Tragic Endings

When a toddler let himself out of his house, unbeknownst to his family, he was hit by a truck and died.

So sad….

A toddler who left his house without his parents’ knowledge was hit and killed by a pick-up truck in southeast Houston Saturday afternoon .

Alejandro Perez, who was 18 months old, got out of his house in the 700 block of Gober around 1:30 p.m. and crossed the street, authorities said.

Minor Topics HQ sits along a river, and we’re ultra-paranoid whenever our children go anywhere near it. Stories like this doesn’t help. Poor kid.

Divers have recovered the body of a 12-year-old boy who fell into the Saco River and was swept away by the current.
more stories like this

The Maine Marine Patrol said the body of Raymond Rivera of Saco was found Sunday 14 feet below the surface, trapped in debris that had accumulated on a sandbar.

Wow, we can’t even imagine the grief and guilt this dad must be going through right now.

The Sibley County Sheriff says that a man who accidentally shot and killed his 9-year-old son while they were hunting apparently mistook the boy for a turkey.

Sheriff Bruce Ponath says that Anthony Klaseus of Belle Plaine and his son Hunter were hunting turkey about three miles west of Belle Plaine around 6:30 p.m. Saturday when Klaseus shot his son in the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun.

Klaseus dialed 911 on his cell phone. Emergency responders pronounced the boy dead at the scene.

It’s certainly hard enough to deal with your mother’s death. But when it’s a senseless murder, committed while your mother was trying to protect your little sister, has to make it that much harder.

“She loved and spoiled that baby. She would have done anything for her,” a distraught Patrick Matt, 19, said on Thursday outside the family’s home in the 12600 block of Bracrest.

Tina Davila, 39, drove up to a Cricket store at 5619 Uvalde to pay a cell phone bill about 6 p.m. Wednesday when a man attacked her. Kaylynn, her 4-month-old daughter, was still in the car.

Surveillance video shows a man in a gold-colored Ford Taurus pulling up beside Davila almost immediately after she parked her Chrysler Aspen outside the northeast Harris County strip shopping center.

The video shows the man lunging for her car keys then moving back toward the Ford sedan, with Davila following after him.

“She was yelling, ‘My baby. My baby.’ That’s why she wouldn’t give up the car,” Denholm said.

Not to add to the parents grief and suffering — I can’t even imagine what it’s like to lose a child, but there is a lesson to learned from this tragic ending. A toddler drowned during a family gathering. Although an accident, the sheriff states that there is nothing anybody could have done. He claims it all happened within a couple of minutes.

But, when a baby or toddler is near water, you can’t even allow yourself to turn your back for even 30 seconds. That is the lesson to be taught to all parents of young children. Small children and distractions do not mix. You can never be too safe. If a family does bring little ones around water, please have them in a life vest or some sort of floating device.

BEAVER — A 22-month-old boy drowned Friday during a family gathering at a home near Lake Pleasant.

Steven Neel, the son of Jennifer Daman and James Neel of Forks, vanished only minutes after several family members had seen him, and was found in Lake Creek about 50 minutes later.

“It was literally within just a couple of minutes — they realized he was missing, and launched a search,” Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Peregrine said on Saturday.

“I can’t see a single thing that anyone could have done differently.”

Police are not releasing the details of how or why a 16 year old Woodrow Wilson High School was killed in her house last Thursday. Foul play is suspected.

Anybody our there have any theories?

Meghan got out of school early Thursday after an exam. She chatted with her next-door neighbor about school around 11:20 a.m.

“She seemed fine,” Andrea Warren, who lent the Woodrow Wilson High School sophomore a package of macaroni and cheese for lunch, recalled earlier Friday.

It was about 4 p.m. Thursday when Meghan’s stepfather returned to the family’s home and found her lifeless body. He called 911. Paramedics pronounced her dead. Police say it’s a homicide.

Portsmouth police released scant details about the case and would not reveal anything about the scene in the house. As of late Friday, police also announced no arrests and would not say how she died. Neither would the medical examiner’s office, which referred requests for information about her cause of death to the police. A police spokeswoman on Friday did not respond to several phone messages.

Investigators remained on the scene Friday.

A drive by shooting targeting a child’s birthday party is under investigation as police they try to figure out whether the gunmen meant to target a child’s party or not and who they were after.

Many children were wounded and one died as well as a 48 year old woman. The gunmen are still at large.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A gunman drove up and opened fire at a child’s birthday party, killing a woman and 5-year-old girl and wounding four others, authorities said.

Annette Stevenson, 48, died at the scene Sunday night and Queshawn Stevenson, 5, who had been shot in the neck and stomach, died early Monday at a hospital, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.

A 15-year-old in Minneapolis driving a stolen car was being chased by police when the teen rammed the car into a mother driving herself and her 6-year-old son to Sunday school. The woman was killed, and her son is in critical condition. In a gross injustice, the teenager only received minor injuries.

The boy, who ran from the crash scene at Lake Street and Stevens Avenue and was arrested inside a Kmart store, likely will face several felony charges, including criminal vehicular homicide, Minneapolis police Sgt. William Palmer said.

Police pursued the suspect’s car for about a mile and a half before the chase was called off near Lake Street and Chicago Avenue because of concern for the public’s safety, Palmer said. The crash happened about a half-mile down the street.

“This was a very quick incident,” he said.

The Hennepin County medical examiner’s office identified the victim as 26-year-old Hanna Abukar, of Minneapolis.

Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, spent Sunday consoling Abukar’s husband and friends. He said Abukar had been driving her 6-year-old son and a 13-year-old neighborhood boy to Sunday school when the incident occurred.

“She was a good wife, mother and member of the community,” Jamal said. “It’s a tragic loss.”

We’re huge proponents of organ donation, so we’re sure we would have made the same decision as Lisa and Jim Koehne, who donated their 15-year-old son Alex’s liver, pancreas and kidneys after he died from what they thought was bacterial meningitis. So imagine how crushed they must feel after learning their very generous act led to even more heartache:

But it was only after the transplants were performed that autopsy results revealed Alex had a deadly cancer known as anaplastic T-cell lymphoma — not bacterial meningitis.

“We were shellshocked by the whole situation,” Jim Koehne said on “GMA” today. “We had a lot of questions.”

Patient privacy laws prevented the Koehnes from ever meeting the recipients of their son’s organs.

“Two things we did think of [once we learned the truth], one, the recipients, are they OK? Are they all right?” said Lisa Koehne, who added the organ recipients’ doctors had be notified about the situation before she and her husband learned the truth.

“They said they’ll be monitored and looked after,” Jim Koehne said doctors told him.

After the operation, the recipients of the organs all showed evidence of the cancer. The recipient of Alex’s liver underwent three cycles of chemotherapy before finally succumbing to the tumors brought about by the lymphoma. The woman who received Alex’s pancreas initially responded well to treatment but she, too, later died.

Just want to emphasize that we are not placing any blame or fault on the Koehne family.

An 11-year-old boy in Centralia, Washington, was found dead in his home from a gun shot wound. Police believe the gun accidentally discharged while the boy was handling it. We just have to shake our heads at how some parents can be so careless with such deadly items.

Detective Sgt. Stacy Brown said this morning that the handgun involved in the incident had been kept in the house northeast of Centralia, at 724 Teitzel Road, where two brothers were eating dinner in separate rooms.

Although no names have been released as of press time today, Brown said the parents of the children were both working at the time of the shooting and the incident is under investigation. The gun belonged to the father, according to a sheriff’s office press release.

“The kids obviously knew where the guns were kept,” Brown said.

According to Internet address listings, Aaron and Tanya Rothmeyer live at the residence. Based on Lewis County tax lot information, the couple bought the 1920s-era home in April 2001. Brown said multiple firearms were kept there, although she declined to elaborate, citing the active investigation.

A 5 year old autistic girl was found dead in her bedroom after apparently swallowing a balloon.

A five-year-old girl died after a burst balloon became lodged in her throat.

Lily Breen’s mother, registered nurse Angela, tried to resuscitate the youngster after finding her lifeless body in a bedroom, but it is thought the little girl died instantly.

Lily, from Desborough, Northants, was autistic and liked touching and tasting things, said relatives on Saturday

It is thought she bit into the inflated balloon and swallowed it when it burst.

More information has been released about Steven Sueppel, who killed his wife and four children before dying himself in a fiery car crash. Apparently Sueppel first tried to kill his family by carbon monoxide poisoning, and when that didn’t work he went on a rampage with a baseball bat:

Sueppel succeeded in killing himself early Monday in a fiery crash, police said, but only after leaving a note and voice mails at his home and at the offices of relatives and co-workers, explaining his actions.

Authorities disclosed details Tuesday of the hours before Sueppel, accused of stealing $560,000 from his bank, rammed the family van into the concrete base of a highway sign about 9 miles east of Iowa City. Sueppel died when the van erupted in flames, police said.

Starting about 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Sueppel, 42, began leaving voice mails at the offices of relatives and ex-colleagues apologizing profusely, saying the shame he brought on his family was too much to bear, Iowa City police said.

“The statements went toward the children and wife being in a better place,” Sgt. Troy Kelsay said. “But it’s pretty personal, and I’m not comfortable commenting more on that.”

5 adults and one 12 year old boy are charged with the murder and torture of a developmentally delayed pregnanat woman, whose 1 year old son was found starving.

There is a special place in hell for these people. This is just so horrific. How can people be so sadistic? How is this level of evil even possible?

Hayes said things apparently came to a head Jan. 30, when investigators believe that Woods, during a dispute, beat Dixon on the head with an object Hayes wouldn’t identify. The next day Woods found her dead.

Hayes watched the autopsy and found her injuries disturbing. X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body — her face, her chest, her arms and feet — and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.

None of the injuries, Hayes said, proved singly fatal to Dixon. Her system already was taxed by her unborn baby.

“The autopsy sort of indicates her immune system just shut down,” he said. “It was not capable of fending off any more.”

Abigail Taylor, a 6-year-old from Edina, Minnesota suffered from a horrific pool drain accident last year has died after suffering from her injuries for almost 9 months.

Family attorney Bob Bennett says Abigail Taylor’s parents were with her when she died Thursday evening at a Nebraska hospital.

Abigail was injured on June 29 when she sat on a pool drain and its powerful suction ripped out part of her intestinal tract. She had small bowel, liver and pancreas transplants at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in December but suffered complications.

The child’s injury led to federal legislation to make pools safer.

“The world’s less better off without Abigail Taylor,” Bennett said.

A 2-year-old boy in Plainfield Township, Michigan has died after falling ill at a home daycare while his parents were vacationing in Mexico. An autopsy has shown that the boy died from ingesting rubbing alcohol.

Toxicology testing found traces of acetone in Keenan Marshall’s body fluids. The chemical is the active ingredient in nail-polish remover and a byproduct of deteriorating rubbing alcohol.

Kent County sheriff’s deputies ruled the death an accident, saying there were no signs of trauma.

The boy fell ill on Feb. 18, three days after arriving at the day care center in Plainfield Township. The center’s operator, a woman, took him to his doctor on Feb. 20 and was told to keep the toddler hydrated after he vomited and felt weak.

The next morning, the woman found him dead. The chemical had slowly damaged his brain, the autopsy found.