ONE VOICE / ONE SOUND

 Spotlighted 

(Unbelievable Crimes / Accidents involving our Children)  

"This is an opportunity for people to turn to God," said Debra Kenton, a member of the New Life Community Church. "Who else can explain things like this?"  Authorities suspect Tunstall was slain on or about Sept. 15.  That day, Hall summoned police to a park, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child, Hart said. She was arrested after she told her boyfriend during the baby's funeral that the baby wasn't his and that she had killed the mother to get it, authorities said.

Tunstall's body was found Thursday, and authorities began a furious search for her children. Police said the children were last seen with Hall on Monday.  Authorities had visited Tunstall's apartment Friday but noticed nothing amiss while looking for photographs of the children for media outlets to publicize in their search, Hart said. 

While in custody, Hart says, Hall told investigators she killed the children and hid them in the washer and dryer.  Hall said he understood why investigators may have overlooked the children during their previous trip to the apartment. "Who would be looking in the washer and dryer?"  By Saturday night, Hart said, "you could find them by the smell."

The oldest, 7-year-old DeMond Tunstall, was found in the dryer and the younger two children _ 2-year-old Ivan Tunstall-Collins and 1-year-old Jinela Tunstall _ in the washer. Two of the children were found nude, the third wearing only underpants, Hart said.

Mourners left stuffed animals outside Tunstall's apartment, its door crisscrossed with white evidence tape. There was a white teddy bear, and a stuffed race car with DeMond's name.  An autopsy showed that Jimella Tunstall bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, Hart has said. Authorities believe her womb was cut open after she was knocked unconscious.

Relatives say Tunstall grew up with Hall and had let her baby-sit her children. Hall has two children of her own. Illinois State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said they are "safe and sound."  DNA tests should determine definitively whether the baby was the one Tunstall was carrying, Hart said.

June 29, 2007:  The mother of three children who were killed in a fire at their Burtonsville apartment remains critically injured.  Fire officials said 30-year-old Elsie Nuka is being treated at R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Her three daughters, 4-month-old Makenzie Foncham, 2-year-old Megan Foncham and 4-year-old Chanelle Foncham all died at hospitals.

 November 26:   A former correction officer was arraigned in his pajamas on murder charges Friday, accused of shooting his two children to death in their Harlem apartment in a crime that a prosecutor called "unthinkable."

January 6, 2003:  The gruesome story began to unfold Saturday, when a man who lives in the house searched the windowless basement for a pair of misplaced boots. When he kicked in a locked door, he discovered what he described as a "head with hair on it" beneath a bed and he called police, he said yesterday during an interview outside the house. The police arrived to find the two children starved and dehydrated, Gordon said. Police said the children apparently had not eaten for two weeks.   Gordon identified the dead boy as Faheem Williams, Raheem's twin. The other child is their 4-year- old brother, Tyrone Williams.   An autopsy will be performed today.

June 12, 2007:    A fire that raced through a three-story row house early Tuesday, killing five children, may have been caused by the youngsters playing with matches, authorities said.  Police said they are trying to confirm whether the children were alone or in the care of a teenage baby sitter.  Authorities interviewed the two mothers of the dead children, and police said they don't know where the mothers were at the time of the fire.  The dead were identified as Cedano Holyfield, 4; Daekia Holyfield, 7; Dezekiah Holyfield, 3; Andre Rankin, 6; and Azquel Rankin, 5. The Holyfield children lived in the home and the Rankin children lived in the Hazelwood neighborhood.

April 15, 2007:    The man police say set fire to a Quincy home, killing the five children inside, could face the death penalty.  27-year-old Zachary Meeks is accused of setting fire to the home of his cousin, Jeanette Clark, early Sunday morning.    All 5 of Keith and Jeanette Clark's children were inside the home at 428 North 7th...they all died of smoke inhalation. They include 10-year-old Kendall Edwards, 9-year-old Althea Clark, 7-year-old Cameron Clark, 5-year-old Khalil Clark, and 5-month-old Kejuan Clark.  Funeral arrangements for the children are pending at the Duker and Haugh Funeral Home.

May, 2007:   It was inside a Delray Beach apartment that 10-month-old Deadrian Wilson died early Sunday morning. The walls of the 2nd floor unit are charred.  The furniture, burned. The flames had become too intense for anyone to have rushed back in, say witnesses.

Bello says she and others neighbors were shocked, but not surprised to learn that Deadrian's mother, Nicole Heath, was not home at 4 A.M. when the fire broke out.    Instead, she'd left the baby in the care of seven young relatives including at least two teenagers. The children, says Bello were rarely supervised by an adult. 

June 4, 2006:  Three small children, killed in a fire Friday in their family's townhouse, died from "inhalation of products of combustion" a Contra Costa County coroner's pathologist said Saturday.   They were identified as Isis Cradle, 2, Jeremiah Cradle, 4, and their sister, Devieonne Portis, 9.

Richmond Fire Chief Michael Banks said the three youngsters were found huddled under a blanket in a second story bedroom of their home at 908 View Drive.   "It didn't take us long to find the kids," Banks said. "I believe it was within the first 10 minutes after the first unit reached the scene."

 September 2, 2006:  A father and his two sons died Saturday in an apparent murder-suicide at a university, authorities said.

Douglas W. Pennington, 49, shot sons Logan, 26, and Benjamin, 24, before shooting himself with a .38 caliber revolver on the Shepherd University campus, state police said. Both sons were seniors at the university.   Police said the elder Pennington traveled to the campus to visit his sons, but offered no reason for the shootings. Witnesses said Pennington had not been arguing with his children before the shootings occurred.   The gunfire occurred about 2 p.m. in a parking lot, near residence halls on the campus' west side. The Penningtons were pronounced dead at local medical facilities.

 May 1, 2008:   Police said a man who fatally shot his wife and injured her two children in a Mesquite home Wednesday morning is in custody.  Police said Monique Turner, 31, and her children, Michael Turner Jr., 11, and Najye Heath, 7, were found in a house in the 1600 block of Sam Houston Road at about 7 a.m. after gunshots were reported coming from Candice Court at 6:24 a.m.  Neighbor Carlos Vazquez called 911 after he heard the shots.

March 22, 2008:   Police in western Georgia have determined that a father whose body was found in a wooded field next to those of his three children shot them and himself.   The body of 28-year-old Eddie Harrington was found Wednesday near the family's home in Columbus. Nearby were the remains of his 3-year-old son Cedric Harrington and twins Aliyah and Agana Battle. The girls were nearly 2.   The children's mother told authorities Harrington withdrew $200 from the couple's bank account March 4 to buy a handgun and left with the children that night.

 March 28, 2008:   At 10 p.m.  last night, a man so incensed in an argument with his wife, turned to the rear seat and shot his baby girl in her child safety seat - then he shot himself.   They had been parked in his wife's parent's driveway when it happened, after having visited with them for Easter.   The baby girl (Amari Roberts,) died early this morning in the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta in Egleston.

February 21, 1995:  Delaware bank employee Douglas John Mont had always been on time when returning their three children to his estranged wife after daylong visits.   When he was three hours late Saturday, Nancy Mont was concerned.    Her worries, it turned out, were tragically justified.

The bodies of her three children - Catrina, 9, Daniel, 6, and Theresa, 4 - were found here Sunday in the charred remains of a Ford van at First Flight Airport. Eleven hours later and 186 feet to the east, their father shot himself to death as officers approached him.   Mont apparently had shot each of his three children in the head at close range with what police sources said was a .357-caliber Magnum handgun. Then, about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, he set the dark green 1993 Aerostar ablaze in the airport parking lot.

May 5, 2008:  A 5-year-old boy fatally shot his 4-year-old sister with a semiautomatic handgun he had taken from a bookcase to play with, police said.   The shooting happened just after 10 a.m. Sunday in the 6100 block of Massachusetts Avenue, on Indianapolis' northeast side.   Police found Makayla Booher on the floor of an upstairs bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head. The gun was found on the floor nearby, police said

 July 16, 2007:  A man fatally shot his three children and then took his own life in a Montgomery home Sunday night as law officers hunted for him on a domestic violence claim by his wife, police said.    Lt. Keith Barnett said Eric Robinson, 42, was found in the house where his wife lived with the children. Robinson, who lived at a different address, fatally shot the children, a 4-year-old girl and boys aged 6 and 11, Barnett said.    The three were found in his car outside his wife's house.

The police spokesman said there had been an "ongoing domestic violence relationship" and officers had been actively looking for Robinson after his wife signed a warrant Sunday afternoon accusing him of violating a protective order.  The children were with Robinson for a normal visitation when his wife sought help and police began looking for him, Barnett said.

After reports of gunshots at the wife's home at 9:53 p.m., police found Robinson inside the house with a fatal gunshot to the head. Officers searching for the children found them in the car with gunshot wounds to the head.  The 6-year-old boy was dead in the car and the other two children were taken to Jackson Hospital, where they were pronounced dead.  Police did not immediately release the names of the three slain children or where the mother was at the time of the shootings. Her name and relationship to the three children was not immediately released.

 August 2, 2007:   New details in the murders of a young basketball star and his brother in Aspen Hill. Legal documents say the father of Justin and Jeremy Herring admits he shot both of them while they slept - and then tried to set the family home on fire.  But the charging documents fail to answer the most basic question: Why?

Police found a gas can in the foyer. They say Herring admitted he doused the basement and tried unsuccessfully to set the home on fire.  The distraught Kennedy High School students have left the murder scene, but they have left behind flowers in Justin and Jeremy's memory.  Police say Herring told them he "went to his oldest son's room and shot him in his bed while Justin was sleeping... Then went to the youngest son's room and shot him."

September 17, 2007:  Two men fatally shot a 21-year-old man during a suspected home-invasion, and then shot his 7-month-old son in the head as he was strapped in a car seat outside the home, police said.

Detectives believe Sean Paul Aquitania drove with his son, Sean Paul Aquitania Jr., to a home on Friday to visit friends. He left the infant in the car and went to the front door. As two men answered, two other men ran up and forced their way inside, sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran said Saturday.    A melee erupted, and Aquitania was shot at least twice in the upper body. Th e two suspects fled, stopping to shoot the infant. No one else was injured, Curran said.

March 23, 2008:  Police in DeKalb County late Sunday night were investigating a double shooting in which a father apparently shot and killed his 1-year-old daughter and then turned the gun on himself.

The incident occurred shortly before 10 p.m. on the 2300 block of Tarian Road near Clifton Springs Road, said Officer Marcus Hodge of the DeKalb County Police Department.  Hodge said the father, 21-year-old Mario Roberts, shot his daughter, Amari Roberts, and then shot himself.  DeKalb Fire and Rescue rushed baby and father to Children's Healthcare of were talking with the baby's mother, who witnessed the shooting in the driveway of her mother's house, Hodge said. The couple resides there with their young daughter.

January 25, 2006:   An 8-year-old boy who shot a 7-year-old girl in the arm yesterday with a handgun he sneaked into a Germantown, Md., day care center in his backpack told classmates last Friday after a fight that he had easy access to guns, two law enforcement officials said.

The boy, a third-grader, had been suspended in the past for bringing a toy weapon to school, said the sources, who declined to be identified because the case is open. He was armed yesterday with a .38-caliber Taurus revolver that belonged to his father, a felon with a lengthy record, police said. The law enforcement sources said they do not believe that the shooting victim, a second grader at S. Christa McAuliffe Elementary, was involved in Friday's fight. It was unclear what the boy had planned to do with his father's gun, they said. But what ever his plans, they were cut short around sunrise as six children supervised by a female teacher were huddled around a television set watching Peter Pan at the daycare center.

The sources said the boy threatened to rob the girl and then shot the gun once, striking her in the upper right arm.  The boy's father, John Linwood Hall, 56, was arrested and charged with leaving a firearm within reach of an unsupervised minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and possession of a firearm by a felon. His son was charged as a juvenile with numerous counts that police declined to outline yesterday. The boy was placed in the custody of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, which provides counseling and treatment to delinquent juveniles. In charging the boy, authorities weighed the nature of the offense and the child's disciplinary history against his age, officials said.

"An innocent 7-year-old girl was shot in the arm inches away from her heart," Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas Gansler said. "In the final analysis, given this particular child's personal history, both at home and school, the decision was made that it would be in the best interest of this juvenile to be charged.   Paramedics rushed the girl to the sports field of her school, near the apartments, and about 7:35 a.m. a state police helicopter took her from the field to Children's Hospital in Washington D.C. She was reported in stable condition yesterday night. Her family could not be reached for comment yesterday.

November 26, 2006:  Timothy Jerome Addison and his 2-year-old son Timberlan were crazy about each other.   Timberlan’s mother, Jacqueline Wilson, knew right away what to think when she received a phone call Sunday morning that Timberlan had been shot in the chest while playing at his father’s North Tampa home, near Sulphur Springs.  Tampa police responded to a 911 call on N 15th Street around 10:30 a.m. Sunday. Addison, 37, had rushed his bleeding son to a neighbor’s house for help.

Addison told detectives that he and Timberlan were playing around on the couch, where Addison had forgotten he stashed a 9mm handgun between the cushions, said police spokesman Larry McKinnon.  At some point while Timberlan was playing on the couch, he found the gun and it fired once into his chest. He died shortly after arriving at Tampa General Hospital.

April 23, 2008:  Police say the mother of a 3-year-old suburban Chicago boy found her son dead, hanging from the cord of a window blind.  Autopsy results released Wednesday found the death of Maxillian Padilla an accident. The boy died Tuesday evening in Oak Forest. He was pronounced dead at a hospital in Hazel Crest.  Police say only the boy and his parents were in the home at the time of his death. A spokesman with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services says the agency isn't investigating the death.

November 6, 1998:   A Bronx man who killed his three young children before committing suicide on Wednesday night had a history of psychiatric troubles and wrote a suicide note explaining that he knew he was about to die and did not want his children to grow up with a stepfather, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

Stunned neighbors described the man, Gottfried Ohene, 48, as a doting father who adored his sons Michael, 8, and Frederick, 7, and especially his daughter, Shantel, 3.  But on Wednesday night, Mr. Ohene asphyxiated the children by setting a small fire of rolled-up papers on the floor of a closet, setting the children down next to the fire, covering them with a rug and then sitting on top of them, according to a law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Then, the officials said, Mr. Ohene succumbed to the smoke himself and died. 

June 18, 2008:  A 28-year-old father and 30-year-old mother of twins were detained and charged with failing to provide necessities of life after their mother told police she may have neglected the twins and not fed them enough.  Both twins, named in media only as Lily and Zaide, weighed around 4 kgs (8.8 lb) when they died, around the weight of a normal newborn baby.  Since the discovery, the deaths have received prominent newspaper coverage and have dominated television and radio reports.  A post-mortem examination was to be completed on Wednesday and, depending on the outcome, prosecutors said charges against the parents could be upgraded to manslaughter or murder.

June 18, 2008:  One of Japan's most notorious serial killers, who murdered and mutilated four little girls and reportedly drank the blood of one of them, was hanged yesterday.  Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, killed the girls, aged four to seven, in the late 1980s. He burned one victim's body and left her bones on her parents' doorstep. Japanese newspaper reports said he ate part of the hand of another girl and drank her blood.