Sandy claims 2 missing NYC boys, ages 2 and 4 Sandy claims 2 missing NYC boys, ages 2 and 4 ADVERTISING NEW YORK — Two young brothers swept from the arms of their mother by the violent sea at the
Sandy claims 2 missing NYC boys, ages 2 and 4
NEW YORK — Two young brothers swept from the arms of their mother by the violent sea at the height of superstorm Sandy were found dead in a marsh Thursday, a tragic exclamation mark on an epic storm.
The boys, 2-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Connor Moore, were sucked into the swirling floodwaters as their mother, Glenda Moore, tried to escape her SUV after it stalled Monday in the deluge on Staten Island, one of the areas hardest hit by the storm that has claimed 90 lives.
“Terrible, absolutely terrible,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said as he announced that the bodies had been discovered on the third day of a search that included police divers and sniffer dogs.
“It just compounds all the tragic aspects of this horrific event.”
Police said the 29-year-old mother had driven from her flooded home toward her sister’s house in Brooklyn when the car became stuck about 6:10 p.m. Monday, forcing her to confront the rising water and the relentless cadence of pounding waves as she clung to her boys’ arms.
Search halted
for missing ship captain after 3 days scouring sea off N.C.
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — The U.S. Coast Guard halted its search Thursday for the captain of a tall ship that sank off the North Carolina coast during Hurricane Sandy after more than three days of around-the-clock effort.
The Coast Guard for 90 hours searched for 63-year-old Robin Walbridge of St. Petersburg, Fla., using ships, helicopters and large planes before suspending its efforts at approximately 6:42 p.m., said Lt. Michael Patterson.
“Suspending a search and rescue case is one of the hardest decisions we have to make,” said Capt. Doug Cameron, the chief of incident response for the Coast Guard 5th District.
The HMS Bounty was originally built for the 1962 film “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando, and it was featured in several other films over the years, including one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.
Walbridge was captain of the three-masted tall ship, which sank before dawn Monday in hurricane-churned waters about 90 miles off Cape Hatteras. The crew abandoned ship in two life rafts, and the Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members. Claudene Christian, 42, was among those rescued, but she died.
Prosecutor: Woman told children to pray, then stabbed them as they begged for lives
NAPERVILLE, Ill. — A suburban Chicago woman ordered her 7-year-old son and a kindergartner she was babysitting to kneel on a bedroom floor and pray, then stabbed them both dozens of times as they begged for their lives, striking again and again as she told her son he was going to heaven, authorities said Thursday.
Officers who forced their way inside the locked apartment hours later found blood-spattered walls and the children’s bodies in a master bedroom where moments before the killings they had been happily jumping on a bed, prosecutors said.
The Naperville police chief said it was the most gruesome sight he’d seen in three decades on the job.
Elzbieta Plackowska, a 40-year-old immigrant from Poland, offered numerous explanations for the violence, including that she was battling the devil and trying to rid the children of evil, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said. But she eventually told investigators she stabbed the children and slashed their throats on Tuesday night because she was angry that her husband, a truck driver, was often away.
“She told the detectives that she thought by killing (her son) Justin she would make her husband hurt the way she hurt in their relationship,” Berlin said.
By wire sources
