Straight from our "The world has gone mad" file, BV Blackspin is reporting that an 18-month-old Charleston, S.C., toddler is in critical condition after police investigators say he was beaten by three teens as he hung upside down by his ankles in a closet. The child's mother, Shakera Wright, 18, told the Department of Social Services' caseworkers that she was visiting her friend Tyrek Varnes, 16, at his home. Varnes had two other friends, a 14- and a 15-year-old, visiting him as well (the younger teens have not been identified because of their age). Reportedly, the youths were "play wrestling" with the young victim, Louis. Wright saw the kids pummeling her son, hitting him repeatedly in the stomach and chest, and told police and DSS that she told the kids to stop when she felt the child had endured enough. When Wright went to wake him the next morning, he "looked like he wanted to die." She called the child's father, who advised her to call an ambulance. A CT scan found that Louis, who was in respiratory distress when he arrived at the hospital, had five rib fractures, air and blood in his thorax, and multiple lacerations of his liver, spleen and pancreas. The child was in shock, and the scan also showed that he had suffered a skull fracture at some point, but doctors could not determine when it had occurred. The police and DSS were called immediately.
Wright and Varnes, along with the 14- and- 15-year-old teens, were charged with infliction or allowing infliction of great bodily injury to a child. Varnes, who confessed to everyone's role in the beating to police, was charged as an adult. If they are convicted, the felony charge carries a 20-year sentence. No words, except where were the parents of the 16-year-old and his "friends" when this was happening? Stony silence over here at The Root.
Read more at BV Blackspin.