Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Hispanic crime: Cleveland police say that they're still figuring out charges against 52-year-old Ariel Castro, accused of keeping three women captive in his home with the help of brothers Onil, 50, and Pedro, 54

All three Latinos are in custody, and it has been reported that Ariel has a history of violence. In 2005, his ex-wife accused him of a beating her, and a court document lists broken ribs, dislocated shoulders, a blood clot on the brain, a twice-broken nose, and a knocked-out tooth. Ariel Castro also had at least one nasty dispute with a neighbor that ended up in court. Few details are available on the brothers, who did not live in Ariel's home. A woman who lives three houses away says that she called police several years ago after her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in Castro's backyard. "But they didn't take it seriously," she said. Another neighbor says that he called police in 2011 when his sister saw a woman banging on a window. "The cops came. They pounded on that man’s door around 15, 20 times, real hard. They looked in the driveway, they got back in the squad car and left." Among the disturbing details emerging is that the captive women had at least five pregnancies among them, but only one child apparently survived, that being the 6-year-old daughter of Amanda Berry. The daughter of Ariel Castro is serving 25 years in jail for slashing her baby daughter's throat. Emily Castro was convicted in Indiana in February 2008 of trying to kill her 11-month-old daughter Janyla. Castro, then 19, slashed the little girl's neck four times and then sliced herself in the neck and wrists during a grisly attack at her Fort Wayne home in April 2007. Police who visited the home on reports of an injured child found the young Latina mother smeared with blood, mud and water.

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