A teacher said she gave her students hockey pucks to defend against a potential shooter, but an expert said it may send a 'troubling' message

term life insurance - #1:A teacher said she gave her students hockey pucks to defend against a potential shooter, but an expert said it may send a 'troubling' message

 

 A teacher went viral with a TikTok showing how she put hockey pucks under desks in her class.
She said she decided to do it so students could throw them at a potential school shooter.
An expert told Insider that he understood why the teacher did it but said the tactic could send a "troubling" message.
A Michigan teacher amassed over 2 million views on a TikTok video where she showed how she taped hockey pucks under her students' desks, so they could throw them at a potential school shooter, but one expert told Insider the tactic could send a "troubling" message to students.

In the video, Carly Zacharias, who teaches Spanish to 9th and 10th grade students, said she wanted to give her students "something to prepare themselves" in case of a school shooting because her classroom door is made of wood and has a window in the middle.
Zacharias deleted the video on Tuesday, telling Insider: "I think my boss wanted me to."
She said she decided to plant hockey pucks within reach underneath every desk because they can "really hurt somebody," and that "it definitely makes us feel a little bit better."
Zacharias told Insider she'd gotten "mixed responses" to the viral video but said most were positive. The clip, posted at the beginning of January, had amassed over 400,000 likes before it was removed, with many commenters expressing sadness and frustration that such a precaution would even be necessary.
She said a student from Michigan's Oxford High School — where four people were killed and seven others were injured in a November shooting — thanked her for "being proactive" and giving her students more than the "typical" supplies.

Zacharias said her own students were grateful that their classroom is "a little bit safer than most of the others."
Hockey pucks were previously provided to students and faculty members as a defense mechanism against school shooters at Oakland University in Michigan in 2018, according to CNN.
Speaking about Oakland University's hockey puck measure in 2018, the school's Police Chief, Mark Gordon, told the local news channel WXYZ that throwing a puck at a gunman "would probably cause some injury" and "would be a distraction if nothing else."
Experts worry students can be traumatized by efforts to prepare them for shooters
David Schonfeld, the Director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, told Insider that instituting a measure like this could suggest to students they have "a high risk of an active shooter coming into their classroom," which could be a "troubling" message "for a number of kids" and is "not accurate."
The Washington Post in 2018 reported the statistical likelihood of a public school student in the US being killed by gunfire at school was roughly 1 in 614,000,000 since 1999. Still, anxieties about school shooting are high. According to 2018 data from the PEW Research Center, 57% of teenagers aged 13 to 17 said they were at least somewhat worried about a school shooting.

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3-foot-long creature with scales found during drug bust at Texas home, cops say

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 A tip from Crime Stoppers led a Texas sheriff’s office to an assortment of drugs and an alligator the length of a toddler in one man’s home.
The Rusk County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Game Warden investigated a home on Jan. 21 after receiving a tip about drug distribution and illegal possession of an alligator, they announced in a Facebook post.
A search warrant resulted in officers finding a number of controlled substances, including magic mushrooms, PCP, THC edibles and vape cartridges, and 1 pound of marijuana, the post said.

But officers also found a 3-foot-long visitor in the home: a Caiman alligator, according to the post.
They are relocating the slithery animal to a wildlife rescue in Dallas.
Officers also found firearms and money in the home, the post said.
A 44-year-old man was arrested at the home and charged with four controlled substance felony offenses.
Rusk County is about 140 miles southeast of Dallas.

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North Carolina man given record prison sentence for livestreaming sex abuse of Filipino children

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 A man from North Carolina, Jake Ross, was sentenced to 55 years in prison for paying a mother in the Philippines to sexually abuse her children over livestream.

The 47-year-old man from McDowell County received the longest sentence ever given in a child pornography case by the federal courts in the Asheville division of the Western District of North Carolina, reported the Charlotte Observer.

The Chief U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger also added a lifetime of court supervision if Ross were to outlive his sentence. U.S. lawyer Dena King stated Ross’ punishment “reflects the depravity of his actions.”

Ross was arrested in July 2020 for his involvement as a dealer in “webcam sex tourism,” wherein “pornography from mostly from developing countries is live-streamed on social media platforms around the globe,” according to prosecutors.

According to the court documents reported on by the Observer, federal investigators found 28 pornographic screenshots from Ross’ WhatsApp video chats with the Filipino mother on his phone. Screen grabs of other livestreamed sex abuse of children were also uncovered from Ross’ Google accounts.

“These types of crimes that prey on our children sicken me,” King said.

According to the global anti-child exploitation network ECPAT International, an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 Filipino children, typically impoverished girls aged 14 to 17, are trafficked each year in the Philippines. The country was described as “the global epicentre of the live-stream sexual abuse trade” by UNICEF in 2016.

The Department of Justice Office of Cybercrime also reported a 264.63% increase in online sexual exploitation of children after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the Philippines in 2020, according to The Philippine Star.

Featured Image via UNICEF Philippines

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Pensacola man spent 54 years in search of the love of his life. He lost her in seconds

go compare car insurance - #1:Pensacola man spent 54 years in search of the love of his life. He lost her in seconds

 

 A Pensacola man is still reeling several days after he lost the love of his life in a fire that destroyed the couple's humble campsite where they had been living.
Craig Heathcoe, 55, said he tried to save his girlfriend, Angela Meeks, from the flames after a small portable heater accidentally caught their camping tent on fire last week.
Meeks, 53, who had trouble walking unassisted due to recent strokes, succumbed to her burn wounds Wednesday night before paramedics arrived to the homeless camp where she and Heathcoe had been living together as a couple for almost a year.

Heathcoe himself was badly burned while trying to pull Meeks out of their tent’s boiling nylon, and less than a week removed from the tragedy, he’s still living in the woods and in pain.
The skin up and down the right side of his body is raw and stings when an over-the-counter burn cream is applied.
But the physical pain, Heathcoe said, pales in intensity compared to the hurt in his heart.
“I prayed for her for 54 years until I found her, but then I only got to spend one year with her,” he said about his lost love, Angie.
Heathcoe is heartbroken, and the ache of it is consuming.
“She loved me every day. She loved me. And she truly loved me, not like all those other damn women who I’ve had in my past,” he said. “Angie loved me, and I loved her.”
He said that she loved him regardless of his past and current situation. To her, it hadn’t mattered that he was homeless, lived in the woods in a tent and had spent the better part of the past decade rambling his way across the continental U.S. jobless.
On cold and desperate nights in the woods when they were huddled together, Meeks made Heathcoe feel like he was still a special person with a place in the world — by her side.
“Yes, I loved her with all my heart, bro — all my heart,” Heathcoe said.
Heathcoe and Meeks’ tent was set up next to a tent shared by two brothers on the night of the fire in the area of the 4200 block of North Palafox and Hickory streets.
Annual survey: Volunteers station at homeless camps, soup kitchens for annual point-in-time survey
Heathcoe was seated outside talking to his two neighbors at about 7 p.m. Meeks was asleep on the couple's bed inside of the tent, lying next a small portal heater positioned inside the tent to keep her warm.
“It happened so quick. I couldn’t really tell you what happened. It happened so quick. I’ve never really seen nothing go up that quick in my life,” Heathcoe said.
He didn’t see what exactly happened inside the tent. All he knows is that one second everything was fine and the next his home was ablaze.
Meeks couldn’t get out on her own because of her disability, and Heathcoe rushed to try to pull her out, in the process suffering burns.
"All over the right side of my body, my face, my arm, all over the right side of my body I’m burned pretty good,” he said. “I’m guessing third-degree because, my knuckle, it burned the hide off my knuckle.”
Craig Heathcoe was badly burned in a fire that killed his girlfriend last week.
One of the two brothers living in the text next door to Heathcoe and Meeks called 911, and Escambia County Fire Rescue was dispatched to the scene.

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Defense attorney for one of the 3 former Minneapolis officers charged in George Floyd's death said Chauvin called 'all of the shots' in the fatal police encounter

homeowners insurance - #1:Defense attorney for one of the 3 former Minneapolis officers charged in George Floyd's death said Chauvin called 'all of the shots' in the fatal police encounter 

A defense attorney for an officer charged in George Floyd's death said Derek Chauvin called "all of the shots."
Three ex-MN officers are standing trial on civil rights charges of depriving Floyd of his constitutional rights.
Former Minneapolis officer Chauvin was convicted of Floyd's murder in June 2021.
A defense attorney during the trial of the former Minneapolis police officers charged in connection to George Floyd's death said convicted fellow former officer Derek Chauvin called "all of the shots" in Floyd's arrest, the Associated Press reported.

Three former officers Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng face civil rights charges of depriving Floyd of his constitutional rights during the fatal police encounter on May 25, 2020. The trial began on Monday, January 24.
Thao and Kueng are also being charged with failing to intervene in the use of unreasonable force.
The three officers pleaded not guilty.
During opening statements, prosecutor Samantha Trepel accused the three men of standing by as Chauvin "slowly killed George Floyd right in front of them."
"They chose not to protect George Floyd, the man they had handcuffed and placed in their custody," Trepel continued.
A defense attorney representing Kueng claimed Chauvin called "all of the shots" during the arrest, as he was the senior officer at the scene, adding that Chauvin served as his client's field training officer and had "considerable sway" over his future.
"You'll see and hear officer Chauvin call all of the shots," attorney Tom Plunkett said, also saying there was a lack of training at the Minneapolis Police Department, specifically on the intervention against unreasonable use of force.
A representative for the Minneapolis Police Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In May 2020, Floyd died after Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for 9-and-a-half minutes while he was handcuffed. Kueng, who is Black, was seen pressing on Floyd's back, and Thao, who is Hmong American, supervised the crowd, according to the AP report.
Video footage showed Lane, who is white, holding Floyd's feet, and at times he was holding one of Floyd's calves. In some instances, Lane's hands were not on Floyd at all and he appeared to be just nearby him, the AP reported.
In June of last year, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter in the murder of Floyd. He was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison. Chauvin also faces additional charges related to violating Floyd's constitutional rights during the fatal encounter. He also pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Trepel said videos show Thao standing next to Chauvin and taunting Floyd for using drugs, telling bystanders "this is why you don't" use drugs. She added that Kueng "never once" told Chauvin to get off Floyd. Kueng's attorney said his client was the one who told Chauvin he could not detect a pulse in Floyd.
Attorney Earl Gray, who is representing Lane, said his client suggested using a hobble restraint to allow Floyd to be on his side, but claimed Chauvin refused, the AP reported. Gray added that Lane called an ambulance for a cut on Floyd's lip and gave the instruction to elevate the urgency of the call as the incident escalated.

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How Indians in Jersey City fought back against the terror of 'Dotbusters' in the 1980s

compare car insurance - #1:How Indians in Jersey City fought back against the terror of 'Dotbusters' in the 1980s

 

 Navroze Mody left Hoboken's Gold Coast Café around 11 the night of Sept. 27, 1987. It would be the last minutes of his life.
The Jersey City resident was walking back home with a friend when he heard the taunts of “Kojak” and “Baldy.” The teenagers pursuing yelled racial slurs, too, then beat Mody unconscious with bricks and other objects.
His white friend, William Crawford, was unharmed. Mody was taken to a nearby hospital. He died four days later.

His death came during a dangerous time for Indian immigrants and people of Indian descent who settled in Jersey City. But it also rallied those newcomers in a way that could be instructive today, as Asian Americans face a new wave of attacks sparked by racist rhetoric and the coronavirus pandemic. Three days before Mody was beaten, Kaushal Saran, a 30-year-old physician, was walking out of an office building in the Jersey City Heights when a group of men beat him with a baseball bat.
The previous month, two men beat Bhered Patel with a metal pipe while he was sleeping in his Jersey City apartment.
In the six months from June to December of 1987, a dozen incidents against Indians were reported to police in the state's second largest city.
And the attacks continued into the next year, including a New York City taxi driver killed on a Jersey City street and a 28-year-old man beaten after being chased by youths, both happening in June 1988.
Many of these attacks were carried out by the "Dotbusters," a group of assailants, primarily white, who announced themselves in a letter to the Jersey Journal in the summer of 1987. The letter detailed how they planned to terrorize the new residents.

The fear prompted some Indians to change their daily habits.
"We would not go out after 6 p.m. ... We did not know how to handle the situation," said Dr. Vijaya Desai, a pediatrician who came to Jersey City with her husband in 1976. "We were new to this country and scared of what would happen to you or your family or your friends."
However, the recent immigrants — many of them spurred by Mody's death — soon banded together to protect each other, to protest for better protection from the police and to send a message that they would not be bullied.
The attacks subsided within a few years. Yet, they left a legacy of racist aggression that continues to be felt years later by Indians and other Asian immigrants.
A reference to the Dotbusters' campaign of terror was mentioned in coverage about racist signs that sprung up in protest of a Hindu temple proposed in an Atlanta suburb last year.

In March, six women of Asian descent were killed by a white man, Robert Aaron Long, in shootings at three nail salons in the Atlanta area that claimed eight victims. Long pleaded guilty in four of the fatal shootings and is on trial for four others.
The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate reported more than 10,000 anti-Asian incidents nationwide from March 2020 to June 2021. Those incidents included attacks on an 84-year-old Thai immigrant in San Francisco who died after being shoved to the ground and a 61-year-old Filipino American who was slashed on a New York subway.

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