Soft toys of the Baby Shark characters from SmartStudy Co.'s Pinkfong brand are displayed at the company's store in Seongnam, South Korea, on Monday, Jan. 21, 2019. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Three people are suing Oklahoma County jail employees who investigators found forced them to stand handcuffed for hours and listen to the children’s song “Baby Shark” on repeat.
Attorneys for three former inmates filed the civil rights lawsuit Monday in Oklahoma City federal court, according to The Oklahoman.
Daniel Hedrick, Joseph “Joey” Mitchell and John Basco are suing Oklahoma County commissioners, Sheriff Tommie Johnson III, the jail trust and two former jailers, describing the discipline tactics as “torture events.”
A criminal investigation last year determined at least four inmates were secured to a wall with their hands cuffed behind them while the song played on a loop at a loud volume for hours in two separate incidents in November and December 2019.
In the lawsuit, attorneys called repeatedly playing “Baby Shark” a known device to torment. They pointed out how in West Palm Beach, Florida, the children’s song was blasted outside an event center in 2019 to keep the homeless from sleeping there at night.
The fourth former jail inmate, Brandon Newell, did not join the lawsuit as he was convicted of first-degree murder a month after the “torture” incident and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Two former detention employees, Gregory Cornell Butler Jr. and Christian Charles Miles, both 21, and their supervisor, Christopher Raymond Hendershott, 50, were charged with misdemeanor counts of cruelty to a prisoner and conspiracy as a result of the investigation.
A jury trial in the criminal case is set for February.
A 4000-year-old slab of rock is being dubbed a treasure map for archaeologists. The rock was found in 1900 at the site of an ancient tomb in northwestern France and it was declared Europe's oldest known map in 2021.
Hundreds of people gathered for a vigil honoring a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy who was stabbed to death over the weekend by his family's landlord in an apparent hate crime.
If you have some older comic books stashed away in your attic, basement or closet, make sure to check their condition as they could be traded for serious cash. Cheddar News' Michelle Castillo at New Yor Comic Con spoke with Chris D'Lando, event manager with NYCC for Reedpop; Andy Mourat, co-founder and president of MetaZoo; and Julian Montoya, senior vice president of The Noble Collection, to get their thoughts.
Susan Akkad, senior vice president of innovation at Clinique, a finalist in the anti-aging category for the CEW Beauty Awards, joined Cheddar News to demonstrate some products to care for your skin as you age and how that is part of your overall healthcare.
Special prosecutors said Tuesday they are seeking to recharge actor Alec Baldwin in the 2021 fatal shooting on a Western movie set in New Mexico by presenting evidence to a grand jury.
They are playfully called the “forgotten five”: A handful of toys — the pogo stick, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper, My Little Pony, PEZ dispensers, and Transformers — that regularly approach toybox royalty as finalists for the National Toy Hall of Fame, only to be tossed back on the pile.
