Thief steals special iPad belonging to child with Down syndrome

from WPXI:
Several precious items were stolen from a Washington County family, but one thing in particular will be very difficult to replace.
Among the stolen items was a special iPad belonging to a boy with Down syndrome who has a tough time communicating, Channel 11's Cara Sapida reported.
The thief broke into the Miller family's home just a few days before Christmas and took a laptop, the iPad and even little Elijah's backpack that had in it his folders from school. It's not having the iPad, however, that concerns the family most.
"I thought, 'Oh my god, Elijah's iPad,'" the child's mother, Michele Miller, recalled. "I run in the living room, (and) it's gone. I started crying. I didn't know what to do."
The iPad was specially given to Elijah by the Charleroi School District to help him communicate. The family said they believe the thief would only need a quick look to realize that it belonged to a special boy.
"(It has) bright blue bumper foam pad with a handle," Michele Miller pointed out. "Whenever you turn it on, you can see his pictures, all the sign language apps and other things for a child to learn and communicate."
Elijah's big brother Samuel had a message for the thief.
"Whoever took it, I hope they return it," the 9-year-old said. "Because that isn't just right. It isn't right."
The laptop is missing an F5 key. If you recognize any of those items, you are encouraged to contact Charleroi Police.

Man with Down syndrome receives over 1,800 Christmas cards

from My Fox 8 Piedmont News:
NEW YORK — Not a hippopotamus. Not his two front teeth. All Elliot Shirback wanted for Christmas this year was cards.
It was a wish heard around the country.
A houseful of cards poured in for the 25-year-old New York man who has Down syndrome, according to his mother’s Facebook pages.
More than 1,800 have arrived, coming from nearly every state, CNN affiliate YNN reported.
“I’m, like, blessed right now,” Shirback told the network.
It all started because of his mother, Anne Daggett.
Shirback was sad one day. She wanted to make him feel better so she asked what he wanted for Christmas.
“A hundred Christmas cards,” he said, according to his mother’s Facebook post. “I said it might be a little too late for that and people have much things on the plate,” his mother wrote, “If anyone can send him a card He would love it!!!!!”
She included the address. Friends and family put the word out on Facebook and it exploded from there.
“I thought maybe he might get 35 cards at best. Next thing I know, it’s like a flurry and gone viral,” Daggett told YNN.
Their home is now covered in cards. One reads: “Elliot, you are loved.”
“It makes me happy,” he said. “It’s like a gift, like somebody loves and cares about you.”

family trying to raise awareness about son's rare brain disease

by Leonard Hayhurst from the Conshocton Tribune:
KEENE — Wyatt Guilliams, 11, likes taking pictures and photos on his iPad, revels in playing games on his Xbox, and says he can’t wait for Christmas to come.
That’s all typical for a boy his age, but what isn’t typical for the Warsaw Elementary School fourth-grader is his duel with a rare brain disease called moyamoya syndrome.
Wyatt has Down syndrome and related growth and development problems. It was through medical tests for his low growth hormone levels that the moyamoya, which causes strokes because of blocked arteries at the base of the brain, was determined in August.
Wyatt had surgery to restore blood flow in October, but it will be about another six months before it’s known whether surgery was successful. If not, another surgery might be needed.
Right now, Wyatt seems to be his usual self, said his mother, Tammy Guilliams. Wyatt has returned to school but can’t participate in gym or recess because he has to be careful with physical activity.
Guilliams is shifting gears to focus on awareness of the disease and has started a Facebook page to do so, called Wyatt’s Battle. Guilliams also has made fliers about the disease and distributed them at Wyatt’s school and is a member of a moyamoya support group on Facebook.
“There’s so little knowledge of moyamoya,” Guilliams said. “We’re all trying to get knowledge out there so (medical facilities) can get research funding and more training. We hope they can find something to cure it or something to fix it that’s a guarantee.”
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, moyamoya can be fatal if left untreated. Victims will experience mental decline and multiple strokes as blood vessels continue to narrow. Studies show moyamoya affects about 1 in every 2 million people in the United States. The name is Japanese for “puff of smoke,” which describes what the tangled, small vessels look like that develop in the brain to compensate for the blockage.
“It’s actually the weirdest looking thing,” Guilliams said. “We saw Wyatt’s MRIs, and that’s what they looked like: a puff of smoke.”
Wyatt’s surgery involved taking a blood vessel from his face and attaching it to his brain to grow new arteries to bypass the blocked ones. It was an eight-hour surgery.
“The neurosurgeon said after the surgery (Wyatt) was so far ahead of the game. He came out of surgery and all he wanted to do was eat,” Guilliams said with a laugh. “They were hooking him up to things in intensive care, and he was saying, ‘Where’s my mom, where’s my mom?’ and I said, ‘I’m right here.’ I squeezed around all the doctors and nurses and he said, ‘See mom, I tell you I wanted breakfast, and now it’s supper time.’ ”
Guilliams said they were lucky a neurosurgeon, Lance Governale, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus had training in the technique from when he worked at Boston Children’s Hospital. Guilliams said she has found other families online who have to give up almost everything they own so they could travel to Boston or Stanford, Calif., for treatment.
It brings tears to her eyes to think of the people who supported Wyatt and the family — which includes Wyatt’s father, Mike Guilliams, and his older brother, T.J. Guilliams — during his hospital stay. A benefit auction and card shower were organized by Kenny and Marie Roberts. The Coshocton Army Navy Garrison donated its facility to host the auction.
Tammy Guilliams said the family received more than 50 cards, many from people they didn’t know. Several of the cards contained money, and Wyatt was able to go on a celebratory shopping spree after being released from the hospital. Other donations helped the Guilliamses pay bills, travel back and forth, and buy needed essentials while Wyatt was at the hospital.
“I can’t even express the gratitude we have for the people in this community. You hear so many bad things about Coshocton, but when it comes down to it, the people in Coshocton are great,” she said. “People we’ve never met, you can’t believe how much they care.”

llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com

Dismissal motion says Md. man with Down syndrome was trespassing when he died in custody

by David Dishneau from the Daily Journal:
HAGERSTOWN, Maryland — A man with Down syndrome who died in the custody of three Frederick County sheriff's deputies contributed to his own asphyxiation by resisting arrest after refusing to leave a theater seat for which he had not paid, the officers said in a federal court filing Monday.
The deputies, who were moonlighting as mall security officers, asked a judge to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Robert Ethan Saylor's parents, contending that they, too, were at fault for putting their son in the care of an aide who couldn't control his angry outbursts.
The motion, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, is the first detailed response from the deputies to the family's allegations that the officers and Regal Cinemas Inc. were grossly negligent in the Jan. 12 confrontation at the Westview Promenade shopping center near Frederick.
The officers were cleared of criminal misconduct by a Frederick County grand jury in March. They and Knoxville, Tennessee-based Regal have denied any civil liability for Saylor's death.
Saylor, who had an IQ of 40 and weighed 294 pounds, died with a fractured larynx after the deputies tried to escort him in handcuffs from an auditorium where he was awaiting a repeat viewing of "Zero Dark Thirty." Saylor had re-entered the theater while his aide went for her car. The theater manager had summoned the deputies.
Baltimore attorney Daniel Karp, representing Lt. Scott Jewell, Sgt. Rich Rochford and Deputy First Class James Harris, wrote that the deputies responded reasonably to an apparent case of trespass and theft by a subject who then resisted arrest.
"His decision to struggle with the deputies when they seized him by the arms to forcibly remove him from the theater clearly exposed him to a risk of injury," Karp wrote.
He suggested that Saylor's parents, Patricia and Ronald Saylor, had a duty to either supervise their son appropriately in public places or delegate that responsibility to someone "who would be able to control him adequately, so that he did not engage in conduct detrimental to other persons or to himself, including criminal conduct."

Can someone with Down syndrome be a godparent?

from Catholic Answers:
Hello, I have never used this site before, perhaps this question is answered elsewhere but I could not find it.
My husband has a cousin with Down syndrome. She is high-functioning and it seems to me that she has "reached the age of reason" despite her condition, but then I'm not clear on how that is defined.
We would love to ask her to be a godmother for one of our children. She goes to church with her parents and siblings, loves God in her innocent and joyful way.
We would also have a godfather and would make sure that godfather is also a practicing Catholic in good standing.
I am thinking that the answer is yes, because one sponsor alone is sufficient and therefore the godfather would already fulfill that requirement, right? But would the answer change if she were to be the only godparent?