Episode #189 – Lured Away – Randumb Thoughts Podcast

A ten year old boy was arrested for threatening to shoot up a school. But did he? A 15 year old girl was abducted at a major sporting event. Why are the details being kept secret? Drinking coffee may keep you alive. They don't make MP3 players like they used to. And more on today's episode of the Randumb Thoughts podcast.

Hello and welcome to episode number 189 of the Randumb Thoughts podcast. That is R-A-N-D-U-M-B thoughts dot com online. I am your host Darren O'Neill and I have two main stories, both which will relate to the safety and well-being of your children

and what you should know again about looking at stories and learning to ask the vital questions when the information is not provided as it often is not with the media.

Today, the first story is one of a ten year old boy from Florida who was arrested for threatening to shoot up the school when these stories come around and something doesn't seem right for me, a lot of times I go and I tried to do the due diligence and do the research to try to find out what exactly happened in this case and the next story we're going to talk about, about a 15 year old girl that was abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game.

And both of these cases, these stories that were presented in the media just seemed to leave some gaping holes. They just did not answer the questions that I had about the story. And this is the basics of what journalists are supposed to do I'm not a journalist. I play one on the Internet, I suppose not even I'm a talking head. I'm a pundit, I'm an opinion guy, not really an investigative guy.

But I did take a class back at DePaul University here in Chicago about journalism when journalism is still meant to thing. And you had the basics who, what, why, when and how. And quite often these things are no longer answered when it comes to the news stories on these events.

For instance, this story about the ten year old boy from Florida, the articles all were like, well, he was arrested for threatening a mass shooting via a text message. And I made one. My first question is going to be, if you're listening to this episode, and you've heard a lot of the randumb thoughts before, you'll know my question is going to be, why is a ten year old in the possession of a cell phone?

I mean, without that, the story goes away because this was a threat that was communicated via text message. But it took reading through probably eight to ten versions of this story in various publications because I'm like, well, what did he do? Did he did he text the school? Like, I'm going to come shoot the place up because this whole thing didn't make sense. Well, how do you threaten to shoot up a school in a text message?

I mean, that's the first thing I go from point A to point B really quick. And that was the first thing to me that came to mind was like, well, he texted the school, but no, no, that's not what actually happened. He was having a conversation via text, and I don't know if this was actually text or using some other messaging program, but again, bad journalism, they don't really say. They don't really let you know.

But either way, we know that this ten year old boy from Florida was having a communication with another, I'm guessing ten year old boy from Florida who's both of the sets of parents. Let them have devices let them have phones, let them have access to the Internet because that's really safe. But what this threat really was was first a message where the ten year old boy claimed, quote, I scammed a friend where he that included a photo of a stack of cash.

You know, you just go to Google Images and you do a search and then you send that and pretend like, hey, man, I got all this money. And then he sent a photo of four or A.R. 15 style rifles along with the text to get into his ten year old friend. I mean, assuming that is school friend, maybe he's nine, maybe he's 11. I don't know. Again, journalism, they don't tell us the text that was included with this was Get Ready for Water Day

No, I guess Water Day is an event that they have at the school where they do things who have water, but that was the extent of the messaging. It was the photo obviously then that was the most germane to this concept, but it was sent from one kid to another. Again, probably should have never had access to the cell phones. But yeah, go parents. But the debate is then from this point, should this really be considered a threat to shoot up the school?

And to be fair, I understand both sides of this one.

I understand the knee jerk reaction that an idiot ten year old kid sends a picture of four air 15 that I mean, I don't know I mean I'm a pretty big guy and a are 50 I think I could shoot one of those easily but two I don't think I could really handle I don't know how you would do three or four at a time, how this would be something that would even make sense but parents were quoted on this story once finding out about this, how afraid they were of sending their children to school.

And we know we have the new society, everything you're afraid of, everything you're afraid of COVID. You're afraid because a ten year old did something dumb when I was ten. Me and everybody I knew, well, we were doing something dumb because you're ten. When you're ten, you do dumb stuff. Then the question again here, should we consider this a threat?

Well, obviously, the police department in this location in Florida did because they went they did the investigation and they decided to arrest the kid.

They put him in handcuffs. They took him to the car. They brought him to the station. One of the reasons they gave about why this was taken more seriously was because there were guns in the family home that were legally owned by the father. Now, they don't mention anything about how they were stored.

So I'm just going to assume that they are stored correctly and locked away from the ten year old boy because the story didn't come out and say, well, there were unprotected guns in the home and you always again have to look for these details. And the details are vitally important. And when the details don't come, it's either really bad journalism and that is the word that the Romanian TV guy and YouTube called journalism. I just thought it was funny.

So I keep saying it, but there's this really bad journalism because they don't give you the details on what's going on here. Get ready for Water Day You know, I don't know if that rises to the level of making a threat. No, of course, you're including it with a picture of guns that he's pretending to own, which he didn't.

But again, he's ten years old and this was sent to a friend I understand red flags are very important and you don't want to miss one but this is a ten year old who was then handcuffed and put through the system. And I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, there's that knee jerk reaction that says he's ten, he's an idiot. He sent it to a friend, obviously a joke. And that's kind of where I'm still sitting with it. But I understand the other side, which is these things have to be investigated.

The local sheriff Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marsh Zaino

said, quote, I did a campaign fake threat, real consequences. While I understand the boy is ten years old, his brains not fully developed. He's a juvenile. I have to tell you, when a ten year old presses a trigger, the aftermath is the same regardless of age, end quote. He's absolutely right about that. But again, we need to decipher what is a joke and what is not. Once they did their investigation because there were guns in the home, they took it more seriously.

I don't know if that was the right decision or not, but it seems like maybe that's something the ten year old kid needed maybe to be scared straight, maybe to be shown that there are going to be consequences. But I'm going to go one extra step and say the parents should have been arrested as well because they gave the more on kid a device to which he could use to do this. And a ten year old, your kid should not have a device.

I know I'm a broken record about that, but they are their brains are much and they should not have access to the outside world. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because it will get them into trouble. The sheriff also said, quote, We don't wait one second. We investigate every threat as if it's real. We have zero tolerance. Our children are going to be safe no matter what. So what we need to do is I beg the parents to sit with your children.

We need to do everything we can as a team to prevent these types of issues and not ignore the red flags, unquote. So, yes, parents, you should sit down with your children. The first thing you should do is if they have a device, take it away

and explain to them that making a threat, even if they think it is a joke, can be taken very seriously and can lead to consequences. And it's the same thing if you're walking through an airport and your kid decides to yell, I got a bomb, well, you're going to be missing that flight and there's going to be some questioning that is done to determine exactly the state of mind of everybody involved.

But it's important to teach your children that making threats, making jokes about things like school shootings while you have the freedom to do so in this country that doesn't mean you don't have some backlash. And I think I mean, hey, you're free to say it, but you have to understand, if you're going to say it, there's going to be an investigation and that investigation may be uncomfortable for you. So just don't do it. Don't say stupid things.

Don't send pictures of guns to your friends and say, hey, wait for water day. Going to be fun. But again, we're talking about a ten year old kid and a ten year old kids are morons, so get them off the Internet. He was charged as a juvenile and he was charged with making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting. No, again, I don't know if that is the right call. There was definitely a reason to scare him a little bit, give him a very stern warning.

I don't know if texting a friend saying get ready for water day translates fully to me to, hey, I'm going to shoot the school up. Now, if you would have said, OK, I'm going to shoot the school up or I'm going to be using these on water day with the pictures of the guns. I just think we have to let sanity back into our world. And I don't know exactly how that one's going to happen because this next story

is a horrendous story that started on my birthday April 8th. And this will be the worst day in this 15 year old girl's life that was abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game. And I would have brought this story earlier. But again, I needed more information. I wanted to know exactly what happened. I wanted to know how the system broke down and tried to find some idea of who was actually responsible for what.

Because like the story of the ten year old with the threat against the school, the journalism being really, really bad, really bad, it took double digits easily of reading story after story, most of which you can scan because you realize really quickly it's the same story over and over and over again, pretty much word for word, because a lot of these news sources, even though you'll find it on 30 different web pages, they all use the same source, whether it's the AP

or Reuters or something like that, and it's all the exact same thing. And again, they leave out some vital information if you're unfamiliar with the story. A 15 year old girl went to a basketball game with her dad went to the restroom and ended up missing for 11 days, was found in an Oklahoma City motel where she was being trafficked. Now, there have been a lot of breakdowns in this story where the Dallas police were basically like, well, you know, once you get to teenagers,

we're not going to treat it as an abduction. We have to treat it as a runaway until we're kind of not sure or something that it's an abduction. They just told the dad to go home and report it in his own jurisdiction, which doesn't make sense. Because she went missing in Dallas. But the story behind what happened here is still not clear the only place they found a little bit of information was in the US sun, not something really known as being high on that journalism standard.

But this girl walked out of the Mavericks arena with a guy and for 11 days her family couldn't find her until they got together with the Texas Counter Trafficking Initiative. Which they're a nonprofit organization, and they used a photo of the girl and ran it through their system. Facial recognition against a bunch of different websites that were known for pornography, known for prostitution, all this kind of stuff. And they found a photo of the girl where she was being sold.

She was being sex trafficked, and that was the only way that they were able to find her. This it seems to be a huge ring in this case because eight different people were arrested but the story of how

she was taken from the arena, to me, that was the vital part of this story because once somebody is abducted, horrible things are going to happen. What you want to do is prevent the abduction. So for me, the question is, how did that part happen? And that's the part in almost every story that is not even talked about except that, oh, well, she was abducted from the venue. Well, you got to give me a little bit more information here. How did this happen?

15 year old girl in a busy basketball arena I'm thinking that you have to go willingly because otherwise somebody is going to be able to help you. You're in a crowded area. You think your kid's safe just going to the bathroom. And this was the end result. So I wanted to know. And the lawyers now for the family, rightfully so, I'm sure looking to blame just about everybody involved, including the Dallas Mavericks, which there's a certain amount to be said for security in an arena.

I will give you that. But part of this story is the man that made contact with this 15 year old girl was in the arena with a fake ticket.

So he should have never been in there to begin with. And they didn't do their due diligence. And I'm not really sure you can really tie fake tickets to sex trafficking again. I think we want to have a lot more information about what happened. Now again, the US Sun I will applaud them because they're the only ones talking about what the family lawyer said about the actual event itself of getting the girl from the venue out of it. The family attorney, Zeke Fortenberry, said he would not comment on

the exact tactics used by the man to lure the victim out of the arena. One that's concerning. That's concerning that the attorney for the girl's family will not talk about the exact tactics. Why would that not protect everybody who has a kid who this may happen to where they could sit them down and say, We're going to let you know this is what you want to look for he said that, quote, These human traffickers are sophisticated and they are good at what they do.

They targeted a young adult and whatever he said to this 15 year old girl got her attention. He said something to her to get her attention that convinced her that she should leave. She walked out with him, and that means he was able to convince her of something and, quote, to at least one thing is finally clear because of the U.S. Sun article, and that is that this 15 year old girl was not taken by force. Somebody didn't put a gun in her back. Somebody didn't drag her out of the venue.

Somebody was able to approach her and that quickly say something to her that got her to leave the arena with this person. And I don't know why the family lawyer won't be specific about this, because I don't think there's anything that could have been said. This girl is a 15 year old. Her brain is just a little less full of mush than the ten year old from the last story. She could have been told anything. She could have been told she won a contest. Do you want to go pick up your prize here?

You just have to come with us. Why they're not giving you the specifics? I don't know. And that is disappointing. I'm sure this will come out at some point when this goes to trial because again, the family's blaming the Dallas Mavericks. They're blaming the Dallas police. Who wouldn't file a report in that. I understand. But I also understand the other side of that one, which is, well, this is a teenager.

They maybe ran away, especially, I guess once they find the security footage from the arena that shows she is leaving apparently willingly with somebody. But I think the Dallas police could have done a lot more they're blaming the hotel chain for letting the guy come in and rent a bunch of rooms with a fake I.D.

This is a very weird story that I guess happens all the time, which I guess this happens in places like this, Extended Stay America, where somebody comes in, gets a bunch of rooms and then uses that for nefarious means, hotels. I mean, if the ID looks good and the cash is good or the credit cards good, I mean, sure, they should all pay more attention. But the reality here is sadly, this girl seemingly could have protected herself by just saying, no, I don't know you, I'm not leaving with you.

And this isn't victim blaming. This is the importance of parents

to sit their children down and say, if somebody you don't know approaches you you do not leave with them. There's no information about this because, again, bad journalism. But perhaps this guy could have said, hey, I work for the Dallas Mavericks. And you won a prize. Yay! Just come with me. Let your children know if anybody approaches them that you do not go with them.

If it's somebody that says, hey, I work with the Dallas Mavericks and you won a prize, you say, well, let's go get my dad first and then we can go get my prize, this kind of stuff is vital for your children's protection. This is why I've talked so much on this show about what children end up posting on social media, how easy it is to be tracked down and traffic. This happened randomly at a basketball game.

It could just as easily happen right outside your house because of what people post to social media. Let your children know they should never leave with somebody they don't know. And to be forever vigilant that anybody new they meet may be trying to do them harm. Now, one of the television stations that had covered this story

in the Dallas area, I thought, did such a piss poor job of it. They had a little bit about the warning signs that parents should look for. Obviously, in this case, a little bit different because this was a quick abduction from an arena. But as I said, social media and the Internet leads to a lot of children being abducted because of being found out on the Internet. And the warning signs they said to watch out for number one, extra phones. That's more than just a little warning sign.

If your child ends up with a second phone. But you didn't buy them. I mean, let's remember, again, your children should have zero phones until their brains are no longer full of mush. But parents refuse to do that. Thus, the kids kept getting taken. The next was an older boyfriend or girlfriend involved. That kind of makes sense. I think people have always been concerned about that even long before the Internet. But if that wasn't bad enough, the extra phone as a warning sign.

The other thing that was really a warning sign was if you find a hotel or motel key with their stuff, I mean, really, this is an obvious to everybody involved. If your young teenage daughter has a motel key or hotel key, you need to be told that this is a red flag. My God, are we that bad? Is this society now? Are we this clueless as a society now where people on the local news will tell you, well, if your teenage daughter has a hotel key, that may be a red flag who doesn't know this?

If you don't know this? Oh, let me know Darren D our any at R-A-N-D-U-M-B thoughts dot com. If you didn't know this before now that your child having a motel or hotel key in their possession or having a extra phone that you didn't know about that that may be something to look out for if you didn't know those things then let me know. The bottom line here is the world is a dangerous place. People will use every possible tool they can to do harm to your children.

In this case, eight people arrested. They may have missed some, but eight people involved with kidnaping. This 15 year old bringing her to another state and sex trafficking her. The sheriff in the first story is right. Sit your kids down. Talk to them. Make sure they understand that they shouldn't be threatening a school. Make them understand that people may want to do them harm.

And I mean, you know, your kids don't use the peer pressure thing to be like, oh, well, all their friends have phones phones are bad. Phones are really bad for kids of that age. When a ten year old who didn't if he didn't have the phone, he's not getting arrested for threatening to shoot up a school. And I want to know what happened to the girl's phone. I'm guessing they got it from her shortly after they left because we know those are easy to track.

As I said, once all this stuff starts going to trial, maybe we'll get a little bit more information and we will keep you updated on what's going on. Now on to only slightly less depressing story,

the Times of Israel headline Bradley Cooper's prosthetic nose and Leonard Bernstein biopic Sparks Jew Face Debate. So I guess this is like blackface because Bradley Cooper is playing legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein in a movie and they wanted him to look a little bit more like him. He is wearing a prosthetic over his nose. And there is debate on whether or not that is anti-Semitic, which I think is absolutely it, he added. He's playing the part of somebody like actors have done for years.

And years and years, and they will often do whatever they can in order to look more like that person. Quite often. It's losing weight, gaining weight. Wearing like a suit that makes it look like you're a little bit heavier wearing makeup to maybe lighten your skin tone, darken your skin tone, which we know that's all obviously racist as well. But using a prosthetic on the nose, I don't understand how that is anti-anything.

That is, in order to enhance his performance, to make him look more like the person that he's playing. And it makes for an interesting question. When you have these types of biopics where you have actors playing real people, we know exactly what they look like. They're not a character that was just written, they fictional character. This is, you know exactly what Andy Warhol. Weird Al Yankovic. There's a new biopic been coming up on Hulu with him.

The people that play these characters do their best to try to look like them. You know, Weird Al, the guy that played Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, is playing Weird Al. I'm sure you had to wear a wig. I mean, maybe he grew his hair, but he probably wear a wig with Weird Al's long curly hair. I mean, is that also anti something or other? Does Weird Al had long hair? I don't know. I don't think anything is anti-Semitic. That's not actually anti-Semitic.

I don't think wearing a costume I you know, again, when it comes down to any of this stuff, the context matters. The reasoning behind it matters. If a seven year old girl, a little seven year old white girl likes Jasmine, that's her favorite Disney princess. And she puts on a little makeup because she wants to look more like Jasmine. Is she being racist? No. I mean, trying to look like somebody else. Is not racist.

Now, you may use that in order to make fun of somebody and that part may be racist. But context matters and the reason why people are doing things matters again, like journalistic stuff. Who, what, when, where, how? Answer all these questions. Before you have any knee jerk reaction. Like, well, no, no. Obviously, anybody wearing a prosthetic knows that that's anti-Semitic because he's not Jewish. So, no, he can't be wearing that nose Get a grip. People really get a grip.

And for those of you who drink coffee, you know, and if you believe studies out of China, according to an article on study finds dawg, quote, adding a spoonful of sugar to a cup of coffee could be the key in a longer life, according to a new study. Scientists have found that coffee drinkers are at a lower risk of death than non coffee drinkers. But those who like to drink sweet are even less likely to die.

Researchers in China who followed a group of British adults for an average of seven years found people who drank between one and three and a half cups of caffeinated coffee were less likely to die during the same time in comparison to those who did not take sugar or who did not drink coffee at all. People who drank any amount of unsweetened coffee were up to 21% less likely to die than those who did not drink coffee. So there you go. Obvious proof, right?

You should drink coffee and you'll be less likely to die. I don't understand these sweetening part of that because sugar is bad no matter what you're taking it in. I guess moderation is the key with everything here. But we know coffee, tea. There's antioxidants that are inside of these things. That can be helpful to your health. But again, you don't want to overdo anything. As of yet, they haven't looked at the artificial sweeteners, which is probably just as bad, although I don't know.

Again, this is science. I mean, you have to believe the science. This is just something you can use if you drink coffee and people are like, you shouldn't drink coffee. Tell them you'll live longer. I mean, you don't even have to tell them. You'll just live longer. You'll feel better. Everything will be great.

And in there, they just don't make them like that anymore. Segment. My wife uses a three player to listen to mainly audiobooks, but also some music going back and forth to work. And the thing finally started giving up. It's a little device that we've had over a decade now, which was made by SanDisk. It was called the Sansa Clip Plus and reading reviews. Going through things, looking for replacements. It doesn't seem there really are any. This is a very tough little device. One it is small.

It's maybe like three inches by two inches and maybe an inch as far as the depth. I mean, I could probably fit six of these in the same space as I could fit my cell phone. And it is durable. I know this one has gone through the washer a couple of times and just kept on working. This one had eight gig, internal memory. And you can put a little micro SD card in trying to find a replacement was nearly impossible.

So I decided to go the only sane route, which was to find another one of these devices on eBay, found one new in a box. I mean, sure, it's 11 years old, but new in a box. Unfortunately, just for gig of internal memory rather than the attic. But again, SD cards are not really a big deal. And I have to say, well worth the price paid, which is probably about twice what we paid for this thing when it was new.

But it is one of the best sounding devices When you add the free, open source rock box firmware onto it, it'll play FLAC, pretty much anything you want. So super small battery is great. Goes for, you know, when it's new here, it looks like 22 hours. That was one of the things that was starting to run down after over a decade. But still, it was something that only had to be charged once a week or so. So we'll see how this new one works out.

And I thought it was great last night. The new player came and I asked my wife, Well, where's the old one when I need to get the SD card out so you can just transfer all your stuff over And she couldn't find it. And I'm like, well, it's got to be somewhere. So she goes out, she looks through her purse, dumps everything out, looks in the car, comes back in good looks in the other car, comes back in good looks in the car again, like it's got to be in the car.

It doesn't really go anywhere. I mean, granted, it could fall out somewhere and then it would be gone for good. But I'm like, well, it's got to be in the car. She's like, No, I looked in the car. I'm like, But did you look? Well, I mean, that's never a good question to ask. I got, you know, the look like, what do you what do you mean, did I look well? So I'm like, well, let me go look. I'm like, did you look under the seats? Did you look everywhere? I looked. I looked everywhere. Did you look?

Well, the again, the eye rays of death came my way So I go out and I sit in the car, and she came following me out. And I sit in the car and I go to move the cup holder that is in the armrest that goes up and down. And the cup holder won't move. And I said to him, like, are you aware that your cup holder won't move? And she's like, Yeah. I'm like, you are. You know, I know it moves me. No, what I'm saying is the cup holder won't move.

And I shook the little console there with the armrest and I heard something moving around, and I'm like, Oh, it seems like maybe something is stuck in here. So I take out the cup holder. Sure enough, there's the little device like 10 seconds after sitting in the car. She was not happy. I mean, I'm sure she was happy that the device was found, but was not happy that I was right. It was in the car, and there it was. Did you look thoroughly? I guess the answer was right there.

And I'm not going to say that I'm always right. I let other people say that I'm always right. And you probably know that because that is why

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With that said, I will be back next week on Wednesday with another edition of the Randumb Thoughts podcast. Until then, I am Darren O'Neill thanks for listening.

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