A mother in Orange County, Florida was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse Thursday, after using a stun gun on her daughter.  34-year-old Melissa Neale had been staying with her two children at a friend’s home in Orlando. Neale and her children had recently relocated from Texas.  It was the female friend she was staying with that reported the crime.  On June 9, Neale brandished a stun gun and used it on her daughter when the girl apparently didn’t make oatmeal to her liking. READ MORE HERE

Las Vegas, California — A 16-month-old baby girl is dead and the person who was supposed to be watching her is now charged with murder. This incident is the latest in a recent string of murders involving young kids being beaten to death. Investigators said Detrail Young admitted shaking his girlfriend’s sister’s baby after she started crying earlier this week. The arrest report details Young demonstrated with a doll what happened. During the police interview, he shook the doll back and forth and asked “what’s wrong with you?” in a stern tone. READ MORE HERE

Lafayette, Louisiana —  A Carencro man has been charged with raping a 5-year-old boy and possibly giving the child AIDS, according to records with the Lafayette Parish District Attorney’s Office. Conwell Cormier, 29, was indicted by a Lafayette Parish grand jury this past week on one count of aggravated rape and one count of exposing the child to AIDS, records show. Cormier, whose address was 241 Beau Basin Road, Apartment 13 in Carencro, has been in the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center since his arrest on April 1.  READ MORE HERE

West Springfield, Massachusetts — A UMass police officer is facing a number of charges, including child rape, following his arrest Thursday. 49-year-old George Colon of West Springfield was arrested Thursday night on a warrant, charging him with two counts of open and gross lewdness, rape of a child, sodomy, and enticing a child under the age 16. Colon was arrested at his home in West Springfield, with the assistance of his UMass Police supervisor and another officer. READ MORE HERE

Fayetteville child killer sentenced to death

Fayettville, North Carolina — A Cumberland County jury deliberated less than 40 minutes Wednesday before deciding that Mario Andrette McNeill should die for the November 2009 death of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis. The eight-man, four-woman jury last week convicted McNeill, 32, of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, sexual offense of a child, indecent liberties with a child, human trafficking and sexual servitude in connection with her death. That decision took almost eight hours over two days, but jurors didn’t even have to call out for lunch Wednesday before handing down the death sentence. READ MORE HERE

The Warning Signs of Child Abuse

Statistics show that in the last year approximately 1 in 10 children have experienced some form of maltreatment.* Teachers and school staff are have a unique ability to monitor children’s health and well-being on a daily basis. Sudden changes in mood, behavior, or health may only be apparent to those closest to the child. Many abused or neglected children are too young to articulate what has happened to them, or to understand right from wrong. Even teenagers may not understand that it is illegal to be sexual with adults or beaten by a parent. When the abuser is a loved one, the dynamic may cause a great deal of psychological conflict for the victim and lead them to hide the abuse. Many signs of abuse are therefore subtle, and will take a trained eye to catch. Here is what to lookout for among your students. READ MORE HERE

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Child Abuse & Neglect – Part 1: What are the warning signs & indicators

Child Abuse & Neglect – Part 2: What are the warning signs & indicators

Police: Baby scalped during parents’ fight

Authorities said a man is being held in the Greene County Jail accused of ripping a baby’s scalp off while fighting with the mother. Police said Kodi Weatherspoon assaulted the woman while she was holding their one-month-old child in their Duncan Drive apartment June 5. Weatherspoon called for help after allegedly hurting the baby and can be heard on the 911 call saying “I’m sorry.” When officers arrived, the mother was found with a facial laceration and was bleeding. She was holding the child, and officers could see his scalp was missing. “The injury provided me with the observation of what appeared to be bone to the head,” the reporting officer wrote in the police report. READ MORE HERE

Father accused of scalping his baby boy

Man to be arraigned for sexually molesting 3-year-old daughter

JACKSON, MI – A Blackman Township man is to be arraigned Monday afternoon on several counts of criminal sexual conduct for allegedly sexually assaulting his 3-year-old daughter. He would take showers with the girl and told Blackman-Leoni Township public safety detectives Christopher Boulter and Joseph Merritt that he may have attempted to have sex with her six times. He said it happened “too many times to remember,” according to a petition seeking to remove the girl from the care of her mother and father, who were living at the Avalon Hotel, 2000 Bondsteel Drive. READ MORE HERE

On July 24, 2006 a family and all of Franklin were forever changed as the result of a horrifying double murder — 10-year-old Blake Dickus and his 26-year-old stepmother Chynna Dickus were brutally slain in their north side Franklin home. Murders are a rarity in smaller communities like Franklin. They are especially shocking when a child is a victim. Since that tragic day, the Franklin Police Department has worked diligently to solve this crime. Despite their valiant efforts the case has remained unsolved for seven years. Blake’s family and friends have refused to let this case fade from the public conscious and have created several avenues to publicize the case with hopes that someone may hear about it and realize they might have valuable information that could lead to an arrest, conviction and closure of this horrible crime. READ MORE HERE

Father found dead with his 2-year-old son in ‘murder-suicide’

A Utah man who spoke about his ‘temper’ on Facebook was found dead Sunday night with his 2-year-old son in an apparent murder-suicide. Bryson Drew, 21, was found with a single gunshot wound to the head in the basement of a Spanish Fork, Utah, home by his sister at 8:40 p.m. Sunday, according to KSL. Along with a suicide note, police found Drew’s son Chanse in a bedroom with blunt force trauma injuries. The note did not give a reason for the deaths, which police believe resulted from a murder-suicide. READ MORE HERE

Police: Body found during search for missing Charlestown girl

Officials at the Maryland State Police North East barrack confirmed Monday evening that a body was found by searchers, but did not say whether or not the body was that of a missing 10-year-old Charlestown girl. Troopers and K-9 search teams were seen scouring the area around a Port Deposit-area home throughout Monday afternoon and evening. Maryland State Police set up a command center with the Cecil County Department of Emergency Services at nearby Pleasant View Baptist Church to run the investigation. READ MORE HERE

High school freshman Kathlynn Shepard had been missing since May 20 when she and a 12-year-old friend were lured into a pickup truck.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Authorities confirmed Sunday that a body found in the Des Moines River was that of a 15-year-old Iowa girl who was abducted along with a younger friend after getting off a school bus last month. An autopsy confirmed the body found Friday night under a bridge near Boone is Kathlynn Shepard’s. Her kidnapping May 20 in the small city of Dayton led to a massive search involving federal, state and local authorities. READ MORE HERE

A dog has been hailed a hero for saving the life of a newborn girl who had been slung into a rubbish dump. The animal, a Thai Bangkaew called Pui, discovered the child inside a plastic bag at the roadside tip in Bangkok. He carried the bag in his mouth to his owner Gumnerd Thongmak’s house and barked loudly to get his attention. Mr Gumnerd’s niece, Sudarat, 12, then opened the bag and found the tiny baby inside and she was rushed to hospital. READ MORE HERE

John Zawahri Identified As Santa Monica, CA Shooter

Shooting rampage killed four — he was angry at parents divorce

SANTA MONICA, CA – The gunman who killed four people in a shooting rampage in Santa Monica before he was slain by police at a community college in the California seaside town was once a student there and had a brush with the law several years ago as a teenager, police said on Saturday. Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks also revealed that several students at the college survived Friday’s shootings by hiding in an interior room of the library and piling up heavy objects against the door as the gunman fired through the walls at them. Seabrooks detailed how the gunman, after killing two people identified by a law enforcement source as his father and brother and apparently setting their house on fire, went on to carjack a woman’s automobile, ordering her at gunpoint to drive him from place to place as he fired at other individuals. READ MORE HERE

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What We Know So Far About John Zawahri

Santa Monica shooting suspect, possible motive identified

11 John Zawahri Photos – The Santa Monica College Gunman

• Four plus Zawahri are dead after the former Santa Monica College student killed his father and brother, set fire to their home, and hijacked a car from which he fired multiple rounds
• One victim ID’d as Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, and Franco’s daughter Marcela, 25, on life support in ‘grim condition’
  
• Footage clearly shows a large rifle in the hand of John Zawahri’s as he enters the school’s library