Arie Johnston, 10, is almost too good to be true.
First of all, the New Hampshire boy gave up his Saturday to help his grandmother and others clean up roadside debris. That’s when he found a burned backpack with $8,160 stuffed inside. Instead of helping himself, Arie called over his grandmother, who then called the Foster town clerk. A passport and other documents inside the backpack helped them track down the owner.
The bag of cash apparently belongs to Parvin Jannati, whose home was badly damaged in a fire in October, the Foster’s Daily Democrat reported. It’s still unclear why there was so much money in the bag, and police declined comment on whether they’re investigating. The woman’s sister is picking up the backpack, and there’s not word yet on whether a reward is in store for Arie.
Arie’s mom, April Everngam, says that good deeds just come naturally to her boy. When he was just four years old, he found a neighbor’s dog wandering around and walked it home. Arie is “a good helper,” the proud mama said, adding that he’s “the type of kid that notices things others don’t.”
Sirdeaner L. Walker says she called her son’s school repeatedly to get teachers to stop the bullies. But she says, school officials, didn’t do enough. On Monday, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with an extension cord in his home. He had been a sixth grader at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, Mass.
“I just want to help some other child. I know there are other kids being picked on,” Walker told WCVB TV News. She said that her son had had a hard time making friends since transferring to New Leadership this year. Classmates allegedly called him gay, mocked his clothes and threatened to hurt him. School officials declined comment.
About 30 percent of kids are either a bully or the victim of bullying, according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center. Unfortunately, many of the incidents only come to the attention of adults after a tragedy. Read more about teen suicides and bullying here.
Apparently you can buy anything online except official cookies from a Girl Scout.
The aptly named Wild Freeborn, 8, thought she was being enterprising when she made a YouTube video to try to sell enough boxes to send her troop to summer camp. And in this economy, the Asheville, N.C., girl should be heralded for being able to generate about 700 orders.
But scouting authorities pulled the plug on her thriving business, the Associated Press reported. A Girls Scouts spokeswoman says that Tagalongs, Do-si-dos and other treats can be promoted online, but orders can’t be taken that way. The reasoning: It wouldn’t be fair to other Girl Scouts, and selling online can compromise a girl’s safety.
For Wild, it’s back to going door-to-door and sitting in front of grocery stores.
After the shooting on Friday, the boy apparently jumped onto the bus and went to school, authorities said. It was there that the fifth-grader was later arrested.
Jordan Brown was charged as an adult with the murder of Kenzie Marie Houk, 26, his father’s live-in girfriend. She was eight months pregnant. Her 4-year-old daughter found her dead in bed in their home northwest of Pittsburgh. The murder weapon was a 20-guage shotgun designed for use by children that belonged to Jordan, investigators told CNN.
Some of his father’s family and friends say that jealousy might have motivated the shooting. “He actually told my son that he wanted to do that to her,” Houk’s brother-in-law Jason Kraner told the Associated Press.
A pscyhologist who studies blended families told the AP that such tensions are normal in stepfamilies, but “You just hope there’s not a loaded gun around.”
Unfortunately, Jordan is not the youngest suspected killer to make headlines recently. Last week, a 9-year-old boy pleaded guilty to fatally shooting his father and another man last November. The boy is to remain under state custody until he turns 18. No clear motive was given for the shooting, which was committed with a hunting rifle that the boy’s father had given him as a birthday present.
It’s come to this: A Girl Scout troop selling cookies outside a San Antonio drugstore last week was robbed of $250. A man seized the bag containing the day’s income from Thin Mints, Trefoils and Tagalongs and jumped into a car driven by a female accomplice.
The robbery occurred in the evening, just as the two girls and their troop leader were packing up. One of the girls was so upset she started screaming. The troop leader got the license plate, but so far there have been no arrests.
While the missing money will no doubt come in again in the form of donations, the girls, both 9, won’t be the same. “They’ve learned, firsthand, there are bad people out there,” the troop leader, who did not want to be identified, told a local television station.
Hunter Pope’s death might have been prevented if he had gotten a flu shot. But his mother says that he had lost his vaccination permission slip and never got the shot at school, the Boston Herald reported.
Hunter, a seventh-grader in Boston, died Sunday at a hospital. A doctor with the city health commission said that the boy did not seem to have any other health problems. Hunter is fifth child to die from the flu this winter, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This was the first winter that the federal government recommended that all children, not just those under 5, get a flu shot. Hunter’s mother, Tess Pope, said she did not know until after his death that he had lost the permission slip.
Pope told the Herald that Hunter started feeling feverish on Friday, but wanted to go to school to celebrate Valentine’s Day. He was later sent home that day with a 101-degree temperature. Early Saturday, his parents rushed him to the emergency room after he was vomiting and complaining of severe body aches and burning. He died the next morning.
Codey R. Hawks, 19, had played with the boy and the boy’s father through an online video game network, authorities said.
Hawks lives in Burton, Mich., but took a bus on Jan. 15 to Parma, Ohio, where the family lives, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. The family told police that Hawks called and asked whether he could stay in their home. He said that he had just joined the National Guard and would be shipping out in February.
For some reason, the family agreed. The parents later became suspicious and started asking their son questions. Police say that Hawks admitted to detectives that he assaulted the boy when the parents weren’t in the home. It wasn’t reported how long Hawks stayed at the home.
Hawks was arrested on Monday and booked on multiple charges of rape and gross sexual imposition. Police say that he may have other victims. Anyone with information can call the crime tip-line for the Parma Police Department at (440) 887-7340.
That’ll teach ‘em. Two brothers who were caught stealing an ax in Gering, Neb., were forced by their father to stand in front of the store, apologizing for their crimes on handwritten orange signs.
“My name is Cole,” the older boy’s sign said. “I was caught shoplifting at Dollar General. I will not shoplift again.” Cole Russell is 15; his brother Kip, who waited outside the store while Cole did the deed, is 12. (See a photo of the boys and their signs here.)
The two-hour punishment for the boys last month is nothing compared to the notoriety they’re receiving as the story belatedly makes its way around the Internet. Most commentators are applauding the father. “I won’t tolerate a thief, and hopefully this will teach them that they need to make the right choices,” Merle Russell told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald.
Cole Russell was due before a judge last week, but there’s no word on how that turned out. We’re hoping the boys were sentenced to spending more time in school. Both their signs misspelled “stealing” as “steeling.”
Photo by Drinksmachine
The girl said she was 17. On her webcam Friday, she held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill herself.
After a viewer called the sheriff’s office in Naples, Fla., where the girl said she lived, an investigator got online, the Associated Press reported. The detective pretended he was a young girl and started talking to her via instant message.
Deputies were then able to track down where the girl lived with her grandparents. The girl, who was actually 12, was taken to a mental health center.
Just two weeks ago, a 19-year-old community college student overdosed on antidepressants as a live audience watched on a bodybuilding Web site. Some viewers posted insults and egged him on as a webcam recorded Abraham Biggs Jr. dying in his Broward County, Fla., bedroom.
A nine-year-old girl and two brothers died in separate incidents after they were submerged in freezing waters.
Leaving a family Thanksgiving celebration, Maheen Ahmad and her two cousins tested out a frozen retention pond in Villa Park, Ill. The little girl was tapping her foot to test the ice when she fell in, the Chicago Tribune reported. Her cousin, 12-year-old Fazil Ahmad, was on another part of the pond and also fell in.
A neighbor and his wife waded into the pond and with a pole, rescued the boy. But the girl was too far away, and she went under the water. She was submerged for 15 minutes before paramedics were able to get her.
On Friday afternoon, three boys were rescued from the East Twin River in Wisconsin, near Green Bay, but two of them later died, the Manitowoc Herald-Times reported. Larry Yang, 12, and his brother, Jimmy, 13, were both submerged in the water for at least 50 minutes before firefighters were able to pull them out. Another boy, 13, was in stable condition. He was clinging to a piece of ice with his head above water when rescuers found him.
During a family reunion at a home near the river, the boys had gone exploring and tried to cross the 1/2-inch thick ice. A neighbor who was outside putting up Christmas decorations saw the kids and called 911.
Since Friday’s accident, police say that they have received two other reports of children on the ice. They are warning parents to keep kids off of any frozen water.
Photo by Lierne
