NEW YORK

Police charge 13 people linked to sex-slave ring

Federal prosecutors have charged 13 people in a sex-slave ring they say forced young Mexican women into prostitution in New York and New Jersey.

Authorities said some of the women were delivered to farms in New Jersey, where each would have sex with up to 25 farm workers a day. They say others worked in brothels located in dingy apartments in poor neighborhoods.

Court papers say customers paid $30 for 15 minutes of sex and the women would get $15 but were usually forced to give it to traffickers who had smuggled them into the U.S.

Some of the defendants were scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

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Eight defendants were jailed without bail Wednesday in New York. Four are in custody elsewhere. One is being sought.

BURKESVILLE, Ky.

Boy, 5, fatally shoots his 2-year-old sister

In southern Kentucky, where children get their first guns even before they start first grade, Stephanie Sparks paid little attention as her 5-year-old son, Kristian, played with the rifle he was given last year. Then, as she stepped onto the front porch while cleaning the kitchen, “she heard the gun go off,” a coroner said.

In a horrific accident Tuesday that shocked a rural area far removed from the national debate over gun control, the boy had killed his 2-year-old sister, Caroline, with a single shot to the chest.

“Down in Kentucky where we’re from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation,” Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said. “You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything.”

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The rifle was made by a company that sells guns specifically for children — “My first rifle” is the slogan.

Kristian’s rifle was kept in a corner of the mobile home, and the family didn’t realize a bullet had been left in it.

“It’s a normal way of life, and it’s not just rural Kentucky, it’s rural America — hunting and shooting and sport fishing. It starts at an early age,” said Cumberland County Judge Executive John Phelps. “There’s probably not a household in this county that doesn’t have a gun.”

— From news service reports

 


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