[angelize56]

Apr 7, 6:20 AM EDT

Teen Emerges From More Than Yearlong Coma

TUSTIN, Calif. (AP) -- A teenager defied a hopeless prognosis and awoke from a coma she slipped into more than a year ago after giving birth.

Doctors had told Jessica Diaz's mother, Eva Diaz, she would never awake from the coma. But now with help, she can cuddle her son Julio Jr. and touch his face. She even gave a television interview on Sunday.

Diaz, then 17, gave birth on Jan. 13, 2002. She could hardly see her newborn because a brain tumor had blinded one eye and obscured vision in the other. But she held her son, named after boyfriend Julio Ortiz, and told him she would be back later to take care of him.

Doctors removed a fast-growing tumor a day after she gave birth. Within 10 minutes of surgery, Jessica became comatose.

But last Tuesday, Eva Diaz knocked on the open door of her daughter's room at Tustin Hospital and Medical Center and for the first time in a year, her daughter turned her head toward the sound.

"I just froze," Eva Diaz said, choking back tears. "The nurses came, and I said, 'She turned her head! She moved!' They said, 'Go on, Mom. Go, go.'"

She said she never gave up on her daughter, even when doctors told her Jessica was likely to die from medullablastoma, a particularly virulent brain tumor.

Doctors said Jessica Diaz probably emerged from the coma because her brain became accustomed to the pressure inside her skull and developed new neurological pathways to make up for ones she lost when half her brain was surgically removed.

They want to get Jessica into aggressive physical, occupational and speech therapy.

Jessica Diaz can lift her arms, but she can't smile, talk or walk. She communicates mostly by rolling her eyes back: once for no, twice for yes.

Sunday, she was briefly interviewed by Los Angeles television station KCBS. She rolled her eyes for yes when asked if she had been aware of her mother at her bedside

[eggplant43]

I just read about this young lady and saw her picture. She is very beautiful. What better motivation to come back from a coma than having a son. I hope she can have a good recovery.

[angelize56]

Bruce: Miracles happen! Take care. angel

P.S.-In case you didn't get my pm...you spelled the word right! Sorry!

[n2gun]

Angel
A very touching story. Hope she has a full recovery.

[angelize56]

Thanks Bruce and Jerry! I hope she can make a good recovery too and be able to raise her sweet son herself! Take care. angel

Hot Dog Vendor Gets Terrorism Insurance
Policy Covers Vendor, Customers
Posted: 6:18 p.m. EDT April 8, 2003
Updated: 6:23 p.m. EDT April 8, 2003

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A hot dog cart vendor in Harrisburg is making sure he's prepared for the worst.

"I'm the first hot dog vendor in all of Pennsylvania to have terrorism insurance," vendor Daniel Krehling said. "It's a $1 million policy."

Krehling knows he may not be a huge target, but his stand is sandwiched between City Hall, the county courthouse, and lots of downtown high rises.

Krehling said the policy covers anything that happens to anyone or anything in a 50-foot radius of his hot dog cart, which includes him and his customers.

The added insurance costs a little more than $100 extra a year.

"We have flood insurance, homeowners insurance, liability insurance, why not terrorism insurance?" Krehling said.

Last fall, President George W. Bush signed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 into law. Under the law, insurance companies are required to offer terrorism insurance to businesses.

Copyright 2003 by ClickOnDetroit.com

[anlore2001]

Originally posted by angelize56:
Thanks Bruce and Jerry! I hope she can make a good recovery too and be able to raise her sweet son herself! Take care. angel

Hot Dog Vendor Gets Terrorism Insurance
Policy Covers Vendor, Customers
Posted: 6:18 p.m. EDT April 8, 2003
Updated: 6:23 p.m. EDT April 8, 2003

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A hot dog cart vendor in Harrisburg is making sure he's prepared for the worst.

"I'm the first hot dog vendor in all of Pennsylvania to have terrorism insurance," vendor Daniel Krehling said. "It's a $1 million policy."

Krehling knows he may not be a huge target, but his stand is sandwiched between City Hall, the county courthouse, and lots of downtown high rises.

Krehling said the policy covers anything that happens to anyone or anything in a 50-foot radius of his hot dog cart, which includes him and his customers.

The added insurance costs a little more than $100 extra a year.

"We have flood insurance, homeowners insurance, liability insurance, why not terrorism insurance?" Krehling said.

Last fall, President George W. Bush signed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 into law. Under the law, insurance companies are required to offer terrorism insurance to businesses.

Copyright 2003 by ClickOnDetroit.com

Only in Harrisburg... Go figure.... If I was him I wouldn't be so worried about the government building but I would be worried about TMI (Three Mile Island)... God knows I am

[eggplant43]

Retarded Man Beaten To Death
HARTFORD, Conn., April 8, 2003


A 39-year-old retarded man who liked to dress up like Batman and tell neighbors he was a crime-fighter was beaten to death in the lobby of an apartment building where he had been placed by state officials.

Ricky Whistnant died at the scene Saturday. He fell and hit his head on a radiator after three teens pelted him with bottles of soda he had just bought, authorities who viewed a security video of the attack said. Even after Whistnant collapsed, police said, the boys continued kicking and pouring soda on him.

The attackers fled after tenants called 911, but several hours later police arrested two 14-year-old boys and one 13-year-old.

Neighbors said they had wondered for months why social workers would have placed a mentally retarded man alone in the city's most crime-ridden neighborhood. "I don't know why he was here," said Hugo Nunez, who lives across the hall. "This could have been avoided."

Whistnant, who weighed 300 pounds, occasionally dressed in a homemade "Batman" costume and shouted at drug dealers from the sidewalk outside his cinderblock apartment building.

"He'd stand right out front and scream, 'You're gonna stop all this drug dealing!'" Nunez said. "He was wise enough to know what was going on."

But living by himself posed problems. Sam Nieves, who lives down the hall, said he used to find Whistnant slumped in the hallway, sobbing because he had been picked on by passers-by.

"He might have been 39 years old, but his mind was like a 10-year-old," Nieves said.

State mental health officials have asked Northampton, Mass.-based Community Enterprises, the social services agency that placed Whistnant in the building, to review the decision. Officials at Community Enterprises did not respond to repeated telephone messages Tuesday.

Property manager Michael Grant said social workers were with Whistnant when he signed the lease.

Family members said they also want to know why Whistnant was placed in the building, located in the middle of a neighborhood that led the city last year in overall crime. They said they would press for answers after his funeral, which has not been scheduled.

State Sen. Catherine Cook, an advocate for the mentally retarded, said Community Enterprises has a solid track record.

"It was not the (state) Department of Mental Retardation who killed this man," she said. "It was three punks."

The teen suspects were charged with assault on a mentally retarded person but could face more serious charges depending on the outcome of an autopsy.

Two of the boys, Jermaine Lee and Joseph Bonner, both 14, will be tried as adults as allowed by state law for youths 14 or older accused of serious crimes. The 13-year-old will be treated as a juvenile.

[angelize56]

I read that yesterday! Isn't that terrible! Poor man! What's wrong with kids these days! Take care. angel

[eggplant43]

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

Student's soldier story turns out to be a hoax

By Mark Boshnack

Tri-Towns Bureau


ONEONTA — A 27-year-old Hartwick College sophomore featured in a front-page story in Tuesday's Daily Star admitted to college officials Tuesday he perpetrated a hoax on Hartwick and the newspaper.


Rob Williams had claimed to be an inactive Army Reservist who spent his spring break training Iraq-bound military police at Fort Drum.


Williams told his false story last week to Robert A. Clark, Hartwick's executive director of communications, who then contacted The Daily Star about doing a feature story.


The public affairs officer at Fort Drum, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, described Williams' story as "gibberish." He said Williams, a co-captain of the Hartwick football team, received an administrative discharge from the Army Military Police in April 2001.


Hilferty said an administrative discharge is given to a soldier for a general pattern of misconduct.


An Army official said that could include such actions as failure to obey an order or conduct unbecoming a soldier, but he would not say if any of those charges applied in Williams' case.


Hilferty said Williams was not telling the truth about being a member of the MP special-response team. Hilferty said Williams served in the army police stationed at Fort Drum, but he said he did not know whether Williams had served in Kosovo, as Williams said in the story, or what his years of service were.


About Williams' claim that he was called back to Fort Drum to train MPs, Hilferty said, "We don't call civilians to train us in urban warfare."


And as per the front page photo, Hilferty said if Williams had actually been posing with a weapon issued by the Army, it would be "highly illegal."


A person claiming to be a Fort Drum staff sergeant named Mark Wildman contacted the Daily Star reporter Monday to corroborate the basic facts in Williams' story. Hilferty said there was no such person at Fort Drum.


There is a Sgt. Scott Wildman, but Hilferty said he wasn't the one who called to verify Williams' story.


Hartwick officials said Williams confessed to the hoax when they confronted him Tuesday. Williams did not return two messages Tuesday from The Daily Star.


Accompanying the story was a photo of Williams holding what he described as an Army-issued M-4 assault rifle in his dormitory room at Hartwick. Williams told a Daily Star reporter and photographer that he was required by the Army to always keep the weapon with him.


The photo caught the attention of Oneonta police, who contacted the college. Within "five minutes of reading the story," Hartwick Dean of Students Greg Krikorian said, he went to Williams' room to investigate.


Krikorian said he found not only what police described as a Bushmaster rifle, but several other weapons, including a pellet gun. Police and Krikorian said no ammunition was found in the room.


Krikorian said he removed the weapons from the room and took them to the Oneonta Police Department.


It is illegal to possess any firearm in a college or school — loaded or unloaded — Clark said.


The actions were taken "to make sure our campus was a safe environment," Krikorian said.


Oneonta police said they are considering filing charges against Williams. Lt. Joseph Redmond said having a gun on school grounds is fourth-degree criminal possession of a firearm, a Class A misdemeanor, which can carry a one-year jail term and/or a $1,000 fine. Redmond said an investigation is continuing.


Krikorian said any action by Hartwick against Williams will depend on a campus judicial review. Any penalties given, he said, can't be discussed because of the federal right to privacy act.


Williams was a residential assistant before the hoax, college officials said. Krikorian did not say whether he still is. "But campus safety is our chief concern," he said.


Clark said he had received several calls from parents of Hartwick students who saw the photo of the weapon in the dorm. He said he told them "it was brought in for the purpose of the photograph," and was normally kept off-campus.


However, Krikorian found it in Williams' room on Tuesday.


Ed Fernley, an Oneonta resident who said he served in the U.S. Army from 1979-1989, reaching the rank of sergeant, said of Williams' hoax, "This behavior detracts from the legitimacy of real soldiers by suggesting that the things we say or do are not necessarily believable."

[THoey]

Retarded Man Beaten to Death...

It is a shame to see stuff like this. But I had one question after reading the following:

Family members said they also want to know why Whistnant was placed in the building, located in the middle of a neighborhood that led the city last year in overall crime. They said they would press for answers after his funeral, which has not been scheduled.

Where were these family members when he was placed there? Why weren't they taking care of him instead of having him placed there? I understand that it is not easy to take care of someone in this condition, but it just sounds to me like they didn't care before and now that he was murdered, they are looking for a lawsuit...

Sad...

[eggplant43]

Hair-uncurling experience prompts suit
By William C. Lhotka Post-Dispatch

updated: 04/08/2003 12:54 AM



Geremie Hoff claims that her bad hair day in August 2001 evolved into depression, counseling and a job loss.

It also prompted a lawsuit against Elizabeth Arden's Salon at Saks Fifth Avenue in Plaza Frontenac, where Hoff went to get her hair straightened or relaxed.

Hoff's attorney, Paul Devine, said Monday that the work on Hoff's hair at the salon was so bad that Hoff, a teacher at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and a tour guide for trips to Italy, "shut down. She spiraled into a depression because, right or wrong, looks were important to her."

The salon's attorney, Lawrence Hartstein, told the jury in his opening statement that the stylist, Raye Hudson, had performed "hundreds if not thousands of these procedures" and did nothing wrong in treating Hoff's hair.

Hoff's "alleged losses were unrelated to anything we did," Hartstein added.

Devine said Hoff never had had her naturally curly hair straightened or relaxed, although "she had gotten it colored and colored it herself from time to time."

Hoff, now 56, of Creve Coeur, decided to have her hair straightened because she was going on a float and camping trip, Devine said, and went to Saks on the recommendation of a friend.

Hudson applied a hair product, then washed Hoff's hair several times before putting her under a hair dryer. Devine alleged that Hudson failed to do a test strand before applying the product.

On the float trip, some of Hoff's hair fell out, and her scalp was flaky, Devine said. Weeks later, she had a bald spot in back, "and her hair stuck out like a bird's nest," Devine said.

Hoff took early retirement from teaching and stopped taking tour groups to Italy, Devine said. He added that a psychiatrist and a counselor will testify about her depression.

Hartstein said testimony will disclose that Hoff bought moisturizing products and left a tip when she paid her bill. He said Hoff didn't see a mental health professional until three months later. And her hair had already grown back by the summer of 2002 when her next tour to Italy was scheduled, Hartstein said.

[eggplant43]

Report says cop got nude dances while on duty

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@herald.com

A Miami-Dade police officer who allegedly preferred patrolling the VIP lounge of a strip joint to the streets of Miami-Dade County was arrested Thursday on charges he falsified his time sheets to cover his naughty encounters.

Exposed: Sgt. Felix Martinez, a 19-year veteran of the North Dade patrol squad.

Investigators say on three occasions -- Jan. 28, Feb. 4 and Feb. 9 -- Martinez received nude dances in a private VIP room at the Masters Gentlemen's Cabaret, 5325 NW 77th Ave., in unincorporated Miami-Dade, while on-duty and in uniform.

The dancer was a stripper-turned-confidential-informant who needed him to ''fix'' her driver's license, a report states.

Martinez could not be reached Thursday.

According to an affidavit filed by the Miami-Dade state attorney's office, here's what happened:

The dirty dancing took place in the club's VIP room, which rents out for about $200 a pop. But the service was provided to Martinez free of charge.

Martinez, 41, and the dancer, age unknown, worked out the details of the agreement about midnight Jan. 24. He was on-duty and in uniform -- as was she. Martinez said he would take care of two open arrest traffic warrants in exchange for a personal show.

Later that morning, between 4:26 and 4:39 a.m., Martinez went into the Miami-Dade Police Department's criminal justice information system and obtained the dancer's driving records. He later prepared a motion for relief regarding the two arrest warrants and filed it with the Clerk of the Court's traffic division.

Four days later, she danced for him as she promised. A week later, she did so again.

The next day, Feb. 5, Martinez visited the Richard Gerstein Criminal Justice Building and paid the fees for the dancer to attend traffic school. That same day, he reminded her she owed him a future dancing performance in March or April.

When Martinez became the prime suspect as being the leak in an ongoing investigation, police put a mobile tracking device on his car.

That's when police discovered Martinez's lies about his daily activities and falsified time sheets.

Investigators say that between Feb. 5 and March 20, Martinez, who is paid $33.32 an hour, cheated taxpayers out of 54 hours and 53 minutes of his services, or $1,835.32 of alleged duping.

He ''engaged in a systematic and continuous pattern of falsifying official documents with the corrupt intent to gain a benefit for himself,'' according to the affidavit.

As to the motion he prepared in the dancer's name, investigators say Martinez ``falsified information, forged the confidential source's signature, and subsequently instructed her to lie to the court regarding her previous failures to appear so that her testimony would be consistent with the falsified information in the motion for relief.''

Police say Martinez may have leaked confidential information regarding active investigations, including one at Masters Gentlemen's Cabaret.

He has been charged with one count of unlawful compensation, nine counts of official misconduct and one count of grand theft.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2003 The Miami Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com

[n2gun]

California Town to Legalize Adultery
The Associated Press
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES, Calif.

Adultery will soon be legal in this small community southwest of Los Angeles.

On Monday, the City Council voted to repeal a 46-year-old ordinance that prohibited immoral conduct, which included extramarital sex. The archaic law, which could result in a $250 fine or three months in jail, was passed after the city was incorporated in 1957.

Council members weren't endorsing adultery but they took some pleasure in commenting about the ordinance. "So this is a pro-adultery thing?" Councilman James Black joked before the meeting. "Good for us!"

City officials heard about the ordinance after a resident scouring the municipal code mentioned it at a recent forum for City Council candidates. They were unsure if anyone had been cited for breaking the law and couldn't figure out why it was put there in the first place.

"Why this particular law has been dormant and allowed to remain on the books all these years is anyone's guess," City Attorney Mike Jenkins said. "I doubt it had anything to do with the rate of adultery in Rolling Hills."

The ordinance could be formally repealed at the end of May, 30 days after the repeal is given a second reading on April 28.

Rolling Hills Estates, a community of 1,900, is 25 miles southwest of Los Angeles.
Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2003

[eggplant43]

Shoplifting suspect bolts, leaves baby daughter in store


By DENES HUSTY III, dhusty@news-press.com


A man accused of shoplifting a DVD player Monday ran away, leaving Target employees in Bonita Springs with an unexpected bundle — a baby.

“She’s a beautiful little girl,” store manager Lauren Hensley said.

Hensley said she pitched right in and changed the baby’s diaper and another employee fed her with a bottle the father left behind in a baby bag.

The episode started at 1:41 p.m. when the man was filmed on a store security camera shoplifting a portable DVD player with a small screen that allows car passengers to watch movies, Lee County sheriff’s Deputy Tom Kontinos said.

While the man was being questioned, he suddenly bolted, leaving behind his baby daughter, Kontinos said.

The family’s names were not released Monday. A couple of hours after the incident the baby’s mother was found. She picked up the child from the store.

“I’ve never heard of a man leaving his baby behind like that,” sheriff’s Sgt. Stephen Edlin said.

In the meantime, medics stationed at the Bonita Springs Fire Department were called to make sure the child was all right.

“She’s a healthy baby girl,” Kontinos said.

Deputies now are searching for the father.

He’s wanted on charges of shoplifting and felony child neglect, Kontinos said.

If convicted, the man faces a maximum penalty of more than five years in prison.

The employees cared for the baby until late Monday afternoon, when deputies located the mother based on information from a doctor’s bill that was found in the baby bag, Edlin said.

“They’re (store employees are) the real heroes in this story,” Kontinos said.

[angelize56]

That's awful Bruce!!! Leaving a baby behind! I think the baby is more important than a fine or a few days in jail! Take care. angel