12,000 laptops are lost at airports each week www.privateofficer.com

 

 

MYRTLE BEACH, SC Oct 3 2012 - It’s a story about a lost and found, but not just any lost and found. This one is filled with an item many in fact swear they could never do without. Each year, hundreds of thousands of laptop computers are left at airports.

Personal laptops, company laptops, all loaded with sensitive information, music, movies, games, a person’s life just lost forever.

So what is it about laptops and airports that seem to have so many of us so forgetful? And what happens to all these lost laptops?

The answers are almost too hard to believe.

More than 12,000 computer laptops are left in airports every week, and most are never returned to their owner.

Angela Amoroso is a traveler from New Jersey. She wonders if those careless computer owners are unconscious.

Amoroso always travels with her laptop. She can’t imagine one person being so careless with what she calls her, “electronic lifeline,” much less thousands a day.

“How could that be?” questions Amorosa. “How could that be? I mean it’s part of you. It’s your communication. It’s your life. I don’t get that.”

To give you a better idea of just how many laptops filled with often sensitive personal and business information are lost in airports each year, imagine a trail of laptops stacked end to end leading from Myrtle Beach International to a space shuttle in orbit above the earth. The estimated value of all those lost laptops should send the traveling public into orbit as well…$700 million.

Airport officials say there’s not much that can be done for the passenger, outside of a generic announcement on the airport paging system.

Kirk Lovell is with Myrtle Beach International. “With so many tablets and electronics, they’re password protected. There’s no way for us to identify who it belongs to so it will sit here.”

The Department of Homeland Security is so concerned about the loss of so many laptops at facilities it secures, that when I contacted their regional TSA representative, he caught a flight to Myrtle Beach to so we could talk in person.

Jon Allen says the TSA can only go so far when if comes to finding a computer’s owner. “We’re not going to turn that laptop on. We’re not going to try and analyze the hardware or anything like that.”

The bottom line cause for these laptop left behinds, according the federal government; too many of us lose focus. Simple as that.

“It’s not just getting through the security process,” says Allen. “It’s ‘I got to get to my gate, I have to connect somewhere else’. You look at all of that combined, times 1.7 million people a day and you’re gonna find instances where items do get left behind.”

Tom Dermody is having a hard time digesting that 12,000 a week number. But it was something else that peaked his curiosity. Tom thinks there’s an obvious follow up question related to all those lost laptops.

“Where do they go? I don’t know. Somebody’s making money on them,” suggests Dermody.

Yes they are. In the case of laptops, airports, airlines and the TSA hold the devices for at least 30 days. Then most, well, it’s finders-keepers.

“They’ll take the memory out,” says Allen. “They take the hard drive out and then at that point they can auction it, they can surplus it. It becomes government property.”

Those laptops may be auctioned off online, and you can see how that process works for yourself, by visiting the US General Services Administration website at gsa.gov.

You and I already give enough to the federal government. It’s time to show you how to fool-proof your trip through airport security.

Rule number one; never step foot inside an airport without some kind of contact information stuck on that computer.

Also, always place the laptop in the first plastic bin that goes through the scanner, and your shoes last. Seasoned travelers already know this trick because you’re not going anywhere without your shoes and you’re less likely to forget to pick up the first thing out of the x-ray.

Finally, don’t expect the TSA to watch it for you.

Greg Szupillo has been a TSA agent on the X-ray line for 10-years. “Our job is to protect the traveling public and that’s what we do.”

Translation; your laptop is on it’s own.

The worst news about lost laptops, is the numbers being left in airport like this are going up not down as more travelers bring them along. In fact that same Dell survey found 80 percent of those asked, say they already know someone who has lost a laptop at an airport, never to see it again. That means your chances of becoming the next are getting better and better every day.

Source: WMBF

Dying Colo. boy, 12, sworn in as police officer www.privateofficer.com

 

BRIGHTON, Colo.May 27 2012 — A boy with an inoperable brain tumor was sworn in as Brighton’s youngest police officer on Thursday.

Jose Rubio-Pavon, 12, always wanted to be a police officer, The Denver Channel reported.

Officers Anna-Marie Cuney, Levy Slagle and Cpl. Monce Portillo swore him in during a ceremony in his hospice room and presented him with a certificate officially recognizing him as a member of the Brighton Police Department, a police uniform shirt and a junior officer badge.

The fifth grader wore a giant smile as he took the oath of office, Brighton Police said.

Donations to help the family with medical bills and living expenses can be made to the Jose Angel Rubio-Pavon Family Fund.

Florida mother kills her four children-then herself www.privateofficer.com

 

PORT ST. JOHN, Fla. May 16 2012 (AP) — A Florida mother who fatally shot her four children before killing herself Tuesday called three of the kids who had sought help from a neighbor back to the house before firing the fatal shots, authorities said.

Tonya Thomas, 33, fatally shot her four children, who ranged in age from 12 to 17, said Lt. Tod Goodyear, a spokesman for the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office.

Three of the children had gone to a neighbor’s front door before dawn to say their mother had shot them. The mother then called the children back to the house and killed them, Goodyear said.

“From what the neighbors said, she was very calm. She walked out and called them back. They turned around and walked back to the house,” Goodyear said.

The neighbor then heard gunshots and called 911.

Another neighbor told deputies that Thomas sent a text message in the middle of the night saying she wanted to be cremated with her children.

“He didn’t see the text until he woke up this morning,” Goodyear said.

Deputies identified the children as Pebbles Johnson, 17; Jaxs Johnson, 15; Jazzlyn Johnson, 13; and Joel Johnson, 12.

The shooting happened in Port St. John, about 15 miles west of Cape Canaveral in an area known as the “Space Coast” because it is the home of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the location of numerous famed shuttle launches.

A spokesman for the Department of Children and Families wouldn’t immediately comment on whether the family had a history with the agency.

Dispatch records released Tuesday show that authorities responded to Thomas’ house on three successive days in April.

In the first visit, on Easter Sunday, Thomas reported that her son had thrown a bicycle through a window at the house. The next day, Thomas called to report that her son had kicked and punched her when she tried to wake him up for school. The following day, child welfare investigators visited the house to look into allegations of inadequate supervision of the children.
Records also showed that Thomas was arrested in 2002 on a misdemeanor battery charge for striking the father of her children. The charge was later dropped. Two years earlier, she filed a domestic violence complaint against Joe Johnson, but that was dismissed after a hearing.

Jamie Hudson, whose mother lives two doors down from the family, said the boys in the family were known to shoot BBs at a home across the street and had threatened to set it on fire.

“It has been an ongoing problem on our street with them,” Hudson said.

Goodyear said Jaxs Johnson had recently been arrested on a domestic violence charge. He said he didn’t know if the boy had been accused of hitting his mother or causing damage at the house.

Austin Lewis, a 16-year-old classmate of Pebbles Johnson, said the family “had problems like everybody else but nothing that drastic.”

He described Pebbles Johnson as “very loving and caring.”

“Always with a smile,” Lewis said. “Didn’t let anything affect her. She was always in a good mood.”

A pastor at the church the family attended described it as “normal stuff.”

“I think he was punching some walls or something,” said Jarvis Wash, pastor of the Real Church in Rockledge, Fla.

Wash said the family attended services last Sunday but had been absent for a few weeks before that.

“I don’t know what could have happened in the past couple of days,” Wash said. “It’s a tragedy to the church and the community.”

Police says kidnap-slaying suspect Adam Mayes dead; 2 girls OK www.privateofficer.com

 

GUNTOWN, Miss.May 11 2012 — A manhunt for a fugitive accused of a double-slaying and kidnapping two children ended Thursday after the suspect apparently shot himself and died. The girls he fled with were found safe, police said.

Adam Mayes, 35, was killed Thursday evening after a SWAT team acted on a tip and found him and the girls near New Albany, Miss. When they went to arrest him, he shot himself in the head, said Guntown Police Chief Michael Hall.

The girls, AlexandrIa Bain, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, were being taken to a hospital for observation, Hall said. It was not immediately clear if they were with Mayes when he was killed.

Mayes had been charged with first-degree murder in the April 27 deaths of Jo Ann Bain, 31, and her daughter, Adrienne, 14. Their bodies were found buried outside the Mayes’ home a week after they were reported missing by Jo Ann Bain’s husband.

Mayes’ wife, Teresa, also is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths. She told investigators he killed Jo Ann and Adrienne Bain at their Whiteville, Tenn., home so he could abduct the two young sisters, according to court documents.

“Thank God it’s over and the babies are safe,” said Teresa Mayes’ sister, Bobbi Booth. “That’s all that mattered. I’m just glad it turned out the way it did.”

Teresa Mayes told investigators that after she saw her husband kill the two in the garage at the Bain home, she drove him, the younger girls and the bodies to Mississippi, according to affidavits filed in court. She faces six felony counts in the case: two first-degree murder charges and four especially aggravated kidnapping charges.

Authorities refused to comment on the motive for the April 27 slayings and abductions.

Mayes’ mother-in-law, Josie Tate, told The Associated Press that Mayes thought the missing sisters might actually be his daughters and it caused problems in his marriage to her daughter, Teresa, who is jailed in the case.

“She was tired of him doting on those two little girls that he claimed were his,” Tate said.

Adam Mayes’ mother, Mary Mayes, also has been charged with conspiracy to commit especially aggravated kidnapping.

Mary Mayes’ attorney, Somerville attorney Terry Dycus, said his client maintains she is not guilty.

The hunt for Adam Mayes and the two young sisters encompassed parts of at least three counties in northern Mississippi. State and local law enforcement agents on Thursday searched a densely wooded area about 10 miles from Mayes’ home near Guntown.

Dee Hart, who organized a Tuesday night vigil for the girls in Bolivar, Tenn., said their prayers were answered.

“No words can express our elation,” she said by phone. “We know prayers brought those babies home. I can’t wait to see them.”

Source:the tennessean

Three children killed, 5 others injured in NC fire www.privateofficer.com

 

 

ONSLOW COUNTY, NC Feb 24 2012 – Three children were killed Thursday morning in a house fire in Onslow County.

According to Sheriff Ed Brown, Tabitha Pittman, 12, Elijah Pittman, 8, and Gabriel Pittman, 6, were on the first floor of the home. It is possible the oldest child was trying to help the other two get out.

According to authorities with the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were dispatched to a fire in the 2100 block of Wilmington Highway Thursday morning around 5 a.m.

When deputies and fire crews arrived, the house was completely engulfed in flames, and they were met by the home’s injured residents who had escaped.

Deputies and firemen attempted to enter the home to rescue the remaining family members, but were unable to due to extreme smoke and flames.

As soon as possible, firemen went inside the home and discovered the victims who were killed in the fire in the house’s living room.

Authorites say the home belonged to Samuel and Johnetta Pittman.

According to WITN, Johnetta and her five other children were injured in the fire. She and her daughter Hannah, 10, were taken to the Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill. The other children injured are Samantha, 16, 15-year-old twins Adrianne and Gabrielle, and Johnathan, 4.

According to officials at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, Samantha, Adrianne and Gabrielle were all in good condition Thursday evening. Johnetta, Hannah, and Johnathan’s conditions are unknown at this time.

Authorities told WITN the twins suffered impact injuries after they jumped from a second floor window.

WITN is reporting that Samuel Pittman was working overnight and not at home when the fire started.

When fire crews arrived to the scene, flames and smoke were shooting from the home. It took officials about 45 minutes to contain the fire.

It is unclear what caused the fire at this time. Officials told WITN they are still trying to make sure the house is safe enough for investigators to begin their probe.

According to the media outlet, this is not the first time Pittman lost their home in a fire. A friend of the family said their house in Richlands caught fire eight years ago.

I wanted to give you a quick update on how the Red Cross is assisting the Pittman family from the Onslow County fire this morning. Because of the magnitude of this event, we have several chapters and regions involved in the response.

According to officials, the American Red Cross has stepped in and is providing temporary housing, food and clothing to the family.

“Although we are unable to release specifics due to confidentially laws, Red Cross volunteers and mental health professionals will continue to assist the families through the coming days as requested,” said officials in a statement.

Anyone who wishes to help the Pittman family during this time can contact Walter Scott with the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office at 910-989-4008 or 910-389-4685.

Gloria Joles, the Sheriff’s Administrative Secretary, is also helping and can be reached at the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office at 910-989-4001.

Receipts for all donations will be given at the time a donation is received.

For those who wish to donate clothing to the Pittman family, the following is a list of clothing sizes:

Men

• Size 31 x 32 pants

• Size medium shirts

Women

• Size 12, 14 pants – teenagers

• Size 3,5,7 pants – teenagers

• Size 16 pants – mother

• Size XL tops – mother/teenagers

• Size small tops – teenager

Girls

• Size 10/12 pants

• Size 10/12 tops

Boys

• Size 4/5 pants

• Size 4/5 shirts

Source:WECT/WITN