Florida Sentinel Bulletin

MACON, GA — Former state Sen. Robert Brown of Macon has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Brown served in the state Senate for about 20 years, rising to the rank of Democratic leader before resigning his seat to run unsuccessfully for mayor of Macon this year.

After he first won his seat in the state Legislature in a special election in 1991, Brown became the first black person to represent Bibb County in the Senate since Reconstruction. He previously served on the Bibb Board of Education.

The NAACP is currently fighting what it calls nationwide voter suppression through various initiatives.

President Ben Jealous is talking about the Stand 4 Freedom March that took place December 10 in New York City as an important call to arms in this battle over voting access.

Seventy-five percent of black men in the state of Wisconsin currently don’t have a valid ID. In Texas, the ID law wouldn’t recognize your student ID, but it would recognize your gun license. It’s impossible to look at a bill like the one in Texas and say it’s not targeted.

NORTH CAROLINA — Another fake butt implant surgeon is apparently doing the rounds. The so-called cosmetologist operating out of a North Carolina hotel was arrested after injecting an erotic dancer with deadly injections.

Lauretta Cheek, of Greensboro, was arrested on last Wednesday for allegedly injecting the dancer’s buttocks with the disfiguring potion. She’s been charged with one misdemeanor count of practicing medicine without a license, Guilford County Sheriff’s Det. Craig Cotten said.

The 42-year-old was already on probation for administering similar treatments to three women in 2008, which left them with kidney failure. The injections were later determined to most likely contain types of infertility drugs.

Victoria Pannell, 12, the National Action Network’s Northeast Regional Director of the Youth, led a march and rally in a Harlem neighborhood where gang, drug, and gun activity is rampant.

Dozens of Harlemites congregated Friday at Wright Brothers Playground, a small park that has a reputation of being unsafe for kids, to denounce the illicit activities that go on in the recreation space.

National Action Network recently announced the national Shake-Off the Violence tour and coast-to-coast cease fire coordinated by NAN’s Youth Movement and the Youth in Action group.

WASHINGTON — The NAACP says it is gathering information on the effect of new state laws that tightened rules on voting in order to make its case to the Justice Department that the laws are discriminatory.

The civil rights organization argues in a report released Monday that the laws amount to a coordinated, comprehensive assault on minorities’ voting rights as their numbers in the population and at the ballot box have increased. NAACP President Ben Jealous says he met with assistant Attorney General Tom Perez over the weekend and personally gave Perez a copy of the report.

The NAACP says it will also send the report to other federal agencies, secretaries of state and attorneys general in the 50 states, congressional committees and the United Nations.

Emanyea Lockett, 9, was suspended for calling a teacher “cute,” his mother says.

After a substitute teacher overheard 9-year-old Emanyea tell another student a teacher was ‘cute,’ school officials put him on two-day suspension for sexual harassment.

The school’s code of conduct doesn’t list sexual harassment, but does mention possession of any gun, rifle, pistol, firearm, prohibited substance or assault of a school employee as grounds for long-term suspension.

DETROIT — Stepping gingerly among mounds of discarded tires, piles of soggy clothing and nail-pierced wood boards, Makibla Gideon’s head swept from side to side in search of a purple toddler’s jacket or pink shirt — any remnant that could have been worn by a 2-year-old Detroit girl whose father claims was taken during carjacking.

More than three dozen volunteers seeking signs of Bianca fanned out in small groups of five to 10 Monday morning through the North End neighborhood, while police continued to pore over D’Andre Lane’s version of how his car was taken during a robbery Friday morning with his daughter in the rear seat.

She and others who canvassed the area returned a couple hours later to Metropolitan United Methodist Church, many vowing to try again Tuesday if necessary.

Lane, 32, was in custody on an unrelated warrant.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA — A transgender Virginia inmate has appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit asking the state to pay for her to have a sex change operation, saying a jury should decide if hormones and other therapies she receives are adequate.

U.S. District Judge James Turk tossed out Ophelia De’Lonta’s lawsuit in October, saying the state was adequately treating her gender identity disorder, a mental diagnosis in which people believe they were born the wrong sex. Turk said courts have ruled that inmates are guaranteed only minimum care, not preferred therapies.

De’Lonta, who was born a man, claims her disorder causes her to attempt castration and that the surgery is the only thing that will make her stop. In an appeal to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals filed last week, she cites established treatment guidelines that say the surgery is needed in severe cases.

MILWAUKEE — Police believe the tragic death of a 10-year-old boy was suicide, but his parents think it may have been due to a game that went terribly wrong.

“It wasn’t a suicide, because he was just too happy and he had no reason to commit suicide,” Enzy Curtis says of his son, Thalian.

Curtis believes the boy’s death was a tragic accident.

“I think it was just a game he was playing and it got out of hand of just him by himself,” Curtis says.

Thailan’s parents say he’s played the choking game before, and they warned him. “I told him, ‘Honey that’s dangerous. You shouldn’t do that,'” Yolanda Cash, the boy’s mom, says.

The choking game, also known as the fainting game, involves cutting off the supply of oxygen to the brain in order to induce a high.

Cash is trying to make sense of why her son Thailan was taken so suddenly. “Why my baby? He was only 10,” Cash says. “I’m just hurt. I’m just angry with God.”

Cash says Thailan’s older brother found him in the upstairs living room Saturday night. “He said, ‘There’s something around his neck and there’s blood.’I said, ‘Huh?’ He said, ‘There’s blood,’” she says.

Cash quickly ran upstairs only to find Thailan slumped over with a curtain around his neck.