Rucker leans mostly toward a "how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb" way of looking at things. I think that's something always sorely needed in this weird weird country:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11123834
Neighbor says suspect in boy's abuse case blamed him for her troubles By Linda Goldston Media News Posted: 12/02/2008 08:15:07 PM PST
TRACY — As police search for a third suspect in the case of a teen boy held captive at a house in Tracy, residents struggled to make sense of such a thing happening in a city considered to be among the state's safest.
It is even harder to understand for the neighbors who know Kelly Layne-Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, the couple who lived at the Tennis Lane home and are now being held on suspicion of torture, kidnapping, false imprisonment and child endangerment. Those neighbors had seen the boy, who has not been named by police, playing with the couple's four children in the front yard, setting out the trash and even carrying out used Pampers.
"You'd look outside and she'd be watering the lawn and the kids would all be playing," said Rachel Portillo, 47, who lives directly across the street from Lau and Schumacher and has known them since the couple moved in about two years ago.
The boy, 17, "seemed to arrive at the house like a friend," Portillo said.
"They said it was a friend's son, they said he'd be going in about a month, then it was three months, then six months, then November. I always wondered 'why isn't he going to school?'"
On Monday afternoon the youth stumbled into a sprawling fitness club near the house where he was being kept, wearing only boxer shorts and a heavy chain padlocked to his ankle. Covered in dried blood, bruises, burns, feces and urine, he begged the club's assistant manager to Advertisement Quantcast hide him
Everyone is shocked that such a thing could happen on a quiet street where hundreds of children walk to Williams Elementary School, just behind a sports complex where hundreds of adults work out to stay fit.
The sports club manager said they wrapped the boy in towels because he was shivering so hard. Officers immediately sealed off 630 Tennis Lane, which sits just in front of the side parking lot of the sports complex.
They arrested Lau and Schumacher and placed their four children in protective custody. Schumacher is a contractor with Comcast Cable, according to Tracy police. Lau's MySpace page says she is a stay-home mom. She is also a Girl Scout leader.
Portillo's daughter, Marina Alvarez, was friends with Lau and said she was told that Ramirez and the boy were at the house because he had gotten into trouble and caused Ramirez to lose her home. Ramirez has a 2007 conviction for felony child abuse against her in Sacramento County. She said the woman was called Carmine, not Caren, by Lau and Schumacher. Alvarez said the boy was called Kyle.
"Supposedly Carmine (Caren) was going to court because of Kyle," she said.
Portillo said Lau and Schumacher often held garage sales and would sit in the driveway. "Kyle" would be with them but seemed shy and withdrawn.
"He never went away," never went anywhere, she said." He'd come out and cut the lawn, but they'd have the blinds open. I think he was being watched."
Portillo said her 11-year-old granddaughter spent the night at Lau's and Schumacher's house one night. The girl told her grandmother that the boy they knew as Kyle slept at night "on a piece of carpet in front of the door to the garage."
The neighbor also said Lau would curse the boy.
Finding out the boy had allegedly been kidnapped and tortured, that he escaped with a heavy chain padlocked to his ankle "just blew me away," Alvarez said. Lau "made it seem like he was this troubled kid that needed to be disciplined."
The boy remains in serious condition at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital.
And a town — named just last week as the second safest city in Northern California by CQ Press — was left to wonder why.
"We met him, my grandkids played with him in the front yard," Portillo said. "It angers me and it hurts me. I feel so badly."