Coffin Conversations - by dementia

Lockport police are investigating an apparent attack by a pit bull on a small boy.

The 2-year-old is recovering at Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo after police say he was attacked and sexually assaulted by his family’s pit bull.

Police said the toddler was in his home on Washburn Street about 2 p.m. Sunday when the pill bull attacked. According to police, the dog sodomized the boy.

“The dog sexually attacked the kid and caused some pretty significant injuries,” said Lockport Police Detective Capt. Larry Eggert.

Eggert said the boy’s family members, who were reportedly home at the time, and neighbors had to beat the dog to get him off the boy.


The dog has been impounded at the Niagara County SPCA in Wheatfield as the investigation continues. Eggert said a veterinarian will be brought in to take DNA samples from the dog.

“(The vet will) compare DNA taken from the boy to kind of verify it happened,” Eggert said.

Eggert said everyone involved in the case was shocked by the bizarre happenings.

“I have never, ever heard of an assault quite like that,” Eggert said.

Niagara County SPCA Executive Director Al Chille said this case is an unusual one.

“I have had reports of adults having (sexual) relationships with animals, but not anything like that,” he said. “The majority of the calls we receive with regards to pit bulls are bite calls, not calls of this nature. We get a considerably large number of those (bite calls) from all over the county.”

A bra and pair of underwear were to blame for a sewage leak that damaged more than 20 homes and caused excrement to flow down a street.

Northumbrian Water said Monday the underwear had been flushed down a toilet and became snagged on a sewage pipe under a busy road. Water could not pass the bra, which caused the sewer to collapse, and made the road crack open on Friday.

Dirty water and excrement flowed down Middleton Lane, in Middleton St George, near Darlington, and into people's homes.

The road will be closed for another five days, causing buses to be re-routed, and Northumbrian Water estimates repairs will cost roughly $30,000 US.


The company is now urging residents to think carefully about what they put down the sink and toilet.

A Northumbrian Water spokeswoman said: "When we dug down, we found a bra and knickers had snagged itself across the nine-inch diameter of the pipe.

"There was also a heavy build-up of grease and fat. The pipes are not designed to carry that, and they're certainly not designed to carry bras and knickers.

"We encourage people to bag and bin anything that isn't water, basically.

"If the bra and knickers had not been put down there, we don't think the sewer would have collapsed. It was extremely irresponsible behavior."

Northumbrian Water cannot pinpoint where the underwear came from, but believe it was local. A two-meter section of collapsed sewer has been replaced.

Middleton St. George residents reacted to the flood by claiming the pipes were not fit to cope with the village's increasing population.

Councilor Doris Jones, from Darlington Borough Council, maintains the sewers need replacing, despite the underwear discovery.

"I just can't accept that's been wholly responsible," she said. "The main problem is the sewers just can't cope - they really are antiquated."

Jones said pensioners had been forced to use expensive taxis because of bus diversions.

The Northumbrian Water spokesman said a full camera survey of the pipes around Middleton Lane would be carried out, and a catchment study would examine the whole area.

"We are aware of the problems and are trying to resolve them," she said.

The knowledge that her daughter died at the hands of one of America’s most prolific serial killers was painful enough for Harriet Semander. Then she found that his prison jottings and autograph were being auctioned online as souvenirs.

But the grieving mother from Houston, Texas, discovered that this was just the tip of a macabre industry in which anything from convicted killers’ toenail clippings to tapes of their victims’ final screams for mercy, is for sale.

“It sickens me. My daughter’s killer shouldn’t be turned into a celebrity, no one should be making money out of her loss,” said Mrs Semander, 74, whose daughter Elena, 20, was strangled by Coral Eugene Watts in 1982.

Watts, now 53, is serving a life sentence for 12 murders, but he is thought to have carried out as many as 100.

Now, the US Congress is to consider passing legislation that aims to drive the purveyors of “murderabilia” out of business. It follows a seven-year campaign by Andy Kahan, who spent years as an undercover buyer researching the ghoulish trade. “I have purchased killers’ hair samples, fingernails, foot scrapings, bottled fluids, artwork, you name it,” he said.

Bryan James, 34, was arrested on Wednesday along with the childs mother, Jessica Silveirs, 26. Along with bites on the girls body, she suffered bites to her face in which she lost the upper part of her lip. Her ear was so mutilated that surgery could not return it to its natural state. Police think the biting attacks began in January, and continued until April.

James is charged with assault and battery upon a child causing substantial bodily injuries. Silveira is charged with permitting substantial injuries to a child under 14 and intimidation of a witness. The girl and her older brother, have been taken into state custody.

PATNA, India (Reuters) - Rats are gnawing at beer cans and making holes in caps of whisky bottles stored in police storehouses in eastern India and apparently getting drunk, authorities said on Wednesday.

The rodents' love for liquor has the police department in Bihar state stumped as it tries to store hundreds of bottles seized from illegal sellers from across the state in Patna, the state capital, said Kundan Krishnan, a senior officer.

Officers seized more than 100 pet rats, dozens of rabbits and other animals including several birds from the home of an 81-year-old woman, who was later treated at a hospital for what appeared to be bites, authorities said.

“The woman had no food in the house for herself and seemed disoriented,” said Annette Ramirez, an officer with the city’s Animal Services Department. “Her arms were covered with open wounds apparently caused by animal bites.”

Police in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, are investigating claims that an eight-year-old boy has killed in cold blood three babies — including his eight-month-old sister and nine-month-old cousin.

The case came to light when a mother could not find her six-month-old daughter after leaving her asleep at a school in Musahari village. After a police search the child’s body was found buried nearby.

German police came up short of stopping a kidnapping when they discovered the "boy" reported to have been thrown into the trunk of a car was actually a dwarf mechanic.

The dwarf, Klaus "Shorty" Mueller, had climbed into the trunk and asked to be driven around so he could find out where a rattling noise was coming from.

A Norwegian political party has chosen its candidate for a local election in Sarpsborg -- a man who has been dead for a year and a half.

A woman who tried to steal a fetus by knocking her pregnant neighbour unconscious with a baseball bat and cutting her abdomen was sentenced yesterday to 22 to 50 years in prison.

Religiously strict Saudi Arabia can’t have traditional Western-style beauty contests, but there was a pageant in April in remote Guwei’iya, about 75 miles from Riyadh - a beauty contest for camels. More than 250 owners brought more than 1,500 camels to be judged by such standards, said one organizer (according to a Reuters dispatch), as “the nose should be long and droop down” and “the ears should stand back, and the neck should be long” and “the hump should be high, but slightly to the back.” Prizes included more than 70 SUVs.

A Ponca City college student says she cannot believe someone stole her $100,000 prosthetic legs. 19-year-old Celeste Ready lost both her legs in a car accident. She woke up one morning this week, and the prosthetics were gone.

A 9-year-old boy who complained of an earache was a little surprised when the doctor told him that a pair of spiders had tried to make a home out of him.

Three women teachers were among six people arrested yesterday accused of sedating and sexually abusing children as young as 3 at a school near Rome.