Hearing stories like this make me wonder is today’s youth is becoming colder and more insensitive than generations before.
Five soulless teens filmed and mocked a disabled man as he drowned in Florida….., but as disturbing as the footage is, it doesn’t appear that any laws were broken, according to officials.
Jamel Dunn, 32, drowned in a retention pond July 9 as the group of teens reportedly watched and laughed in Cocoa, Florida. It was not until three days later that his body was discovered, according to Florida Today.
Soon after Dunn’s body was recovered, a video surfaced on social media that depicted his final moments, authorities said.
The horrifying footage recorded by one of the teens shows Dunn struggle as he screams for help in the water.
Police said that the teens told Dunn, who walked with a cane, not to go into the murky waters.
“The kids were at the park that day smoking marijuana and apparently saw him walk into the water. He walked in on his own. They were watching him,” said Yvonne Martinez, Cocoa Police Department spokesperson.
No one called 911 when he started having trouble staying above water.
“He started to struggle and scream for help and they just laughed,” Martinez said. “They didn’t call the police. They just laughed the whole time. He was just screaming … for someone to help him.”
London officials are apologizing after a group of enforcement officers punished a 5-year-old girl for setting up a lemonade stand last week.
The girl was the daughter of AndrĂ© Spicer, a professor at the City University London’s business school. In an essay for The Telegraph published Thursday, Spicer detailed the moment four council enforcement officers “stormed up to her little table.”
An officer “read a lengthy legal statement ― the gist of which was that because my daughter didn’t have a trading permit, she would be fined [150 pounds],” Spicer wrote. In the U.S. that fine would amount to $194.93.
His daughter was selling lemonade for 50 pence (.65 cents in American currency) for a small cup and 1 pound ($1.30) for large. Spicer said she was devastated after the officers handed down the fine.
He wrote: “My daughter burst into tears, repeating again and again ‘have I done a bad thing?’”
After tweeting the incident to the Tower Hamlets council, Spicer decided to write a piece for the Telegraph to see if these types of fines are common for children.
“I wonder if this has happened to other parents,” Spicer told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “So I wrote an opinion piece for a newspaper which has now triggered a bit of a media storm.”
Spicer said that, as a business professor, he should have known that a permit was required to sell things. But he saw the fine as problematic, explaining in the Telegraph that the world his daughter is growing up in is “radically different” than the one in which he was raised.
“Kids are watched by parents around the clock,” he wrote. “Most are not allowed beyond the front gate of their house.”
Spicer said that children are now “too closely monitored, controlled and supervised” and encouraged parents to learn from experience rather than restricting what they can do, according to ABC.
The Tower Hamlets council dropped the fine after news spread of Spicer’s lemonade stand controversy. The council also issued an apology: “We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense, and to use their powers sensibly,” a spokesperson said on Friday. “This clearly did not happen.”
Since publishing his Telegraph essay, Spicer said in a tweet that “dozens of festivals, markets and businesses” have invited his daughter to set up her lemonade stand at their locations.
Believe it or not there actually two words that are almost as bad as “president trump”. “Legal lean”…
A product marketed as liquid relaxation is upsetting some Durham parents and activists.
Legal Lean is sold as an alternative to the street version of Lean, which is an illegal combination of opioids, prescription pills, cough syrup mixed with soda-- also known in the hip-hop world as purple drank and sizzurp.
But the makers of Legal Lean, on its product website, say their product is for adults and is safe, with all-natural ingredients such as melatonin, vitamins and St. John's wort.
They use a catchy video to sell it.
Sandra Davis, a Durham mom to a 12-year-old, wants it off the shelves.
"When I looked at the video, I was outraged because they were marketing it through hip-hop and what do our children listen to all day is Hip Hop." Davis said.
Davis and Minister Paul Scott, a Durham activist, fear Legal Lean is targeting working-class neighborhoods, and could be used as a date-rape drug or become a gateway for youngsters to try illegal narcotics.
Legal Lean released a statement that says in part:
"I think before they want to demonize the product it's best for them to try it themselves and do some research on the ingredients and see that they are safe and are just natural relaxation ingredients."
We visited several convenience stores in Durham and could not find the product.
But we did find it in a couple of tobacco stores.
At 5 Star Tobacco and Vapors on Holloway Street, the store is selling the two ounce bottle for $14.
The clerk said the store was sold out, and wasn't sure when another shipment would arrive.
When ABC11 visited Tobacco Land on Fayetteville Street to inquiry about Legal Lean, the owner had the product removed from the shelves, and then asked us to leave.
Durham Police said they have not received any complaints or issues about the use of Legal Lean.
PR