Woman bursts into apartment, tries to choke toddler. ( Then it gets weird )

A woman who had smashed into a southeast Houston apartment and tried to choke a small boy -- fending off his frantic family with a shard of glass -- was being examined in a hospital Wednesday after police finally subdued her, officers said.

Even after being restrained and loaded into an ambulance, the 29-year-old woman broke free and fought with the ambulance crew on the way to Ben Taub Hospital, police said.

The 2-year-old child who was attacked, David Nguyen, was treated and released from Ben Taub, along with his grandfather, Tai Nguyen, 54, who was bitten on the arm while trying to rescue the boy, officers said.

Hospital officials would not release any information about the woman's condition. Police said she appeared to have been under the influence of some type of drugs, but no charges had been filed late Wednesday.

The incident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. at an apartment in the 3700 block of Southlawn, where the grandfather was with his 20-year-old daughter and her 2-year-old son, police said.

The man said he heard his front door crash open and his front window shatter before the woman walked in and grabbed the boy.

She tried to choke the child, police were told, and held his relatives at bay with a large piece of glass when they tried to rescue him.

The grandfather tried to grab the glass, but the woman bit his right forearm, police spokesman Alvin Wright said.

Several people outside the apartment witnessed the incident, but refused to get involved, Wright said.

Bystanders flagged down a police officer, who investigated and was met by a badly frightened, bloody woman who was holding the toddler, Wright said. The child had small cuts on his head, possibly from pieces of glass, Wright said.

While the officer talked with the family, another woman covered in blood, holding a large piece of glass, came around the corner. When the officer stepped out of his car, the woman started screaming at him and ran toward him with the glass, Wright said.

The officer, backing up, called for other officers to help and ordered the woman to drop the glass. She then got on the ground and took off her clothes, Wright said. Other officers arrived and subdued the woman until an ambulance arrived. She was bleeding from her left wrist, police said.

As police followed the woman's ambulance to the hospital, the ambulance's rear doors swung open, and officers saw the woman fighting with the crew inside the vehicle, Wright said.

Officers stepped in to assist the ambulance crew, but the woman continued fighting at Ben Taub Hospital, police reports said.

Fried - A dangerous new street drug
Posted by: xxdr_zombiexx.
Sunday, November 10 @ 16:25:00 MST
Source: CNN PRESENTS

Fried
It goes by many names: fry, wet, dust and illy, to name just a few. In rough inner cities and upscale suburbs, dealers pitch it as the new drug -- a potent combination of embalming fluid, tobacco, marijuana and mint leaves. But they sometimes don't mention its most dangerous ingredient -- Phenyl Cyclohexyl Piperidine, or PCP, a chemical developed as an anesthetic but banned in the 1960s because its side effects were so terrible.

Smoking this strange concoction leads to a tendency to strip naked in public, develop chronic schizophrenia, even explode into fits of homicidal rage. Use is soaring nationwide, with PCP-related emergency room admissions nationwide up 80 percent in two years. Correspondent Serena Altschul went to find out who is using this drug and what happens when they do in the CNN Presents documentary, "Fried."

Chasing the high
On the hardscrabble streets of New Haven, Connecticut, "dust," as it's known here, is popular and relatively easy to find. For $20, a person can stay high for two hours on a strong, stinking blend containing some 36 chemicals, including PCP, embalming fluid (full of formaldehyde), sometimes rocket fuel, according to users.

The drug causes numbness from head to toe, as well as dizziness and blurred vision. Even its most die-hard users advise against making it a habit, saying that doing so leads to a relentless, fruitless cycle of chasing the high they got the first time they smoked the drug.

20-minute concoction
Many people aren't told illy contains PCP when they start using it, thinking it is just an especially strong form of marijuana mixed with embalming fluid. But it's the PCP that gives the drug its kick. But unlike euphoric drugs like ecstasy, this chemical produces hallucinations and feelings that are usually unpleasant and negative, experts say.

The Drug Enforcement Agency says that Los Angeles street gangs produce large batches of PCP, and then ship it across the country. Equipped with that chemical, an organic solvent such as embalming fluid and other ingredients, a dealer or user can cook up a batch in about 20 minutes

Police crack down
Police are waging a difficult battle to crack down on the drug's use, trying to curb it before it erupts into the next nationwide craze. Hartford, Connecticut, police Sgt. Arvid Leftwich says the two main sets of users are suburban teens trying to blend into the hip-hop scene and "far gone kids" from the inner city without jobs, education or, seemingly, much initiative.

Authorities say they are sometimes tipped off by the drug's acute, telltale smell, at other times by large gatherings of people in renowned drug sale hotspots. The most prominent dealers typically set up shop inside a residence or building, while their runners exchange drugs for money on the streets

'Something different'
Rehabilitation centers are the last stop for young people who have been caught using the drug, but have been spared, for now at least, being sent directly to prison. They come from all different backgrounds -- rich and poor, black and white -- with some having begun using before they had even become teenagers.

Some past users describe frequently "walking around with my pants down," wandering around school in a daze, and sharing a smoke with friends. "I just do it 'cause it's something different, out of the ordinary, not really a reason," said one suburban Connecticut teen.

Along the way they come to want to adhere to explore and evaluate the ideals of their own "peer groups" and will experiment with many different ideas. They can't really talk about it "consciously", thus the boy's statement "It's not really a reason".

This tends to freak adults out, but, unfortunately, it is probably a healthy and desirable function of developing personal autonomy and strong identity.

When they hear the scare stories about weed and find them to be a lie, who is to blame for them suspecting they are being lied to about more than that? Plus they feel treated like children.

The trick with teens, I think, is to make highly reliable information available to them in ways that avoid "preachiness" or other attempts by adults to "control" a child's developmental experimentation.

Fits of anger
Seven years after the first cases started coming in, the emergency room at Yale Hospital in New Haven now gets 10 PCP-related admissions per week. Doctors say a troop of security guards is often needed to subdue those in "illy rage" -- yelling, paranoid and hallucinating users who vehemently fight off any attempts to diagnose, treat or reason with them.

Users often drift in and out, from frenzied fits of anger to a catatonic state, sometimes even laughing. Experts say PCP interferes with the mechanism in the brain that otherwise keeps a person from going beyond his or her breaking point, and that regular use can lead to chronic schizophrenia.

Temptation abounds
Whatever they are taught during long stints in rehabilitations centers, however long they're technically "straight," many users find it difficult to resist the temptation to start smoking up again once they return home.

Not surprisingly, a user's home and social environment is thought to be a key factor: A strong support system and well-defined, negative consequences discourage future use, while a stable of friends and acquaintances who still smoke regularly make it less likely a user will kick his or her habit.

"Do you wear a gun all the time in your house?

Nobody does, of course. Most people take theirs off when they use the shower or take a bath."

Ever hear of "Zip lock" plastic bags? Great for in the shower.

The problem with not wearing a gun all of the time is sooner or later, you will regreat the fact that you left the gun on the shelf while you just stepped out side for a second. In my case I went out on the porch to feed my dogs and interrupted three goblins smoking a joint and doing a drug deal. I said "Excuse me, but I don't want you selling drugs in front of my house"!

The dealer patted his pocket and replied "Nobody axed you, git back in yo' house before you get hurt".

Back inside, I got my pistol and cell phone, and went back to finish the conversation. I told him (the goblin) if he moved his hand towards his pocket that he was dead. He cussed me out and the three of them turned and "slowly walked away" as I was relaying the information to the police. After standing for Twenty three minutes in the freezing rain, the police showed up and when I offered to ride with the officer to identify the guys I was told "trust me.... they are gone by now but I can file your complaint.

Now, I wear my gun all of the time.

I keep recalling the scene in "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, when Paco was caught helpless in the bathtub by one of the bad guys. Turned out Paco actually did have his pistol in the bath.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.