Babysitter is a suspect after 3 young children go missing in California, authorities say
Constance Franks, 55, and three young children whom she was babysitting were last seen around 7:30 p.m., according to the Inglewood Police Department.
The children were identified as 8-year-old Isabella Mamby, 6-year-old Meischon Mamby and 4-year-old Alona Mamby.
Franks was watching the children at the 300 block of W. Hyde Park Boulevard in Inglewood, near Los Angeles, and potentially left the area with the children on foot, authorities said.
In an Amber Alert issued Sunday afternoon, the California Highway Patrol identified Franks as a suspect and said the children were abducted or taken.
The oldest sibling, 8-year-old Isabella, is described as being a Black female standing at 4 feet tall and weighing 50 pounds. She has dark brown eyes and hair styled in braids. She was last seen wearing a red Winnie the Pooh shirt and black shorts.
The middle child, 6-year-old Mesichon, is described as a Black male standing at 4 feet tall and weighing about 40 pounds. He has dark brown eyes and hair, which is also styled in braids. He was last seen wearing a red Spider-Man shirt, black shorts, and black and white checkered Vans sneakers.
The youngest child, 4-year-old Alona, is described as a Black female who is 3 feet tall, weighs 35 pounds, and has brown eyes and dark brown mid-length hair.
Like her sister, she was last seen wearing a red Winnie the Pooh shirt. She was also wearing black shorts and blue floral Van sneakers.
Authorities have described their babysitter, Franks, as a Black female who stands about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs about 170 pounds. She has red and black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a white tank top with a tan dress and brown UGG boots.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to call 911 or contact the Inglewood Police Department Watch Commander at 310-412-5206.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Trump's immigration crackdown is raising fears as the school year gets underway in Los Angeles
Los Angeles students and teachers return to class for the new academic year Thursday under a cloud of apprehension after a summer filled with immigration raids and amid worries schools could become a target in the Trump administration's aggressive crackdown. Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has urged immigration authorities not to conduct enforcement activity within a two-block radius around schools starting an hour before the school day begins and until one hour after classes let out. 'Hungry children, children in fear, cannot learn well,' Carvalho said in a news conference. He also announced measures intended to protect students and families, including adding or altering bus routes to accommodate more students. The district is to distribute a family preparedness packet that includes know-your-rights information, emergency contact updates and tips on designating a backup caregiver in case a parent is detained. The sprawling district, which covers more than two dozen cities, is the nation's second largest with more than 500,000 students. According to the teachers' union, 30,000 students are immigrants, and an estimated quarter of them are without legal status. While immigration agents have not detained anyone inside a school, a 15-year-old boy was pulled from a car and handcuffed outside Arleta High School in northern Los Angeles on Monday, Carvalho said. He had significant disabilities and was released after a bystander intervened in the case of 'mistaken identity,' the superintendent said. 'This is the exact type of incident that traumatizes our communities; it cannot repeat itself,' he added. Administrators at two elementary schools previously denied entry to officials from the Department of Homeland Security in April, and immigration agents have been seen in vehicles outside schools. DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Carvalho said that while staffers and district police officers cannot interfere with immigration enforcement and do not have jurisdiction beyond school property, they have had conversations with federal agents parked in front of schools that resulted in them leaving. The district is partnering with local law enforcement in some cities and forming a 'rapid response' network to disseminate information about the presence of federal agents, he said. Teachers say they are concerned some students might not show up the first day. Lupe Carrasco Cardona, a high school social studies and English teacher at the Roybal Learning Center, said attendance saw a small dip in January when President Donald Trump took office. The raids ramped up in June right before graduations, putting a damper on ceremonies. One raid at a Home Depot near MacArthur Park, an area with many immigrant families from Central America, took place the same morning as an 8th grade graduation at a nearby middle school. 'People were crying, for the actual graduation ceremony there were hardly any parents there,' Cardona said. The next week, at her high school graduation, the school rented two buses to transport parents to the ceremony downtown. Ultimately many of the seats were empty, unlike other graduations. One 11th grader, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be published because she is in the country without legal permission and fears being targeted, said she is afraid to return to school. 'Instead of feeling excited, really what I'm feeling is concern,' said Madelyn, a 17-year-old from Central America. 'I am very, very scared, and there is a lot of pressure.' She added that she takes public transportation to school but fears being targeted on the bus by immigration agents because of her skin color. 'We are simply young people with dreams who want to study, move forward and contribute to this country as well,' she said. Madelyn joined a club that provides support and community for immigrant students and said she intends to persevere in that work. 'I plan to continue supporting other students who need it very much, even if I feel scared,' she said. 'But I have to be brave.' Some families who decide that the risk is too great to show up in-person have opted for online learning instead, according to Carvalho, with virtual enrollment up 7% this year. The district has also contacted at least 10,000 parents and visited more than 800 families over the summer to provide information about resources like transportation, legal and financial support and are deploying 1,000 workers from the district's central office on the first day of classes to 'critical areas' that have seen immigration raids. 'We want no one to stay home as a result of fears,' Carvalho said.
New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
Adam Schiff, Letitia James and Trump's Payback Plan
President Trump's Justice Department recently reached a nadir when two prominent Democrats, New York's attorney general, Letitia James, and Senator Adam Schiff of California, were placed under criminal investigation for their personal financial dealings. They are the wrong targets chosen for the wrong reasons in a case supervised by the wrong prosecutor. But there's not much either of them can do about it. The process leading up to the investigation demonstrates how this president has eroded longstanding ethical norms governing the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. As the head of the executive branch, the president has authority over all the agencies in his cabinet, including the Justice Department; but since the abuses of Watergate, all subsequent presidents have taken steps to remove themselves from individual prosecutorial decisions while still leading on policy matters. The Justice Department manual instructs that 'the legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence. It is imperative that the department's investigatory and prosecutorial powers be exercised free from partisan consideration.' To that end, the manual sharply restricts contacts between prosecutors and the White House in criminal cases. With Mr. Trump using his social media megaphone, those limits don't exist. Ms. James earned the president's ire by accusing him and the Trump Organization with fraud in connection with the valuation of real estate and winning a $454 million judgment against them (Mr. Trump is appealing). Mr. Schiff was a leader, in his days as a member of the House of Representatives, of the investigation of Russia's efforts to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, and he became the lead House manager in Mr. Trump's first impeachment. Among many other insults, Mr. Trump has reposted a call for Ms. James to be 'placed under citizens arrest' for 'blatant election interference and harassment,' and over the years he's denounced 'Shifty Schiff,' demanding that he be 'questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.' If there were any doubt that these investigations amount to political hit jobs against two of President Trump's most indefatigable political adversaries, the issue was settled with Attorney General Pam Bondi's pick to lead the inquiries — Ed Martin, the Justice Department official who was so unqualified and partisan that he couldn't win confirmation in the Republican Senate to be the United States attorney in Washington. As a consolation prize for that failure, Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the so-called Weaponization Working Group, the Orwellian name for the prosecutorial payback operation designed to build cases against those who investigated Mr. Trump during the Biden administration. Some of Mr. Martin's first targets are Ms. James and Mr. Schiff. Far from displaying the open mind that honorable prosecutors should demonstrate, Mr. Martin said his goal was to 'stick the landing' against the two Democrats. But a president's critics, like the president himself, should not be above the law, so what, then, is the evidence against Ms. James and Mr. Schiff? For both, the issues relate to real estate and mortgages, and the facts about them seem already well established. The case against Ms. James has three parts, First, in 2023, she financed the down payment to help her niece buy a single-family home in Norfolk, Va. According to her attorney Abbe Lowell, Ms. James signed several documents that made clear that her niece, not Ms. James herself, would live in the house. But on one form, a power of attorney, she indicated that she herself would live there, which was obviously a mistake. In light of the other documents, the bank itself could not have been misled, and in any event, the mistake on the power of attorney brought Ms. James no monetary gain. In 2001, Ms. James bought a four-story brownstone in Brooklyn with separate apartments for herself, her mother, her brother and a family friend. On one form, filed 24 years ago, the property was listed as having five units, not four. At all other times, she correctly listed it as four units. Last, in 1983, Ms. James's father bought a house in Queens for the family. On the mortgage application, he mistakenly listed Ms. James, who was just out of college, as his spouse, not his daughter, although other documents listed their relationship correctly. Ms. James has denied any wrongdoing, and according to her lawyer, the accusation that she may have financially benefited is baseless. In a demonstration of the ferocity of the legal assault on Ms. James, her office was subpoenaed last week in a different criminal investigation, led by Justice Department prosecutors in upstate New York. This inquiry is apparently aimed at proving that Ms. James committed some kind of misconduct during the fraud investigation of Mr. Trump and his company, as well as in a separate lawsuit that her office filed against the National Rifle Association. The only basis for this case, it seems, is that the president was unhappy with the outcome of both cases, which Ms. James's office won. As for Mr. Schiff, the investigation of him is rooted in the fact that like many members of Congress, he owns two residences, one in his home state of California and another in the Washington suburbs. According to mortgage documents, Mr. Schiff listed both as his 'primary' residence, which, according to a social media post by the president, represented an effort to 'get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.' At the time Mr. Schiff applied for the mortgages, he was already in Congress, so the banks knew he had two residences. There does not appear to be any deception by Mr. Schiff and he has publicly denied the claims. (In addition, Mr. Schiff apparently last applied for a mortgage in 2012, which means any possible crime would be outside the 10-year statute of limitations; that would probably apply to most of the charges against Ms. James as well.) For the moment, Ms. James and Mr. Schiff are essentially powerless. There is no remedy in federal law to stop even clearly meritless investigations. At best, the two elected officials can look forward to months of detailing their personal financial arrangements; in other words, they will be compelled to violate the political maxim that holds if you're explaining, you're losing. Worse yet, their legal fates are in the hands of a dedicated political enemy who will be able to present the case for indictment to a grand jury. There, in the famous utterance of Sol Wachtler, the onetime chief judge of New York's Court of Appeals, prosecutors can get a grand jury to 'indict a ham sandwich.' The two elected officials will be able to offer formal legal and factual defenses only after they are indicted — that is, when they are criminal defendants in federal court, which is, to put it mildly, hardly a welcome forum. President Trump has always been a master of projection. His accusations of misconduct nearly always replicate what he himself has done. So it is with 'weaponization,' which is how he describes the entirely legitimate efforts during the Biden years to hold him accountable for his financial chicanery and his efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, among other misdeeds. Now, at his behest, his administration is turning that word against two of his most prominent critics. For Mr. Trump, there may be few spoils of victory sweeter than the ordeal that Ms. James and Mr. Schiff will soon endure. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@ Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
CNN
5 hours ago
- CNN
Urgent warning issued as dangerous fake Labubu dolls flood UK market
Fake Labubu dolls that could pose a choking hazard for young children have flooded the UK market, a consumer standards body has warned. Legitimate Labubu toys, created by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung and sold by Chinese toymaker Pop Mart, have become a viral and profitable sensation around the world. The palm-sized plushie, which has a bunny body, elf-like face and sharp teeth, is so popular that genuine versions are becoming increasingly difficult to come by. In May, Pop Mart announced that it was temporarily suspending all in-store sales of the collectible across the UK following chaotic scenes of crowd surges and reported fights. Last week, thieves in the Los Angeles area broke into a store and made off with thousands of dollars worth of stock. The toy's massive popularity has led to a wave of fakes, and many have been deemed unsafe, according to Britain's Chartered Trading Standards Institute. In a warning it described as 'urgent' on its website, the CTSI reported that thousands of dangerous counterfeits have been seized by their teams across the country, often as a result of complaints from parents. 'Counterfeit Labubu dolls are poorly made and unsafe,' the news release warned. 'Many contain small, detachable parts such as eyes, hands, and feet, which present a serious choking hazard to young children. Loose stitching and exposed stuffing further increase the risk of suffocation.' It added: 'Without proper safety checks, they may also contain toxic substances such as lead, harmful dyes, or banned plasticisers.' Last month, CNN reported on the massive production of fake Labubus in China, with the cheap copycats dubbed 'Lafufus.' Chinese customs officials are said to have seized many thousands of these that were intended for export since June alone. Consumers can tell if a doll is genuine by certain markers, including a holographic Pop Mart sticker, a scannable QR code linking to the company's website and a UV stamp on one of the feet. These are 'commonly missing or poorly replicated' on fakes, the CTSI said. Another tell-tale sign can be the number of teeth. Genuine dolls have nine, while fakes may vary. Overly vibrant colors and poor stitching can also indicate the doll is not the real deal. Kerry Nicol, external affairs manager at CTSI, said in the release that the demand has been 'amplified' by social media. 'Supply and demand means that legitimate Labubu dolls are almost impossible to find,' she said. 'These fake products bypass the rigorous safety checks and compliance requirements the law demands, meaning they could contain choking hazards, toxic materials, or faulty components that put children at serious risk. Everyone involved in the supply chain – from manufacturers and fulfilment houses to sellers and marketplaces should have a role to play in ensuring unsafe toys never reach the hands of children.' Pop Mart have been contacted for comment. Olivia Kemp contributed to this report.
