The father of a 13-year-old girl who police say went on a multistate crime spree with her older boyfriend said on Tuesday that he is not angry with the 18-year-old.
Cheyenne Phillips, 13, and Dalton Hayes, 18, were arrested on Saturday last week in Panama City Beach, Florida, after authorities found them sleeping in a vehicle that had been reported stolen.
“I don’t have anything against him. I’m not upset with this boy. He’s a boy, and apparently he thinks something of my daughter. He’s just not thinking clearly,” Shawn Phillips, 38, told reporters.
Shawn Phillips also denied as “completely bogus” Hayes’ allegation that Cheyenne Phillips told him she had been abused at home.
“Anyone that knows us knows better,” Phillips said.
Hayes made the abuse allegations during a jailhouse interview with the News Herald of Panama City, telling the paper they just wanted to escape Phillips’ family — who she said were beating her — and planned to make it to Miami. Officials and others said on Tuesday that they did not know of any allegations of abuse.
“All I had to do was tell her to go home and none of this would’ve happened, but it’s hard to tell someone getting beat on to go home,” Hayes said. “But, if I could go back, I’d be paying for bus rides instead of stealing trucks.”
Shawn Phillips said that he and his former wife divorced before Cheyenne Phillips was born. He said he and his grandparents have raised her since she was three on their farm near Clarkson, where he said Cheyenne had everything she could ever want.
However, he said that Cheyenne would often lie to him. Still, she had a 9pm curfew on school nights and a 10pm curfew on weekends, rules that she never broke.
The abuse allegations are “something we’ll talk about when they get back to Kentucky,” Grayson County Sheriff Norman Chaffins told reporters.
He said he was unaware of any previous accusations of abuse.
The alleged crime spree started on Jan. 3, when police say Cheyenne Phillips’ mother, Sherry Phillips, picked Cheyenne up from her house near Clarkson. Sherry Phillips does not have custody or visitation rights with her daughter, and police arrested her on Monday on a charge of custodial interference. She is in jail on a US$50,000 cash bond and has a court hearing scheduled for today.
The pair’s travels took them to South Carolina and Georgia and included a night in a frigid barn, Hayes said.
Hayes agreed in court on Monday to return to Kentucky to face charges. He is expected to be charged with burglary, theft, criminal trespassing and criminal mischief.
Cheyenne Phillips is to face charges in juvenile court. Florida’s Department of Children and Families took her to a safe house to make arrangements to return home.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of