|
Home Search |
Published on Thursday, March 13, 2003
in the Orlando Sentinel
COCOA -- When Donna Conigliaro was stopped for speeding in January, she pleaded with the trooper not to kill her, rape her or harm her children, the trooper said Wednesday.
"She stated to me not to kill her," Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Aaron Stephens said of the woman accused of kidnapping her children from a Cocoa-area foster home last week. "She said, 'Don't kill me, don't kill my children, don't rape me.' She had her one hand up and her kids corralled in the back with the other hand."
Conigliaro and her husband, Giovanni, are in custody in New Jersey on charges that they violently kidnapped their three children, who had been taken from the Conigliaro home by child-welfare workers the day after Stephens stopped Donna Conigilaro for speeding.
State Department of Children & Families officials have said they cannot release why the agency took the children away from their parents because of confidentiality laws, but on Wednesday DCF filed a petition in Brevard County asking a judge to allow the agency to release that information. DCF expects to be given a hearing date next week.
During the Jan. 8 traffic stop, Donna Conigliaro repeatedly asked Stephens for his identification, he said. She said she did not believe that the uniformed officer was a state trooper, a videotape of the 15-minute-long traffic stop showed. It was the second time within a few hours that Conigliaro, 39, had been stopped for speeding and other violations, Stephens said.
The trooper said Wednesday that he called the Florida Department of Children & Families to report Conigliaro's bizarre behavior -- including repeated allegations that Stephens was out to get her and was putting her children in harm's way -- because he feared for her children's safety.
"I think it's a duty, it's my duty, to report anything that could be a danger to anybody . . . a child or an adult," Stephens said. He wouldn't hesitate to do that same thing again, he said.
DCF officials removed Joey, Michael and Anthony Conigliaro from their Titusville home the next day. FHP Capt. Joseph Schmidt said the two agencies acted independently of each other. Any suggestion that FHP removed the children, Schmidt said, "is patently false."
"We don't take people's children away," Schmidt said. "All [Stephens] did was what any other citizen could have done."
Stephens said DCF was given, at the agency's request, a copy of the videotaped traffic stop and it was later used as part of DCF's request to place the children, ages 5, 6 and 8, into foster care.