This Day In History

Aug 29 1958

Michael Jackson born in Gary, Indiana.

...Coincidentally,

Aug 29 1996
California becomes the first state in the nation to require the surgical or chemical castration of persons who have committed two or more sexual assaults on minors.

Aug 29 2005
Category 3 storm Hurricane Katrina attacks the Gulf coast with 145-mph winds. Cities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are declared disaster areas. Parts of New Orleans are submerged, some residents are left to scramble to their rooftops awaiting rescue. News organizations report widespread panic and looting, crowds abandoned on elevated freeways, and rumors of rape in the Superdome.

(Amazing pictures here...)

Father Arrested After 60 Pound Teen Found Injured in Home

ST. BERNARD, La. -- A 14-year-old boy who weighed only 60 pounds and who hadn’t been in school or seen a doctor in four years was removed from his home and his father was arrested by St. Bernard Parish deputies Wednesday.

Captain Steve Cannizaro said the boy was discovered when a constable went to serve an eviction notice to Dennis Ballard, 30, at his RV home.

Constable Tony Guerra called the Sheriff’s Office after seeing the young man, obviously malnourished and with an untreated leg injury that appeared to be a swollen, who had an infected right foot.

Guerra said the young man was also living in deplorable conditions.

“I could see inside the place and it was horrible,’’ Guerra recalled. “I could see he was limping.

“I asked the father why he (the son) wasn’t in school and he said he was home-schooling him. I knew that wasn’t true.’’

Cannizaro said the father said the boy’s injured leg was the result of a speaker that fell on him as they were moving it, but that the boy didn’t want to go to the doctor.

Cannizaro said deputies found out the boy hadn’t been to school or seen a doctor in the four years the father has had him in the New Orleans area. The young man apparently had also injured his arm a few months ago and didn’t receive medical attention.

Ballard is being held in the St. Bernard Parish prison. Cannizaro said the two had been living in the parish for just over a month after having lived in other parishes.

If convicted of cruelty of a juvenile, he could face up to 10 years in prison.

Detectives said Ballard couldn’t answer basic questions, such as when the boy had last attended school and if there was a copy of his birth certificate.

"Instinctively, the detectives knew something was wrong, something was amiss there," said Col. John Doran, chief of detectives at the Sheriff's Office.

The teen, who is being treated for his foot and arm injuries, is in the custody of the Department of Social Services.

Cannizaro said neither the young man nor Ballard has given them much information, but they believe the boy has been living with him since shortly before Katrina struck.

No birth certificate for the boy or any legal custody documents have been found. According to Doran, the boy lived with Ballard and his mother in Ohio before 2002. Ballard then moved to the New Orleans area, and the mother moved to Arizona with the boy and his sister.

In summer 2005, the mother, whose name was not released, put the boy on a plane to New Orleans to be with Ballard. Since then, Pohlmann said, the mother has tried on and off to locate the boy but has been unable to track him down.

Got the Sucker

4th St. Tammany escapee caught; massive manhunt ends-
NEW ORLEANS – A massive, two-day manhunt is over after deputies find a man who escaped from the St. Tammany Parish jail.

Early Sunday morning law enforcement officers found 30-year-old Timothy Murray in a rural area three miles west of Highway 25 in Folsom.

Murray eluded law enforcement officers for more than 48 hours. But the hunt for him ended around 1 a.m. with his capture.

Officers discovered Murray in a wooded area off of Bennett Bridge Road near Folsom, no more than five miles from the St. Tammany Parish jail.

Murray was one of three men who broke out of the jail Thursday night. All of them were in jail on charges of murder or attempted murder. Murray himself faced a murder charge for the death of a Slidell man back in 2006.

Deputies caught three of the escapees Friday morning, but Murray eluded them until now.

People who live near where Murray was caught say there were several dozen law enforcement vehicles and a helicopter hovering in that vicinity over night. They say deputies shut down Highway 1078, not letting anyone in or out of the area in their final push to find Murray.

'It's upsetting that they wouldn't let us back in. So, as time went on, we sat on the side of the road. It was hot, we didn't want to leave the car on and we stayed there for about an hour, and hour and 10, 15 minutes,” said resident Wayne Charrier. “They had like a family out there, they had like four or five people coming home and of course they wouldn't let none of them-- one group, one couple was so close, they could almost see their house, but they still would not let them through.

“But they got a job to do," Charrier said.

St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain has scheduled a news conference for Monday afternoon, where he is expected to discuss what led deputies to Murray's location. Strain said hundreds of law enforcement officers helped in the search.

He said he would not comment further on the situation so that those officers could celebrate Father's Day.

"You do kind of get in the habit of thinking like the Northshore is kind of its own little island, and separate from everything-- but every so often something happens that rocks the whole area,” said resident Amanda Ladreyt. “It's just one of those things, I guess. I think it does remind you that you're not on your little island and no place is Pleasantville.”

Hunt under way for escaped murder suspect in Louisiana

(CNN) -- More than 100 police officers and others were searching Friday in a southeastern Louisiana parish for a murder suspect who escaped from jail with three other inmates, a law enforcement official said.

Searchers are still focusing inside St. Tammany Parish, on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, 30 miles north of New Orleans, said Capt. George Bonnett of the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office.

At large is Timothy Murray, 29, who is charged with murder, Bonnett said. Authorities believe Murray may have been injured during the escape, but Bonnett wouldn't elaborate.

The inmates escaped about 9 p.m. Thursday from the St. Tammany Parish Jail in Covington, Bonnett said. As many as 250 sheriff's deputies, Covington police officers, Louisiana State police and corrections officials were involved in the search overnight, using dogs, two helicopters and thermal-imaging equipment loaned from Livingston Parish, Bonnett said.

The other three men were found about 1:30 a.m. Friday in a wooded area about a mile from the jail, he said.

Three of the inmates were awaiting trial; one already had been convicted, Bonnett said.

The captured inmates were Gary Slaydon, 27; Eric Buras, 30, and Jason Gainey, 27. Slaydon is charged with attempted murder. Buras is a murder suspect and Gainey has been convicted of murder, Bonnett said.

He said the escape was not discovered until a resident and Covington police reported seeing what appeared to be inmates in jail uniforms walking down a street.

About the time those calls came in, jailers were doing a routine head count and found the four men missing, Bonnett said.

He said the means of escape was under investigation, but it has been determined that their escape wasn't due to human error.

He repeated what St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said early Friday: "Four inmates were able to defeat the structure of the maximum security area of our jail."

Deputies have canvassed neighborhoods, going door to door to warn residents that an inmate is still at large.

Independence Police Major Arrested for Child Porn

INDEPENDENCE, La. – An Independence Police major was arrested for allegedly having child pornography on a city-owned computer by the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office, according to sheriff’s spokeswoman Dawn Panepinto.

Brian Louis Burnthorne, 34, Springfield, was arrested for pornography involving a juvenile, police said.

After a computer technician found images of child pornography, the sheriff’s office was contacted by the City of Independence’s administration about the images, police said.

After an investigation into the images lead to Burnthorne, who was a Independence Police major, he was arrested by the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office, police said.

Burnthorne had been with the department before he was terminated, Panepinto said.

Louisiana Teen Held in Infant's Killing, Police Say

Gut-wrenching details..
(CNN) -- A 17-year-old Louisiana man faces first-degree murder and aggravated rape charges in the beating death of his girlfriend's 8-month-old son, police said.

Authorities responding to a call of an unresponsive infant Saturday found the body of 8-month-old Da-Von Lonzo in an apartment near Gretna, Louisiana, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

The baby was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The medical examiner ruled the boy's death a homicide, noting that his body had multiple fractures consistent with being beaten. The child also had tears in his rectum, police said.

In an interview, the teen, Arnold T. Ross, initially told authorities Da-Von fell down the stairs and stopped breathing while he was baby-sitting him. But a neighbor reported hearing loud noises coming from the apartment, and investigators noted inconsistencies in Ross's statement, according to the sheriff's office.

Ross later admitted that Da-Von began to cry while he was watching him, police said, and "confessed to beating the infant repeatedly. According to Ross, the child began to defecate on himself. Ross claims he placed his fingers inside the infant's rectum in an attempt to clean up the child."

Under Louisiana law, a 17-year-old can be charged as an adult, according to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Sunday that people charged with first-degree murder cannot receive a bond.

Ross has a lengthy criminal history, police said, including arrests on drug possession charges; obscenity; battery on a correctional officer; three counts of battery on a school teacher; theft; weapons charges; and assault.

It was unclear Sunday if Ross had been convicted of any of those charges.