Suspect charged, admits shooting 6-year-old boy

by Meghan Lane from Connect Mid Missouri:
 A rural Fulton man is in custody in the Callaway County jail on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of a six-year-old boy.
Scottie Willet, 27, was taken into custody at 6:36 a.m. by the Pettis County Sheriff’s department in Sedalia, under suspicion of his involvement in the murder of a 6-year-old Fulton boy.
A probable cause statement shows Scottie Willet admitted to deputies he shot the boy multiple times with a .40 caliber handgun.
Early Thursday morning Callaway County deputies were called to a house in the 7500-block of Primrose Lane for an initial report of a missing 6-year-old boy with down syndrome.
At 3:16 a.m. Callaway County authorities requested the help of the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s helicopter in their search for the boy.
According to the Highway Patrol, the child’s body was found at about 4:25 a.m.
About two hours later, Willet was found in a Sedalia trailer park and arrested for failure to appear on a littering charge. Commander Larry Ward of the Sedalia Police Department said Willet was in possession of a car that he believes may have been stolen. Further investigation uncovered a stolen pistol in the car.
Willet was taken to the Pettis County jail until Callaway County Sheriff Dennis Crane transported him back to the Callaway County jail, according to Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond.

mom booked with fatal poisoning of her 17-month-old son

by Paul Purpura from NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune:

A Belle Chasse woman has been booked with killing her 17-month-old son, injecting the hand sanitizer Germ-X into the body of a toddler who was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect. Lucas Ruiz died Jan. 24 from alcohol poisoning, in what his mother, Erika Wigstrom, 20, described to detectives as a mercy killing.

The official cause of death is "acute ethanol intoxication," according to the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office. The active ingredient in Germ-X is ethyl alcohol, the product's website says. Deputies arrested Wigstrom on Tuesday after she confessed to killing the child because she didn't want him to suffer anymore, authorities said. The family had written in his obituary that Lucas died "while cradled in the arms of his beloved mother."

She also confessed that she previously gave the child perfume, a crime with which her former boyfriend and Lucas' father, Cesar Ruiz, already is charged, according to the Sheriff's Office.

"From what I gathered from the detectives, they basically said she had no remorse," said Cmdr. Eric Becnel, a Sheriff's Office spokesman.

Patti Saylor to be honored nationally for advocacy

by Danielle E. Gaines from The Frederick News-Post: 
Patti Saylor will be honored with the National Down Syndrome Society's Advocate of the Year award at an event in Washington later this month, the group announced Friday.
Saylor, of New Market, advocated for her son Ethan all his life, but took on a new role after his death.Ethan Saylor, 26, died in January 2013 while he was being forcibly removed from a Frederick movie theater by three off-duty sheriff's deputies.
Since Ethan Saylor's death, Patti Saylor and her family have advocated for changes in police training and for better inclusion policies, among other things.
“I'm very honored,” Patti Saylor said Friday about the award. “I think the night will be a little difficult. It will be bittersweet because of the reason.”
In September, Gov. Martin O'Malley created the Maryland Commission for Effective Community Inclusion of Individuals with Intellectual and Development Disabilities in response to Saylor's death.
The commission aims to improve first responder training and will recommend statewide training standards.

Defendant takes plea deal in shooting of teen with Down syndrome

by Rosalio Ahumada from The Modesto Bee:
Attorneys on Wednesday unexpectedly agreed to a plea deal that will result in a 24-year prison sentence for a man, now 21, who in 2009 fired 10 shots into a minivan near Modesto. The gunfire killed a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome.A trial started Tuesday morning for Richard Maurice Jolly, who was accused of murder in the shooting of Eliazar Hernandez.

After the attorneys’ opening statements, the jurors didn’t hear any testimony in the trial. Instead, the attorneys told the judge Wednesday morning that they had reached an agreement that would end the trial and close the case.

Jolly pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter with an enhancement for using a gun and three counts of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, according to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. The boy’s family also was in the minivan when the gunfire struck the vehicle.

As part of the agreement, Jolly will be transferred to prison immediately after he is sentenced Feb. 19. In that hearing, the boy’s family will have an opportunity to speak in court about the impact of his death.

Mom, daughters charged with starving family member with Down syndrome to death

by Joseph Kohut from the Scranton Times Tribune:
For two years, Robert Gensiak's world was his bedroom.
It was there, his family kept him from doctors, even when his skin cracked and bled and open sores formed from being forced to stay in his child-sized bed covered in feces.
And it was there, the 32-year-old Taylor man with Down syndrome wasted away to 69 pounds because his mother and sisters were starving him to death.
On Wednesday, about three months after Mr. Gensiak died, police charged his mother, Susan Gensiak, 59, of 12 Williams St., and two sisters, Joan, 35, and Rebekah, 24, with murder.
Read the complaint HERE
"This is the worst case of neglect I've seen the last 26 years," said Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola at a press conference Wednesday. "This family, the mother and two sisters, basically let this young man rot to death."
Mr. Gensiak had been weakening and could not walk without assistance by the time the family called an ambulance on March 19 at the urging of his doctor, Paul Remick, D.O., whom they had not taken Mr. Gensiak to visit for two years. Mr. Gensiak was taken to Regional Hospital where doctors said he had severe psoriasis associated with hypothermia. His body temperature was only 92 degrees.
He died March 20, and weighed just 69 pounds, police said.