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Shackled Teen Shows Up At California Gym
Filed under: In The News, Weird But True
An emaciated 17-year-old boy showed up at a California gym with a shackle around his bleeding ankle, and begged workers there to protect him from the couple he says held him captive and tortured him.Half-naked and covered with soot and feces, the boy also had a 3-foot chain wrapped around his ankle. Detectives believe the boy ran away from a group home in Sacramento last year, to look for his family.
Arrested were Michael Schumacher and his wife, Kelly Lau. The Tracy, Calif. couple are charged with imprisoning and torturing the boy in their home, located just blocks away from the gym where the boy showed up in his boxer shorts. Their four children were removed from their home, and they are being held on $1 million bail each.
Police were expected to question the boy further after he is treated at an area hospital, and are also looking for the boy's aunt. It is unclear at this time how the boy ended up in Tracy, which is 70 miles south of Sacramento.
Workers at the In-Shape Gym in Tracy said the boy was "totally terrified" and repeatedly begged staffers not to "let them get me."
Schumacher is a general contractor, and Lau describes herself as a stay-at-home mom on her MySpace page, according to the New York Daily News. I wonder if she'll update her profile to add "torturer."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
12-03-2008 @ 5:34PM
Joy said...This hurt my stomach to read and makes me ill.
Reply
12-03-2008 @ 6:11PM
Melissa said...I saw this on the news the other night (i live in california), and it made me so scared for my child and other children! and it also made me wonder what the hell the group home was doing to locate him? or did they just treat him as a runaway and forget about him? it's just tragic, i hate the "justice" system!
Reply
12-03-2008 @ 10:38PM
AMH said...This is a horrible incident, however, I find it even more horrible that blame is being placed on an agency that is totally unrelated to this horrible crime commited.
This child ran away; under US guidelines any run away in state's custody must be reported within 24 hours to the local police dept. all information is transfered to them and they are responcible to locating the child.
What would have happened to the other children living in that group home had the staff left to track this boy down... Don't get me wrong, I work in foster care and I have driven around for hours searching for a child or chased them down on foot when I see them leave, but you cannot restrain them, you cannot force them to return (those are the perimiters put on by the state themselves). So the option you are left with is contacting the police dept.
It may be unfortunate but several of them are not found, a huge number go and live with their families and hide until they turn 18, some of them hide with friends and unfortunatly there are a number of children, like this one, who are unsuccessful in hiding and bad things happen to them.
This is not the child's fault; any child in a group home, or foster care or even behavioral schools want to be home with their family, they want to live a "normal" life, but these institutions are in place for a reason, the staff could not have left the other children in that home to conduct 24 hour searches for a runaway- it would be nice, but there is no way to do that, their responciblility is to contact the police! Then wait and pray and hope for the best for that child.
Providing such a huge amount of attention in blaming the agency for this child's unfortunate situation is taking away from the real crime and the real issue here which is a horrible family who did something horrible to a child. Any amount of attention diverted from their crime minimizes this childs trauma, it shadows the real issue and prevents true justice...
12-04-2008 @ 8:52AM
LS said...anyone else having trouble with the link?
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