My name is Dana Haskins, and I work as an overnight radio host in Wichita, Kansas, while my husband Marcus works as an emergency room nurse. On New Year’s Eve, our twelve-year-old son Calvin and nine-year-old daughter Molly were supposed to spend the evening at my forty-three-year-old brother Ross’s house while Marcus and I both worked. Ross had spent weeks boasting about the extravagant celebration he was organizing for his wife Allison’s extended family, claiming he was paying for everything himself. Marcus dropped the children off at seven-forty-five in the evening and headed to the hospital. I continued broadcasting live to thousands of listeners and welcoming the new year, completely unaware that my children were sitting outside their uncle’s house in twenty-nine-degree weather. Ross had refused to let them inside, claiming his older daughter Jillian was hosting her own gathering, and he told my children to wait on the porch until our father arrived. Unfortunately, my father’s truck broke down, and when he called Ross to explain the delay, Ross lied and assured him the children were already safely indoors enjoying the celebration.
My children waited in the freezing cold for nearly three hours until a kind neighbor named Lamar noticed them, brought them into his warm home, and eventually contacted me. When my shift ended at six the next morning, I listened to Lamar’s voicemail and immediately rushed to my father’s house to find my children wrapped in blankets. My daughter mentioned seeing a spectacular chocolate fountain through Ross’s window, which prompted me to investigate a shared family bank account I had established three years earlier for genuine family emergencies and holiday gatherings. I legally owned the account, but Ross was an authorized signer, and I quickly discovered he had used our shared funds to finance his entire private celebration. He had contributed a mere six hundred dollars over the past year but had recently spent nearly four thousand dollars on new tires, an anniversary registry, and catering services for his New Year’s Eve party. I immediately contacted the bank to revoke his access and then sent our mother a brief text message detailing his exact actions.
Ross arrived at my home shortly after eight that morning, pounding on my front door and demanding to know why I had restricted his access to what he considered his money. He showed no remorse for leaving my children outside in the freezing weather and instead complained that I had upset our mother by exposing his terrible behavior. When I asked him to explain how he funded his extravagant catered party, he confidently claimed he used his own money, completely unaware that I had already secured the certified banking documents proving his financial theft. Two weeks later on January fifteenth, a sheriff’s deputy arrived at my radio station to serve me with a small-claims lawsuit from Ross demanding eighteen hundred dollars. He falsely claimed in his sworn statement that he had made twelve separate deposits into the family fund, believing his lies would easily overpower the truth. Following legal advice, I visited my bank manager to obtain certified transaction histories confirming he had only made four deposits, and I promptly filed a counterclaim for the exact amount he had wrongfully spent on his personal expenses.