Man charged with attempted murder, Child Abuse after baby found in trash
LAWRENCE, KS – A 27-year-old man will face attempted murder and child abuse charges after he allegedly left his 6-month-old step-daughter in the trash.
Lawrence Police said 27-year-old Marquis Jamall Young will face attempted first degree murder and child abuse charges after he was accused of leaving his 6-month-old step daughter in a trash receptacle outside of a Lawrence apartment.
On July 7, 2016 a woman walked outside to empty a vacuum cleaner into an outdoor trash compactor at the Trail Ridge Apartment Complex when she heard a noise that she thought was a kitten.
The woman started digging and threw out five or six trash bags and found a baby girl in the compactor screaming.
A neighbor heard the woman yelling for help and called police.
The baby was rushed to the hospital in serious but stable condition with gashes on her head and many bug bites.
An hour and a half earlier, a man parked his SUV in another part of the complex. Neighbors said he was acting erratically, so they called police.
“There was definitely something wrong mentally going on with him, from the things he was saying, and (he was) just acting weird,” said one neighbor.
The apartment where that man lived, the neighbor said, was the same one police had cordoned off after the child was found.
The man’s wife told friends that she and her husband had a fight, she left and returned about 5:30 a.m. to find her 6-month-old daughter missing.
Neighbors also said they believe the man had been to the trash compactor before abandoning his SUV across the complex.
Lawrence Police investigators were able to identify the child’s step-father, Marquis Jamall Young, as the suspect and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Young is currently in custody in Johnson County on unrelated charges. He will be brought to Douglas County to face charges of attempted first degree murder and child abuse.
Police said the baby involved in this case has since been released from the hospital and remains in the care of the state. She will continue to receive medical care for her injuries on an outpatient basis.
4 arrested in murder investigation; accused
of using social media to lure victim
BROOKSVILLE, FL – Detectives made four arrests in a grizzly Hernando County murder.
A man walking in the woods Sunday spotted a car with a naked body lying near it and called authorities. Deputies spent hours at the crime scene off State Road 50 in the eastern part of the county, processing the scene and gathering evidence. Their investigation revealed the victim had been in contact with three men and a woman on the dating site Plenty of Fish.
The victim has been identified as 35-year old Preston Talley, of Gainesville.
Investigators believe Talley thought he was speaking with 25-year old Kayla Morrow, of Dade City. In reality, he was communicating with 24-year old Joshual Gardner, who lived at the same address as Morrow.
“Her and Mr. Gardner and two other individuals were actually attempting to lure our victim into Hernando County … for what he thought was going to be either sexual acts and or consuming drugs, specifically methamphetamine,” Sheriff Al Nienhuis said.
Talley drove to the area and met with Morrow. The two spoke briefly before he followed her to an isolated wooded area off of the highway. There, the three other suspects were hiding and waiting.
“Our information is the minute he got out of the vehicle, one of the suspects began to hit him with a bat… (They) beat him viciously in the head to the point where he was deceased,” Nienhuis said.
Morrow, Gardner and the two other suspects, 19-year old Andrew Abbott and 24-year old Brandon Harrelson, allegedly took $20 and meth from the victim. At some point, the four allegedly removed Talley’s clothes and disposed of some of their own clothing. The sheriff believes they did so to destroy evidence.
Authorities say the suspects then left the state, heading for the Jackson, Mississippi area. After making their way back into Florida, there were arrested in the Gainesville area.
One or more of the suspects told friends or relatives what happened, detectives said. Authorities interviewed those acquaintances.
Morrow, Gardner, Abbott and Harrelson are charged with robbery and first-degree murder. They will be transported from Alachua County to the Hernando County Jail.
Assistant principal at Cape school accused
of dragging boy with autism
CAPE CORAL, FL – A video showing an assistant principal dragging a 6-year-old boy with autism down a hallway in nothing but his boxer shorts sparked an investigation by the Department of Children and Families and the Lee County School District’s internal affairs department.
The video, which captured the Child Abuse of the Autistic Student with Special Needs, was edited by school employees, who edited out 20 minutes of the incident.
Reported sex trafficking cases on the rise
in Indiana, Ohio
FORT WAYNE, IN – Young children, abused or neglected at home, run away and get picked up by strangers or even people they thought were their friends… selling them for sex.
It sounds like something straight out of a movie, but it actually happens everywhere. It could be happening right in your own backyard.
The number of sex trafficking arrests are on the rise in the state of Indiana, but so is the supply and demand of the commercial sex industry.
“This crime occurs when a trafficker uses force, fraud or coercion to control another person for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or soliciting labor or services against his/her will,” says NHTRC.
One may think that sex trafficking only happens in under-developed neighborhoods, or only in other countries. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller reiterates that is simply not true, as it happens in any neighborhood, and from any computer or phone.
In Marion County alone, there have been 20 sex traffickers prosecuted and 25 victims rescued just in the past six months.
Zoeller, an advocate for education and the ceasing of sex trafficking in the Hoosier state, says many victims may not even see themselves as victims. They may experience a phenomenon close to ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ or not know any other life than the toxic one they’re exposed to.
The AG says the victims are not to blame, but the main problem is the business world the traffickers are feeding into.
“This is a growing problem, and one we need to recognize is real. Many people don’t even believe this exists,” says Zoeller. “I’ve called for the fact that people should be arrested and put in jail, the same way we address drunk driving. You may lose your job, or at least the respect of your friends and community. So if we start raising the risk factor, I think we can really take a dent out of the demand that’s out there today.”
Northwest Ohio is also no stranger to human trafficking cases either, as Toledo was once rated fourth in the nation for youth-sex trade due to a high number of FBI busts. Some local coalition members say the busts are actually a good thing.
According to the NHTRC, there have been 289 human trafficking cases reported just this year. 233 of those cases are sex trafficking.
Even higher is the number of phone calls made to report a potential case: 1066.
Jennifer Wedge, a member of the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition, says high numbers is not a bad thing, but quite the opposite.
“If there’s a population center with a lot of identified human trafficking victims, it means something in that area is working,” says Wedge. “They’re getting them identified and getting them help. It does happen in every single zip code in our country and in every country around the world.”
Many victims are believed to be missing children.
That’s why Tim Wedge, a Forensics Science professor at Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio (and Jennifer’s husband) wanted to step in and help.
Wedge helped create FAGIN, Facial Analysis to Gain Information Now, a basic crude prototype that he and his students engineered.
FAGIN is designed to take missing person reports with pictures of missing children, run it through the facial analysis software by comparing them to pictures in ads for people being sold for sex online, and produce a report whenever there’s a match.
It even matches old pictures of the children, from the time when they went missing, to an aged picture years later when they’re being sold.
Wedge says FAGIN has the possibility of rescuing a shocking amount of victims.
“If we can take this crude prototype and turn it into a production system, we potentially can rescue every single one [victim] that’s being advertised online. That possibility exists. That [number of victims saved] is very likely going to be in the thousands,” Wedge says.
Wedge has showed the prototype to some law enforcement agencies to show how it works and how it can be made into a full production system.
He believes for that to happen, FAGIN needs the resources of law enforcement officers to officially use it for missing children like from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database, where 800,000 children are reported missing each year. One in five of them are sex trafficking victims.
Zoeller says knowing the signs of trafficking is prominent in eliminating the epidemic. Be on the lookout for young girls with an older man and it seems out-of-place. There might be some bruising or cuts on the victims, they might seem very controlled, looking down and staying quiet, and they might not have identification on them.
Zoeller says these recognizing these red flags and bringing it to someone’s attention could help get someone’s life back.
To report a potential human trafficking case anonymously, call the NHTRC at 1 (888) 373-7888 or send a text to 233733 (Text “HELP” or “INFO”). Both are available 24/7.
As of 11:30pm, July 12, 2016, 18 Children have been lost to vehicular heat stroke.
I think everyone will agree that too many Children have lost their lives in HOT CARS.
With this in mind, Ark of Hope for Children and NOT IN MY WORLD!!!! have an effective way to slow, and hopefully stop this killer of Our Children.
Share this with everyone
Use and share Our Hashtag: #HotVehicles are not #BabySitters
Set a “TASK” with alarm in smartphone every time you drive Child/Children , set alarm 10-30 minutes early before arrival at destination to drop off Child/Children (depending on distance).
DO NOT TURN OFF ALARM UNTIL CHILD/CHILDREN ARE DROPPED OFF, CONTINUE TO HIT SLEEPER, SET AT 5 MINUTES, UNTIL TASK IS COMPLETED.
My Brother's Keeper 