You can’t just make this stuff up. At least I can’t because I’m not very creative.
From Kansas.com:
Ron and Diane Taliaferro say they locked their kids in a moldy, ant-infested room to protect them from a fugitive.
What happened in the following moments, they told The Eagle on Tuesday, was a gross misunderstanding with law enforcement officers who chased the man to their Oaklawn home June 11.
This story is either really confusing or my reading comprehension skills have shot craps. Please help me decipher what the article is trying to say. I understand that it is the father of the children who was chased to his Oaklawn home by police on June 11th?
It was also the last time they saw their kids.
Officers took all three — 5-year-old Savannah, who goes by Nicki; 4-year-old Anna, who likes to be called “Anna-conda”; and 2-year-old Bubba Jo — into protective custody.
The officers said the room smelled like urine and feces and was infested with ants. The youngest child’s diaper was soiled, and the oldest girl told a detective they hadn’t yet been fed that day.
The Taliaferros spent four nights in jail and were released Friday without being charged.
Does this mean no charges will be filed?
The family moved to Kansas from Alabama about a year ago as they looked for “a fresh start,” which included a new job.
About three months after they got here, they gave up their newborn son, Joshua, for adoption.
What a blessing for this child to be placed in a better home. I hope these worthless parents decide to give all their children up for adoption and then get sterilized.
“We didn’t have the money,” Ron Taliaferro said. “We already had three, and we had a hard enough time keeping clothes on their backs…. We thought it was best for him and us.”
They moved to Oaklawn after a disagreement with a landlord led to their eviction from a home near Hydraulic and Pawnee about a month ago.
Here’s what the Taliaferros said happened June 11:
Ron and Diane Taliaferro and the kids were outside playing in the spray of a garden hose with two abandoned pit bulls they rescued from a home down the street.
This just keeps getting better and better. No offense toward pit-bull owners, but letting your children play with pit-bulls that have been abandoned and you don’t know their history? Crazy.
They went inside so Ron Taliaferro could change Bubba’s diaper, which had absorbed water from the hose.
Moments later, Justin W. Kraai, who had just escaped from Derby police, kicked in the front door.
Could this be the guy the police were chasing? Or, is it really the father of the children?
He had a handcuff dangling on one of his wrists and was acting strange, Ron Taliaferro said.
He recognized Kraai as a man who had tried to sell him a car when the Taliaferro family lived in a duplex near Hydraulic and Pawnee.
So, the father knows this guy — if the story is even true, but I don’t know.
Kraai asked to use a phone, but the family doesn’t have one, so Ron Taliaferro asked his wife to run to a store and buy a prepaid cell phone.
As Diane Taliaferro left, Ron Taliaferro shuffled the kids into a room and locked the door from the outside, using a lock that had been there when they moved in.
Since when does a lock on the outside of the door keep intruders out?
He locked them in so they wouldn’t get hurt, he said.
“I wasn’t afraid afraid of him, but I didn’t know what he was going to do,” Ron Taliaferro said at his home Tuesday as his wife cleaned.
Let the weirdness begin. What convinced the wife to go buy a pre-paid cell phone? A dangling handcuff? Taliaferro apparently was not afraid of the intruder — but he locks his children in a room?
He suspects Kraai swallowed drugs when he was caught earlier that day. Kraai escaped as police were taking him to the hospital.
Normally, Ron Taliaferro said, the kids aren’t allowed to stay in the room because it has mold problems.
“We were thinking of their safety when we put them in there,” he said.
Soon after that, he said, police entered, pistols drawn, and arrested Ron Taliaferro and Kraai. Diane Taliaferro was arrested when she came back from the store.
Ron Taliaferro said police never gave him a chance to explain that he locked his kids in the room to keep them safe or that his kids had been fed that day, and even had ice cream as a treat.
The parents were booked on suspicion of child endangerment with a bond of $75,000 each.
During their jail stay, their van was stolen, their home was broken into and tools Ron Taliaferro used to work as a handyman were stolen.
And they still haven’t been able to see their kids.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “Father’s Day was really bad. It’s like you can’t believe it was happening.”
Um, yeah … I’m sure this freak didn’t get anything for Father’s Day.
The Taliaferros said they planned to fill out paperwork today that would determine whether the couple can see their children.
“I can’t imagine what’s going through their minds,” he said of the kids.
Let me try. Maybe something like, “It sure is nice to be out of that moldy stinking room and get some food in our stomachs.”
Sheriff Lt. Jay McLaurian declined to comment on the case but said the SRS is still doing its own investigation of the family.
Ron and Diane Taliaferro said they plan to move after they regain custody of their children.
Ya think? Why bother with the kids — just move your sorry butts and start fresh without children. Am I the only one that finds this entire story strange and somewhat hard to understand?
12 Comments
June 20, 2007 at 1:12 pm
No, you’re not the only one who doesn’t get it. Methinks the copy editor should be shot.
Ya know, at least they placed child #4 for adoption. Most parents would abort….
June 20, 2007 at 1:16 pm
hiya Wy!…how disturbing hun…good Lord…..nothing is worse than child abuse and ……….this is too bizarre………..sad for those poor kids eh..
June 20, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Hi w,
It’s not surprising that you would be a bit confused by a not very well written account of life in the South. This is far from the strangest story I’ve heard. For that matter, it’s not even the weirdest one I’ve personally witnessed.
For some reason, the weather or the low cost of living, we seem to attract, and keep, the dregs of the country, which means the ones who can’t afford to move to California. When you combine this with our atrocious public education systems, it’s not surprising that we have more than our share of poor, ignorant people. This, of course, results in high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, along with lots of promiscuous behavior, resulting in lots of children being raised by fools.
All of this brings me around to what I wanted to say, even though it is embarrassing, which is that the parents in question were probably telling the truth. This would not seem all that unusual, if you had ever seen a naked woman and a man clad only in his briefs and a cowboy hat on their front lawn, settling a dispute about their son’s desire to join the Boy Scouts, each with a kitchen knife in one hand and a can of beer in the other, at three in the morning.
See, with the proper background information to give it perspective, it all makes sense
the Grit
June 20, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Hi Bridget — don’t worry, Grit explains it all in a comment a couple down from yours and right above this one. And I agree — I wish they’d give their remaining children up for adoption.
Hi Angel — Agreed.
Grit — I’m glad you weighed in on this one because it was really leaving me dumbfounded. Brace yourself — because they might move closer to you once they get their children back!
June 20, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I am concerned about these parents safety myself, so maybe we should lock them up for 50 years to be sure they don’t get hurt………..steve
June 20, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I’ll second that Steve
June 20, 2007 at 6:11 pm
i’m thirding NSL.
insane in the membrane.
June 20, 2007 at 6:27 pm
That’s a very weird story. I completely agree with you and think that the remaining children should be put up for adoption and the parents sterilized.
June 20, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Fourth to Steve.
Tammi - yeah, it’s a shame that they couldn’t do the same for the first three kids.
June 21, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hi w,
Of the two rental homes in the immediate area, we own one. The other, unfortunately, is directly across the road from us, and over the years has been occupied by much worse than the family described above. The current residents almost burnt it down earlier this year, when they neglected to keep an eye on the leaves they were burning. Alas, our fire department is just to good…
the Grit
June 23, 2007 at 7:07 am
[...] knew it would happen, therefore, this week’s comment goes out to the Grit. Unfortunately, the post was regarding child abuse by a white trash family in KS. Please note, many times I use the term white trash with affection, [...]
July 20, 2007 at 11:07 pm
[...] all knew it would happen, therefore, this week’s comment goes out to the Grit. Unfortunately, the post was regarding child abuse by a white trash family in KS. Please note, many times I use the term white trash with affection, [...]
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