The man who threw a 5-year-old boy over the Mall of America’s third-floor balcony in April was given a 19-year prison sentence Monday.
Emmanuel Aranda, 24, pleaded guilty in May for attempted murder. The 40-foot fall left Landen with head trauma and broken bones.
Landen and his parents did not appear in court Monday, but offered statements read in court by prosecutor Cheri Townsend, NBC News reported.
“Your act was evil and selfish,” the boy’s father said in his statement. “You chose to listen to the worst parts of yourself that day. That is where your impact on us stops. You will take nothing more from us.”
Aranda told investigators he was “looking for somebody to kill” on April 12 and was looking to kill another person at the mall, according to The Associated Press. He chose Landen when the previous plan did not “work out.”
“God will judge you someday and I have peace with that,” his mother’s statement said, NBC reported.
By the way, some people have falsely claimed that Aranda is a Somali Muslim immigrant, but in fact he was born in Chicago. There is a large Somali population in Minneapolis, but he’s not part of it.
In January 2018, Christopher Wayne Cleary of Denver posted a disturbing message to his Facebook page:
“All I wanted was a girlfriend, not 1000 not a bunch of hoes not money none of that. All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me I’m 27 years old and I’ve never had a girlfriend before and I’m still a virgin, this is why I’m planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I’m ready to die and all the girls the turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see.”
Cleary already had an extensive history of cyberstalking. His Facebook threat was reminiscent of “incel” (involuntary celibate) killer Elliot Rodger. Last month, Cleary was sentenced to prison:
A man who posted a Facebook message threatening to kill “as many girls as I see” in retaliation for years of romantic rejection was sentenced [May 23] to up to five years in prison.
Judge Christine Johnson’s decision to keep Christopher W. Cleary, 27, of Denver, behind bars in Utah went against a recommendation from Cleary’s attorney and prosecutors to sentence him to probation so he could be returned to Colorado to serve prison time there for probation violations.
Johnson said the incident clearly warranted prison time and that she didn’t feel comfortable relying on Colorado to keep Cleary locked up. She said Utah’s board of pardons can decide if Cleary should be transferred to Colorado.
Cleary’s Facebook threat came hours before women marched through many U.S. cities in January, stoking fears of another deadly rampage by a man blaming women for his problems. Cleary called himself a virgin who never had a girlfriend. When police tracked his cellphone and arrested him at a McDonald’s restaurant in Provo, Utah, Cleary said he had been upset and wasn’t thinking clearly.
Cleary spoke only briefly at the sentencing, saying quietly, “I’m just sorry for what happened.”
His actions fit a pattern of behavior for a troubled man with a history of terrorizing women he met over the internet. At least eight people since 2012 have contacted authorities to accuse Cleary of stalking or harassing them, according to an Associated Press review of police and court records.
His attorney, Dustin Parmley, said Cleary was ashamed of his actions and has long had issues controlling his impulses to say inappropriate things. He said Cleary had a troubled childhood and was diagnosed with mental health issues at age 10, though he didn’t elaborate. Parmley said Cleary bounced between group homes and mental health hospitals during his childhood. . . .
Among the complaints against Cleary in Colorado were reports that he threatened to bomb a grocery store in 2013 after an employee refused to cash his check; that he threatened to slit the throat of a Denver city employee after his car was towed; and that he threatened a mass shooting at a mental health facility during a 2016 phone call.
Cleary was on probation for a marijuana conviction when, in 2016, he was charged with stalking two 18-year-old women he met online. He was on probation and in mental health court for the stalking cases when he was charged in 2017 with stalking and harassing a third woman who was Cleary’s caseworker. Last year, judges in Jefferson County, Colorado, sentenced him to probation in all three stalking cases.
Cleary also has a warrant for his arrest in Denver, where a 17-year-old told police in 2015 that he sent her a string of threatening text messages, including: “I own multiple guns I can have u dead in a second.”
Cleary never actually committed any acts of violence, but apparently enjoyed frightening people with threats of violence. There was a time in our history where someone like Cleary would have either been permanently locked up in a lunatic asylum or, perhaps, shot dead by the father of one of the girls he threatened. The fact that Colorado was willing to turn him loose on probation . . . Oh, crap. He’s like Deb Frisch!
Carlos Maza’s Twitter handle is @gaywonk, which would seem to imply that homosexuality is not only the basis of his personal identity, but also defines his expertise as a “wonk” (i.e., a public policy analyst). For nearly six years, Maza worked for Media Matters, specializing in — what else? — LGBT issues. Then in January 2017, Maza was hired by Vox-dot-com to produce a series of videos called Strikethrough, more or less exclusively devoted to Maza’s dual obsessions, Donald Trump and Fox News.
You get the idea. Maza’s attacks on Fox News are arguably unethical, because he fails to disclose that Vox is substantially owned by Comcast/NBC Universal, a business competitor of Fox. But in terms of pure politics, Maza’s prominence as a left-wing pundit (many of his videos have gotten more than 1 million views on YouTube) makes him a fair target of criticism by conservatives. Steven Crowder, who has nearly 4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, has been providing this criticism, which is to say he’s made a lot of jokes at Maza’s expense.
So, last week, Carlos Maza published a lengthy Twitter thread claiming to be a victim of “harassment” because Crowder has made jokes about him. Of course, liberal media are amplifying his claim:
Of course, all these stories just assume the validity of Maza’s claim, that there is a “homophobic mob” who have been incited by Steven Crowder to engage in “harassment.” This assumption ignores the fact that Maza has made himself obnoxious by his repeated attacks on Fox News, and that all Crowder has done is to call Maza’s videos to the attention of a conservative audience that resents such attacks. Most of what Maza calls “harassment” is merely people expressing (however rudely) their objections to Maza’s obnoxious behavior. It may help to compare this to something completely outside the world of politics.
Think about this year’s NFC championship game, in which the referees missed a pass-interference call that cheated the New Orleans Saints out of a Super Bowl appearance. Now, it is an unfortunate reality that football fans are not apt to express their anger politely, and Saints fans probably said some very crude things about the referees in that game. Whose fault is that? Are the TV game announcers, who called attention to the missed call — replaying it over and over in slow-motion — guilty of inciting “harassment” against the referees? If the referees got death threats from angry New Orleans fans, should this be blamed on the broadcasters and sports writers who criticized the missed call? No, of course not.
Likewise, in the world of political commentary, a partisan pundit who makes himself obnoxious by his commentary is apt to provoke hostile reactions and this is not the fault of any critic who calls attention to the pundit’s commentary. Like the refs in the New Orleans game, Carlos Maza has endeavored to deserve the contempt of a rather large number of people, namely everyone who watches Fox News (the highest-rated cable news network, with more than 3 million views). It is not Steven Crowder’s fault that people are angry at Carlos Maza, and if some of these people have expressed their anger in behavior that could be called “harassment,” these people are responsible for their own misconduct. It’s wrong for Maza to blame Crowder for this, in the same way it would be wrong for bad NFL referees to blame their unpopularity on the broadcasters who call attention to their erroneous judgments.
Here is a simple statement: Carlos Maza is a bad person.
Evidence of his bad character can be shown by the fact that Maza is now attempting to get Steven Crowder banned from YouTube. This is an effort to suppress free speech, and shows that Carlos Maza is a totalitarian, for only a totalitarian seeks to “win” an argument by silencing opposition.
We believe that advertising has the power to change mindsets. In many cases, it really influences popular culture because it’s seen so many times and with such frequency. And so a very big part of our gender equality effort is really focused on leveraging our voice in advertising and media. The Gillette campaign, which I’m so proud of, takes on this other important conversation about modern masculinity. . . .
I mean, the role of men matters in this space, right? Men need to play an equally important role as women in eliminating bias, promoting equality, demonstrating positive social and cultural behavior. You know, all too often we talk about gender inequality as a woman’s problem. But it has to be something that is an issue for all of us, it’s about men and women advocating for a more equal world. That’s a better role for all of us.
Notice how “more equal” becomes a synonym for better.
“The best a man can be” is therefore . . . what? Successful? No, it is wrong for men to succeed, because in the zero-sum-game mentality of feminism, male success is always evidence of discrimination against women. If a man gets a promotion, this is because of his “male privilege.” The agenda of “promoting equality” stigmatizes male success. In the interview, Ms. Tastad boasts that half of P&G’s management is female, but why should this corporate quota regime stop at 50%? Why not make it 100%? Because frankly, I can’t imagine why any man would want to work for Procter & Gamble. Ms. Tastad’s company is almost certainly discriminating against male employees, establishing de facto quotas in order to achieve a statistical “equality” (in the same way, and for similar reasons, that Harvard discriminates against Asian students).
Procter & Gamble has announced that the number of jobs at the company is at an all-time low, with the headcount down 3.2 percent from last year, with just 92,000 people on the payroll worldwide, down 3,000 from last year.
Under increasing pressure to lower costs following restructuring efforts, the company has reported there will be more job cuts to come as sales growth has failed to turn around. . . . A new heavily automated site in West Virginia will give opportunity for less employment as the products manufactured won’t be touched by humans until they reach retail stores.
An extra helping this week to get caught up on the lack of posting over the Memorial Day weekend. This week’s appetizer is Morena Baccarin, because it’s her birthday and because she’s familiar to a lot of folks from the Matrix Reloaded, Stargate SG-1, Firefly and Serenity, V, and of course, Deadpool. This pic is from a 2012 Esquire photoshoot.
Somerset County Prosecutor Michael H. Robertson, Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Chief of County Detectives John W. Fodor and Franklin Township Chief of Police Richard Grammar announced the arrest of four individuals, Sean Allen, age 51, Marina Volz (formerly known as Matthew Volz), age 30, Ashley D. Romero (formerly known as Adam Romero), age 26, and Dulcinea Gnecco, age 19, all of Coburn Lane in Franklin Township, N.J., on charges including aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child (age 7, known to the defendants).
Prosecutor Robertson stated that these arrests were made after a five month investigation conducted by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes/Child Abuse Unit. In January of 2019, the Prosecutor’s Office received a referral from the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P) reporting that a 7-year old child was residing in a home on Coburn Lane in Franklin Township, N.J., where Marina Volz (formerly known as Matthew Volz) and his roommates were creating pornography. On January 28, 2019, a search warrant was executed at the residence and it was discovered that the child was in fact residing in the home where a pornography production company was being operated, exposing the child to sexually-explicit matter. Electronic items, including cell phones and computers were seized for forensic examination. The child was subsequently removed from the home by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in January 2019.
Prosecutor Robertson stated that during the examination and analysis of the electronic devices, several sexually-explicit photos and videos of the 7-year old victim were located. Criminal complaints were signed against four of the residents of the home. The defendants and their charges are as follows:
Marina E. Volz (formerly known as Matthew L. Volz) — 1st degree Aggravated Sexual Assault, 1st degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the manufacturing of child pornography), two counts of 2nd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, 3rd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the possession of child pornography)
Ashley D. Romero (formerly known as Adam D. Romero) — 1st degree Aggravated Sexual Assault, 1st degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the manufacturing of child pornography), two counts of 2nd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, and 3rd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the possession of child pornography)
Sean F. Allen — 1st degree Aggravated Sexual Assault, three counts of 3rd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (one count specifically for the possession of child pornography)
Dulcinea Gnecco — 1st degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the manufacturing of child pornography) and 3rd degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child (for the possession of child pornography)
On Wednesday, May 29, 2019, detectives from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, along with detectives from the Franklin Township Police Department arrested the above-listed individuals at their Coburn Lane residence without incident. They were all transported to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office for processing and later lodged at the Somerset County Jail, pending a detention hearing.
This story has been widely reported, but one aspect of the case requires further investigation: How did these four people end up living together in New Jersey? Matthew L. “Marina” Volz is apparently from Beaverton, Oregon, and two years ago in June 2017, was featured in an article as president of the Queer Student Association at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Assuming that this is the same person — and how many transgender people named “Marina Volz” could there be? — the question is how Volz made his/“her” way to New Jersey.
My suspicion is that these people met online and that the 51-year-old man, Sean Allen, had invited these people to move in with him to start the “pornography production company.” How did Allen obtain custody of a 7-year-old child? Was this his grandchild? Where were the parents?
This story deserves additional reporting, and I’m thinking about making some calls to Somerset County officials on Monday.
