News of Doom 2.0

A mother confronted a neighbor who allegedly raped her 7-year-old son and threatened to call police, but reportedly accepted $600 to let the man molest her son again, Florida authorities said.

The 30-year-old unemployed mother was charged Tuesday with capital sexual battery and child abuse. The neighbor, Nicholas Quiles, 48, has been charged with capital sexual battery. Both are being held without bail. It couldn't immediately be determined Thursday if they had lawyers.

The sexual assaults happened the first two weeks of February, Lt. Jeffrey Harrington said.

The boy told his 11-year-old sister that Quiles did "bad things to him," detectives said. An anonymous tip led investigators to the neighbor and mother.

"There are definitely oddities to this case," Harrington said. "I hope we never have to investigate anything like this again."

A 40-year-old San Francisco woman lit a gas barbecue grill inside the family car, asphyxiating her 3-year-old daughter and critically injuring her 4-year-old son in an apparent murder-suicide attempt, police said Wednesday.

The woman, identified by police and neighbors as Linda Woo, was found alive at 2 p.m. inside her Subaru Outback parked in the family garage at 370 Moncada Way on Ingleside Terrace.

Fire Department crews responded to a well-being check at the home found the girl dead of apparent asphyxiation, authorities said. Her name was not immediately released. The boy was taken to UCSF Medical Center with the possibility of life-threatening injuries.

Woo was taken to San Francisco General Hospital. Authorities said she was expected to survive. Police spokeswoman Maria Oropeza said Wednesday night that Woo had not yet been booked.

A man who let his dog starve to death in a basement closet while he took his 7-year-old daughter to Disney World was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail.

Jason Griffin, 27, received the maximum for aggravated cruelty to animals after pleading guilty earlier this month.

The Long Island man was arrested in January after returning from his Florida vacation. The dog, a labrador-pit bull mix, had been left without food and water for more than a week at Griffin's Northport home.

A Katy mother wants you to help police find the person who killed her pregnant daughter.

Someone shot and killed 29-year-old Gwen Sneed near Hedgecroft at the North Beltway Sunday afternoon. She died from a single shot to the head. Sneed was out riding her motorcycle when it happened.

"Somebody please has got to know something. That's all I ask," said June Sneed. "I want the man found."

Sneed was six weeks pregnant and left behind an eight-year-old daughter. Police do not think this is a random act of violence but do not have any motive or suspects. Anyone with information about Gwen Sneed's murder is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. There is a reward offered in this case.

A fund has been set up to help bury Sneed at the following bank: Washington Mutual, c/o June Sneed for Gwen Sneed, Acct # 3064548983.

A man accused of choking his 8-year-old daughter, stabbing her in the neck and attempting to drown her in a toilet has been charged with murder, authorities said.
Neil J. Lofquist, 40, of Clarendon Hills, is scheduled to appear for a bond hearing Tuesday in DuPage County Circuit Court. He was charged Monday with first-degree murder in the death of his daughter, Lauren.

Prosecutors said Lofquist attempted to strangle his daughter in her bedroom late Sunday while his wife was downstairs and his son was in bed. He then moved the girl to the bathroom, where he attempted to drown her and stabbed her in the neck, prosecutors alleged.

Lofquist later went to a hospital with his wife to attend to wounds he suffered. Hospital personnel called police and suggested they check the Lofquist home, prosecutors said.

Paramedics who found Lauren at the home weren't able to revive her. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. Authorities declined to release the cause of death.

Two local teens face murder charges after they allegedly chased a man who mooned them and bludgeoned him to death.

Martin Malone, 47, of Clifton Heights, Pa., died Friday night in the attack in Upper Darby, Pa.

Investigators said Malone was sifting through trash at a Dumpster when Christopher McEneaney, 16, and Andre Mark, 18, started calling Malone names.

People who knew Malone said he was looking for objects to resell.

Investigators said the pair threw rocks at Malone and he mooned the teens, and they became upset.

"They were offended," said Upper Darby police chief Michael Chitwood. "That's why he died because he would dare offend them."

At some point, police said Malone took off running and tried to hide from the teens.

Police said the teens attacked Malone with a knife and shovel, and then left his body on a ball field.

Police also said evidence showed the teens were proud of the crime, because they saved the knife and newspaper clippings covering the murder. Police said witnesses to the crime who came forward and they were key in tracking the alleged killers.

Mark and McEneaney are charged with criminal homicide; first-, second- and third-degree murder; assault; robbery; theft; reckless endangerment; possessing instruments of crime; and conspiracy.

McEneaney is charged as an adult.

Both are being held without bail pending an April hearing.

A 14-year-old girl told Toledo police she was abducted Tuesday by a man with a gun but got away with help from a hammer.

Police said the quick-thinking teen found it in the man's car and used it to hit him in the groin.

According to police, the man forced the girl into his car while she was walking to her school bus stop and said he wanted sex. So, she told him she had dropped her ring in the car and went searching for it. That's when she felt the hammer under her seat.


Police said the girl told them she remembered a lesson from school to always search for a weapon in that kind of situation.

She was not hurt and ran to her grandmother's house. The suspect is still being sought.

Police this week arrested a Franklin woman accused of preparing to sell her three children to a Columbus man for drug money.

Autumn Skiles, 32, also faces accusations that she, her infant and her two other children -- ages 2 and 3 -- were living in a filthy home. She was arrested Wednesday on charges of child neglect and child selling.

Police said Skiles has a drug addiction, and that relatives told them that she was planning to sell her infant to Christopher Henson, 30, so she could have methadone.

Henson faces felony charges of child-buying, with maximum penalty of six years in prison. He was being held at the Johnson County Jail Saturday.

Investigators have no reason to believe the baby was going to be legally adopted, police said.

Police said Skiles' children were living in filth and that their diapers had not been changed as needed.

Police say a five-year-old Cortland boy with Down's Syndrome is recovering from malnutrition at University Hospital in Syracuse. Police say the boy was discovered while they were executing a drug raid at 6 Union Street.

Police Chief Jim Nichols says when officers went to the second floor of the apartment they found something they didn't expect.

"We came upon the five year old victim located in the apartment inside a play pen," said Nichols.

Nichols says the child with Down's Syndrome was covered with body lice, wearing a soiled diaper and was so undernourished, he weighed 15 pounds. Nichols adds he was told by medical personal that if the child didn't receive medical treatment he could die.

Along with Cockroaches and several bags of soiled diapers, police found two other children, ages 11 and 12 also showing signs of malnutrition. Police say those two children are now with the Social Services Department and receiving treatment at Cortland Regional Medical Center.

The mother of the three children, Judy Gratton, 48, along with a man that was living at the residence, Joseph Kahn, were arrested and face several charges including drug possession, endangering the welfare of a child and endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person.

Kyle Huff, according to police and witnesses, spent time at an after-hours party at the home. Shortly after daylight Saturday, he went to his black Dodge pickup, took out a shotgun, handgun, and belt-style bandoliers of shotgun shells, stuffing other shells into his pockets, and returned to the rental home. Within minutes, five young people were dead, a sixth was dying, and two others were wounded.

What little is known about the 7 a.m. shootings is indeed confounding. Once Huff armed himself at his truck, he also grabbed a can of spray paint. Leaving behind an assault rifle and other rounds of ammunition, he stopped en route during the short jaunt back to the home in the 2100 block of East Republican Street, spray-painting the word "Now" at several locations on the sidewalk and then on the steps to the home.

As he walked up, he opened fire at two victims sitting outside. He continued inside, shooting at whoever was unfortunate to fall within his sights. He fired repeatedly, apparently reloading as he moved through the downstairs and then upstairs. More than two dozen people were inside. Amid panic and screaming, some ran out doors, others dived out windows, while two hid successfully in an upstairs bathroom after one of them saw the muzzle blasts down the stairs and locked the door.

Huff then came back out the front door, either in pursuit of other victims or to leave. A nearby Seattle police officer who had heard the shots took cover outside the home as Huff emerged into the daylight. The officer shouted "Drop your—" but Huff, drawing the 12-gauge pistol-stock shotgun to his face, pulled the trigger one last time. He died instantly, the seventh fatality.

The Associated Press and The Seattle Times have identified two of the dead as Jeremy Martin, 26, and Christopher Williamson, 21.

Two young girls were found dead in the back seat of a car after their father â?? wanted on rape charges â?? fatally shot himself in what police called an apparent murder-suicide.

An officer patrolling a parking lot at the Bull Run fossil plant near Oak Ridge discovered Richard A. Howard, 32, sitting in his car, said Jim Carver, director of Tennessee Valley Authority police.

When the officer asked the man why he was there, "he said he had run out of gas, and he was waiting for someone to bring him some gas or some money to buy gas," Carver said.

The officer at first did not notice the girls, who were covered in the back of the vehicle, Carver said.

A check of the car's license plate revealed the outstanding warrants, and when the officer returned to the car he found Howard slumped over the steering wheel, dead from a gunshot wound.

A suicide note, handgun and the bodies of daughters Brionna, 3, and Markayla, 2, were found in the car. Authorities would not say when or how the girls were killed.

The man wrote in the note that he had killed the girls, Moulton said.

A man stabbed his ex-girlfriend, then jumped off a dock into the waters off Staten Island with their 8-month-old son, police said.

A police officer responding to the incident Thursday morning jumped into the water and was able to rescue the infant, who was floating on his back about 20 feet from shore.

"It was crying. It was in distress," said Officer Brian Sheehy.

The father, 32-year-old Charles Walker, was submerged for at least 10 minutes before he was pulled out of the water. He was pronounced dead at St. Vincent's Hospital.

The infant was listed in stable condition at the hospital, police said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Wysokowski said the man had stabbed his ex-girlfriend before police found him at the dock.