You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up!

Police received a report about a domestic disturbance call just before midnight Sunday from a woman who told police two children were inside the house in Vernon, Sgt. William Meier said. She then began screaming.

Meier says police arriving at the scene heard several gun shots and rushed to the home quickly. Police used a battering ram to force their way in and two girls, aged 9 and 15, were found safe.

Meier says police found a man and a woman dead of gunshot wounds inside. They’ve identified them as 43-year-old Alice Morrin and her 45-year-old husband James Morrin.

Alice Morrin worked as an assignment editor at local FOX affiliate FOX 61 and had recently been promoted to executive assistant to Hartford Courant publisher and FOX 61 general manager Richard Graziano. James Morrin worked for the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

WASHINGTON — A Duke University official has been arrested and charged with offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex.

Frank Lombard, the school’s associate director of the Center for Health Policy, was arrested after an Internet sting, according to the FBI’s Washington field office and the city’s police department.

According to an affidavit by District of Columbia Police Det. Timothy Palchak, an unnamed informant facing charges in his own child sex case led authorities to Lombard.

Authorities said that Lombard tried to persuade a person — who he did not know was a police officer — to travel to North Carolina to have sex with Lombard’s child.

The detective’s affidavit charges Lombard identified himself online as “perv dad for fun,” and says that in an online chat with the detective, Lombard said he had sexually molested his son, whom he adopted as an infant.

The court papers say Lombard also invited the undercover detective to North Carolina to have sex with the young boy, and even suggested which hotel he should use.

Lombard was charged in federal court in Washington with attempting to induce someone to cross state lines to engage in sex with a child. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Lombard’s lawyer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs at Duke, said Lombard has been employed with Duke University since 1999. He is now on unpaid administrative leave.

“Duke is cooperating with the investigation,” Schoenfeld said. He said the university was notified of the incident after Lombard was arrested.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A group of Orange County narcotics agents are being disciplined for drinking alcohol in the middle of a workday.

According to an internal investigation, one agent in the group drank half a beer, three others drank two beers and the highest-ranking supervisor didn’t stop his colleagues. The incident occurred at a Miller’s Ale House in March.

The agents told investigators that they drank the beers so other patrons at the restaurant wouldn’t suspect that they were law enforcement officers.

Xiomara Gamez, 25, was arraigned on charges of reckless endangerment, child abandonment and child endangerment at First District Court in Hempstead. She pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors say Gamez has a drug addiction and has six other children who live with their father. They say she admitted to being addicted to cocaine during her latest pregnancy.

The newborn infant nicknamed “Baby Hope” by authorities was left “completely soiled” in a Timberland box on the floor of an apartment lobby at 5 Lafayette Ave. on Sunday, according to prosecutors.

Judge Robert Bruno ordered Gamez held on $500,000 bond or $250,000 cash bail as she faces charges of first-degree reckless endangerment, abandonment of a child and endangering the welfare of a child.

Gamez abandoned the newborn girl, nicknamed Baby Hope, “because of her addiction” to drugs, the prosecutor said. Authorities said the newborn was in good health when she was found with her umbilical cord tied off with dental floss.

After an investigation Nassau County detectives found Gamez and arrested her Wednesday.

According to a probable cause affidavit released Wednesday, 20-year-old Matthew Schulz of Lafayette admitted to shaking his 15-week-old stepdaughter, Chloe, on at least five occasions.

Chloe was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital on Friday, June 19 when Schulz and his wife Valerie noticed she was foaming at the mouth, breathing irregularly, crossing her eyes and turning red.

The child was flown to Riley Hospital and taken to the Intensive Care Unit for testing.

Lafayette Detective Mark Pinkard said there is too much swelling to determine the amount of damage Chloe’s sustained.

Police said Schulz initially denied shaking the girl, saying she had fallen, but later admitted he would shake her to stop her from crying.

“This was something I had to do to help the people I was close to,” the 16-year-old told a Common Pleas jury yesterday. “The way I understood was that if I didn’t do this, bad things were gonna happen.”

Hector Ayala, 59, is charged with rape of a child and aggravated indecent assault in what allegedly began as what he said was a Santeria ritual and continued for years, eventually involving two of the girl’s friends.

The girl’s mother, whose name is being withheld to protect her daughter’s identity, is charged with conspiracy, sexual assault and related offenses for allegedly persuading her daughter and being present during several assaults.

Under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Leslie Gomez, the girl said that she was 9 when her mother told her that she had the power to lift a curse on the family by allowing Ayala to have oral sex with her.

The girl said that the notion of a curse seemed real at the time; her mother had just lost her job and her mother’s boyfriend recently had been sent to prison.

She said Ayala performed oral sex on her every day after school for a week, while her mother lay in bed next to her, holding her hand.

The girl said that her mother did not know that the sexual contact with Ayala did not end there.

Ayala told her that they needed to “finish the job,” which required vaginal intercourse, the girl said.

The sex acts, which continued until she was 15, became so frequent that the two devised a code to describe the activity, she said.

Eventually, three of her friends were also pushed into sex with Ayala, who similarly misled the girls with talk of curses and impending misfortune, she said.

Ayala is charged in his alleged acts with two of those girls, who also are underage.

In his opening statement, Michael Engle, the mother’s attorney, said that his client never conspired with Ayala and that the evidence against her is insufficient.

Ayala’s attorney, Michael Medway, said that prosecutors have no objective evidence against his client. He also pointed to a letter the girl had written after the allegations became public, in which she claims to have lied about the entire ordeal.

The nationwide search for Haylee Donathan ended when authorities discovered her unharmed with the fugitives at the Morning Star Ranch in Valley Center, Calif., the San Diego Union-Tribune said. Deputies had followed a tip from the ranch’s residents.

U.S. deputies arrested the girl’s mother, Candace Watson, 24, and Watson’s boyfriend, sex offender Robbie Potter, 27.

Until the disappearance, Potter had been living at a halfway house in Ohio, after his release from prison for sexual battery on a minor, the U.S. Marshal Service told the Union-Tribune. He was prohibited from interaction with children.

A resident from Morning Star recognized the missing girl Tuesday from a billboard in the Los Angeles area. He verified the information with the ranch’s manager, who then called the authorities.

TAUNTON, Mass. — A North Attleborough man who coached swimming at an area high school as well as a YMCA and private swim club has been arraigned on possession of child pornography charges.

Timothy Kelly was released on $75,000 bail after a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf Tuesday in Taunton District Court.

Prosecutors allege the 38-year-old Kelly had sexually explicit images of children on his computer as well as on DVDs in his apartment.

The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro reports that Kelly was the swim coach at North Attleborough High School, aquatics director at the Attleboro YMCA, and a swim coach at the Bearcroft Swim Club.

Police say there is no evidence that local children were harmed.

WORCESTER, Mass. — A 7-year-old boy who traveled to the state to spend the summer with his father and who, prosecutors say, was severely beaten by him on Father’s Day can be removed from life support, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Juvenile Court Judge Carol Erskine delivered the ruling after a hearing in which a doctor at UMass Memorial Medical Center testified that the boy, Nathaniel Turner, didn’t respond to a number of neurological tests. Dr. Scot Bateman said the hospital also got a second opinion from a Boston doctor that the boy was brain dead.

The judge gave custody of the boy to his mother for the purpose of deciding whether to donate his organs. Before ruling, the judge called the case “a heartbreaking and gut-wrenching situation,” and she asked the media not to photograph any family members.

After the judge made her decision, family members could be seen crying and hugging each other as lawyers escorted them out of the courthouse.

Relatives said Nathaniel had lived with his maternal grandmother in Eufaula, Ala., before going to live with his father, Leslie Schuler, in Worcester, the second-largest city in New England, with a population of about 175,000, located just west of Boston. Schuler, 36, recently had received a court order to have summer custody of him.

The boy was physically and mentally abused by his father for about two months, police said. On Father’s Day, he suffered severe injuries when his father slammed his head into a bedroom wall with such force that it left a dent in the wall, they said.

Schuler was arraigned Tuesday on seven counts of assault and battery and three assault counts. He pleaded not guilty and was held on $250,000 cash bail. His lawyer, Christopher Tully, said his client was remorseful.

Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said the case had become a homicide investigation, but he would not immediately comment on whether charges against Schuler would be upgraded to murder.

Schuler’s lawyer requested at the hearing that the boy remain on a ventilator.

Nicholas Morana, a lawyer representing the boy’s mother, said his client agreed with the hospital’s assessment of her son’s condition.

“She’s devastated and very frustrated,” Morana said. “She is angry at the father for what happened.”

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said the family had requested that the mother’s name not be released.

Schuler’s girlfriend, Tiffany Hyman, was charged with two counts of assault and battery. Police said it appeared Hyman, 28, didn’t strike the boy but could have intervened and stopped the abuse. She was held on $50,000 cash bail.

The youngsters, aged one, three and four, were kept inside day and night by their cruel parents and forced to play among the filth and rubbish piled high in every room.

Yesterday the 26-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were jailed for three years at York Crown Court after admitting cruelty to their children.

Judge Stephen Ashurst told them: ‘The three very young children were not so much living as surviving in that dark, insanitary and squalid house. They were prisoners in their own home.’

Detective Constable Debbie Outwin, of the Protecting Vulnerable Persons Unit in York, said: ‘The only words to describe the house were “hell hole”.’

The stench was unbearable and the house was littered with rotting food and human excrement, the court heard.

Banned from playing in the garden during the summer months, the youngsters were kept in virtual darkness as every window was covered.

Eventually a concerned neighbour reported the dilapidated state of the building’s exterior to York city council and the authorities moved in, arresting

Passing sentence, Judge Ashurst said: ‘Your children were being exposed to quite appalling squalor, a state of affairs you had jointly brought about.

‘Every available surface in the house was knee-deep in rubbish and filth. All three were dirty and unkempt. This was due to your own self-obsessed behaviour.

‘You the parents are both intelligent adults and therefore what you did is extremely difficult to comprehend.’

The two girls, aged one and four, and the three-year-old boy were unable to play in the garden and the house was ‘eerily’ quiet during the day, the court heard.

Prosecutor Peter Moulson said that when the family moved into the house in York in February 2006, it was in a good state of repair.

‘However, it quickly deteriorated,’ he added. ‘The smell was putrid.’

Reports from two paediatricians revealed the children showed a ‘developmental delay’ with an aversion to washing and language problems.

Glenn Parsons, defending, said the children had not been physically assaulted and their unmarried parents said they loved them.

He said the unemployed father had suffered from anxiety and a fear of open spaces, while the woman, who worked as a caterer, blamed the man’s ‘controlling influence’ for the cruelty.

A family court hearing will be held later this year to decide the children’s long-term future.