Shanghai Knights

DON'T mess with 10-year-old Lana Welsh.


When two young thugs held a pocketknife to her throat,
the feisty Bentley Park girl lashed out with karate moves
she learned from a Hollywood blockbuster and sent her
attackers fleeing.

"I got him by the arm that had the knife and twisted it
and threw him on to the ground," Lana told The Cairns Post.
The boy, aged about 12, was sprawled on the path, stunned
by her fightback.

"He threw the knife at Emma (Lana’s sister) and ran,"
she said.

Another boy filmed the attack with his mobile phone,
she said.

Lana said she only became scared after her attackers
fled.

Police are investigating the incident, which happened
as Lana, Emma and their friend Jasmine walked along a
pathway at Adventure Close, Bentley Park, late Monday
afternoon.

The girls said they saw the same boys trying to beat
up another child earlier that afternoon.

That attack also was being recorded, they said.

Lana’s mother, Annette Lack, was relieved and proud
that her daughter could defend herself so well.

"I was just unbelievably happy that she had done it,
actually," Ms Lack said.

"I said to her yesterday, 'I can’t call you little
one anymore, I’ll have to call you grasshopper’.

"The policeman who spoke to us said, 'Jeez, they
picked the wrong kid’."

Lana, who has never taken a self-defence class,
said she had learned the karate moves by watching
Shanghai Knights, starring martial arts star
Jackie Chan.

Ms Lack said she was alarmed at the thought of boys
threatening her daughters with a knife.

"It wasn’t like they were walking around in the
middle of the night," she said.

"It was broad daylight."

Emma said she believed the boys planned to post
the attack on her sister on the internet.

"But they won’t now because he got beaten up,"
she said.

Original Article by:The Cairns Weekend Post
http://www.cairnspost.com.au/article/2007/12/20/4839_news.html

Teacher Debra Lafave Arrested

TAMPA, Fla. -- Debra Lafave -- the teacher who made national
headlines for her affair with a 14-year-old student -- has been
arrested for allegedly violating the terms of her probation.A former
Hillsborough County middle school teacher, Lafave pleaded guilty
in 2005 to having sex with the student in a classroom and at her
home in June 2004.Under the terms of her plea deal, she was
sentenced to three years house arrest and seven on probation.


If she made it through two years without a violation, she could
come back to the judge and ask to have the final year of house
arrest commuted to probation.According to the arrest report,
Lafave broke the terms of her deal by having contact with a minor.

The 17-year-old girl was a co-worker of Lafave's at Danny Boy's
Restaurant in Ruskin.Investigators say Lafave and the girl talked
about non-work related issues such as family problems, friends,
high school, personal life, boyfriend issues, and sexual issues in
private one-on-one conversations.Lafave was supposed to get
court permission before having any contact with minors.

"It's the typical workplace conversation that people have - that
workers have - women have with their women colleagues, men
have with their men colleagues. They talk about family. They talk
about friends. They talk about high school. They talk about their
boyfriends. They talk about everything, and I don't know if you
have to put a muzzle on somebody or what you do, but it's talk.
That's all it is: talk," said her lawyer, John Fitzgibbons.

In an interview last year with NBC's Matt Lauer, Lafave blamed
her behavior with the 14-year-old student on mental illness."I think
he just became very flirtatious and you gotta remember, in that
period of my life, I didn't feel like an adult," she said.Lafave says
her mental troubles began with the trauma of being raped at age
13, and that later developed into bipolar disorder, a depressive
illness featuring sadness, anxiety and recurring thoughts of suicide.



From MyFoxTampaBay Reports

http://www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5121633&version=6&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.1.1