← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Blond Knight
Thread ID: 20727 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-10-23
2005-10-23 03:55 | User Profile
Will this story get the widespread coverage of similar stories where the perps are white?
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[url]http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=news&start=1&num=2&q=http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5359659,00.html[/url]
San Francisco Mother Charged With Murder
Friday October 21, 2005 11:31 AM
AP Photo CAJC105
By LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The woman charged with tossing her three sons into San Francisco Bay has been battling schizophrenia and once said she was going to feed the boys to the sharks, family members said.
Lashuan Harris, 23, was charged with three counts of murder Thursday while anguished relatives kept vigil and rescuers combed the chilly water for the bodies of two of the young victims.
Harris was being held in a hospital jail ward and was scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
Family members say Harris had threatened to hurt her children before.
[B]She told my mama she was going to feed them to the sharks,'' said Britney Fitzpatrick, Harris' 16-year-old half-sister.No one thought it was that serious.''[/B]
According to a police report, the 23-year-old Harris was heeding voices in her head when she went to San Francisco and dropped her children off a pier into the chilly water Wednesday night.
The former nurse's assistant had been living with her boys in a Salvation Army homeless shelter since September.
[B]The body of Harris' middle child, Taronta Greeley, 2, was recovered late Wednesday near the St. Francis Yacht Club, about two miles from Pier 7. The other two boys - Treyshun Harris, 6 and Joshoa Greeley, 16 months - remained missing, but were presumed dead after so many hours in water with a swift current and temperatures in the low 50s.[/B]
The U.S. Coast Guard called off its search Thursday afternoon, but the San Francisco police and fire departments continued to scour the bay until after dark.
Although Harris was hospitalized twice this year and had received outpatient psychiatric treatment, family members said they never had any inkling she would kill her children.
Demarcus Harris, Lashuan Harris' cousin, said the last time he saw Lashuan was Tuesday at his sister's house in Oakland and the boys were with her.
When his cousin left, she said goodbye and I'm going to miss y'all.'' He said neither he nor his sister suspected what she would do the next day.We all thought she was just going home,'' he said.
Harris was hospitalized in January at the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro and her mother was briefly granted custody of the boys, according to her older sister, Telicia Harris, 26.
Alameda County social service workers determined after the first hospital stay that Lashuan was fit to care for her sons, Telicia Harris said.
Lashuan Harris' aunt, Joyce Harris, told the San Francisco Chronicle for Friday's editions that Lashuan's mother had contacted Alameda County social services officials about three months ago to seek partial custody of the children. She made the request because Harris had stopped taking medication for schizophrenia and had made threats regarding the boys, the paper reported.
``They said she was sane, that they couldn't do anything,'' Joyce Harris told the newspaper.
Sylvia Soublet, a spokeswoman for the Alameda County Social Services Agency, told the Chronicle she could not discuss whether the family had contacted her agency about gaining custody.
Harris told investigators she had taken the anti-psychotic drug Haldol to control her schizophrenia but stopped when she got her symptoms under control over the summer, according to the police report.
But she said the voices returned Tuesday night and were still with her when she put her children into the water, according to the report.
Asked why she didn't seek help from a doctor on Wednesday, Harris said she didn't know but thought the clinics would be closed.
2005-10-23 04:13 | User Profile
The names alone would make a comedy.
I say, good crime prevention.
2005-10-23 07:46 | User Profile
I don't really consider this a racial issue, since severe mental illnesses hit people of all races (though perhaps not at the same rate). I think of it more in terms of a need for self-imposed eugenics. A person with schizophrenia or another disease with at least a partially genetic basis really has no business having children in the first place. Even if this tragedy hadn't happened, having such a condition still must affect parenting ability. And worst of all, there would have been a good chance of at least one of those kids growing up to have schizophrenia as well.
2005-10-23 19:46 | User Profile
If not for those comical names, I wouldn't have had a clue what race the woman is.