One tragedy turned into two for a Nevada family on Friday. The father was backing his SUV out of his driveway when his little boy ran out and was hit.
The toddler was transported to a local hospital, where he later died. But the distraught father stayed behind in the driveway of his Reno, Nev., home — and stabbed himself in the chest. The father was listed in stable condition over the weekend, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. Police did not release the names of anyone in the case.
A woman in Indonesia gave birth to a baby the size of a year-old toddler on Monday. The boy weighed in at 19.2 pounds and two feet long and came into the world safely via C-section, NBC News reported. (Check out the video on the Web site.)
The big boy, who hasn’t been named yet, set a record in Indonesia, but he came short of the world record of 23 pounds set in 1879. Doctors speculate that the boy grew so big because his mother had gestational diabetes. The condition causes babies to receive too much glucose in the womb.
“He’s got a strong appetite, it’s almost nonstop feeding,” his doctor told Agence France-Presse. “This baby boy is extraordinary; the way he’s crying is not like a usual baby. It’s really loud.”
But for his mother, we’re sure, the baby’s size just means there’s more to love.
The baby was ready to be born, but no one else was available to help except for her big sister.
Mom Briana Johnson had to depend on her 6-year-old daughter, Diyana, to fetch towels and other supplies. Johnson, a nurse from the Raleigh, NC, area, had to deliver the infant herself on Wednesday because the baby came faster than the ambulance and relatives.
Diyana saw her mom in pain through the contractions, but managed to be brave and not cry. “I was asleep and my mama woke me up,” Diyana told the Raleigh News & Observer. “She had stomach pains, and then she had the baby. I helped by getting the baby a blanket and opening the door for the rescue squad.”
Madisyn, who weighed 5.5 pounds, was born safe and sound. And her sister, Diyana, knows firsthand where babies come from.
She got a cleaner house; the kids got alcohol, marijuana and antidepressants. That’s the exchange that cops say an Illinois high school teacher made with two 14-year-old girls.
Kym A. Krocza, a 41-year-old math teacher in a Chicago suburb, was charged with contributing to the criminal delinquency of a juvenile. Police say that the incidents took place between January and August. A mom tipped off cops when her kid came back from a visit to Teacher’s house with booze and pot, the Northwest Herald reported.
Krozca was arrested Tuesday and has since been suspended from Grant Community High School in Fox Lake. “She befriended them before they were even students of hers,” Sheriff Mark Curran told the Herald. “She enticed them with Zoloft, marijuana and alcohol, and they would come over and do favors in terms of cleaning up her house.”
Now, would it have been better or worse if she had offered them better grades instead?
One Kentucky church is extremely forgiving. On Sunday, the City of Refuge Worship Center ordained a sex offender as a pastor. Mark Hourigan, 41, was convicted in 1998 of two felony counts of sexual abuse of an 11-year-old boy. He served more than four years in prison and has to register as a sex offender for life (see his registry mug shot above).
Randy Meadows, one of the church’s pastors, told WAVE TV News that Hourigan, who joined the City of Refuge two years ago, has paid his debt to society. But others aren’t so sure. Protesters marched in front of the church in Germantown, Ky., on Sunday, and some of them compared Hourigan’s ordination to the Catholic Church’s cover-up of pedophile priests. “I’m scared for the children of Germantown,” one resident said.
While many states have laws barring sex offenders from trolling Web sites such as MySpace or even driving ice cream trucks, Kentucky apparently has no statute forbidding them from becoming ministers. City of Refuge did make one restriction on Hourigan — he can’t have any contact with kids.
So if you’re high on drugs and need to get home, what’s a parent to do? Lakisha Hogue apparently decided the best solution was to let her 6-year-old daughter drive their SUV.
Hogue, 30, of southeastern Pennsylvania, was arrested and charged with child endangerment after cops stopped the vehicle on Sunday afternoon, the Associated Press reported. Police say that Hogue was sitting in the passenger seat and told them that she was teaching the girl to drive. Hogue was jailed on $15,000 bond.
The judge wanted Lisa Marie Morris to be a lesson to all other parents — if you forget your child in a hot car, you go to jail.
Morris, 26, was sentenced last week to five years in prison followed by five years on probation for leaving her baby inside her car. Morris and her cousin had returned to her Augusta, Ga., area home after running errands on Aug. 7, 2008, and Morris says she thought the cousin had brought the child inside. Instead, Dalton Morris, who was just six weeks old, died in the car, where temperatures reached up to 126 degrees.
Morris pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and asked the judge not to send her to jail because she needs to take care of her 5-year-old daughter.
But Judge Michael N. Annis showed no mercy, the Augusta Chronicle reported. He said that Dalton’s death was completely preventable.
Parents, be suspicious if your teen is suddenly really, really nice to you after a fight over curfew. A 15-year-old Montana girl made Jell-O for her father after an argument with him. Inside the treat: lamp oil. For three days, the girl tried to get her father to eat it, but he didn’t bite.
On Monday, the girl pleaded guilty to simple assault for the attempted poisoning in June, the Associated Press reported. A judge put her on probation until she turns 18. When the girl was asked by the judge what she thought was going to happen if her dad ate the Jell-O, she answered: “That he’d have diarrhea and stuff.”
A spokeswoman for a poison control center in Montana says that ingested lamp oil wouldn’t cause that many problems. However, breathing it could cause inflammation in the lungs.
Two months before her due date, Valerie Post was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with swine flu. Doctors performed an emergency C-section and delivered a healthy baby girl, Nora. But Post, 24, has been in a medically induced coma since the Aug. 7 delivery.
Swine flu usually causes only mild problems in otherwise healthy people. But it can strike harder in pregnant women, and doctors are urging them to get the vaccine once it’s available in October. The hospital in Tampa, where Post is being treated, reports that an average of one pregnant woman a week has been hospitalized for the flu. Usually it’s about two per season, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
Cases as severe as Post’s are rare, but doctors are urging expecting moms are urged to call immediately if they have a fever, cough or sore throat. For the latest updates on swine flu, click on the Centers for Disease Control Web site.
A teacher’s aide apparently forgot to take her seven-month-old girl to a babysitter and instead left the child in a school parking lot while she worked on Friday. Addeleena Sanchez died after being left in the car for five hours on Friday at Bowie Elementary School near Dallas, the Corsicana Daily Sun reported.
The child’s mother, 23, called her babysitter around 1:20 p.m., and that’s when she realized that she had forgotten the girl in the car. The temperature then in Corsicana, Tex., was 89 degrees. Police are investigating and have not yet decided whether to charge the mother.
So far this year, 29 kids have died after being left in hot cars. See stories about the tragedies here.