MIAMI BEACH, Florida A man killed his two young children by throwing them off the 15th floor of a landmark South Beach hotel and then jumped to his own death Saturday, police said.
Edward Van Dyk, 43, tossed his two sons, ages 4 and 8, to their deaths around 8:20 a.m., Miami Beach Police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said. Authorities did not release the names of the two boys.
The children's mother, Qinuo, 40, was not physically injured. Hernandez said the family was vacationing from Alton, Illinois, at the Loews Hotel in South Beach, where the couple were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary.
Qinuo Van Dyk heard one of her children screaming from an adjacent hotel room. When she walked into the room she saw her husband going over the balcony, Hernandez said.
When she looked over the railing she saw her husband and two children lying on the mezzanine roof, which is about two floors off the ground.
She told police that the couple had been having marital problems for the past six months, but had not been arguing right before the incident, Hernandez said.
People in neighboring rooms told police they did not hear anything.
"It's a terrible tragedy. It's unfortunate that this gentleman was so selfish and in an effort to get back at his wife he took the two most loved people in the world away from her," Hernandez said.
Hernandez said Qinuo Van Dyk does not know what prompted her husband, a radiologist at Alton Memorial Hospital, to do this.
"There was no indication that he would be capable of doing something as horrible as this," Hernandez said. "She's totally in shock that this has happened and doesn't know why he did what he did."
Police wheeled the three bodies into the hotel on gurneys covered in red sheets and loaded them into a medical examiner's van. Outside the hotel there were few indications of the events, except two police cars parked in front.
Hotel guest Christopher Carreras, from New York, who is staying on the 14th floor, said he could see where the victims had fallen.
"They already had tents covering the bodies. You can't see nothing. It's like a big awning," said Carreras.
A Loews Hotel spokeswoman in Miami would not comment, but said there was an ongoing police investigation.
Police in Tulsa, Okla., are searching for a man who hid under a woman's car at a Wal-Mart parking lot and then licked her toes as she loaded groceries into the vehicle, according to a report.
The woman said she was at the Tulsa Wal-Mart located near 81st Street and Lewis when she felt her toes being licked. She assumed it was a dog but when she looked down, she saw it was a man lying under her vehicle.
"I felt something lick my foot," the woman said. "I looked at him and I said, 'What in the hell are you doing?' And that's exactly what I said, 'What are you doing?'"
The culprit got up and ran away before police arrived at the scene. The woman said the man who licked her toes is Hispanic or Indian, about 5-foot-9 and weighs 150 pounds. He was wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans. The victim filed a police report and a witness also saw it happen.
A Tulsa County assistant district attorney said if the man is caught, he'll face a misdemeanor charge of battery or outraging public decency.
#3
Once again a high-school guidance counselor failed to steer this guy in the proper direction. Everyone knows that foot pervs get jobs as shoe salesmen.
#5
How long do you suppose he had to lurk suspiciously in the parking lot while waiting for a woman with open-toed shoes and a high vehicle to come along? Damn those SUVs!
#6
If she was properly attired in a burka and army boots this god fearing man would not have been tempted. She was asking for it. She should be beaten for causing him to sin.
MINSK, Belarus (AP) - A monument to Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled Friday in the Belarusian capital Minsk, provoking protests from human rights defenders and opposition politicians. Dzerzhinsky, reviled by critics of the Soviet era, helped establish the first Soviet secret service, called the Cheka, in 1917 under Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB, was responsible for mass arrests and executions.
The towering 10-foot bronze figure, a copy of the statue of Dzerzhinsky that pro-democracy crowds tore down in front of KGB headquarters in Moscow in 1991, occupies a spot inside the grounds of the Military Academy. Dzerzhinksky was known as 'Iron Felix." He was born in modern-day Belarus.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
The first Soviet secret police, maybe, but hardly the first in Russia.
#3
My old Soviet History professor told a story about a statue of Dzerzhinsky which supposedly stands (or at least once stood) in Warsaw:
An American scholar, in Warsaw researching Polish archives, walked past it every day, and every day he noticed there were fresh flowers laid at the feet of the statue. He finally asks one of his Polish hosts why this is. He is told, "Dzerzhinsky was a Pole, and no Pole ever killed more Russians."
Posted by: Mike ||
05/27/2006 7:18 Comments ||
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Sleep well, Fred!
Myelectionanalysis.com:
"Today the Eastern District of Pennsylvania handed down its decision in DiMeo v. Max. As always when reading my analysis, see the standard disclaimer in my about section...
...But underneath the rhetoric is a sound, well-reasoned, and important opinion. It squarely holds that a messageboard owner cannot be held liable for posts made by others on his board under the Communications Decency Act. More importantly, it applies the CDA to the VAWA Amendments discussed here, and makes clear that those Amendments dont apply to an internet service provider. It also heavily implies that there is no private cause of action to begin with. These are important decisions for shielding site owners (such as yours truly) from lawsuits for things a commenter says, especially those that get more traffic than yours truly.
Seriously, read the whole thing. It will be well worth your while." HT to Instapundit
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Read the dismissal - especially bottom of page 4/top of page 5.
Hell, the whole thing is a scream - you rarely see a judge's order quite so entertainingly written. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/27/2006 1:02 Comments ||
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#2
From a bio of Stewart Dalzell:
President George Bush nominated him to fill a judicial vacancy on the federal bench in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1990. He was confirmed by the Senate in 1991. One of Dalzell's most well-known opinions was ACLU v. Reno, the Internet - First Amendment case which declared the unconstitutionality of the Federal Communications Decency Act
The guy is brilliant and truly 'gets' the Internet. A Bush (41) nominee.
A reporter for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch was fired Friday for fabricating portions of a story about reaction to President Bushs immigration speech earlier this month, as well as lifting part of a Washington Post story for the report. A front-page editors note in Saturday paper stated, in part, that the reporter had reported on a fabricated interview and portrayed a scene at a job center [in Herndon,Va.] as though the reporter had visited it. He had not.
The note went on to say that the reporter, Paul Bradley, did not interview Bill Threlkeld, site director for Project Hope and Harmony, as reported in the [May 17] article."
The note stated that Bradley had interviewed the other sources in the story but had not visited Herndon as the story's dateline said. A sentence in the story that described 50 workers sitting at picnic tables waiting for work was taken from a Washington Post story reporting on the town election this month, the note added. A job center for immigrants was a major issue in the election. Also, the pavilion that the story described as protecting the workers from the elements has been planned but not built.
The note added that Bradley, a reporter in the papers Northern Virginia bureau, was dismissed Friday and a review of his past work had begun to see if previous fabrications or incidents of plagiarism had occurred.
#1
MSM continues to implode as factual reportage is mourned. I like Stephen Harper's refusal to speak with the Press Gallery MSM. "Screw taking 'questions' from you biased freaks."
#3
Haven't read the paper yet today (plan to pick it up from the box on the way to duty tonight), so hadn't seen this. Good for the editors.
The Richmond T-D doesn't put up with crap like this. They do run the same prejudiced wire service stories as the other papers (I often wonder if the editors ever read those stories), but they expect integrity from their local reporters - even from their resident death-penalty-hating-and-it-shows-in-his-work reporter.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/27/2006 15:15 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.