Thursday, September 07, 2006

Local Story Goes National, (happy ending, sorta)

Yesterday I had the radio on here and during the top of the hour national news I heard a story about a little girl and her mom in Missouri who had been thrown off a bridge and left to drown. I didn't really pay that much attention, (other than to inwardly curse the bastard who would do such a thing and hope that the folks would be alright), since they said it happened in McDaniel county and I honestly had never heard of such a county in Missouri.They also said the bridge spanned Green Lake. I'd never heard of a lake named Green, but around this state there was a good chance a lake somewhere would be called that. So my attention drifted.

Imagine my surprize later when watching the local news that this near tradegy had happen just about in my backyard! A.P. had got it all bassackwards!
It was Greene county, as in just up the road from here and the lake was McDaniels !
Needless to say, this was the story for the day for the local media. Crazy crap like this just doesn't happen 'round chere.

Apparently, for whatever psychotic reason, the little girls step-dad abducted her from the sitters in the wee hours of the morning while Mom was at work. (The couple was in the midst of a divorce or separation, it had been said.)
He then drove to McDaniels lake just on the outskirts of Springfield, stopped the car on the bridge and tossed his step daughter (all of 5 years old!) into the lake. It's almost a 2 storey drop from the bridge to the water. Just for good measure, he then dropped a weighted tire on her as she bobbed helplessly in the water.

Luckily for the little girl, a trio of guys were fishing nearby and heard the commotion. They got to the bridge just in time to confront the whackjob (and get enough info-make of car, license plate number) and pulled the little girl out of the water. Due to some confusion with the little girls story (which is understandable, afterall, she was only 5 and had just gone through the scare of her life!) law enforcement searched the lake for the mom. But mom showed up at the sherrif's office shortly after when she found out her youngun had been taken.

The cops, thanks to the fisherguys, tracked step-dad of the year back to his house and then a stand off ensued. They finally took him into custody by 6 pm last night.
The bummer of all this, aside from the fact that it happen to begin with, is that Child Protective Services is not letting the mom even see her kid! They claim S.O.P.-which it probably is. But I think after something like that they at least owe the mom and daughter one comforting hug in the hospital before they boot mom out of the room! As a mom, I know I would be raising holy hell to see my kid after something horrible like that and I know the little girl is probably crying for her Ma, too.

Here's the A.P. print story
about this, they corrected for intial mistakes, but still inaccurate.
Local media coverage here
and here(CPS won't let Mom see child) and here (the fisherguys story of events-said they reckon God had them there for a purpose, since they originally hadn't planned on going to that lake.)

2 Comments:

Blogger Joubert said...

It is creepy when we find horrors like that close to home. We had our first murder in ten years last year and people are still talking about it.

9/07/2006 2:37 PM  
Blogger Pamela said...

hey.. where are those zero tolerance torture people ???


I get so upset when people who torture children don't get the keys thrown away.


and.. this WAS torture... no doubt about it

9/07/2006 8:03 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home