LEONIA, N.J. (CBSNewYork) –The fatal police shooting of a New Jersey robbery suspect was an act of “police brutality” made by “untrained police officers,” according to his family’s attorney.
Rosemarie Arnold, the lawyer for the family, said McFadden was “kind,” “gentle” and “emotionally disturbed.” She said he went to CVS “to buy a pack of cigarettes, like he did every single day of his life for the past 10 years.”
“Mr. McFadden did not have a gun when these shootings took place and he was running away from the police as indicated by the fact that there were bullet holes in the back of his legs and on the bottom of his feet,” Arnold told 1010 WINS.
McFadden’s family now intends to file a wrongful-death lawsuit.
While authorities have not gone into great detail about what prompted the shooting, Bergen Prosecutor John Molinelli said witnesses have told investigators McFadden did have a weapon and that he was approaching officers and refused to drop that weapon when they fired.
Molinelli has also described the action of the officers from the Leonia and Palisades Park police departments as “defensive.”
But McFadden’s lawyer called the claim “ridiculous.”
“First of all, he shouldn’t be commenting to the press about specific things that witnesses told him in the first place. Second of all, it makes absolutely no sense that McFadden was attacking police officers when he got shot in the back of his legs and the bottom of his feet,” Arnold said.
Arnold said the shooting was “a total case of police brutality,” committed by “untrained police officers, who are in a situation of danger and have no idea how to handle it.”
However, she also made a point of mentioning that “Nobody is claiming that these officers are evil or did anything purposefully. They had a lack of training.”
“Where are the stun guns? If you are going to claim that this is a defense shooting, you have to be able to show that he was coming toward you, that you were in danger or that someone else was in danger. There was no one in danger in this situation” Arnold said.
Heath Campbell, left, with his wife, Deborah, lost custody of their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell, center, along with their three other children.
A New Jersey couple has lost custody of their four children, three of whom are named after Nazi historical figures, after a Superior Court judge ruled Monday that they were unfit parents.
Self-described Nazis Heath and Deborah Campbell drew national attention in 2009 when a ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich, N.J., refused to decorate a cake with the name of the couple’s eldest son, Adolf Hitler Campbell.
Child welfare officials took Adolf, 6, and his two sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan National, 5, and Honzlynn Hinler Jeannie, 4, into custody soon after.
State officials also took the parents’ youngest child, Hons, hours after he was born in November 2011.
The Campbells sought to regain custody of their children in 2010, but a state appeals court ruled that the family’s history of domestic abuse put the children at risk for similiar mistreatment, according to ABC News.
Court records from the appeals court stated that the mother, Deborah, once slipped a note under the neighbor’s door saying that she feared her husband because he threatened to kill her. The documents showed that the oldest son threatened to kill people as well.
The children’s father insists that the judge made the decision based on the couple’s beliefs rather than abuse allegations.
“These kids weren’t abused. Our kids weren’t taken because of abuse,” the father told the Star-Ledger. “If I have to give up my Nazism, then so be it. I’ll do it.”
Heath last saw his children about a year ago, according to the Star-Ledger. He has since separated from his wife, who now lives in a different state.
Attorneys representing both sides of the case were not allowed to comment on the ruling due to a gag order, the Star-Ledger reports.
The children will continue to remain in the custody of the New Jersey Divison of Youth and Family Services.
Okay, this is starting to get really weird. In the past couple of weeks there have been reports all over the country of criminals chewing on human flesh and eating human brains. So exactly what in the world is going on here? Is this some kind of zombie apocalypse? For the record, I certainly do not believe that zombies exist. Let me be very clear on that. However, zombies have become so prominent in popular culture in recent years that it was probably inevitable that people would try to mimic them. In addition, I certainly do believe that demonic possession is real, and that could be a cause for some of this behavior as well. And of course drugs can play a huge role in causing people to behave in absolutely crazy ways. That certainly was the case with the “zombie attack” down in Miami recently. It turns out that “bath salts” are being blamed for the bizarre cannibalism attack that made headlines all over the nation. Police shot and killed 31-year-old Rudy Eugene as he was literally chewing the face off of another man. According to authorities, the victim has “75 percent of his face missing, including an eye, his ears and lips.” Unfortunately, this is not just an isolated incident. In fact, there have been a whole bunch of other attacks like this in recent days.
For example, one mother down in Texas recently dismembered her baby boy and ate some of his brains. The following is a description of this horrifying crime from a recent MSNBC article….
The scene was so gruesome investigators could barely speak: A 3 1/2-week-old boy lay dismembered in the bedroom of a single-story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out.
“At this particular scene you could have heard a pin drop,” San AntonioPolice ChiefWilliam McManus said Monday. “No one was speaking. It was about as somber as it could have been.”
Officers called to the home early Sunday found the boy’s mother, Otty Sanchez, sitting on the couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming “I killed my baby! I killed my baby!” police said. She told officers the devil made her do it, police said.
Sanchez, 33, apparently ate the child’s brain and some other body parts before stabbing herself, McManus said.
Can you even imagine that?
What would cause a person to act like that?
A similar incident recently happened on the east coast. Just check out what happened in Maryland recently….
Investigators say 21-year-old college student Alexander Kinyua killed his roommate and then ate his heart and parts of his brain. He cut off his victim’s head and hands and stored them in his family’s townhouse on Terrapin Terrace in Joppatowne.
Can you ever remember so many reports of people eating human brains so close together?
Like I said, this is getting really weird.
There have been other reports of criminals chewing on human flesh as well.
Police were called to the store just before 6 o’clock because a customer was fighting with two employees. When they got to Lowe’s they found Christopher Newman fighting with two men who worked at the store.
Witnesses tell police the suspect threatened to cut the victims with a knife and he also bit both of them on the arm during a fight, causing them to bleed. Police also found that Newman had two knives. Reports also state he caused $135 worth of property damage inside the store.
Wayne Carter, who has a history of psychiatric problems, had barricaded himself inside his Hackensack, N.J., home when the gruesome event took place late Sunday, The Record reported Tuesday.
Police were called to the house after the 43-year-old was spotted cutting himself with the knife.
When they arrived at the scene, Carter refused to drop the weapon and began waving it — along with a hammer — at the officers. He then repeatedly stabbed himself in the legs, abdomen and neck.
All of this has caused people all over the Internet to openly wonder if a “zombie apocalypse” is now upon us.
In particular, a lot of really weird things have been happening down in Florida in recent days. The following is a post by “ihopericksantorum” on Tumblr that has gone absolutely viral….
All in same week and same state…. may God be with you Florida.
So is there some rational explanation for all of this?
Or is there truly something incredibly strange going on?
Amazingly, an article entitled “Zombie Preparedness” recently appeared on the official CDC website.
Were they trying to tell us something?
Or is all of this just one huge coincidence?
Once again, I do not believe that zombies exist.
But I do believe that popular culture is obsessed with zombies, I do believe that demonic possession is real and I do believe that drugs can make people behave in ways that are almost unimaginable.
Hopefully there will be no more “zombie attacks” and all of this will just fade away.
A mother in Pennsylvania left her infant son and young daughter alone in her car while she went tanning at a local salon.
Krista Mann, 28, now faces child endangerment charges and a wrath of public scrutiny as her incident comes on the heels of New Jersey mom Patricia Krentcil earning the moniker ‘tanning mom’.
Krentcil was charged with allegedly bringing her pale red-head daughter into a tanning booth with her and has since been banned from 63 tanning salons in her home state.
Tanning mom II: Krista Mann, left, was arrested for leaving her six-year-old daughter (right) in the car with her 10-month-old son while she went tanning
CBS News reports that Krentcil’s ban happened on the same day as news of Mann’s arrest broke.
Though Krentcil is significantly more tan than Mann, the similarities between the cases will certainly raise the heat that both mothers are facing.
A neighbor of Mann’s told local ABC affiliate WHTM that she is a good mother but simply under stress.
‘It’s a mistake and I know she’s devastated,’ Trish Rowles told the station.
Different hues: Patricia Krentcil (left) was the first one to be called tanning mom, and now Krista Mann (right, seen with her son) is raising comparisons
The officer, who was doing meter checks on Saturday morning, asked the girl where their parents were and she pointed to the tanning salon nearby.
Trouble: Because Mann was driving on a suspended license due to a prior DUI charge, she now faces a possible 60 days in jail
One credit that Mann does get: she told her daughter never to talk to strangers, so when the police officer was asking questions she would only point her answer and began to cry.
Mann was in the tanning booth when the officer arrived at the salon, and she told him that it was ‘stupid’ of her to have left her children in the car.
She said she had forgotten her driver’s license, and when it was presented, the officer learned that it had been suspended because of a prior arrest for drunken driving.
As a result, she now faces two charges of child endangerment, two charges of leaving a child in an unattended vehicle, and a charge of driving on a suspended license.
If convicted of the last charge, she will face at least the mandatory minimum sentence of 60 days in jail.
‘The thing that we hope occurs is that we raise public awareness to the fact that we should not be leaving our children unattended in vehicles, particularly with the keys in the ignition,’ police chief Jack Mentzer told The Huffington Post.
A New Jersey woman was arrested after police said she brought her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth, causing the girl to suffer burns.
But 44-year-old Patricia Krentcil, who was charged with second-degree child endangerment, said her daughter was never exposed to the tanning booth’s UV rays and instead got slightly sunburned while playing outside on a warm day.
The girl’s father told NBC 4 New York his daughter told classmates at school that she “went tanning with Mommy.” He thinks a teacher overheard, inaccurately connected the girl’s sunburn to the tanning salon trip and contacted police.
“This whole big thing happened, and everyone got involved,” said Rich Krentcil. “It was 85 degrees outside, she got sunburned. That’s it. That’s all that happened.”
Patricia Krentcil said she treats her tanning salon trips as an errand in which she brings along her daughter, but insists the booth lights were never exposed to the girl.
“It’s like taking your daughter to go food shopping,” she told NBC 4 New York at her Nutley, N.J. home after being released on $25,000 bail. “There’s tons of moms that bring their children in.”
“I tan, she doesn’t tan,” she continued. “I’m in the booth, she’s in the room. That’s all there is to it.”
The incident happened over a week ago, but there did not appear to be any burns on the little girl Tuesday.
Patricia Krentcil said she’s been visiting her local salon for more than 10 years, and doesn’t know why her visits there with her daughter have suddenly been called into question.
In New Jersey, children under 14 are not allowed to tan at indoor salons, while those 14 to 17 years old may do so with signed parental consent.
“My daughter’s a beautiful girl who loves school, who had to go through this, and I think it’s traumatizing for a little girl who did nothing wrong but got a little sunburned,” Krentcil said.
She is expected to appear in court Wednesday and hopes to convince the judge it was all a misunderstanding.
When single father Stuart Chaifetz was told his 10-year-old autistic son was being violent in school, he knew something was wrong.
Akian had always been a gentle, loving boy, and the school’s description of him was so out of character that he sent his son to school with a hidden tape recorder to find out what was really going on.
That evening, when he listened to the six-and-a-half hours of audio, his life changed forever.
Distressing: Akian was a gentle boy until he attend the school in New Jersey where his teachers taunted and swore at him
Discovery: Akian had always been a gentle, loving boy, and the school’s description of him was so out of character that his father sent him to school with a hidden tape recorder to find out what was really going on
Not only were Akian’s teachers at Horace Mann Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, talking about being drunk at school and sex, and gossiping about pupils and their parents, they were also taunting, shouting and swearing at his son.
‘What I heard on that audio was so disgusting, vile, and just an absolute disrespect, and bullying, of my son that happened not by other children, but by his teacher, and the aides, the people that were supposed to protecting him. They were literally making my son’s life a living hell,’ Chaifetz said.
He incorporated the troubling recording into a 17-minute YouTube clip, in which he demands a public apology from the teachers who treated his son as if he was ‘subhuman’.
Chaifetz told how Akian, who suffers from learning difficulties, sometimes talks softly to himself. But when he is heard doing this at school, the disturbing audio documents his teacher mocking him and yelling: ‘Shut your mouth.’
Sweet: Akian’s parents are separated and he sees his mother every other weekend, which is sometimes stressful for him
Viral: Stuart Chaifetz’s YouTube video, uploaded last Friday, has been viewed almost 200,000 times, attracting 13,000 likes and 1,000 comments
Insulting: Akian, who is autistic, sometimes talks softly to himself. But when he does this at school, the disturbing audio documents his teacher mocking him and yelling: ‘Shut your mouth.’
In distress, the schoolboy begins to cry, to which his teacher responds: ‘Go ahead and scream because guess what? You are going to get nothing until your mouth is shut.’
The shocking recording details Akian’s teachers talking to him aggressively, culminating in one’s outburst of: ‘Oh Akian, you are a bastard.’
But what is perhaps the most disturbing for the father-of-one, is when Akian’s teachers deliberately upset him, causing the boy to breakdown.
‘Go ahead and scream because guess what? You are going to get nothing until your mouth is shut.’
One of Akian’s teachers
Akian’s parents are separated and he sees his mother every other weekend. But this sometimes proves distressing for the special needs boy, so a frequent question he asks is, ‘May I see Daddy after Mommy?’
But when the boy seeks reassurance from his teachers and asks the same question, they respond, laughing: ‘No, you can’t see.’
In panic, Akian reacts by throwing chairs around the classroom, his meltdown lasting for half an hour.
‘What kind of sick, twisted person does that to a 10-year-old boy?’ Chaifetz asks. ‘My son did not go to school, he went to prison and learnt to fight to survive.’
He took the audio to the Cherry Hill School District, where officials fired one of the teachers involved – but the other teacher featured in the recording is still at the school.
Out of line: Akian’s teachers at Horace Mann Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, frequently talked about being drunk at school and sex, and gossiped about pupils and their parents
‘This is a personnel matter that the school district took seriously and handled appropriately and there will be no further comment,’ Susan Bastnagel, spokesperson for the Cherry Hill School District, told NBC10.
But Chaifetz does not agree. ‘What you did was so disgusting that you should be walking around with your head in shame… And you’re still teaching children today,’ he said.
TRANSCRIPT
Teacher: Who are you talking to, nobody? … Knock it off. Akian: (crying)
… Akian: May I see Dad after Mom? Teacher: No. Akian: (crying)
… Teacher: What did you do in the library yesterday? Akian: Looked at the sculpture. Teacher: You looked at the sculpture, that’s what you did? You didn’t look at books? You couldn’t see any books in the library or you just looked at sculptures? Akian: (inaudible, crying) Teacher: Oh Akian, you are a bastard.
‘I want an apology not for me, but so one day, I can play this video back for my son and say, “Akian, you did not deserve anything that happened to you. These people are at fault”… This is to reclaim my son’s dignity.’
The outraged father’s YouTube video, uploaded last Friday, has been viewed close to 200,000 times and has attracted almost 14,000 likes and 1,000 comments.
Internet users reacted with horror and the upsetting clip, with one user, named frickchicka786, posting: ‘It wasn’t until she called your son a bastard that I realized how really, truly vicious this woman is. There is a fine line between discipline and humiliation and she skirted it for the first few clips and then blatantly crossed with the name calling. I could hear the resentment in her voice.
‘How could she make fun of these kids–special needs children are the sweetest! I’m sorry your son hurt so much. I hope this reaches the world and you get the change that your son deserves.’
Another, posting under the name shmaderable, added: ‘This seriously sickens me. It’s hard to believe that people would treat a child like that, much less a child with autism.
‘You are an absolutely WONDERFUL father! I hope those evil women get what they deserve and I hope for the best for you and your son from here on out.’
CASE STUDY: JOSE SALINAS’ MOTHER BUGGED HIS WHEELCHAIR
Melisha Salinas knew her 10-year-old son Jose Salinas, who has cerebral palsy, was not happy at Wicksburg High School, Alabama, as he often came home upset.
An explanation came when one of his classmates told Salinas that the teacher’s aide had been mean to Jose three times that day.
Determined to be sure of what was happening, she attached a bugging device to Jose’s wheelchair and left it recording over three days.
The recording revealed that her son was being cruelly taunted about his disability and ignored for the majority of the day with no-one giving him instruction.
‘You drooled on the paper,’ a male’s voice, allegedly that of teacher’s aide Drew Faircloth, can be heard saying. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Keep your mouth closed and don’t drool on my paper,’ a woman’s voice identified as Alicia Brown is heard saying. ‘I do not want to touch your drool. Do you understand that? Obviously, you don’t.’
After listening to the tapes, which the nursing student said ‘broke her heart’, Salinas immediately pulled her son out of the school.
Protective mom: Melisha Salinas bugged her son’s wheelchair to find out if his school teachers were bullying him
RUNNING SPRINGS – A former San Bernardino middle school teacher could face 20 years in federal prison after being charged with exchanging sexually explicit photos with a 13-year-old New Jersey girl.
Eugene Ballantyne, 29, of Running Springs appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Riverside on one count of receiving and distributing child pornography, according to the FBI’s Los Angeles division.
Ballantyne taught social studies at Arrowview Middle School until two weeks ago, when the accusations came out.
Federal agents arrested Ballantyne at his home Tuesday morning.
During an FBI search at his home March 1, Ballantyne admitted to agents that he had been communicating with the girl in South Brunswick, N.J., since January, according to the criminal complaint. He also said he received pornographic images from another girl he met two years earlier and that he traveled 180 miles to have sex with a third child, FBI officials said.
Ballantyne met the New Jersey girl on an Internet chat site, according to the complaint. He went by the name John Baldwin. Ballantyne allegedly sent nude pictures of himself to the girl and received partially nude, sexually suggestive photos of the alleged victim.
FBI officials said he was demanding during phone conversations with the girl and persuaded her to engage in sexual activity while they talked.
He also asked the victim to delete his pictures, text messages and emails and told the girl not to tell anyone about their relationship, according to the complaint.
The complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office says Ballantyne sent messages expressing his love for the child.
“Really it’s so nice to have you in my life. I only wish you were here so I could really express my feelings for you,” he wrote in one of his notes.
The South Brunswick Police Department began investigating the case when a parent of the child reported the relationship earlier this year.
In court proceedings Tuesday before Judge David T. Bristow, an FBI agent testified that Ballantyne contacted a 13-year-old female student at Arrowview – a day after federal agents served a search warrant at his home.
Special Agent Jeffrey Stiff testified that Brinda Leon, a human-resources official at San Bernardino City Unified School District, told him just before the court proceedings that Ballantyne had contacted the Arrowview student via Facebook at 8:30 p.m. March 2.
“Mr. Ballantyne stated that he liked a young girl. He asked if she ever kissed a boy,” Stiff testified, in summary. The girl felt “uncomfortable” and told a principal, who told Leon, Stiff said.
The testimony was the “tipping” point for Bristow, who said he had been considering a conditional release for Ballantyne. Instead, Bristow said he was concerned about potential harm to the community and ordered the defendant held in custody of federal marshals.
But the judge added that he was willing to reconsider his decision if new information develops after federal prosecutors investigate the incident further.
Ballantyne returns to U.S. District Court in Riverside for a preliminary hearing March 27. An arraignment was scheduled for April 4.
Bristow ordered Ballantyne into the custody of U.S. marshals.
San Bernardino City Unified School District placed Ballantyne on paid administrative leave March 1, when the FBI told the district agents were searching his house. Ballantyne, who was hired in July 2010, resigned March 2, and parents were mailed a letter that day.
“The district takes all accusations of sexual misconduct seriously,” district spokeswoman Linda Bardere said before learning of Stiff’s testimony. “At this point, and it also comes out in the FBI report, we have no reason to believe Arrowview Middle School students were involved or in danger.”
However, investigators suspect he may have more victims.
Students at Arrowview Middle School painted conflicting pictures of Ballantyne on Tuesday, although none gave their names because of the sensitivity of the topic and their fears of retribution.
“Anyone who says that must be lying,” said one seventh- grade girl who said Ballantyne had substitute taught her class several times. “He’s a good teacher, and he’s nice. He wasn’t `too’ nice, though, you know?”
Other students said they had suspicions even before the accusations became public.
“He’d look at some of the girls `perv-y,’ and he was always going from happy to mean,” said an eighth-grade boy who had taken his class.
Neighbors said Ballantyne and his wife were a trusted member of a close-knit street.
“He was a super nice, church-going guy,” said neighbor Tylor Newman. “I never expected it. It’s just such a shocker.”
School Board President Barbara Flores said the school board was updated as soon as the FBI contacted district officials.
Anyone with information about this case or on additional victims may call the FBI at 888-226-8443.
