A child is dead, found in a torched vehicle near a New Jersey high school, and a man is charged with arson, authorities said Friday.
Cops initially received a 911 call about a fire near Sayreville High School around 10:45 p.m. Thursday. As they were responding, another call came in reporting a related domestic dispute. Police responded to Eisenhower Drive, where they encountered a woman who said a domestic dispute led to Manuel Rivera, 43, leaving the home with their son.
Authorities found Rivera alive, but with burns to his body and a self-inflicted wound at Washington Road, near the back of Sayreville High School, officials say. Next to him was a vehicle on fire; it had been doused in gasoline.
Rivera was taken to a hospital for treatment of his injuries. A preliminary investigation revealed the body of a child in the burned-out vehicle. Prosecutors haven’t definitively identified the body as that of the 9-year-old at this time.
Rivera has been charged with second-degree aggravated arson. Additional charges are pending to autopsy report from the Middlesex County medical examiner’s office. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sayreville Police Department at 732-727-444 or the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office at 732-745-3289.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Rivera had an attorney who could comment on the arson allegation.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
The only survivor of the crash was an 8-year-old child, who was receiving medical attention, according to authorities in the northern province of Limpopo.
The Limpopo provincial government said the bus veered off the Mmamatlakala bridge and plunged 50 meters (164 feet) into a ravine before busting into flames.
Search operations were ongoing, the provincial government said, but many bodies were burned beyond recognition and still trapped inside the vehicle.
Authorities said they believe the bus was traveling from the neighboring country of Botswana to the town of Moria, which hosts a popular Easter pilgrimage.
(Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will set aside C$1 billion ($738 million) to provide low-cost loans for expanding and renovating child care spaces.
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It’s the latest in a series of pre-budget announcements largely aimed at voters aged 40 and under, as Trudeau attempts to address cost-of-living concerns and turn around his sagging poll numbers.
Trudeau’s government launched a national child care program in 2021, pledging C$30 billion over five years, but it’s been criticized by some providers and provincial governments for insufficient funding and long waitlists.
“Not enough families have access to affordable child care spaces – so we’re building more,” Trudeau’s office said in a news release.
It said the upcoming budget, set for April 16, will include a new child care expansion loan program with C$1 billion in low-cost loans and C$60 million in non-repayable grants. The goal is for providers “to build new spaces and renovate their existing child care centers.”
The budget will also provide student loan forgiveness for child care workers who work in rural areas, and an additional C$10 million over two years to train more workers in the sector.
The release said every province and territory in Canada is on track to lower average child care fees to C$10 per day. Before the national plan, daily fees could top C$90 per day in large Canadian cities.
Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland are expected to make pre-budget announcements nearly every day ahead of the budget, with housing a major focus. On Thursday, they revealed a package of measures meant to give renters more rights.
Rescue crews are working again on Sunday morning in the hopes of finding a 6-year-old girl that was swept away in a creek in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night, according to officials.
At 8 a.m., on Sunday, crews resumed a search for a girl who fell into Chester Creek at about 7 p.m. on Saturday night. Officials suspended the search after 10 p.m. on Saturday after searching for the girl for several hours.
Officials told NBC Philadelphia that the incident began at round 7 p.m. on Saturday night when three girls were playing by Chester Creek when two of them slipped on the mud and fell into the water.
Officials suspended the search after 10 p.m. on Saturday after searching for the girl for several hours.WCAU
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One of those girls was able to get herself out, but the 6-year-old is believed to still be in the water, officials said.
The girl’s aunt, Tyeesha Reynolds, told NBC Philadelphia that her daughter tried holding onto the young girl’s jacket but couldn’t, and she got swept away into the creek.
NBC Philadelphia has also been told that several of the girl’s family members also jumped in the water and started searching on their own before crews arrived.
The area of the creek is located near 7th Street and the Avenue of the States in Chester, Delaware County, according to the director of Delaware County’s Department of Emergency Services Tim Boyce.
Rescue boats are in the water looking for the girl as the Coast Guard circles above the scene. The search area includes the Delaware River, according to sources.
The malnourished and badly bruised son of a parenting advice YouTuber politely asks a neighbor to take him to the nearest police station in newly released video from the day his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges in southern Utah.
The 12-year-old son of Ruby Franke, a mother of six who dispensed advice to millions via a popular YouTube channel, had escaped through a window and approached several nearby homes until someone answered the door, according to documents released Friday by the Washington County Attorney’s office. Also released Friday were journals written by Franke describing how she abused and starved her children.
Crime scene photos, body camera video and interrogation tapes were released a month after Franke and business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor, were each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. A police investigation determined religious extremism motivated the women to inflict horrific abuse on Franke’s children, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke announced Friday.
This image taken from body camera footage provided by Washington County Attorney’s Office shows Jodi Hildebrandt, left, and Ruby Franke, center, being arrested on child abuse charges on Aug. 30, 2023, in Ivins, Utah.
/ AP
“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” Clarke said.
Franke, 42, and Hildebrandt, 54, pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse that included convincing Franke’s two youngest children they were evil and subjecting them to manual labor, dayslong fasting and conditions Clarke has described as “concentration camp-like.”
The women, who have said they belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were arrested last August at Hildebrandt’s house in Ivins, a picturesque suburb of St. George, after her neighbor Danny Clarkson opened his door to find the emaciated boy. Their actions have been condemned by other Mormon parenting bloggers who say they misrepresented their community and the religion.
In the video, the boy is seen shoeless, walking away – wearing torn socks with his ankles wrapped in bloody duct tape and plastic wrap – but turns back when Clarkson answers the door. He and his wife, Debi, could be seen on their Ring camera feeding the child, calling 911 and asking him about the lacerations on his ankles and wrists, which the boy insisted were his fault.
“I got these wounds because of me,” the boy tells the couple as they share worried looks. He tells first responders his younger sister is still in Hildebrandt’s house, and police rush to the home.
The boy later told investigators that Hildebrandt had used rope to bind his arms and his feet to weights on the ground. She used a mixture of cayenne pepper and honey to dress his wounds, according to the police report. He had been told by Franke and Hildebrandt that everything being done to him was an act of love.
“I will not feed a demon”
In handwritten journal entries also released Friday, Franke chronicles months of daily abuse that included starving her son and 9-year-old daughter, forcing them to work for hours in the summer heat and isolating them from the outside world. The women often made the kids sleep on hard floors and sometimes locked them in a concrete bunker in Hildebrandt’s basement.
Franke insists repeatedly in her journal that her son is possessed by the devil. In a July 2023 entry titled “Big day for evil,” she describes holding the boy’s head under water and closing off his mouth and nose with her hands. Franke tells him the devil will lie and say she is hurting him but that she is actually trying to save him.
She later justifies withholding food and water from her son, writing, “I will not feed a demon.”
Franke’s attorney, LaMar Winward, and Hildebrandt’s attorney, Douglas Terry, did not immediately respond Friday to requests for comment on the new evidence.
Body camera video shows officers entering Hildebrandt’s house and detaining her on the couch while others scour the winding hallways in search of the young girl. They quickly discover a child with a buzzcut sitting cross-legged in a dark, empty closet. After hours of sitting with the girl and feeding her pizza, police coax her out.
Franke describes shaving the girl’s head several times for whining, and writes in her journal, “If she is going to act sick, she can look sick.”
In Franke’s initial police interview at the station, when asked if she lives in the area or in the northern part of the state, she delivered a blank stare, CBS affiliate KUTV reported. When asked whether she preferred to speak with only one of the two investigators in the room, she replies, “I’ll wait till I have a lawyer.”
Hildebrandt was more talkative, KUTV reported, telling police she had been in the house for the last six years.
“I’m a little nervous,” Hildebrandt said. “I’ve watched too many detective movies.”
“8 Passengers” and “Moms of Truth”
Franke and her husband, Kevin Franke, launched “8 Passengers” on YouTube in 2015 and amassed a large following as they documented their experiences raising six children in a Mormon community in Springville. The couple also have a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, as well as two adult children.
She later began working with Hildebrandt’s counseling company, ConneXions Classroom, offering parenting seminars, launching another YouTube channel and publishing content on their shared Instagram account, “Moms of Truth.”
Jodi Hildebrandt, left, and Ruby Franke are seen in this still from an Aug. 28, 2023, video uploaded to the ConneXions YouTube channel.
ConneXions YouTube channel
Ruby Franke was already a divisive figure in the parent vlogging world. The Franke parents had been criticized online for banning their oldest son from his bedroom for seven months for pranking his brother. In other videos, Ruby Franke talked about refusing to take lunch to a kindergartener who forgot it at home.
The “8 Passengers” YouTube channel has since ended, and Kevin Franke filed for divorce shortly after his wife’s arrest. He appears stunned in interrogation footage when officers inform him of his son’s condition. He had not seen his wife or children since Franke asked him to move out in July 2022, investigators said.
Kevin Franke has filed several petitions in the months since his wife’s arrest in hopes of regaining custody of his four minor children, who were taken into state custody.
Franke’s sisters, Julie Griffiths Deru and Bonnie Hoellein, YouTubers themselves, shared videos detailing Franke’s separation from the family and stating that they were not aware of her actions.
Franke’s parents, Chad and Jennifer Griffiths, said in their statement to the court that for three years they only had “brief communications” with their daughter, where she “accused us of either things that never happen or she grossly exaggerated the events that did.”
“She was delusional,” they said, according to KUTV. “She was so deeply brainwashed we could not recognize her.”
Search and rescue mission in Delaware County ongoing after child falls into Chester Creek
Search and rescue mission in Delaware County ongoing after child falls into Chester Creek
02:04
CHESTER, Pa. (CBS) — A search and rescue mission is ongoing in Chester after a 6-year-old girl fell into Chester Creek, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The family has identified the child as Lin’Ajah Brooker.
Officials told CBS News Philadelphia they received a 911 call reporting that a child fell into Chester Creek on Saturday.
Initial reports from police indicate two girls were playing by the water when the 6-year-old girl slipped on mud and fell into the creek.
The Chester Bureau of Fire is currently working on a search and rescue operation in connection with Delaware County’s water rescue team. The Coast Guard has a small boat on the scene along with a chopper searching the area.
Delaware County emergency services brought down light towers to help search crews with visibility. Crews have also launched drones that have infrared and thermal imaging technology to help with the night search, Chester Fire Commissioner John-Paul Shirley said.
The current is moving rapidly after more than two inches of rain fell in Chester today.
“It’s very rapid currents. There’s a lot of debris in the water which poses a potential hazard to our responders, but they’ve been trained to kind of deal with those situations,” Shirley said.
Lin’ajah’s aunt, Tyeesha Reynolds, says she’s praying she will be found alive.
“They was down there playing and she went down a little too far with the other kids. And my 7-year-old daughter tried to hold her. And she was holding on to my daughter’s coat, and I guess the wind took her,” Reynolds said. “It would be terrifying for me and I’m 40. She’s six. So I’m quite sure she’s terrified.”
Emergency officials were on the scene for hours, but they suspended the search just after 10:30 p.m. Crews will be back out at 8 a.m. to continue looking for Lin’ajah.
At this time only one child is reported missing.
Madeleine Wright
Madeleine Wright is a bilingual general assignment reporter for CBS News Philadelphia. She joined the team in January 2022.
Close to 100 people have been arrested in Australia and the United States in connection with a global online child abuse network uncovered in the aftermath of a high-profile murder of two FBI agents, authorities announced this week.
The myriad charges for alleged child abuse stem from the killings of two FBI special agents, Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger, who were fatally shot in 2021 while serving a warrant in Sunrise, Florida, to search the apartment of a suspect allegedly tied to a case involving violent crimes against children.
FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger and FBI Special Agent Dan Alfin were shot and killed in the line of duty serving a search warrant in Sunrise, Florida, on Feb. 2, 2021.
FBI
The deaths of Alfin and Schwartzenberger, who both specialized in investigating crimes against children, spurred a wider international probe into an illicit online platform whose members are accused of sharing child abuse material on the dark web, according to the Australian Federal Police.
Nineteen Australians, whose ages range from 32 to 81 years old, were recently charged for their alleged involvement in what the agency described in a news release as a “sophisticated” digital network. Members are believed to have produced, searched for and distributed images and videos of child abuse material on the dark web, officials said.
Two people have been sentenced in Australia for their ties to the massive investigation, while the others have active cases in court, according to the federal police. In addition to the 19 arrests, authorities also removed 13 Australian children from harm over the course of the probe. Federal police allege some of those children were “directly abused” and others were removed as a precaution.
Called “Operation Bakis,” the joint investigation involving state and local authorities in various parts of Australia ran alongside a U.S. investigation led by the FBI. The FBI investigation has so far led to the arrests of 79 people allegedly connected to the online network, the Australian Federal Police said. That probe has led to the convictions of 43 people for child abuse offenses, the Associated Press reported.
The suspects — who were arrested across Australia, including in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia — collectively face 138 charges related to the investigation. One suspect described as a “public servant” by federal police was already sentenced to 14 1/2 years in prison in June after pleading guilty to 24 charges. The same month, a call center operator on the NSW Central Coast was sentenced to five years after pleading guilty to possession of an estimated five terabytes of child abuse material.
Australian Federal Police
“The success of Operation Bakis was only possible because of the close working relationship between the AFP-led ACCCE [Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation] and the FBI, and our dedicated personnel who never give up working to identify children who are being sexually assaulted or living with someone who is sharing child abuse material,” said Australian Federal Police Commander Helen Schneider in a statement.
Schneider added that “the lengths that these alleged offenders went to in order to avoid detection makes them especially dangerous – the longer they avoid detection the longer they can perpetuate the cycle of abuse.”
Most of the suspects in Australia worked in jobs that required a high degree of knowledge in the field of information communications technology, the federal police said, noting that alleged members of the online platform “used software to anonymously share files, chat on message boards and access websites within the network.” The suspects are accused of using methods like encryption to remain anonymous online and avoid being identified by law enforcement.
Both Australian and U.S. authorities noted that the success of Operation Bakis hinged on cooperation between agencies in both countries.
“The complexity and anonymity of these platforms means that no agency or country can fight these threats alone,” FBI legal attaché Nitiana Mann said in a separate statement. “As we continue to build bridges through collaboration and teamwork, we can ensure the good guys win and the bad guys lose.”
Mann said the FBI alerted authorities in other countries to additional suspects in their jurisdictions who are allegedly connected to the online child abuse ring, but did not did say which countries, according to the Associated Press.
Nearly 100 people in the United States and Australia have so far been arrested over child sex abuse allegations after the fatal shooting of two FBI agents led to the unraveling of a suspected international pedophile ring, officials announced Tuesday.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said that 19 men had been arrested for allegedly sharing child-abuse material online, while at least 13 children were rescued from further harm as a result of a joint operation with the FBI, dubbed “Operation Bakis.”
The development brought the total number of people arrested as part of the joint probe up to 98, with at least 79 arrests so far carried out by the FBI, according to the AFP.
The joint investigation began after two FBI agents investigating the alleged pedophile ring were fatally shot in 2021 while executing a search warrant in Sunrise, Florida, for a man suspected of being in possession of child abuse material, the AFP noted in a news release.
Special Agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were fatally shot, while the gunman, David Lee Huber, 55, was also killed, NBC News previously reported.
The AFP said the coordinated probe was formally launched in 2022 after the FBI provided the AFP-led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation with intelligence about Australian individuals suspected of being part of a “peer-to-peer network allegedly sharing child abuse material on the dark web.”
Operation Bakis was a joint investigation with Australian state and territory police that had its origins in the murder of two FBI agents in Florida in 2021.Australian Federal Police
The Australian suspects are between the ages of 32 to 81 years old, the AFP said. So far, two have been sentenced, it said.
Most of the Australian suspects were employed in occupations that required a high degree of knowledge on internet networks, the AFP said.
“Members used software to anonymously share files, chat on message boards and access websites within the network,” it said.
Some were also accused of having produced their own child abuse material to share with members of the network, the AFP said.
“Viewing, distributing or producing child abuse material is a horrific crime, and the lengths that these alleged offenders went to in order to avoid detection makes them especially dangerous — the longer they avoid detection the longer they can perpetuate the cycle of abuse,” AFP Commander Helen Schneider said in a statement.
“The success of Operation Bakis demonstrates the importance of partnerships for law enforcement, at a national level here in Australia, but also at an international level,” she said.
“We are proud of our longstanding relationship with the Australian Federal Police resulting in 19 Australian men facing criminal prosecution as a result of our collaborative investigation,” FBI Legal Attaché Nitiana Mann said in a separate statement.
“The complexity and anonymity of these platforms means that no agency or country can fight these threats alone,” Mann said. “As we continue to build bridges through collaboration and teamwork, we can ensure the good guys win and the bad guys lose.”
Mann said that 43 people had been convicted of child abuse offenses in the U.S. as part of the investigation, according to the Associated Press.
The FBI had also alerted other countries to suspects within their jurisdictions, Mann said according to the AP, but did not name those countries.
A new labor-backed campaign plans to spend at least $50 million ahead of the 2024 election to put child and senior care legislation back on the priority list, after it fell out of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda during his administration.
The “Care Can’t Wait” campaign is focused on resurrecting parts of Biden’s “Build Back Better” program, including universal child care and guaranteed paid family and medical leave that Democrats were forced to abandon due to opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats. It will also push for billions in new spending for child and senior care.
The campaign is backed by some of the nation’s largest labor unions — including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) — whose members stand to benefit from expanded federal spending, along with some major left-leaning advocacy groups and super PACs, like Priorities USA.
“Care work makes all other work possible, helping children learn and grow, protecting the injured, ill and aging, and keeping our neighborhoods safe,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers union. “Unfortunately, care work remains largely invisible: unprotected by labor laws, and all too often, informal and unrecognized for just how important it is — and just how important care workers are to the fabric of our society and the functioning of our economy.”
Biden has pushed for more federal support for senior and child care, such as his proposal to invest $775 billion over 10 years. But his agenda ran into opposition on Capitol Hill from moderates, like then-Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and was eventually set aside in favor of infrastructure and climate legislation, both of which passed Congress during his first two years in office.
And when Republicans won back the House in 2022, Biden’s care agenda was effectively dead.
To do anything big in 2025, he would not only need to be re-elected but would likely need Democrats to retake the House and hold the Senate — a tall order given Democrats’ grim prospects in next year’s Senate contests.
In addition to traditional advertising campaigns in key battleground states, the campaign’s coalition aims to contact 10 million infrequent voters, host town halls for presidential and Senate candidates, commission new research and polling to bolster the argument that their policy is popular, and offer “care immersions” for candidates to spend a day working alongside family and professional caregivers.
“Through Care Can’t Wait Action, we can educate and mobilize our communities, sending a powerful message that care is on the ballot in 2024, ensuring that providers and the families who depend on them have the support they need every day,” said AFSCME president Lee Saunders.
Advocates say the Covid pandemic exposed the need for better support for family care providers, plus the need for more care workers and better compensation for them.
“Our country is in a care crisis — families from every walk of life are grappling with the challenge of accessing high-quality, affordable care. Meanwhile, the largely women of color workforce who provide this vital care are barely getting paid enough to get by,”said Fatima Gross Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund.
Alex Seitz-Wald
Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News.
