Crime and Incidents

MEXICO BEACH, Fla.—Search-and-rescue teams began finding bodies in and around Mexico Beach, the ground-zero town nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael, an official said on Oct. 12 as the scale of the storm’s fury became ever clearer. But he gave no details on the number of dead. The death toll across the South stood at 13, […]

Zooworld, a privately owned and funded zoo is an attraction in Panama City Beach that has been in place for more than 60 years, the manager of the zoo for the past four years, Kayte Hogan told Reuters. The five acre small zoo, home to capybaras, alligators, a lion, tigers, giraffes and more, offers ‘a […]

MEXICO BEACH, Fla.—Florida authorities fielded a barrage of calls about people missing in Hurricane Michael’s aftermath as search-and-rescue teams Friday made their way through ravaged neighborhoods, looking for victims dead or alive. The death toll stood at 13 across the South. The number of dead was expected to rise, but authorities scrapped plans for setting […]

A tractor-trailer drove into the back of a Hanover County, Virginia, fire rescue unit at a highway crash site on Oct. 11, killing one firefighter and seriously injuring two others. The truck driver was later cited for reckless driving and driving with defective brakes. The truck driver was also severely injured. The accident is still […]

BOSTON—A Massachusetts mayor who was first elected at age 23 was charged on Oct. 11, with using investments in a company he formed as his “own personal ATM” to enjoy casinos and adult entertainment, buy a Mercedes, and pay down student loan debt. Jasiel Correia, the mayor of Fall River, collected more than $360,000 from […]

They needed an ax and a chainsaw to have a chance of getting him out alive. Time was running out. It was dark, but the area was lit by flames that engulfed the supposedly-vacant house. A hand was reaching out from under the building’s foundation, from a vent too small for a body to move through. […]

The Portland Police Department said it stood by as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other groups blocked traffic, harassed drivers, and assaulted a man who had exited his car after the mob damaged the vehicle. The shocking sequence of events, caught on camera by a videojournalist, was at least partly witnessed by police officers, who […]

A 60-year-old Florida man was arrested on Oct. 11 for allegedly molesting a girl under 12 years old at Davidson Middle School in Crestview, a Hurricane Michael evacuation center. John Stapleton was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of someone under 12 years old. A witness told Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office deputies that she saw a […]

Video footage from inside an Oregon courthouse shows a defendant reaching for a police officer’s gun before being taken to the ground by a jail deputy. The defendant was seated two seats away from the officer, who was at the counsel table to testify in the trial, when the defendant quickly got up and lunged […]

Missing Arizona hiker David Yaghmourian was found dead on Mount Hood, Oregon authorities said after finding the body. Yaghmourian’s family had said that the 30-year-old traveled to the state to hike the Timberline Trail, which wraps around the mountain, with a friend. The friend, Hayden Kirschbaum of Portland, told KATU that he and Yaghmourian split up […]

LAS VEGAS—Attorneys for a Nevada woman accusing Cristiano Ronaldo of rape challenged the international soccer star’s legal team on Oct. 11 to prove that documents cited in European media reports about their 2009 encounter in Las Vegas are false. Anything that proves that documents were altered, fabricated or inaccurate also “should be immediately turned over […]

NEW YORK—New York City prosecutors abandoned part of their sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein on Oct. 11 after evidence surfaced that a police detective dead set on putting the Hollywood mogul behind bars had coached a witness to stay silent about evidence that cast doubt on the allegations of one of his earliest accusers. […]

ATLANTA—By all accounts, Sarah Radney was safe inside her grandparents’ home when Hurricane Michael roared into southwest Georgia. If the family feared anything, it was probably falling trees—not a carport next to the house. In what could only be described as a freak accident, authorities say Michael’s powerful winds lifted the portable structure high into […]

HOUSTON—A NiSource Inc. affiliate failed to require contract repair crews to relocate pressure sensors during natural-gas pipeline work, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Oct. 11, resulting in overpressured lines that caused explosions and fires in three Massachusetts communities last month. Overpressurized gas poured through Columbia Gas Co. of Massachusetts’ distribution system in […]

PORT ST. JOE, Fla.—Hurricane Michael’s violence was visible on Oct. 11 in shattered Florida coastal towns, where rows of homes were ripped from foundations and roofs were torn off schools by the near-record-force storm blamed for seven deaths. Michael smashed into Florida’s northwest coast near the small town of Mexico Beach on Oct. 10 with […]

A man in Tappan, New York, was arrested and accused with planning to blow himself up at the National Mall on election day. “As alleged, Paul M. Rosenfeld concocted a twisted plan to draw attention to his political ideology by killing himself on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., risking harm to many others in […]

A woman brought an emotional support squirrel in a cage onto a flight at Orlando International Airport on Oct. 9. The woman indicated to Frontier Airlines on her reservation for Cleveland-bound flight 1612 that she would be bringing a support animal onboard. The animal was also cleared by TSA’s X-ray machine. The problem was, the […]

LATHAM, N.Y.—A limousine service operator was charged on Oct. 10, with criminally negligent homicide in a crash that killed 20 people, while police continued investigating what caused the wreck and whether anyone else will face charges. The operator’s lawyer said that the man wasn’t guilty and that police were rushing to judgment. The company, Prestige […]

WASHINGTON—A California man accused by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office of operating an online auction service for stolen identities was sentenced to one year in prison on Wednesday in a federal district court. Richard Pinedo, who pleaded guilty to one count of identity fraud in February, could serve half the sentence at home, U.S. […]

NEW YORK—The operator of a limousine company that owned the vehicle involved in a crash that killed 20 people in upstate New York was taken into custody and charged with criminally negligent homicide, New York State Police said on Oct. 10. Nauman Hussain, the operator of Prestige Limousine, was taken into custody following a traffic stop […]