Roy Exum
We live in such a jaundiced world today that disappointment has long-hence overwhelmed any ‘shock and awe’, yet now from Tulsa comes a story that will sure enough make your ears wiggle. Last Thursday a man identified as Juan Miranda-Jara joyously rushed his girlfriend toward labor and delivery at Hillcrest Hospital in the city’s midtown.
As the nurses placed the girl on a hospital gurney, the chief resident quietly made a phone call to 9-1-1, saying “get here quickly, this is worse than rape,” and the arriving police were shocked see the birth mother was only 12 years old. That’s right, she should have been registering for her fifth grade year in elementary school instead of motherhood.
Miranda-Jara, age 24, was happy to tell the police he was the proud father, even when he was told that in Oklahoma it is regarded a statutory rape to have sex with any person under the age of 16. He was allowed to view the birth before being placed under a $50,000 bond. According to news reporters, he repeated told police officers he didn’t understand what the uproar was all about.
The baby was born healthy and without complication. “We know there are many people in the community who are shocked by this, grossed out by this, disturbed by this, have questions, a whole range of emotions,” said Danny Bean of Tulsa PD. “But in time we hope to give the community the answers they want. We just don’t have the answers they want. We don’t have those answers. And we don’t want compromise an investigation.”
Both children – the child-mother and the newborn – are being held by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. Miranda-Jara’s hearing is in late August.
According to a Fox News report, “We don’t believe this is incest at this time,” Bean was able to reveal, but he was not able to discuss the man and the child’s relationship any further at this time.
Bean said because of the sensitivity of the investigation and its on-going nature, the public will need to give officers time to piece things together going back at least nine months when the girl became pregnant if not sooner, as to how she came in contact with Miranda-Jara and was allowed to have a relationship with him."
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THE ‘BUCK MOON’ NOW APPEARS
A beautiful full moon graced the skies last night and you see the “Buck Moon” through Saturday night. It gets its name from the Algonquin Indians in the Northeast who knew this is the time when male deer regrow their antlers bigger and stronger than the year before. Some call this cycle the Thunder Moon due to the thunderstorms that occur this time of the year.
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WAS IT ULYSSES GRANT ON LOOKOUT MTN. -- OR NOT?
This comes from Kim Coons with the National Park
Service: Did Civil War hero and our 18th President appear on Lookout Mountain during the Battles of Chattanooga and Chickamauga?
On Saturday, July 31, at 2 p.m., Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will provide a one-hour program focusing on General Grant’s visit to Lookout Mountain.
This program will take place inside Point Park on Lookout Mountain. As a reminder, there is a $10 entry fee, per adult (ages 16 and older, 15 and younger are free), to enter Point Park.
Most of us have likely seen the famous photograph of General Ulysses S. Grant standing on Roper’s Rock atop Lookout Mountain. If not, you can easily find it by searching the photo archives in the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov). The label on this photograph has long been taken as fact and published in hundreds, if not thousands, of printed books, pamphlets, wayside exhibits, etc.
However, how do we know this was Grant? Is there any possibility the photo was mislabeled? In this dialogic program, participants will discuss, based upon evidence presented, if this was truly Grant on Lookout Mountain.
For more information about programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, contact the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706-866-9241, the Lookout Mountain Battlefield Visitor Center at 423-821-7786, or visit the park website at www.nps.gov/chch.
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