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Teen mom who confessed to tossing newborn in dumpster
is charged with attempted murder
By Leonardo Blair,
Christian Post Reporter
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
A New Mexico teenager who confessed to police that she was the mother of a newborn baby found discarded in a dumpster and that she was the one who left the child has been charged with attempted murder and felony child abuse.
In a statement shared on Facebook, the Hobbs Police Department said that at about 8 p.m. last Friday, officers were called to the 1400 block of N. Thorp Street about a baby found in a dumpster.
Shortly after confirming the report, they provided assistance to the newborn. Hobbs EMS transported the child to a Lubbock, Texas, hospital for pediatric treatment. After reviewing the surveillance video of the area, police identified 18-year-old Alexis Avila as a suspect in the case. She later confessed that she gave birth to the baby at another location before leaving the child in a dumpster.
Avila is scheduled for a court appearance in Lovington on Wednesday afternoon. She is charged with attempting to commit first-degree murder.
Joe Imbriale, the owner of Rig Outfitters and Home Store, told KOB4 that when police called him Friday night with a request to view his surveillance footage, he knew “something wasn't right.”
“I saw the officers' faces, and they did not look right. They really didn't,” he said.
"I said, 'What is it we are looking for?' And she goes, 'We're looking for somebody who dumped a black garbage bag in your dumpster.' I turned around, I said, 'Please don't tell me it was a baby,'" the business owner said.
The video shows a woman believed to be Avila leaving the dumpster at about 2 p.m. Friday. Around six hours later, three people are shown searching through the dumpster and pulling out a black bag.
A woman in the group pulls out the newborn and cares for it, while a male quickly uses his phone. Police later arrived on the scene.
"I was in shock just to see this,” Imbriale said.
According to a criminal complaint, Avila told police that she didn’t know she was pregnant until a Jan. 6 doctor's appointment she had for abdominal pain.
She said the day she gave birth, the baby came "unexpectedly" when she went to the bathroom. She said she panicked as she cut the umbilical cord.
She wrapped the baby in a towel, placed the child in a bag with some trash, then put them in another bag and tied the bag shut. When asked what she thought would happen to the child after it was placed in the dumpster, she said nothing.
One of Avila's school friends at Hobbs High School, who declined to be named but has known her since freshman year, challenged her claim to police that she did not know she was pregnant in an interview with The Daily Mail.
“I heard her talk about being pregnant around late September, early October,” the friend said. “She never expressed that it was a bad thing that she was pregnant.”
On Dec. 17, she reportedly dropped out of high school. The 16-year-old father of the child, who was not named in the report because he is a minor, told the publication that Avila was aware of her pregnancy well before January but told him she had a miscarriage.
The baby boy is reportedly currently in the custody of the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department. Those wanting to make donations to help the baby can contact the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department, the police department announced Tuesday night.
The teen father says he wants custody of the baby and has called him Saul, according to The Daily Mail. While he remains younger than the legal age of consent in New Mexico, which is 17, Avila is not expected to face statutory rape charges because she is less than four years older than him.
Imbriale said he’s now having difficulty sleeping.
“I can't sleep at night just knowing that this baby was just tossed in a dumpster like that. I'm sorry, but who does that?” he asked. “That is evil. I don't have words for it."
It's called narcissism, and, yes, it's evil.
Country star Craig Morgan joins fight against human trafficking:
‘Jesus went to those ugly places’
By Jeannie Ortega Law,
Christian Post Reporter Twitter|
Thursday, January 13, 2022
Press photo of Craig Morgan, 2021 | Photo: Nate Griffin
Country music star, TV personality and Army veteran Craig Morgan is now lending his voice to the anti-trafficking nonprofit Exodus Road — because as a man of faith, he wants to use all of his life experience to do good in the world.
Morgan, an outspoken Christian who served as a deputy sheriff in Tennessee before becoming a country music star, was introduced to Exodus Road by a friend nearly seven years ago.
Exodus Road trains operatives to facilitate rescue missions for survivors of human trafficking by using "advanced technology to locate survivors and gather evidence for successful raids and arrests, impacting the larger systems of slavery," according to its website.
Due to his years of military experience, Morgan believes he's well-matched with the nonprofit.
"I was in the military for about 17 years and done a lot of things, so I had a particular skill set that I felt like I could offer my assistance to the organization, and I did,” Morgan shared in an interview with The Christian Post.
“In the process of doing that, I felt so strongly about what they were doing that I decided to get on their board and help promote the organization and try to assist in fundraising because this cost a lot of money to do this.”
Morgan was particularly intrigued by the organization’s mission to follow through with victims once rescued.
"The one thing that I loved about Exodus Road, and I think what drew me to them most, was the follow on,” he posited. “I've worked with other organizations in the past where we literally go in, snatch and grab and remove the victim, and then turn the victim over to either the government, or a church, or someone like that. That's not a bad thing, it's good that they're doing that. But with Exodus Road, when we start an operation, we're not just thinking about the individual and getting them out. We're thinking about where they're going to go, what they're going to do, how we're going to assist them in their life in the future.”
Many victims of human trafficking return to their captors if not assisted once taken out of compromising situations. Morgan praised Exodus Road for how they help victims develop skills to help them with everyday life.
"Exodus Road doesn't just focus on removing that individual and arresting the individual perpetrator, our emphasis is placed on the main players, the individuals that are responsible for that trafficking,” he said.
The organization's strategy, the musician said, is to dismantle sex-trafficking rings from the top down.
"We found around the world that in areas where [Exodus Road] had a huge impact, there's less and less of the ‘joes,’ per se. So in life in general, I think when you remove the temptation, it helps everybody,” the Tennessee native contended.
According to statistics from Traffick Watch, sex trafficking affects individuals of every age, ethnicity and socio-economic background. At any given time in 2016, an estimated 40.3 million people are in modern-day slavery.
The work of Exodus Road has led to over 1,500 rescues and more than 800 arrests to date. They have over 70 operatives working in six countries combating human trafficking through “prevention, intervention and aftercare."
The "International Harvester" singer called this work "a very ugly thing," adding: “You have to really be strong in faith, in your relationships, otherwise you could find yourself being compromised."
"Think about where Jesus went," he added. "I'm not comparing myself or anyone else that works for Exodus Road to Jesus, by no means, my Lord and Savior is the King. But Jesus went to those ugly places. He went there. I feel like if we're going to help people, that's where we have to go."
In 2018, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law that expands the fight against human sex trafficking, known as the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. Since then, however, Morgan said the conversation has died down.
"I felt like about three or four years ago, we were on a path in this nation to fight this on a level that hasn't been seen since the inception of this country," Morgan noted. "We were really on a path, and I feel like we kind of got away from it again. So that's why it's important that everyone that has the opportunity to talk about it, raise awareness. There's some bad players out there in the world that we need to ensure that we alleviate their ability to do what it is they're doing to other people.”
In 2017, Morgan visited Thailand with Exodus Road. While undercover with the organization, he met with a group of South African women that were told they were going to be going to Thailand to work. They were offered jobs, shown beautiful videos of the hotels and told they’d be making good money.
"They got there, there were no hotels, none of that stuff,” Morgan recounted. “They took all their passports and told them they had to pay them this much money before they got their passports back. The only way they could do that was through prostitution.”
This story is repeated every day in many parts of the world.
According to a 2002 report from the International Labor Organization, more than 1 million children alone are trafficked each year, with most of the planning happening online and the dark corners of the internet.
Exodus Road’s Operation SCOPE mission has provided police with evidence of traffickers exploiting children by using “pornographic photos of victims as a means of control, threatening to shame them by exposing the photos to their families.” The photos are then sold to porn sites while also being used to exploit the victims who are also coerced into prostitution.
As a man of faith, Morgan encouraged Christians to get involved in this fight rather than turn a blind eye.
"I don't believe that you can work your way to Heaven. I do believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was resurrected and ascended to Heaven, and for that, I receive salvation if I accept it. But I do believe that accepting that salvation in and of itself is not enough," Morgan explained.
He stressed that Christians should follow Jesus' example.
“You can't just say, 'I do accept you, Jesus Christ,' and then not do anything else," he said. "I'm not saying that I do these things to try to work my way into Heaven. … I want to get to Heaven quickly as I can. When I get there and St. Michael or St. Joseph meets me at the gates, I don't want them to say, ‘This is all the things that we wanted you to do that you could have been doing for God. Here's all the people that would have been saved, had you done what God asked you to do,' and me not have done it."
"So I try to do everything that I can when I feel led, when I feel the Holy Spirit, or when I feel that is something that Christ wants me to do," Morgan concluded. "I try to do as much of that stuff as I can. It's just that simple."
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Join the Army or go to jail, judge tells guard convicted of sexual assault
Former jailer who assaulted a shackled female inmate is given option of re-enlisting in military to avoid incarceration
A former Kentucky jailer who had been found guilty of sexually assaulting a female prisoner has reportedly been ordered by a judge to either rejoin the military or serve time in the same jail where he worked.
“If you don’t enroll in 30 days, you can report to the Franklin County Regional Jail,” Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate said last week at his sentencing of Brandon Scott Price, a 28-year-old former guard. “You are under the gun, young man. You gotta do it.”
Price, who is a US Army veteran, was charged with felony sodomy, but he was convicted of the lesser charge of second-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor. According to the State Journal newspaper, Wingate sentenced Price to 12 months in jail, but the term was probated for two years, meaning the convict can avoid incarceration if he abides by the judge’s requirements.
The assault occurred in January 2019, when Price was bringing a female inmate back to the jail after she received medical treatment at a hospital, the State Journal said. The woman said that on the way back from the hospital, Price pulled off the road and forced her to perform oral sex on him while she was shackled in the back of the van.
Price told authorities that the allegations were false, but he “made a stupid mistake,” allowing “a female inmate to touch me inappropriately.” He was arrested after the woman filed a civil lawsuit against the county, Price, and other jail employees.
“You’re getting a huge break,” the judge told Price at his sentencing. “You made a terrible mistake, which I know personally cost the county money.”
Price has reportedly begun the process of trying to re-enlist, but it’s not a certainty that the army or any other branch of the US military will take him.
It wasn’t uncommon in decades past to give defendants the option of enlisting to avoid incarceration, such as when the US was fighting wars in Korea and Vietnam. However, current army rules prohibit accepting recruits who are trying to join as a condition of a court sentence, unless they are granted a waiver.
People who are convicted of felony sex crimes aren’t eligible for such waivers. Price was charged with a felony but convicted of only a misdemeanor, suggesting that his re-enlistment could be approved at the army’s discretion. A New York man who tried to enlist in 2006 to avoid jail time on an assault conviction was rejected by the army.
Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow first-time offenders facing up to four years in prison to avoid incarceration by joining the military, but it might take congressional action to make such sentences possible because, like the army, other branches have policies against enlistment as an alternative to jail.
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