NEW BERN, NC – A judge has denied a New Bern woman’s request to have her bond reduced from $2 million. The court ruling happened Wednesday morning in a case that started about a year ago. 25-year-old Amber Sandvig is facing charges in the death of her 6-year-old daughter Alanna on Feb. 22, 2013. Sandvig is accused of driving high on drugs when she crashed the car with her two children in the backseat. Sandvig’s 2-year-old son survived the crash.

A former soldier accused of killing his five-year-old daughter kicked her so hard that he left a boot imprint on her chest, prosecutors have said at the opening of his murder trial. Naeem Williams, 34, appeared in court in Honolulu, Hawaii, near to where he was based at Wheeler Army Air Force Base, for the first day of the trial on Tuesday morning. He is accused of inflicting seven months of abuse on his daughter Talia – including making her eat her own feces and tying her to a bed before beating her with a belt – before killing her in 2005.

GREENVILLE, SC – Scott Respass can’t forget the day deputies swarmed his neighborhood. “All you could hear was the sirens because the fire department is down the road,” said the father of three. On February 21, emergency crews found a 3-month old baby girl unresponsive. She was being cared for at the home of Pamela Clark Wood on Donington Drive in Greenville. The little girl later died. When deputies arrived to investigate, they say wood was hiding something…literally.

ARECIBO, Puerto Rico — First, the Catholic Church announced it had defrocked six priests accused of sex abuse in the Puerto Rican town of Arecibo. Then, local prosecutors disclosed that at least 11 other priests on the island were under investigation for similar accusations. Now, as U.S. authorities acknowledge that they, too, are looking into abuse allegations by priests on this devoutly Catholic island, many are reeling from revelations of abuse involving some of the U.S. territory’s most beloved clerics. Puerto Ricans had largely been spared the lurid accounts of sex abuse involving the Catholic Church, and many had come to believe they were immune. But Barbara Dorris, a director with the U.S.-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the new reports mean it’s likely the problem is much worse than previously imagined.

SAN DIEGO – A man attempted to kidnap a child from a little league practice field and might have succeeded if not for the actions of the coach. Police arrested Jarrod West, 28, and charged him with attempted kidnapping and resisting a police officer after he approached a boy on the baseball field and declared he was the boy’s father, NBC reported.

Each state has a law in place to allow an unharmed infant to be relinquished to the proper authorities, no questions asked. The National Safe Haven Alliance works with states to promote these laws and increase public awareness that options exist. Together, the Alliance and states work together to save the lives of innocent infants and to protect the lives of their mothers.

A man claiming to be the illegitimate son of Mr. T filed a $5.4 million lawsuit last year claiming that the TV star had abandoned him at a young age causing him to become emotionally unstable and join a gang. In the legal papers, Alexander Taylor, 25, of San Diego, California, claimed that the actor – real name Laurence Tureaud – walked out of his life because ‘he did not fit into Mr. T’s public image.’ According to the June 2013 lawsuit, Taylor ‘was born May 25, 1988 to Vanessa Taylor (mother) and Mr. T (father)’.

Authorities say two teenage girls from Maryland are accused of assaulting a mentally-challenged boy they knew. Police in St. Mary’s County say one of the teens, 17-year-old Lauren Bush, has been charged as an adult in the case. According to investigators, Bush and a 15-year-old girl recorded cell phone video of themselves beating the 16-year-old boy. The girls are also accused of assaulting the boy with a knife on several occasions, and forcing him to perform sex acts. Police say they also kicked him in the groin and dragged him around by his hair.

PEACHTREE CORNERS, GEORGIA — For about 11 hours Monday, Gwinnett County police, volunteers and other agencies searched for 12-year-old Kelsie Lee. For about 11 hours, their efforts were fruitless. Lee was reported missing at about 8:45 a.m. Monday after her mother returned to the family’s home at 4650 Jones Bridge Circle. It’s believed that Lee’s mother asked her to take the garbage out while she drove her son to school, and the girl’s sister told police that she did so but never came back inside. Authorities launched a full-scale search for most of the day Monday, bringing it to an end when it got dark around 8 p.m. Anyone with information on the location of Kelsie Lee is urged to call 911 or contact the Gwinnett County Police Department at 770-513-5300. The active investigation will continue Tuesday.

A mother who stabbed her three young children to death has been found dead in a high security hospital. Theresa Riggi, 50, was found at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire in the early hours of this morning. Riggi was jailed at Edinburgh High Court for 16 years for killing her eight-year-old twins Austin and Luke and her five-year-old daughter Cecilia at their home in August 2010.

A mother was shocked and horrified to discover her three-year-old daughter had been molested by a friend of the family. Now she’s urging other parents to broach the subject of sexual abuse with young children to ensure they are safe and aware of what’s right and wrong. Rachel was stunned when her little girl, Hannah, (names have been changed to protect their identities), casually revealed that her private parts had been touched by Ron Wood. He was a trusted friend of the family who Rachel had no reason to suspect was a child abuser.

FLORENCE, S.C. — It had been less than a day since Carol Gause ended a multi-state hunt for a man accused of a Baltimore County slaying and his 11-year-old daughter, but she was reluctant to take any credit. The trim, 53-year-old woman, who wore a silver cross embellished with small diamonds around her neck, said she believes God orchestrated Caitlyn Virts’ rescue. “I am not the hero; the hero is those who started prayers for that girl,” Gause said early Saturday afternoon. “It was because of those prayers that she was found. The Lord only used me and used the woman that posted on Facebook to take care of this little girl. “It wasn’t by chance that they came to my motel. It wasn’t by chance that I rented to him and it wasn’t be chance that I saw it on Facebook.”

Information entered into this form will be provided to law enforcement for possible investigation. You can contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 24 hours a day at 1-800-THE-LOST. The CyberTipline® receives leads and tips regarding suspected crimes of sexual exploitation committed against children. More than 2.2 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation have been made to the CyberTipline between 1998 and Dec. 2013. If you have information regarding possible child sexual exploitation, report it to the CyberTipline.

One of the Army’s 15 most wanted suspects was arrested in Puerto Rico on Friday on multiple charges of sexual assaults against adult and child victims in Harnett County. U.S. Marshals Puerto Rico Violent Offender Task Force arrested Oscar Rodriguez, 34, early Friday in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, according to the federal agency. He is in jail pending extradition to Harnett County.