Daily Archives: March 12, 2010

by | March 12, 2010

Lesbian teen sues to force school to hold prom

JACKSON, Miss. – A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom.

“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year,’” McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who is a fellow student, and wear a tuxedo, which the school said also violated policy.

The district’s decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students’ rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen’s free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.

“A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom” to cancel it, she said.

McMillen said she didn’t want to go back to the high school in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.

“My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I’m still proud of who I am,” McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “The fact that this will help people later on, that’s what’s helping me to go on.”

The school board statement said it wouldn’t host the event “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” but didn’t mention McMillen. District officials didn’t return calls seeking comment Thursday.

At least one supporter has offered to help McMillen and her classmates hold an alternate prom.

New Orleans hotel owner Sean Cummings told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson he was so disappointed with the school board’s decision he offered to transport the students in buses to the city and host a free prom at one of his properties.

“New Orleans, we’re a joyful culture and a creative culture here and, if the school doesn’t change its mind, we’d be delighted to offer them a prom in New Orleans,” he told the newspaper. “Concluding your high school experience should be a joyful one. One shouldn’t conclude that experience with all their friends on a negative note.”

Same-sex prom dates and cross-dressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“A lot of schools actually react rather than do the research and find out what the rights of these students are,” said Presgraves.

McMillen says she hopes her fight will make it easier for gay students at other schools facing discrimination.

“I want other kids to know that’s it not right for schools to do that,” she said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

In 2002, a gay student sued his school district in Toronto to allow him to attend a prom with his boyfriend. A judge later forced the district to allow the couple to attend and stopped the district from canceling the prom.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said a bill he’s introduced in Congress would make it illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian school students. He said at least 10 states have such laws, and his bill is modeled after those.

“This situation with the prom is a perfect example of why we need to protect students from discrimination. In this case it’s a prom. It other cases, it’s getting beaten up or killed,” Polis said.

The school district had said it hoped a privately sponsored prom could be held.

Southside Baptist Church Pastor Bobby Crenshaw said he’s seen the South portrayed as “backwards” on Web sites discussing the issue, “but a lot more people here have biblically based values.”

Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It’s near Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.

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by | March 12, 2010

Los Angeles Driver plunges off bridge, barely alive

A 24-year-old woman was in critical condition after being pulled from the murky water of the Los Angeles River, where witnesses say her vehicle plunged some 40 feet off a northbound Long Beach Freeway bridge Thursday.

Lizeth Pimentel was in “very critical condition,” unconscious and on a ventilator, hospital officials said.

“She’s very sick. The next 72 hours are critical,” said Andrew Reno, director of emergency trauma services at St.Mary Medical Center.

Pimentel was the only person in the vehicle, and the cause of crash is still under investigation, said Lisa Massacani, Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman.

Witnesses reported the crash off the Seventh Street bridge about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, said Joshua Johnson, Long Beach Fire Department spokesman.

According to witnesses, the woman’s SUV hit the guardrail and plunged face first into the water below.

“I was facing the other way and I heard a bang, I looked over and the next thing I saw was a truck headed face first into the water,” said Andrew Stone, who lives nearby. “It sank in about three minutes and nobody got out. I saw air bubbles and that was it.”

Six rescue divers searched by feel in about 15 feet of water with literally no visibility.

“You can’t even see your hand in front of your face,” Johnson said.

Divers found the vehicle sitting on the bottom of the river on its wheels with the rear hatch facing east.
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Forcible entry was required to enter certain areas of the vehicle, officials said.

An infant car seat, which was found during the search, had led rescuers to think that there might be others in the vehicle. It was later confirmed by family, identified through the vehicle’s license plate, that the victim was the only one in the car, Johnson said.

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by | March 12, 2010

Nurse in bar brutally beaten after rejecting mans advances

A savage thug followed a nurse into a Hell’s Kitchen bar bathroom early yesterday and brutally beat her in a stall after she rejected his advances on the dance floor, authorities said.

The 29-year-old victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, suffered fractures to her eye socket, skull and nose, and needed surgery and 50 stitches to close deep gashes to her face, police said.

The vicious assault occurred at around 2:15 a.m. in the basement bathroom of Social, a sprawling, three-story Irish pub on Eighth Avenue near 48th Street.

“He wanted to dance with her and she rebuffed him,” a source said.
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So the creep followed her to the bathroom and barged into the stall.

“She starts pulling her pants up and she fights him off, but it was a brutal physical assault on her,” the source said.

“She was seriously beaten.”

The victim, a registered pediatric nurse who lives on the Upper East Side, kicked and bit the man, but he pummeled her unconscious.

Investigators suspect the man may have slammed her head against the sink or toilet bowl.

Surveillance video taken from a police camera outside the bar captured the suspect — who cops described as a Hispanic man in his mid-20s — casually walking out, then looking at and shaking his right hand. Moments later, he appears on the video surveillance of a convenience store 200 feet away.

He remains at large.

When the woman didn’t return from the bathroom, a friend, who is also a nurse, went to look for her.

“She goes and finds her sprawled on the floor,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Not realizing her friend had been assaulted, she called 911 and said the woman had passed out and hit her head.

An ambulance, but no police car, was dispatched.

“The friend did not report it as a crime,” a source said.

The woman was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center, and when she came to several hours later, she told staffers there that she had been attacked and police were finally called.

The woman, who was found with her pants partially down, said she did not think she had been raped. A rape kit taken at the hospital later came back negative, sources said.

But cops “believe that there was an attempted sexual assault,” according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The victim, who is originally from Connecticut, underwent surgery and was in stable condition in a VIP wing of the hospital with her family by her side, sources said.

Police combed the bar, which is popular with the after-work crowd, for evidence yesterday. A manager there called the assault “horrible.”

“We’re cooperating with the police right now,” he said. “It can happen anywhere.”

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by | March 12, 2010

Woman, Rose Mankos fatally struck by train after jumping on tracks to retrieve bag

A woman dropped her gym bag on the tracks of a crowded Upper East Side subway station yesterday — then made the fatal decision to jump after it as screaming straphangers watched in horror.

The 48-year-old victim, identified as Rose Mankos, was crushed by a northbound No. 6 train barreling into the 77th Street Station below Lexington Avenue as she tried desperately to claw her way back to the platform.

“She had one choice to make and seconds to make it,” said Alfonso McGruder, 55, of The Bronx, who witnessed the tragedy. “She didn’t make the one that would have saved her life.

Chad Rachman/N.Y.PostThe woman who was fatally struck by a northbound 6 train yesterday dropped this bag on the tracks and attempted to retrieve it before she was killed.

The woman who was fatally struck by a northbound 6 train yesterday dropped this bag on the tracks and attempted to retrieve it before she was killed.

“She tried to go under the platform because the train was bearing down on her. Then she tried to climb onto the platform, but she couldn’t do that. Then she just froze.”

Mankos lost her life trying to retrieve a nylon LeSportsac bag filled with exercise clothes, toiletries and her cellphone, sources said.

“People were yelling at the lady on the tracks when they saw the train coming,” said Hakeem Nhl, 53, a vendor on the opposite platform. “People were screaming, ‘Oh, my, God! Oh, my God!’ ”

Witnesses reported that the train operator sounded his horn eight times and attempted to brake.

“I think she just went into shock knowing that the train was seconds from hitting her. It looked like she just gave up,” McGruder said.

Mankos died as soon as she was struck at around 3:45 p.m.

“You could see some woman with her head stuck in between the train [and the platform] and her arms sticking out,” recalled witness Andrew Pistella, 30. “Some guy was screaming, ‘Is this real? Is this real?’ It looked like a mannequin.”

It was bedlam on the platform, with children, teenagers and old ladies shrieking hysterically, witnesses said.

“Who drops their [bag] down there, then jumps down there to get it?” Pistella asked.

Onlookers shouted for Mankos to lie down between the tracks or under the platform — perhaps thinking of “Subway Superman” Wesley Autrey, who saved a fallen passenger by climbing atop him in the trough between the tracks as a train rolled over them in 2007.

“I felt the thud when the train hit the body,” said Glenda Farr, 52, who was on the train. “I didn’t know it was a body. I lived upstate. You ever hit a deer or something? It was like that.”

A neighbor said Mankos lived alone in her Stuyvesant Town apartment.

NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said, “The message to our customers is clear: If you drop something on the tracks, do not attempt to retrieve it. Alert a transit employee or a police officer.”

Meanwhile, cops were investigating a separate incident in which a 50 year-old man was struck and killed by an eastbound No. 3 train at the Utica Avenue station in Brooklyn.

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