Angry at her mother-in-law, Sandra Price allegedly threw a Christmas tree across the room. The mother-in-law tried to pick it up, but then Price said she couldn’t have it, Illinois police said.
The two women wrestled over the four-foot-tall tree, and unfortunately Price’s little girl got in the way. Part of the tree hit the 21-month-old child and injured her left eye. She had to undergo surgery and it’s unclear whether she will lose the vision in the eye, authorities said.
On Monday, Price, 28, was arrested and charged with reckless conduct, the Telegraph newspaper of southern Illinois reported. The incident happened on Christmas Eve in Madison County, Ill., and the charges were made after a police investigation and review by prosecutors.
The fight occurred in a motel where the family had been staying because a fire displaced them from their home earlier in the month.
The parents had placed a mesh covering over the top of their portable crib apparently to prevent their 2-year-old boy from climbing out.
The family from Harvard, Mass., was visiting relatives in Maine over the Christmas holiday and had brought along a Pack ‘N Play crib. Little Noah Thompson was placed in the bed on Friday night. The next morning, his mother found him dead.
“He had apparently stood up and gotten his head out of the netting, between the netting and the crib, and somehow he turned his head and the netting tightened around his neck and strangled him,” Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland told the Bangor Daily News.
The death has been ruled an accident. Safety experts caution parents to keep the sleeping area free from toys, extra pillows and other items that could pose risk of suffocation or strangulation.
Don’t get too attached to some of those Christmas gifts. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a slew of recalls.
Cribs again confirm their status as the most dangerous item in a child’s nursery. At least one child has been diagnosed with lead poisoning after ingesting paint from a crib distributed by Munire Furniture Inc. of New Jersey.
About 3,000 cribs and 6,000 pieces of matching furniture may contain paint with dangerously high levels of lead. The Indonesian-made furniture features black finish paint with red paint underneath and was sold at specialty stores from April 2006 to November 2008. See specific model numbers here.
Consumers may receive a replacement coupon for new furniture. Call the company for more info at (866) 586-9639 or visit the firm’s Web site.
Two Jumbo Snowman Snow Globes have acted like magnifying glasses when exposed to sunlight and caused nearby materials to catch on fire, according to Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo. No injuries have been reported, but the company is recalling the 7,000 items sold in October and November at Hallmark Gold Crown stores nationwide.
Consumers may return the globes for a full refund. Contact Hallmark at (800) 425-5627 or through its Web site.
About 2,800 Calypso steel toy drums are being recalled because the surface paints contain excessive lead. No injuries have been reported, but authorities say that the drums should be taken away immediately from any child.
The items were made in Trinidad for Woodstock Percussion Inc. of New York and sold via mail order catalogues, Web sites and retail stores nationwide for one year, beginning in 2006. Some might have been later sold again online or at secondhand stores.
Woodstock Percussion says it will give consumers a replacement drum and an additional $5 payment or credit. Call the company at (866) 543-2848 anytime, e-mail safety@chimes.com, or visit the firm’s Web site.
Manufacturers can’t seem to remember that jackets for youngsters are not allowed to have drawstrings, which can be a strangulation hazard. About 1,300 hooded jackets distributed by Foursquare Outerwear of Irvine, Calif., and sold at various stores nationwide from June to November are being recalled; no injuries have been reported yet.
Consumers should either take out the drawstrings or get a full refund. Contact Foursquare at (877) 327-4484, visit its Web site, e-mail the firm at info@theprogram.com.
Three candle-powered carousels have caught on fire because the candle holder on the item’s base is too close to the structure. No injuries have been reported, but about 1,500 of the products made in China and distributed by Gardener’s Supply Co. of Burlington, Vt., are being recalled.
The items were sold at Gardener’s Supply retail stores, by catalogue and online from September through November. They can be returned for a full refund. Contact Gardener’s Supply Co. at (800) 876-5520 or on its Web site.
The girl had slept in a van with other children while their parents attended a holiday party in Raisin City, Calif. But soon after the clock struck midnight to herald Christmas Day, someone noticed that the four-year-old disabled girl was missing.
After a 40-minute search, the girl was found naked and partially buried in a vineyard, authorities said. She had been sexually assaulted and beaten. The searcher who found her “saw the little girl’s foot was buried; just her little foot was sticking out,” party-goer Lauro Beitero told KMPH TV News. “The rest of her body was inside the ground.”
Juan Gomez-Jimenez, 24, of Fresno has been charged in the attack. He showed up at the hospital on Friday where the family had taken their daughter. Investigators said that he went to Community Regional Medical Center for treatment for an injury not related to the assault on the girl.
It was unclear from news reports whether Gomez-Jimenez knew the family or how deputies determined he was involved in the girl’s kidnapping. He may have attended the party.
Like many of you this holiday season, we’ll be busy over the next few days, between trying to avoid a Santa freakout, toxic toys and the Christmas tree catching on fire. But before we take a break for a few days to play Santa, we wanted to remind you of some of our favorite characters from the 2008 holiday season.
First, there was the British teacher who told a roomful of students that “Santa doesn’t exist.” That wasn’t even as bad as the church group who wanted to post a sign at the Washington state capitol building, which read “Santa Claus Will Take You to Hell.”
Then, there were the cops in Ohio who decorated their Christmas tree with photos of local sex offenders. And finally, the sex offender in New York who tried — and failed — to get into Santa’s mailbox.
Have a safe and wonderful holiday! We’ll be back posting before the Christmas tree is put out on the curb, and the decorations go back in the attic.
But the Grinch couldn’t steal away Christmas.
The Postal Service resumed Operation Santa on Saturday after the program was suspended last week when a postal worker recognized a registered sex offender as one of the people taking a child’s letter at a post office near New York. The sex offender said that he didn’t have ill intentions, the New York Times reported.
Nevertheless, changes have been made to put a buffer between kids and wannabe Santas. Instead of volunteers sending gifts to needy children whose letters to Santa they pick, the post office will deliver all gifts. The kids’ names and addresses are blacked out on the letters, and postal codes are used.
Some of the Secret Santas said the changes to the program took a little cheer out of the gift-giving. Many of the volunteer elves like to make deliveries themselves and keep in touch with the kids they help.
“The spirit of giving is still there, making somebody’s Christmas a little brighter,” U.S. Postal Service spokesman George Flood told the Associated Press. “But the times have changed. So the Operation Santa program had to change.”
About 3,000 letters a day are answered by Secret Santas. While most cities have wrapped up their program, New York and Chicago still have enough letters to continue through this week.
Photo by Romanlily
Maybe the police force in the Ohio town of North Baltimore is just really dedicated. Or maybe they all need a vacation. Because they’re decorating their office Christmas tree with photos of the community’s eight registered sex offenders.
Police Chief Alan Baer told the Courier newspaper that he thought the ornaments would get attention and raise awareness. He denied he was mocking the holiday or making light of the offenders’ crimes.
The offenders could not be reached for comment.
When the government issues a recall on toys, few are actually returned by consumers. Many recalled products end up for sale online and at garage sales and secondhand shops.
As the recession prompts more people to sell their used stuff and others to go bargain shopping, parents are advised to check sale items with recall advisories on the Web site of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
“There are products out there that have killed children in the past,” said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal safety commission, in an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Typically, just 15 to 30 percent of the recalled items are returned to retailers or manufacturers.
Ebay’s online safety adviser says that the company doesn’t have the resources to check the millions of items listed on its site against recall advisories. It’s illegal to sell a recalled product, but many of the amateur vendors may be doing it unintentionally.
A reporter from the Atlanta newspaper found on Ebay listings for toy helicopters that were recalled in July after two caught on fire. Several sellers did not respond to the reporter’s questions, but one wrote back and said the listing would be taken off.
One seller was peddling a Cinderella 12-volt electric ride-on car, which had been recalled after the safety commission recorded 40 incidents of the vehicle’s wiring overheating and catching fire. However, the seller did include information about the recall in the ad and assured that a repair kit had been ordered.
This year, the commission has recalled 7.8 million toys that posed choking, burn, impaling and toxic hazards. The agency received 18 reports of toy-related deaths last year, most of which involved riding toys and small toy balls. About 170,000 toy-related injuries required treatment in hospital emergency departments.
Check Minor Troubles for frequently updated news about recalls. For lists of toy hazards and safety tips, click here.
She’s on the naughty list for sure.
The teacher, who was substituting at a school in England, told a class of seven-year-olds this week that parents delivered the gifts under the tree, according to several British newspapers. The woman made the astonishing announcement after the kids acted rowdy and kept talking about their Christmas plans.
Naturally, the children came home in tears. Their parents complained to the school. The school’s head teacher has told the agency that sent the substitute that the woman isn’t welcome anymore, the London Times reported.
Another teacher later told the kids that the substitute had made a mistake and that of course, Santa was real. One dad told his son that the woman was someone from a different religion. Another had to convince his little girl that the teacher was confused.
The substitute teacher was not publicly identified, but certainly Santa knows who she is.
If you’re planning on visiting Santa at the mall with your little one this weekend, brace yourself for the fact that your child might not cooperate with your vision of holiday merriment.
There is so much miserable photographic evidence of Santa visits gone bad that two editors from the Chicago Tribune have published a stocking-stuffer collecting them, using photos submitted by the paper’s readers.
A whole book of tykes suffused with dread? Yes, now there’s “Scared of Santa: Scenes of Terror in Toyland,” because — as promotional copy for the book attests — “nothing says Christmas quite like innocent children shrieking with terror as a stranger dressed in red drags them kicking and screaming onto his lap.” You can read an interview with Nancy Watkins, one of the authors, here.
If you’re more interested in trying to avoid your child freaking out when faced with Father Christmas, Santa offers his best tips for a happy visit here. One good one: the best Santa and kid pics are taken in the first 15 seconds of the visit.
