| If it were a white man accused, you would have heard about this one...and yes it is Post-9/11 Era relevant.
----
http://home.comcast.net/~inrev/caged.jpg
Milagro Cunningham, 17, is in custody on charges of attempted murder, sexual battery and false imprisonment.
Monday, May 23, 2005
LAKE WORTH — The two officers stared down at the pile of stones, saw only a small hand and a foot sticking out and assumed the little girl they had frantically searched for was dead.
Finally, they had found her at a secluded landfill, her body stuffed inside a large bright yellow recycling bin, with rocks and crushed concrete covering her. The bin lay inside a trash container, a dismal last resting place.
enlarge
The officers summoned a superior, Lake Worth Detective Lt. Dave Matthews, who, after seven tense hours of hunting, also thought the case had ended in the worst of tragedies.
And then something happened.
"Her hand just moved!" Matthews shouted.
Moments later, the officers had unearthed an 8-year-old girl who had lived through a nightmare but survived to identify a teenager as her abductor, sexual attacker and would-be killer, police said.
The girl was in St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach Sunday, where medical staff said she was in good condition. Her alleged assailant, Milagro Cunningham, 17, of Lake Worth, was in custody, on charges of attempted murder, sexual battery and false imprisonment. Police said he had confessed.
"Pretty much a miracle," Lake Worth Mayor Marc Drautz declared at an afternoon news conference.
This particular Sunday miracle was performed by a massive police operation — about 100 local, county and state officers.
It all began at 3:44 a.m. when Lake Worth police received a 911 call from 713 Latona Court. According to police, it was Cunningham, a guest at that address, who reported a terrible crime:
He told a dispatcher that several unknown "white men" had entered the apartment, abducted the girl, and escaped in a brown station wagon. Cunningham and the girl are black.
Lake Worth Police Chief William Smith said patrol officers were notified immediately and began to hunt for the reported vehicle. A command post was set up at the Osborne Community Center, just a block from the apartment.
All through the night and after daybreak, the size of the police manhunt grew. By 4:30 a.m., Lake Worth detectives had been called in, and by 4:45 an Amber alert had been issued. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Child Abduction Response Team (CART) moved in to coordinate an effort that eventually involved various departments.
By 8:30 a.m. about 50 Lake Worth police were on the case and by 9 they were joined by 35 Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies. The PBSO put a helicopter in the air and a marine unit was made part of the search. At 9:15 a.m., a bloodhound was sent to the scene.
Lantana and Boca Raton police also pitched in.
But by that time, investigators had decided Cunningham's story was "bogus," Smith said.
"That did not occur," Smith said of Cunningham's tale of the unknown men.
The police found holes in that story and turned their attention to Cunningham. They also established a search grid in the area surrounding the apartment.
Sgt. Mike Hall of Lake Worth police and Sheriff's Cpl. Bob Cresswell were assigned to search a large landfill behind the Osborne Center, about a quarter mile from the Latona Court address. Although it is surrounded by a chain-link fence, in places there are holes big enough for a person to squeeze through.
At 10:28 a.m., after inspecting one other trash bin, Hall lifted the lid of the recycling bin and saw the hand and foot. The girl had not made a sound.
Police said the weight of rubble dumped on the child would have made it impossible for her to dig her way out. The trash bin was far enough away from any home that any cry for help never would have been heard. They said if she hadn't been found very soon, she almost certainly would have died.
Smith said he believed Cunningham had brought the girl there on foot from the apartment in the middle of the night.
The unit is rented by Lisa Taylor, godmother of the girl. She had been caring for the child because the mother, a medical secretary who lives in Delray Beach, sometimes works on weekends.
Taylor said Cunningham was a friend of her son's, who had been thrown out of an aunt's home nearby, allegedly for stealing from that house.
A relative at the aunt's house confirmed the story. He said Cunningham, who had dropped out of John I. Leonard High School in Greenacres, had one previous brush with the law, for throwing a rock through a car window. Neighbors said Cunningham was still on probation.
Taylor, who had given Cunningham a place to stay several months ago, said he had always been respectful, helped with household chores and caused no trouble.
That apparently changed Sunday. Taylor recounted the events of the night this way:
She had put the little girl to sleep in the same bed with her 15-month-old grandson in one bedroom, then went to sleep in a separate bedroom. Cunningham slept on a pullout bed in the living room. At 2:30 a.m., her two teenage daughters — Danielle Holloman, 18, and Tata Lee, 16 — arrived home from roller-skating and found the infant boy asleep in a bed different from the one where he'd been placed. Cunningham and the little girl were gone.
Shortly after 3 a.m., they heard a knock at the door. When they opened it, they saw Cunningham on the ground, wearing a shirt that was torn and covered with dirt. He claimed that unknown men had entered the house and kidnapped the girl. He said he had run after them, was able to catch up to the car and then had been beaten by them.
But his story began to unravel as he repeated it to police. According to Taylor, Cunningham initially said there were five men, and then said four. He first said the men got out of the car before he confronted them, then said they stayed inside the car.
"The story got criss-crossed into a whole bunch of B.S." Taylor said.
The little girl later told police that she was raped by Cunningham in her bed, according to Taylor and the mother, who also spoke to The Palm Beach Post.
"If I could put my hands around his neck, he would be dead," the 30-year-old mother said of Cunningham. "He left my daughter to die."
Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localn..._rape_0523.html | |
