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29 March 2024

Bizarre: Teens beat up neighbour 'just for fun'

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CHESTER: Six teenagers were in custody Friday on charges they brutally beat a neighbour on her stoop "just for fun" and then posted mobile phone video of the attack on Facebook, authorities said.

Four 16- and 17-year-old girls were charged as adults in the attack on the 48-year-old woman, a crime that has shaken this struggling city of about 30,000 residents just outside Philadelphia. The girls were charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, burglary and harassment. Another teen girl and a 19-year-old woman were also arrested later Friday afternoon.

The woman, whom police described as "mentally challenged," was punched, kicked and hit with a shoe and chair, and suffered cuts and bruises but no broken bones, authorities said. Her name was not released.

The attack occurred Tuesday at a two-storey stucco house, where the woman lived, down the block from a small grocery. No one answered the door at the building Friday.

"It appears just for fun," Chester police Detective James Nolan said. "There hasn't been a discernible explanation as to why."

Police Commissioner Joseph M Bail Jr. said the victim was doing better Friday and being treated for lacerations and abrasions at a crisis unit.

The Delaware County Daily Times first obtained video footage from police on Thursday.

It showed a group of girls walking down a sidewalk then suddenly attacking a woman sitting on her stoop. The teens follow the woman into her home as she tries to escape, taking turns punching and beating her. They quickly flee.

In the neighborhood where the woman lives, cashier Crystal Pate said she knows two of the girls — one babysits her daughter — and said they were not bad kids.

"I can't comprehend it. I trust her with my daughter's life," the 29-year-old Pate said. "Obviously, they were showing off. That's not something you do for fun."

Pate said the woman regularly sits on her front stoop and sometimes curses people or asks for cigarettes.

Chester has long battled high rates of crime and poverty. Mayor John Linder said youth should understand that attacking people will not be tolerated.

"This is an egregious attack," Linder said. "It's unbearable."

Janet Purnell, 55, whose elderly mother lives down the street from the attack, said it is hard for her to understand why a group of girls would want to attack a woman like that.

"It really doesn't make any sense," Purnell said. "It's ignorant." (AP)

 


7-year-old boy pulls car!

CHINA: The seven-year-old who weighs more than 50kgs has become an internet sensation at his young age.

After all, not everyone can just wrap a rope around themselves and pull a van weighing 1.85 tonnes along a road. Right?

But Yang Jinlong can do that and also carry his father, who weighs more than 90kgs, reports news agency ANI.

The young powerhouse can also carry a 40kg bag of wheat and a 100kg bag of cement easily.

Watch the video here.

 

Mobile phones responsible for troopers committing suicide

INDIA:  A lot of people blame mobile phones for rising suicide cases among troopers in India.

A senior official of BSF claimed that thanks to mobile phones, the domestic issues are communicated to the men who are guarding India's borders and it leads to depression among the men who stay away from their families for months at a time.

So far, 15 BSF personnel have committed suicide this year. Last year, 21 troopers took their own lives, reports Zee News.

The BSF has responded to the growing suicide rate by granting troopers compulsory leave on three occasions every year so they can go home and spend time with their families and keep them motivated.

An expert told the news channel that in most cases the personnel committed suicide immediately after returning from home.

 


Man does time for convict friend

STOCKHOLM: A man convicted of smuggling in Sweden outwitted his jailers by sneaking in a friend to serve most of his year-long sentence, prison officials said Friday.

The identity of the false convict was discovered only when he'd been released on probation after serving about two-thirds of his friend's sentence "sometime in 2008 or 2009," Elisabeth Lager of Sweden's Prison and Probation Service said.

Lager said the in-lieu convict came to serve the sentence with a false ID — a driving license in the name of the smuggler friend but with his photograph. She declined to name either man or give more details about the switch.

An international arrest warrant was issued for the real convict earlier this year, Lager said, but declined to comment on why it took police more than three years after the switch was discovered to issue the warrant. It was not clear if the smuggler's friend would be punished for misleading prison authorities and assuming a false identity.

The convict, who never served his term, was sentenced for a series of smuggling offences in southwestern Sweden in 2008. Several media reports said he had fled to Asia and had paid his friend for his "prison-sitting" service. (AP)

 

 Image via Shutterstock