Brutis the Cat Rescued at Last

There is a sense of familiarity to a story about a cat getting caught up in a tree. This is one of these stories but with a twist. This story is not so much about the cat, rather it is about the downright un-neighborliness of a Phoenix police officer who seemed willing to thwart the efforts of his neighbor to recover his cat.

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It all began on Dec. 23, when homeowner, Michael, realized that his cat named Brutis had escaped from the house. When Michael finally tracked Brutis down, he was stuck in the branches, two stories in the air, on his neighbor's property. So Michael knocked on his neighbor's door and explained that his cat was stuck up in the tree. The neighbor, a Phoenix Police Officer, said there was nothing he could do and that the cat would probably come down on its own.

Brutis did no such thing. On Christmas day he was still in the tree. The Arizona Humane Society was called but their ladder was too short to rescue Brutis. They suggested that Michael leave food at the trunk of the tree to entice the cat to come down, but to Michael's surprise the police officer refused to let him leave any food. The officer would not let him back on the property, claiming that he was concerned that if someone got hurt while trying to get the cat on his property, he would be liable. Michael tried squirting water from a hose at his own house at the cat. Brutis did not budge.

“It seems like I just have to sit here and watch my cat starve to death or freeze to death,” Michael said.

A Phoenix Police spokesperson, Sgt. Tommy Thompson, said the officer did what he could to help the cat. He said the Humane Society called the officer an "angel" who did all he could.

When I spoke to the Arizona Humane Society they advised that the officer was very patient and did everything he possibly could to facilitate the rescue of the cat throughout the course of this incident. In addition, because of the large amount of attention this story has gained, which garnered complaints, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office sent investigators to look at the possibility of animal cruelty. I spoke with the supervisor, who went to the scene, and he told me that the officer had done absolutely nothing wrong and the cat was fine.

The news media got involved and aired Michael's efforts to rescue Brutis. Due to the publicity received, the police department began to receive negative phone calls and emails attacking the officer. The officer even had derogatory things written on his sidewalk.

On Dec. 29, Brutis was still in the tree. That was when Toni Smith and Terry Toman who are with Citizens for North Phoenix Strays decided to try to get the cat down.

"There's some friction here between these neighbors and I said I could care less about the people I just want to go up and get the cat," said Smith.

Smith and Toman said they chose to go behind the home on a public sidewalk and lean a 25-foot ladder against the cop's back wall. In this way, they figured they were not on his property. Just as they were about to get the cat, Smith said, "This guy comes barreling out of his house, flashed his gun and his badge, and started screaming and freaking out." Toman added, "It's a little overkill". They had to retreat without the cat.

Both Smith and Toman said they were willing to sign a waiver guaranteeing they would not sue the officer if they should hurt themselves while rescuing Brutis.

"Its just a cat in the tree. Why can't we just go there and get the cat and move on" said Toni Smith.

The next day Dec. 30, possibly due to all the attention, Phoenix Police Officers from the Desert Horizon Precinct obtained a large ladder and with several officers securing the ladder, one climbed up the ladder and removed the cat from the tree. Brutis the cat appeared in excellent condition and was returned to its owner. Michael said Brutis is a bit tired, scared and skinnier after 9 days in the tree, but by all accounts appears okay.

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"I'm pretty happy, he lost a lot of weight up there, he was a little chubby when he went up and he's kind of  boney now," Michael said.

Michael said he has no hard feelings for the people who own the tree the cat was stuck in, he's just glad to have Brutis safely home.

"He wasn’t allowed out in the first place…specifically for this kind of reason," Michael said. "And I don’t ever want him to get out again. I’d like to think he learned his lesson, but he’s probably not that smart. He couldn’t figure out how to get out the tree."

Robert Aragon Charged in Daughter's Death

Robert Aragon, 55, of Jerome, ID., is in the Blaine County Jail. He has been charged with second degree murder and  felony injury to a child. He made an initial appearance December 29, 2008 in 5th District Court, where Judge Mark Ingram appointed a public defender for him. His bond was set at $500,000.

His 11-year-old daughter, Sage Aragon, is dead. Her frozen body was found, barely visible under windblown, drifting snow at about 2:00 am December 26, 2008 by search dogs.  She was wearing a brown down coat, black shirt, pink pajama pants and tan snow boots. She was pronounced dead at 4:15 a.m. at St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center south of Ketchum.

His 12-year-old son, Bear Aragon, was found alive at around 11:00 pm on Christmas night, wearing only long underwear.  Apparently delusional from hypothermia, he had discarded his jacket, pants and shoes. He was treated and released from hospital.

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These unfortunate events began on Christmas morning when Robert Aragon was driving his two kids, Sage and Bear, to visit their mother, JoLeta Jenks,  who lives in West Magic Reservoir. According to his cousin, Kenneth Quintana, who went along for the ride, they were supposed to meet the kids' mother halfway along the way. However, their car got stuck in a snow drift near the intersection of  Highway 75 and W. Magic Rd., about 10 miles away from their destination. It was decided that the kids should start walking towards their mother's house, Kenneth would go back to the highway to get help and Robert would stay with the car.

"I just want everybody to know that Bob did not send his kids out to die - he didn't," Quintana said. "He didn't even want to let them go, but the kids were confident, hell I was even confident in that she (the mother) was going to be there."

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Eventually they got the car out of the snow and Robert and Kenneth returned home. They assumed that the kids had made it safely to their mother's house. Around 4:00 pm JoLeta Jenks called Robert to find out why her kids had not yet reached her house. Robert explained what had happened and, with Kenneth, drove back in the car to start looking for the kids. In the meantime JoLeta called the police.

"They didn't even call me, telling me they were walking," she told the Times-News.

Robert and Kenneth found the spot where they had gotten stuck earlier and tried to follow the kids footprints in the snow. They lost track of them in the blowing snow and were forced to return back to the car when the weather started getting worse.

The police organized a search party in the knee-deep snow and they eventually found the boy at around 10:00 pm about 4.5 miles away, dressed only in his underwear. The girl was not found until 2:00 am the following morning about 2.7 miles away. According to JoLeta, who later questioned her son, Bear, the children had a disagreement on what to do when they got lost in the snow.

"(Bear) kept on telling her: 'Let's go, Sage, let's go, Sage,'" Jenks said, recalling what her son told her. "She said, 'No, I'm going back.'"

Sage was pronounced dead at a Ketchum hospital; preliminary autopsy results indicate she died of hypothermia. Officials say temperatures in the area at the time the girl was missing ranged from 27 degrees above zero to minus 5.

Robert Aragon was arrested and charged with second degree murder in the death of his daughter and felony injury to a child in the case of his son. He was emotional during his appearance before Judge Mark Ingram:

He banged his head on the defendant's table as Ingram read the charges against him, The Times-News reported. After Ingram noted that second-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, Aragon said "Oh my God" as he banged his head on the table one final time.

JoLeta Jenks and Robert Aragon are not married. While she said she doesn't understand the decision Aragon is accused of making in letting the children walk to her house, Jenks added:

"I don't need to sit and yell. I know he's going through hell right now."

Where is Roland “Jack” Auslander?

Roland “Jack” Auslander, 69, buried his 100-year-old mother, Herta Auslander, not in a cemetery, nor did he have her cremated; Roland buried his dead mother in a freezer chest at her home in Cooks Fall, N.Y. There she remained for more than a year before being discovered by the New York State police. An autopsy revealed that the woman died of natural causes - cardiac disease - so foul play is not suspected in her death.

However in the meantime, for more than a year Roland was happily cashing her social security checks. The police, naturally, would like to have a chat with Roland - but he has disappeared. He hasn't been seen since his mother's body was discovered months ago.

Roland is also no stranger to trouble, he has been locked up several times in Sullivan County Jail and in the Woodbourne Correctional Facility on drug charges. Court records show he was convicted of buying more than 3 ounces of cocaine in Livingston Manor in 1987. He was imprisoned on drug charges again in 1999 and was released in 2003.

“He will eventually appear and we’ll ask him what Mom was doing in the freezer,” said Les Hyman, a senior investigator with the state police in Binghamton.

When Roland surfaces he will likely be facing criminal charges of fraud and forgery related to cashing his dead mother's social security checks. He will probably not face any charges for stuffing his mother in the freezer, which would at best be a violation of the public health law.

According to his attorney, Gerald Orseck, Roland has already paid back the roughly $20,000 that he accumulated from his mom’s Social Security checks. Orseck said he has no clue where Roland is hiding.

“I know he paid back the Social Security Administration because I delivered the check personally,” Orseck said.

This is not the first time Roland has disappeared. When he was out on bail, about 10 years ago, on a cocaine charge, he skipped the court date for his sentencing. He wasn't found until more than a year later, on a farm in Essex County, in Northeastern New York, where he was dressed like an Amish person.

“He was pretending that he was Amish, laying low, working on a farm,” Sullivan County District Attorney Steve Lungen recalls.

Has Roland gone Amish again? The police would certainly like to know: Where is Roland Jack Auslander now??

Eyeglasses for the Masses

Joshua D. Silver, a retired Oxford University physics professor,  has designed eyeglasses that hold promise for a billion people in the Third World. His idea was driven by the fact that in many parts of the world opticians are in short supply and most poor people, especially in developing countries, could not afford their services anyway. His adjustable spectacles can be tailored quickly and easily by each person to suit their individual needs.

Working on the principle that thicker lenses are more powerful than thin ones, Prof Silver's spectacles can be adjusted by injecting tiny quantities of fluid. The tough plastic glasses have thin sacs of liquid in the center of each lens. They come with small syringes attached to each arm with a dial for the wearer to add or remove fluid from the lens. Once the lenses have been adjusted, the syringes are removed and the spectacles worn just like a prescription pair.

This invention will enable millions of people who do not have access to eye care professionals to have eyeglasses for the first time. They will work for both far-sighted and near-sighted people. A trial project, supported by his company, Adaptive Eyecare, and the Department for International Development, has already seen thousands of pairs distributed in Third World countries. Prof. Silver has now set his sights on India. He plans to distribute more than one million pairs a year in that country, with the eventual goal of reaching one billion people, worldwide, by the year 2020. See a short video presentation of his invention here.

Hear a presentation sponsored by The Conversations Network of Prof Joshua Silver as he describes how he developed his liquid-filled corrective lenses and his plans for the future. Click the arrow below.

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Lesbian Rape Considered a Hate Crime

An unidentified 28-year-old woman was brutally raped and beaten for 45 mins by a gang of 4 men. She was then thrown out of her own car and left naked on the street. During the attack the men told her she was targeted because she was a lesbian. Authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests and prosecution in the case.

"I've lost sleep over this. I am sickened," said police Chief Chris Magnus. "While every sexual assault is a terrible crime, this particular case is especially horrific because multiple individuals acted together in the commission of this assault, and because of the hate-crime aspect."

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The victim, who police describe as openly gay, parked her car on the 1500 block of Visalia Avenue, Richmond, Ca., at about 9:30pm. While walking away from the car she was approached by four men on foot. "One of the suspects struck the victim with a (blunt) object," Lt. Mark Gagan said. "There was very little interaction between the victim and the suspects. From that point, the physical assault turned into a sexual assault."

"She was beaten, she was robbed and she was sexually assaulted," Gagan said. A few minutes into the sexual assault, one of the men told the group that someone was approaching and they forced the victim into her car. They took her to a desolate area near the Bay Area Rapid Transit tracks, about seven blocks away, to the 1300 block of Burbeck Avenue where they continued to rape her, both inside and outside the vehicle.

During the attack, which lasted for about 45 minutes, the suspects made several statements about the victim's sexual orientation. She also had a rainbow sticker on her license plate that identified her as being supportive of the gay community. After the attack, the suspects fled in the victim's car, leaving her there naked in the street, Gagan said.

After the men left she was able to get help from a nearby resident, who called for the police and an ambulance. She was treated for her injuries at a hospital and released.

Although the four men participated in the attack to varying degrees, they are all being sought on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and rape in concert with an enhancement for committing a hate crime.

"It's rare to find four adults willing to condone behavior this extreme and violent. It's clear that some of them behaved as followers, but all of them are responsible for what happened," Gagan said. "They should know that their best chance (for leniency) would be to turn themselves in and cooperate with our investigation before we identify them and apprehend them on our own."

The police have descriptions of the four suspects:

• The first suspect, the leader of the group, was described as a Hispanic man in his 30s. He was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed 180 pounds and had black hair, brown eyes and a mustache.




• The second suspect was a black man in his early 20s. He was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 170 pounds and had black hair and brown eyes. He goes by the nickname "Blue."




• The third suspect was described as a Hispanic man about 18 to 20 years old. He goes by the nickname "Pato."




• The fourth suspect was described only as a Hispanic man about 18 to 20 years old.

"The Richmond Police Department is pleading for the community to come forward and help us find the people responsible for committing this vicious crime," Gagan said. "We are hoping that residents know who these people are. People need to pick up the phone."

Anyone with information about any of the suspects is asked to call Detective Ysenia Rogers at (510) 672-1717.