Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Find this woman


This person is despicable. Horrid. She should be thrown in jail and the key tossed away.

Please look at her picture and call the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division office in Boston, Massachusetts at: 1-617-918-2300 or submit the Report a Fugitive's Location web form if you recognize Albania Deleon.

As reported in the fabulous big city paper and on National Public Radio this woman ran a sham asbestos training school in the northern part of the Commonwealth. It was the largest program of its type in New England "training" over 2,500 people in how to properly and safely remove asbestos from homes, libraries, schools, hospitals, nursing homes.... the list goes on and on and on.

Asbestos was put in buildings between the 1940's-1990's inside insulation and fabric. According to a chilling graphic, asbestos particles released in the air literally float for hours and can travel for miles. Breathing in these particles leads to an increased risk of lung cancer including the very rare mesothelioma.

But it isn't the buildings, and those that reside or use them, that are most in danger. It is the workers, the people - mostly undocumented immigrants who do those dangerous jobs we native born rarely do - who are most in jeopardy and their families. These people, who thought they were doing what they were suppose to do to be properly credited for the jobs, did not wear proper breathing equipment or outfits over their clothes to keep the dangerous particles off their bodies.

They breathed in the toxic chemicals but also carried them to their homes. Where they floated in the air their children breathed. Their spouses. Their elderly parents or grandparents.

Albania Deleon's victims were not just her students. It was their families. And because many of them were undocumented immigrants, they can't be found. There could literally be hundreds of people, including young children, at risk for cancer that have no idea.

All because she wanted to make a buck.

I will let the big city paper tell the next part:

Days before she was to be sentenced for one of the country's most egregious environmental crimes, North Andover resident Albania Deleon begged for the court's mercy.

"I pray that God will forgive my soul," she wrote in a three-page handwritten letter to US District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, "and allow me to atone the rest of my life repaying and repairing the harm I have done. This is my solemn promise."

Then the 39-year-old mother sawed off her ankle monitor and disappeared into a cool March day, becoming one of the US Environmental Protection Agency's most wanted fugitives.


The court's mercy? She should ask for the mercy of the mothers and fathers whose babies have cancer because she wanted to make a buck.

So if she appears in your community - as a nanny, a new store employee, a neighbor - call the EPA at the number above. Justice needs to, must be, served.

3 comments:

Patois42 said...

That's horrific. Damn.

Jenn in Holland said...

Oh, that is despicable.
Really, truly awful. I hope she's found, I really do. Mostly, I hope those who were endangered because of her carelessness will be spared illness. It just doens't seem right at all that innocents will pay a penalty for an individual's greed. Sometimes, I just don't like people.

Jen said...

That is beyond horrific.

I can't even fathom this. Truly.