3 Chicago teens accused of raping girl, posting attack on Facebook

What is wrong with today’s youth?  Where are their parents?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/19/3-chicago-teens-accused-raping-girl-posting-attack-on-facebook/

Three Chicago teenagers are accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl and posting the attack on Facebook.

Prosecutors say 15-year-old Kenneth Brown, Justin Applewhite and Scandale Fritz, both 16, attacked the girl at Fritz’ home on Dec. 15.

According to court records, Fritz took the girl to the basement of his home and assaulted her. Fritz allegedly brought Brown and Applewhite to the basement where they assaulted her as Fritz videotaped the rapes. Fritz was identified because he turned the camera toward his face.

Court documents indicate the video was first posted on Brown’s Facebook account. It was later posted on Fritz’ and Applewhite’s Facebook pages.

The three were ordered held Friday in lieu $900,000 bail for aggravated criminal sexual assault. It wasn’t immediately known if they have lawyers.

Search for John Wayne Gacy victims solves decades-old missing person case

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/search-for-john-wayne-gacy-victims-solves-decades-old-missing-person-case

A DNA test used by investigators to identify victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy has helped solve a 41-year-old New Jersey missing persons case, officials announced Tuesday.

Sixteen-year-old Steven Soden went missing on April 3, 1972, but his remains were not identified until 2012, when authorities matched them with a DNA sample from his sister.

Soden’s relatives contacted the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in 2011 after hearing about Sheriff Thomas Dart’s efforts to identify several of Gacy’s victims. They believed Soden may be one of them, officials said.

“We always had hopes that we’d somehow find him alive,” Steven’s brother, Ron Soden, 73, told NBC 4 New York Tuesday from his home in Tacoma, Wash. “In this day and age, it’s so much easier to find someone over the Internet.”

The teen, who lived at an orphanage, was last seen alive on April 3, 1972, running away with 12-year-old Donald Caldwell, from the Bass River Camp Grounds in Burlington County, N.J., during a group camping trip, officials said. Neither boy was ever seen again.

Soden may have headed to Chicago, where his biological father lived, his relatives suggested — and there he may have come into contact with Gacy.

Gacy killed 33 teenage boys and young men in Chicago from 1972 to 1978. He was executed for his crimes in 1994. Seven of his victims remain unidentified.

At Dart’s request, a DNA sample was taken from Soden’s sister, but there was no match between her and any of the unidentified Gacy victims.

In December 2012, however, her profile matched that of unidentified human skeletal remains found 13 years earlier in New Jersey.

Over the next few months, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and New Jersey State Police conducted further investigation and obtained additional DNA samples from Soden’s half siblings, including a paternal half sibling, to make an accurate identification.

Genetic testing was performed at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.

The remains were discovered in the woods in Burlington County in April 2000 — not far from where Soden was last seen.

New Jersey State Police say they’re still searching for Caldwell as well as additional evidence in Soden’s death, according to Philadelphia NBC affiliate WCAU. His exact cause of death is still unknown.

“You always hope for the best,” Ron Soden told NBC 4 New York. “But when you finally get an answer, a partial answer…” He trailed off.

“It’s sad,” he continued. “The sense of him being so young, and the way it happened, and where it was. He probably ran away because he thought nobody cared about him. It’s just not a good story.”

Fast-food workers stage walkouts over wages

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/11/fast-food-workers-stage-walkouts/2152603/

The protest in Detroit follows similar walkouts in St. Louis, New York and Chicago.

Fast-food workers and labor activists staged sporadic walkouts and protests at various chain eateries in Friday as part of an organized nationwide protest to gain better wages and working conditions.

Organizers in Detroit said several hundred food workers participated in the walkouts, which succeeded in disrupting operations at six chain restaurants in the city, including two McDonald’s, a Subway, a Burger King, a Long John Silver’s and a Popeyes.

Workers at more than 30 fast-food restaurants in St. Louis walked off the job Thursday in a similar one-day strike. That followed strikes at fast-food chains in New York and Chicago.

The Detroit strike was organized by a coalition of labor, faith and activist groups calling itself the Michigan Workers Organizing Committee. Strike relief payments of $50 per striker were offered to those who walked off their jobs, organizers said.

Detroit pastor Charles Williams II of the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church said workers want better working conditions, the right to unionize and an increase in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $7.40.

“There’s really nothing you can accomplish in terms of taking care of a family with that wage,” Williams said.

The one-day protest started early this morning at a McDonald’s on Gratiot, one of about 50 eateries organizers said they planned to target.

The day’s activities concluded with a large rally and march outside a McDonald’s in New Center. An estimated 200 marchers shut down rush hour traffic for several minutes before the group moved to the sidewalks after police arrived.

Demetrice Kidd, 35, of Detroit said he skipped his Taco Bell job to take part in the strike day and march. A single father of a 7-year-old son, Kidd said he barely gets by on his hourly wage of $7.75.

“Unfortunately, here in Detroit, the cost of living is pretty high, but not a lot of people are being paid well,” he said.

Brandishing a bullhorn, Pastor W.J. Rideout III of All God’s People Church in Detroit helped lead marchers up and down a stretch of West Grand Boulevard.

“(Fast-food chains) make $200 billion a year, and they’re crying about giving minimum-wage workers $15 an hour?” Rideout said later. “It’s time to stop giving them slave wages and give them something that they deserve.”

A McDonald’s corporate representative was not immediately available for comment this afternoon.

Mike Telly, manager of the McDonald’s in Detroit, said several protesters stood outside his restaurant from early Friday morning to about 11:30 a.m. He said the activists arrived on a bus that later returned to pick them up.

According to the manager, some of the activists entered the restaurant and offered workers $50 to walk out and join them.

Although Telly said that none of his workers walked out, a spokeswoman for the strike coalition, Darci McConnell, said at least 13 workers at the McDonald’s either walked out or never showed up.

Aris Lynch, 21, who worked the front counter register at the McDonald’s, said activists came inside and urged her to join, but she turned down their offer.

“My job is more important than losing it,” Lynch said.

McDonald’s employee Keith Bullard, 29, of Inkster said he walked out of work to join the strike wave. A married father with two young children, Bullard said he makes $7.50 an hour and has trouble getting more than 16 hours a week. But he said he works hard during those hours.

“We deserve $15 an hour because we work hard for it,” he said.