TRENTON, N.J. - It took nearly seven hours, the demolition of a bathroom and a sturdy extension ladder for rescue workers to remove a more than 700-pound woman from her home here, officials said.

Rescue workers arrived at the woman's home about 5:45 p.m. Monday in response to reports she had fallen and injured herself in her second-floor bathroom, said Trenton Fire Department Battalion Chief Qareeb Bashir.

They didn't get her out until after midnight.

The undertaking ended up involving dozens of emergency medical responders and firefighters from Trenton and neighboring Ewing.

Firefighters eventually had to dismantle the toilet and radiator, then saw out part of the bathroom wall and window to create a large enough space to move the woman out.

As the hours went by, the woman was in surprisingly good spirits, Bashir said.

"She actually had a pleasant personality. She was laughing and cracking jokes about the situation," Bashir said.

Initially, firefighters had requested a forklift or some other piece of commercial-style equipment to lower her out. But as the hours ticked away with no forklift, they turned to muscle instead of machines to get her out, Bashir said.

After tying her into a metal-framed basket, about a dozen firefighters and emergency medical workers used ropes to lower her down along a metal extension ladder, reinforced with a wooden frame they had constructed.

After lowering her into the backyard, they lifted her into a stretcher with wheels and pushed it along a path of plywood sheets they constructed.

Rescue workers then carried her into a special oversized ambulance, Bashir said.

The woman was taken to Capital Health System's Mercer hospital in Trenton. A hospital spokesman reported her in fair condition Tuesday.

Bashir said it appeared the woman hadn't been downstairs since the autumn, although she was able to move herself to the bathroom.

A neighbor three doors down, Irene Hunter, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years, said she only saw her neighbor once early last year. Hunter said the woman drove a van, parked it, and quickly walked into the house.

"It was amazing to me then how she could do that," Hunter said.

Hunter said older neighbors, such as herself, usually avoid asking about the affairs of newcomers. But after seeing her street crowded with emergency vehicles on Monday _ including an ambulance that she said resembled a tank _ she thought that might change.

"We, as neighbors, should have been more abreast of what goes on," Hunter said.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17934161/

Rapist spared jail as judge agrees girl, 10, looked older
By Ben Quinn
Last Updated: 8:15am BST 05/04/2007


A man who raped a 10-year-old girl was spared a jail sentence yesterday after a High Court judge agreed that the victim looked older.

Describing the case as "wholly exceptional", Mr Justice Roderick Evans said he understood why Liam Edgecombe, a 20-year-old painter, had thought that the child was 16 when they had sex last year.

Edgecombe, who was charged with rape, had entered a guilty plea on a basis accepted by the prosecution - that he believed she was 16, that she was presented as a person of that age and that he was entirely shocked to find out she was only 10.

He was granted a conditional discharge for 18 months but, apart from having to register with the police as a sex offender, no further punishment was imposed on him.

Swansea Crown Court heard how the girl was in the care of a local authority when she was taken on a shopping trip to a branch of Tesco on November 24 last year. Chris Clee, prosecuting, said she pretended to go to the lavatory and took her chance to "disappear".

That night she met Edgecombe outside a pub in the centre of Haverfordwest, west Wales, and he invited her back to his nearby flat in Hill Street, where they had intercourse twice.

Mr Clee said Edgecombe raised the subject of the girl's age but she asked him: "Does it matter?"

He said there was no doubt the girl consented to sex but because of her age the offence amounted to rape.

The following day police spotted her in the centre of the town and she was returned to care workers. She told them what had happened but refused to co-operate with the police inquiry, although officers were able to trace Mr Edgecombe because the girl had mentioned his first name to a social worker.

He admitted what had happened and was "visibly traumatised" on being told the girl was only 10, according to his barrister, Janet Gedrych.

The painter also became so upset that police granted him bail on condition that he leave his flat and go to live with his mother.

"This is an exceptional case," said Miss Gedrych, who added that her client was "embarrassed and ashamed".

Judge Evans viewed photographs of the girl before deciding on a non-custodial sentence, and told the accused: "She was a girl of 10 and you are a man of 20. Those bald facts do not properly represent the true facts of this case.

"The prosecution accepts that you believed she was 16 and that that belief was reasonable. She was looking for a man and got what she wanted."

Where’s the Tolerance?
Hateful reactions from the Left.

By Deroy Murdock


The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) recently generated headlines when it announced that former Vice President Al Gore’s Nashville estate “devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours” of electricity in 2006, “more than 20 times the national average.” This free-market think tank’s phones lit up when it analyzed Nashville Electric Service’s public records and identified an inconvenient gap between Gore’s conservationism and his energy consumption. TCPR’s one-page press release was greeted with enough megawatts of hatred to power the South.

“I was accused several times of being a ‘stupid, redneck bitch,’” recalls TCPR’s vice president Nicole Williams, who fielded numerous calls. “I repeatedly was called a ‘whore’ and asked ‘Whose whore are you?’ for three days straight, almost as if those were talking points… I was shocked by these sexist insults — basically attacking my gender.”

The calls continued beyond Williams’s Nashville office.

“I had to change my home number and get an unlisted number,” Williams tells me. “I got about 10 death threats by phone that made an impression on me. I got the ‘I’m gonna get you’-type threats more than 100 times…I was worried that I would get shot walking to my car.” Williams discovered her obsolete address posted online. “If they could find my old home address, it would not be so hard to find a current one.”

Gore’s defenders also spewed venomous e-mails. They sent TCPR nearly 3,000 Gore-related messages that exhibited the very bigotry the Left routinely denounces. Warning: These offensive, often-vulgar, and occasionally unschooled comments reveal the vitriol behind much of today’s “progressive” rhetoric.

Many e-mails displayed Dixiephobia — an intense disdain for the south and southerners.

After TCPR President Drew Johnson discussed his story on cable news, Kevin Lafferty objected: “Johnson said Gore’s home has gas lamps lining his driveway, a heated pool and an electric gate — all of which would be easy to do without. Well sure, that’s easy enough for you to say when you live in a frickin mobile home in Tennessee, eh Johnson?”

“F**k you, and for that matter, f**k Tennessee,” wrote Thomas Brown. “I’ll never go there again.”

“Why don’t you all go back to shooting one another across the hollows instead of trying to make people think anyone in Tennessee has an ounce of intelligence?” Roger Miller insisted. “Or better yet, get your snaggle tooth grins capped and learn to read and write…Someone who’s traveled the world here, and never ever wants to even fly across your state again.”

“W.T.F. difference would it make if he was [sic] using 1000 times more energy than the average household if it came from clean energy?” Thomas Grinnell wondered. “Don’t think about that too much. It will give your southern mullet a headache.”

“You really should concentrate on what Southerners do best,” D. Hunter advised. “Sodomizing and impregnating little children!”

“You are the most despicable and pathetic types of people of all time,” Christopher LaBarge declared. “I hope you all die slowly and have your hearts and brains trampled to pieces you small-minded, ignorant, backwoods ideologues.”

“GO-F—K-YOURSELVES! GO-F—K-YOURSELVES! GO-F**K-YOURSELVES! GO-F**K-YOURSELVES!”

“Well it’s like I’ve always said, ‘we should have flattened the South when we had the chance!” wrote Mount Laurel, New Jersey’s Robert Dodelin. “If ever you confederates [sic] want to leave the Union please do. We Nothen [sic] states would love to stop having to subsidize you with our tax dollars.”

This anti-southernism mystifies TCPR’s Johnson.

“Some people must believe the Mason-Dixon Line runs between our office and Gore’s mansion,” Johnson says. “No one would call Gore a redneck, but when we uncovered his hypocritical energy use, it somehow made me a sister-dating hillbilly. That’s quite amusing, since Gore and I live in Nashville, less than five miles apart.”

Some e-mails, like Benjamin Greuel’s, reflected anti-religious bias: “Go f**k yourselves you neo con, non-secular, bible thumpin, anti-science dumb f**k pricks.” Similarly, Anthony Black wrote:

You bunch of stupid hick red-necks. I am sure you are quite religious, yet you have no problem destroying His creation with pollution; and, rather than addressing that, you cast dispersions [sic] on Al Gore’s home energy use. Absurd.

Seriously, find one of those nice Tennessee hardwoods, get a nice stick from it, and stick it up your white-bread ignorant a**.

Have a nice day, you ignorant red-neck.


“How about you have a do [sic] humanity a favor and have a stroke,” Russ Smith recommended. “You silly metrosexual twit, need some more hi-lites in your hair?”

Another gay-hater wrote: “You guys are the faggiest fags I’ve ever come across. How do you get any work done, what with all the c**k sucking and such?”

“Keep licking Bush and Cheney’s privates,” Burton Ogle suggested. “Your time is up and we’re moving you’re a**es out.”

Two e-mails feature chillingly violent imagery.

“You people are such slime,” T. J. Williams noted. “You are a total waste of skin and air. Help the environment and jump off a cliff.”

Bob Beaver urged: “Find a hole and stick a knife in it.”

Such anti-intellectual intimidation reflects the high-octane hate that fuels so much Leftist discourse. Rather than simply argue that Johnson, Williams, and their colleagues are misguided or misinformed about global warming, these bullies call them barefoot, same-sex-loving, Winchester-wielding whores, and evangel-yokels. Remember this whenever liberals crow about diversity, tolerance, and open-mindedness.