A 20-year-old Michigan woman who was declared dead by paramedics and placed in a body bag for nearly three hours was discovered alive when a funeral home employee unzipped the bag and found her staring up at him, a lawyer for the woman’s family said.
Timesha Beauchamp, who’s suffered from cerebral palsy since birth, was in critical condition and on a respirator Tuesday afternoon at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, her family’s lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, said during a Zoom news conference.
“When the body bag was opened and they were getting ready to embalm the body, Timesha’s eyes were open and she was breathing,” Fieger said.
Fieger said that shortly after Beauchamp was declared dead, her godmother, Savannah Spears, a registered nurse, told paramedics and police officers that she saw Beauchamp move and thought she detected a faint pulse.
An assistant principal charged with raping a 16-year-old student in Missouri
has avoided jail time by accepting an Alford plea, allowing her to
assert innocence while acknowledging the evidence proves her guilt
beyond reasonable doubt.
Elizabeth Giesler, who served as the
assistant principal of Ste. Genievieve Middle school in eastern Missouri
prior to the indictment, accepted the Alford plea earlier this week,
according to court records.
Rather than serving jail time, Giesler reportedly agreed to serve two years probation, as well as voluntarily surrender her teacher’s license.
The
39-year-old assistant principal was charged with sexual contact with a
student, statutory sodomy and statutory rape in 2018, The Kansas City Star reported.
The
unidentified student told police about three sexual encounters he had
with Giesler, including one reported instance at the assistant
principal’s home when she performed oral sex on the child.
His father told local news channel KTV1 that Gielser acted as a mentor in the boy’s life.
“She
talked to us about my son and stuff like this,” he said, “what she can
do for him through life, you know, give him a better life.”
He added: “She was going to try to make sure he got on the right path.”
The
middle school where Giesler was employed also told the news channel
that she had been placed on leave pending the results of the
investigation.
Ste. Genevieve County prosecuting attorney Wayne Williams defended the Alford plea in a statement to the Daily Journal,
saying he considered her lack of a criminal record and how she would no
longer be able to work in schools after surrendering her teacher’s
license.
“Some people might not understand the bargain that was
struck in this case unless they really understand what she had to give
up voluntarily to get that bargain,” Mr Williams said.
He added: “That was basically her livelihood, and she had to surrender that.”
A
woman’s death in Utah last month led to the shocking discovery of the
body of her husband — who died a decade ago — in a freezer kept inside
her home.
Jeanne
Souron-Mathers, 75, was found dead in her home on November 22 after
officers had been called to conduct a welfare check when she had not
been heard from for two weeks, the Tooele City Police tells PEOPLE.
Sgt.
Jeremy Hansen tells PEOPLE that while there was no apparent trauma to
Jeanne’s body, the official cause of her death has not yet been
determined, and authorities are still trying to establish a timeline of
her death.
But Jeanne’s wasn’t the only dead body in the house.
While
officers were searching Jeanne’s home, they discovered the body of her
husband, Paul Mathers, in a freezer — and authorities are now saying
that he was in there for more than 10 years.
In
another strange twist, officers found a letter signed by Paul and
notarized on December 2, 2008, stating that Jeanne was not the one
responsible for his death. Police say the notary said she did not read
the letter before notarizing it.
The cause of Paul’s death remains a mystery — though the Tooele police say that he suffered from a “terminal illness.”
Since the discovery of the body, authorities have determined that Paul died sometime between February 4 and March 8 of 2009.
He
was last seen at a doctor’s appointment on February 4, 2009, in Salt
Lake City at the George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. He was 58 at the time.
The
Tooele police have sent out subpoenas seeking more information about
Paul’s medical history and records of his finances. While they are still
waiting for more information, Hansen says that police are investigating
whether payments from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs were still
being sent to Paul throughout the last decade.
The amount sent to Paul from the time of his death to the time his body was found could have totaled $177,000 or more, Hansen says.
An Ohio teenager killed a
14-year-old girl after she told him she thought she was pregnant — he
reportedly feared he was the father.
In March, 14-year-old Sylvia McGee was fatally shot by a 13-year-old boy (PEOPLE is withholding his name due to his age).
On Wednesday, in juvenile court,
the teen boy pleaded true— the equivalent of guilty— to murder, Stark
County Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Cordova tells PEOPLE.
Cordova says the perpetrator had told police he and McGee believed she was pregnant with his child.
“That is what I believe got this whole thing started,” Cordova said on Wednesday, according to the Canton Repository. “There was no evidence of any other reason for this.”
But McGee was not actually pregnant, Cordova says, citing an autopsy.
“It’s still not closure,” Carlina Hanley, McGee’s great aunt, told the Repository after the hearing. ”[He] should have just admitted it from the beginning. She didn’t deserve that…She wasn’t that type of a kid. She was upbeat and funny. I just can’t believe that he did that.”
“[She] was always funny, smiling, nothing ever dragged her down, not
one thing,” the victim’s friend Tabitha McCarthy told the station after
her death.
Before her death, McGee hoped to become a beautician.
“She talked about owning her own business,” Hanley said, according to the Repository. “She talked about moving to New York and taking her maternal grandmother with her.”
“I knew that she could always
excel in life, in anything that she chose to do,” she continued. “She
wanted everybody to get along. She wanted everybody to just be friends —
that’s just the type of personality she had.”
Attorney information for the teen boy was unavailable Tuesday. He was
not tried as an adult because he was 13 at the time of the crime. He
accepted a plea agreement that brought an aggravated murder charge down
to murder.
As part of the plea, the teen will remain behind bars in a youth
prison until he is 21 and will undergo a psych evaluation. If he is
deemed a serious youthful offender, Cordova says the boy would face time
in adult prison of 18 years to life.
HOUSTON – Authorities say a man was caught attempting to smuggle 35 pounds of liquid cocaine in 24 full-sized shampoo bottles at a Houston airport.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers working at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport intercepted the traveler, a 26-year-old Colombian citizen, as he retrieved his checked baggage from the luggage carousel.
CBP says officers questioned the passenger, and that interaction led them to conduct a baggage search where they discovered the two dozen shampoo bottles concealing the liquid cocaine valued at $400,000.
Authorities say a K9 alerted to the bottles in a manner to indicate the presence of narcotics, and a test conducted by officers indicated the substance was cocaine.
“Our officers are the first line of defense at our ports of entry, so they are trained in the various smuggling methods people use to bring illicit goods into the U.S.,” said CBP Port Director Shawn Polley. “We take every opportunity to intercept those illicit goods before they enter our communities, in this case it was 35 pounds of liquid cocaine.”
CBP says the would-be smuggler was returned to Colombia, and the narcotics were seized and turned over to the Houston Police Department for further investigation.
Buffalo Wild Wings fires employees after alleged incident of racism originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Some employees at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in the Chicago area have lost their jobs after an alleged incident of racism against a group of black customers.
The alleged incident happened last month at a Buffalo Wild Wings in the Chicago suburb of Naperville.
Speaking to Chicago ABC station WLS, Justin and Mary Vahl of Montgomery, Illinois, said they arrived at the restaurant with their family and friends to celebrate a birthday when a host inquired about their race, saying a “regular” customer is seated next to their reserved table and doesn’t want to sit near black people. But the couple told the host to seat their group there anyway.
After the group sat down, several other employees approached their table on separate occasions to try to get them to move, claiming their table is actually reserved for another party. They finally decided to leave for another restaurant and filed a complaint with upper-level management, the couple told WLS.
A Portuguese doctor has been suspended by the country’s medical council after a baby born in his care did not have eyes, nose or part of his skull.
According to the parents, Dr. Artur Carvalho never mentioned seeing any abnormalities during the three ultrasound scans he performed during the pregnancy, the BBC reported. Nor during a fourth, 5D ultrasound during the sixth month of pregnancy, when they allegedly specifically asked whether Carvalho could see any potential issues and he said no.
“He explained that sometimes some parts of the face are not visible [on ultrasounds] … when the baby’s face is glued to the belly of the mother,” the baby’s aunt told a local broadcaster, AFP reported.
But when their son Rodrigo was born on Oct. 7, he was missing part of his face. The parents submitted a complaint to the Portuguese Prosecutor’s Office, and the Portugal medical council, Ordem dos Medicos, voted to suspend Carvalho for six months while they investigate.
RELATED VIDEO: Surrogate Mom Gives Birth to Baby Girl with Serious Birth Defects Despite Parents’ Order to Abort
Several other complaints against Carvalho have since come out, the BBC reported, including one from 2011 of a baby born with severe brain damage and leg and facial deformities. The child is now 8, according to Público, a daily newspaper in Portugal, and cannot walk or talk, despite undergoing multiple operations.
Rodrigo was only expected to live for a few hours, but he has made through over two weeks at the hospital.
Carvalho initially agreed to stop practicing while the Ordem dos Médicos investigated the latest complaint, but they later decided to suspend him for six months.
Alexandre Valentim Lourenco, the medical council chief for Portugal’s southern region told a local broadcaster that there is “strong evidence” that Carvalho did not properly care for his patients. He added that Carvalho’s suspension will hopefully “reassure” pregnant women now that he is no longer practicing.
For its weekly “Wanted Wednesday,” the Washington police department posted a mugshot of 38-year-old Anthony Akers, who allegedly violated his probation. He has a history of illegal possession of prescription drugs and resisting arrest, according to the Tri-City Herald.
But Akers, clearly exasperated by the attention, didn’t want to be rushed.
“Calm down, im going to turn myself in,” he commented.
When he didn’t show up, the Richland Police Department tried reaching out again. They even offered him a ride to the station.
Akers said he needed to tie up “a couple loose ends” before his impending incarceration, but assured the police that he would show up in “the next 48 hours.”
On Monday, the police responded with another post, days after Akers promised to turn himself in.
“Dear Anthony, is it us?” the Richland Police Department asked. “We are beginning to think you are not coming.”
When he didn’t show over the weekend, Akers wrote a heartfelt apology for standing up the police. Here’s his tongue-in-cheek note admitting his “commitment issues.”
After nearly a week of ghosting, empty promises, and leading them on, Akers finally turned himself in. He replied to the Richland Police Department’s post with a cheeky selfie captioned, “Here for our date sweetheart.”
Love, Actually who? Watch this romance blossom over Facebook instead.
In Louisiana, Larry Mitchell Isaacs gave up his medical license in the face of discipline after he removed an allegedly healthy kidney during what was supposed to be colon surgery.
In California, he mistakenly removed a woman’s fallopian tube. According to medical board records, he thought it was her appendix — which already was gone. More surgeries on the woman followed, including one in which he allegedly left her intestine unconnected.
Facing state sanctions, he surrendered his license there, too.
In New York, where regulators were moving to take action based on his California problems, he also agreed to give up his license.
But in Ohio, he has found a home.
There, his medical license remains unblemished, allowing Isaacs to work at an urgent care clinic in the Cincinnati area.
Surrendering a license is often done in the face of overwhelming evidence of unprofessional conduct. It can come after repeated surgical mishaps, churning out improper opioid prescriptions, or years of having sex with patients.
A license surrender can spare a doctor the time, expense and reputational harm that might come with formal charges and a hearing before a state medical board. Typically it comes with no restriction on practicing elsewhere.
The wife of a Manhattan financier hired a nanny for her baby, but freaked out when she realized the caretaker was African-American and fired off a text message saying, “NOOOOOOOOOOO ANOTHER BLACK PERSON,” a lawsuit alleges.
Lynsey Plasco-Flaxman, a Tribeca mother of two, wrote the message for her spouse, Joel Plasco, upon meeting new nanny Giselle Maurice for her first day at work in 2016.
Only she didn’t send the text to Plasco — she accidentally sent it to Maurice. Twice.
When she realized the gaffe, Plasco-Flaxman immediately fired the experienced caretaker, saying she felt “uncomfortable.”
She said that their outgoing nanny was African-American and had done a bad job — and that they were expecting a Filipino.
Now Maurice, 44, is suing the couple for discrimination and seeking compensation for wages she says she was promised — $350-a-day for a six-month live-in gig.
“[I want] to show them, look, you don’t do stuff like that,” Maurice told The Post Friday, saying they paid her for the single day’s work and sent her home in an Uber.
“I know it’s discrimination.”
But the family says their actions were reasonable, arguing they couldn’t trust Maurice after offending her.
“[My wife] had sent her something that she didn’t mean to say. She’s not a racist. We’re not racist people,” Plasco, co-chairman of the Dalmore Group investment bank, told The Post on Friday.
“But would you put your children in the hands of someone you’ve been rude to, even if it was by mistake? Your newborn baby? Come on.”
Maurice said she never would have treated the child any differently because of her mom’s text.
“This is my reputation. Why would I do something to a baby?” she said.
“I was willing to work with her and prove her wrong, but it was her conscience, and she couldn’t work with me anymore.”
Maurice said she had tried to settle the dispute through mediation and filed the suit after that didn’t work out.
Plasco said that they didn’t owe her any more money because there was no contract, and that the suit is just “extortion.”
“I’m not someone who has millions of dollars lying around to just pay off people that are coming after me for extortion. And now you’re playing straight into her hands,” fumed the banker, who once ran the UK’s biggest brokerage firm.
“My wife was two months off having a baby, suffering from a very difficult situation. You’re going to go after someone like that? That’s not a very nice thing to do.”
