In happier days, Tyler Deccio, 18, received nude photos of his 15-year-old girlfriend. Once the Everett, Wash., couple broke up, Tyler allegedly posted the X-rated pics on MySpace, along with the girl’s name and crude comments.
After the girl went to the cops, Tyler was arrested on felony charges of suspicion of harassment and posting nude photos of a minor. Tyler appeared in court on Wednesday, where he told the judge that he thought his girlfriend was cheating on him, KING TV News reported.
Tyler is just the latest kid to be arrested on sexting charges. Read about other cases here.
Just one more thing that parents have to worry about as kids hit the pool — 4 million swim floats are being recalled because the leg straps can tear and cause kids to fall unexpectedly into or under the water and put them at risk for drowning.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has received 31 reports of float seats tearing; no injuries have been recorded. The affected products are a variety of styles and colors, detailed here. Consumers should contact the manufacturer, Aqua-Leisure Industries of Avon, Mass., for a full refund. Call the company at (866) 807-3998 or visit its Web site.
Daniel Slutsky became the second child this week to die in a hot vehicle after being accidently left behind by a day care worker.
Daniel, 2, was forgotten for 6 and a half hours in a car with the windows rolled up outside a daycare center in suburban Philadelphia. Rimma Shuartsman, the operator of Fairy Tales Day Care and also his neighbor, had been taking the boy to the facility three times a week since September, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. But on Wednesday morning, she apparently forgot to take him out of his car seat.
Daniel died of hyperthermia. The high temperature was only 83 degrees, but that’s enough to turn a locked car into an oven. Police are investigating and haven’t made a decision on whether to charge Shuartsman.
Three-year-old Damilyn McElveen of Baton Rouge, La. died today after accidentally being left in a daycare van. The blue-and-white van was parked outside of Wanda’s Kids World, according to the Advocate.
Apparently, the child was picked up by an employee of the daycare this morning, and then left in the van all day, when temperatures were in the 90s. Police were notified just before 3 p.m. that daycare workers had found the child in the afternoon, attempted and failed to revive her using CPR.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration has tips here on preventing such tragedies.
Photo by Jalalspages
A 12-foot python escaped from its aquarium and killed a 2-year-old girl on Wednesday morning in her central Florida home. Shaunia Hare died in her bedroom, suffering strangulation as well as bite marks on her head, police told the Associated Press.
The boyfriend of Shaunia’s mother owned the Burmese python, but did not have a legal permit for the animal, police said. Charles Jason Darnell, 32, discovered the snake was missing, and then found the snake on the Shaunia.
The Humane Society told the AP that Shaunia is at least the 12th person to be killed in the U.S. by pet pythons since 1980. Five of those deaths were children. Last year, the parents of a 3-year-old boy in Las Vegas were charged with felony child neglect after their child was attacked by their pet python. The boy survived after the mother stabbed the snake with a kitchen knife.
Photo by Tambako the Jaguar
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible for one week to pass this summer without a child dying of heat exhaustion or hyperthermia in a hot car.
A 23-month-old girl was left strapped in her car seat in front of her family’s home in suburban Baltimore for more than eight hours on Saturday. Police said a change of routine caused the parents to forget about the child, but didn’t specify details, the Baltimore Sun reported. The parents, who were not publicly identified, will not be charged in the incident, police said.
The 11-month-old boy was left in a hot car in a supermarket parking lot as temperatures reached 100 degrees on Saturday, police said. An employee at the HEB supermarket in Killeen, Tex., spotted the child and called 911. Firefighters broke open a car window to rescue the baby, who looked dazed from the heat, KXXV TV News reported.
The child had been left in the car for at least 17 minutes, authorities said. The mother, Sarah Lowelle Traylor, was arrested and charged with child abandonment.
Senior firefighter Robert Arrendo told KXXV that young children are more at risk to hyperthermia because they “have a smaller amount of fluid that their body can hold, so them sweating just like we would would cause them going into a type of shock.”
If you think that teens take so many dumb risks because they believe they’re immortal, this study will make you think again.
University of Minnesota Medical School researcher Iris Browsky found that one in seven teens believes that they’ll die before age 35, and that such fatalism is strongly linked to greater risk taking behaviors, such as illicit drug use, suicide attempts, fighting and unsafe sexual activity.
“While conventional wisdom says that teens engage in risky behaviors because they feel invulnerable to harm, this study suggests that in some cases, teens take risks because they overestimate their vulnerability, specifically their risk of dying,” Borowsky said in a statement. “These youth may take risks because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake.”
The study found that nearly 25 percent of youth living in households that receive public assistance believe that they will die young, as do more than 29 percent of American-Indian, 26 percent of African-American, 21 percent of Hispanic and 15 percent of Asian youth. Just 10 percent of their Caucasian peers have such a pessimistic outlook on the future.
Most parents wonder how to keep their children from getting hooked on smoking. This dad taught his two-year-old son to smoke in hopes that it would help him deal with the pain from a hernia, according to the Daily Mail.
Tong Liangliang puffed his first cigarette at the age of 18 months. He now smokes a pack a day, and throws a tantrum if he’s not allowed to light up.
“The father wasn’t aware of how serious the toddler’s habit became until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day,” China Radio International reported.
Even the President of the United States admits to the occasional cigarette. Tips on preventing your child from developing the habit are here.
Photo from the Daily Mail
Two-year-old Elise Nelms unbuckled herself out of her booster seat and opened the sliding door of the minivan being driven by her grandmother. She then fell out and was run over by a rear tire, police said.
Elise died a week after the June 17 accident, when she was taken off life support, the Peoria Journal Star in Illionis reported. She had multiple injuries to her head and chest.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that kids should not be in booster seats until they are at least four years old. Younger children should be in a car safety seat with a five-point harness.
