Dad appears to be ‘overwhelmed,’ social worker wrote weeks before police say 5 children slain
Dad appears to be ‘overwhelmed,’ social worker wrote weeks before police say 5 children slain
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina man accused of killing his five children was an ex-convict whose homes were visited by social workers a dozen times in the last three years.
The children seemed happy and well-adjusted despite occasional spankings, and the family took a summer trip to Disney World and the beach, according to documents released by the Department of Social Services on Thursday. Authorities never found anything serious enough to take the children away, but the documents show Jones as a single father and computer engineer struggling to raise his children.
In the social worker’s last visit — two weeks before the children’s disappearance — a social worker summed up Jones’ life: “Dad appears to be overwhelmed as he is unable to maintain the home, but the children appear to be clean, groomed and appropriately dressed,” wrote the case worker, whose name was blacked out, on an Aug. 13 report.
On Aug. 28, Jones picked up his children, ages 8, 7, 6, 2 and 1, from school and day care. Acting Lexington County Sheriff Lewis McCarty said the three boys and two girls were likely killed soon after that, with Jones loading their bodies in trash bags in his Cadillac Escalade, driving around the Southeast for days with the decomposing bodies.
An intoxicated and agitated Jones was arrested at a DUI checkpoint in Smith County, Mississippi, on Saturday, and authorities said he had a form of synthetic marijuana on him. Officers found children’s clothes, blood and maggots in his SUV.
Thousands of superstorm Sandy victims could be asked to return FEMA funds
NEW YORK — Thousands of people who received government aid after superstorm Sandy slammed the East Coast may be forced to give some or all of that money back, nearly two years after the disaster.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is scrutinizing about 4,500 households that it suspects got improper payments, according to program officials and data obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request. As of early September, FEMA had asked around 850 of them to return a collective $5.8 million. The other cases were still under review.
FEMA’s campaign to recover overpayments, called “recoupment” in government lingo, involves instances where the agency believes a household got more money than allowed under program rules, but not necessarily through an attempt to cheat the system. Fraud cases are handled separately.
Many people asked to return money were deemed ineligible for aid because their damaged properties were vacation houses or rental properties, not their primary homes. Others had double-dipped into the aid pool, with more than one household member getting payments. Some received FEMA money for things later covered by insurance.
In all, about $53 million in payments are under review. That’s just a fraction of the $1.4 billion that storm victims received. But that is no consolation to many homeowners.
Human rights group says Israel committed war crimes in Gaza war, highlights school attacks
JERUSALEM — A leading international rights group on Thursday alleged that Israel committed war crimes during this summer’s Gaza war, saying it reached that conclusion after investigating three attacks on or near United Nations-run schools housing displaced Palestinians.
Human Rights Watch said it investigated the strikes at the schools in three separate locations in the war-battered Gaza Strip, attacks in which at least 45 people were killed.
According to its investigation, based on field research and interviews with witnesses, the New York-based group said no military targets were apparent in the area of the schools and that some of the attacks were indiscriminate.
“The Israeli military carried out attacks on or near three well-marked schools where it knew hundreds of people were taking shelter, killing and wounding scores of civilians,” Fred Abrahams, special adviser at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Israel has offered no convincing explanation for these attacks on schools where people had gone for protection and the resulting carnage.”
Israel argues that the heavy civilian death toll during the 50-day summer war was Hamas’ fault, accusing the Islamic militant group of launching rockets — and drawing retaliation — from school yards, residential areas and mosques.
By wire sources