I should just stop paying attention to the news.

[utukki]

All day I've been paying attention to an Amber Alert about a 7 1/2 year old girl who went missing last night while playing outside her apartment in Salt Lake City.

Her body was found in a neighbor's bathroom around 7 pm tonight. Five people were arrested. Five people.All this a little over 3 blocks away from where my sister and 7 1/2 year old

Comments

[ysabet]

That's a horrible thing; I remember something very like that happening in the apartment-complex I lived in back in Las Vegas-- a 6-year-old. They found her body in a dumpster. Her murderer was eventually caught and sentenced, but the anguish her family must've gone through was hideous.

A good website to keep in mind is this one: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/registry.htm It leads to individual state sites where you can check by zip-code, county, street-name, etc. to see who lives in your area. It's not a bad thing to know.

One drawback that skews the results, though, is this: anybody who got into trouble for underaged sex is also listed, and by this I'm not talking about some pervert raping a 12-year-old, I mean an 18-year-old who gets caught with his 17-year-old girlfriend and whose parents scream over it even when it's consensual. They stay on the books. Not quite what the setups's designed for, so keep that in mind when you see a listing for 'sex with a

[jaysons_lady]

It's things like that that make people think I am a paranoid parent. Also why I keep my son on a leash at the mall and Walmart now that he doesn't like to ride in the cart anymore.

With regard to the sex offender registry mentioned in the earlier comment, some states are better about listing the actual offence so you can tell how bad it really was. Don't know how Utah is. New York lists what they were charged with, and Mississippi does not.
Hope your sis can get out of that area, but you'd be surprised where sex offenders live. Especially if the state doesn't have laws restricting where they live.
In the meantime, until the day child molesters get the death penalty, I will be a paranoid parent. (even after that really)

[jaysons_lady]

Also a good site is
www.familywatchdog.us

[irish_brigid]

How horrible!

I hope your sister moves now, too.

5 People arrested

[anonymous]

It is a tragic thing that has happened and it terrifies me because I have a 9 year old sister whom I have practically raised.

But I read an article about what happened and 4 of the 5 arrested hadn't been home for that last 24 hours and had no reason to go to the room or adjacent bathroom where the man who most likely killed the girl lived. I feel for the men who now have to live with the stigma of murderer just because they needed to make rent.

[smartycat_mod]

It's scary. *hugs* My college was in a REALLY Rural town, and I lived in apartments that a) sliding door lock was broken, b) was off campus, c) on the outskirts of town basically, and d) faced a rather large grassy field with woods. Halfway through my junior year, about two blocks from me, a girl woke up to find a man sitting in her apartment, watching her sleep.

My roommate told me this after she left for the weekend and I was on my own. Thankfully, I had a stick for the door, and like two deadbolts.

Yeah. I still took every knife in the place upstairs, just in case.