The in-school assault was serious enough that several credentialed media sources reported on it, and how the school was warned, in advance, that the attack would occur, and did nothing.
But you know what all of the media sources I linked did not mention? It has been reported by the Daily Mail that the assailant was not a real girl, but a boy self-identifying as a girl: Continue reading
We have previously covered the death of 12-year-old Thomas “TJ” Siderio, sent to his eternal reward after he shot at police. Naturally, then-Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw suspended and then fired Police Officer Edsaul Mendoza, and, despite the Commissioner declining to publicly name the officer, for his safety, The Philadelphia Inquirer ferreted out his name and published it. Naturally, the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner charged Officer Mendoza with among other things, first degree murder and third-degree murder. Now, two years later, Mr Mendoza has pleaded guilty of doing his job:
Former Philly cop who shot and killed 12-year-old T.J. Siderio pleads guilty to third-degree murder
Edsaul Mendoza was charged with murder two months after the shooting in March 2022.
by Rodrigo Torrejón and Ellie Rushing | Friday, April 19, 2024 | 12:36 PM EDT
Edsaul Mendoza, the former Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Thomas “T.J.” Siderio in South Philadelphia more than two years ago, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder on Friday — becoming the first city officer in recent history to face conviction for murder related to a fatal on-duty shooting.
Mendoza, 28, was charged with first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter after prosecutors said he chased T.J., then shot him in the back at near point-blank range after the boy tossed away a gun he had been carrying. The March 2022 shooting made T.J. the youngest person ever killed by a city police officer.
Mendoza’s plea marked only the second time a Philadelphia police officer has been convicted of a fatal shooting in recent years, and the first to be convicted of murder. Former police officer Eric Ruch was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter for shooting Dennis Plowden Jr., who was unarmed, after a car chase in 2017 and was sentenced to 11 ½ to 23 months in prison.
I have noted dozens of times that the Inquirer does not publish mugshots of accused or even convicted criminals, and I frequently have to do further online searches to find the mugshots I do publish. But the photo above? The newspaper was certainly willing to ignore its previous policies and publish Mr Mendoza’s photo. I screen captured it from the Inky’s online story at 4:08 PM EDT today. The newspaper did the same thing in the case of former Officer Eric Ruch.
Under Title 18 §106(b)(2) a crime is a felony in the first degree if the sentence thereto can exceed ten years, and for third degree murder maxes out at 40 years. Though the story does not indicate that there was a plea deal in place, my guess is that there was, and Mr Mendoza will receive a far more lenient sentence., perhaps similar to Mr Ruch’s 11½-to-23-month sentence, and much of that might already have been served. I hope that he’s out of jail soon.
We have frequently used the terms ‘journolism,’ or ‘journolist’, the spelling of which comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And we have also mockingly referred to The Philadelphia Enquirer: RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
Now here they go again! Continue reading
I’ve got to hand it to the people at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania! When the news came out that Dr Margaret Somerville, of that fine institution, allegedly had some sort of sexual contact with a student many years ago, they, or at least someone, very diligently scrubbed out any references to the accused in which her photo was available. But a Google search for margaret somerville friends central, for images, was still good!
A Friends’ Central Latin teacher accused of sexual misconduct has resigned after a school investigation
Margaret Somerville was accused earlier this year of having sexual contact with a student “some 20 years ago,” the school said Monday.
by Maddie Hanna | Monday, April Fool’s Day, 2024 | 4:25 PM EDT
A longtime Latin teacher at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood was accused earlier in the school year of having sexual contact with a student two decades ago, and an internal investigation found the allegations credible, school officials said Monday. Continue reading
Can someone tell me why I am paying $285.48 per year for a newspaper which censors the news?
When I first saw this photo in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, I immediately asked myself, “Self, is that really a girl?” So, I read a story I might normally have skipped.
Bensalem teen faces 15 to 40 years in prison for killing a 12-year-old girl and showing her corpse on Instagram
Ash Cooper admitted her guilt Thursday and was sentenced to prison.
by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 3:41 PM EDT | Updated: 6:02 PM EDT
A Bensalem teen who shot and killed a 12-year-old girl, then displayed her corpse in an Instagram video call as she sought help in hiding her crime will spend 15 to 40 years in prison after admitting her guilt Thursday.
Ash Cooper, 18, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related crimes in the shooting death of Morgan Connors in the trailer Cooper shared with her father in the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park in November 2022.
In accepting the guilty plea, Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey L. Finley decried Cooper’s actions and lamented Morgan’s death.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” he said. “A tragedy no family should ever have to undergo.”
It turns out that “Ash” Cooper is actually Joshua Cooper, as reported by London’s Daily Mail. The Inquirer did leave a clue, in that the hyperlinks in the newspaper’s story took us to stories noting that the killer was named Joshua Cooper at the time those stories were published, but if you read reporter Rodrigo Torrejón’s story, there isn’t the first indication that the murderer is actually a male.
The Daily Mail also told us things that the Inky decided to omit:
Cooper, who was 16 at the time of the murder, also allegedly told police she and Connors were in a sexual relationship. . . .
During the investigation, officials discovered Cooper was accused of sexual assault in a previous unrelated case. She was found guilty in juvenile court.
The victim was in court on Thursday as Cooper received his sentence.
So, not only was young Mr Cooper, 16 at the time, having sex with a 12-year-old, but he was previously convicted of a sexual assault on a different person. How is it that the Daily Mail, from 3,500 miles away had this, but the Inquirer couldn’t get that information from a bordering county?
Well, of course the reporters at the Inky knew. The first story on the murder appeared on November 26, 2022, and the second on March 6, 2023, at which point he was still identified as Joshua Cooper. Now, after that time, we find out that young Mr Cooper is ‘transitioning’, trying to become a girl, and no one asks, “Is he really transgendered and ‘transitioning,’ or is he just doing this to stay out of adult men’s prison?” As you can see from the Daily Mail’s photo, Mr Cooper is not exactly a big guy, and perhaps he had watched NCIS, and saw the scene in which Leroy Jethro Gibbs tells a couple of young college kids, “Believe me, son, you will not do well in prison.”
Were I to ask the editors of the newspaper why they concealed the fact that young Mr Cooper is ‘transgender,’ and referred to him in exclusively feminine terms, they might tell me that hey, that has nothing to do with the murder. I would reject that argument, since it’s obvious that the previously convicted sex criminal was also f(ornicating) young Miss Connors — the London newspaper noted that court records stated that the victim’s body “was found laying facedown with her pants around her ankles” — and that the victim’s state of undress indicated that something sexual had occurred. More, the fact that Mr Cooper is claiming to be a girl will have a huge impact on to which prison he will be sent for hopefully the full forty years. One of us wonders on how the newspaper will cover that story.
I have written it previously: when I see a story in the credentialed media about the sexual abuse of a minor, if it is written in a manner to obscure the sex of the victim, “I suspect that the abuse was homosexual in nature.” Now, fresh on the heels of our stories about April Bradford’s sexual abuse of two female middle and high school students, this one appeared in my media feed, from the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Teacher sexually abused student for years, including in her classroom, Iowa cops say
By Mike Stunson | Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 4:53 PM CST
A teacher faces sexual abuse charges following a yearslong “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a student, Iowa police say.
Rachel Whiteside, a 34-year-old teacher and coach with the Ankeny Community School District, turned herself in Wednesday, Feb. 21, according to the city of Ankeny. She is charged with third-degree child abuse, four counts of sexual exploitation by a school employee, and lascivious conduct with a minor.Rachel Whiteside, via Iowa News Now
Authorities learned in January of the incidents involving Whiteside when the victim came forward to the Ankeny School District, officials said.
The victim reported being in ninth grade when the abuse began, KCCI reported, citing court documents. The victim was 14 years old at the time.
Police said the “sexual conduct” continued for years while the student attended the Ankeny Community School District between 2015 and 2018. The incidents continued until the victim was 23, according to the Des Moines Register.
There’s more at the original. Neither the Lexington Herald-Leader, where I first saw the story on Sunday morning, nor the Kansas City Star, another McClatchy newspaper, had the mugshot of the accused, even though it was available in several places. The Des Moines Register, a Gannett newspaper which Mike Stunson’s article cites, also failed to include Miss Whiteside’s photo.
Why was I interested at all? As I stated, when I don’t see any references to the victim’s sex, I always assume that it was homosexual in nature, and I wanted to confirm my suspicion. And yup, Mr Stunson’s article was written in a manner in which the victim’s sex was carefully concealed.
But The Des Moines Register let it slip, just barely, and just once, in the seventh paragraph down:
She (Miss Whiteside) also kept photographs of the victim in her classroom, and had kept a note written by the victim when she was a student in middle or high school in her desk drawer, according to court documents.
Emphasis mine.
Mr Stunson referenced the Des Moines Register article in his original, which included that reference to the victim’s sex, so, unless he’s a sloppy reader — something which is always a possibility — he knew that the victim was female, and wrote his article in a manner deliberately to conceal it.
But there’s more. Iowa News Now reported, in a reference which was easily found by a Google search of Rachel Whiteside, part of the victim’s statement to law enforcement:
As a minor, I was confused about my sexuality and wasn’t sure about my own identity. Rachel Whiteside groomed me and abused me. It wasn’t until just before I turned 23 that I broke ties with her.
Did Mr Stunson not do any more research? Does he believe that people wouldn’t be asking that question? Of course, to be fair, he could well be following the directives of his editors?
It is the Accepted Wisdom of our good friends on the left that homosexuality has nothing to do with the sexual abuse of minors, nothing at all, but it certainly seems that a much greater incidence of such reported crimes are homosexual in nature than the prevalence of homosexuals in our society. I suppose that we weren’t supposed to notice that.
We have used the headline, “Journolism: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts”, thrice before, and yup, here they go again.
The First Street Journal reported on this story at 12:07 PM EST today, which was 28 minutes after Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing‘s story, but our sources were older. Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley published the accused’s mugshot at 10:02 AM, but he also published the (alleged) offender’s previous record, and the fact that he’d been released with a completely unsecured bond, at 7:42 PM yesterday.
The image to the left is a screen capture from the Inquirer’s website taken at 2:18 PM today; I thought it important to document it, with the newspaper’s timestamp visible.
You know what isn’t in Miss Rushing’s story, at least as published at 11:39 AM? There is absolutely no mention that Kenneth Rogers, the accused, was previously accused of attempted murder and first-degree aggravated assault last June, or that he was released with no bond in December, and, of course, the Inky used a stock photo rather than Mr Rogers’ mugshot. The newspaper seems to only publish photos of people accused of crimes if they are policemen.
Mr Rogers initial bond was set at $750,000, on June 3, 2023, requiring a cash bond of 10%, or $75,000. The accused was unable to post that bond, and languished in jail until December 15, 2023, without being convicted of anything, when he was finally released with his bond being unsecured, which means no money was posted.
Which brings us to the case of Cody Monroe Heron. As we reported on October 5, 2023, Mr Heron was charged with aggravated assault, the same charge that Mr Rogers faced last June, but he was not charged with attempted murder, as Mr Rogers was in June of 2023, and again today. District Attorney Larry Krasner and the DA’s Office requested that Mr Heron’s bail be set at $5,000,000, though it wound up being initially set at $2,500,000. We then reported, on October 16, 2023, that when Mr Heron’s attorney requested a reduction in bail, because there was no way Mr Heron could meet that $2,500,000 bail amount, it was instead increased to $4,000,000.
After four months and two days in jail, Mr Heron pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault and one count of possession of an instrument of crime. He will be sentenced in June, and prosecutors stated that they intended to seek a sentence of three to six years in prison.
The obvious question becomes: why was Mr Heron effectively denied bail, by having it initially set more than thrice what Mr Rogers’ bail originally was, and why was it then increased by $1,500,000 while Mr Rogers was just set free? Mr Heron’s offense, while certainly serious, despite the fact that no one was actually injured, was one not likely to be repeated, while Mr Rogers’ offense was not only more likely to be repeated, and (allegedly) has now been repeated.
Miss Rushing’s story did conclude with the note that it was a developing story, and would be updated, but at least as of this publication, at 3:22 PM EST, it has not been.
__________________________________
Update! There was an update to the story time stamped at 4:44 PM EST:
On Monday, Rogers was charged with aggravated assault, robbery, making terroristic threats, and related crimes. He is being held on $750,000 bail.
This is only the latest time Rogers has been accused of violence. In just the last three years, he has twice been charged with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing two people in separate incidents. And over the last decade, he’s been in and out of jail on robbery, theft, and drug possession charges, records show.
In June 2020, Rogers was arrested after police said he stabbed his cousin in the torso. According to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest, Rogers owed his cousin about $7,000, and the two got into a fight over it near Tioga and Jasper Streets. Rogers then stabbed his cousin in the chest, puncturing his lung, and vowed to kill him before a bystander intervened, the victim told police, according to the records.
Rogers was arrested and charged with attempted murder, but after the victim failed to appear at multiple court hearings, a judge dismissed the charges, records show. The district attorney’s office refiled the charges, records show, but a judge again tossed the case after the victim failed to appear four more times at scheduled preliminary hearings.
Then, in June 2023, Rogers was again charged with attempted murder after police said he stabbed a man multiple times at the Allegheny station on SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line in Kensington, according to the arrest affidavit.
He was originally held on $750,000 bail. But the victim in that case, who was also unhoused, did not maintain contact with victim’s services and similarly failed to appear at court hearings, said Jane Roh, a spokesperson for the DA’s office.
Following those failures to appear, Common Pleas Court Judge Nicholas Kamau in December reduced Rogers’ bail to unsecured — meaning Rogers could be released without posting bail so long as he did not violate the conditions of his release. Rogers was ordered to house arrest with an electronic monitor following an agreement that he could stay at his mother’s home, Roh said.
So, will we find that the latest victim will choose not to appear?
As is the case with many newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer likes to use on-hand, stock photos to illustrate some of their online stories. This one greatly amused me.
Man died after falling on SEPTA tracks, getting electrocuted at City Hall
The man — who has yet to be identified — fell on the tracks before train service began at 4:40 a.m.
by Beatrice Forman | Monday, February 26, 2024 | 7:52 AM EST | Updated: 8:16 AM EST
A man died at SEPTA’s City Hall station after falling onto the tracks early Monday morning, the transportation authority confirmed.
The incident occurred before Broad Street Line service starts at 4:40 a.m. when a man “made contact with the energized third rail” and was electrocuted, said SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch.
The man has not been identified, and it is unclear what caused him to fall.
“All we know is that he was by himself,” said Busch. “No one else was there.”
So, no foul play is suspected. Considering how much crime has been reported on SEPTA and at SEPTA train stations, that’s actually a relief, not that a story about anyone being killed is somehow good news.
But, as the newspaper continually touts public transportation, I looked closely at the photo used, and there it was, shown through the open subway car door, a man (?) keeled over in his seat, doing what? Sleeping it off, drunk, keeping warm on a winter night, or just another junkie riding the rails while riding high. The Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones, “Driving that train, high on cocaine,” comes to mind.
A hatchet attack and a shooting at SEPTA stations this weekend continued a spate of high-profile violence
Two suspects are in custody after the separate incidents occurred within hours of each other.
by Jeremy Roebuck and Ariana Perez-Castells | Saturday, February 24, 2024 | 10:49 PM EST |Updated: Sunday, February 25, 2024 | 10:21 PM ESTLatest @PhillyPolice booking photo of Kenneth Rogers,28,arrested after police say he attacked man in @SEPTA concourse with hatchet while he had active arrest warrant for attempted murder. Detectives tell me “Hopefully a Philly judge won’t release him on unsecured bail again.”
Two attacks over the weekend at SEPTA stations in Philadelphia continued a recent spate of high-profile violent crimes that have plagued the transit system.
A 20-year-old was shot on a Broad Street Line northbound subway train that had just left the Hunting Park Station just before 9 p.m. Saturday.
Then, less than five hours later, a hatchet-wielding assailant attacked another rider on the subway concourse near the SEPTA station at 8th and Market Streets, police said.
That incident occurred just before 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning. The victim told officers his attacker had struck him six times with the hatchet and kicked him four times in the face. He suffered cuts to the back of his head and bruising to his face, according to police reports on the attack.
No, of course the Inquirer didn’t publish the (alleged) “hatchet-wielding assailant’s” mugshot; it was up to Fox 29 News’ Steve Keeley to do that!
The distinguished Mr Rogers was arrested and jailed on June 3, 2023, for several charges relating to an assault, including attempted murder and aggravated assault PA 18 §2702(a)(1) with an attempt to cause serious bodily injury with extreme indifference to the value of human life. That is a first-degree felony, which under PA 18 §106 has a maximum sentence of twenty years in the penitentiary. His bail amount was set at $750,000, with a 10% minimum cash bond.
On July 5, 2023, Mr Rogers was ordered held for court. However, on December 15, 2023, he was released on an unsecured $750,000 bond, which means, for all practical purposes, no bail at all.
The Eighth Amendment guarantees a right to reasonable bail for criminal suspects; Mr Rogers had, upon his arrest, been imprisoned for a crime of which he had not been convicted, and spent six months and 12 days behind bars, without being convicted. To release a criminal suspect, without bail, who has a bail which has been set at an amount which he cannot raise, can be argued to be reasonable.
The real problem is that, in the six months and 12 days Mr Rogers was locked up, District Attorney Larry Krasner and the District Attorney’s Office had not brought Mr Rogers to trial. This isn’t even an issue of Mr Krasner and his office having ridiculously lenient policies toward crime, but simply not doing their jobs at all, not bringing a criminal accused of a violent, first-degree felony, to trial quickly enough for him not to be released.
So now, just 72 days after he was released without any bail, Mr Rogers, who is apparently homeless, is once again accused of trying to kill someone.
The Powers That Be in the City of Brotherly Love have been going full speed ahead on promoting public transportation and SEPTA, but the first step is to clean out the junkies and criminals from the buses, trains and train/subway stations, and that can’t be done until Mr Krasner and his minions start doing their jobs!
My good internet friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that the local police and credentialed media decided to keep secret the identity of the “suspect” who murdered two police officers and a paramedic on Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville.
Mr McCain noted:
(The alleged suspect) petitioned the court in 2020 to have his gun rights restored, which a judge denied.
However, the Associated Press reported:
The suspect, who officials said had multiple guns and large amounts of ammunition, also died.
Clearly, clearly! this report must be false. Since the (alleged) suspect was legally prohibited from owning or possessing firearms, he couldn’t possibly have had the weapons in question.
The only reasonable answer is that one of the children in the house owned and had the firearms, one of the kids shot the police officers and fireman, and the (alleged) suspect, in nobly trying to shield the children, wound up sacrificing his life.
I started this article early, but put it on the shelf, waiting to see if The Philadelphia Inquirer would update it, but nope, the 8:28 AM EST version of the story is the last one posted. More, it no longer shows on the main page of our nation’s third oldest newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the sixth largest city, and seventh largest metropolitan area in our country. And a site search for Shannon Gooden, made at 4:50 PM EST, the (alleged) suspect, returned nothing connected with this story.
Mr McCain, and many others, have wondered why the credentialed media kept the name, and thus the photo, of the (alleged) suspect under wraps, and many have suggested that it is because Mr Gooden is black, and that had he been a MAGA hat wearing white male, his name and image would have been all over the news. Perhaps that’s true, though there’s at least the possibility that the police were waiting until Mr Gooden’s family had been notified.
But it wasn’t just the Inky which never updated a story to identify Mr Gooden. A Google search for Shannon Gooden, conducted at 5:10 PM EST, returned only one national news source, CBS News, with the story on the first page. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Duluth News-Tribune, both had stories, but they’re local news sources, not national.
Two police officers and a fireman working as a paramedic, murdered, and this story is being quickly memory-holed.
