Articles labeled: victoria

A tragic accident occurred at a Victoria, Texas car wash when a toddler was run over while playing at a self-serve car wash.

Police say the toddler and his six-year-old brother had been playing Thursday afternoon while their parents cleaned their white Mitsubishi sedan. The driver of the Hummer, who had just finished vacuuming his vehicle and pulled forward, was not speeding when the toddler was hit.

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He just didn’t see the small child that had wandered away. This is an absolute unfortunate accident,” said Police Chief Bruce Ure in Friday’s online edition of the Victoria Advocate.

A judge in Australia has ruled that a 12-year-old girl may begin the first step in getting a sex change. That’s quite a drastic life altering decision to make for someone who hasn’t even entered puberty. How old do you have to be to get a tattoo in Australia, 5?

It was reported yesterday that during a hearing in December, the court heard that the girl from Victoria had thought of herself as a boy since the age of four. Several medical experts, including a psychiatrist, backed her application for a sex change.

The judge said that while the initial treatment was reversible, it needed to be seen as the first step in a process which, if continued, would allow the girl to live as a man.

“In my view, and on all the evidence, the treatment is in [the child’s] best interests,” the judgment said.

Further court applications will have to be made if the child wants to take the process further. Surgery to remove her womb and ovaries or construct a penis cannot be performed before the age of 18.

Carol Louise Matthey, of Victoria, Australia, was charged two years ago with killing her four young children in a sick attempt to save her marriage — an excuse that seems to come up surprisingly often in these types of cases. Well, today prosecutors dropped the charges deeming the case un-winnable:

Acting DPP Jeremy Rapke said the prosecution had been re-assessed in light of a body of evidence being ruled inadmissible. “I have now determined that the remaining Crown case is such that there is no reasonable prospect of any conviction being recorded,” he said.

Justice John Coldrey said he had asked the DPP to reconsider the viability of the prosecution.

“A detailed examination of the prosecution case revealed, in my view, evidentiary difficulties both as to its admissibility and as to the quality of the evidence the Crown was seeking to lead,” he said.

Matthey has maintained her innocence the entire time she was waiting for trial, and that all of her children dying within a relatively short time frame was just a horrible twist of fate.