Ripped off? Girl X, the victim of a brutal assault at the Cabrini-Green housing development in ’97, was in the news again last week. The Tribune reported that she has gotten almost zilcho money from a fund set up to help her. (She needs tons of medical care.) The fund set up by community organizer Beverly Reed raked in $310,000 – but court records indicate that only about $1,375 of that went to Girl X. “Our office and the FBI are looking at criminal charges,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Floyd Perkins said. “It’s horrible to think that Girl X could be ripped off.” Reed, who came up with the name Girl X for the victim, said she had done nothing illegal, had the right to spend the money on administration costs and had simply failed to keep written records of her spending. “Being a humani-tarian or person who wants to make a difference in the world is a very noble thing… but you have to be aware of how to deal with the business aspect,” she said.
Extremities: A Miami boy recently kicked his mom in the leg during a family spat at a restaurant. Not nice, for sure. Still, his punishment was extreme: After a waitress saw what happened, the boy was handcuffed, hauled away, charged with battery and held in lockup overnight. His mom said the arrest was foolish – and the judge agreed. All charges were dropped Wednesday.
Ice cream headache: Ice-cream truck music – treat or torture? To ice cream lovers, those tinny sounds are a sweet part of summer. But to residents of Stafford Township, N.J., the music was “a form of torture.” They even tried to ban amplified music from the local ice cream trucks! But after town officials passed such an ordinance, an ice cream vendor sued. And last week, a federal judge ruled in favor of the vendor, saying that hearing other people’s music was one of the “inconveniences of living in a free society.” (Tell your folks that.)
