Louisiana Teen Charged With Rape and Murder of Infant

June 09, 2009

Read, then vote to decide if abortion is comparable to murder

Last week I brought you the story of a 13-year-old boy from southern China's Guangzhou Province, who was arrested for brutally murdering a three-year-old girl and then having sex with her corpse. Today, I bring you an equally disturbing case from Gretna, La., involving a teen who police say raped and murdered his girlfriend's infant son.

According to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, a patrol unit was dispatched to an apartment in the 1600 block of Gary Court on June 6 to investigate a report of an unresponsive infant. When deputies arrived on the scene, they found the lifeless body of 8-month-old Da-Von Lonzo. Paramedics were summoned to the scene, and the child was transported to Ochsner Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

When police questioned the lone subject inside the house, 17-year-old Arnold T. Ross, he told them he had been babysitting Da-Von for his girlfriend when the infant fell down the stairs and stopped breathing. Investigators noted inconsistencies in Ross's statement, and a neighbor who was questioned reported hearing loud noises coming from the apartment.

Despite suspicions surrounding Ross, he was not arrested at the scene; however, he was taken into police custody the following day, after an autopsy revealed that the infant had suffered multiple fractures consistent with a beating, and tears to his rectum that were consistent with a sexual assault.

When confronted with the evidence, police say Ross changed his story, implicating himself in the case.

"Ross admitted that while he was watching the infant, the child began to cry," said Sheriff Newell Normand. "As the crying continued, Ross confessed to beating the infant repeatedly. According to Ross, the child began to defecate on himself. Ross claims he placed his fingers inside the infant's rectum in an attempt to clean up the child."   

Following his alleged confession, Ross was booked into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Facility on one count of first degree murder and one count of aggravated rape. Due to the degree of the murder charge, Ross is ineligible to receive a bond.

According to John Fortunato, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, Ross has a lengthy criminal record that includes arrests for assault, drug possession, obscenity, theft, and weapons charges. Fortunato did not specify which charges, if any, have resulted in conviction; however, he did say that Louisiana law does allow a 17-year-old to be charged as an adult.

Switching gears a bit…

On June 7, Mary Ann Kreitzer, founder of the Catholic Media Coalition, published an article on her blog entitled "Arnold Ross and George Tiller: Two Child Killers." (George Tiller is the Wichita, Kan., abortion provider who was recently shot to death in the vestibule of the Lutheran church he attended.) In the article, Kreitzer calls Ross the "philosophical twin" of Tiller, claiming that his alleged crimes are just as monstrous as the legal late-term abortions that Tiller performed.

"That's what George Tiller did every day: injected saline solution to scald babies and burn off their skin, stabbed them in the neck and sucked out their brains, thrust a needle full of digoxin into their hearts to stop its beating - his methods changed over the years, but all guaranteed delivery of a battered and dead baby," Kreitzer wrote. "Yet Tiller is a hero to the pro-abortion mob while Ross, no doubt, they would consider a monster. Tiller didn't rape the babies; he performed a mechanical rape on their mothers using sterile instruments to violate the sanctuary of the uterus."

Kreitzer goes on to say that there is "precious little difference" between Da-Von and the babies that were surgically aborted at Tiller's clinic.

So what do you think? Is abortion comparable to murder? Share your thoughts, and vote in our poll:

Online Surveys & Market Research

Related Links:
Thirteen-year-old Boy Accused of Murder-Necrophilia
James Wamsley Sent to Prison For Rape of Nine-Month-Old Infant

Photo Credits: Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office

Please note: Persons appearing in mug shots may not have not been convicted of the charges for which they are accused and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission from Discovery Communications. All quotes must include a link back.

Comments

[Lisafer]

I just wish there were a "Oh, HELL no!" button on the poll.
Mary Ann Kreitzer and her kind are true abominators and should educate themselves on just what kind of circumstances most often lead to third-term abortions.

[betty]

Thanks for posting this. It's a topic that's been on my mind lately.

[Terri]

what is wrong with Doctors that are suppose to help people not kill innocent babies that havent even had a chance at anything. shame on him and his family for going thru there daily routine ignoring what he does and have the nerves to go to church. let what happened be a message to all that do this unless its medically necessary.

[Heather]

The problem with people who are rabidly anti-abortion is that they don't stop to actually get their facts straight. If they (and Terri) actually did a little reading online they would find that Dr. Tiller only performed late term abortions when it WAS medically necessary. If anti-abortionists had their ways all abortions would be illegal even if the pregnancy killed the mother.

[oscar]

Individual rights are not to be a tool to make political points and/or advance an intolerant point of view. Decisions are personal and evaluated well, placing belief, values and morals in a balance. We cannot dictate actions..based on a personal want... the world would not function if we were to enact how we all feel about everything... It is within our reasonable conciense to know what is right.. please do not practice with unreason. making points by comparison -are transparent with hate and intolerance. Use that time to help the ones in need that are suffering now. Orphans, sick, unwanted, discarted, missing, abused and waiting for mercy...

[John D]

"Mary Ann Krietzer and her kind are true abominators and should educate themselves on circumstances leading to third-term abortions." What circumstances lady? If you think murdering by piercing the skull and sucking out the baby's brain matter is at all justified, then your e-name shouldn't be LISAFER: It should be LUCIFER!!

[Anonymous]

Many states now prosecute as murder, the causing of the death of an unborn child in the mother's womb. Most doctors will not perform abortions because they know it is the murder of an unborn child, and that life begins at conception. Every mother knows that there is a viable, living human being in her womb during pregnancy. The Catholic Church has always defended life from conception in the womb. More people are pro-life today than pro-abortion. There is no "free choice" when the life of the child is concerned. No one with free will is permitted to choose the death of the child. Medical ethics clearly states that the mother's life should never be taken to save the child. And no child should be aborted to save the mother's life. Catholic teaching is that everything should be done to save the mother's life, but the objective should never be to kill the child in the womb. Wake up!

[mary ann]

I agree with Ms. Kreitzer. George Tiller was in many ways worse than this young man, because he killed many, many babies. As a post-abortion counselor, after working with hundreds of women over the last 20 years, I know this: abortion does not help women. Show me the studies. Ask women you know. Show me the evidence that it helps women--emotionally, spiritually, economically, mentally. It does not, and it kills their children. You do not "help" a woman by killing her child. It goes against what we all know is right and true, deep down. Wake up!

[John Regan]

Abortion is worse than murder. Most murders are the result of violent and passionate reactions to real or percieved injustice. The criminal mind is utterly frustrated and sees no other way out but to murder his victim. The abortionist is a different animal altogeather. Cold and calculating, he plans with precision how he will destroy, in a "professional way" the body and life of God's child, while He (God) is forming the child in it's mothers womb. The abortionist has no respect for God or man, and ultimately no respect for himself. He is a career murderer and (on the surface at least) is proud of his skill. He is however, mentally, emotionally and spiritually sick and needs our prayers. Regardless, he is still a murderer.

[Cat]

Being surgically aborted in a clinic by medical professionals who take sworn ethical oaths is undoubtedly a heck of a lot less painful that being beaten to death by your crappy mother's dead beat boyfriend.

The best alternative is neither. We need to stop shoving all of the attention on to abortion, and start focusing on the REAL problem- preventing unwanted pregnancy, and educating our population.

If you think making abortion illegal again will make it go away you're being short sighted and completely naive. Abortion has existed as long as human beings have. All you'll accomplish by outlawing it is turning it into a prohibition era style underground racket.

[Rod]

"If you think making abortion illegal again will make it go away you're being short sighted and completely naive."

On the contrary, after 1989 post-Communist Poland outlawed abortion and promptly saw the number of aborions reduced from over 100,000 to 773 in 1993! In 1997 the Left managed to get this Anti-Abortion Act temporarily suspended and the number rose to 3,047. As soon as it was reintroduced after a legal challenge abortions immediately dropped again - to 310 in 1998 and 193 in 2004.

Furthermore, not a single one of the usual litany of alleged repercussions which pro-aborts claim will flow from criminalising abortion materialised. They said hospitals would be full of women being treated for botched backstreet abortions. In fact, the number of such cases decreased greatly. They said Polish prisons would be full of women convicted of abortion. In fact, it was the aborting Doctors, not the mothers, who were treated as criminals. They said unnplanned (unwanted) pregnancies would rise sharply. In fact, it didn't happen. They said miscarriages induced by desperate women would increase. In fact, the number of miscarriages went down. They said deaths connected with pregnancy, confinement and delivery would increase. In fact, they dropped significantly. They said women would fall into financial penury and lack assistance. In fact it was such a non-problem that Church pregnancy support resources were under-utilised. And they screamed, of course, that the number of illegal abortions would skyrocket. It just did not happen and all the relevant official statistical indicators show that it is not a serious problem, there being just 70 recorded in 1991 and only 23 in 2004.

In other words, all the facts point to the Anti-Abortion Act benefitting the whole of Polish society rather than turning abortion "into a prohibition era style underground racket"! Even in America this was never the case. In "Aborting America" [1997], former leading abortionist Dr Bernard Nathanson, who was instrumental in the campaigning that led to the striking down of New York's anti-abortion laws and the introduction of abortion on demand, details how he and his fellow "pro-choicers" (which "very cynical" slogan he helped dream up) lied their heads off about the rate of illegal abortions to sell their cause. This is what he said:

"We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program by fabricating the small number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. We lobbied the legislature, we captured the media...."
I hope all that dispels the usual myths recycled by "Cat" in his mail above. Nowadays it is the law of the land, rather than the natural moral law of right and wrong written on heart of every believer and unbeliever alike, which acts as the moral guide for countless millions. In which case, outlawing abortion would quickly and simply save millions of American babies at a stroke, without any of the calamitous side-effects trotted out by the billion dollar abortion franchise in a bid to protect its lucrative industry.

[helenhudson]

Da-Von's mother (seemingly) willingly exposed her child to this monster; she didn't know or care about his record? Let's see prosecutors charging some of these women with failure to protect (and make it a serious felony).

RIP little Da-Von

How did Tiller sleep at night? Did he avert his eyes from the kick bucket when he committed those murders? How ironic that he died in church; was the sixth commandment on his mind at death?

[Kim]

I am sick sick of mothers leaving their innocent children alone with their criminal boyfriends! This mother should have been arrested along with her loser boyfriend. I don't believe in abortion for myself, but I do not have the right to make that choice for other women as I DO NOT know their reasons and I will not be around to take care of that child for her either. Late term abortions are done in order to save the mother and if that is the case so be it.

[aimee]

I work in the social services field and see daily children who are beaten, raped tortured and unwanted. Having never been born would be a heck of alot better than these kids face everyday. I say right on!!! to pro-abortion doctors who would rather terminate a pregnancy than to see the effects of an unwanted child later down the road.

[j.stephen.h]

It isnt comparable to murder by definition, because the definition is the WIlling and UNLAWFUL act of killing by one individual(s) to another. (or group of others)....until abortion is illegal then its lawful killing, unless the state in question has laws against it. Also with murder the mentality should be considered, its willfull and premeditated beforehand, intended to exact revenge, gain money,power,fulfilling lust drives etc...or reactionary in degrees of passion. (jealousy, ,rage,reaction to a spontaneous insult ) Is it wrong to kill them? Sometimes...but I think there are extenuating circumstances in life that can sometimes make death a mercy if the quality of life in question is so distorted that the child will never know of its existence in the world. (babies born with malformed brains who are virtual vegetables among other things) Its' crude to make such comparisons between doctor tiller and a.t. ross...being that the slain doctor didnt maliciously beat, sodomize, and kill his "said": victims...he killed babies still in the womb and collected a check for it, and regardless of the morality ethics involved what he Did was considered legally acceptable by his state...if the laws change, (making abortion indentifiable with murder) then abortion will be murder. Note however that ethical rights, and wrongs are not capable of being summed up completely by the coldness of words alone. (and as i always state, each case should be examined individually with all factors considered.)

[Mary]

As a Catholic, I find I am more than a little out of the main stream because I take the time to educate myself on issues instead of following blindly down a path of half truths. What Ms. Kreitzer fails to realize is the choice variable. Many women choose termination for reasons of their own and the majority are done prior to any form or viable life. That defensless baby was living, in THIS world and had a future. Neither his mother or that child had a choice in the manner in which he died. It is wrong, NOT the same, and she should be ashamed to use such a tragedy for her grandstanding.

[Kelly]

Throw this piece of trash into the gutter and let him drown in a stinky, contaminated river full of feces and other junk! I can't believe it sinks THIS low..an eight-day-old infant..dead already? The poor thing couldn't even get through two weeks of his life. R.I.P. baby angel. You will never be able to hurt again. This WILL come back to bite this disgusting, disgraceful excuse for a living thing in the arse very, VERY soon.

[locksmith in Wichita]

These stories are so disturbing. I remember the Wichita story. Thank goodness there was no locksmith in Wichita to unlock that vestibule.