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Texan carves pentagram into son's back on "holy day" of 12-12-12-police
Brent Troy Bartel, 39, of the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills, Texas is shown in this police booking photograph on December 12, 2012. Bartel told authorities he carved a pentagram into the back of his 6-year-old son ''because it is a holy day'' in reference to the numerical date of 12-12-12, police said.
Credit: Reuters/ Richland Hills Police Department/Handout
FORT WORTH, Texas |
FORT WORTH, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man told authorities he carved a pentagram into the back of his 6-year-old son "because it is a holy day" in reference to the numerical date of 12-12-12, police said.
Brent Troy Bartel, 39, of the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills, was in jail Wednesday on a $500,000 bond, charged with aggravated assault of a family member with a deadly weapon.
Police officers responded to an emergency dispatch call shortly after midnight from a man who said, "I shed some innocent blood," according to an audio recording of the emergency 911 call, released by police.
When questioned by the dispatcher, the man said, "I inscribed a pentagram on my son."
When the dispatcher asked why, the man responded, "because it is a holy day," according to the recording. He then hung up.
Moments later, police received a call from the boy's mother at a neighbor's house, said Officer Sheena Parsons, Richland Hills police spokeswoman. The mother could be heard on that recording crying and asking for help.
Police arrived at the Bartel home and found the boy shirtless and shivering, with a large pentagram carved on his back. Officers also found a box cutter at the house, which is believed to have been used in the attack, police said.
The boy was taken to a Fort Worth hospital for treatment. His injuries were "not life threatening," Parsons said. Police and Child Protective Services were investigating the attack.
Wednesday was 12-12-12 - a date some considered significant because such a match of day, month and year will not occur again in this century.
The pentagram is a five-pointed star sometimes associated with Satanism.
(Reporting by Marice Richter; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Christopher Wilson)
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Furthermore, the calendar was fudged in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, shifting the date by 10 days to correct for an inaccuracy in the Julian calendar which had been in use.
The root day for the beginning of the calendar year has absolutely no reference to the birth or life of any known Christian religious figure. (It actually had to do with Roman empire political terms.)
Given all these details, the fact that December 12, 2012 fell 2012 years, 12 months and 12 days after a day when nothing in particular happened, how can anyone consider it “holy” just because of numbers?
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