"A 13-year old Virginia Beach boy is being held at the Virginia Beach Detention Center after police say he abducted an exotic dancer last Tuesday night.
According to officials, the dancer showed up at a pre-arranged appointment at a residence - subsequently discovered to be vacant - in the 700 block of South Rosemont Road around 6:30pm.
The woman noticed the client was a juvenile, but was told that the contract was for his older brother. Police say the woman waited for a while, but no one else showed up.
Authorities say when the woman eventually tried to leave the residence, she was stopped by the juvenile who pointed a shotgun at her and ordered her to dance.
The dancer diverted the boy's attention and tried to dial 911 on her cell phone. According to police, the juvenile then grabbed the phone. During the struggle, the woman bit the boy's hand and was able to break free and run to her car.
Police say their investigation identified the suspect, and also led them to believe that another juvenile was involved in the plan to abduct the dancer. Investigators are working on identifying the second suspect.
The initial 13-year old suspect was arrested Thursday. He is charged with abduction by force, conspiracy, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, brandishing a firearm, and transporting and possessing an assault firearm at age 13."
I cannot stress this enough, you cannot take the stripper home with you. I supppose the obvious question's here are, "Where was the child's parent's and how did the child become in possession of a shotgun?" Actually, here's another question, "Where was this chick's bodyguard?" I would assume that all call girls and strippers and such, when they make housecalls, have some back-up to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Women in the sex industry have to be wary of all kinds of men that are out to do them harm. Now they're going to have to be on the lookout for gun-wielding children as well.
"TROY, N.Y. -- A teenager who said he fantasized about "shooting up" his school, admitted in court Monday that he fired several shotgun blasts at two students, hitting a teacher in the leg.
John Romano pleaded guilty to attempted murder and could get 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 20. He also pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment.
Romano walked into Columbia High School in suburban Albany on the morning of Feb. 9, firing his 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun twice at the pair of students. Neither student was hit. He was finally tackled by a school administrator, but not before getting off a third round of birdshot that hit teacher Michael Bennett in the leg.
"I'm pleased and I hope that John gets the help he needs," Bennett told reporters after Romano's court appearance Monday.
In a signed statement to police on the day of the shooting, Romano said, "I have had fantasies for about the last year of going in Columbia and shooting up the place."
Romano, who was 16 at the time, also said in his statement that he hated the school's principal and assistant principal. "They had no respect for me and lied to me. If I saw them, I would have shot them," Romano wrote.
District Attorney Patricia DeAngelis prosecuted Romano as an adult, bringing an 86-count indictment against the student that included three counts of attempted murder, one second-degree assault charge and 82 counts of first-degree reckless endangerment.
He pleaded guilty to all three counts of attempted murder and six counts of reckless endangerment.
"This sentence sends a strong message to any person who is contemplating committing any act of violence in our schools," DeAngelis said. "There is no room for fear in the classroom. There is no room for violence in the classroom."
Romano's attorney, E. Stewart Jones, had characterized his client as an "unstable, fragile and frightened" boy with "a history of emotional problems."
On Monday, Jones called the possible 20-year sentence "barbaric." "
It's always sad to hear about yet another school shooting. High school is a rough place and it can be worse if you don't have a reasonable adult to confide in and trust. Whenever I hear about stories like this I think back to my time in school. I saw kids get dirty pantyhose shoved down their throats, beat with lacrosse sticks, humiliated in front of crowds...hell I even put one kid in a gym locker...and I was one of the kids getting picked on. However, as far as I know, nobody from my town ever came back to the school with the intent to commit murder. I'm not saying my town had some stellar teacher's and parent's...because that would be a lie, but I would like to think that above all else, we all respected each other's right to live. There's a huge line between revenge against the school bullies and murder. Apparently, that line is being ever more blurred year after year.
"Hundreds of children and teenagers held in juvenile detention facilities in New Jersey are there illegally, kept for months without basic medical care in locked quarters that are severely overcrowded and leave them vulnerable to episodes of violence, according to a report by the independent monitor of the state's child welfare system.
The report, issued by the Office of the Child Advocate, which was created last year after the state's child welfare system scandal, is based on a yearlong investigation that had access to confidential government records.
It amounts to a damning portrait of the 17 county detention facilities that together house more than 10,000 adolescents a year.
The report found that fully a quarter of the youths held in detention facilities, many of them suffering from mental health problems, were there simply because the state could not find a more appropriate setting, such as a hospital or foster home. And in what the report called a "cruel irony,'' scores of them stayed four months longer on average than the sentences served by the adolescents who had been sent there for committing crimes.
The counties, according to the report, often failed to provide the most troubled youths in the facilities with rudimentary mental health care. Evaluations often were not done in some county juvenile jails; in others, mental health care was provided by drug and alcohol counselors, not doctors.
State officials acknowledged the problems yesterday and said significant reforms were being introduced and had already reduced the population in detention.
Nevertheless, the report offered recent chilling examples of cases that underscored the chaos and damage suffered by some of the adolescents in the detention centers.
One boy, over eight weeks in one of the centers, attempted suicide five times, often showered with his clothes on and threatened workers, but was taken off suicide watch by a social worker. That night, he was found trying to hang himself from a light fixture, using a piece of elastic from his underwear. A 16-year-old attempted suicide 14 times before being hospitalized.
"Thousands of kids are being inappropriately waylaid into detention when they need community-based mental health services,'' said Kevin M. Ryan, the child advocate. "The vast majority of the mentally ill kids are in detention for some minor offense like stealing a bike or getting into a fight. During the course of doing this report, we saw scores of them slowly and painfully come apart as they failed to receive treatment.''
Mr. Ryan said he had been particularly struck by the case of one teenager at the detention center in Union County. The youth had tried to kill himself four times in one month, once by slicing his wrists with a broken plastic cup, once by swallowing a screw, and yet again by drinking the chemicals from an ice pack.
"Putting kids like this in detention is akin to placing an asthmatic child in a closet with pollen and asbestos,'' he said. "It is a given they are going to get sicker.''
The inappropriate but frequent placement of mentally ill adolescents in detention facilities is a national problem. According to a 1999 report by the surgeon general, one in five youngsters in detention centers across the country have serious emotional problems, just as in New Jersey. Still, the child advocate's report points to long-term systemic failures within the state that have exacerbated the impact of such incarceration on adolescents.
In one measure, the report found that juveniles are often placed in detention centers that have already reached maximum capacity, a practice Mr. Ryan called a flagrant violation of state law. In 2003 in Camden County, the juvenile detention center had more than twice as many youths as legally allowed inside its walls on a daily basis.
Over the years, the administrator of the Camden County center, Mary T. Previte, has repeatedly protested the overcrowding, calling the conditions a "tinderbox'' that could lead to violence and sexual assault."
Parent's bring children into this world that they cannot care for and ultimately do not want because they are selfish and dysfuntional. Social service agencies are set up to protect children from said parent's. But what happens when said agencies fail those children? You get the story above. This makes me sick. This is glaring proof that we as a society are really not interested in protecting children. We seem to be saying that we are, but the proof is sitting in detention centers, shelters and foster homes across the country. I just do not have the words.
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