Florida Sentinel Bulletin

LOS ANGELES – April Brown was once a cosmetologist, fashion designer, and working mother of two daughters.

She’s now a multiple amputee. She says hospitalizations after unlicensed cosmetic procedures led to life-threatening infections. Professionals removed her limbs last year to save her life.

“I got the butt implants five years ago,” said Brown. “For five years, I lived in pain. Excruciating pain.”

April Brown won’t identify the unlicensed practitioner who injected her with silicone. She will only say it was somewhere near Western and Manchester. Brown tells us, her own lack of self-esteem issues are mostly to blame.

“They call it butt injections,” she says. “These things are done at pumping parties. They call it medical grade silicone but a lot of it is industrial grade silicone.”

President Barack Obama didn’t earn any Holy points with America’s leading religious leaders when he announced via a pre-recorded  interview with ABCs Robin Roberts that he supports gay marriage.

Pastors and religious leaders expressed their disappointment in Pres. Obama’s decision.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is the only high-profile Black religious leader to come out and support Pres. Obama’s announcement.

Marissa Alexander, whose case brought allegations that Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is being unfairly applied, was sentenced to 20 years in prison last Friday after being convicted of three counts of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot during a dispute with her husband.

Alexander, 31, claimed she fired a shot from a handgun into the wall to protect herself during a confrontation with her husband, Rico Gray, 36. Two children were with him when she fired a shot in his direction, and she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.

Her attorneys claimed self-defense and cited the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which gives people some protection from prosecution for using potentially deadly force in cases in which they feel their life is threatened.

But a jury agreed with prosecutors that the law didn’t apply because she left during the argument, got a gun and returned to confront him.

Last week, State Attorney Angela Corey, who is also handling the Zimmerman case, said she personally met with Alexander and reviewed the evidence in the case. She said she offered Alexander a three-year sentence before trial, despite the case qualifying for a 20-year minimum mandatory sentence.

The case has sparked rallies on Alexander’s behalf, described a heated scene outside the courtroom after the sentencing:

“Three years is not mercy and 20 years is not justice,” U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown told Corey in an animated confrontation in the hallway. “If there ever was a stand-your-ground case, it was this one.”

“This is the beginning, not the end,” Brown said of Alexander case. “Clearly there is institutional racism.”

“The law was made for people like Ms. Alexander,” Cobbin said. “They did not make it for people running around on the streets shooting people. They made it for women in their homes trying to defended themselves against abusive mean men.”

A police officer in Georgia has become the subject of an investigation for kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach.

Jerad Wheeler, an officer in DeKalb County, responded to a call over a custody dispute involving the brother of the alleged victim, Raven Dozier.

According to Dozier she was actually trying to calm her brother down when cops were called to the scene and shot him with a stun gun. When she questioned their actions, Dozier was kicked in the stomach by Wheeler. “I was upset because I couldn’t believe an officer would kick me, with my child in my stomach,” she said.

Officer Wheeler downplayed the incident, writing it off as a “front push kick to the abdomen, as he was taught to do at the academy.” He also claims to have not known that Dozier was pregnant, and stated in the police report that she “approached him aggressively.”

Donte Johnson, 20, who is said to have the mind of an 11-year-old child, was found guilty of the 2010 first-degree murder and rape of Philadelphia waitress, Sabina O’Donnell.  The judge gave him a sentence of life without parole in state prison.

Johnson confessed to police that he merely wanted O’Donnell’s bicycle, which was why he followed her on that fateful night of June 10, 2010.  The 20-year-old woman, who was an aspiring dancer and model, peddled home on a borrowed bicycle at around 1:00 a.m., after completing her shift at the restaurant where she was employed.

Surveillance videos show O’Donnell being pursued by Johnson who was also on a bicycle.  When the young woman arrived at her place of residence, Johnson is shown grabbing her around the neck, then forcefully dragging her to the back of her building where he proceeded to rape her.  A coroner concluded that the 5’3,” 100-pound O’Donnell had been strangled by her bra strap.

WASHINGTON  — Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is facing federal civil charges of taking part in an influence-peddling scheme involving the city’s public-employee pension funds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission says Kilpatrick and ex-city treasurer Jeffrey Beasley received $125,000 in private jet travel and other perks from an investment firm. The SEC says that was in exchange for getting the city’s pension fund to make an investment favoring the firm.

Kilpatrick and Beasley violated federal securities laws, the SEC alleged in a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Detroit.

Kilpatrick says he’s innocent of these charges and separate criminal charges brought previous by the Justice Department.

INDIANA – Chelisa Grimes gave her gay son, Darnell “Dynasty” Young, a stun gun to protect himself against bullies, after she lost faith that officials at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis would protect him..

The 17-year-old high school student says be took the stun gun to school because he didn’t feel safe. On April 16, six students surrounded Young, taunting him and pelting him with homophobic insults.

He then took out the gun and fired it, sending off an electric shock. The would-be bullies were abated. Young’s mom says she doesn’t regret her decision of giving her son a stun gun, and, in fact, would make the same decision again. However, her son is now facing expulsion.

She said the choice to arm her son was one that she had to make.

Young said it was unfair for him to be suspended from school for protecting himself. His decision to use the gun during the April 16 incident stemmed from his frustration over being bullied. He said that the bullying has pushed him to consider suicide.

A 24-year-old Orlando man is charged with first degree murder after allegedly killing his own son during a two-week visitation.

Eddie Lee Daniels, who is currently being held in an Orange County jail, is suspected of causing massive injuries to the child, including frontal bulging and retinal hemorrhaging behind the eyes and a broken leg. During the baby’s final hours,

Daniels sister changed and fed the baby before leaving on a road trip. Daniels was alone with the baby for most of the day.

Daniels told police he put the child in a carrier and later noticed that he wasn’t moving so performed CPR.

The man, who called 911, denied dropping, spanking or striking the child and insisted the baby had shown no signs of distress before becoming unresponsive.

The baby’s mother lives in south Florida and had left the baby with his father for a two-week visit.

Everett Glenn, 19, a freshman at Lafayette College, was a reportedly charismatic and social teen who was even nicknamed “Mr. Mayor” by his fellow classmates. Glenn died this past Saturday, after drinking too much in celebration of his birthday.

According to Glenn’s mother, Joanne, Glenn drank too much while celebrating his birthday then went to bed, face up.  Emergency room doctors eventually told her that Glenn passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest.

A police report states that the fencing star was discovered early Saturday afternoon at the college’s residence hall and then immediately transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.