Coroner warns teens and parents about concerning trend
As a parent there is nothing quite as terrifying as not knowing where your child is. It doesn't matter if they're 30 or 3, if you don't know that they're safe your mind doesn't rest. Most parents experience this level of panic only briefly when a little one escapes eyesight in a public place but far too many parents know the prolonged feeling of not knowing the whereabouts of their child.
Richland County Coroner, Naida Rutherford is taking to social media to give teens and their parents a serious warning to keep them from ending up on her table. Her plea came shortly after finishing a press conference about the missing 13-year-old Ka'Niyah Baker who was recently found deceased. The teen left her home to meet up with two other teen girls and was never heard from again.
"You may be running away with somebody who has undiagnosed mental illness with violent homicidal tendencies. You don't know enough to know what the hell you don't know," Rutherford says passionately to her live stream audience.
boy wearing white shirt and black shorts carrying backpack standing on black concrete road between vehicles and trees during daytime
Photo by Jesús Rodríguez on Unsplash
While Ka'Niyah was reported as a runaway, she's not alone. 93% of children reported missing are runaways, and in 2023 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that over 300 of the cases were children in child protective custody, like Ka'Niyah. Much of the time, teens have no idea what they're running towards and since their brains aren't fully developed, they impulsively leave.
This impulsivity can kick in for a number of reasons that cause teens to believe their life would be better elsewhere. According to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, kids runaway due to bullying, family conflict, mental health issues, lack of acceptance at home, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. While kids in foster care may be running away to get back to their parents. But many children have no real concept of what can happen to them when they leave home, especially if they think they're leaving with other teens or internet friends they think they can trust.
man in black jacket and black backpack walking on train rail during daytime
Photo by Oskar Smethurst on Unsplash
In Rutherford's plea, she addresses the increased risk of sex trafficking, informing teens that grown men should not be interested in children sexually. She explains that sex trafficking doesn't only happen in large cities as teens have been trafficked in her small town in South Carolina and often teens are too embarrassed to go home. But she has a message to parents on how to keep their children safe.
"Parents. I'm addressing you right here and right now. Come on in. Be nosey. Know who their friends are. Know who they're talking to. You pay the cell phone bill, snoop. I'm asking you to be so nosey that it is almost annoying and show them the story of Ka'Niyah Baker," the county coroner says.
Rutherford has been inundated with positive responses to her candid video which she tells News 19 WLTX, the comments have proven there's a community still out there wanting to keep children safe. She admits that it will take a village mindset to ensure the safety of children and she's not alone in her thinking.
Investigator J.P. Smith from the Richland County Sheriff’s Department (RCSD) Missing Persons Unit tells ABC 4 News that protecting children is not solely the parents' job as it requires community effort. He tells the news outlet, “when you see something, say something. You’re not bothering us—we want to know why that child is out at one in the morning. Don’t hesitate to call, the sooner the better.”
The heartbreaking story of Ka'Niyah won't make parents feel warm and fuzzy but the compassionate warnings from public officials provides much needed information to families. Continue to hold your children tightly, together, we can be the village for children in our communities.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
At least it wasn't Bubbles. 
You just know there's a person named Whiskey out there getting a kick out of this. 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.