Child Finds Loaded Gun, Fatally Shoots 7-Year-Old Sibling In Tennessee

The child found a loaded gun inside their mother’s purse.

Crossville Police Department / Via Facebook: CrossvilleCrimestoppers

A 7-year-old boy was shot and killed on Monday in eastern Tennessee when a gun his sibling was handling discharged, police said.

Four children were left unattended in the vehicle in Crossville just before 3 p.m. local time when their mother and step-father went inside a nearby store to pay a bill, according to a statement from the city's police department.

That's when one of the children found a loaded semi-automatic pistol inside of the mother's purse, which she had left in the vehicle.

"Further reports indicate that the child removed the magazine in an effort to unload the firearm," police said, however, the gun discharged, striking the 7-year-old.

The child was flown to a Knoxville-area hospital, but a police spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the child later succumbed to his injuries.

Neither the child nor the family has been identified by police.

The county's district attorney and Department of Children's Services have been notified.

SOURCE: BuzzFeed

Obama Bans Solitary Confinement For Juveniles In Federal Prisons

Carolyn Kaster / AP

President Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons on Monday and adopted recommendations to modify the use of the practice for adult prisoners.

The president announced the reforms in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

"The United States is a nation of second chances, but the experience of solitary confinement too often undercuts that second chance," he wrote. "Those who do make it out often have trouble holding down jobs, reuniting with family and becoming productive members of society."

Obama invoked the fate of Kalief Browder, who was arrested at age 16 and spent roughly two years in solitary confinement at New York's Rikers Island prison. Browder was never convicted of a crime, and after his release, he and his family spoke of his struggles with mental health. In June, he killed himself at age 22.

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"Today, [solitary confinement is] increasingly overused on people such as Kalief, with heartbreaking results — which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem," Obama wrote.

The Department of Justice began a review of restrictive housing in federal prisons at the president's request a month after Browder's death.

"After extensive study, we have concluded that there are occasions when correctional officials have no choice but to segregate inmates from the general population, typically when it is the only way to ensure the safety of inmates, staff, and the public," the department's final report said. "But as a matter of policy, we believe strongly this practice should be used rarely, applied fairly, and subjected to reasonable constraints."

In this Aug. 31, 2015 photo, a room used for recreation by inmates in solitary confinement at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington is shown.

Ted S. Warren / AP

The practice should never be used as a default solution, and never in juveniles, the report added.

In addition to banning the use of solitary confinement for juvenile prisoners, Obama said treatment would be expanded for mentally ill inmates and the time adults in solitary confinement could spend outside their cells would be increased.

Obama said the changes would affect about 10,000 federal inmates. He added he hoped the federal standards would become a model for state and local corrections systems.

"How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people?" he asked "It doesn’t make us safer. It’s an affront to our common humanity."

SOURCE: BuzzFeed

People Are Receiving Prank Calls From Pranksters Posing As Major Companies

United Airlines has launched an investigation after several people across the country were harassed over the weekend with late night, profanity-laced phone calls supposedly from the company's customer service telephone number.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Three people told BuzzFeed News they received calls from the United Airlines customer service number (1-800-864-8331) and spoke with a man who claimed to work with the company.

In reality, though, the calls most likely came from pranksters using software to mask their caller ID as the official United number — a prank that has previously been played on customers of other companies, including Comcast.

"I think it was around the time that he called me a cunt that I hung up," Molly Wilkof, 28, told BuzzFeed News of the phone call she received at midnight on Saturday from a man claiming to work for United in Oregon.

"I called back and it was their official customer service number but I couldn't get a hold of a human being," she said.

Also on Saturday evening, Joey Creel, 31, spoke with someone who called to discuss getting him home from California to Washington, D.C., after his United flight was cancelled due to the east coast blizzard. "The guy told me to go fuck myself," Creel told BuzzFeed News. "I rebutted saying that's not how customer service representatives should talk and said I wanted to speak with his manager, and he said, 'You can speak to his dick, and I have one for your mom to ride.'"

When Creel demanded the purported employee's identification number he was given the code "S-P-3-R-M."

"I was just trying to figure out how to get home," Creel said, "so when this guy started cussing at me, I was like, 'Is this Ashton Kutcher? Am I being punked?'"

Yael Even Or, 30, was also given the code "S-P-3-R-M" by someone calling from the official United number on Saturday evening. "I'd been waiting to talk to United all weekend so when someone called me back finally I was being patient with him," she told BuzzFeed News, "but he said this thing was called 'sperm' and that's when I hung up."

All three theorized that perhaps a disgruntled United employee was harassing customers, or perhaps someone hacked the company's database.

Mira Oberman / AFP / Getty Images

However, despite not knowing each other, Wilkof, Creel, and Even Or all shared a similar habit — complaining publicly about companies on social media.

Creel and Even Or both tweeted criticism of the airline on Twitter earlier on Saturday, while Wilkof retweeted a complaint from her boyfriend, who, like Evan Or's boyfriend, was trying to fly to the U.S. from Europe.

What's likely is that, amid the chaos of the snowstorm, pranksters identified people who had complained about United Airlines on Twitter and then tracked down their cell phone number from publicly available sources.

Multiple online websites and apps allow people to make calls that show fake caller IDs.

BuzzFeed News was able to replicate a call from the United Airlines customer service number using one such website.

A United Airlines representative told BuzzFeed News via Twitter, "We're aware of an ongoing issue with a prank call group. This group targets various businesses and their customers with harassing phone calls and we are currently investigating."

This prank phenomenon was previously reported in September by the podcast Reply All, which spoke with a man pranked by someone purporting to be from Comcast.

Comcast's head of security, Matt Moleski, told the podcast he has 100 staff working to stop such phone calls.

"You know, I don’t know if frustrated quite captures the level of anger that I experience when I see something like that, but really more so for the customers themselves who have been exploited and whose trust has been betrayed," Moleski said.

SOURCE: BuzzFeed