Charges against Kiana Paez have been upgraded to second degree murder in the death of her 11-week-old son, Pablo Paez. Three weeks after he was brought Elmhurst Hospital, doctors declared that the infant had suffered permanent brain death, and the child was removed from life support. The recovering-addict mother brought her son to Elmhurst Hospital earlier this month, saying that her son had just stopped breathing. After an examination of Pablo by doctors and questioning......

A 7-week-old baby who has been beaten since he was just 2 weeks old is now brain dead at Elmhurst Hospital, after his mother admitted to beating her son and then dropping him on his head. And the Daily News reports that the Administration for Children's Services had visited mother Kiana Perez just two days before. Perez, an ex-junkie whose first child was taken away by ACS but was allowed to keep baby Pablo because......

The father who wanted to give up his 6-month-old baby out of desperation has told the police he wants to surrender. Carlos Rodas, 27, was overwhelmed when his 14-year-old girlfriend and the mother of the baby left him to care for their daughter, so he, his sister, and her boyfriend, a livery cab driver, worked out a plan for the driver to leave the baby at a Queens fire house. The story of the......

As details continue to emerge about the plot to fake a baby's abandonment in Queens, the fate of the baby has remained questionable. Now the Administration for Children's Services say the 14-year-old mother, who may not have known about the plot, may get the 6-month-old baby back. An ACS spokeswoman said, "The child has the right to be raised by the parent." The Post reports the mother, Yelemer Cosme Perez, is in ACS custody while......

After the city was moved by the story of a baby abandoned in the backseat of a livery cab and how the driver dropped off the baby at a fire house, prompting the police and media to look for the baby's relatives, it turns out the livery cab driver was involved in the abandonment scheme. Driver Klever Sailema was arrested today, as were another man and woman. Oh, no. According to the police, "Sailema was......

A 6-7 month old baby girl, strapped in a car seat, was left in the backseat of a livery cab this morning. Tel-A-Car driver Klever Sailema picked up a man and the baby around 9:45AM this morning at 106th Street and Northern Boulevard in Queens. When the cab got to 83rd and Northern, the man said he needed to make a call and left the car. Only he crossed "the street to a pay phone......

In a sign of these struggling economic times, more than a few New York businesses are making it clear that money is money, whatever the currency. Reuters spoke to a few business owners who explained why they are open to moneys from foreign lands. East Village Wines' Robert Chu said, "We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank...[S]ome days, you'd be......

Hey, tourists, NYC may want you to spend lots of money when you visit the Big Apple, but just don't get really sick or else the Administration for Children's Services will take your kids in! Because that's what happened to one British family last month! Yvonne Bray and daughters Gemma and Katie, who live in Devon, England, were visiting New York for four days, staying at the LaGuardia Courtyard Marriott. The mother fell ill with......

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced this morning that they had arrested a suspect in the murder of orthodontist Daniel Malakov. Kelly said that the suspect, Mikhail Mallayev, was a relative (by marriage) of Malakov's ex-wife. Malakov was shot in the chest after just after dropping his 4-year-old daughter Michelle to his ex-wife at a Queens playground on Sunday morning. He and his wife, Dr. Mazeltuv Borukhova, had been embroiled in a bitter divorce and custody......

Last year, there was a very sad report about a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide by jumping into the frigid waters of the East River, and his mother suggested it was because of school bullying. Now the Daily News reports that the Administration for Children's Services had been investigating a charge that the boy's mother had choked him and beat his brother with a belt. Last March, Sidney Hatchett and his 6-year-old sister were walking......

More than a year and a half after the death of Nixzmary Brown, the Administration for Children's Services has hired 20 retired NYPD detectives to work as trained investigators consulting with ACS caseworkers. The ACS plans on eventually fielding 120 such investigators. The need for a bolder approach to protecting children being monitored by the ACS follows the beating death of Brown in January 2006 and a number of other deaths of children under ACS......

The death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown shocked the city in January of last year. The child was beaten to death in her family's Brooklyn apartment and a history of abuse, including being tied up to a chair and showing up to school with bruises (when she would appear in school on rare occasions), had been noted by the Administration for Children's Services who seemingly did nothing to intervene. Her mother Nixzaliz Santiago and stepfather Cesar......

The short, sad life of Hailey Gonzalez ended yesterday when hospital staff at Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island removed the 21-month-old from life support. Gonzalez had been in the hospital since last Thursday, when the police discovered that her mother and her mother's boyfriend had thrown her against a playpen and beaten her near the point of death. The couple had waited hours before calling 911, as Hailey foamed from the mouth and......

There was a sickening coincidence yesterday: A report was released that faulted the city's Administration for Children's Services for contributing to the deaths of 10 children in families it was supposedly monitoring, just as a 20-month toddler was brutally beaten by her mother - who was under investigation by the ACS - and her mother's boyfriend. Twenty-four-year-old Marlene Medina and 30-year-old Edwin Garcia allegedly repeatedly "slammed" Hailey Gonzalez into a pack-and-play crib, according to the......

Florida police believe that Judith Leekin adopted 11 foster children, many of them special needs children, while she lived in Queens, collecting millions as she neglected them. After discovering one 18-year-old at a supermarket, police found other children in Leekin's Port St. Lucie home: They were malnourished, had scars on their hands from being handcuffed, left without access to a bathroom and were never schooled. The city's Administration for Children's Services is cooperating with Florida......

Aleshia Smith was sentenced to more than two and a half years in prison for the 2006 death of her 4-year-old son Quachaun Brown. Authorities believe that Smith's 18-year-old boyfriend Jose Calderon beat the child after he knocked over the TV set on Friday, January 27; last year, the NY Times wrote the Calderon "grabbed [Brown] by the ankles, swung him and hurled him into the wall" and recent reports noted Calderon used his fists,......

The American Cancer Society reported yesterday that city minorities are more likely to die from certain types of cancers than other New Yorkers. In addition to the fact that certain malignancies occur more frequently in some ethnicities, the report, issued after a three day conference in New Orleans, shares that minorities are also less likely to get preventative treatment. And the treatment they do receive once diagnosed tends to be less aggressive. This is due......

An interesting thing to know about growing up under the Administration for Children's Services: If you are diagnosed with gender-identity disorder, your sex change operation will be courtesy of the city. The Post reports that for the second time, a judge has ruled that the city should pay for the operation since Mariah Lopez was diagnosed with gender identity disorder. The city appealed, but Judge Sheldon Rand ruled in Lopez's favor yet again, saying that......

We're used chopsticks to as ad-hoc kite frames, but we've never ever crafted a brace out of them for a 20 month old toddler's ankle fracture. Yet that's what health guru David Jubb did instead of taking his son to the doctor. Jubb, who the Post excitedly proclaims has clients like Liv Tyler and Donna Karan AND drinks his own urine, had to give up custody of his son when he didn't follow the Administration......

Yesterday morning, Bronx couple Rosa Lopez and Francisco Pena realized their 2 year old son Anthony was missing when they were getting their children ready for school. After searching for him, they found him dead, in a plastic container. It turns out his 6 year old brother Alexis had put Anthony in a Rubbermaid storage bin - the boys and their 4 year old sister were playing a game of hide and seek after their......

It was one year ago yesterday that 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, previously starved and beaten, was murdered in Bed-Stuy - her stepfather and mother are currently charged with her death. On this grim anniversary, city officials and child advocates implored the government to increase resources in keeping with an increase in child abuse reports over the past year. Specifically, officials are requesting an increase in the number of Family Court judges and maintaining a healthy budget......

Subway special on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person struck by an A train in Brooklyn, a stabbing on the J train in Queens, and a "train job" (?) at Newkirk Avenue. Rosie's Trump beef now extends to Barbara Walters, who appears to have been stabbing her in the back in private conversations with Donald Trump: "Are you looking me in the face and denying you didn't tell him you didn't say this? You're a......

They say New York is home to a million stories, and so far this year, we've published 7021 of them here on Gothamist. So in case you missed any of those, let's take a little stroll back in time, and review the most significant stories the past 12 months, shall we? Here's part one of a semi-chronological look at 2006; part two will go up tomorrow: Nixzmary Brown and the Problem with the Administration for......

Yesterday morning, a Bronx man used his building's emergency call box to say he had killed his son. When police and firefighters arrived, Jose Stable told them he slashed the throat of his 12 year old son. Ulysses was found nude in a bathtub; police also found "two knives possibly used in the attack, and a bucket with bloody water." Ulysses was autistic, and Stable reportedly said, "I just couldn't take it anymore. My son......

Of all the places of business that should be shredding documents, the Administration for Children's Services, which deals with very sensitive material about children and their families, should be shredding them. And yet the Daily News found 200 case files dumped on a streetcorner in Manhattan - totally in tact and in a "ripped, clear plastic garbage bag." The Daily News called one of the parents whose file was in the trash, and the mother......

Preston Hertzog, the 4 month old baby whose brain suffered serious injuries possibly due to his parents's shaking, died Wednesday at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park. Parents Antonio Patterson and Tamira Hertzog had been investigated by the Administration for Children's Services over the 2000 death of an infant and were currently meeting with ACS over abuse claims on another child, and the couple hid Hertzog's pregnancy from ACS workers. They were called "extremely......

Sigh. More news about how Administration of Children's Services caseworkers had a lot of contact with the parents of a 4 month old baby boy whose brain damage may be caused by shaken baby syndrome. In 2000, Antonio Patterson and Tamira Hertzog's baby daughter died, possibly by wounds inflicted by Patterson; the incident caused their children to be placed in foster care, but they were returned to their parents a few years later. A daughter......

The Administration for Children's Services was involved with the family of now brain-damaged 4 month old Preston Hertzog. Authorities suspect Preston is the victim of shaken baby syndrome; the baby remains in a hospital, being kept alive by a respirator. In 2000, Antonio Patterson and Tamirra Hertzog's 2 month old baby Mia died; the ACS put their other children into temporary foster care during the investigation which found that Mia died of blunt force trauma.......

The Administration for Children's Services has yet another problem on its hands. A Brooklyn mother who was visiting her daughter at an ACS-contracted foster facility managed to kidnap the 5 year old, Egypt Lewis. Deneen Peterkin returned her 5 year old to St. Vincent's Services, a foster agency on Montague Street, yesterday when she found out police were looking for her. The Daily News reports that Peterkin managed to get away with her daughter by......

The death of 2 year old Sharllene Morillo was already tragic enough, as it had come from the hands of her stepfather (she was dropped on her head, which led to a brain hemorrhage last week), but now it turns out that her day care provider had contacted the Administration for Children's Services about abuse weeks ago. Gertrudis Acevedo, who took care of Morillo in May, said that the child seemed withdrawn and saw scratches,......