Articles labeled: Florida

A 19-year-old was arrested on child neglect charges after police found her and her baby living in a home with no running water and littered with garbage and rotting food. We’re no neat freaks, but we would imagine there’s some serious psychological issues going on to live like that, especially with your kid.

“This home was not fit for a human residence,” an arrest affidavit states. “No child could remain healthy in this home and with the numerous biohazards the child was at risk of future great harm.”

An officer was dispatched at 10:48 a.m. to the residence and met a state Department of Children and Families case worker, who said a complaint was reported that a 1-year-old child was being neglected by his mother at the home.

“By the level of filth and smell coming from the home, it appeared from outside of the home, to be a dangerous environment for humans to reside in,” the affidavit states.

Police reported every room in the two-bedroom house was “filthy,” brimming with dirt, garbage, dirty diapers, decaying food and other items. A 1-year-old boy was in a crib in the living room.

Another defenseless toddler dies at the hands of a loser “boyfriend”.

Seriously, when are single moms going to wake up and smell some self respect and dignity while putting their children first? Is sex and a the prospect of a partner, any partner, so important that they’re willing to allow these loser men to beat their babies to death. I hope the loss and suffering was worth the cheap sex and companionship of a psycho loser.

Citrus deputies said that Shands officials said the boy “suffered severe head trauma, a brain stem injury and massive retinal hemorrhaging.”

Spagnolo, who is unemployed and lives in a garage at a friend’s home, told investigators he baby-sits for Sheppard, who lives in Ocala. He said he and Andrew sleep in the same bed.

Our grandma was generally up for anything, but we doubt that we could have convinced her to put on a ski mask and wave around a gun for our video. That’s what an 18-year-old in Lake Worth, Florida is accused of doing — unfortunately for him, Granny is a bit senile so the cops are charging him with elderly abuse.

The 85-year-old woman is seen and heard on the video threatening to shoot “all the pigs,” referring to police.

Michael Alfinez was arrested Monday and charged with abusing an elderly person, discharging a firearm in public and improper exhibition of a dangerous weapon. Authorities say Alfinez also appears on the video firing a gun from a moving vehicle.

A Florida father made an interesting discovery when cleaning out his 13-year-old daughter’s treehouse the other day — guns and ammunition. There was a 9mm handgun, a 9mm rifle, and a sawed-off shotgun all wrapped in a sheet along with some other interesting items:

Deputies also found a plastic baggie containing 343 rounds of 22-caliber long rifle ammunition and another plastic bag with 94 rounds of 9 mm ammunition. Seven empty cigar containers, two folding knives, a pair of earplugs and an empty Crown Royal liquor bag were also discovered.

O’Connell said the last time he was inside the tree house was Apr. 13 and the bundle had not been there.

Either a criminal took up residence in the treehouse, or that teen is going to have some serious explaining to do. “I swear, Dad, they aren’t mine! I was just holding them for a friend!”

It’s a real life Lassie!

A barking dog helped save an infant Monday evening by alerting his mother that the child was floating in a pool, according to an incident report.

The child, 10-month-old Lios Kelaidis of Ontario, was breathing when pulled from the pool, but Stuart Fire Rescue paramedics transported him to Martin Memorial North as a precaution, according to the report.

Hospital officials said Lios was in good condition Tuesday morning, and he has since been released from the hospital.

Matthew Kent Sheley of Hollywood, Florida, has been arrested for child molestation after police found hundreds of graphic videotapes in his apartment, several of which police allege show Sheley molesting two children.

Investigators on Sunday released images of a little girl’s handcuffed arm bearing a distinctive birthmark. It was taken, police said, from a videotape of her being molested by a South Broward man. Police hope someone will recognize the images and contact them, police spokesman Andrew Casper said.

Detectives also said videotapes indicate a second child was abused by the same suspect, Matthew Kent Sheley, 36, Casper said. There is no identifying description yet of the second child.

Police arrested Sheley on Friday in Hollywood on one count of sexual performance by a child after investigators saw the first girl on a videotape found in Sheley’s former residence in Hallandale Beach, Casper said. Detectives have since reviewed other tapes uncovered and said one more girl was forced to perform sexual acts on camera.

“We’re still trying to get more victims,” Casper said. “He’s been transient in South Florida for 10 years. He’s probably left behind a lot of victims. We don’t know what we’re going to find.”

As if it wasn’t obvious that Oliver Thomas Bernsdorff, who went on a killing spree last December, was a mentally ill psycho, the note police have discovered may clinch it.

A Pinellas County teacher who fatally shot his ex-wife, their two children, another woman and himself in December left behind a letter that indicated the killings would cleanse the world of “sociopathic” and “unethical” tendencies, according to newly released documents.

“Though this act may be viewed as depraved and evil, it does, in fact, leave the world a better place,” authorities said Oliver Thomas Bernsdorff wrote in a letter found on his computer after the slayings.

Ballistics tests confirm Bernsdorff used the same gun in all the killings and to take his own life when state troopers tried to pull him over for driving erratically, Clearwater police spokeswoman Elizabeth Daly-Watts wrote in a statement.

We hate lines. Seriously hate them. We will avoid them at all costs, even going so far as to take days off work to head to popular attractions and avoid the crowds. Rainy day at the zoo! Love it, no lines! So we sympathize with Victoria Walker, who also apparently hates waiting in line. But see, Victoria, we just grind our teeth and bear it, we don’t go ape on our fellow people in the queue!

Aimee Krause says Victoria Walker accused her of cutting into the line at the Mad Tea Cup ride last year at Disney World, MyFOXOrlando reports.

Walker, an Alabama native, could face 15 years behind bars if convicted of battery with a deadly weapon.

Krause has now filed additional charges claiming her children were also attacked.

“She came from behind just screaming,” Krause told MyFOXOrlando. “Next thing I knew she kicked me in my left leg, threw me to the ground and at that point I was pinned between the teacup and the saucer and she continued to beat up on my body.”

A boy at the Meadowbrook Middle School in Orlando, Florida hid behind a bookcase in his classroom, urinated into his teacher’s lunch box, closed it, and gave it back to her. School officials think that perhaps the boy took the teacher’s joke to its literal conclusion. We don’t think that teacher will be too quick with the jesting going forward. We also think she might be in the market for a new lunch box.

The teacher, Jameeka Chambers, was put on paid leave Tuesday while district administrators continue investigating what happened in her classroom last week.

Based on statements from other students in the class, school officials think that when the boy asked to go the restroom on Thursday, Chambers told him to hold it or use her lunchbox. The boy then took the lunchbox, hid behind a bookcase, urinated in it and returned it to the teacher, said Frank Kruppenbacher, attorney for the Orange County School Board.

“I think we clearly know she didn’t tell him, ‘Go pee in this box,’ in the sense of going to go do that,” Kruppenbacher said. “That’s beyond our comprehension.”

Now, our kids can get just as unruly as the next, and we’ll admit we’ve daydreamed about some creative punishments for the little buggers — locking them in the garage, throwing them in an alligator pit, running them through the car wash… the difference is that these are fantasy stress relievers, we don’t actually do it.

A Florida mother caught on tape using a pressurized hose at a car wash to discipline her toddler daughter could end up in hot water after police meet Friday to consider filing child endangerment charges.

“She appeared [to be] a parent who thought she was disciplining her child for acting up. It’s a unique form of punishment that I don’t think anyone has ever seen,” Commander Matt Irwin of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said Friday on TODAY. “It’s not acceptable in my mind.”

The incident began on Feb. 24 when a white Hyundai Elantra pulled into a self-service bay at the Magical Car Wash in Orlando…

Police later determined that the toddler’s mother, who is 22 and five months pregnant, pulled into the car wash for the sole purpose of hosing down her daughter — possibly for wetting herself in the backseat of the car.

At the end of the surveillance tape of the incident, which police seized as potential evidence, the woman is seen stripping her daughter’s soaked clothes off and wrapping her up in a towel.

The woman has since turned herself into police. She has not been publicly identified.

When we were going to school, we learned a little about the “Civil War” and the “Thirteenth Amendment” which ended the practice of slavery in this country. But someone forgot to tell Evelyn Theodore and her daughter, Maude Paulin, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who have been convicted of enslaving Haitian teenager Simone Celestin for SIX YEARS.

Celestin, now 22, testified Wednesday that she considered suicide after years of beatings and intimidation. She tearfully described sleeping on the floor, rummaging through cast-off clothes in the garage for something to wear, bathing from a bucket or a garden hose and scrubbing floors when she should have been in school.

She said Theodore and Maude Paulin often struck her with their hands, shoes or objects such as a curling iron or a mortar if she didn’t finish the work to their satisfaction.

Defense attorneys argued during trial the Celestin’s allegations of abuse were motivated by her desire to be a permanent legal resident of the U.S.

An off duty fire-fighter/paramedic and father who was returning a kids meal toy at a Wendy’s was shot in the back and died after a random shooter open fired in the restaurant during lunch.

The shooter had no motive but to take down innocent people because he was miserable. What a selfish, selfish man. Hopefully, he’ll rot in internal hell. Rest in hell, POS.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Paramedic Rafael Vazquez left a training course on how to help when several people are hurt at once, and went to lunch at a nearby Wendy’s. He became exactly the kind of victim he was being trained to save.

As Vazquez stood at the counter waiting to exchange a promotional toy for his child, he was shot point blank in the back by a gunman wearing a jacket, tie and baseball cap. Four others, including a man from Killeen, Texas, were wounded by gunfire during the lunch hour rampage Monday, and the 60-year-old gunman — Alburn Edward Blake of West Palm Beach — committed suicide.

The parents of Jessica Lunsford, a 9-year-old girl who was raped, tortured, and buried alive in 2005, are suing the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Citrus County Board of County Commissioners claiming negligence in the investigation into the disappearance of their daughter, and they have reason to believe that the alleged mistakes led to the girl’s death.

The sheriff’s office said Thursday morning that the department has received notice of the lawsuit from Mark Lunsford and Angela Wright, who are Jessica’s parents.

Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped and murdered by John Couey in 2005. It took investigators nearly a month to find Jessica’s body. Couey was convicted of the crime last year, and a jury sentenced him to death.

At a news conference just before Lunsford’s, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said he was surprised by the lawsuit.

“I was surprised and disappointed,” he said. “We truly believe that this litigation is baseless.

Wow, can’t imagine why this mom wouldn’t want to spend more time with her little angels. Melissa G. Dean, a mother in Ocala, Florida, apparently would leave the house for days at a time — she was, in her words, “on strike” — leaving her four teenage boys to fend for themselves. Apparently the teens are out of control, and she just couldn’t take it anymore. Dean was subsequently charged with child neglect, and when reporters showed up on the scene to get the scoop, her kids demonstrated why Dean should perhaps get a lenient sentence:

On Wednesday FOX 35 sent a reporter and photographer to the family’s home for a story. When they got there Dean’s sons walked up to the news car when they pulled up and started swearing, and yelling out racial slurs three times the kids came back at the news crew. After the first time, the FOX 35 news crew called 911. The four kids then surrounded the FOX 35 news photographer. One of the kids stood behind him with a pipe in his hand while another kid threatened to hit him.

When police showed up they talked to some of the kids, who had scattered then took a report. A woman with the Department of Children and Families also showed up. We’re told the boys are staying with neighbors. No word on where the mother is after bonding out of jail.

Delores Henderson, a 55-year-old woman in Cocoa, Florida near Orlando, has been arrested for repeatedly hitting her 2-year-old grandson and slamming his stroller into the curb as they walked down the street:

“People driving in the area of Dixon at this boulevard were witnessing this woman hitting this child,” Barbara Matthews with Cocoa police said.

The incident occurred at the intersection of Fiske and Dixon Boulevard in Cocoa.

Police arrived after being contacted by witnesses. Police said the beatings didn’t stop, even after Henderson dumped the boy out of his stroller and on to the concrete.

“As he drove up, he saw her hitting the child in the head. She was slapping him with her open hand,” Matthews said. “The officer described it as looking like a rag doll. She threw him back in the stroller and started to hit him again.”

Henderson gave no reason why she went completely mental on the kid. No mention of the boy’s parents, either — but with a mom like that, it would be difficult to be a well-rounded mother or father yourself.