The Handiest Girlie Of All

Louisiana man decapitated and dismembering 7 year old disabled son

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP)

Jeremiah Lee Wright, 30, of Thibodaux, La.

A Louisiana man is accused of bludgeoning, decapitating and dismembering his disabled 7-year-old son and leaving the boy's head near the street so the child's mother would see it _ a killing that brought seasoned police officers to tears, authorities said Monday.

Jeremiah Lee Wright, 30, of Thibodaux waived his right to an attorney and confessed to killing Jori Lirette within 30 minutes of being brought to the police station Sunday, Police Chief Scott Silverii said. He said Wright was booked with first-degree murder and held in lieu of $5 million bond.

He was in isolation, Silverii said during a Monday afternoon news conference. The department spokesman, Detective Ricky Ross, said he does not believe Wright has an attorney.

Flowers, balloons and stuffed animals were left Monday outside the house where Jori died.

"He was maybe the best thing that ever happened to me," his mother, Jesslyn Lirette, said at the news conference.

A preliminary autopsy found the boy was bludgeoned, decapitated and dismembered, Silverii said. Whatever hit him caused "excessive bleeding in the head," he said.

Silverii said the motive was unclear, though Wright told police "that he'd gotten to the point where he was tired of taking care" of the boy, who had cerebral palsy and heart problems, needed a feeding tube, had limited speech and was in a wheelchair.

"He said when he put his head out by the side of the road it was so the mother would see it when she came by," Silverii said. He said Wright's only explanation for doing so was "just that he wanted her to feel stupid when she saw the head."

The police chief said Jori's feet and one hand also were cut off, recovered with the body in several white plastic garbage bags.

The slaying was the first in Thibodaux since 2008.

Silverii said the boy apparently was decapitated over the kitchen sink, which was sent to the Louisiana State Police crime lab along with a box of tools found nearby. Wright told investigators he began killing the boy about 30 minutes after Lirette had left Sunday to repair her pickup truck so she could take Jori to a doctor on Tuesday.

Police had been called to the house last month when the couple had an argument _ possibly about money _ though neither person brought charges, Ross said. The police chief said Wright had been arrested a few times previously, though he was never charged with violent crimes. Wright served 10 days for theft in 2005.

Lirette, 27, told The Daily Comet of Thibodaux  that she and Wright had been together for 10 years, but that she had planned for some time to leave him.

"I didn't get out fast enough," she said.

Mark Chatagnier, a friend of Wright's, told the newspaper that Wright was unemployed and that Lirette often left him to care for Jori, even when she was not working.

"She would take off and totally expect Jerry to do everything," Chatagnier said.

Lirette denied that. She said she cared for another disabled person to pay household bills and was still around to care for her son, who had been born three months premature, could say only a few words and weighed no more than 50 pounds when he died.

"He was my star. No matter what people think or say, he was always top priority in my life," Lirette said through tears during the news conference. "I've done everything I can for him."

When Lirette returned from fixing the truck, she found her home blocked by police tape.

When she identified herself, Silverii had a captain and Ross, who was a minister for 12 years and remains a lay pastor, tell her what happened.

"These are experienced men. They came out of there in tears. Just absolutely in tears," Silverii said.

Grief counselors from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office also spent time with her, he said.

South Thibodaux Elementary School, where Jori was a second-grader, was "a very somber place" Monday, said Floyd Benoit, spokesman for the Lafourche Parish school system. Counselors were on hand there and at other schools where people knew Jori, he said.

The school has 560 students, including 84 second-graders and 18 in special education across all grades, he said.

Jori had attended South Thibodaux since pre-kindergarten, principal Diane Smith said. "Everyone loved him. Even though he could not express in words his feelings to us, he did it with his smile," she said.

Lirette, who began her statement with a plea for privacy, ended with a message to her son:

"In Heaven I believe you're a beautiful star and you will always shine bright inside my heart, inside everybody's heart. If I could go back and change yesterday, I would. But I can't.

"You will be missed and loved by everyone and we will pray every day in your honor. Love you, Mom."

WTOP

Daily Comet

Related articles

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• Police: Man Decapitated Disabled Son, 7 (abcnews.go.com)

Survey Says: Disabled people face increasing hostility from strangers

A disabled protester during last week's London march against cuts to disability services

 

Disabled people have faced greater hostility from the public since the government launched its controversial benefits reforms, according to a survey by a leading charity.

A majority said that they experienced hostility, discrimination and even physical attacks from strangers every week and more than a third claimed the position had worsened over the previous 12 months.

Victims blame ministers for portraying all people with disabilities as scroungers as they seek to cut the number of people on disability benefits, including the 2.9 million people in receipt of disability living allowance (DLA) and the 1.9 million people deemed physically unable to work currently given incapacity benefit.

The government has presented changes, including the introduction of medical and psychological tests for those claiming the allowance, as a way of getting tough on people who are cheating the system. But Scope, a charity for disabled people, which commissioned the survey, said there was powerful evidence that the "backdrop of negativity" behind the cuts was leading to a rise in hostility and even violence towards some of the most vulnerable in society.

In the survey, 37% of people with disabilities claimed they were increasingly being abused in the streets, erroneously reported to the benefits fraud hotline and accosted when trying to use parking spaces for disabled drivers. Nearly two- thirds thought others did not believe they were disabled and half of respondents said they felt others presumed they did not work. Around two-thirds of the 676 surveyed said that they expected to experience discrimination when trying to find a job, and more than half expected to be discriminated against in the workplace.

The findings follow last week's protest by several thousand disabled people through London over cuts to services and benefits provided by central and local government. David Gillon, 47, from Chatham, Kent, who suffers from a debilitating back condition, told the Observer he was left distraught when he was recently reported to the Department for Work and Pensions' fraud hotline.

"I spend only about four hours a week outside the house, but I was contacted by the DWP recently because someone had anonymously reported me for cheating," he said.

"They asked me to come down to the job centre, but I had to explain that every time I went down there I had to have the next day stretched out in bed. They finally relented and came to my house and it took 30 seconds to realise that the allegation was nonsense. I don't know whether it is jealously, resentment or fear, but things are undoubtedly getting worse. I feel more under threat of violence than for years due to the 'jihad' waged against us by the government."

Mark Mayer, 38, from Dorking, Surrey, who has cerebral palsy, said: "It's upsetting when complete strangers feel they can question me. At a supermarket the other day I was getting out of my car and a woman accosted me, demanding to know what my disability was. She said I didn't look disabled and couldn't see my blue badge. I showed it to her and she still demanded to know what was wrong with me, and I had to show her my walking sticks. The nonsense that everyone on disability benefits is a scrounger is adding to this sort of thing."

Richard Hawkes, Scope's chief executive, said he believed the decline in tolerance for disabled people would see fewer taking up jobs and playing a full role in society.

"Much of the welfare reform debate has focused on disabled people as benefit scroungers, and many disabled people feel this has led to the public being more sceptical about disability issues and more hostile to those who receive welfare support," he said.

"Ironically, this backdrop of negativity will only make it harder for the million disabled people who will be migrated off benefits to get a job. Unless disabled people can contribute to society, attitudes will continue to deteriorate and they risk being further excluded from society."

• This article was amended on 16 May 2011. The original referred to disability living allowance as the benefit now given to 1.9 million people deemed physically unable to work. This has been corrected. References to "the disabled" have also been corrected to conform to the Guardian and Observer style guide.

 

Guardian.uk

Gaurdian Disability

China's disabled exploited as slaves

Having Cerebral Palsy is not exactly the happiest life and what i would have wanted in life but, I am very thankful to live in the United States. Its absolutely repulsive and horrendous  what people with disabilities have to go through in other countries.   Mao Xiulian shows the sores on the legs of her son Liu Xiaoping, 30, who was burned with hot bricks while made to work as a slave at a brick factory.   At 30, Liu Xiaoping is more boy than man, with soft doe eyes that affix visitors with the unabashed stare of the very young and glisten with reluctant tears when his bandages are changed. It takes effort not to show the pain of the wounds that read up and down his body as a testament to the 10 months he was held captive at brick factories in the Chinese countryside. His hands are as red as freshly boiled lobster from handling hot bricks from a kiln without proper protective gloves. On the backs of his legs, third-degree burns trace the rectangular shape of bricks, a factory foreman's punishment for not working fast enough. Around his wrists, ligature marks tell of the chains used to keep him from running away at night. Liu was found wandering in the small town of Gaoling, north of Xian, on Dec. 22, 10 months after his family reported him missing. He was wearing the same clothing as when he'd disappeared in February, but the trousers were glued to the festering wounds on his legs and the gangrene of his frostbitten feet stank through the gaping holes in his shoes. Despite his injuries and an intellectual impairment, he was able to tell how he'd been tricked by a woman who bought him a bowl of soup and promised him the equivalent of $10 per day, good wages for manual work in rural China. Instead, he became a slave. "They took advantage of my brother because he has a mental disability," said his 26-year-old brother, Liu Xiaowei. "They forced him to work, beat him, tortured him, and then when he was too weak to take it anymore, they threw him out on the street." In an adrenaline-paced economy with a chronic shortage of manual laborers, ruthless recruiters often prey on China's mentally disabled. The worst offenders work with the brick kilns that are feeding a seemingly insatiable appetite for the new apartment complexes and malls cropping up around the countryside. "The brick factories can never get as many workers as they need. The work is heavy and a lot of people don't want to do it," said Ren Haibin, the former manager of one of several brick factories where Liu said he had worked. "Possibly the mentally disabled can be intimidated and forced to work.... They are timid and easier to manage."

In the Beijing offices of Enable Disability Studies Institute, a nongovernmental organization, director Zhang Wei reels off a list of more than a dozen cases over the last decade in which people were enslaved in appalling conditions, each more nightmarish than the last.

Young women have been sold by psychiatric hospitals as sexual partners and wives; mentally disabled young men have been imprisoned as forced laborers in coal mines and brick factories. In 2008, a brick factory owner beat a young man to death for an escape attempt. In December, Chinese authorities rescued 11 workers who had been sold by a supposed charitable organization for the disabled to a brick factory more than 1,000 miles away.

Reports on conditions in the factory said the workers hadn't been allowed to bathe in more than a year and were fed the same food as the boss' dog.

"Every year there are cases like this," Zhang said. "The worst are when they are violating the rights of the disabled in the name of charity."

Police often won't exert much effort when a mentally disabled person disappears, he said, and even if they're rescued, their testimony is not taken seriously because of their impairment.

"This is not like when a child goes missing. Police will just assume they've run away," Zhang said. Some families, he says, won't even bother to report. "They might feel that they've been relieved of the burden."

That was not the case with Liu Xiaoping. He comes from a loving family who occupy the ground floor of a shabby apartment in southern Xian, where his father sells remedies to people too poor to afford a doctor. Since Liu escaped from the brick factory, he has shuttled between home and the hospital, while his family tries to raise money for skin grafts.

Liu doesn't speak much. When he does, the words come slowly but clearly, as though they've required some concentration. He left school in the third grade, when it became clear that he'd never be able to read or write beyond an elementary level.

But he was strong and healthy. Neighbors would always call on him to help harvest wheat and potatoes and he would hang out at the market looking for odd jobs unloading trucks or carrying parcels.

"He wanted to stand on his own feet," said younger brother Xiaowei. "He was kindhearted and thinks that everybody else is too."

On Feb. 28, 2010, the night of the Lantern Festival that ends the lunar New Year holiday, he and his family were visiting relatives in Shanyang, a town south of Xian. That night, Liu failed to come home, something that had never happened before. His family reported him missing the next day and printed posters that they distributed around the neighborhood.

Little did they know that he had been transported almost 100 miles away to Gaoling, a rural county where there are dozens of brick factories tucked deep in the countryside. They might never have found him if not for another family who'd also lost a son to the brick factories.
 

He Wen went missing June 2. The 35-year-old had been psychologically troubled since his late teens, when he'd suffered a breakdown after failing an exam. He was unable to hold a regular job but could unload trucks and was proud that he'd managed to buy his own television set.

The afternoon he disappeared, a nephew overheard him taking a telephone call from a woman who'd offered him a job that would provide more than $10 a day, meals and a free pack of cigarettes. He rode away on a bicycle.

His father, He Zhimin, is a 62-year-old farmer with unruly whiskers and hands that tremble as he fingers photographs of his missing son.

"I was suspicious as soon as I heard about this supposed job offer. I started asking around and people told me stories about the brick factories," He said.

He went to the local police, but they told him to file the report in nearby Gaoling. The police there sent him back.

"They kept kicking me from one place to another," he said.

So he launched his own investigation. Every afternoon, he'd go out in a three-wheel motorized cart, handing out fliers and business cards with images of his son's square-jawed face. Somebody printed out a map from Google and he marked the locations of all the brick factories he heard about: 58 in Gaoling alone.

Four workers at one factory said He Wen had worked there earlier in the summer and they gave his father directions to other factories nearby. An elderly woman had seen the younger He walking toward downtown Gaoling. Construction workers erecting an apartment complex thought he might have worked there.

"People kept saying they'd seen my son, but by the time I'd get there, he'd have disappeared."

In December, somebody telephoned to say a homeless man who looked like his son was sleeping on the street in Gaoling. He rushed over. He could see that the unshaven, dirt-encrusted man looked like his son: the same height, close in age. But he was not.

Disappointed, he returned home. His wife was furious.

"How could you leave that boy out on the street in winter? Maybe it was our son, after all. Even if he's not, he's somebody's son," she badgered her husband.

After a sleepless night, he drove back to Gaoling. The homeless man was still out in the street, but he was too delirious to give his name. He tried to take him to the police and to a hospital, but nobody wanted to take him in. Finally, he called a journalist, who matched the young man's description to that of another young man reported missing.

He was Liu Xiaoping.

As Liu recovered in the burn unit, his brother coaxed the story out of him. Liu told of the beatings and burnings, of the food so meager than he lost 20 pounds, of being chained at night and guarded by vicious dogs, about being shuttled among three brick factories.

He identified a photograph of He Zhimin's missing son as one of 11 disabled workers imprisoned with him. He also picked out from police photographs the woman who tricked him and a man known as Lao Fang, a nickname meaning "Old Fang," the foreman who beat him and the other workers.

He described in detail the location of the three brick factories where he'd worked, one of them where the workers had recognized the photo of He Zhimin's son.

That factory lies at the end of a straight dirt road through fallow corn fields 10 miles from Gaoling. There are a few houses out front, and in back a partially underground room lined with chambers containing brick ovens. Although it was closed for the winter, the manager, Wang Youqiang, was on duty.

"Look around if you like. There's no evidence against me. It's all just rumor," he told a visitor.

Wang acknowledged that it's hard to find workers — "Business is great. We sold 27 million bricks last year and would have sold 30 million, if we had the labor" — but denied using the disabled. "If you say otherwise, show me the proof."

But Ren Haibin, who was manager until June, when he says he retired because of ill health, confirmed most of what Liu Xiaoping claimed. He said the factory contracted with a man named Fang who would supply and supervise mentally disabled workers. Fang's mistress recruited them with the promise of $10 a day in wages.

In fact, the going rate for healthy workers was about $14 a day, whereas the factory paid Fang $4.50 per day for each mentally disabled worker, of which $1.50 was spent on food. The rest went to Fang.

"They made promises they didn't keep," Ren said. "The money went into Fang's pocket. The workers never saw it."

Ren said he never saw Fang beating a worker, but added: "He was not a kind person.... Maybe if they didn't work up to a certain level, there would be no food."

Fang could not be reached for comment. Telephone numbers he had used were disconnected.

In the two months since Liu was found wandering, local authorities have visited many brick factories in the area, requesting lists of workers' names and where they've come from. But no one has been arrested and Liu's family has yet to receive compensation for his medical bills.

"I thought this should be so simple, an open-and-shut case, but it has proved so complicated," said his brother Liu Xiaowei. "I'm very disappointed that our society hasn't done more to protect people like my brother."

He Zhimin, meanwhile, is no closer to finding his son. He fears that whoever is holding him may have spirited him far away to avoid detection. It's not an unreasonable fear; when the disabled workers were rescued in December in Xinjiang, one was found to have been transported 2,000 miles across China.

He Zhimin continues to go out every afternoon, driving through the countryside near the brick factories, thrusting fliers into the hands of passersby.

By now, most people recognize him, so they simply shake their heads: No, they haven't seen his son.

LA Times