Abducted Clayton Co. teen found, reunited with family

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. -

A teenager kidnapped from her home at gunpoint in the middle of the night has been reunited with her family.

Ayvani Hope Perez, 14, was found around noon at a location in Conyers, Ga., according to Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter. The details regarding how she was found have yet to be released.

"She was recovered at a location in Conyers, Ga. The investigation is still active," the chief said. He added that she has been reunited with her family and is being evaluated.

Authorities said she was taken from her home on Brookgate Drive in Ellenwood around 2 a.m. Sunday.  Police said the teen was abducted and the family dog was shot after her mother didn't have any money to turn over to the suspects.

For more than 34 hours, more than 150 federal, state and local officers searched for the teen and her abductors.

Porter said Ayvani has been in the metro area since her abduction.

Authorities said that two men -- 40-year-old Juan Alberto Contreras-Rodriguez, a Mexican national, and 29-year-old Wildrego Jackson, of Atlanta -- were taken into custody.

"We're currently looking for others," Porter said.

Authorities clarified that the two men in custody are not the suspects shown in the sketches provided by Clayton County police Tuesday afternoon.

Porter would not comment on reports that a ransom note had been sent to Perez's family.

Balloons welcomed Perez back to her home as relief and joy blanketed the neighborhood.

"She's back. She looks very nice, she's very relaxed. She's a sweet girl," said Lucille Howart.

Howart said she got to spend a few minutes with Perez.

"She was smiling. She looked very happy to be back home," said Howart.  "A look of relief was all over her."

Neighbors were glad to see the terrifying ordeal end.

"We were praying as a community for her safe return and I'm just so excited about that," said Shanell Clayburn.

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Two men arrested after being found with marijuana and crack cocaine

NACOGDOCHES COUNTY, TX (KLTV) -

Released by the Nacogdoches County Sheriff's Department:

On 09/13/13 at approximately 1415 hrs, Deputies with the Nacogdoches County Sheriff Office conducted a traffic stop on a passenger vehicle on South Street. The vehicle was occupied by two male subjects both from Nacogdoches, Texas.

During the traffic stop, Deputies could smell the odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle. Deputies conducted a search of the motor vehicle due to having probable cause. A search of the vehicle led to the discovery of 12 grams of crack cocaine that was found in the center console of the vehicle. Deputies also found a small amount of marijuana inside the car.

Darreyon Cooper 18 years of age and Timothy Morris 20 years of age were both arrested for possession of controlled substance in a Drug Free Zone a felony of the 1st Degree. . Both subjects were booked into the Nacogdoches County Jail.

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Two for the Road: Second Coffin Found With Richard III

So much for the royal treatment.

Archaeologists digging up the same parking lot in Leicester, England, that last year yielded the remains of King Richard III have discovered a second, far more elaborate grave.

This one appears to have been buried more than a century before Richard, who lost his crown—and his life—at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. (See "King Richard III Bones Found, Scientists Say.")

Who the occupant of this grave might be is a mystery. But whoever he was, he mattered. While a crude hole in the ground was deemed good enough for the mortal remains of King Richard III, the person whose grave was uncovered this week was buried in splendor. His body was sealed in a leaden coffin, which was decorated with a cross, placed inside a limestone sarcophagus, and interred in a prominent part of the medieval abbey that once stood on the site.

"[He] had to have been someone of fairly high status to have merited a burial like this," said Richard Buckley, director of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, which has overseen the excavation.

The style of burial—a carefully soldered coffin enclosed within a sarcophagus—was fairly rare in medieval England, and would have been costly at the time. Buckley says a coffin made of lead sheeting might have been used to transport a prominent person with Leicester connections who had died hundreds of miles away.

History Under the Pavement

The parking lot where the dig is unfolding covers the site of what was once Grey Friars Abbey, a medieval monastery founded by the Franciscans in the 13th century and torn down by Henry VIII in 1538. The Franciscan monks at Grey Friars, in their distinctive gray habits, had the moral courage to take in the body of the fallen Plantagenet king and give it a Christian burial when others were content to leave it where it lay.

Henry VII, who defeated Richard to take the English crown, is said to have had a monument built at the abbey for his former foe. But that monument was demolished along with the monastery itself. And over the centuries the area—including the gravesite and the precise location of the monastery—was forgotten.

A combination of local legends and painstaking research led archaeologists to the council parking lot opposite Leicester Cathedral. Last summer an excavation there revealed not only King Richard's remains but also the ruins of the monastery.

"With this summer's excavation we had hoped to learn more about the layout and design of Grey Friars," said Buckley. The discovery of the mysterious sarcophagus and sealed lead coffin was an unexpected bonus.

Looking for Clues

A trawl through the old abbey's burial records suggests three potential candidates for the mystery grave's occupant: Peter Swynsfield, one of the friary's founders, who died in 1272; William of Nottingham, another head of Grey Friars, who died in 1330; or William de Mouton, a medieval knight and sometime mayor of Leicester, who died in the late 1350s.

"But these are just names of significant people whom we know from the records were buried at the abbey," said Buckley, who rates the new discovery as exciting as finding the remains of Richard III. "The grave could just as easily contain someone for whom the burial records have been lost. At the moment we just can't say."

But there are hopes of finding out much more.

A similar lead coffin, found in 1981 in the Cumbrian town of St. Bees, contained the astonishingly well-preserved remains of a knight subsequently identified as Antony de Lucy, who died in 1368. As with that coffin, the sealing on the lead coffin in Leicester is largely intact, save for a hole near the foot where centuries of slowly dripping water eroded the lead sheeting.

"We can see feet bones inside," said Buckley. "If there are more organic remains or clothing preserved inside, we could get some very interesting clues. If, say, we find the remains of a gray monastic cloak inside, we could be pretty sure it was one of the friars."

Scientists and forensic archaeologists will probe the coffin this winter, when they insert an endoscope through the hole to examine the remains-and perhaps add a new name, and another story, to the rapidly unfolding tale of Leicester and its long-lost abbey.

"The excavation is really changing the way we are seeing Leicester now," says the Very Reverend David Monteith, the dean of Leicester Cathedral, who is organizing next year's memorial service and re-interment of King Richard III.

"You tend to think of Leicester [as] either an ancient Roman town or a city in the Industrial Revolution. This is reminding us all of the rich fabric of medieval history that lies just below the surface."

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Clues Found to Prostate Cancer Upgrading

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By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San FranciscoNote that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.Almost a third of men on active surveillance for prostate cancer had an upgrade in Gleason pathology grade during follow-up, biopsy results for almost 600 patients showed.Point out that clinical stage at diagnosis, PSA velocity, number of involved biopsy cores, and the interval to follow-up biopsy predicted an increased likelihood of Gleason upgrading.

ORLANDO -- Almost a third of men on active surveillance for prostate cancer had an upgrade in Gleason pathology grade during follow-up, biopsy results for almost 600 patients showed.

During median follow-up of 6.4 years, 31.3% of the localized cancers were upgraded. The proportion of men with upgraded tumors increased over time, D. Andrew Loblaw, MD, reported here at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. "This increase over time was not statistically significant, but it allows for some hypothesis generation."

Clinical stage at diagnosis, PSA velocity, number of involved biopsy cores, and the interval to follow-up biopsy predicted an increased likelihood of Gleason upgrading, according to Loblaw, who practices at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.

Intermediate-risk tumors had an upgrade probability more than double that of low-risk tumors -- 1.9% per year compared with 0.75%, although the difference did not achieve statistical significance.

"Gleason upgrading increases with time from diagnostic biopsies and might be higher in patients with initial Gleason 7 disease as opposed to Gleason 6," Loblaw said.

Men with localized prostate cancer have a 10-year disease-specific survival exceeding 97%, making active surveillance a reasonable option for many patients. Considerable research has focused on factors that can identify men who have an increased risk of progression, but pathologic upgrading has received little attention, said Loblaw.

In the largest published study to date, investigators at the University of California San Francisco found that a third of 377 patients in surveillance had pathologic upgrading of their tumors during 4 years of follow-up (J Clin Oncol 2011; 9: 2185-2190).

However, studies have produced little information about factors associated with upgrading, said Loblaw. In an effort to gain some insight into those factors, he and his colleagues analyzed a prospective database of patients entered into active surveillance at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center

Eligibility for active surveillance required a biopsy Gleason score =6 and a PSA level =10 ng/mL. For patients older than 70, the criteria consisted of a Gleason score =3+4 and a PSA level =15 ng/mL.

Patients had repeat PSA testing every 3 months for 2 years and then every 6 months thereafter. Scheduled follow-up biopsies occurred after 1 year and then every 3 years until age 80.

Patients and physicians considered active treatment in the event of a PSA doubling time <3 years, histologic upgrading, and clinical progression, as well as patient preference.

As of August 2012, the database included 862 patients, including 592 who had at least one repeat biopsy. The subgroup of re-biopsied patients had a median age of 68 and a median baseline PSA of 5.5 ng/mL.

Loblaw reported that 83% of the patients had T1 disease and 17% had T2. Additionally, 20.2% of patients had intermediate-risk disease, 0.3% had high-risk prostate cancer, and 79.4% had low-risk cancer.

Multivariate analysis of baseline and dynamic factors associated with upgrading identified clinical stage at diagnosis (OR 2.301, P=0.0028), percentage of involved prostate biopsy cores at diagnosis (OR 1.768, P=0.0007), PSA velocity >2 (3.274, P<0.0001), and interval to re biopsy (OR 1.437, P=0.0102).

Subsequently, 114 (62%) of men whose tumors were upgraded chose to undergo treatment. The investigators found that a higher proportion of treated patients had a Gleason score of 8 (22% versus 2.9% of untreated patients), and treated patients had a significantly higher PSA velocity (1.2 versus 0.42 ng/mL/y, P=0.01).

The likelihood of upgrading increased over time, including 18.4% of patients followed for up to a year to 36% of patients followed for 7 to 8 years, 36% of patients followed for 8 to 9 years, and 26% of patients followed for more than 9 years.

In the discussion that followed the presentation, a panel of prostate cancer specialists and the audience engaged in a prolonged discussion about the future of surveillance for localized prostate cancer. Eric Klein, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, suggested the time has come to reconsider the focus of surveillance.

"We have all patted ourselves on the back that we can identify patients who aren't going to die of their prostate cancer, with appropriate surveillance criteria," said Klein. "Shouldn't we raise the bar now?

"Given the cost and morbidity of metastatic disease [should we be asking] how much longer patients with metastatic disease are living? Should we say the goal of therapy or surveillance ought to be to avoid metastatic disease, rather than simply avoid death?"

The Genitourinary Cancers Symposium is co-sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology.

Loblaw and co-investigators had no relevant disclosures.

Primary source: Genitourinary Cancers Symposium
Source reference:
Jain S, et al "Gleason upgrading with time in a large, active surveillance cohort with long-term follow-up" GuCS 2013; Abstract 1.

Charles Bankhead

Staff Writer

Working from Houston, home to one of the world's largest medical complexes, Charles Bankhead has more than 20 years of experience as a medical writer and editor. His career began as a science and medical writer at an academic medical center. He later spent almost a decade as a writer and editor for Medical World News, one of the leading medical trade magazines of its era. His byline has appeared in medical publications that have included Cardio, Cosmetic Surgery Times, Dermatology Times, Diagnostic Imaging, Family Practice, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Medscape, Oncology News International, Oncology Times, Ophthalmology Times, Patient Care, Renal and Urology News, The Medical Post, Urology Times, and the International Medical News Group newspapers. He has a BA in journalism and MA in mass communications, both from Texas Tech University.

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