News of Doom 2.0

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Ruby Hill was arrested after her two-year-old grandchild, who suffered burns all over her body, was found inside Hill's house. When authorities went to check on the child, the 81-year-old woman stopped them from conducting the child abuse investigation, police said.

"She was not cooperative with the officers when they came to the house, basically obstructing them in trying to do their job when checking the welfare of the child," Capt. Steve McCool said.

On July 4, Oklahoma City Police were sent to the home and found the child with burns, some of which were scarred or scabbed over while others were new injuries. An EMSA worker tried to comfort the toddler, but could only find a place to touch her on the top of her head that didn't cause the child pain. According to emergency workers, it was the worst case of child abuse they have witnessed.

Twelve hours passed before another relative notified the police of the injuries to the child, police said. While the rest of the family wasn't speaking about the issue, the grandmother said she's done nothing wrong and the child's mother is to blame.

ENFIELD, Conn. -- Regina Barnes waited outside Rockville Superior Court on Wednesday while trying to come up with the money to bail her teenage son out of jail.

Police arrested her son, who has been accused of assaulting a 1-month-old baby.

Police said Scott Perigo, 17, was staying with his girlfriend at her Tolland home at the time of the May assault.

The baby was fathered by the girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, police said.

Police said the baby began crying during the night of May 8, and Perigo attended to the child. Police said while Perigo changed the baby's diaper, the child urinated on him, allegedly causing him to assault the baby.

Police said the baby suffered multiple skull fractures and contusions to his body. His condition remains unknown.

Perigo was charged with assault and risk of injury to a minor. He remains held on a $250,000 bond and is scheduled to appear at Tolland Superior Court on Wednesday.

Court officials said that Perigo was arraigned as a youthful offender.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Seminole County man went before a judge on Monday in a fatal child abuse case involving a 6-year-old boy.

Authorities said the boy, Cameron Palmer, was admitted to Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital on July 3. Hospital officials contacted the Seminole County Sheriff's Office about the case.

Investigators said they found the child unresponsive and on life support and with bruises all over his entire body. He has since died.

On the same day, deputies said they arrested Tony Gonsoulin, 39, the boy's uncle.

Officials said the boy, along with a 4-year-old and a 10-year-old, was visiting Gonsoulin for the summer. The child's mother lives in Louisiana.

Authorities said Gonsoulin admitted to disciplining the boy for lying.

Gonsoulin's common law wife called 911.

"The child did something to upset our suspect and he apparently questioned him about it and he didn't apparently like the child's answer and throughout the course of this day things proceeded to happen, the incident in the pool. He was dunking him in the pool repeatedly and then another incident inside the house we believe was probably stemmed to him believing he was lying to him," Lt. James Clark of the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said.

A neighbor said he saw Gonsoulin holding the boy under water for about 20 to 30 seconds.

A Meridian day care provider, who has been investigated for child abuse before, is behind bars today.

Dawn Seekamp, 37, is accused of slamming a one-year-old boy into his high chair so violently that she broke his leg in two places.

She was caring for the child at her in-home day care, Building Blocks Pre-school, on Bentley Drive in Meridian.

Ada County Sheriff’s detectives say on Monday Seekamp got angry at the baby.

Other children in the home say she slammed the little boy into his high chair three times, and the impact was so hard that he suffered a spiral fracture to his femur.

When detectives went into Seekamp's home they found deplorable conditions -- feces on the carpet and on a baby seat, as well as rotten food all over the home.

This is not Seekamp’s first brush with the law. Deputies say she has been under investigation for child abuse before and had foster children removed from her home four years ago.

They say there was simply not enough evidence to file charges against her and thus, she was able to get a day care license.

A hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon with Health and Welfare officials to determine if Seekamp will be able to keep custody of her own four children.

Seekamp is also facing possible animal neglect charges.

Detectives say there were dogs, cats, and chickens at the home that were not being fed and had no water.

A mother is accused of partially skinning her caged son and feeding his flesh to relatives.

Kalra Mauerova, 31, of Brno in the Czech Republic, wept in court as she admitted torturing her son Ondrej, and his ten-year-old brother, Jakub, The Sun reported.

Mauerova, a member of the Grail Movement cult, caged Ondrej for months while relatives, also members of the cult, ate his raw flesh, a judge heard yesterday.

The court in Brno heard the family sexually abused the boys and made them cut themselves with knives.

The boys said they were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables and made to stand for days in their own urine.

The abuse was discovered when a man living nearby installed a TV monitor to keep watch on his newborn baby.

Instead of pictures of his newborn he was confronted by live images of Ondrej naked in the cellar, beaten and chained, The Sun reported.

Mauerova is understood to have installed the monitor so she could watch her victims suffering from her kitchen.

Police were called, and the boy and his brother, as well as what appeared to be a 13-year-old girl, were freed.

The teenage girl later turned out to be 34, and one of the torturers.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday demanded an immediate investigation into why a 5-year-old South Los Angeles boy suffered "unbearable" abuse for two years without detection by authorities or social service agencies.

And, on the same day, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of a third suspect in the case -- a 26-year-old babysitter who they say disfigured the boy's hands by burning them on a stove.

Police say that La Tanya Monikue Jones also conspired with the boy's mother, Starkeisha Brown, 24, and her live-in girlfriend, Krystal Denise Matthews, 21, to hide the abuse.

Nonetheless, Brown and Matthews shared their small South L.A. apartment with Brown's 5-year-old son. Over a two-year period, authorities said, the boy endured "unbearable psychological and physical abuse," including cigarette burns, near-starvation and beatings. The conditions went undetected by county officials until an anonymous caller alerted them earlier this month.

Brown appears to have regained custody of her son when she left prison in January 2007. But that March, a judge issued an arrest warrant for her in connection with parole violations. It is unclear why officials could not locate her.

Matthews also has a criminal history, including convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and forgery. In May, Matthews got into a fight with her younger brother, slashing him in the face with a box-cutter. She was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty.

Los Angeles police said the 5-year-old was hung by his hands and wrists from a doorjamb and beaten with some sort of leash or chain. He was routinely denied food and water, burned with cigarettes on his body and genitals, and left to sit in his own urine and feces.

Turlock, Stanislaus County -- A 27-year-old grocery store worker who police say punched and kicked his 2-year-old son to death on a country road calmly told motorists who stopped at the scene that he had to "get the demons" out of the boy, two witnesses said Monday.

Sergio Casian Aguiar of Turlock told people who urged him to stop late Saturday that the boy was "trash," the witnesses said. He asked for a knife at one point and, at another, said, "Look how they make toys now."

And when a Modesto police officer jumped off a helicopter and ordered Aguiar to stop at gunpoint, he raised his middle finger and continued his attack.

Officer Jerry Ramar, standing in a cow pasture behind an electric fence, shot Aguiar once in the forehead, the witnesses and police said. Aguiar died at the scene.

The reason a father with no criminal record would commit such a brutal killing was still a mystery on Monday. Authorities do not know whether Aguiar was drunk or on drugs, and toxicology reports on him and his son will not be available for three to four weeks, said sheriff's spokesman Deputy Royjindar Singh.

The boy was beaten so savagely that DNA tests will be needed to confirm his identity, Singh said. His name has not been released.

The crime shocked this agricultural community and stunned those who knew Aguiar and his wife, Frances, who had recently separated from her husband. She was in Southern California when her son was killed.

The roadway was still stained with blood Monday, and one neighbor had attached a teddy bear to a nearby stop sign.

Ramar jumped from the helicopter before it touched down, ran about 20 yards toward Aguiar and, while standing behind the pasture's fence, ordered him to stop beating the boy, Singh said.

McKain said Aguiar responded, "I'm not going to prison," and when he raised his middle finger, Ramar fired.

The godmother of the 3-year-old boy whose lifeless body was discovered in her Brooklyn apartment was arrested along with her boyfriend Saturday for allegedly torturing the child she was supposed to protect.

Nymeen Cheatham, 30, and Lemar Martin, 25, were charged with assault and endangering the welfare of a child Saturday and could face more serious charges - including murder, police said.

The medical examiner completed the autopsy on Kyle Smith's 28-pound body and determined he died of "multiple blunt impact injuries with soft tissue hemorrhages all over the body," a spokeswoman said.

She said she could not be more specific because it might interfere with the investigation.

The suspects were surrounded by two dozen neighbors screaming obscenities at them Saturday afternoon as they were led out of the 81st Precinct stationhouse to be taken to Central Booking.

Cops said three domestic incident reports had been filed at Cheatham's home from Dec. 11 to Jan. 2 - but none of them led to an arrest. The NYPD did not release details of those reports Saturday.

Cheatham apparently took custody of Kyle 18 months ago after a judge ordered the child be taken from his crack addict mother.

Neighbors said Cheatham and Martin frequently screamed at the boy, whose body was covered with bruises, rope burns and cigarette burns when paramedics found him in a Patchen Ave. apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Friday afternoon.

Investigators said that doctors at Interfaith Medical Center - where Kyle was pronounced dead on arrival - said the child had a broken leg and had been sodomized with a stick before he died.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for keeping her 17-year-old adopted son caged in her home.

Brenda Sullivan pleaded guilty in January to three counts of aggravated child abuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop lesser child neglect charges. The teen weighed 49 pounds when child welfare workers found him in 2005 in what appeared to be a cage. Sullivan told a judge at the time that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib.

Two other children, 13-year-old twins the Sullivans adopted as infants, both testified they were kept in similar cages.

Sullivan's lawyer, Charles Fletcher, said he didn't think prison was the right option because she does not pose a threat to society. He said they would appeal the sentence.

CREIGHTON, Mo. -- A 3-month-old baby in Cass County suffered brain trauma and broken bones, and prosecutors said the girl's father is responsible.

The girl's father is in custody, accused of violently shaking her.

Grandmother Barbara Sites said her daughter, Brandy, lived in her home with the baby's father, Brian Kariuki, 20.

Sites said that on Friday, the girl started having seizures.

"Her left side seemed to do this jerk, even her tongue was just going like this and we didn't know what was going on," Sites said.

They rushed the infant to the hospital. Later, they were told she suffered brain trauma and broken bones.

She said Kariuki has been tired from working the overnight shift at his job.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- The parents of a 24-day-old infant are charged with felony child abuse after doctor's found that the infant had multiple skull fractures and other previously broken bones.

Deputies said the baby’s father, Brian Hollingworth, of Lyman, took the baby boy to Allen Bennett Hospital on Sunday to be treated for what he described as seizure like behavior. The infant was transferred to Greenville Memorial Medical Center.

Doctors said besides the skull fractures, the baby’s leg and several ribs had been fractured at an earlier date.

Investigators said the infant's mother, Destiny Renee Carswell, changed her statement several times during an interview with investigators on Monday afternoon.

KOKOMO, Ind. -- Two children endured horrific treatment at the hands of their mothers and two other people at a Kokomo home, police said.

Officers went to the home Monday after the mother of one of the children complained that she wasn't allowed to see her daughter.

Police said they found two 4-year-old children in the home suffering from multiple injuries and open wounds.

According to the Kokomo Police Department, the children were abused daily in the home. They were frequently beaten, bound and kept in a closet -- one of them for three weeks.

Police said the children had been attached to items with zip ties to restrict their movement and were forced to stand in corners, sometimes overnight.

Water and food were also kept from the children for long periods of time, according to officers.

Donald Hawk, 33, Madeline Hawk, 42, Jennifer Leonard, 36, and Melissa Chandler, 30, each face felony neglect charges.

Madeline Hawk was also charged with battery. Leonard and Chandler were also charged with inducing or causing battery.

MIAMI -- A woman is accused of starving and torturing her 7-year-old niece for whom she was supposed to be caring.

Felicia Watkins, 37, is charged with multiple counts of child abuse. She appeared before a judge Thursday in Miami.

Miami police said they were first notified after the girl's teacher noticed her fingers were swollen to the point that she could not hold a pencil.

Police said Watkins, who works in the cafeteria at Miami Beach High School, repeatedly abused her niece inside the Liberty City apartment she shared with her husband.

"The aunt confesses and says this was all a part of discipline and punishment," Miami police spokesman Delrish Moss said. "So she seemed to think her actions were pretty normal. She was rather cavalier about it."

Police said Watkins squeezed the girl's fingers with pliers, whipped her with an electrical cord and starved her to the point that she weighed just 48 pounds.

The girl came to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother was arrested, accused of killing the girl's father.

MIAMI -- Police are searching for a father accused of inflicting a day of torture on his 12-year-old son, repeatedly burning him with an iron.

Detectives said Cedrick Brown was reuniting with his son after Brown spent three years in prison.

The reunion allegedly turned abusive April 12 when, police said, Brown asked his son, "Are you ready for your beating?"

What followed, according to detectives, was a day of torture, with the boy being stripped naked, beaten and whipped, and then burned repeatedly with an iron. Police said Brown also threatened to castrate the boy and bit his fingers and toes several times.

Police said after the abuse, Brown and the boy's grandmother, Annette Brown, kept him home from school and away from doctors, fearing the abuse would be detected.

New Castle police charged 23-year-old Mark Strickler in connection with the death of a toddler on Wednesday.

They said Strickler beat his girlfriend's 18-month-old son inside his house so badly that it put him in a coma.

The boy was on life support for 11 days, but died Tuesday night.

New Castle Police Chief Tom Sansone said there were injuries all over the baby’s body, including the face and chest.