Weird news - Kid died in hot car, father charged

It is an accident, something that no parent would want to happen. At the same time, it would seem as a lot of common sense that a car will quickly get hot when left in the open, and anybody left in the car would quickly become uncomfortable in the vehicle and given enough time, suffocate in the heat. This is more problematic when a child is left in the car and because of their inability to help themselves, suffer the heat and some of them even die. In such cases, even if the parent would most likely have forgot the child in the car, the child died and this is a crime (link to article):

A Mississippi man has been charged with second-degree murder after he left his 8-month-old daughter in an overheated car while he went to work. Joshua Lewis Blunt left the child in the vehicle outside the restaurant where he works for “some period of time,” Grenada Deputy Police Chief George Douglas told the Clarion-Ledger.

Weird news - Child gets left behind in bus in Dubai, dies

This happens in different countries, and gets repeated so much you would wonder there would be a technical solution that can detect when a child gets left behind in a vehicle when it is very hot, so that they don't suffer in the stifling heat, something that can kill (and in fact, has killed many children over the years). However, it is still odd. When parents send their children to school, they sort of transfer the responsibility of the children to the school as soon as they get into the bus. So when they find out that the child had slept off and nobody noticed, and in the heat of Dubai weather, the bus would have become a death trap with heat and suffocation (link to article):

DUBAI: A six-year-old Indian boy was found dead after he dozed off in his school bus and left behind alone for several hours in the UAE on Saturday, according to a media report. Mohamed Farhan Faisal from Kerala was a student of Islamic Centre in Al Quoz and had dozed off after boarding the bus. He was left behind after all other students disembarked outside the centre at 8 am, the Khaleej Times reported. The Dubai Police said that they were told of the tragedy at 3 pm. "The child was found as the driver took the bus out to drop the students back home," a senior police official was quoted as saying by the paper.

Weird news - Japanese boy abandoned by father, found after a week

Sometimes the behavior of parents seems very weird. Among all animals, human children seem the most vulnerable when they are alone, they need the most help. Given this, it seems odd when one visualizes this case where parents abandoned their 7 year old son in a Japanese forest as a punishment, and then he went missing for a week. Given a forest and being alone, it is a miracle that the boy made it out alive, having found a hut with a tap so that he was able to get water to drink.
He was very hungry when found by a soldier who provided him with some food, he was checked for injuries and then reunited with his parents who were very sorry for their behavior. They could have lost their son, and in the US or UK, child services would have got involved if parents had behaved like this (link to article):

The father of a seven-year-old Japanese boy who went missing for nearly a week after his parents abandoned him in a mountain forest as punishment apologised today hours after his son was found safe. "My excessive act forced my son to have a painful time," he said. The boy, apparently unharmed and in good health, was discovered at a military base. Reports said he had taken shelter in a hut and found a tap to drink from but was hungry and immediately asked for food when discovered. "A Self-Defence Force official who was on a drill found a boy whose age appeared to be seven," said Tomohito Tamura, spokesman for police in northern Hokkaido island.

Weird news - Son reported father for running red light

In school, students are taught traffic discipline, including when to stop at red lights, when to go, what are the various traffic signals. So whenever I drive, even though I follow stop lights, I get a reminder from my first-grader about following the signal, "Daddy, it's a red light, stop". Hopefully when these children grow up, they will be similarly inclined to follow traffic signals when they start driving (if driverless vehicles haven't taken over already).
The below case does seem a bit extreme though, where a 6 year old called 911 to report his own father for driving through a red light, after apparently having warned his father when he was doing that, even though his father tried to convince the son that he was taking a right turn which was perfectly legal. The police department put the call to their Facebook page to show the kind of calls they get, and not in a negative way (link to article):

When the light went red but the driver turned anyway, officer Robbie Richardson's training kicked in. Green meant go, yellow meant slow, and red, he was certain, meant stop. But the driver, turning right, just blew on through the light, his crime all but undetected. Officer Richardson, who spends his free time patrolling the streets of his Boston-area neighborhood, couldn't stand the injustice of it all - especially since the delinquent driver was his dad, and Richardson, a sassy six-year-old who'd left his Little Tikes toy cop cruiser at home, was in the back seat. So the kindergartner did what any good purveyor of justice would do, family loyalty be damned: he called 911.

Weird news - Parents of 3 year girl with huge tumor arrested

Any kind of illness in a child can scare a parent and cause them to take all kinds of action. The minimum would be to see a doctor and figure out what kind of treatment. This would happen even if the parents are busy, or if the weather or bad, or something similar. The care and concern shown by parents is something that is supreme. This is something that is present in a vast majority of parents, so it always seems weird when you see a parent who apparently does not show concern for their children. And given that children are incapable of looking after themselves, it is the responsibility of the parents to take care of their children, and if it seems that they are not really doing so, they will face criminal charges for not taking care of them. The children can also be taken away and kept in foster homes where atleast they will get better care.
In this case, authorities in a town in Oklahoma were called to a camper home where they found a 3 year old girl with a 17-pound tumor, and who died soon after being admitted to hospital. Now, a tumor can be deadly and fatal, but it does not happen suddenly. Tumors develop and get bigger over a period of time, and in any normal case, the parents would have been frantic with worry, getting medical attention for the girl. The tumor may have been treatable or may not have been, but atleast the child would have had a chance, except the lack of attention meant that she did not have a chance. And which is why the parents will face manslaughter charges (link to article):

The parents of a 3-year-old Oklahoma girl who died from cancer and had a 17-pound tumor face manslaughter charges for allegedly failing to provide medical care. Authorities in Lawton were called Jan. 3 to a camper home near Lake Lawtonka on Oklahoma State Highway 58, the Lawton Constitution reported. The child was unconscious but breathing when responders arrived. She was taken to a hospital where she died. The state medical examiner found the child had cancer. Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said she had a 17-pound tumor, although it was not immediately clear exactly where the tumor was located.

Weird news - Parents discovered a dead baby in daughter's bed

Making the bed of their children is one of the most normal activities, but you can be scared out of your wits if you find a dead baby while doing this simple task. And yet this is what happened to the parents of a 17 year old girl when they were making the bed of their daughter. They found a dead baby in the bed and called the police. The police found that the baby belonged to the daughter of the couple who was unaware that she was pregnant right till the time that she gave birth, and gave birth to a full term baby boy. Experts say that this has happened before, where a girl did not know that she was pregnant almost till the time that she gave birth and has happened before (link to article).
This is also a difficult scene for everyone involved, there is really no one at fault, given that the girl did not know what had happened to her and she would have been suffering a severe emotional turmoil. Experts say that in such a case, the young girl (or girls in different cases), the girls needs counselling and support.

Weird news - Trick or treat results in child getting drugged

For parents, the safety of their children is paramount in their thoughts and actions. In parts of the United States where there are problems with increased incidence of drugs, it is even more important to try and ensure that your children do not get into the habit of drugs - many drugs can be highly addictive and also very dangerous, and with the opioid epidemic ever present, there are so many different ways in which people can get ensnared.
However, parents can get very puzzled when they find their children suddenly showing signs of being drugged, especially when the child has gone out for a Halloween trick or treat and is only 5 years old, an age where you would not expect your child to have consumed drugs or come into contact with somebody who could provide drugs (link to article):

This year, rain fell during that two-hour window in the northern Ohio city. Afterward, as Braylen Carwell peeled off his costume and prepared to dive into his haul, he thought his sudden shaking was related to the cold, wet weather. “I was putting my socks on, and then I started to shiver,” the 5-year-old told CBS affiliate WBNS. “And then I couldn’t move my arm or my fingers." The child’s father rushed him to a hospital. By then, “the left side of his face was just droopy, and then he fell and then he couldn’t move his left arm,” his mother, Julia Pence, told WSYX, an ABC affiliate. “And he didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Weird news: 3 year old boy shoots himself in tragedy

In a sign of how the increasing presence of guns in US society is making it easier for tragedies to happen, another tragedy happened where a 3 year old saw a gun (which was loaded and ready to fire) in his father's store and shot himself with the gun, right under the nose of the father. The increased presence of guns with citizens has statistically increased the chances that such of tragedies will happen; there will be an increased number of people who somehow forgot to ensure gun safety at all points of time. Children play with toy guns, and if they see a loaded gun, they do not have the knowledge to avoid the gun; it is the responsibility of the gun owner to ensure that the gun is always safe, in a place where children cannot access it.
Unfortunately in this case, the loaded gun (ready to fire, no safety latch apparently on) was accessible to the child, and even though his father was just next to him, a small gap in time ensured that the child was able to pick up the gun and fire at himself, leading to his tragic death (link to article):

Manal Jr. was sitting on a stool beside his father at the store on Sunday when he found a handgun stored on a shelf beneath the cash register. The three-year-old accidentally shot himself and died shortly after. It is illegal in North Carolina to have an unsecured gun in the presence of a child, according to the Associated Press. Authorities in Lumberton, a small city 100 miles south of Raleigh, are investigating the incident and the Robeson County District Attorney's Office will decide whether to file charges. Lumberton Police Department Capt. Terry Parker urged gun owners to keep their weapons secure. "Make sure it's where the child cannot have access to it," he told WTVD Monday. "Kids are going to be naturally curious about firearms. Kids, they need to learn gun safety but at the same time we as adults have got to protect the kids to the best of our ability."

Weird news: 2 year old has cardiac arrest on a plane

A heart attack or any kind of cardiac problem is a matter of great distress to the affected person as well as to relatives and friends, but it is even more problematic when this happens in a kid. The incidence of heart problems is much lower in children, unless they are born with some of those problems, but yet, it is painful to see children in such a state. This is even more problematic when an incidence such as cardiac arrest happens on a plane, where there may not be the required specialized equipment or medical personnel; in such cases, one can only hope that things become better soon (link to article):

Authorities say a 2-year-old reported in cardiac arrest on a JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh to Boston was rushed to a hospital after landing at Logan International Airport. Massachusetts State Police Trooper Matthew Guarino says an ambulance met Flight 1786 about 5:40 p.m. Thursday after the pilot reported the medical emergency. Emergency responders blocked road intersections to rush the child to Massachusetts General Hospital. A state trooper drove the child's father and brother to the hospital.

Weird news - 10 year old boy shoots his mother dead, on trial

These are the sort of cases that both judges and juries dread to have. If you have a murder trial, where an adult has killed another person, you would not feel too much trouble in being part of such a trial, and even if it came to passing a judgment of execution in such a case, you would feel that you have gone through the proper process and done what needs to be done. However, this can get real tricky when you are dealing with a 10 year boy who is on trial for killing his own mother.
Typically, societies consider the age of 18 to be one where a person is considered to be an adult, and more important, when a person is considered of sound mind and capable of being responsible for their own actions. For somebody younger than that, and specially when somebody is like 10 years old, you would think that the child cannot be responsible for their own actions. What was more of a problem was that the 10 year old was in such anger after an argument with his mother, and equally important, had access to a gun with he was able to shoot his mother (link to news article):

An Ohio boy admitted he fatally shot his mother in the head with a rifle when he was 10 after what a relative described as an argument over chores. The boy, now 13, entered the equivalent of a guilty plea Monday in juvenile court. In January 2011, the boy went to a neighbor's house, called 911 and told the dispatcher he had shot his mother at their home in rural Holmes County, about 70 miles northeast of Columbus. "I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun," he said. At the time, his uncle said the boy and his mother had argued over carrying firewood.

Weird news - Mom phones police about son's disappearance, charged later with crime

It is always scary for a parent when they lose sight of their child or the child goes missing, especially when the child is of such a young age that he or she cannot take of themselves. A 3 year old child certainly cannot take care of themselves, and it is incumbent upon parents and guardians to take care of them, and if this does not happen and the child seems to be mis-treated, then the government steps and can take over the maintenance of the child. However, even this does not happen in some cases, after all the Government is not all knowing, with a dependence that the parents of the child will take care of their responsibility. The Government more depends on law and the fear of the law to ensure that parents take care of their responsibility, and when they find cases where a parent is responsible for a child suffering, or in tragic cases, where the parent is responsible for the death of the child.
In a recent case, the parent of a child (where the parents are separated) filed a complaint that the child was lost in a park and appeared distraught. The mother came to the police looking very distressed and got the police in action to look for the child and more people including volunteers got into the action. However, this is where things get stupid and tragic. When they were looking near the child's home, they saw a garbage truck leaving the home and followed the truck to the garbage handling facility where they found the child's body. As a result, the mother of the child was held, although there is no admission from her of guilt as yet (link to article):

A Cleveland woman has been arrested in the death of her 3-year-old son after police found what they believe is the body of the young boy at a waste-treatment plant, according to authorities. Cleveland police said Monday they're holding Camilia Terry, 20, at Cuyahoga County Jail to await charges in the death of her son, Emilliano Terry. "We come here with heavy hearts, I'm sure you understand. Today, at approximately 4 o'clock, a body of a small child matching the description of Emilliano Terry was discovered at a waste treatment plant in Oakwood Village," Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said, according to ABC News affiliate WEWS-TV.

Weird news - Father throws his son out of the window, son dies

Fathers are typically the ones who are expected to ensure that their children are safe. In history, there are literally countless cases where parents have given up their lives to save their children, or dedicated their lives to ensure that their children have a better life. So, it seems very strange to come across cases where you find parents ill-treating their children, or in this specific case, actually causing the death of the defenseless child, one who cannot protect himself and for whom everybody expects that their parents will be the one who take care of them.
In this case, the parents had 4 children, 3 daughters and 1 son (and in these areas, having 1 son and 3 daughters would mean that the son would be very well thought over and loved by his parents), and yet the son was thrown out of a window during an argument and died (link to article):

Police added the couple was married for 11 years and the boy, Hanif, was their fourth child. They had three daughters as well. "The couple was fighting on Thursday and Hafiz, in a fight of rage, picked up the boy and threw him from the balcony of their house situated in Jodhpur's Nai Sadak area," said the officer. Neighbours informed the police and rushed the injured boy to the hospital. "The boy had sustained injuries on his head and other body parts. He was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit," said the officer, adding that Hafiz was arrested on charges of attempt to murder.

Weird news - Father kills his own child for making too much noise

When you read news like this one, you wonder as to how somebody could do things like this. The bond between a parent and their children is extremely strong, where a parent could do anything to ensure the safety of the child. If somebody else says anything to the child, the parent can and in most cases, does react against such utterances by other people. Given all this, it seems impossible to believe as to how a parent could be so barbaric to their own children (link to article):

Enraged by the continuous bawling of his infant daughter, a man allegedly flung the two-month-old baby down a drain resulting in her death in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, police said on Monday.
"Mujibur Sheikh, a mason, was at his home and got irritated by the continuous crying of his baby. He asked the mother to calm the baby, but she failed. Enraged, he threw the baby into a drain which killed her instantly," said Jagannath Das, officer of Ragunathgunj police station.

Weird news - Man kills his own children after estrangement with his wife

In today's world, marriages are made easily, but can also get broken far more easily. This is a far cry from medieval times where the church refused to let divorces happen, and a bad marriage still meant an existing marriage. With the number of broken marriages increasing, there are more tensions due to children and the issues related to who gets to keep the children as part of divorce proceedings.
However nasty such divorce proceedings go, it is in the very rare case that such proceedings lead to violence, and even less so that the father actually kills his own children and that too in such a brutal manner, by knifing them to death (link to article):

A jilted man in Britain killed his daughter and son by slitting their throats to hurt his estranged wife as he was about to be evicted from their flat. Jean Francis Say, 62, murdered his eight-year-old daughter Regina and son Rolls, ten, when he had custody of them for the weekend, the Sun reported Thursday.
He carried out the killings shortly after receiving a letter confirming that he was being kicked out of the family's three-bedroom property where he lived alone. His estranged wife Adjoua had moved out with the children six months earlier. So, Say wasn't entitled to the flat any longer.

Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce [Paperback]	He's History, You're Not: Surviving Divorce After 40 [Paperback]	The Breakup Bible: The Smart Woman's Guide to Healing from a Breakup or Divorce [Paperback]

Weird news - A traffic fine for a 6 year old boy on a toy motorcycle in Mexico

One normally assumes that traffic fines are given when people break traffic rules, and you normally associate this with people who do speeding, drive when drunk, or jump a red light, or do some other action that violates a rule meant for traffic safety. There is no restriction that such laws are only meant for adults, including teenagers who are more prone to do rule breaking antics on the road.
But, how often have you heard about a young boy being prosecuted for a driving offence, especially a boy as young as 6 years old, fined for a traffic incident, and with his toy vehicle having been impounded. However, after some amount of delay and some amount of controversy, the vehicle was returned and the traffic citation was voided (link to article):

A six-year-old Mexican boy has been fined for riding his toy motorcycle, a Christmas gift, without a licence and for reckless driving, after he crashed it into an SUV.
The incident occurred on December 27 in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, when the boy, Gael Santiago was riding his bike near his home, and collided with an SUV that had jumped a stop sign, Fox News quoted a Mexican police spokesperson as telling Spanish news agency EFE.
Terming the charges as "ridiculous", the boy's mother , Karla Noriega said it showed lack of judgement on the part of the traffic police who fined the boy and impounded his miniature gasoline-powered bike.

Driving in Europe: Roadsigns & Signals, Traffic rules, Fuel, Parking, Breakdowns & Accidents, Blood alcohol limits for all European countries, Automotive Phrasebook (Mobi Travel Guides)	Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)	Trucking Rules and Regulations: Reference Guide to Transportation

Weird news - Girl eats a lightbulb, and is only 3 years old

You read about people doing all sorts of weird things, many of them for some sort of publicity or the other. If you read some of the facts listed in Ripley's books, or even the Guinness World Records, some of those exploits seem so weird. But most of those are done by adults who want the publicity.
When a young child does something that seems weird, the immediate need for doing that act is blamed on the parents (since it is assumed that the parents are the one who are forcing the child to act, and the child is too young to do something on his / her own). Consider the following case where a very young girl (all of 3 years old) ate a lightbulb due to a medical condition (link to article):

A three-year-old girl has eaten a light bulb.
Natalie Hayhurst - who suffers from Pica, a condition characterised by an appetite for non-nutritive substances - nearly died when she consumed the inedible object, and she polished off nearly a whole brick "like a chocolate chip cookie" in the past.
Her mum Colleen told the Daily Mail newspaper: "She doesn't try to eat glass so much since it hurt her, but she will try and eat rocks and sticks she finds in the garden.

Weird news - 11 year old tried and prosecuted for participating in the recent London riots

The recent riots in London and other cities shocked the people of Great Britain, causing a greater than normal deployment of police. Once the riots and disturbances ended, it resulted in a huge amount of counter-reaction against the rioters; this included calls to ensure that the rioters were evicted from state provided housing; that rioters received quick and harsh sentences as a deterrence; parents were encouraged to turn in their children if these children took part in the rioting, and so on.
But there have been calls after the first series of judgments that came out against some of the rioters that the sentences have been too harsh, that normal norms of sentencing have been set aside in some kind of harsh vigilante mode. What would you call sentencing an 11 year old boy for stealing a waste bin costing around 50 pounds (link to article):

A 11-year-old boy today became the youngest person to be sentenced for stealing a waste bin worth £50 during the recent London riots.
He was given an 18-month youth rehabilitation order at Havering Magistrates' Court in Essex after admitting burglary.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stole a waste bin from Debenhams in Romford, Essex, on August 8 after the windows of the store were smashed by looters.

Weird news - Parents offered sex with their young girl for paying off loan

Parents are normally seen as extremely protective of their children, especially when the children are vulnerable. It is only when children get much older that they let their children make their critical decisions, especially when it comes to matters such as sex. However, once in a while you come across parents who pervert this relationship, and try to use their children for personal benefits. And when the law finds out such an attempt, the law comes on top of them like a ton of bricks and will almost always penalize them with jail terms, and also take their children away. Read the following story and see whether society has any other option other than what was described in this article (link to target):

Police arrested three people including the parents of an eight-year-old girl, after they allegedly negotiated a deal involving sex with the minor to help pay off a loan, Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday.
“We have detained the parents of the girl after a relative discovered on a laptop, that her parents were offering sex with her as a downpayment to a loan,” Jeichien de Graaff of the Rotterdam prosecutors’ office, said.
Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad reported that the parents negotiated an amount to be paid in return for sex with the girl and that photos have been exchanged, including pictures of the girl.
The three are facing charges of child abuse, and the making and distribution of child pornography “within the next few weeks,” De Graaff said.

Weird news - Father kills 7 year old son over matrimonial dispute

Disputes between parents and children is nothing new, but you hear of those typically when both parents and children are adults and both have their own views (and the disputes could be over monetary issues, or over differences of opinion); but when the children are young and defenseless, one gets horrified at scenes of violence between parents and children.
Consider the following case where a father killed his own 7 year old son since he was having a fight with his wife, and this led to his taking out the anger on his own son, hitting him hard with a hammer on the head (link to article):

In a gory fallout of a matrimonial feud, a property dealer from south Delhi killed his seven-year-old son with a hammer blow to his head on Sunday. The victim, Arpit Singh, a class I student of Greenfield Public School, fell dead instantly.
Though police remained tightlipped, it appeared that the attack was a result of a heated argument between Bhupender and his wife. Arpit's 11-year-old sister and his mother were not in the room when the incident took place. Bhupender also reportedly suffers from alcoholism. According to senior police officers, the couple had a bitter argument on Sunday after which Bhupender stomped back to his room. Sources said the argument was over an extra-marital relationship and the manner in which the accused conducted himself in public.

Weird - Chinese man eats the brain of a child to try to cure epilepsy

Anything that can do with harm or hurt to a baby or young child gets people all worked up, and the parental instinct in people with respect to their children is incredible. In such cases, when you hear of incidents such as where this man, in order to try to cure epilepsy, kidnapped a young boy, killed him, cut open his head and ate parts of the young brain in some weird concept that this will epilepsy. When caught, he tried to pretend something else (link to article):

29-year old Wang Chaoxu, who hails from the southwest Chinese village of Qixian, seems to have a nasty habit of killing children and eating their brains, believing them to be the cure for his epilepsy. 11-year old Li Xuetang disappeared one night, prompting his mother to become worried, and going so far as imploring the head of the village to make a radio broadcast on the off chance her song might see it.

It seems like incidents like this have happened before, so hopefully incidents like this will not happen again.