Mother hangs self-her 4 children, 8 month old survives

HUDSON OAKS, Texas (AP) -- A young mother who may have been depressed apparently hanged three of her small daughters and herself in a closet using pieces of clothing and sashes, authorities said Tuesday.
A fourth child, an 8-month-old daughter, was also found dangling in the closet but was rescued from the family's mobile home.
"It's horrendous. That's all I can say," Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said. The woman was identified as Gilberta Estrada, 25. The infant, Evelyn Frayre, was in good condition at a hospital, Fowler said.
Authorities did not immediately identify the other children, but Fowler said they were apparently ages 5, 3 and 2.
Filly Echeverria, who said she was the children's godmother, identified the dead as Maria Teresa Estrada, Janet Frayre and Magaly Frayre.
After Estrada failed to show up for work, her sister, who lived nearby, forced her way into the locked residence in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth in this rural community of 1,600 people.
The sheriff said the sister rescued the infant when she realized the baby girl was still alive.
The sheriff said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the trailer's doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the woman had been depressed.
The young mother and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, he said.
The sheriff said Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in August against Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, who was believed to be the father of the infant and some of the other children, after an attack on Estrada.
The sheriff said the couple had stopped living together in February. Tuesday was the first emergency police call to Estrada's trailer, and authorities said there was no evidence that Frayre abused the girls.
A telephone listing for Frayre, 38, could not immediately be located.
"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her porch, and today it's sad, very sad," neighbor Joyce Harris said as other trailer park residents milled about on their porches, some crying and talking softly about the deaths.
Estrada's trailer was dilapidated, with paint peeling off the brown and white mobile home. Cactus plants and a rose bush decorated the front. Toys and a bicycle littered the back yard.
Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.
Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub.
Dena Schlosser killed her 10-month-old by severing the child's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

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This is unbelievable. I can't see why anybody would hang their children!! I'm speechless. I've never thought I'd hear of something this horrible in my lifetime. But yea what do you think??

Please comment.

Drugging dad locked boys in cage, police say

Two brothers were locked up in a dog cage when their father used drugs and when they were being punished, and one had to wear a shock collar, authorities said.
The parents appeared briefly in court Thursday on charges of child endangerment and making or selling drugs in front of the children, ages 10 and 5.
Jessica Botzko, 28, and John Westover, 37, were arrested a day earlier, after the boys ran away from home and were found on a neighbor's porch.
The boys told officers that they had been abused and locked in a dog cage at their home, said police Capt. Ray Carroll. They also said their father put them in the cage when he was using drugs, according to Carroll.
Court documents say the 10-year-old boy was repeatedly shocked at the family's home through a remote-controlled collar meant as a training device for animals.
Police searched the family's mobile home and found it filled with garbage, Carroll said.
The couple's hearings were continued because neither had a lawyer and the parents remained in jail.
Another Ohio couple, Michael and Sharen Gravelle of Norwalk, were convicted in February of child abuse and endangerment for keeping some of their 11 special-needs adopted children in wire and wood enclosures.

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OMG!!!! I'm sick of these kinds of parents. These kids having to grow up like this??? IT'S HORRIBLE!!! I don't think ANY child should have to go through this kind of ordeal. It's just wrong. Please post, and tell me what you think about this. (I've posted twice today I know that.)

$5M settlement OK'd in boy's boot camp death

A $5 million settlement for the family of a teenager who died after being roughed up by guards at a state-supervised boot camp won lawmaker approval Wednesday and was sent to the governor, who is expected to sign it.
Gov. Charlie Crist and black legislators had led the effort to compensate the family of Martin Lee Anderson, who died in January 2006 shortly after being kneed, struck and having ammonia tablets held to his nose at the military-style facility run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office in Panama City.
The state has already paid Anderson's parents $200,000, the most allowed by law without legislative approval. The bill would pay the remaining $4.8 million of the proposed settlement.
"While no dollar amount will return their son to his family, compensating them for this tragedy is the right thing to do," Crist said.
A message left for Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing Anderson's parents, was not immediately returned.
Although run by the sheriff's department, the camp was part of a state program under the Department of Juvenile Justice, which did not contest the settlement. The Legislature dismantled the military-style youth boot camps last year after Anderson's death.
The sheriff's office has separately settled with the Anderson family for $2.4 million. Seven guards and a nurse employed at the camp face manslaughter charges.
An initial autopsy report blamed the 14-year-old's death on complications from sickle cell trait. A second autopsy, though, found Anderson died from suffocation due to being forced to inhale the ammonia.
Anderson entered the camp for a probation violation for trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were charged with stealing their grandmother's car.

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This is rediculous. This kid was only 14 years old. He had a life to live, and different people to meet. Yea maybe he was a bad kid, maybe he wasn't, but that didn't give the guards the right to do what they did to him. These are the kinds of things that triggers my anger against the world. I'm glad his parents are getting money for it, but that's not going to buy your child back. A child is a part of you that you never want to let go. This really upsets me. 14 years old. Jeesh. Well comment this and tell me what you think about this.