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Plane landing in Boston possibly struck by lightning

A plane at Logan Airport is out of service after possibly being struck by lightning during a flight Monday night. A Delta flight from Chicago to Boston landed at Logan before midnight after possibly being struck by lightning while in the skies, airline officials tell Boston 25 News. According to Delta, flight 2346 landed safely and none of the 85 passengers or members of the crew were injured. A Boston 25 News photographer noticed crew members looking at a Delta plane parked near a gate early Tuesday morning. The plane will remain out of service while the investigation is underway. Logan Lightning Strike This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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crime

Police: Unlicensed Mass. driver crashed into New Hampshire troopers cruiser

An unlicensed Massachusetts driver crashed into a New Hampshire State Police cruiser Saturday while a trooper was helping another driver who had crashed, according to state police. The crash happened just before 11:20 p.m. on I-93 in Canterbury when 38-year-old Chelsea resident Melvin Ruiz Chaperon hit a trooper’s car, state police said in a press release. Ruiz Chaperon was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. At the time, troopers were responding to several crashes on the road caused by icy conditions, state police said. The trooper who the cruiser belonged to was outside his car helping another driver and was not injured. State police charged Ruiz Chaperon with operating without a valid license. He was summonsed to appear at Concord District Court.

2a89984052533c8fff05d46b0419c826

crime

A New Hampshire man pleads guilty to threats and vandalism targeting NHPR journalists

A New Hampshire man pleaded guilty to threatening public radio journalists and vandalizing their homes, prosecutors said Thursday. Tucker Cockerline, 32, of Salem, N.H., pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and the use of a facility of interstate commerce. The harassment and intimidation of the victims included the vandalism — on five separate occasions — of the victims’ homes and the home of one of the victims’ parents with bricks, large rocks and red spray paint, according to investigators. Sentencing is scheduled for March 19, 2024. Cockerline was initially arrested and charged in June along with two alleged co-conspirators. The defendants were subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury along with a fourth suspect in September. Prosecutors allege the men were involved in a plot to vandalize homes associated with New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Lauren Chooljian and news director Daniel Barrick in retaliation for a report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against Eric Spofford, founder of New Hampshire’s largest network of addiction treatment centers. Each charge in the indictment carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and restitution.

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crime

U.S. Naval Officer Who Helped China Is Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

A gunman killed a sixth-grade student and injured five other people at a high school in Perry, Iowa, early Thursday morning just as students were arriving back to school after their winter break. Four of the injured were students, and one was an administrator, Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at a news conference on Thursday. One of the injured victims was in critical condition. The administrator was identified by Easton Valley Community School District as Dan Marburger, the principal at Perry High School, where the shooting took place. Officials did not release the names of any other victims. The gunman, identified as Dylan Butler, a 17-year-old student at the high school, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Mr. Mortvedt said. Law enforcement officials believe he acted alone and said the motive for the attack was not yet known.

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crime

Vermont shootings: Jason Eaton fired recently, was Boy Scout leader

“We are horrified by the shooting and are cooperating with law enforcement as they investigate,” she said in a statement, which declined further comment. Jason J. Eaton , 48, was a full-time sales assistant for CUSO Financial Services in Williston, Vt., according to his LinkedIn account. He was terminated on Nov. 8 after working there for less than a year, said Elisabeth Rutledge, a company spokeswoman. A Vermont man accused of shooting three college students of Palestinian descent on Saturday was terminated from his job with a financial services firm earlier this month, a company spokesperson said Monday. Eaton allegedly shot the students outside his apartment on Saturday around 6:30 p.m., authorities said. He was arraigned Monday and pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted second-degree murder. Advertisement Relatives have identified the students, all of whom are 20 years old, as Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad. Eaton’s LinkedIn page and personal website provide details of his professional and educational history going back nearly three decades. Much of his work history was in New York state. On Monday. Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said investigators believe Eaton moved to Burlington over the summer and had previously lived in the Syracuse area. From 2017 to 2022, he worked as a leader for a Cub Scout troop, according to his LinkedIn page. The Boy Scouts of America said Monday that Eaton had been an assistant scoutmaster in upstate New York and was last registered with the organization in 2021. Eaton is not currently a member of the organization and has not been registered in scouting in Vermont, the Boy Scouts said. Jason J. Eaton, who is accused of shooting three college students of Palestinian descent near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, was arraigned via video call at Chittenden Superior Court. Chittenden Superior Court “Mr. Eaton’s alleged actions do not reflect the values of Scouting. Upon learning of his arrest he was been banned from registering in Scouting any capacity and will be proactively placed in the Volunteer Screening Database, permanently preventing his registration or participation in the future,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement. Advertisement Scott Armstrong, a spokesperson for the Boy Scouts, said Eaton left the scouts of his own accord and his membership “voluntarily” expired in 2021. “He was not dismissed and there were no complaints. He was an Assistant Scoutmaster to a Troop (now inactive) in Syracuse, N.Y., at the time he left Scouting in 2021. He did not receive any honors or awards during his tenure,” Armstrong said. In Syracuse, the city’s Department of Community Development lauded Eaton for his “dedication and hard work” as a volunteer community liaison between the city and its Eastside neighborhood in 2009. Brooke Schneider, a city spokesperson, confirmed that Eaton was a volunteer from 2009 to 2011. Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, in a separate statement to the Globe, denounced the shooting in Vermont. “The shooting of three Palestinian-American college students in Burlington is tragic. We all must join together in rejecting hatred and intolerance in any form and work toward a nation and world of understanding and peaceful coexistence,” Walsh said. Travis Andersen and John Ellement of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. John Hilliard can be reached at john.hilliard@globe.com.

54b541e7877ea39a887e5a019c6e59ec

crime

Winthrop police lieutenant facing child rape charge placed on leave

Winthrop Police Lieutenant James Feeley has been placed on leave “pending the outcome of a criminal investigation,” Winthrop Police Chief Terence M. Delehanty said in a statement Wednesday. Feeley is facing charges of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said in an email to MassLive. He will be arraigned in East Boston Division of Boston Municipal Court on Wednesday, the Clerk’s Office told MassLive. Feeley was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant in 2020 after holding the rank for three years. Before that, Feeley served as Patrolman for six years and Reserve Police Officer for eight years. According to his LinkedIn, Feeley has been with the department for 22 years. The investigation is being conducted by State Police Detectives assigned to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

35a56fb849b596b88d1fcc9e57ce2543

crime

Dateline episode to feature 2010 Granby killing and trial of Cara Rintala

Charles, Oliver and Mabel are back for the broadcast premiere of ”Only Murders In The Building” on ABC on Tuesday, Jan. 2 at 9 p.m. EST. Viewers can stream the show by using FuboTV or DirecTV. Both streaming services offer free trials. Since the show is a Hulu original, viewers can also stream the series on Hulu with a subscription and will get their first month free when they sign up. Plans for Hulu start as low as $7.99 a month and give you access to thousands of shows and movies. According to a description on Hulu, “three strangers share an obsession with true crime and suddenly find themselves wrapped up in one.” How can I watch “Only Murders In The Building?” Viewers looking to binge the new season can do so with a Hulu subscription. A Hulu subscription with ads starts at just $7.99 a month and offers a 30-day free trial for new users. A subscription with no ads is $14.99 a month, also with a free trial. Viewers can bundle Disney+ with Hulu for $9.99 a month or bundle Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ for $12.99 a month. Viewers can also bundle all three, disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ with no-ads for $19.99 a month or bundle all three streaming services with live TV for $69.99 a month

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crime

Burglars target four Beacon Hill businesses over the weekend

Crime Burglars target four Beacon Hill businesses over the weekend Security footage caught a suspect throwing a brick through one store's front window before ransacking it. Four businesses on Charles Street in Beacon Hill were targeted in break-ins or attempted break-ins over the weekend, according to incident reports shared with Boston.com by Boston Police. Security camera footage captured one of the break-ins, at Soodee, a clothing store located at 63A Charles St. According to police, the footage showed a man in black pants and a blue sweatshirt throwing a brick through the window, entering the store, and stealing the cash register late Saturday night. Officers who responded to Soodee on Sunday morning observed “possible drops of blood” near the cash register, according to their report. The owner inventoried the store and reported a box of rings of unknown value stolen, plus an estimated $600 from the cash register. Advertisement: Sunday morning, an employee reported a second burglary down the block at 96 Charles St., home to the clothing store Remy Creations. The employee told police she had found the store in disarray that morning, and reported an iPad stolen. Police noted in their report that a glass panel on the door had been shattered just below the doorknob. The third burglary, at a rental storage facility at 53 Charles St., triggered the business’s alarm system early Monday morning. Officers responded to the building and contacted the owner, who provided them with security footage of a white, male suspect wearing black pants, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and sneakers. The incident report notes that the suspect shattered a window in the door to force it open, and stole an Apple laptop and about $200 cash. The fourth burglary triggered an alarm early Monday morning around the same time as the third. Officers responded to the home goods store J. Grady Home at 133 Charles St., and found that a glass panel in the front door had been shattered, but the door was still locked. They were unable to immediately reach the owner. All four incidents are under investigation by Boston Police. No arrests have been made.

2aac37b4fb32922cef188702c8d7953b

crime

Murder in Boston podcast explores lasting impact of Stuart case

It has been more than three decades since Charles placed the 911 call claiming he and his pregnant wife had been shot and carjacked in Mission Hill, identifying a Black male as the alleged attacker. While Charles survived, Carol died of her gunshot wounds. Their baby, Christopher, was born the night of the shooting after a C-section, but died 17 days later from respiratory failure. The 1989 Charles and Carol Stuart shooting set off an intense police investigation and media frenzy that still haunt the city. “Murder in Boston,” the Globe’s nine-part original investigative podcast, reexamines the case, exploring new clues, what went wrong, and the scars it left on Mission Hill’s Black community. Advertisement Black residents of Mission Hill faced increased police scrutiny and surveillance due to the investigation, with law enforcement homing in on Willie Bennett, a Black man, as a suspect. Ultimately, Matthew Stuart confessed in 1990 that he helped his brother Charles hide the gun used to murder Carol. Although Bennett’s name was cleared, the wounds inflicted on the Mission Hill community are still fresh. Get The Big To-Do Your guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more. Enter Email Sign Up “There was always this sense that this story was something that they never let go,” said Globe associate editor and columnist Adrian Walker, who hosts the podcast, launching Dec. 4. “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning,” a three-part documentary by HBO, produced in association with The Boston Globe, also debuts Dec. 4 on HBO and Max. The Globe’s “Nightmare in Mission Hill” eight-part investigative series is now available to read. Ahead of the release, Walker spoke about revisiting the story three decades later, what surprised him about the case, and what’s needed to start the healing process for the residents of Mission Hill. Q. In the intro for the podcast, you talk about how it’s time to “tell the story the right way.” What went wrong with the initial coverage of the case? Advertisement A. Going back and looking at a story 34 years later is nothing like reporting a story in real time. And I was on that story when it happened. Looking back on it, I think we all kind of got caught up in the competitive pressure of it, wanted to beat the [Boston] Herald, wanted to beat TV, all that kind of stuff. I think, at times, certainly judgment was a casualty. Q. What kind of reporting did you do on the investigation back then? A. I was just going wherever they sent me, like the day [Charles] jumped off the [Tobin] Bridge. The gun had been thrown into the Pines River, right where Lynn meets Revere, and my assignment was to just go there and stay there until they found the damn gun and fished it out. Q. In addition to reexamining the shooting and its aftermath, the podcast features interviews with Mission Hill residents who were impacted by the police raids and chaotic investigation. Why did you want to center their experiences? A. That was always the missing part of the story. Those voices have just not been heard to the degree that they needed to be. I always thought that was the missing piece. Q. And the scars are still there. A. You’ll see it in the documentary, but you’ll hear it even more in the podcast because there’s so many more voices. It was just such a traumatic event at the time. One of the things that drew me to it, and drew all of us to it, is that it was such a cataclysmic event when it happened, and yet three quarters of people in Boston probably weren’t here in 1989 and, for a lot of people, the story is new. Advertisement Q. Did anything surprise you while revisiting this story? A. I was surprised by how many people knew [Charles had] done it who never came forward. That was the biggest surprise to me. Q. Retired Boston detective Bill Dunn, who was involved in the investigation, is featured in the podcast and documentary. At one point he says “we’ll never know” who murdered Carol, and that police “never got the chance to finish the investigation.” Is this still an open case? A. It’s crazy. I mean there are these guys, Billy Dunn and some of the prosecutors, who are still like, “You know, I still think Willie Bennett was involved. I still think they knew each other.” That’s all just nonsense: “We didn’t get to finish the investigation”? The investigation was finished. His brother Matthew went to the police, he said Charles did it. The next day Charles jumped off the bridge. That will end any murder investigation. Q. Is there any kind of justice that needs to take place for Willie Bennett, who was wrongly suspected of the crime, and his family? Advertisement "Murder in Boston," the Globe's nine-part original investigative podcast, debuts Dec. 4. Courtesy of HBO / The Boston Globe A. There’s a reckoning that’s never occurred with this case. I think an apology would go a very long way. I mean they never got anything. [Former Boston mayor] Ray Flynn went to their house for like 30 seconds. He wouldn’t even sit down, that kind of thing. I think some kind of public acknowledgment of the pain and suffering of, first the Bennett family, but also the wider Mission Hill community, is long overdue. It would be great if that was one of the things that came out of this. Q. The podcast highlights how the media, police, and politicians all had roles in this case becoming chaotic, but does anyone deserve the lion’s share of the blame? A. No, because it’s so multifaceted. A lot of these entities were acting independently, so there’s not like one bad guy. I think there are a lot of people who wish, or should wish, they had made some different choices. Interview was edited and condensed. Listen to “Murder in Boston: The untold story of the Charles and Carol Stuart shooting” beginning Dec. 4 wherever you get your podcasts. “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning,” debuts Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. “Nightmare in Mission Hill” is now available to read. Matt Juul can be reached at matt.juul@globe.com.

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crime

Man Charged in Grand Central Stabbings Slashed Inmate, Officials Say

A Bronx man facing attempted murder charges after he stabbed two girls at Grand Central Terminal on Christmas Day slashed a fellow Rikers Island detainee in the head and face on Thursday, seriously injuring him, according to Correction Department officials. It was not clear how the man, Steven Hutcherson, had obtained the 1.5-inch ceramic blade he used in the attack on the inmate: whether ineffective searching had allowed him to sneak it into the jail, or if he had acquired it inside. The detainee who was attacked had four slashes to his face and received about 200 stitches, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. Mr. Hutcherson, 36, was in a jail dorm at the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island when, around 8 a.m. on Thursday, he attacked the other detainee, officials said.

83e78aa72db04439bcebec03e048c390

crime

Alleged subway urinator and female friend charged with assaulting rider, 72

Crime Alleged subway urinator and female friend charged with assaulting rider, 72 The couple allegedly resorted to name-calling and physical violence after the 72-year-old spotted the male suspect urinating on the platform. The Government Center MBTA station. Ryan Breslin/Boston.com, File A man and a woman were arrested on New Year’s Day after allegedly assaulting a 72-year-old at the Government Center T station, according to officials. The couple resorted to name-calling when the alleged victim spotted the male suspect urinating in a corner of the platform around 8 p.m. Monday, MBTA Transit Police said in a statement. The pair then approached the older man and allegedly assaulted him. The 72-year-old was taken to the hospital with a head injury, police said.

da4ce3aeae5167903b690df1e18b35e2

crime

2 of 7 victims in Lynn shooting now dead, DA says

WE’VE SEEN ACROSS OUR REGION. ONE AMBULANCE WE HAVE PROBABLY SIX VICTIMS DOWN HERE. THE 911 CALLS COMING IN AROUND 220 THIS MORNING. BLACK SUV CAME UP, FIRED ROUNDS, TOOK OFF A SHOOTING ON ESSEX STREET WHERE PEOPLE WERE CELEBRATING. A FRIEND HEADING OFF TO COLLEGE. NOW, THIS STUFF IS UNFORTUNATE. I DIDN’T EXPECT IT TO HAPPEN. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD GET THAT CALL. HIS BROTHER SAYING ABRAHAM DIAZ IS ONE OF THE SEVEN PEOPLE SHOT. THE 25 YEAR OLD DIDN’T SURVIVE. HE’LL GO TO THINGS LIKE THIS TO SHOW SUPPORT AND LOVE AND THAT’S WHAT THAT’S WHAT HE’S ALL ABOUT. THE SIX OTHERS WERE RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL. TWO IN CRITICAL CONDITION. THERE’S MULTIPLE PEOPLE THAT WE KNOW PERSONALLY THAT WE HANG OUT WITH AND LAUGH WITH THAT ARE RIGHT NOW IN THE HOSPITAL FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES. NOW INVESTIGATORS ARE WORKING TO TRACK DOWN WHOEVER PULLED THE TRIGGER, SAYING VIOLENCE LIKE THIS ISN’T UNIQUE TO. LYNN. IT’S NOT ONLY A PROBLEM IN OUR COMMUNITY, BUT IT’S BEEN A PROBLEM IN MANY URBAN COMMUNITIES LAST WEEKEND IN BOSTON, TWO LARGE BRAWLS INVOLVING TEENS AND KIDS AND A SHOOTING AT THE CARIBBEAN FESTIVAL THAT LEFT EIGHT HURT ENDED WITH 17 PEOPLE ARRESTED, 14 OF WHOM ARE MINORS. NOW, AS LYNN POLICE INVESTIGATE, SOME WHO LIVE HERE ARE QUESTIONING HOW SAFE ARE OUR COMMUNITIES. I HAVE A TWO AND A HALF YEAR OLD BROTHER. I’M STARTING TO THINK LIKE AS A IS THIS A GOOD PLACE TO RAISE HIM HERE? YOU KNOW, IT’S GETTING A LITTLE VIOLENT. LYNN POLICE SAY THEY BELIEVE THIS SHOOTING WAS TARGETED. THEY SAY IT’LL TAKE THE WORK OF POLICE AS WELL AS THE HELP OF THE COMMUNITY TO SOLVE THI Advertisement 2 of 7 victims in Lynn shooting now dead, district attorney says Share Copy Link Copy Another man is dead in connection with a shooting that happened early Saturday morning in Lynn, Massachusetts.Authorities announced Sunday that 21-year-old Jandriel Heredia, of Revere, died of the injuries he suffered in the Essex Street shooting that had already claimed the life of 25-year-old Abraham Diaz.The shooting, which injured a total of seven people, was first reported to Lynn police at about 2:20 a.m. Saturday.The Essex County District Attorney's Office said that as of Sunday night, there is no new information as to the condition of the five other shooting victims. "This is a terrible act of violence," Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker said. "We do not believe this was a random act of violence."Tucker said shots were fired from a vehicle."They were having some type of a social gathering," the district attorney said. "This violence was put upon them in a terrible way.""The people who did this are not in custody, and we want to make sure we do get them into custody," Tucker added. "I just can't believe it happened," said Brian Diaz, brother of Abraham Diaz. "I'm still trying to process it.""My brother was a good kid," Brian Diaz added. "He was just like me, giving back to kids, looking out for kids, and ... just wanted to make sure everyone was all right."Brian said Abraham was from Lynn. He said his brother was with a group celebrating a friend who was heading off to college. "This is absolutely outrageous to have this level of violence happen on our streets and in our neighborhood," Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson said at a news conference on Saturday morning. "It's horrifying.""What everyone experienced in this street and neighborhood, shouldn't happen," Nicholson said.Several multi-unit residential homes were located in the area of the shooting. "We believe this incident was a targeted attack," Lynn police Chief Christopher Reddy said. "We are committed to holding those accountable responsible for this senseless act of violence."On Sunday, Tucker and Reddy said that a man was fatally shot on Lincoln Street shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday. Authorities said that based on their initial investigation, the shooting is not believed to be a random act of violence.Anyone with any information about the shootings is asked to contact Lynn police at 781-595-2000 or by texting a tip to 847411 (TIP411).The shootings were being investigated by the Essex County District Attorney’s Office State Police Detective Unit and detectives from the Lynn Police Department. Previous coverage:

d16b0313e570b547e7499825f0925718

crime

Detroit Man Charged in Stabbing Death of Synagogue President

A man was charged on Wednesday in the killing of Samantha Woll, a synagogue president who was found stabbed to death in October outside her Detroit home, the authorities said. Ms. Woll’s death appeared to have taken place during a break-in at her home, Kym L. Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor, said at a news conference. “This is an extraordinarily sad and tragic case,” Ms. Worthy said, adding that “there are no facts to suggest that this defendant knew Ms. Woll and there are no facts to suggest that this was a hate crime.” Michael Jackson-Bolanos, 28, was charged with first-degree felony murder, a charge that carries a penalty of life in prison without parole. He was also charged with home invasion and lying to a peace officer. Mr. Jackson-Bolanos was being held in custody on Wednesday evening, and it was uncertain whether he had legal representation.

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crime

Needham Police issues warning after credit card skimmer found at Sudbury Farms

The Needham Police Department is warning customers about credit card skimming devices found at a Sudbury Farms grocery store after discovering more devices installed in other Massachusetts communities. Management found the device at the Sudbury Farms store on Sunday at one of the self-checkout registers and turned it over to police Tuesday, according to a Facebook post by Needham Police. Authorities said the skimmer may have been installed on Dec. 16 and are warning customers to monitor their credit or debit card statements for suspicious activity. “At this time, the Police Department has not gotten any reports of compromised financial information that is believed to be related to this incident,” Needham police said. Similar devices have been found in Wellesley, Natick, Weston, Sudbury and Cambridge in Roche Brothers supermarket stores, police said. Needham police said the safest way to pay while using a credit or debit card is to insert the chip or use the “tap” function at the register. “Always be mindful of the card reader when paying by card. If something appears unusual or out of place, report it to the store management immediately,” Needham police said. Customers can also contact Needham police at 781-455-7570.

03ac28771ea49c08077a8fa45fdc00b7

crime

Grandfather Who Tried to Break Up Fight Is Killed in Subway Shooting

NBC’s “Dateline” is set to air an hour-long episode about the 2010 killing of Granby woman Annamarie Cochrane Rintala in her home by her wife Cara Rintala who was recently convicted by a Hampshire County jury. The episode, “Down the Basement Stairs,” airs on Friday, Dec. 15 at 10 p.m. and is reported by Dennis Murphy. Interviews will include Northwestern District Attorney’s Office prosecutor Steven Gagne, defense attorneys Rosemary Scapicchio and Chancey Wood, among others. Read more: Judge sentences Cara Rintala 12 to 14 years for killing of wife in 2010 Rintala, 57, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in October after a two-week trial, a lesser conviction than the murder charge brought by authorities. Judge Francis Flannery sentenced Rintala to 12 to 14 years in state prison with seven-and-a-half years of time served after being held during past trials. In a press statement promoting the episode, “Dateline” wrote: “When young mother and paramedic Annamarie Cochrane Rintala is found dead at the bottom of her basement stairs, it takes four trials and 13 years before justice is served. In Friday’s ‘Dateline,’ insiders close to the investigation speak out in new interviews about the final verdict.” "Down the Basement Stairs," an episode of NBC's "Dateline," will air on Friday, Dec. 15.Courtesy of NBC News There were three previous trials of Rintala, a case pursued by prosecutors for 13 years. Trials in 2013 and 2014 resulted in hung juries. A third trial in 2016 ended with a murder conviction, but later the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a witness should not have been allowed to testify and overturned the conviction in 2021. Annamarie was found dead and covered in paint at the bottom of the basement stairs by authorities on March 29, 2010, with Cara cradling the body and both of them covered in paint. Prosecutors later charged Cara in the killing and said she attempted to cover up the crime and used paint to conceal evidence. “There was Cara Rintala sitting on the floor with a female across her lap — we later found out it was Annamarie,” Granby police Sgt. Gary Poehler told “Dateline.” “Her arms were extended out like this,” he said and pulled his hands back by his head. “Paint all over the place. All over this female she had across her lap,” Poehler said in a preview of the episode. Steven Gagne, a prosecutor with the Northwestern District Attorney's Office, will appear on NBC's "Dateline" episode on Friday, Dec. 15.Courtesy of NBC News Rintala and her wife Cochrane Rintala were both paramedics and had a daughter. Prosecutors argued Rintala strangled her wife to death amid a rough patch in their relationship. “We hope today’s verdict brings a measure of justice and closure to Annamarie’s family, who’ve been patiently waiting for this day for many years,” Gagne said in an interview after Rintala’s conviction in October.

1551f93d2d83d113b56358297bbc0932

crime

Man arrested, after pointing loaded ghost gun at Springfield officer

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - Springfield Police have arrested a man after he pointed a gun at an officer in a Harriet Street apartment overnight. According to the Springfield Police Department, officers were conducting a follow-up connected to a domestic assault involving a gun and were looking for 30-year-old Joseph Morales-Dejesus when they received permission to enter the apartment he was staying in. When officers arrived at the apartment Morales-Dejesus walked into view with a loaded large-capacity ghost gun with an extended magazine in hand. Police said he pointed it directly at an officer before complying and tossing it away from him. Morales-Dejesus was arrested and charged with the following offenses: Firearm Violation with Three Prior Violent/Drug Crimes Firearm-Armed Assault in Dwelling Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Felony (Two Counts) Assault with a Dangerous Weapon Carrying a Loaded Firearm without a License Possession of a High-Capacity Magazine/Feeding Device Possession of a Firearm without an FID Card - Subsequent Offense Possession of Ammunition without an FID Card Threat to Commit a Crime Witness Intimidation Authorities also revealed Morales-Dejesus was convicted on firearms charges in 2019, numerous drug distribution charges in 2017 and several domestic related charges in 2020 including assault & battery on a pregnant female. Copyright 2023. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.

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crime

Pharmaceutical company Ultragenyx pays $6 million for kickback scheme, Boston feds say

Next month would have marked the 30th year that Richard and Jakeba Henderson had been together, and March the 20th year they had been married. But on Sunday, Mr. Henderson, 45, a father of three and a grandfather to two little girls, was fatally shot aboard a No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument between two other passengers over loud music in the car, the police said. Mr. Henderson, who worked as a crossing guard at a private school in Manhattan, had been watching football with friends, Ms. Henderson said in a phone interview, and was returning home to Crown Heights on the subway. He was shot as the train was nearing the Rockaway Avenue stop in Brownsville, the police said, just three stops from his own. “He got shot stepping into an altercation that he had nothing to do with,” Ms. Henderson said, adding that her husband was known for standing up to bullies. “He died a hero. He died doing what he did — taking up for the weak.”

042d5131a055c722f09844c377860770

crime

DA: Northampton man charged with 4 counts of attempted murder

Crime DA: Northampton man charged with 4 counts of attempted murder Joshua Martinelli allegedly used an AK-47 to fire into his neighbors' home, according to officials. A Northampton man faces attempted murder and other charges after allegedly firing an assault rifle into his neighbor’s home on Thursday evening. Joshua Martinelli, 29, was arraigned Friday in Northampton District Court on four counts of assault to murder, animal cruelty, and several weapons violations, according to a statement from Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan. According to The Boston Globe, Martinelli allegedly admitted in an interview with police that he fired an AK-47 repeatedly into a shared wall on the first, second, and attic levels of the house with his dog by his side. Police later counted 17 entry holes, according to the paper. Advertisement: Officials said none of the four adults present were injured, but “one just narrowly missed being shot when a bullet traveled through the pants he was wearing.” According to the Globe, Martinelli allegedly told police that he shot at his neighbors because of something his dog said. “Martinelli elaborated by stating that tonight the dog told him to kill the neighbors as they were poisoning him (the dog),” police wrote in a report filed in Northampton District Court, according to the paper. “The Northampton Police Department should be commended for their rapid response to an extremely volatile situation,” said Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Andrew Covington, who is prosecuting the case. Martinelli is being held in the Hampshire County House of Correction without bail. His next hearing is Dec. 14.

361f943e2586505a5335004449c6d2b7

crime

Leaping NH murder suspect caught in Malden

Jumping from one building to another in Malden as he tried to escape authorities, a New Hampshire man wanted in connection to a fatal shooting earlier this month ran out of luck. Authorities on Tuesday arrested Giovanne Morris, 31, who allegedly shot and killed a 42-year-old man in Manchester, N.H., in the early morning of Nov. 18 near a diner in that city. Morris had eluded police for nearly two weeks until investigators determined the fugitive had been staying at an apartment on Kennedy Drive in Malden. Massachusetts State Police teamed up with a United States Marshals Fugitive Task Force to make the arrest. After members of the joint collaboration knocked the door to the apartment that Morris was staying at and announced themselves, the suspect escaped onto a fifth-floor balcony and jumped to the balcony of an adjacent apartment, according to authorities. Officers positioned outside the building observed the leap, with an arrest team then gaining access to the balcony of the initial apartment where they gave Morris verbal commands to surrender peacefully. Authorities said the suspect “eventually” adhered to their request before Morris was placed into custody. Troopers took Morris to the State Police-Medford Barracks, with authorities booking him as a fugitive from New Hampshire, where he faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a dangerous weapon. The charge stemmed from the fatal shooting, a release states. Morris, last known to have an address in New Hampshire, was arraigned Tuesday in Malden District Court as a fugitive from justice, and prosecutors in both states are arranging his rendition to New Hampshire. Morris is alleged to have shot and killed Carlos Rodriguez, of Manchester, N.H., near the Red Arrow Diner in the city. Manchester Police received a call for a reported shooting in the area of 61 Lowell St., just after 2 a.m. on Nov. 18. Officers responded to the scene and found Rodriguez suffering from gunshot wounds. Officers had been dispatched to the area less than an hour beforehand for a reported motor vehicle crash, according to authorities. Rodriguez died from his injuries later that day. The shooting remains under investigation by Manchester Police and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Individuals involved in the shooting have been identified, while investigators are working to determine whether the person who shot Rodriguez acted in self-defense. Investigators believe there are additional bystanders who have yet to come forward to report what they may know about the incident.

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Man stabbed outside Kowloon Restaurant

A pharmaceutical company reached a multimillion-dollar settlement agreement this week with federal authorities in Boston to resolve claims it engaged in a kickback scheme, in which it gave away free test kits to acquire patients’ data to target them for treatment, in turn causing fraudulent insurance claims to be submitted, authorities said. Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Inc. agreed to pay $6 million to resolve allegations it caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare and Medicaid. The company was accused of paying for free genetic tests for patients and buying test result information. Ultragenyx then used that information to target patients for prescriptions of a drug it manufactures that is used to treat hypophosphatemia, a condition that causes people to have abnormally low levels of phosphate in their blood, according to a statement from Acting United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Joshua S. Levy’s office. “Kickbacks, in whatever form, have no business in our federal healthcare system. We are always on the lookout for financial kickbacks that can improperly influence medical decisions, undermine patient care, and cause waste to federal healthcare programs,” Levy said. “As medical practices evolve, our office is committed to ferreting out improper financial kickbacks of any permutation.” The California-based company manufactures Crysvita, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug used to treat X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH) in adult and pediatric patients six months of age and older. The condition is a rare inherited disorder characterized by low levels of phosphate in the blood, which can lead to weak bones and, in many instances, may require a genetic test to definitively diagnose, the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s statement read. As part of the settlement, Ultragenyx admitted in some cases, an insurer, like Medicare or Medicaid, would require a positive genetic test for a mutation consistent with XLH to pay for a patient’s prescription for Crysvita and a health care provider would require a positive test to make a definitive diagnosis of the condition and prescribe the drug, federal authorities said. According to prosecutors, Ultragenyx entered into an arrangement, which it called its “sponsored” XLH testing program, with a genetic testing laboratory, in which the company paid the lab to conduct tests at no cost to providers or patients and provide the results to providers. As part of the scheme, Ultragenyx sales workers allegedly discussed the program with providers and delivered order forms for the tests to providers’ offices. Ultragenyx was also accused of paying the lab to provide it the test results, including the name of the provider who ordered the test, a patient ID number, the date the test was ordered and, once ready, the test result itself, called a result report. The company then used the reports, in part, to market its drug and find potential patients and their providers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office detailed. Until April 2022, Ultragenyx received results reports and gave the information to its sales force with instructions to make sales calls for Crysvita to providers who ordered a test or who had a patient with a positive test result, according to federal authorities. The company’s sales employees then allegedly followed up with providers about patients’ test results. Prosecutors argued because of Ultragenyx’s scheme, the company caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare and Medicaid by paying kickbacks to beneficiaries in the form of free genetic tests to get them buy reimbursed Crysvita and to the lab for the results reports to induce the lab to provide to Ultragenyx the names of providers the company could market the drug to. Read more: Shelter opens in Cambridge for dozens of families amid emergency housing crisis “Today’s settlement makes it crystal clear that pharmaceutical companies like Ultragenyx will not be allowed to exploit patient data to target patients for treatments in order to boost their bottom line at the expense of taxpayer-funded health care programs,” said Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston Division. “Let this case be a warning to others that the FBI and our law enforcement partners are hard at work investigating allegations of health care fraud, and anyone engaging in similar conduct will face similar consequences.”

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N.Y. Cannabis Board Settles Suits, Paving Way for Dispensaries to Open

A state judge in Ulster County froze the interim program in August after four service-disabled veterans sued, claiming that they were illegally excluded from applying. They borrowed the argument from a lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of opponents that included four of the state’s medical cannabis companies. The settlement would end both lawsuits. It would also limit avenues for future lawsuits against the program. Going forward, 436 retail license holders caught up in the litigation would be able to open shops and begin making deliveries, including 23 dispensaries that were ready to open before the stoppage. Regulators would also be able to issue additional licenses. Jorge Vasquez, a lawyer whose firm, Vasquez Segarra LLP, represented some license holders in the litigation, said the settlement should give stores that are already open “peace of mind” that their licenses won’t be revoked, while licensees that have not opened can finally move forward in their business planning. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in both lawsuits did not immediately comment on the settlement. Opening more dispensaries is key to relieving a bottleneck that has left most of the state’s 600,000-pound stockpile of cannabis sitting in storage facilities unsold while some farmers and would-be retailers sink into dire financial straits. As a result of the delays with lawsuits and other financial and bureaucratic hurdles, there are just 27 licensed shops and delivery services open across the state, far short of the 150 dispensaries that the state wanted to have open this year.

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crime

Anderson Coopers Newest Assignment: Grief (His Own)

In 1992, he covered famine in Somalia. In 1993, Sarajevo. In 1994, he crossed a bridge into Rwanda. When he looked down, he saw bodies caught on the rocks, their arms flailing in the water. It was at the edges of the world, in places of extreme suffering, that he discovered he could feel again, he said. When he was 10 and his mother came to tell him that his father had died of a heart attack, he remembers crying — a little, he said. And then almost never again. He pulled inward, learning to control his emotions, he said. Among his earliest impulses was the desire to be fully independent. One of his first appearances in the pages of this newspaper was in a story about a lemonade stand he helped run. He got his own bank account, and after his father’s death, he began working as a child model for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. He retreated even further after his brother’s death, when Mr. Cooper was 21. Tracing two lines in the air, he said: “I sort of live in this middle ground of no high highs and no low lows.” He continued: “The only time I felt stuff is when things were so extreme that you couldn’t help but feel — where it was so overwhelming, terrifying, tragic that through, like, osmosis, it overcame all of the sort of things I had worked up to prevent myself from feeling,” But it was a fleeting solution. “I would come back home,” he said, “and I just felt dead.” The death of his mother and the subsequent birth of his sons — who are now 3 and almost 2 — made him take stock. (Mr. Cooper is co-parenting his children with his former partner, Benjamin Maisani, 50, an entrepreneur and nightclub owner.) He described the sadness that he used to see in his mother’s eyes. He doesn’t want his sons to see that in him.

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Inside the Three Days That Reframed Black Womens Health

This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here. Four decades ago, nearly 2,000 Black women converged on Atlanta for a conference at Spelman College. As Dara Mathis recently reported for Headway, The New York Times’s initiative covering the world’s challenges through the lens of progress, this event was a milestone in the then-nascent movement. Black women were gathering en masse from across the U.S. to share with one another the experiences that affected their well-being. I spoke to some of the women who attended the event, to understand what drew them there, what they found and the impact the conference had on them. A few things stood out from our conversations. I was struck by how many aspects of their lives the attendees discussed openly for the first time. When she went to the conference, Brenda Smith had just graduated from Spelman and was studying at the Georgetown University Law Center. “I think that was probably one of the first places I heard about abortion,” Smith told me. “I think it was the first time that I heard open conversations about sexual violence, that people really talked about domestic violence. I think it was probably the first time that people acknowledged, or that I got the sense that people were open about, loving other women.” Nancy Anderson was a young doctor working at a county hospital in Atlanta at the time. “I had read a book called ‘This Bridge Called My Back,’” Anderson said. “That was where I realized that, ‘Ooh, there are people who are describing, really, what it’s like to be a Black woman.’ They had all kinds of points of view. I realized that I could find other people like that in Atlanta.” Reading the book, a collection of writings by women of color, helped begin a process of exploration that brought her to the event at Spelman. Thousands of similar discrete catalysts led women all over the country to organize buses and car pools and make their way to Georgia.

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Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare in Record Numbers

Why It Matters: The Affordable Care Act is expanding its reach. Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power. Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also lengthened the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll. “More and more people are realizing they can come onto the marketplace,” said Cynthia Cox, the director of the Program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group. She added: “Just because the A.C.A. has been around for a while doesn’t mean people who need to sign up for it know how to do that.” One Eye-Popping Statistic: 750,000 sign-ups in a single day. On Dec. 15 — the deadline to sign up for coverage that begins on Jan. 1 — nearly 750,000 people opted for a marketplace plan on HealthCare.gov. It was the largest single-day total yet. Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard who served in the Biden administration, said that improved outreach helped explain the record sign-ups. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said.

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crime

Celtics Mailbag: A creative TPE idea, 3-point dependency

The Celtics ended their road trip on a sour note before returning to Boston for a critical stretch against the East’s best team. Let’s dive into some questions about players and philosophies on the roster in this week’s mailbag along with a couple of trade ideas. If you have questions about the Celtics or NBA, free agency or more email brobb@masslive.com or tweet @briantrobb Brian, How can a team with this much talent still be living and dying by the three (16/50 against Charlotte)? Follow-up question, what’s more boring than watching the world’s most talented basketball players brick 34 threes in a game? — Sean Sean, coming out hot out of the gate! The offensive performance against the Hornets was certainly painful to watch at times. Jayson Tatum was insane in the first half, Payton Pritchard played great all night but beyond that it was an overreliance on the 3-point shot on a night where the team simply didn’t need to go that route. The Hornets have the NBA’s worst defense so if the Celtics picked at it and ran their stuff, high-quality looks could be had at the rim against mismatches. Instead, the Celtics launched from 3 plenty, some of which were great looks but many were contested and came on isolations. Shooting 3s is great when it comes from good ball movement with clean looks but there wasn’t enough of that to justify 50 on Monday night. Whether it was the Celtics’ legs failing on their fourth game in six nights or just mailing it in against an inferior opponent, it clearly came back to bite Boston. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. Do you see the Celtics trying to make a trade before December 10 for a player to fit in the Grant TPE? Seems like it will be hard to find an impact player who will actually help down the stretch/play a role in the playoffs for a player at that money and my understanding is that they need to wait 60 days to aggregate salary with that acquired player in a second trade. Seems like it would be prudent to try to find someone, even if it just a contract like Ricky Rubio who won’t play this year but has a $6.1M salary. Can’t imagine it would take more than a second rounder to get him and that allows you to aggregate his contract before the deadline with spare parts (Oshae, Lamar etc) and picks to go after a guy making around $8-10M who may actually be useful (Nance, Caruso etc). Thanks, Matt D. The TPE conundrum is a fascinating debate. On the one hand, getting a salary into that TPE early helps to expand the team’s trade options when it comes to deals without taking away any member of the team’s current rotation (if they want to stay put here). However, there is also the matter of the luxury tax that will come into consideration here to some degree. Any salary Boston adds to the roster right now will cost nearly four times as much when factoring in luxury tax penalties. Does ownership want to add $20+ million to the payroll for a guy who isn’t even playing in Rubio without another deal lined up for him? It’s quite admirable if they are willing to spend that type of cash but I wouldn’t think it’s a sure thing at this point. The Celtics probably don’t even have to give up a real second-round pick to take on that kind of dead salary (in fact, they might even get a pick for taking it off a team’s books). Boston’s willingness to spend though on a potential 8th or 9th guy will determine a lot in terms of what they can realistically acquire in the next few months before February’s trade deadline. If they don’t use the TPE early, the biggest salary they will be able to use not in the top 6 is Payton Pritchard (about $4 million) and that won’t get the team very far for salary matching. With Bridges electing to take his QO and being only an 8m contract, could he be a trade avenue for the Celtics to look for bench scoring with all of our PF options not working out. —Connah It’s hard to see the Celtics taking a run at Bridges for quite a few reasons. To start, his criminal history is certainly a major red flag and should be a non-starter in my mind. Beyond that, there is the issue of a high price tag the Hornets would likely ask for in any deal as well as the limited options Boston has for salary matching for thee $8 million per year that Bridges is earning. With an expiring contract as well that will make him an unrestricted free agent after his year, it’s hard to envision the Celtics be willing to give him his next deal, which would limit any kind of assets they would need to give up for him. Combine all of those factors together and it’s just hard to see a world where this is a guy Boston will go after. My first question, why do Celtics fans and media panic after every loss? It’s maddening. —Ty R It certainly did not feel like the Celtics had an 11-3 NBA-best record after Monday night’s loss. The weight of high expectations is certainly inviting to that type of panic but it’s fair to note the Celtics have struggled offensively for a few games now against inferior opponents after a superb start to the year. Whether it’s Jaylen Brown’s fit within the offense or old bad habits resurfacing in crunch time, there are areas to watch. No one is going to remember one bad loss in a few weeks but given how passionate this fanbase is, blowing a nine-point lead in two minutes is going to naturally result in some panic from the fanbase.

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crime

Dear Annie: Those around me dont see beyond themselves to see how lonely I am

Dear Annie: I recently had to go to a big-box store to purchase something that I couldn’t get online. The checkout lines on the grocery side of the store were six people deep, but if you looked beyond, to the other side of the store, there were no lines. I’ve been trying to teach family and friends this lesson — to look beyond themselves — for some time. Every Christmas, I get invited to a gathering so I won’t have to be alone. While I try to converse with guests, since I don’t have kids or grandkids to talk about, I wind up alone at the party anyway. No one wants to talk about books or world events. Counselors tell me to volunteer or get involved in groups. When I moved back to the town I grew up in and tried to get involved, I was told, “You’re not from here; that’s not how we do things.” After 25 years, I am still not welcome. Their social groups were formed long ago, and new members are not welcome. They can’t see beyond. Everyone has been writing gratitude journals all year — things they are thankful for, such as children, grandchildren, work and health. It’s hard to listen to what they are thankful for, as I have health issues, which makes it hard for me to get out, and I am alone most of the time. They are so focused on things they are going through or thankful for that they don’t see beyond. They don’t see what others go through every day. Look beyond your world. What are others going through? There is a second part of gratitude, which is to show gratitude to others. For 2021, thank others. Get away from social media, and make this the year you send that handwritten note or phone call to thank someone, even if it is for something that person helped you with years ago. Don’t include statements about you. Make it only about the other person’s act of kindness. If needed, rewrite it so that only a positive statement is left. Look beyond the closest checkout line. Look beyond yourself. Others will appreciate it. Finally, Annie, I want to thank you for including the words “I am sorry for what you are going through” in a lot of your responses. Being able to express that is a genuine trait few possess. — Wishing for True Friends Dear Wishing for True Friends: You make a good point about “looking beyond,” but please, don’t be so hard on yourself or others. Seeing counselors helps enormously. Try not to take it all so seriously. Make a special effort to reach out and offer friendship to new people. You might find, similar to your observation at the big-box store, a faster lane to health and happiness. “How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” is out now! Annie Lane’s second anthology — featuring favorite columns on marriage, infidelity, communication and reconciliation — is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

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crime

Horrible Springfield Gardens properties have new owner; will tenants lives improve?

SPRINGFIELD — Hopes rose this year when Springfield Gardens, an absentee landlord with a history of substandard properties, sold 11 apartment buildings of its vast rental stock to a new owner. Gerry McCafferty, Springfield’s director of housing, said maybe things would improve under Patriot Property Management Group, a West Springfield property manager turned landlord.

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crime

Report: Westborough worker crushed to death by semi-truck

A man who was working on a semi-trailer truck in Westborough on Wednesday morning died while he was on the job, the Worcester County District Attorney’s office said. The local police department, state police and its detectives in the district attorney’s office were investigating the man’s death as of Dec. 27, and the district attorney stated there is no threat to the general public.

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crime

New Jersey mayor says buses of migrants bound for New York are being dropped off at NJ train stations

Politics New Jersey mayor says buses of migrants bound for New York are being dropped off at NJ train stations File -- Secaucus, New Jersey, Mayor Michael Gonnelli. KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey mayor says buses of migrants bound for New York City have been stopping at the train station in his town and others in an apparent effort to evade an executive order by New York’s mayor trying to regulate how and when migrants can be dropped off in the city. Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli said Sunday that Secaucus police and town officials had been told by Hudson County officials about the arrival of buses at the train station in Secaucus Junction beginning Saturday. He said four buses were believed to have arrived and dropped off migrants who then took trains into New York City. Advertisement: Gonnelli said the executive order signed recently by Mayor Eric Adams of New York requires bus operators to provide at least 32 hours’ advance notice of arrivals and to limit the hours of drop-off times. “It seems quite clear the bus operators are finding a way to thwart the requirements of the executive order by dropping migrants at the train station in Secaucus and having them continue to their final destination,” Gonnelli said in a statement. He suggested that the order may be “too stringent” and is resulting in “unexpected consequences.” Gonnelli called the tactic a “loophole” bus operators have found to allow migrants to reach New York City, and added that state police have reported that “this is now happening at train stations throughout the state.” Gonnelli vowed to work with state and county officials and to “continue to monitor this situation closely.” A message posted on a social media account for Jersey City said the city’s emergency management agency reports that “approximately 10 buses from various locations in Texas and one from Louisiana have arrived at various transit stations throughout the state, including Secaucus, Fanwood, Edison, Trenton.” About 397 migrants had arrived at those locations since Saturday, the post Sunday said. Advertisement: “This is clearly going to be a statewide conversation so it is important that we wait for some guidance from the governor here on next steps” as buses continue, the post said. Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, told lehighvalleylive.com that New Jersey is being used as a transit point for migrants, almost all of whom continued on to New York City. Jones said New Jersey officials are “closely coordinating with federal and local officials ”including our colleagues across the Hudson.” In New York City, a spokesperson for City Hall said Monday that the city had “led the nation in responding to this national humanitarian crisis, providing compassion, care, shelter, and vital services to more than 161,000 migrants” since spring 2022. The spokesperson characterized the executive order as “part of that effort, ensuring the safety and well-being of both migrants and city staff.” The Texas governor, the spokesperson said, was treating asylum seekers “like political pawns” and dropping off families in surrounding areas “in the cold, dark of night with train tickets to travel to New York City” as was done in Chicago in response to a similar executive order there. “This is exactly why we have been coordinating with surrounding cities and counties since before issuing our order to encourage them to take similar executive action to protect migrants against this cruelty,” the spokesperson said. Advertisement: Adams last week joined mayors of Chicago and Denver to renew pleas for more federal help and coordination with Texas over the growing number of asylum-seekers arriving in their cities by bus and plane. “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” Adams said at a virtual news conference Wednesday with the other mayors. “This not only prevents us from providing assistance in an orderly way, it puts those who have already suffered” so much in danger. The Democratic mayors, who met last month with President Joe Biden, want more federal funds, efforts to expand work authorization, and a schedule for when buses arrive. Cities have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars to house, transport and provide medical care for migrants.

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crime

Dogs belonging to Stephanie Croteaus family are up for adoption in Springfield

Dogs belonging to the family of Stephanie Croteau, the Springfield mom who died in an October car crash after her child and mother were killed in a murder-suicide in August, have been put up for adoption, a family friend confirmed to MassLive. The Thomas J. O’Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center in Springfield wrote on Facebook Sunday that the two dogs, named Lola and Marley, are ready to find a new home. According to the adoption center’s website, both dogs are 2-year-old Siberian husky mixes. “Marley and Lola are sweet pups that came to TJO after a number of tragedies in their lives. At the request of the family, we are placing these two beautiful pups together. They are loved dearly, and it shows in their sweet nature,” adoption center workers wrote about the dogs. The dogs have experience with children, and will likely do well with other kids and pets if introduced properly, the adoption center wrote on its website. As is the case with most huskies, they require lots of exercise and brushing, but the adoption center said the dogs don’t have any additional medical issues. A third dog belonging to Croteau’s family was killed along with Croteau’s 10-year-old daughter, Aubrianna Serra, and her mother, 52-year-old Kim Fairbanks, on Aug. 14 when their upstairs neighbor entered the family’s Berkshire Avenue apartment and began shooting. Victor Nieves, 34, a close family friend who was reportedly dealing with mental health issues, then shot and killed himself. At the time, Fairbanks was babysitting Croteau’s three children while their parents were at work. Croteau’s 12-year-old daughter was also shot during the incident but survived, and her 5-year-old son was uninjured. According to Western Mass. News, Croteau’s 12-year-old daughter is adamant that Marley and Lola be adopted together even though it can be difficult to find a home willing to take two dogs. “We’ve got a situation here where a family needs our help,” Lori Swanson, the adoption center’s executive director, told the news station. Those interested in adopting Marley and Lola are asked to call 413-781-1484 ext. 2 or visit the adoption center’s website.

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A Fifth Round of Hostages Released as Extended Truce Appears to Hold

Hamas released a group of 12 hostages on Tuesday, most of them Israelis or dual nationals but also including two Thai nationals, all of whom had been kidnapped during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. It was the fifth group to be released since Friday, when a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas went into effect. Here’s what we know about the Israeli hostages released on Tuesday. Clara Marman, 63; Mia Leimberg, 17; Gabriela Leimberg, 59 Clara Marman, Mia Leimberg and Gabriela Leimberg. Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Ms. Marman, 63, a member of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, was taken hostage on Oct. 7, along with her partner, Luis Norberto Har, and three visiting family members: a brother, Fernando Marman, 60; a sister, Gabriela Leimberg, 59; and Ms. Leimberg’s 17-year-old daughter, Mia Leimberg, a high school senior who lives in Jerusalem. Moshe Leimberg, Gabriela’s husband and Mia’s father, stayed home in Jerusalem that day because he had the flu. In a notice he posted on LinkedIn, Mr. Leimberg said that since Oct. 7, he had heard nothing from or about his wife and daughter. “Not a word, not a picture,” he wrote. “They just disappeared, leaving behind a few scattered personal effects, almost as if they never existed.” Their absence, he said, “has left a gaping hole.” Gabriela Leimberg is the manager of a day-care center for youth adults with autism. The organization, the Shekel Association, has pleaded for the family’s release. Mia Leimberg, who is known for her singing voice, has studied at the Jersualem High School of the Arts, and also worked at a bookshop, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. The family dog was taken with the family; on Tuesday, videos on local news outlets showed Mia carrying a dog as she approached the International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles. A banner hanging at Mia’s high school reads, “We’re waiting for you, Mia, to come back.” Mr. Har and Mr. Marman are still believed to remain in Gaza. Ditza Heiman, 84 Image Ditza Heiman Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Ditza Heiman, 84, was one of the first members of Kibbutz Nir Oz and had spent her entire adult life at the kibbutz, her son, Gideon Heiman, said at a news conference held by the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum earlier this month. Ms. Heiman, who worked as a social worker, retired just before she turned 80, Mr. Heiman said. “She spent her whole life helping people and helping take care of people,” he said. Ms. Heiman requires anticoagulant medication and suffered from a pulmonary embolism in the past, Dr. Sharon Kleitman, the family physician of Kibbutz Nir Oz, said at the same news conference. “My mother is not a healthy woman, and she needs medicine,” Mr. Heiman said. When the family tried to call Ms. Heiman on the day of the attack, someone picked up and said, “It’s Hamas,” her daughter, Neta Heiman, said in a video posted by the forum. “When I envision my mother there, she’s taking care of everyone,” Ms. Heiman said in the video, adding: “That’s my mother. She’ll take care of everyone if she only can. If they only let her.” “My mother, and many of her friends on Kibbutz Nir Oz who were massacred, were people of peace,” Neta Heiman said in an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, adding, “All that my mother and her friends wanted was to live in peace in the small Eden they had built there in the desert.” Tamar Metzger, 78 Image Tamar Metzger Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Tamar Metzger, 78, was taken hostage along with her husband, Yoram Metzger, from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, according to a report in the Times of Israel. The couple has three children and seven grandchildren. She had worked in the kibbutz nursery and ran the general store, but in recent years had been a full-time grandmother, spending a lot of time caring for her grandchildren, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Tamar has limited mobility, according to the forum, and spends a lot of time on her balcony, reading, doing crossword puzzles and smoking cigarettes. Her husband is believed to remain in Gaza. Noralin Babadila, 60 Image Noralin Babadila Agojo. Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Noralin Babadila, 60, was visiting friends at Kibbutz Nirim on Oct. 7, when terrorists attacked, killing her partner, Gideon Babani, and taking her hostage. The kibbutz was celebrating the anniversary of its founding that weekend. Ms. Babadila was born in the Philippines but lived in Yehud, a city in central Israel. She spoke with her brother by telephone in the early morning of Oct. 7 and told him that she was scared and that she might not return, according to a report in The Times of Israel. Ada Sagi, 75 Image Ada Sagi. Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Ada Sagi, 75, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, has taught Hebrew and Arabic, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. The child of Holocaust survivors from Poland, she moved to a kibbutz when she was 18, according to The Associated Press. She was getting ready for a planned a trip to London to visit her family and to celebrate her 75th birthday when she was kidnapped on Oct. 7. Meirav Tal, 53 Image Meirav Tal Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Meirav Tal, 53, her boyfriend, Yair Yaakov, and his children, Or, 16, and Yagil, 12, were all taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. Both Or and Yagil were released on Monday, the fourth day of the cease-fire, as part of a group of 11 freed Israeli hostages. Yair Yaakov is believed to remain in Gaza. Rimon Kirsht, 36 Image Rimon Kirscht. Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Rimon Kirsht, 36, and her husband, Yagev Buchshtab, 34, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nirim on Oct. 7. The couple married two years ago, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, and had five dogs and five cats, most of which had been abused before being adopted. Ms. Kirsht practices alternative medicine and reflexology, and volunteered at Maslan, a support center for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence in southern Israel. Ms. Kirsht loves growing plants, adopting and raising animals and listening to music, favoring Israeli bands, Guns N’Roses and U2, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. Ms. Kirsht was included in a hostage video released by Hamas in late October. Mr. Buchshtab is believed to remain in Gaza. Ofelia Adit Roitman, 77 Image Ophelia Roitman Credit... Hostages and Missing Families Forum Ofelia Roitman, 77, moved to Israel from Argentina in 1985, according to a Facebook post by the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. She lived in Kibbutz Nir Oz and has nine grandchildren. Ms. Roitman was an educator who taught first and second grade students for twenty years, her daughter, Natalie Madmaon, said in a video posted by the Israeli public broadcaster, Kan. Her family lost contact with her on Oct. 7, Ms. Madmaon said in the video. She worked in education in the kibbutz for many years, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

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crime

The Quiet Feminism of Norman Lears Middle-Aged Women

Mr. Lear’s characters held our attention, making us care about their struggles and joys, marriages and children, their money or work woes. They made us laugh. What’s more, these women had romantic lives. Sometimes, they would hint at having actual sex, despite the serious handicap of being over 40. Esther Rolle was 53 when she began playing Florida Evans on “Good Times” (spinning off from her role in “Maude”) — 19 years older than John Amos, the handsome actor who played her husband, James. Yet they were depicted as having a vital, erotic relationship. In one episode, James whisks Florida off to a snowbound cabin for a second honeymoon, carries her across the threshold and murmurs that he wants to “get it on.” Even the demure and innocent Edith Bunker — played by Jean Stapleton from age 47 to 56 — referred on occasion to her still-active bedroom activities. In an episode titled “The Joys of Sex,” Edith consults a sex manual to spice up her marriage. “Ain’t I always there when you’re in the mood?” asks a wounded Archie. “Yeah, Archie, and even when I ain’t,” Edith replies. Mr. Lear’s heroines also confronted feminine reproductive issues: Edith endured a rocky menopause — replete with crying, rage and mood swings. On “The Jeffersons,” Louise Jefferson (played by Isabel Sanford from age 57 to 67) tries some marriage therapy techniques on her recalcitrant husband, George (Sherman Hemsley), trying gamely to get him to talk about sex. Most dramatically, Maude had a late-life abortion (when the character was 47 and Arthur was 50). In other words, these female characters had female bodies, and those bodies got to be part of the story: not as jiggling eye candy, objects of leering jokes or fashion plates, but as the flesh-and-blood, complex, flawed and sexual entities that bodies actually are — and that all women have, whether they’re 25 or 60, supermodels or not.

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Red Sox trade Chris Sale to Braves in shocking deal for young infielder

Less than 24 hours after agreeing to sign free agent righty Lucas Giolito, the Red Sox have made a shocking trade involving their starting rotation. Boston has traded lefty Chris Sale and cash considerations to the Braves in exchange for infielder Vaughn Grissom, a source confirmed Saturday. ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who first reported the deal, notes that Sale waived his no-trade clause to facilitate the trade. The deal is official. An important factor in the deal was, as a source said Saturday, that the Red Sox are covering a “good amount” of Sale’s $27.5 million salary for 2024. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier pegs that number at is $17 million. The move gives the Red Sox a significant amount of savings ($8.6 million for competitive balance tax purposes) while netting them a highly regarded young infielder in Grissom, who is likely to take over at second base on a full-time basis and has six years of control remaining. A trade involving Sale didn’t seem particularly likely before the winter because the Red Sox wanted to add rotation help, not subtract it. Ultimately, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said Saturday night, the deal with the Braves made too much sense not to pursue. “Anytime you trade someone like Sale, who has made such a meaningful contribution to this organization and was obviously an incredibly important part of a World Series winning team, it’s a really tough decision,” Breslow said. “The fact that I wasn’t the chief baseball officer here (during Sale’s prime) didn’t diminish that in my mind at all. So it’s something that I was very mindful of and very thoughtful of, but in the end, I felt like this was the decision that was best for the Red Sox both in the near term and the long term.” The move ends an up-and-down tenure in Boston for Sale, who was an All-Star in 2017 and 2018 before injuries derailed the final years of his time with the club. In his first two years after coming over in a blockbuster trade with the White Sox, Sale finished in the top four in American League Cy Young voting twice while posting a 3.08 ERA in 84 starts. The Sox then gave him a five-year, $145 million contract extension before the 2019 season, which was a struggle before ending prematurely due to injury. Due to Tommy John surgery and a series of injuries (some of the freak variety), Sale was limited to just 11 starts from 2020-22. In 2023, he posted a 4.30 ERA and recorded 125 strikeouts in 20 starts but missed two months with a shoulder injury. Manager Alex Cora had named him the team’s Opening Day starter for 2024, though that obviously will no longer be the case. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. In 115 starts over seven seasons with the Red Sox, Sale posted a 46-30 record and 3.27 ERA while recording 945 strikeouts in 670 ⅔ innings. His departure leaves a void in what will surely be a different-looking Red Sox rotation in 2023. With Giolito signed, the Sox can pencil him in along with Brayan Bello and a group that includes Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford, Garrett Whitlock and Tanner Houck. The money freed up by trading Sale may also be used to add more rotation help via free agency. Grissom, 22, has 64 games of major league experience with the Braves since debuting last season. The former 11th-round pick has hit .287 with five homers, 27 RBIs and a .746 OPS as a big leaguer and profiles as Boston’s second baseman of the future. The right-handed hitting Grissom entered 2022 as the No. 12 prospect in a loaded Braves system with scouts excited about his contact ability and arm strength. He debuted that year and played well — including hitting his first career homer at Fenway Park in August — and spent 2023 bouncing between the majors and Triple-A, where he hit .330 with eight homers, 61 RBIs and a .921 OPS in 102 games. Grissom, who has the ability to play every infield position except first base, was blocked in the majors by Atlanta stalwarts Ozzie Albies, Orlando Arcia and Austin Riley. He won’t have that problem in Boston where second base is wide open; he projects as the starter there with Enmanuel Valdez, Pablo Reyes and David Hamilton moving down the depth chart. The unexpected Sale trade fills one hole (second base) for the Red Sox while opening up another in the rotation. The club could use its savings from Sale’s contract ($8.6 million) to increase its aggressiveness in the free agent market for starters or dangle a middle infield prospect (Nick Yorke or Marcelo Mayer) in trade talks involving a controllable starter. There’s also still a chance the club adds to its outfield mix; Teoscar Hernández remains available on the free agent market and the Sox do have interest in him. As a veteran of more than 10 major league seasons and five with the same club, Sale had a full no-trade clause he had to waive to facilitate the deal. Moving to a ready-made contender like the Braves, who play not too far from his home in southwest Florida, likely appealed to Sale. “He was quite appreciative and understanding of the position and the opportunity to influence the longer term outlook of this team and the chance to go to a team that’s likely to compete for a World Series championship in the NL,” Breslow said. “I think he would probably say it was bittersweet because the organization has meant so much to him. He had very close relationships with the people here and in fact was very mindful of calling that out. “Those decisions are never easy. Those conversations are never easy. But I’m super appreciative of the way that Chris approached it.” The Braves will hold a $20 million club option over Sale for 2025.

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crime

Trump legal team files motion to pause proceedings pending appeal

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a motion Tuesday urging U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to pause proceedings against Trump while his appeal is pending. The filing comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review Trump's appeal in an expedited manner. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Tragedy in the Bahamas: Mass. woman killed by shark while paddleboarding identified

It was a tragedy in the Bahamas, as a tourist from Massachusetts was killed by a shark on Monday while paddleboarding near a Sandals resort. A lifeguard jumped into action to try to save the woman, but her injuries were ultimately too severe. The victim, a 44-year-old woman, was identified by Bahamian authorities as Lauren Erickson Van Wart. She was reportedly paddleboarding with a male relative when the attack happened, the Royal Bahamas Police Force said. Sources in the Bahamas are saying she had just gotten married, but we are still working to confirm if that man was her husband. According to police, the attack happened just after 11:15 a.m. Monday. The woman was less than a mile off the western end of New Providence island, where the capital, Nassau, is located. A lifeguard on duty saw what was happening and went out on a rescue boat to try to save the woman. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. The lifeguard quickly noticed she had serious injuries to her right hip and right arm. She also had no vital signs. The lifeguard attempted CPR but the woman died at the scene. It wasn't immediately clear what kind of shark attacked her, a police representative told NBC News. Between 30 to 40 shark species live around the Bahamas, although the Caribbean reef shark, the bull shark, the tiger shark and the black tip shark have the highest bite frequency. The woman was a guest at the Sandals Royal Bahamian resort, a representative for the company said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of a guest while on a paddleboarding activity nearly a mile from the shore. We wish to express our heartfelt condolences to the guest’s family and loved ones," the statement said. "We remain in close contact with them and are providing all support possible during this difficult time." Shark experts said that while these types of attacks are rare, tourists ought to beware, as the Bahamas have been a shark sanctuary for years. "In most cases it's mistaken identity," said Nick Whitney, senior scientist at the New England Aquarium. "Humans just happen to be unfortunate enough to be swimming in the water in a place where the shark was feeding on something else and the shark accidentally bites the person or investigates the person and uses their teeth to do that investigation." Gavin Naylor, program director of the International Shark Attack File in Florida, said there have been a couple of shark-related fatalities reported in the Bahamas in the past five years. He noted that the Bahamas has a “huge” tourist population, adding that there are a lot of people in the water and a lot of visitors who want to view sharks from a fishing boat or dive with them. “So the sharks get acclimated, and the animals are a little bit less cautious than they otherwise might be,” he said. The natural spectacle was captured at Caladesi Island Monday morning. Fatal shark attacks are rare, with only an average of five to six reported worldwide a year, most of them occurring in Australia, Naylor said. Last year, there were a total of 57 unprovoked bites around the globe, the majority of them in the U.S., according to the International Shark Attack File. At least 33 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks have been reported in the Bahamas since 1580, with the island ranking ninth worldwide, according to the file. The Nassau Guardian newspaper reported that authorities in the Bahamas are still searching for a German woman who went missing late last month after she was apparently attacked while diving. Last year, a shark killed a U.S. cruise ship passenger from Pennsylvania who was snorkeling in the northern Bahamas near Green Cay. Most shark attacks in the Caribbean occur in the Bahamas, although a rare shark attack was reported in the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin three years ago. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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crime

Credit card skimmers found at grocery store in Sudbury - Boston News, Weather, Sports

SUDBURY, MASS. (WHDH) - An investigation got underway over the weekend after credit card skimmers were found at a grocery store in Sudbury, officials said. Roche Bros. Supermarkets in a statement said the skimmers were found on two self-checkout pin pads at the chain’s Sudbury Farms location off Boston Post Road on Sunday. Roche Bros. said it “immediately took steps to secure all registers at all locations and launched an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the activity.” Roche Bros. operates 20 grocery stores around Massachusetts. As of Sunday, the chain said it determined the Boston Post Road Sudbury Farms store was the only store impacted. While there was no confirmation that any customer data had been compromised, Roche Bros. said anyone who shopped at the Sudbury Farms site on or before Sunday may have been impacted. Roche Bros. CEO Kevin Barner addressed the situation in his company’s statement, saying “Roche Bros. has strong policies in place to protect against these types of incidents, including conducting multiple security checks daily on our registers.” “Roche Bros. is committed to protecting the confidentiality and security of our customers’ information and are issuing a press release to try and reach affected and potentially affected customers who we are not able to specifically identify,” Barner said. Roche Bros. said it notified law enforcement after finding the skimmers. Sudbury Chief of Police Scott Nix later confirmed his department responded, saying the incident remained under investigation Monday morning. While authorities investigate in Sudbury, this is not the first time this year that skimmers have been found in local grocery stores. Indeed, other devices have been found at various grocery stores in communities including Chelsea; Somerville; Reading; Haverhill; Concord, New Hampshire and Nashua, New Hampshire. Police have launched investigations into other skimmer sightings. The Better Business Bureau, in the meantime, has shared tips for shoppers to protect themselves. Among tips, the BBB advises: Keep a close eye on your bank and credit accounts. Be wary if your card gets stuck in a chip reader. Use contactless payment methods. Go inside to a teller to withdraw cash from the bank Use ATMs in banks Cover the keypad Don’t proceed if you feel resistance when your card is inserted. (Copyright (c) 2023 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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crime

Mass. State Police seek publics help with fatal Stoneham crash near I-93

A crash that killed a woman in Stoneham on Wednesday has Massachusetts State Police seeking information from the public about an SUV in the area of the crash. At around 8:40 a.m., state police troopers arrived at the site of a rollover crash on the northbound side of Interstate 93, state police said in a statement. The car, a 2015 Nissan Rogue, rolled over south of Exit 26, the statement read. The driver, a 34-year-old woman, was ejected and died near the crash. What caused the crash remains under investigation. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation first posted about the crash on X, formerly known as Twitter, shortly after 9 a.m. Two of the roadway’s righthand lanes were closed, it said, and drivers should expect delays. At 12:07 p.m., MassDOT posted that all lanes were reopened. State police are now trying to identify another vehicle in the area, believed by investigators to be a dark-colored small SUV resembling a Subaru Crosstrek or a Nissan Rogue. “That vehicle was being operated erratically and at a high rate of speed on (the I-93) north in Medford and Stoneham between 8:25 and 8:40 a.m.,” state police said. Anyone with information about this other vehicle is being asked to call Trooper C.J. Murgo at 781-897-6609 or the Massachusetts State Police Medford Barracks at 781-396-0100.

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UMass research: Climate-change temp soon to hit limit for the rhinoceros

AMHERST — Rhinos don’t sweat. And with global warming causing their habitat’s temperature to increase, black and white rhinos are in jeopardy, according to new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Southern Africa — home to most of the world’s remaining rhinos — is experiencing rapid climate change. To date, rhino conservation efforts have been focused on poaching. A UMass research team recently reported in the journal Biodiversity that the rhinos are more sensitive to rising temps, which will soon surpass the animals’ limit. The team advised national park managers to plan now if they intend to preserve a future for the rhinoceros. White rhinos, like this one at Kruger National Park, South Africa, are threatened by climate change. (Sam Ferreira photo)Sam Ferreira photo The African continent is projected to see a temp increase of 2 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The change also will disrupt rain patterns. Because they don’t sweat, rhinos cool themselves by bathing and seeking out shade. “Most, if not all, species will, in one way or another, be negatively affected by the changing climate,” said lead author Hlelowenkhosi S. Mamba, who completed this research as part of her graduate studies at UMass Amherst, in a statement. “It is therefore important for conservationists ... to catch trends and model futures for some of the world’s most vulnerable species to prepare to mitigate climate change’s effects, hence minimizing global biodiversity losses.” To understand how change climate will affect rhinos, Mamba and senior author Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, focused their efforts on the five large national parks in South Africa: Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and eSwatini.

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Boston man pleads guilty to posing with weapons on SnapChat

BOSTON (WWLP) – On three state firearm charges, a Boston-area man pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally possessing a firearm seen on SnapChat. An investigation into a violent Boston gang in 2021 led law enforcement to intercept a Snapchat “chat” with images of people with guns. Trevon Bell, 27, of Boston and Lynn, a member of the violent Heath Street gang based in Boston – was identified in the chat. Bell was indicted on three separate unlawful possession of a firearms and ammunition cases in state court. He was released on home detention with a GPS bracelet tracking his location. Investigation revealed that Bell had posted numerous videos of himself with firearms on Snapchat while on state pre-trial release, including a video from November 24, 2021 that showed him with a black semi-automatic Glock 9 millimeter. Since then, the firearm has been recovered. Credit: Department of Justice Bell has pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun. A felon in possession of a firearm can get up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV set sentencing for Feb. 29, 2023. Kayleigh Thomas is a digital reporter who has been a part of the 22News team since 2022. Follow Kayleigh on X @kayleighcthomas and view her bio to see more of her work.

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Dog walker, dog, violently attacked at Burlington reservoir, police say

BURLINGTON, Mass. — Authorities are investigating an alleged violent attack on a dog walker and his dog at a popular walking path Tuesday morning. Burlington Police say the assault happened around 9:30 a.m. at the Mill Pond Reservoir. Both the victim and his dog were attacked by a suspect riding a black mountain bike and accompanied by two dogs, according to officials. The severity of their injuries is unknown at this time. The suspect is described as a 30-year-old white male with an athletic build. Police believe one of the dogs he was walking was a beagle mix. Anyone with information is asked to call Burlington Detectives at 781-272-1212. Anyone with any information is asked to contact BPD at 781-272-1212.#BurlingtonMA pic.twitter.com/1isDn0xS9N — Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) December 6, 2023 This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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Man Who Posed as Federal Agent Is Sentenced to Nearly 3 Years in Prison

A man from Washington, D.C., who pretended to be a federal law enforcement officer and leased luxury apartments for which he failed to pay rent was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Friday, federal authorities said. The man, Arian Taherzadeh, 41, had falsely claimed to be a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, a former U.S. air marshal, a former U.S. Army Ranger, and a member of a federal task force working across multiple jurisdictions, among other fake roles, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia said in a news release. Mr. Taherzadeh and a co-conspirator, Haider Ali, 36, of Springfield, Va., used those false claims to recruit others to his law enforcement firm, which they called the United States Special Police LLC and falsely described as a private law enforcement service linked to the federal government, according to court documents. Mr. Taherzadeh used the false claims to recruit others to join his business and to defraud the owners of three apartment complexes in the D.C. area into providing him with multiple apartments and parking spaces for the supposed law enforcement operations, federal authorities said.

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Police investigating active shooter scene at Perry, Iowa, high school

The Perry Police Department is responding to an active shooter scene at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday morning, Fox News Digital has learned. Multiple law enforcement agencies are responding to reports of an active shooter situation at the school, according to local reports. Police officers were dispatched to the scene on Thursday morning after receiving a report of an active shooter, the Perry Police Department confirmed. Multiple EMS vehicles were sent to the scene at 1200 18th Street, according to public safety radio traffic. Officials have not released further details at this time. Perry High School belongs to the Perry Community School District, about 25 miles northwest of Des Moines. About 1,785 students are enrolled at the school, according to its website. Thursday was the first day of school after winter break, according to the school's calendar. This is a developing story and will be updated.

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19-year-old arrested for driving 124 mph on I-93 in New Hampshire

A man was arrested on Wednesday night after traveling 124 MPH in a 65 MPH zone in New Hampshire. Concord Police says the driver, identified as 19-year-old Jacob Riley Hebert, of Laconia, NH, and his vehicle were spotted on I-93 Southbound in Concord. According to authorities, three other passengers were also identified inside the car, including a minor under 16. Hebert was arrested for aggravated driving under the influence, reckless operation, transporting alcoholic beverages by a minor, reckless conduct and endangering the welfare of a child, police say. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. Authorities say two of the passengers were also arrested for unlawful possession and intoxication and open container. These two passengers are expected in Concord District Court in January.

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Everett man arrested in connection with fatal East Boston stabbing

Police have made an arrest in connection to the fatal stabbing of a Medford man in East Boston last week, according to Boston police. Edwin Mendez Hernandez, 20, of Everett was arrested at approximately 8 a.m. Friday on 20 Hancock St. in Everett. At the time of his arrest, Hernandez was wanted on a warrant for the Dec. 15 killing of Wilfredo Landaverde Arevalo, 34, of Medford, police said in a statement. Hernandez will be arraigned in East Boston District Court.

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Townsend woman accused of trying to poison husband after scammer impersonating soap star texted her

TOWNSEND, Mass. — A 64-year-old Townsend woman has been charged with attempted murder, accused of trying to poison her husband after a scammer impersonating soap opera star Thorsten Kaye of “The Bold and the Beautiful” texted her to “get rid of your husband honey,” police said. Roxanne Doucette, 64, of Townsend is charged with attempted murder, intimidation of a witness, juror, police or court official; resisting arrest, and assault and battery on a police officer, court documents show. Doucette was released on personal recognizance following her arraignment in Ayer District Court on Dec. 4, 2023, court documents show. Conditions for her release include that she have no contact with her husband and daughter, stay 100 yards away from her husband, undergo a mental health evaluation, be confined to her home except for medical appointments and wear a GPS monitoring device. At about 4:34 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, Townsend Police Officer Michael Marchand was contacted by Ayer Police, who had spoken to Doucette’s daughter at Nashoba Valley Medical Center. The daughter had told Ayer police officers that she suspected Doucette had poisoned her father, Marchand wrote in his report. Marchand responded to the hospital room to speak to Doucette’s daughter and Ayer police. An Ayer police officer told Marchand that the daughter was at the hospital with Doucette. “Roxanne had been messaging someone she believed to be a daytime drama actor, Thorsten Kaye,” Marchand wrote in his report. “This person scammed her into giving them money.” Roxanne Doucette of Townsend (Townsend Police Department) The daughter “was going through all the messages in Roxanne’s phone with the scammer, to send screenshots to” police, Marchand wrote. “When she did, she came upon messages that she felt indicated that Roxanne might have poisoned her husband,” police said in their report. The daughter showed police screenshots from text messages that were sent on Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, court documents show. “One of the messages from “Thorsten” stated ‘You have to get rid of your husband honey. I need you so much,’” police wrote in their report. “Roxanne stated that she needed to do some thinking.” Thorsten Kaye JUNE 19: Thorsten Kaye attends the closing ceremony and Golden Nymph awards of the 58th Monte Carlo TV Festival on June 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) “At 2:34pm she responds that she is ‘”Making an amazing soup. Special potion. He will be hungry when he gets back. Just enough for him,’” police wrote in their report. “At 4:26pm, Roxanne goes on to say ‘Hubby got back not feeling well. Maybe I can collect life insurance.” Thorsten responds “Honey when will that be?” Roxanne says “Don’t know.” At approximately 5:11 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, Roxanne called 911 for her husband, police said. The report was for a 73-year-old unresponsive man who was still breathing, with a cardiac history. Doucette advised emergency responders that her husband “was very dizzy earlier and is currently sitting in a chair, mumbling, not making sense.” An ambulance took her husband to a local hospital. When her father later regained consciousness, the daughter told police that she had asked him about what happened on Friday. Her father “stated that Roxanne made him soup, but that it wasn’t very good. He stated that it tasted bitter,” police wrote in their report. When police spoke with Doucette, she “stated that she had told (her husband) that she was going on a retreat. She then came clean about the fact that she was not going on a retreat and told (her husband) about the person she was messaging,” Marchand wrote in his report. “She stated that she thought she was talking to a star, and that she had always wanted to meet a star.” Roxanne Doucette, 64, of Townsend Police wrote that Doucette “stated that she was afraid to be alone. She stated that she would never harm him in any way, and that she loves him very, very much. She stated that she loves her children, and that she hopes her daughter doesn’t think she put him in the hospital.” Doucette also told investigators that her husband “was under a lot of stress because of the scam. She stated that he had recently been the victim of a scam and lost approximately $8,000.00.” Doucette refused to turn in her cell phone and tablet to police as part of their investigation, and then she resisted arrest, kicking at Marchand with her boot on her foot, Marchand wrote. Police later seized Doucette’s cell phone and tablet. Days later, on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023, Townsend Police arrested Doucette again for violating an Abuse Prevention Order. Police were called because Doucette’s husband had received a handwritten letter from Doucette, which violated the no contact order. According to police, Doucette’s letter, which was included in the couple’s bills that Doucette had a neighbor mail to her family, allegedly stated, “Please consider dropping the restraining order.” “That’s a long time to have you out of my life,” Doucette is alleged to have written in a letter to her husband, court documents show. “I want my husband back. I miss you so much.” Townsend woman accused of trying to poison husband after scammer impersonating soap star texted her Attempts to reach Doucette for comment at her home on Monday were unsuccessful. News of the allegations spread through the neighborhood where Doucette and her husband have lived for four decades. “You can’t ever expect that. That’s something that books are made out of I think,” said neighbor Sadie Crawford. Crawford and her mother, who reside across the street, have been waiting for answers for the last month. “I just asked her where he was. I didn’t want to pry too much,” said Gail St. Hilaire. “She just said that he had a heart attack.” Townsend is a small town north of Fitchburg and near the New Hampshire border. The town’s population was 9,127 at the 2020 census. “Making an amazing soup. Special potion.” 64-year-old Townsend grandmother accused of poisoning 73-year-old husband after texting with scammer she believed was soap actor. Court documents say she mentioned possibility of collecting life insurance #Boston25 AT 10 & 11 pic.twitter.com/3930Qv5Zn7 — Drew Karedes (@DrewKaredes) January 9, 2024 This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2024 Cox Media Group

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crime

Jonathan Majors Case Begins With a Debate: Was He an Abuser or a Victim?

WESTFIELD — After a dispatcher with the Regional Public Safety Communication Center lost her sister and home in a devastating fire in Springfield on Oct. 16, the officers of the Westfield Police Department decided to donate over $6,800 they raised during an annual fundraiser to her family to help in their recovery. “This will help a lot. I really appreciate it. It’s overwhelming,” said Jailyne Rivera just before being handed a donation of $6,806 that was raised by the department’s officers during their annual No-Shave November fundraising campaign.

036e3f79d8d6441f2210edaa7003e6c0

crime

Police responding to reports of active shooter, multiple victims at University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Authorities on Wednesday were responding to reports of multiple victims in a shooting at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, police say. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Las Vegas police said they were responding to "preliminary reports of an active shooter on the campus." "There appears to be multiple victims at this time," police said. "Please avoid the area and we will have more information soon." This is a developing story

7e3c997240cbfe019039bd4dd233ad34

crime

Woman Who Plotted Her Mothers Killing in Bali Gets 26 Years in U.S. Prison

A woman who plotted to kill her mother and then stuffed her body in a suitcase in Bali, Indonesia, in 2014 was sentenced on Wednesday to 26 years in prison, federal prosecutors said. Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of U.S. District Court in Illinois sentenced the woman, Heather L. Mack, after she had pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiring to kill a U.S. national. The sentence, handed down in a Chicago courtroom, was just shy of the 28 years sought by federal prosecutors. Ms. Mack was also ordered to pay restitution of $262,708 and a $50,000 fine. Her time in prison will be followed by five years of supervised release, according to prosecutors. “This was a brutal and premeditated crime,” Judge Kennelly said in court on Wednesday, according to local news outlets.

1dbfc9701af0e910924f332fd22b33cd

crime

Everett man arrested in connection with fatal East Boston stabbing

Police have made an arrest in connection to the fatal stabbing of a Medford man in East Boston last week, according to Boston police. Edwin Mendez Hernandez, 20, of Everett was arrested at approximately 8 a.m. Friday on 20 Hancock St. in Everett. At the time of his arrest, Hernandez was wanted on a warrant for the Dec. 15 killing of Wilfredo Landaverde Arevalo, 34, of Medford, police said in a statement. Hernandez will be arraigned in East Boston District Court.

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crime

Police: Boston SWAT at the scene of active shooter at building fire in Mattapan

Boston police responded to a report of gunshots in Mattapan Saturday shortly after firefighters were called to the scene to extinguish a fire, authorities said. Members of the city’s SWAT team were brought in after a suspect opened fire on first responders, who were called to 50 Fairlawn Ave at about 11:35 a.m., according to police. City data shows there have been 107 shooting incidents in Boston in 2023 with 141 victims through Dec. 24. That is down from the 145 fatal and non-fatal incidents in 2022, according to Boston police data. The address where the shooting occurred Saturday is just off Cummins Highway. This is a developing story.

4de7f0f9143aaa70993e0e5f318234ac

crime

Florida man arrested, arsenal of weapons seized after RI shooting, high-speed chase

A Florida man is facing over 100 charges after a shooting and high-speed chase in East Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday afternoon. According to WJAR, 43-year-old Joshua D. Pavao, of Kissimmee, Florida, is charged with 106 counts of possessing a large capacity feeding device, two counts of license or permit required for carrying a pistol, discharge of a firearm from a motor vehicle, firing in a compact area, eluding an officer with a motor vehicle in a high-speed pursuit, duty to stop for an accident resulting in injury, duty to stop for an accident with occupied vehicle, vandalism and obstructing an officer in the execution of duty. Police did not say when Pavao will make his initial court appearance. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney. East Providence police said they initially received a 911 call around 2:20 p.m. Friday for a report of shots fired at a house on Estrell Drive in the Riverside section of the city. When they arrived, police found at least one shot had shattered the rear window of a vehicle at the residence. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. Pavao's vehicle, a black Nissan Armada SUV, was seen fleeing toward Willett Avenue and Pawtucket Avenue. A police detective tried to stop the vehicle near Silver Spring Avenue and Dodge Street, but Pavao refused to stop. Police said a long gun magazine was either discarded or fell from the SUV as it traveled north on Pawtucket Avenue before striking another vehicle at the intersection of Waterman Avenue. Around 2:35 p.m., Pavao ran a red light at the intersection of Taunton Avenue and crashed into three vehicles. He then got out of the vehicle and fled on foot. He was taken into custody by police a short distance away in the parking lot behind Davenport's Restaurant. Courtesy: WJAR Multiple loaded long gun magazines were ejected from Pavao's vehicle in the collision and were found scattered across the road. Police said they found thousands of rounds of ammunition in three duffle bags in Pavao's vehicle, along with a significant number of loose rounds. A suspicious backpack was found a short time later off Boyd Avenue, containing three loaded Glock handguns, a pellet-style rifle and a bulletproof vest. “I am extremely proud of the men and woman of the East Providence Police and Fire Departments for their swift action during yesterday's emergency incident," Mayor Bob DaSilva said in a statement. "Thanks to their training and professionalism, the members of the East Providence Police Department were quickly able to apprehend the suspect and locate the guns and ammunition without any threat to our community. I commend them on their actions during Friday's incident." I want to commend the members of the East Providence Police, East Providence Fire Department & Public Safety Communications Dispatchers for handling a very dangerous and volatile situation that spanned across the city with numerous incident scenes. — Mayor Bob DaSilva (@mayorbobdasilva) December 1, 2023 Police said they did not fire any shots during the chase. "This was an extremely volatile situation involving a dangerous and unpredictable suspect who put so many of our residents and police officers in harm's way," Police Chief Christopher Francesconi said in a statement. "My officers and dispatchers handled this very serious situation with great professionalism and restraint." During the pursuit, two officers were involved in a crash, with a police cruiser crashing into a house at Dover Avenue and Gardiner Street. The home sustained minor damage and one officer was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. No injuries were reported in the crash at the intersection of Waterman Avenue, according to police. East Providence police said their investigation remains "very active" as they try to understand the motives and intentions of the suspect.

2f8b0bed58a77d2ce78ce8d68a88ac5a

crime

Vermont shootings: Thanksgiving tradition ruined by gunfire

Dear Amy: My teenage daughter recently came to me saying that she needed a new smartphone. I took a look, and it was basically smashed. She said she was at her friend’s house when this happened. I called the friend’s mom and she told me that both girls had deliberately broken their phones in order to get new ones (this was before Christmas, so I guess they were hoping to find a shiny new phone in their stockings). I asked my daughter what had happened and she said, “It just fell onto the driveway.” She didn’t seem too concerned about it. I asked her if she had done this on purpose and she said no. My wife and I can’t quite decide what to do now. She is in favor of getting her a new phone, but I don’t want to reward this behavior. – Broke Dad Dear Dad: Unless you have purchased insurance, replacing this broken phone could be a very expensive proposition (insurance is also expensive, and there is a deductible to replace a broken or lost phone). I do believe that it is something of a safety issue for a teenager to have a phone these days, and because of that, she should have one. However, until you/she are eligible for a free upgrade for the latest model, you can offer to purchase a much less expensive flip phone for her to use until she can afford the phone she wants. (Flip phones are cool! They’re vintage! They’re so very ‘90s!) I think it’s important that your daughter should ultimately pay for the replacement – or negotiate a partial payment with you and her mom. Experiencing the consequences of this incident should inspire her to be much more careful. Dear Amy: “Patricia” and I have known each other for several years. We have always referred to one another as “best friends.” A while back, I found out that she did something horrible to a family member of mine, and I was furious. I didn’t speak to her for several months and started to make plans to confront her about what she had done. Before I was able to confront her, she found out that her boyfriend flirted with me. Yes, he did flirt with me, but I just ignored him and didn’t say anything to her about it. Now Patty blames me for all the emotional turmoil she is going through. This is absurd! I am so sick of her throwing shade at me! Should I confront her about it? – Over It Dear Over It: I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that you and “Patty” are not actually best friends, and perhaps never have been. The reason I can say this is because intimate friends tell one another the truth – even when it is challenging or painful to do so. You state that Patty did a horrible thing to a family member of yours, and yet you ghosted her for months instead of communicating about this incident. On Patty’s side of things, she is blaming you for the fallout from something her boyfriend did. Again – casting blame without pursuing an explanation is not how friends behave and communicate with one another. It seems obvious that at this point, your friendship is broken. Given that so much time has passed and that you have no stated desire to try to repair the relationship, dredging up these episodes might give you two yet another point of conflict. I understand the desire to set the record straight when it comes to your own conduct and whatever untruths are told about you. If you decide to do this, remember that anything you say or write can be dredged up and used against you (or as a way to keep this conflict going) on social media. Therefore, you should make your decision understanding the possible ongoing negative consequences for you. Dear Amy: I’m enjoying the letters about gender-specific toys, especially toy kitchens. I worked in a preschool, and once I asked a boy playing in the kitchen area about the things he’d piled up in the kitchen next to the little sink. He said he was going to play video games – the telephone with its keypad was propping up the frying pan, which was his screen. I asked about the banana perched on top and he said, “I’m charging it.” There are lots of ways to play with a toy kitchen. – Another Amy Dear Amy: I’ll never eat an uncharged banana again. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) ©2023 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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crime

Police searching for Roxbury man wanted on a murder warrant

Boston police are searching for a 31-year-old Roxbury man wanted for murder connected to the fatal stabbing last year of Earnest Sims, 39, of Boston. Roxbury’s Anthony Chester is wanted on a straight warrant out of Roxbury District Court for the May 30, 2022, fatal stabbing, police said. He was last seen in Roxbury and is described as a Black male, approximately 5 feet 9 inches, and about 190 pounds. Police said officers responded to the area of Beauford Lane in Dorchester in May 2022 for a report of a man stabbed. Officers found Sims suffering from life-threatening injuries, police said. Sims was taken to a local area hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to police. “The Boston Police Department is actively reviewing the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. Anyone with information is strongly urged to contact Homicide Detectives at (617) 343-4470,” Boston police said in a statement. Norfolk man accused of crashing into a cop car while drunk The Norfolk Police Department charged a 43-year-old Framingham man with driving while under the influence of alcohol after he allegedly crashed into a police cruiser early Friday morning. Norfolk Police Chief Timothy Heinz said police responded to the intersection of North and Needham Streets after a local police sergeant reported a vehicle traveling “at a high rate of speed had crashed into his marked cruiser.” “The cruiser, which was traveling south on North Street, was hit on the rear driver’s side,” Heinz said in a statement. “The impact tore the left rear wheel and suspension from the cruiser, and caused it to end up partially off the roadway and into the woods.” Dubose and the sergeant were both taken to a local hospital. Dubose was charged with marked lanes violation, operating under the influence of liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, driving above the posted speed limit, and possessing an open alcohol container in a motor vehicle. Revere man pleads guilty to manslaughter A 25-year-old Revere man pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in state prison after prosecutors said he fatally shot John Brooks, 35, in 2019. Brooks and a friend were “engaged in an altercation” with another group outside a restaurant in Revere on July 18, 2019, when Jorge Cordova took at a firearm from his waistband and shot Brooks once in the abdomen before fleeing, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. Brooks was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital and received treatment for five days before he died on July 23, prosecutors said. Cordova was arrested in Dorchester on July 24. Police found a .45 caliber handgun in the room where Cordova was located, authorities said. “My deepest sympathies go out to the family and friends of Mr. Brooks, whose life ended far too early at the hands of someone carrying an illegal firearm and using it to terrible effect. Once again, we see the tragic results of too many firearms in the hands of too many people willing to use them,” District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement. Phone robbed outside of Fenway Park Boston police are asking the public to help them identify individuals connected to the robbery of a phone just outside Fenway Park during the early morning hours of July 30. Police said citizens should “never allow your cell phone to be used by anyone that you do not know to prevent people from downloading your financial applications and changing passwords.” The images released by police show two individuals, one wearing a hat and the other in a t-shirt.

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crime

MBTA crews clean up historic streetcar after vandals deface 50s trolley

Local News MBTA crews clean up historic streetcar after vandals deface ’50s trolley The old-school orange trolleys are some of the most iconic symbols of Boylston Station (aside from the Boylston Squeal, of course). A recent effort to clean up a historic PCC streetcar at Boylston Station removed not only graffiti, but also several years of carbon dust, according to MBTA streetcar operator and Carmen's Union Local 589 delegate Scott Page. Scott Page/Courtesy Photo A few days after vandals targeted a historic streetcar at the MBTA’s Boylston Station last November, Scott Page’s inbox started pinging. The messages from fellow T workers had a common theme: “How can we fix this?” “I kept getting messages from streetcar operators who were saying, you know, ‘This doesn’t look good. This is our history; this is something that we take pride in,’” said Page, the Green Line delegate for the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589. “And when you roll into Boylston and there’s graffiti on the side of the car, that’s disheartening.” Advertisement: So Page reached out to Ryan Coholan, the T’s chief operating officer, and together they made a plan to clear away the graffiti. It took about a dozen volunteers from the MBTA and Keolis four hours, and “a lot of elbow grease,” according to Page, but the crew managed to get the streetcar cleaned up on Dec. 30. “I could not have asked for a better end of 2023,” Page said. “I think what sometimes people don’t realize is just how many people there are who work here and care about not only what we do, but care about how this place looks and how it runs. And to have people give up their own time to come out and try to clean up something that’s really valuable to not only us, but the riders we serve — I think that was great.” MBTA Transit Police previously asked for the public’s help identifying three people of interest in the Nov. 12 vandalism, sharing photos of the individuals on social media. Transit Police Supt. Richard Sullivan told Boston.com last week that the department has no update in the case. ID Sought re: Vandalism at the MBTA's Boylston Station midnight 11/12 on historic trolley. Recognize these subjects of interest? Pls contact our CIU at 617-222-1050 w/any info you have. You can remain anonymous. TY pic.twitter.com/kSEKDppO18 — MBTA Transit Police (@MBTATransitPD) November 24, 2023 According to Page, the orange PCC streetcar — one of two historic streetcars that sit on a side track at Boylston — was built in 1951 and predates the MBTA itself by more than a decade. A group of Local 589 volunteers fully restored the streetcar in the late 1970s, and it was used for novelty trips throughout the 80s and 90s before it was retired around 1998. Advertisement: “It has a history of sort of being preserved to celebrate the work that we do,” Page said. Graffiti artists have targeted the historic Boylston streetcars before, with T employees notably launching a similar cleanup effort in 2014 after the PCC streetcar and an older Type 5 car were tagged. A group of volunteers met up on Dec. 30 to clean graffiti off a historic streetcar at Boylston Station. Left to right: Bryan Snow (MBTA), Ronnie Mosley Jr. (MBTA), Brandon Barlow (Keolis), Scott Page (MBTA), MBTA General Manager Phil Eng, Nick Tomkavage (MBTA), Richie Phipps (MBTA), and Alicia Gomes (MBTA). – Scott Page/Courtesy Photo There were some logistical challenges to the cleanup this time around (Boylston notably lacks running water), but the volunteers were ultimately able to remove both the graffiti and several years of carbon dust. Among the volunteers was MBTA General Manager Phil Eng, who “took a particular interest” in some well-preserved 1990s-era advertisements inside the streetcar, according to Page. “I want to express my sincere gratitude to the employees who volunteered their time during the holidays to remove the graffiti and make the trolley shine again,” Eng said in a statement. “We should be proud of the MBTA’s history as we look forward to a bright future.” In addition to highlighting the T’s history, Page believes the cleanup effort could also be seen as one way for T and union leaders to feed workplace morale. “The fact that I got phone calls from people saying, ‘I want to come and help and clean this thing,’ that to me was kind of heartwarming,” he said.

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crime

Feds seek charges against clients connected with Massachusetts brothel ring

For the first two years, he brought along one of his two lifelong friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College, or Tahseen Ali Ahmad, who attends Trinity College. This year was special, though, because for the first time all three of the Palestinian college juniors were here together for the long weekend. They grew up and went to school together in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and treasured their reunions. BURLINGTON, Vt. — Ever since he enrolled at Brown University three years ago, Hisham Awartani made the trek north from Providence to Vermont every Thanksgiving to spend the long holiday weekend with relatives. Advertisement They stayed here at the home of Awartani’s grandmother, Marian Price, and spent much of their time next door, at the home of his aunt and uncle, Kimberly and Rich Price. On Saturday, the three 20-year-olds joined the Price family at a bowling alley for a birthday party for Awartani’s 8-year-old twin cousins, Matthew and Merrett Price. “As college students, they had every right to say, ‘A birthday party for 8-year-olds, that sounds terrible.’ But they wanted to be there for my sons,” Rich Price said, standing in the kitchen of his house. “That’s the kind of young men they are. Incredibly gracious.” Rich Price, uncle to victim Hisham Awartani. Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe When they got home from the party, Matthew declared, “Best birthday ever!” Awartani and his two friends smiled and excused themselves to take their nightly stroll, having a cigarette and a conversation in the hybrid of Arabic and English they commonly use. They were two blocks away from the Price home when a white man with a scruffy beard walked down the porch steps of a sprawling white apartment building, pointed a handgun and shot all three of them. “They told me the shooter didn’t say a word,” said Rich Price, who has spent most of the last three days in the room at the University of Vermont Medical Center where his nephew and two friends are being treated for gunshot wounds. “He stepped out of the dark. They used the term ‘stone cold’ to describe him.” Advertisement Rich Price said Ali Ahmad was struck in the chest, Abdalhamid in the glute area, and both should recover with time. The prognosis for Awartani is not as encouraging. Rich Price said the bullet that smashed through his nephew’s clavicle lodged in his spine. “His recovery is going to be a long one,” Rich Price said. The sudden, tragic twist ended what had been a long, languorous weekend of food and family. The three college students played board games with the five Price boys, hung out at Marian Price’s house, and sat down for a sprawling, traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Kimberly and Rich Price’s house. There’s a family tradition of proclaiming what food they were most looking forward to, and Awartani announced it was the pumpkin pie. Another family tradition involves asking who they would most want at the table who wasn’t, and what they were most thankful for. “All three of them said they wished their parents were at the table,” Rich Price said. “They said they were thankful for being welcomed into our homes. They were grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with each other. We just did what so many families do on Thanksgiving and the days that follow.” Those parents are now trying to get to Vermont, to see their sons in the hospital. Advertisement “They have been incredibly resilient,” Rich Price said of his nephew and his two friends. “They have been brave and even retained a sense of humor.” The three have been ribbing each other about who got the worst of it. The friends keep each other’s spirits up. “There is a rapport between all three of them that is amazing,” Kimberly Price said. Awartani’s mother, Rich Price’s sister Elizabeth, has lived in Ramallah for 20 years, in a region where armed conflict has been a constant. He said people often ask how dangerous it is where his sister lives. “The tragic irony of it,” Rich Price said. “They send their kids to Vermont for Thanksgiving and that’s where they get shot. There’s a level of vitriol that exists in our civic discourse, we have a sickness with gun violence, that in a way doesn’t even exist in a place like Palestine.” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said it is too early in the investigation to classify the shootings as a hate crime. He said the suspected shooter, Jason Eaton, had only been living in Vermont recently, and that, other than a traffic stop, has had no known involvement with law enforcement. Rich Price said he and his family are willing to let the investigation play out, but said given the circumstances “our fear is that this crime was motivated by hate.” He said his nephew and his friends had taken a nightly stroll each of the three days that preceded the shooting, that at least two of them were wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian scarf, and that they spoke at least some Arabic. Advertisement “It’s possible the shooter saw them the previous evenings and was waiting for them,” Rich Price said. Murad said Eaton was not at home, or did not answer the door, Saturday night, when investigators first knocked on doors at the apartment building where the three friends were shot. But when an ATF agent knocked on the door in follow-up canvassing Sunday afternoon, Eaton opened the door and said, “I’ve been waiting for you,” Murad said. When the agent asked why he was waiting for them, Eaton asked for a lawyer, Murad added. As Rich Price spoke in the kitchen of his home, Kimberly Price stepped out to the foyer and greeted a local rabbi who came by with food and support. The minister at the Congregational church the Price family attends visited the three friends at their hospital room. US Representative Becca Balint called to offer support. “As awful as this has been, the outpouring of support from friends and neighbors has been amazing,” Rich Price said. “The community has really rallied around us. The hospital has been fabulous.” On Sunday night, Rich Price spoke by phone to his brother-in-law, Ali Awartani, in the West Bank. “Thanks to God, a thousand times, my son is alive,” Ali Awartani told him. “They are just so grateful he is alive,” Rich Price said. “So are we.” Advertisement The Price family was watching TV Sunday night when news about the shooting came on. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” 8-year-old Matthew said. Rich Price looked at his son, a study of innocence, and replied, “Neither do I.” On Monday morning, Matthew sat at the kitchen table and used a pencil and crayons to fashion a handmade get-well card for his cousin and his cousin’s two friends. “I hope you all get better soon,” Matthew wrote. He folded the letter over and drew a flower on the front. Kevin Cullen is a Globe reporter and columnist who roams New England. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

33970b6a1cddae4f6456f720059c743f

crime

$200K bail for Winthrop police lieutenant and DCF foster parent facing child rape charge

WINTHROP, Mass. — A longtime member of the Winthrop Police Department was ordered held Wednesday on $200,000 bail in connection with an investigation into child rape allegations after authorities say he confessed to the crimes in a cemetery on Christmas Night. Winthrop Police Lt. James Feeley, 56, of Winthrop, was arraigned Wednesday morning in East Boston District Court on charges including aggravated rape of a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of 14, a Massachusetts State Police spokesperson said. A criminal complaint alleged that Feeley “did unlawfully have sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse” with the victim and that the victim was “under 12 years of age.” The Department of Children and Families confirmed with Boston 25 that Feeley is a foster parent for the state and says they are working with law enforcement in the investigation. “DCF is investigating these disturbing allegations against a foster parent. There are no foster children currently residing in the foster home,” said a DCF spokesperson. Feeley was arrested Tuesday night by state police detectives assigned to the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office. Winthrop Police Chief Terence M. Delehanty said Feeley will remain on administrative leave pending the outcome of the state police investigation. Winthrop police lieutenant appears in court to face child rape charge Delehanty told investigators that he was called to the Belle Isle Cemetery in Winthrop on Christmas Night, where he encountered Feeley, who had stated that he “was really in a bad way,” according to a police report. While speaking with Delehanty, Feeley confessed to the rape and assault allegations as he stood near his parents’ grave site, the report stated. When Delehanty asked him why he was at the grave site, Feeley allegedly said, " What do you think?” Delehanty also told investigators that he believed Feeley was suicidal and armed with a handgun, the report indicated. Feeley was later taken to Massachusetts General Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Benjamin Hui said the alleged assaults occurred over the past year. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 4 Winthrop police lieutenant placed on administrative leave amid criminal investigation Video captured by a Boston 25 News photographer showed Feeley in handcuffs as he was escorted out of a Suffolk County Sheriff’s van and into court to face the charges. Feeley was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant in 2020 after holding the rank for three years. He previously served as a patrolman for six years and reserve police officer for eight years. He is also a medic for the Metro North Special Operations Unit. Feeley has been a member of the department for more than 20 years. A judge also ordered Feeley to stay away from the alleged victim in this case, surrender his passport and all firearms, remain in the Commonwealth, and refrain from having contact with children under the age of 16. The state initially requested bail of $500,000 but Feeley’s attorney argued for a lower amount, stating that his client had already brought “shame and embarrassment” upon his family and department. An investigation into Feeley remains ongoing. He is due back in court on Jan. 29, 2024, for a probable cause hearing. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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crime

Boston police investigating stabbing near Maverick Square

Boston police were investigating a stabbing that prompted an entrance to a nearby MBTA Blue Line station to be temporarily closed. Police responded to the area of Sumner and Paris Streets around 1:18 p.m. for a report of a person stabbed. Investigators said one person was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Boston police homicide detectives responded to the area. The incident happened very close to East Boston's Maverick Square. The MBTA shared an alert on social media that urged passengers to use the west head house entrance to Maverick Station. "The east head house entrance to Maverick Station is temporarily closed due to police activity," a post on social media said. "Please use the west head house entrance." Boston police were investigating a stabbing that prompted an entrance to a nearby MBTA Blue Line station to be temporarily closed. Police responded to the area of Sumner and Paris Streets around 1:18 p.m. for a report of a person stabbed. Advertisement Investigators said one person was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Boston police homicide detectives responded to the area. The incident happened very close to East Boston's Maverick Square. The MBTA shared an alert on social media that urged passengers to use the west head house entrance to Maverick Station. "The east head house entrance to Maverick Station is temporarily closed due to police activity," a post on social media said. "Please use the west head house entrance."

96e38de24fb0f54ab9311153ec107df9

crime

Man arrested in woman's death at Worcester spa

The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office is seeking to charge 28 people — who may include high-profile government officials and business executives — connected with a brothel ring it claims two Dedham residents operated in Cambridge, Watertown and Virginia. The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed complaints against the suspects, who they believe to be “sex buyers,” in Cambridge District Court Monday, but no names will be released until probable cause is found, the office said in a press release. If probable cause is established and criminal charges are issued, referrals will be made to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. “Our office made it clear when we announced charges of a commercial sex ring case on Nov. 8, 2023, that the investigation was ongoing and that there would be accountability for the buyers who fuel the commercial sex industry,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in the release. The brothels’ suspected clients include elected and military officials, government officials with high-level security clearance, tech and drug company executives, doctors, professors, attorneys and scientists, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said previously. Last month, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Dedham residents Han Lee, 41, and Junmyung Lee, 30, as well as California resident James Lee, 68, with conspiracy to sex-traffic in connection with the alleged brothels. The three are accused of operating the brothels in Cambridge, Watertown and locations in Virginia close to Washington D.C. since at least July 2020. The scheme targeted Asian women as sex trafficking victims and enticed them with luxury lifestyles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said previously. The accused communicated “house rules” to the women via text messages that featured pugs. The brothels found clients online through two websites which posted fake ads for nude Asian models, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said previously. The clients were verified using their personal information before being texted by the accused to set up appointments and look through a “menu” of women. The clients paid between $350 and $600 an hour, and the accused hid hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue through personal bank accounts and peer-to-peer transfers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said previously. But the suspects’ lavish lifestyles and “impeccable” records kept in places such as a Louis Vuitton shoebox eventually gave them away. The three accused ringleaders were held without bail during their arraignment in federal court last month.

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crime

Boston police: Shooting near Roxbury schools leaves man near death

Boston police homicide detectives are investigating a Saturday afternoon shooting in Roxbury that left a man near death, according to police. Officers responded to the intersection of Warren and Quincy Streets around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday after gunfire was detected in the area, a Boston police spokesperson said Sunday evening. They found a man with life-threatening gunshot wounds on nearby Townsend Street, which is located between Boston Latin Academy and Bridge Boston Charter School. Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting, even though, to the best of their knowledge, the victim has not yet died, the spokesperson said. As of Sunday evening, no suspects had been taken into custody in connection with the shooting. WBZ-TV reported Saturday that the shooting appeared to have happened while the victim was driving. The Boston Globe reported that police are investigating whether the shooting was a road rage incident. “We do not believe that there is any concern for the general public in this neighborhood,” Boston Police Deputy Sup. Paul McLaughlin told reporters Saturday evening, according to the Globe.

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crime

Brockton homicide suspect dies in hospital days after shooting himself

Gelson Fernandes, the 29-year-old Brockton man authorities accused of shooting and killing 22-year-old Stephanie Beatty, has died, according to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office. Authorities said Saturday they found Fernandes after issuing a warrant for his arrest for Beatty’s killing, but that he appeared to have shot himself. He was taken to a Boston hospital for treatment in police custody. Brockton police found Beatty dead inside a car near 17 Nason St. around 12:20 a.m. Friday, authorities said previously. The Norwich, Connecticut, resident had been shot, and her death was soon ruled a homicide. Authorities have not specified a motive in Beatty’s killing, but said previously that she and Fernandes “were previously acquainted.” No further information has been released.

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crime

21-year-old woman identified by family as victim in Lawrence homicide investigation

In television interviews with multiple outlets, family members identified 21-year-old Diomaris Mejia as a woman found dead in her Lawrence basement apartment on Tuesday. The Essex County District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the District Attorney’s Office and the Lawrence Police Department are investigating the death as “an apparent homicide,” according to a press release Tuesday. Lawrence Police were called to a basement apartment at 243 Salem St. for a well-being check at about 7:48 a.m. Dec. 26. Officers found an unresponsive person who was pronounced dead at the scene, the press release said. In interviews with both WCVB and NBC10, family member Nelly Perez identified Mejia as the person found dead. Perez told the outlets that Mejia is from the Dominican Republic and has two children.

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crime

Attleboro man sentenced for 2020 drunken crash that killed 36-year-old woman

An Attleboro man whose drunk driving caused the death of 36-year-old woman in Norton in June 2020 was sentenced to five to seven years in state prison, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said Tuesday. Russell Stone, 63, was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol and operating under the influence of alcohol with serious bodily injury in Fall River Superior Court. The charges stemmed from the fatal crash that happened on Oak Street in Norton around 3:51 p.m. on June 7, 2020, Quinn said. Read More: Milan Lucic pleads not guilty to assault and battery charge Witnesses said a woman sitting in the front seat of Stone’s car got out of the vehicle and started screaming at him to slow down. The woman also told investigators that Stone was screaming that he wanted to die before crashing his car into a tree, according to Quinn. When first responders arrived at the crash, they found Thersea McNutt, 36, of Attleboro, unconscious in the back seat. She had severe head trauma and was pronounced dead, Quinn said. In addition, the woman sitting in the front seat suffered a fractured spine and three fractures in her left arm. Investigators later found several empty mini alcohol bottles in the vehicle, according to the district attorney. The bottles had Stone’s DNA on them. After he was brought to the hospital following the crash, a blood test showed that Stone’s blood alcohol level was at .184, more than twice the legal limit. Further investigation revealed Stone was driving 51 mph in a 30 mph zone, Quinn said. Read More: Franklin police charge 3 people believed to have helped hide missing teen “The defendant should not have been behind the wheel because of his intoxicated state. His reckless driving caused the death of an innocent person,” Quinn said. “The sentence is appropriate to hold the defendant accountable.”

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crime

Joshua Hubert of Worcester charged with rape of girl police say he threw off bridge in 2017

The man accused of throwing a 7-year-old girl off a Massachusetts bridge after he took her from her family’s Worcester home in the middle of the night in August 2017 has now been charged with raping the child, prosecutors said during his Wednesday morning court appearance. Joshua Hubert, 41, of Worcester, had initially been charged in district court with kidnapping, then attempted murder in August 2017. He was held on a cash bail set at $1 million that later increased to $2 million. Hubert, who was 35 at the time of his suspected felonies, was indicted by a grand jury in January 2018 on two counts of attempted murder and one each of kidnapping and strangulation. He was held on a $50,000 cash bail following his arraignment on Jan. 29. He posted that bail and had a previous trial date postponed from March until Oct. 19, 2020, the Associated Press reported. But Hubert was not back in court until Dec. 13, 2023. On Wednesday morning, Hubert was indicted on two counts of aggravated rape with the victim being a child who was tied, bound or gagged during their rape, and at least a five year age difference. Hubert pleaded not guilty to both charges. He was ordered to continue to have no contact with the victim or unsupervised contact with any children under the age of 16. Though there was no new bail set, he is next expected in court for hearings in both cases on Feb. 7. In 2017, the 7-year-old girl had told detectives her “friend Josh” had thrown her off a bridge into a lake on Aug. 27 of that year, prosecutor Courtney Sans previously said in superior court. The girl had been asleep on a chair at her grandparents’ Forestdale Road home following a cookout the house earlier that day, when officials said Hubert, who’d been at the cookout, took her around 2:30 a.m. The man had been longtime friends with the girl’s father until a falling out, prosecutors previously said. He drove with the child in his Saturn around Worcester for over an hour, Worcester Police said. A district court prosecutor previously said Hubert stopped the car at one point to choke the child. In search warrant affidavits obtained by MassLive in 2018, Worcester Detective Dyan Patient wrote Hubert had used both hands to strangle the 7-year-old. “He strangled her with two hands, and his arm, then got back in the driver’s seat and started driving again,” Patient wrote. “When asked if she had tried pushing him away, she stated, ‘I tried that but it didn’t work’.” It was before 4 a.m. when Hubert stopped his car on the Interstate 290 overpass at the Worcester-Shrewsbury line, prosecutors said. While she was wrapped in a blanket, he threw the 7-year-old over the bridge into Lake Quinsigamond, according to prosecutors, police and court records. “The victim stated that she fell for a long time and landed in the waters below,” Patient wrote. “She stated that she began to swim to a building she could see but the blanket she was carrying was getting very heavy, which made it difficult to swim. She then swam to a house and stated that she was able to stand up in the water.” The lake is up to 90 feet deep in some parts, with an average depth between 21 and 36 feet. The little girl then swam the some 100 yards to shore and, soaking wet in her pajamas, ended up the door of a Shrewsbury woman’s home, prosecutors previously said. The woman brought her inside, wrapped the child in a towel, gave her dry clothes, and then called the police after the girl told her what happened. Hubert was arrested at the Worcester Police station. And Patient wrote a witness came forward and said they were on I-290 on Aug. 27 when he saw a Saturn Ion parked in the breakdown lane of the highway on the bridge over the lake. According to the witness, a man was walking around the car before it sped off, Patient wrote. The witness got home around 4:15 a.m. and texted a friend, jokingly saying he just saw someone throw something off the bridge. Hubert had apparently stopped at his home Bernice Street around 3:15 a.m. and told his girlfriend he was going to the store, police said. Officials said he told his girlfriend to delete all of his accounts with Lastpass.com, an encrypted data storage company, after his arrest. Prosecutors said surveillance footage showed Hubert driving around the city, buying “Dutchies” at a gas station on Southbridge Street and looking inside the trunk of his car. Investigators obtained search warrants to retrieve information from Hubert’s phones to help track his whereabouts, and searched his home and seized clothing. Police said he lied about his whereabouts when questioned on the allegations. Investigators also found a portion of DNA evidence on the child’s underwear, which did not match Hubert’s voluntary sample, his defense attorney said. The attorney also questioned the positive identification the witness made and the surveillance footage’s validity. After the incident, Hubert was suspended from his job at the Fay School in Southborough where he’d worked in the school’s technology department as a systems support analyst. School officials said he did not have any contact with children.

763a87158a0bdea41d6e073826acc92a

crime

Multiple Bomb Threats Made To Jewish Synagogues In MA Over The Weekend

A man has been arrested a day after a woman was found dead at a massage parlor in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving, as newly-released court documents reveal that the woman was shot in the head. Worcester police announced Friday that 31-year-old Marcel Santos-Padgett, of Leicester, was taken into custody on Friday at Columbia Park in Haverhill. The state police violent fugitive apprehension squad and the Haverhill Police Department assisted Worcester police with the arrest. Santos-Padgett was arrested on an outstanding warrant for armed assault to murder in connection to the investigation into a woman's suspicious death at Angie's Body Work Spa on Thursday, police said. Worcester Police responded to Angie’s Body Work Spa on Pleasant St. for a report of a woman experiencing a medical issue. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. Investigators have not revealed many details of the circumstances leading up to the shooting, but say they got a call about a woman experiencing a possible medical issue at the Pleasant Street business around 11:37 a.m. Thursday. When officers arrived at the spa, a man flagged them down and brought them to the woman who was unconscious. First responders were not able to revive her and she was pronounced dead on scene. Police initially called the woman's death suspicious but they now say this is a homicide. According to investigators, Santos-Padgett allegedly pulled a gun on the woman inside the massage parlor and shot her in the head. Police were able to identify him from license plate reader data that placed his vehicle in the area of the crime scene. Santos-Padgett lives in Leicester but was arrested at a home in Haverhill on Friday. Court records indicate that investigators have not yet been able to identify the victim. A tenant who rents a room inside the spa told NBC10 Boston he didn’t know much about the incident, and placed a sign on the door referring all questions to police. “When this place opened I said this is bad news for the neighborhood,” said David Balyan who lives on Pleasant Street. Santos-Padgett is expected to be arraigned on Monday. Attorney information was not immediately available.

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crime

Former Milford teacher pleads guilty to child sex abuse video possession

A former second-grade teacher from Milford appeared in federal court in Worcester on Monday, where he pleaded guilty to possessing child sex abuse videos, acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy’s office said. Vincent Kiejzo, 36, pleaded guilty today to one count of possession of child pornography, Levy’s office said in a statement. Read more: Sutton magician Scott Jameson pleads guilty to child porn charges A search of Kiejzo’s home in September 2020 resulted in the findings of a USB drive connected to Kiejzo’s bedroom television, Levy’s office said. The USB drive contained links to websites with videos depicting children being sexually exploited, along with over 6,000 images of child sex abuse, including pictures involving infants. The charging statute provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Kiejzo was arrested and charged that same month before he was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2020. U.S. Senior District Court Judge Timothy Hillman scheduled Kiejzo’s sentencing for April 4, 2024.

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crime

Boston, Cambridge police seek person of interest in multiple assaults

Crime Boston, Cambridge police seek person of interest in multiple assaults The person allegedly used a knife to attack two victims in Porter Square. Boston and Cambridge police are looking to identify a person who allegedly assaulted two people in Porter Square last week. The person of interest allegedly used a knife to attack the victims on the evening of Jan. 4, Cambridge Police shared on Facebook yesterday. The two victims were left with non-life-threatening injuries. The Cambridge Police Department shared three images of the suspect captured by security cameras in the area. He’s also a person of interest in “multiple” other assaults in Boston and Cambridge, according to Cambridge Police. Police urged anyone with information on the suspect to contact the Cambridge Criminal Investigations Unit anonymously at 617-349-3370 or online at cambridgepolice.org/TIPS. Community members may also call the Cambridge Police Department at 617-349-3300.

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crime

Boston man sentenced for securities fraud scheme

BOSTON (WWLP) – A Boston man was sentenced in federal court for exerting secret control over a Massachusetts-based company as part of a pump-and-dump securities fraud scheme. According to the Department of Justice, 57-year-old Christopher R. Esposito, formerly of Everett, was sentenced on November 14 to five years of probation, three months to be served at a halfway house, and ordered to pay forfeiture and restitution. He pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in April 2023. Esposito and co-conspirator, Anthony Jay Pignatello, worked to conceal their control over Cannabiz Mobile, Inc. and to use backdated promissory notes to obtain free-trading shares in the company over the course of 2012 and 2015. They both took other steps taken to conceal their control, including how Esposito caused another individual to be installed as the company’s chairman, president, and CEO. The executive reported to Esposito, and the two arranged for a promotional campaign in October 2014 to artificially inflate the value and trading volume of Cannabiz Mobile, Inc.’s stock so that they could sell their shares secretly. Between September 2014 and February 2015, Esposito personally sold around 1.3 million shares that were fraudulently obtained as part of the scheme. Esposito was ordered to pay over $20,000 in connection with the pump-and-dump of Cannabiz Mobile. He was also ordered to pay over $61,000 in restitution to the investors who lost money in a separate business venture that Esposito pitched involving the company, Code2Action, Inc. Between August 2019 and February 2020, he represented to investors that he would take Code2Action, Inc. public through a reverse merger and that he solicited investments in the company for that purpose, but the merger never took place. Pignatello pleaded guilty in March 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud for his role in the Cannabiz Mobile scheme. He is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12 before U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr.

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crime

Deadly Paris Knife Attack Revives Terrorism Concerns

Crime & Safety Multiple Bomb Threats Made To Jewish Synagogues In MA Over The Weekend The threats were conveyed through an email message that appears to have been sent from the same email address, police said. Hundreds of similar threats were received by Jewish institutions across the United States over the weekend, according to police. (Jenna Fisher/Patch) MASSACHUSETTS — State police are investigating after multiple bomb threats were made to Jewish synagogues and affiliated facilities in Massachusetts Sunday, police confirmed to Patch Monday afternoon. The threats were conveyed through an email message that appears to have been sent from the same email address, police said. The State Police Bomb Squad responded to three synagogues and a Jewish community center in Framingham, a Jewish cultural center in Tisbury, and a Jewish synagogue in Florence, according to police. Authorities also conducted sweeps of a synagogue in Natick in advance of a planned event there Sunday afternoon. No explosives or hazards have been located at any site, but the threats are still being monitored by the State Police Commonwealth Fusion Center, police said. "The State Police Anti-Terrorism Unit is assisting in the investigation into the source of the threats," the department wrote in an email to Patch. "The State Police Hate Crime Awareness and Response Team, a unit that was established several weeks ago, will communicate with religious leaders about follow-up concerns they may have related to the threats." Hundreds of similar threats were received by Jewish institutions across the United States over the weekend, according to police. See Also:

104ff87a03a94dd8820d099fe58b3ae6

crime

Man arrested after guns, drugs, and alcohol found during traffic stop in Springfield

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - A Springfield man was arrested after officers found guns, drugs, and an open container of alcohol during a traffic stop Wednesday night. Springfield police officers saw a car driving with a headlight out on state street and pulled the car over. Police identified the driver as 33-year-old Leonard Naylor and immediately saw an open bottle of beer on the floorboard of the car. Officers began to search the car and found a stolen loaded gun that had been reported missing out of Chicopee and crack cocaine. Naylor who was convicted of gun charges back on 2020 was immediately taken into custody and now faces even more drug and gun charges. Copyright 2024. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.

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crime

Internal investigation cleared Springfield officers of wrongdoing in 2020 arrest; family alleges tasing linked to mans death

A German tourist was killed and several other people injured in central Paris late Saturday after a man attacked them with a knife and a hammer, the French authorities said. The case stirred fears of renewed Islamist terror attacks in a nation already on edge. A suspect was arrested nearby shortly after the assault. The authorities said he had serious psychiatric disorders and had told the police he was upset over the death of Muslims in the world, including in Gaza. France’s national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation. Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said the suspect first attacked two German tourists shortly after 9 p.m. on the Quai de Grenelle, not far from the Eiffel Tower, killing one of them, a Filipino-born German man, with a knife. The other person, a woman, was not injured, Mr. Darmanin said. “This person was clearly ready to kill other people,” Mr. Darmanin told reporters in Paris. France was struck by large-scale Islamist terror attacks in 2015 and 2016, and then by a string of smaller but deadly shootings and stabbings in subsequent years. The country is still on its highest terrorism threat alert after the killing last month of a teacher in northern France.

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crime

DA: Man shot his girlfriend in her Marlborough home in apparent murder-suicide

A man forced his way into his girlfriend’s Marlborough home Wednesday morning and shot her before also shooting himself in an apparent murder-suicide, according to the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office. The DA’s office did not identify the man or woman, but said that the woman was 28 years old and that the man was 29. The two had been dating, and on Tuesday night, the man threatened his girlfriend at his home. She returned to her Rice Street home later that night, but around 10 a.m. the next morning, the man came to the home, forced his way in through a window, shot her and then shot himself, the DA’s office said. Police received a call about the shooting at 10:05 a.m. Wednesday. At the scene, they were met by two women who said their roommate had been shot, the DA’s office said. Police found the man and woman dead inside her home. Authorities are still investigating the shooting. They did not specify a motive for the killing.

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crime

Police investigating active shooter scene at Perry, Iowa, high school

The Perry Police Department is responding to an active shooter scene at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday morning, Fox News Digital has learned. Multiple law enforcement agencies are responding to reports of an active shooter situation at the school, according to local reports. Police officers were dispatched to the scene on Thursday morning after receiving a report of an active shooter, the Perry Police Department confirmed. Multiple EMS vehicles were sent to the scene at 1200 18th Street, according to public safety radio traffic. Officials have not released further details at this time. Perry High School belongs to the Perry Community School District, about 25 miles northwest of Des Moines. About 1,785 students are enrolled at the school, according to its website. Thursday was the first day of school after winter break, according to the school's calendar. This is a developing story and will be updated.

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crime

Detroit Police Officer Charged in Death of Man He Punched

The Wayne County medical examiner found that the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to the head, prosecutors said. “Police officers frequently deal with citizens who are disorderly and verbally unpleasant,” said Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor, in a statement on Tuesday. “But the evidence in this case shows that the officer allegedly was the aggressor, and his actions went criminally beyond what was necessary in this situation.” She added: “This behavior cannot be tolerated from our law enforcement.” Mr. Brown was suspended the day after the altercation after the department reviewed police camera footage, The Detroit News reported. Detroit Police Chief James White told local media then that there were concerns that the officer did not “adequately de-escalate or disengage from the situation.” On Tuesday, the Detroit Police Department said in a statement that Mr. Brown had been terminated “as a result of his actions,” on Sept. 1. If convicted, manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Mr. Brown was planning to appeal that decision, the department said, but in the meantime would not be on police payroll or hold any law enforcement authority. He is set to appear before a Detroit court on Wednesday morning.

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crime

West Springfield PD searching for SUV involved in hit-and-run that injured teen

Police said a 15-year-old boy was hurt after he was the victim of a hit-and-run in West Springfield on Sunday evening, prompting the city’s police department to ask the public for help in the case. It was around 4:52 p.m. in the area of Piper and Amostown Road on Dec. 10 when a white SUV turned left from Piper onto Amostown, the department said. The intersection is in a residential area, and the West Springfield Covenant Community Church is located on one corner. A 15-year-old boy was running in a crosswalk at the intersection and he was hit by the car, police said. The boy was sent to the ground, but police said the SUV did not stop and continued up Amostown Road. The teen was brought to the hospital by family members and had minor injuries, the department said. Residents who live in the area have been asked to check video surveillance footage from that time on Sunday to help police in the investigation. Witnesses or those with doorbell video are urged to contact Officer Shawn Knox at (413) 263-3210, Ext. 228.

daef7282bd75958e1bbafb1d529327e5

crime

Alleged drug bust next to AG Campbells home sparks stressful couple of days

It has been “a very stressful couple of days” for Campbell since last Wednesday when a State Police bust “found significant amounts of meth and fentanyl” in the house next door to Campbell’s, she said Tuesday on GBH Radio’s “Boston Public Radio.” The Boston Herald had previously reported on the arrest of a 31-year-old man accused of distributing crystal meth and fentanyl out of the property, though Campbell said the newspaper got some of the facts wrong. As the state’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Andrea Campbell sees it as her responsibility to protect the safety of all communities in Massachusetts — and that includes her own neighborhood in Mattapan. Advertisement The attorney general detailed the concerns she and her neighbors have had about the house for years. She said that State Police and county prosecutors have done what they can, but faulted the city for not doing more to “get that person out of there” and respond to persistent quality-of-life complaints from neighbors. “It’s a house that is directly next to me. I can look out my window and see this house. It is a major public safety hazard for my family, for my husband, my kids, and for the whole neighborhood. And the sad part is, it’s been a problem property in the city for probably over four years,” Campbell said. The attorney general, who previously served on the Boston City Council, said an “elder Irish woman” who lived in the neighborhood for decades started complaining to her about the property years ago when an individual “moved into the house, took it over.” She said once that person moved in, the house started getting significant traffic “day and night, middle of the night, you know, women and just all types of characters coming in and out.” “So fast forward, I become attorney general and ... it’s an honor, privilege to protect the safety of everyone across the commonwealth and of course I want to do that in my own neighborhood,” Campbell said. At one point, she claimed the person was “illegally living there.” Advertisement The attorney general made clear that it was the State Police, not local police, that led the investigation and conducted last week’s bust. She said her office works with the Boston Police Department on lots of matters, “but in this particular instance, I think you’ve got to be a little bit more aggressive and with a sense of urgency, and not give an individual who’s proven to be a criminal and trafficking drugs the benefit of the doubt.” “And he’s back in the house, by the way, which is even more disturbing,” Campbell said. Campbell said she was working to push the city “to do, sort of, its civil part to get that person out of there.” “We’re pushing [the Inspectional Services Department], we’re pushing the city of Boston to do their part ... which means to get him out of there, to get him out of our community, to really shut that place down, to not allow it to continue to be a place where they’re trafficking drugs, human trafficking, the same thing,” she said. Campbell added, “I have a State Police detail that sits outside of my house, and what they see and witness — the powerlessness that they feel and I think that I feel at moments is just ridiculous. And so we’re pushing really hard.” Advertisement The attorney general also said that the frustration she feels around the situation is one example of a larger issue in communities like Mattapan. “Folks in Mattapan have frequently said, you know, they often will feel over-policed and under-protected. This is what they’re talking about,” she said. “You complain about something in your neighborhood, something’s not right. You call the police, you engage your elected officials, say for years, and you don’t get the response that you need with a sense of urgency.” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was on “Boston Public Radio” right after Campbell on Tuesday and addressed the idea that communities and the police are not on the same page. “I can’t speak for what happened before under previous administrations and under different transitions, but our mission under this administration and this police administration under Commissioner Michael Cox is to ensure that we are as closely partnered with community members as possible. We need to be earning the trust of our residents in order to deliver safety for everyone,” Wu said without specifically addressing Campbell’s situation.

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crime

Police arrest 2 after suspects SUV sparks car chase through Boston

Police arrested two suspects in South Boston Monday evening after an SUV potentially connected to a Boston shooting sparked a car chase through the city, Massachusetts State Police said. The two suspects were charged in connection with the chase on Tuesday. The driver, 23-year-old Bridgewater resident Kailyn Almeida, is facing a slew of charges including assault with a dangerous weapon, negligent operation and malicious destruction of property over $1,200, according to state police spokesperson David Procopio. The passenger, 30-year-old Malden resident Christopher Meade, already had a warrant out for his arrest and is now facing additional firearms and drug charges. Read more: Police: Teen found stabbed to death in Boston alley The car chase began around 10:20 p.m. after a trooper noticed the SUV — a 2023 GMC Acadia — coming into Dorchester via the Neponset Avenue bridge, Procopio said. The trooper turned on his emergency lights and tried to stop the SUV, but Almeida immediately accelerated and fled onto Morrissey Boulevard. Almeida continued driving into South Boston and at some point hit a Boston police cruiser. Procopio listed this as the reason for the property destruction charge. Eventually, the Acadia made it onto Castle Island where it was damaged by a tire deflation device, Procopio said. Almeida and Meade then got out of the SUV and tried to run away, but they were soon arrested in the area of F Street and West 1st Street. Read more: Man suspected of killing Fermin Baez in 2021 arrested Police recovered firearm and ballistics evidence from the ground next to the Acadia, Procopio said. Boston police are investigating both the suspects’ and the SUV’s possible connection to a shooting, but Procopio did not say what shooting they are potentially connected to. The chase resulted in a massive police presence in South Boston. Videos of the scene were shared widely on social media Monday night.

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crime

State police searched woods for Gardner murder suspect

Local News State police searched woods for Gardner murder suspect “We searched an extensive wooded area by foot and ATVs, including a 25-mile stretch along power lines. Nothing to report,” said spokesperson Dave Procopio. A specialized unit was once again searching for a man accused of murdering his wife in October, according to 7 News Boston. Aaron Pennington, 33, hasn’t been seen since October 2023, when his 30-year-old wife, Breanne Pennington, was found fatally shot in their Cherry Street home, according to officials. Friday, a Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) was searching through the woods in Ashburnham and Gardner to find him, according to state police. “We searched an extensive wooded area by foot and ATVs, including a 25-mile stretch along power lines. Nothing to report,” said spokesperson Dave Procopio Friday. “SERT is our search and rescue unit specifically trained for, among other missions, ground searches of difficult terrain,” Procopio said in a statement. Advertisement: Pennington, a U.S. Air Force veteran, suffers from mental health issues, according to authorities. Police have been searching for Pennington since October 22, 2023, when his wife was found dead. The couple’s four children had run to a neighbor’s house for help, police said. Police ask anyone who sees Pennington to call 911 instead of making any attempt to subdue him themselves. Police suspect he is still in possession of a gun, which was missing from the Pennington home. A GoFundMe has been set up to assist the Pennington children. “As an extended family, we are trying (to) plan for the future of [Breanne’s] four children. We are trying to create a loving home for them. Please help us provide for their physical, emotional, and educational needs as they recover from this traumatic event,” reads the GoFundMe description.

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crime

$30,000 in luxury goods stolen from store in Newbury Street heist

Police in Boston are asking for the public's help in identifying two people who stole thousands of dollars in luxury goods from a shop on Newbury Street early Monday. Boston police said the breaking and entering incident happened at about 3:25 a.m. Monday at 47 Newbury St., which is the Valentino store. Surveillance images from inside the store show two men with arms full of handbags during the heist. About 20 handbags were stolen, with a total value of approximately $30,000, police said.A 911 caller told police a man kicked in the window of the store. Officers also reported seeing two bricks inside the store. The 911 caller said the two men fled down Berkeley Street toward Commonwealth Avenue. One man was described as a white man in his 40s or 50s, wearing a white hoodie, blue jeans, black shoes with white trim, white or yellow gloves and a light-colored mask. The second man was wearing a dark jacket and pants, a mask that covered his entire face, a dark baseball hat and white sneakers. Police said the first man fled the store with the handbags slung over his arms, and the second man threw the purses in a trash bag before fleeing. Anyone with information is asked to contact Boston police at 617-343-5619 or anonymously by calling the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 1-800-494-TIPS or by texting the word "TIP" to CRIME (27463). Related stories: Police in Boston are asking for the public's help in identifying two people who stole thousands of dollars in luxury goods from a shop on Newbury Street early Monday. Boston police said the breaking and entering incident happened at about 3:25 a.m. Monday at 47 Newbury St., which is the Valentino store. Advertisement Surveillance images from inside the store show two men with arms full of handbags during the heist. About 20 handbags were stolen, with a total value of approximately $30,000, police said. A 911 caller told police a man kicked in the window of the store. Officers also reported seeing two bricks inside the store. The 911 caller said the two men fled down Berkeley Street toward Commonwealth Avenue. One man was described as a white man in his 40s or 50s, wearing a white hoodie, blue jeans, black shoes with white trim, white or yellow gloves and a light-colored mask. The second man was wearing a dark jacket and pants, a mask that covered his entire face, a dark baseball hat and white sneakers. Police said the first man fled the store with the handbags slung over his arms, and the second man threw the purses in a trash bag before fleeing. Anyone with information is asked to contact Boston police at 617-343-5619 or anonymously by calling the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 1-800-494-TIPS or by texting the word "TIP" to CRIME (27463). Boston Police Dept. Related stories:

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crime

Jonathan Majors found guilty on two counts in assault trial

CNN — A jury found actor Jonathan Majors guilty on two of four counts in the New York criminal case stemming from a domestic dispute with his former girlfriend. Majors was convicted on Monday of one count of reckless assault in the 3rd degree and a non-criminal charge of harassment as a violation. He was acquitted on of another assault charge and one count of aggravated harassment. The trial, which began on December 4, stems from a March 25th domestic dispute involving Majors - who plays a villain in the Marvel cinematic universe - and his former girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Prosecutors alleged Majors “didn’t hesitate to use physical violence” against Jabbari in the March dispute when he grabbed Jabbari’s right hand, twisted her arm behind her back and then “struck a blow” to her head. Majors’ attorney reiterated his innocence during her closing argument, calling the accusations against him “fake” and alleging that Jabbari was the aggressor in the March dispute. This story is developing and will be updated.

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crime

Wrong-way driver arrested for reckless conduct

A wrong-way driver has been arrested after traveling southbound in the northbound lanes in Canterbury, New Hampshire. New Hampshire State Police say they received multiple reports of a wrong-way driver on I-93 Friday at around 11:51 p.m. A trooper stopped the car and arrested the driver, identified as 40-year-old Zachary William Bunker from Gilford, New Hampshire, according to police. Bunker was charged with reckless conduct with a deadly weapon, driving while intoxicated, and reckless driving, authorities say. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. He is scheduled to appear in Merrimack Superior Court on Tuesday.

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Springfield shooting leaves 1 injured, 2 with criminal histories under arrest

SPRINGFIELD – Two men accused of shooting another man in the leg early Thursday morning were tracked down by police and arrested on a variety of charges. Both men have a long list of convictions and one was recently arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon and was out on bail in a case from Northampton District Court. Police Superintendent Cheryl C. Clapprood expressed frustration with the fact that the men were in the community. “This happens daily in our world and somewhere, sometime, someone has to come out and say bad, evil, convicted repeat felons have to be held in jail so injuries don’t happen to innocent people, my people, my K-9s,” Clapprood said. “Let’s start doing the right thing as a society. You demand a lot from us, let’s start demanding a lot from the courts,” she said. The victim, who was brought to Baystate Medical Center by a private vehicle, was treated for injuries that are not life-threatening, said Ryan Walsh, police spokesman. The shooting took place at about 1:50 a.m. on Dickinson Street between the intersection of Orange Street and Marengo Park. Police responded following a ShotSpotter activation and found evidence of the shooting, Walsh said. Crime analysts with the department were able to identify a vehicle believed to have been involved in the shooting that was recorded on city cameras. Officers later spotted the car and tried to stop the driver at about 2:45 a.m. He sped away, but crashed a short distance away on Longhill Street, Walsh said. Men arrested Police arrested the driver, Antonio Vega, and Julio Nunez-Jimenez, both 24, of Springfield, on a variety of charges. They include possession of a large-capacity firearm, carrying a firearm without a license, two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a Class B drug, Walsh said. After the arrest, officers searched the car and found crack cocaine and two firearms, including an unlawful ghost gun capable of holding 14 rounds of ammunition, he said. Vega was recently arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon and is out on bail in a case from Northampton District Court. He has been convicted of heroin trafficking on firearms offenses in the past, Clapprood said. Nunez-Jimenez has two previous firearms convictions and was recently released from prison, she said. This is the second shooting in Springfield in the first four days of 2024. Last year 31 people were killed, mostly by gunfire, which was an all-time high for the city. Both shooting victims are expected to recover from their injuries.

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crime

Boy shot in Dorchester; suspect not in custody, police say

A boy was shot in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday in Dorchester, the Boston Police Department said. It was around 3 p.m. when a report came in that a person had been shot in the area of Bellevue Street, the department said.

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crime

Credit card skimmers found at grocery store in Sudbury - Boston News, Weather, Sports

SPRINGFIELD — Keely Charles alleges that the police response to her brother’s mental health distress led to his death. After Sterling Lester Chest Jr. pushed an officer in March 2020, police tased him — and he died several days later. Civil claims of excessive force are pending in court. But a 2020 internal investigation into the incident, obtained by The Republican through a public records request, found officers acted properly.

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crime

Man arrested at MBTA station after harassing others with rats, police say

MBTA Transit Police arrested a man Sunday evening at a Boston T station after receiving a report that he was “harassing” other passengers with his two pet rats, according to police. Officers responded to Haymarket Station around 7 p.m. and found the man with “Tom and Jerry,” police wrote on social media. Police said the man had several warrants out for his arrest on charges such as disorderly conduct, making criminal threats and failure to register as a sex offender. Officers arrested the man and turned the rats over to Boston Animal Control. It is unclear what will happen to the rats, and Boston Animal Control did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Police did not identify the suspect, but said he is “well-known” to them. No further information about the incident has been released.

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crime

Two men arrested in Lynn after State Police found drugs and guns on them

LYNN, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - Two men were arrested after State Police found guns on them. On Saturday night, a State Trooper noticed a man using his cell phone while driving and pulled the car over. When the officer approached the car, he smelled marijuana and noticed the handle of a pistol in the pocket of one of the passengers. The passenger, 20-year-old Dimitry Phillipe of Malden, is not licensed to carry. The State Trooper called for backup and when the other two officers arrived, they removed the other passengers and found a gun in the waistband of 23-year-old Eddie Rojas of Lynn who is also not licensed to carry. During a search of the car, officers located six ounces of suspected marijuana. Both men were placed under arrest and taken into custody. The operator of the vehicle was released from the scene with a citation. Rojas and Phillipe were scheduled for arraignment at Lynn District Court. Copyright 2023. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.

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crime

Suffolk DA touts Bostons record-low homicides, high arrest rate in 2023

Boston experienced a record-low number of homicides and a high arrest and prosecution rate in 2023, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden. There were 37 recorded homicides in the city in 2023, and two of the killings happened in 2022 but were not ruled homicides by the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office until 2023, Hayden’s office said in a press release Sunday. Though, according to FBI crime data, that’s one more recorded homicide than in 2022, Boston’s 2023 homicide rate is far lower than that of other comparable cities. According to data provided by the district attorney’s office, cities of a comparable size, such as Washington D.C., Baltimore and Detroit, had a homicide rate of around 40 to 50 homicides per 100,000 people, which is about six to seven times greater than Boston’s. Boston’s homicide rate in 2023 was comparable to cities of a similar size such as San Francisco, which had a homicide rate of around six homicide per 100,000 people, according to data from Hayden’s office. Additionally, according to the Boston police data, shootings hit a record low in Boston in 2023 as well, and saw a 24% reduction from 2022. Hayden’s office also highlighted that arrests were made in 24 of the 37 homicide cases last year — an arrest rate of about 67.5%. Additionally, district attorney’s office achieved guilty verdicts in 12 of 13 homicide cases that went to trial last year. “This is a heartening story of increased cooperation and participation by members of our community and top-notch work by Boston police officers and homicide detectives, all combining to provide a slice of positive news in relation to this most terrible of crimes,” Hayden said. “No one is taking any victory laps here, especially when serious crime still disproportionately affects our communities of color, but it’s important to point out promising trends.” The district attorney said in the release that he felt communities in Boston reached an “enough is enough consensus” around killings in their neighborhoods, which led to positive change. Hayden also credited Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office of Neighborhood Services for increasing communication and cooperation with members of the public.

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crime

Chicopee man sentenced to 7-9 years in prison for Ware shooting case

NORTHAMPTON — A Chicopee man will spend 7 to 9 years in state prison for shooting up a Ware apartment in October 2021. On Tuesday, Kent Mitchell, 35, pleaded guilty in Superior Court. Mitchell admitted that, on Oct. 30, he had words with a man and woman in their 17 Cherry St. apartment in Ware. During the argument, Mitchell brandished an unlicensed firearm and fired twice, once into the ceiling and once at the couple. One bullet struck a wall, behind which was a 1-year-old child. No one was struck by the gunfire. Hampshire Superior Court Judge James Manitsas sentenced Mitchell to the state prison term after pleading guilty to two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, with one prior conviction for a violent crime; two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon; and one count each of unlawful possession of ammunition, with one prior conviction for a violent crime, intimidation of a witness, reckless endangerment of a child and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling. The sentence was jointly recommended by Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Andrew Covington and defense attorney Lisa Lippiello of Northampton. “The defendant’s actions here were incredibly dangerous. Luckily, no one was struck by a round,” said Covington in a statement from the office of Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan. Covington also noted that there was a lack of cooperation from witnesses at first, but detectives were able to follow leads and solve the case.

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crime

Worcester State shooting: Kevin Rodriguez indicted on murder charge

A Worcester County grand jury has indicted three people in connection with the Oct. 28 fatal shooting at Worcester State University, the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office announced. The indictments, which were handed down Wednesday, indicate that 18-year-old Lawrence resident Kevin Rodriguez, who authorities have accused of killing 19-year-old Randy Melendez Jr. during the incident, was not responsible for injuring a second victim. That victim, an unidentified 21-year-old man who survived but is now paralyzed at the waist down, was shot by 19-year-old Spencer resident Richard Nieves, the district attorney’s office said in a press release Thursday. Nieves is also accused of having robbed the second victim, with the help of 20-year-old Southbridge resident Kenneth Doelter, before shooting him. Read more: Teen fatally shot at Worcester State days after 19th birthday, GoFundMe says The grand jury also indicted Rodriguez on a murder charge in connection with Melendez’s death, as well as on firearms charges, the district attorney’s office said. Previously, Rodriguez was only facing a charge of armed assault with intent to murder and firearms charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty. Doelter and Nieves were both indicted on charges of armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping, the district attorney’s office said. Nieves is facing additional charges of armed assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury and other firearms charges. Rodriguez is to be arraigned in Worcester Superior Court on Jan. 12, 2024, the district attorney’s office said. Nieves and Doelter will also be arraigned there in the future. What happened the night of the shootings It is unclear exactly what led to the shootings, but authorities have repeatedly said they were sparked by a confrontation between two groups, and that none of the people involved were Worcester State students. Video confirmed to be of part of the confrontation shows several males running around a parking lot before shots are heard and a man can be seen stumbling over, apparently injured. It is unclear who the man is. Assistant District Attorney Lina Pashou also gave an account of the shootings at a dangerousness hearing for Rodriguez last month. She said two groups — a group of four from Southbridge and a group of six from Lawrence — attended a party at a Worcester pub on Oct. 27, but then went to Worcester State for a party afterwards. What started with the groups doing burnouts in a campus parking lot escalated into physical fights, Pashou said. One unnamed member of the Southbridge group fired a gun in the air, after which Rodriguez fired three shots at Melendez and Nieves shot a person from the Lawrence group, who has now been identified as the 21-year-old victim, she said. Rodriguez’s lawyer claimed at the hearing that his client was trying to protect his friends, and said his client has no criminal record. Worcester State police responded to the shooting near Wasylean Hall and Sheehan Hall, two student dormitories, on Oct. 28 around 2:30 a.m. At the scene, officers found Melendez and the second victim with gunshot wounds, and they were soon rushed to a hospital where Melendez died. Nieves was arrested at the scene and was soon charged with trespassing and carrying a firearm without a license, while Rodriguez went on the run from police for several days following the shooting, authorities said previously. He was eventually arrested in New York and brought back to Massachusetts.

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crime

Body of 45-year-old Avon man missing for 2 months found Saturday night

The body of an Avon man who had not been seen for more than two months was found in a well Saturday night, according to the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office. Keith McKechnie, 45, was last seen leaving his home at 34 East High St. on Sept. 7, according to the district attorney’s office. McKechnie was reported missing by Avon police on Nov. 22. On Nov. 25, Avon police and firefighters, along with Massachusetts State Police, were searching a “heavily wooded area on the property of the home” where McKechnie often walked, authorities said in a statement. The search was mainly focused on an old well on the property that had been searched before, according to authorities. A body, later identified as McKechnie, was found in the well, the district attorney’s office said. McKechnie’s body was brought to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Boston for an autopsy that will be completed in the coming days to determine the cause of death. There were no obvious signs of trauma, the office added. “Our thoughts are very much with the McKechnie family tonight,” District Attorney Morrissey said Saturday evening. “This is a very sad result.”

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crime

Shannon Squires sentenced for role in killing, burning Ashley Bortner in 2015

A New Hampshire woman who pled guilty to her involvement the death and burning of a woman in Bridgewater in 2015 was sentenced in Plymouth Superior Court on Monday, Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz’s office announced. Shannon Squires, 47, pled guilty to one count each of manslaughter and kidnapping in connection with the death of Ashley Bortner, 29, of New Jersey, Cruz’s office said in a statement. Bridgewater police received a 911 call before midnight on Nov. 3, 2015, about a fire burning next to the MBTA commuter rail tracks. When police arrived, they found a body was on fire, Cruz’s office said. Police found that 70% of the body, identified as Bortner, was burned and she was gagged with a towel wrapped around her face, Cruz’s office said. Her hands and feet were also bound. During their investigation, Massachusetts State Police found that she knew a man named Fernando Owens, 51, and believed Bortner played a role in the death of Owens’ son, Cruz’s office said. State police investigators determined Owens was connected to Bortner’s murder after they took an electrical chord and a towel from Owens’ home. Owens fled the United States for the Dominican Republic, where authorities arrested him there, Cruz’s office said. Squires and her partner, Julian Squires, of Manchester, were in Bridgewater at the time the 911 call was made. They assisted in killing and disposing of Bortner’s body, Cruz’s office said. Owens was found guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison in June 2023. Julian Squires was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in June 2022. On Monday, Judge William Sullivan sentenced Shannon Squires to eight to 10 years in prison with five years of probation, Cruz’s office said.

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crime

Charles Stuart the murderer and police brutality: a Boston legacy

SUDBURY, MASS. (WHDH) - An investigation got underway over the weekend after credit card skimmers were found at a grocery store in Sudbury, officials said. Roche Bros. Supermarkets in a statement said the skimmers were found on two self-checkout pin pads at the chain’s Sudbury Farms location off Boston Post Road on Sunday. Roche Bros. said it “immediately took steps to secure all registers at all locations and launched an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the activity.” Roche Bros. operates 20 grocery stores around Massachusetts. As of Sunday, the chain said it determined the Boston Post Road Sudbury Farms store was the only store impacted. While there was no confirmation that any customer data had been compromised, Roche Bros. said anyone who shopped at the Sudbury Farms site on or before Sunday may have been impacted. Roche Bros. CEO Kevin Barner addressed the situation in his company’s statement, saying “Roche Bros. has strong policies in place to protect against these types of incidents, including conducting multiple security checks daily on our registers.” “Roche Bros. is committed to protecting the confidentiality and security of our customers’ information and are issuing a press release to try and reach affected and potentially affected customers who we are not able to specifically identify,” Barner said. Roche Bros. said it notified law enforcement after finding the skimmers. Sudbury Chief of Police Scott Nix later confirmed his department responded, saying the incident remained under investigation Monday morning. While authorities investigate in Sudbury, this is not the first time this year that skimmers have been found in local grocery stores. Indeed, other devices have been found at various grocery stores in communities including Chelsea; Somerville; Reading; Haverhill; Concord, New Hampshire and Nashua, New Hampshire. Police have launched investigations into other skimmer sightings. The Better Business Bureau, in the meantime, has shared tips for shoppers to protect themselves. Among tips, the BBB advises: Keep a close eye on your bank and credit accounts. Be wary if your card gets stuck in a chip reader. Use contactless payment methods. Go inside to a teller to withdraw cash from the bank Use ATMs in banks Cover the keypad Don’t proceed if you feel resistance when your card is inserted. (Copyright (c) 2023 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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crime

Trial in 1988 killing of Mass. 11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay ends in mistrial

A photo of a man being detained by Boston police officers is projected in the former neighborhood of the Bennett family in Mission Hill. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The Charles Stuart Case New clues challenge the long-held narrative. It may be too late for many. Autoplay audio Veda Bennett opened her front door to two strangers one summer morning in 2022. Her Mission Hill apartment was dark and cool and still — a sharp contrast from the sweltering concrete patio where she liked to sit on a milk crate and chat with her neighbors. People called her Channel One, because she knew all the good gossip. “I’m glad y’all came,” Veda said. She meant it. She thought this conversation might hurt, but she also knew it had to be done. So, she stepped back from the door and gestured — come inside — and two Globe reporters stepped across 33 years of silence and into her kitchen. They settled at the kitchen table, and before anyone asked a single question, Willie Bennett’s younger sister started to talk. “Nobody ever heard my story,” Veda began, and she slipped back into the fall of 1989, a time that Veda never really left. The Stuart case sucked her in and never let her go, like a planet forever orbiting the sun. “For people to say it’s over with, it’s over with? It’s never gonna be over with for Veda Bennett,” she said, sitting underneath pictures of Willie and her dead mother and the old Mission Hill apartment where they were all living together when the police barged in and tore everything apart. “It’s never over. It’s never gonna be over. It’s never gonna be over.” Though the city, the police, the media — everyone, really — considers this case long closed, Veda said they’re all wrong. “They can say that,” she said, “because it didn’t happen to them.” Mission Hill looks much different than on the night of Oct. 23, 1989, when Chuck Stuart called 911 and said that a Black man had jumped into his car and shot him and his pregnant wife, Carol. That call sparked a manhunt that swept up an untold number of Black men before police zeroed in on Veda’s brother Willie, a notorious criminal who had, as it soon became clear, nothing to do with this crime. In the years that followed, the city tore the old brick public housing buildings down and rebuilt them in soothing baby blues and cream. Alton Court, where Willie lived at the time of his arrest, is gone, and some view this as erasure instead of progress. William "Willie" Bennett, during an interview at the state prison in Gardner on Nov. 24, 1992. Bennett was wrongly linked to the murder of Carol Stuart before evidence emerged that her husband, Chuck, had masterminded the crime. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff) The city relocated Veda Bennett to a new unit, where she said she wakes up every night at 2:30 a.m. to the sound seared in her memory, of her door opening and the police storming inside. At night, Veda said, it’s always the hour of the raid. Veda is always 29 years old, holding her 7-year-old niece on her hip as the police push through her home. She is always terrified and tripping as she runs, tumbling down the stairs, hitting her head. She has a tumor in her head now, and she swears it was that tumble that caused it. When she does sleep, she dreams about the Stuart case. “It’s never going out of my head,” she said with a short, dark laugh. “It’s right next to the tumor.” Every Bennett since Willie has battled with the legacy of the Stuart case. It’s a festering wound at the center of their family’s story. After the truth came out — that there never was any Black man, that Willie was innocent, that Chuck killed his own wife and child — the Bennett family never got a public apology. The Boston police never admitted they did anything wrong. The media didn’t run any corrections to its journalism. The Bennetts sued the city in federal and state courts, but years of litigation netted them just $12,500 — a sum they collectively viewed as more insulting than zero. Willie’s mother, Pauline, used some of the money to buy new church clothes from a discount magazine and died a few months later, bitter to the end. Veda remembers her mother’s last moments. It was the middle of the night, and Veda said she heard a thump, then Pauline calling out: I can’t breathe ... that Stuart case, that Stuart case. And then she was gone. After Chuck jumped, there were investigations and trials and commissions and reports. The lead homicide detective who pursued Willie as the suspect got a five-day suspension, which was knocked down to four, then knocked down to three, and then tossed altogether on appeal. Chuck’s brother Matthew and his friend went to prison for three years for getting rid of the gun. The Bennetts got their $12,500. And then, people did what Mayor Ray Flynn had been asking all along: They stopped thinking about the past. They moved forward. An image of The Boston Globe from January 1990 showing Willie Bennett's brother Ronald and daughter Nicole Bennett is projected in the former neighborhood of the Bennett family in Mission Hill. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) But enormous questions — both evidentiary and moral — were left unanswered. The Bennetts and a whole lot of other people in Mission Hill and beyond were left behind. For them, there’s never been anything that resembles justice. The Globe spent two years reinvestigating the Stuart murder case, from the crime to the aftermath to the influence it has on the city today. A team of reporters conducted hundreds of interviews, and traveled thousands of miles to talk to key players. Reporters hunted through archives and basements and the back rooms of courthouses to reassemble as much of the original casefile as they could — including secret grand jury transcripts and audio recordings of interrogations that have sat unplayed on decaying tape cassettes. Taken together, the material significantly changes the long-held narrative around the case. The Globe team found: Boston police didn’t just miss the clues that Chuck was likely behind the murder, they ignored them. A sprawling whisper network of people on the North Shore knew the truth about Chuck, and chose not to go to the police. Dozens knew he was behind Carol’s killing — some for months — but said nothing. Several doctors believe it’s implausible that Chuck shot himself, a key finding that suggests someone else may have pulled the trigger. And evidence points to Chuck’s brother, Matthew, playing a much larger role in the shooting than previously known, running counter to his claims he was tricked into helping get rid of the murder weapon. It’s too late for any of this to matter to Willie. He’s still alive, suffering from dementia and living alone in Boston. He declined, through a family spokesperson, to comment. And maybe it’s too late for Veda, too. “We’re not gonna gain nothing, we’re not gonna win nothing,” she said to the reporters who visited her that summer. But maybe the simple act of breaking the silence will help. “Somebody’s listening to me, you know?” Veda said. “Finally. Somebody’s listening.” In the early 1990s, as the dust settled on all things Stuart, the Boston Police Department sought to figure out how its detectives landed where they did, and whether officers broke any rules or laws in the quest for the killer. When the head of the homicide unit, Lieutenant Detective Edward McNelley, sat down with internal affairs investigators, he was steadfast that his officers had done nothing wrong. “In my opinion, the investigation was properly conducted. I think it was done competently. I think it was done professionally. I do not think there was any wrongdoing,” McNelley said. “Did he [Charles Stuart] fool us? Yes, he fooled us. But other than that, I do not find any fault with that investigation.” Boston Mayor Ray Flynn (right) met with tenants of the Mission Hill neighborhood on Aug. 19, 1992, to explain a report released by the Boston police's office of internal investigation on the handling of the Stuart case. The report cleared all but one police detective of misconduct in the investigation. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff) The department agreed. Other than lead detective Peter O’Malley’s swearing at a witness and a “joke” about using officer Billy Dunn as a “lie detector test,” the Police Department’s internal affairs unit found that officers did everything by the book. Chuck Stuart just fooled ‘em. But this is far from the truth. The first two detectives assigned to the case, Robert Ahearn and Robert Tinlin — “the two Bobbies” — suspected from the get-go that Chuck might be the killer. But they were sidelined, and O’Malley was brought in to pursue Willie. Ahearn testified in 1991 before a federal grand jury that he told both McNelley and O’Malley of his suspicions about Chuck. This failure to pursue Chuck as a suspect was not the only chance the department missed. Beginning in October of 1989, just days after the shootings, two men close to Chuck Stuart’s inner circle began reaching out to different police officers in Massachusetts, trying to pass along a tip that Chuck was the killer, according to police reports and grand jury testimony obtained by the Globe. The two men were Michael “Dennis” MacLean and John Carlson. Dennis was the brother of David MacLean, Chuck’s best friend from high school. And John was Dennis’s pal. John was unavailable for an interview and Dennis declined. Back in late 1989, shortly after Carol’s funeral, Dennis MacLean’s brother told him that Chuck had confided in him about the murder. Dennis told John, and the men decided to call police, according to Dennis’s grand jury testimony. They were nervous, so they chose not to call the Boston police tip line directly. Instead, sometime around Nov. 1, before police had made the turn to Willie as the prime suspect, Dennis and John reached out to Sergeant Dan Grabowski, a state trooper John knew. Dan Grabowski “He called him, gave him the information,” Dennis testified. “That it was Chuck that killed his wife.” Grabowski took the information, Dennis said, but he never called back. No one did. The Globe reached out to Grabowski for comment, and he declined in a voicemail and text messages to be interviewed. “I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to make Willie Bennett a hero just like they made George Floyd a hero,” Grabowski said in the voicemail to a Globe reporter. “A complete piece of shit, a piece of trash that terrorized people his whole life.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript Grabowski retired from the Massachusetts State Police a few years ago, after rising to the rank of major, one of the highest in the organization. For nearly a year, he sent profane and racist text messages to a Globe reporter, suggesting the media was complicit in a grand conspiracy to hide the truth. Dennis MacLean and John Carlson didn’t give up after Grabowski blew them off. In the middle of November, they contacted another police officer who happened to be John’s brother-in-law, according to grand jury testimony. That officer took their tip more seriously. On Nov. 16, a few days after Willie was arrested, the officer passed the tip along to Ahearn, one of the original detectives on the case. This was the moment when the investigation into Willie could have come screeching to a halt. This was a credible tip, passed along by a police officer who vouched for one of the tipsters. Ahearn himself already believed Chuck was the murderer. So it’s hard, in hindsight, to understand what happened next: Nothing. On Nov. 18, Ahearn called David MacLean, whom Chuck had asked to help kill Carol. But David said he didn’t know anything and didn’t want to talk, then he hung up the phone. Robert Ahearn And that ... was it. No police car squealed to a stop in front of his house with its siren blaring. No sledgehammer banged his door down. Ahearn didn’t even call him back. Two longtime Boston police officers — one current, one former — speculated that Ahearn could have been bitter about losing the case to O’Malley. If O’Malley wanted Ahearn’s case, he could hang himself with it. Ahearn died in 2017. His partner, Tinlin, died in 2001. Ahearn did tell the grand jury in 1991 that he regretted not doing more. And Tinlin’s son, who grew up to be a police officer too, said the case gnawed at the two Bobbies for the rest of their lives. But whatever Ahearn’s motivation — department rivalry, apathy, exhaustion — the single best tip the Boston police had to solve the Stuart murder got shoved into a drawer and forgotten. The story of the Stuart case holds that much of the world was shocked when the truth came out that Chuck was the real killer. On Boston’s North Shore, it was old news. The Globe found — through an analysis based on police files, grand jury testimony, recorded phone calls, and more — that at least 33 people knew the truth by the time Matthew went to police with his story on Jan. 3, 1990. Thirty-three people knew that — as Matthew Stuart said to Michael Stuart three days after the murder — “There’s no Black person that did this.” And yet, almost every one of those people stayed quiet, even as Chuck identified in a lineup a man they knew to be innocent. Much like the rumor about Willie Bennett shared by a few teens in a Mission Hill smoke session, this, too, was a perverse game of telephone. Siblings told friends, who told friends, who kept it secret. In Mission Hill, an 18-year-old Black man told his mother, who told a detective. But in Revere, a type of omerta took hold among some Stuarts, their friends, and friends of friends. They talked — just not to police. The Stuart case is not just a story about institutional failures by police, politicians, and the media. It is a story about the failures of regular people, too. People who believed themselves to be good and moral and decent who watched something terrible happen and did nothing. The Globe reached out to every person who knew the truth before the police. None of them agreed to speak. When Matthew Stuart confessed to Boston police that he disposed of the gun after Chuck killed Carol, he was motivated in part by the fear that Chuck would go to the cops first and blame Matthew for everything, his brother Michael later told police. But Matthew didn’t have to worry. Chuck jumped and Matthew stuck to the story he told police for the rest of his life: That he never knew Chuck planned to kill Carol, and he wasn’t there when it happened. That he never even saw Carol in the car with Chuck the night of the shooting. That he had no idea Chuck even had a gun — until after Carol was dead. In the years since the murder, a lot of people have come to view Matthew as one of the good guys. “Matthew Stuart was one of the few heroes of this,” said Jack Harper, the WCVB-TV reporter reporter who covered the case and stood by the Mystic River on the morning of Chuck’s suicide. “If you give him the benefit of the doubt, he was the brother who went along with it initially, got rid of the gun and the stolen stuff, but at least he had a conscience down the road. … He finally said something. … He had the stones to go talk.” Matthew Stuart arrived at the Stuart family residence on Jan. 11. 1990. (Paul Benoit/Globe Staff) Nancy Gertner, Matthew’s attorney, has always believed that Matthew was a victim of his older brother’s machinations and that Matthew bravely came forward to do the right thing and was punished for it with jail time. “This was a young man who was tortured by this, and was actually seeking help from every quarter he could get,” said Gertner, who later became a federal judge. “Charles was the golden boy in the family. So here [Matthew] was saying something unbelievable about his older brother, saying something that was going to lead to his older brother being in prison for the rest of his life.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript The official story of the Stuart murder case is that Chuck acted alone. But the Globe pulled medical records, police forensic reports, FBI lab notes, and more, and there is strong evidence someone else was there that night helping Chuck. And that person may have pulled the trigger. The first clues come from detailed accounts of three witnesses who each told police that they saw a third person in the car with Chuck and Carol on the night of the killing. Their statements were tucked among thousands of pages of police and legal documents and have never been reported before. The first was a basketball coach who was standing on the steps of the Tobin Center on Tremont Street, waiting for his players to arrive. Chuck’s route would have taken him past the Tobin on the way to the side street where Carol was most likely killed. The basketball coach told police he saw a dark blue car, which matched the description of Chuck’s Cressida, driving erratically down Tremont, with a white man behind the wheel. He assumed it was a drunk driver. But what stuck out as particularly strange was what he saw in the back seat: a man in the middle, hunched over. The second was a woman who lived in an apartment building overlooking the spot on St. Alphonsus Street where police found Chuck’s car. She told police she was leaning out her window to water her flowers when she heard a car door slam, and then saw a stocky man with a full head of hair running away from the car, saying “Oh my god, you [expletive].” The man she described resembled Matthew. A few minutes later, she heard sirens and police, and when she looked out, she saw emergency workers taking Chuck and Carol out of the same car. And the third witness was a man driving around the neighborhood, who told police and prosecutors that he saw a car with its headlights off park on St. Alphonsus Street. He circled, and when he passed it a second time, he saw a white man in the driver’s seat and another man whose face he couldn’t see getting out of the back seat. When he passed the car a third time, he saw the police and ambulances surrounding it. The Globe can’t ask the witnesses about what they saw because all three are dead. Police examined the scene of the shooting and the Stuarts' car on St. Alphonsus Street in Mission Hill on Oct. 23, 1989. (Tom Herde/Globe Staff) In addition to these witness statements, more clues were found in ballistics reports. There’s no dispute that three bullets were fired in Chuck’s and Carol’s car. One entered the back of Carol’s head; police found a second lodged in the ceiling; and the third left a wound in Chuck’s lower back, traveling upward through his liver and intestines. Dr. Edwin Hirsch, the Boston trauma surgeon who operated on Chuck that night, had treated hundreds if not thousands of gunshot wounds in Vietnam. And he was adamant that Chuck could not have shot himself. It was his view that led police to believe that Chuck was an innocent victim. Hirsch is dead. But two other doctors who also operated on Chuck are alive, and both of them told the Globe they agreed with Hirsch: It didn’t make sense that Chuck shot himself. At Hirsch’s direction, Dr. Fred Millham acted as Chuck’s personal doctor. Millham not only examined Chuck’s guts, he also spent a lot of time around Chuck and his family while Chuck was recovering. And during those visits, Millham picked up odd vibes. In a recent interview, Millham cited patient confidentiality laws that prevent him from saying anything specific. But given everything he saw back then, he said, he is confident in his assessment. “It’s my opinion based on facts that everybody has — I think the brother probably did the shooting. But I’ve always thought that, since I saw them dragging Charles’s body out of the harbor,” Millham said. “It was Matthew. Of course.” These clues, together with the fact that Matthew admitted to conspiring with Chuck, being in Mission Hill at the time of the shooting, disposing of the gun, then covering it up for two and a half months — they suggest there’s much more to Matthew’s story than what he told police. The lead prosecutor on the case thought so. Francis O’Meara, the head of the homicide unit at the Suffolk district attorney’s office, testified under oath in 1991 that he was certain there was someone else in the car for the shooting — and that it could only be one of two people. Francis O'Meara “There’s no question in my mind, none whatsoever, that there was a third person on St. Alphonsus Street that night, and it’s either Matthew Stuart or Willie Bennett,” O’Meara said. “There’s absolutely no question in my mind.” If the lead prosecutor was so sure, why wasn’t Matthew ever charged in the murder? O’Meara retired a long time ago. In late 2022, O’Meara wasn’t interested in talking to Globe reporters. He said it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. He died a few months later. Matthew’s attorney, Gertner, said the reason Matthew wasn’t charged was simple: He was innocent. She pointed out that a grand jury tried to prove Matthew was involved in the murder — they interviewed nearly 100 people and pored over the case for years. “I mean, if there had been a whisper of that evidence, he would have been charged with being an accessory to murder,” Gertner said. “And that was not a charge that they could bring.” Matthew’s accomplice in ditching the gun, Jack McMahon, didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment. Finally, the Globe reached out to an independent forensic consultant, Lewis Gordon, and shared with him all the police and FBI files on the shooting as well as the autopsy reports and other material. But Gordon couldn’t provide a definitive determination. “He certainly could have shot himself. He certainly could have been shot by someone else,” Gordon said. “We just don’t have enough information to reach a conclusion one one way or the other.” With the passage of time, there may be no way to say for sure. Like everything else in Mission Hill, the block where the shooting took place is vastly different now. Back in ‘89, it was a bleak dead end with an abandoned bar on the corner. But on an afternoon last summer, it was buzzing with construction workers building condos where the old bar once was. Globe reporters flagged one of them down, a young Black man named Rashard Young, and asked if he’d ever heard of the murder that unfolded right where he was standing. He squinted in confusion, until someone said, “Chuck Stuart?” His eyes slowly lit with recognition. Then he tried to explain the thread that tied his life to Stuart’s crime. “I was told that it wasn’t — it’s not what we think it was,” Rashard said, working it out. Rashard knew the outlines of the story — a white man killed his wife and blamed a Black man, and the police and everybody else believed him. Rashard wasn’t even born then, but he knows the story because his older brother told it to him when he was still a kid. In his family, the Stuart case was a warning. “He was like, ‘Get used to it,’ you know?” Rashard said of his brother. “It was just like, Wow. Like, we can be lied on like that so quick. That’s what really scared me. You know, I’ve been lied on too… you know. So I definitely know what it’s like just because of my complexion and my just — who I am.” Rashard’s dad is Black and his mom is white. He said he’s always felt torn between the two. But the outside world isn’t confused at all. His blackness is what people see. It’s what the police see, too. “When they got that badge on, it’s their world,” Rashard said. “You’re living in their world.” All these years later. Same spot. Same neighborhood. Same fear. In the wake of the Stuart case, there were lots of recommendations about how to fix the problems in the Police Department, but many never came to fruition. From federal authorities to the state attorney general’s office, officials determined police had done disturbing things, including stripping Black boys and men in public and searching them. The detective work was shoddy, and the teenage witnesses were scared. But each of these agencies stopped short of calling anything illegal. Wayne Budd, the US attorney for Massachusetts at the time, wrote a scorching report on the department’s actions. As a Black man, Budd felt enormous pressure to hold someone accountable. But he couldn’t prove that the police violated federal civil rights laws. He didn’t charge anyone. And the blowback from police critics was brutal. “The reaction from the community was particularly stinging,” he told the Globe. Budd said people told him: “Nobody’s doing anything about what these cops did in our community. You’re the US attorney, Wayne Budd, and you’re our last hope in getting justice from this.” Budd went on to become US associate attorney general, and he oversaw the federal prosecution of the Los Angeles police officers who beat a Black man named Rodney King. In 2020, with America up in arms again over racism and police abuse, the Boston police again came under the microscope. A team of Globe reporters - including some involved in this story — exposed corruption and misconduct within the department, as well as several instances of the agency’s failure to deliver on past pledges of reform. Amid all this, the city again turned to Wayne Budd. Budd chaired a commission that came up with a slate of Boston police reforms. Some of them resembled recommendations that came out of a commission formed following the Stuart case. The department is still working on some of those changes. Today, Boston has more work to do, but this much is clear: It is not the city it was in 1989. In 2021, voters elected for the first time a mayor who was not a white male. Michelle Wu — the 38-year-old daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who ran on a progressive agenda that included platforms on rent control and free public transportation — won in a landslide. Quickly, Wu made a statement with her choice for police commissioner: a former Boston police officer named Michael Cox. Boston Police Department Commissioner Michael Cox speaking during a press conference on Feb. 6, 2023. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff) And Michael Cox — he has quite a backstory. At the time of the Stuart shooting, he was a new cop, and one of the only Black officers working drugs. One night, while Cox was undercover, fellow Boston officers mistook him for a drug dealer and viciously beat him. It took Cox years to heal. But Cox didn’t leave the department. He stayed on the force and rose through the ranks, before leaving a few years ago to serve as a chief of police in Michigan. His return to Boston as commissioner has been widely viewed as the best hope for ushering in a new era for the BPD. What Cox does with that power remains to be seen. He declined to be interviewed for this project. The scars of the Stuart case may not be so visible across Boston today, at least not on the surface. But it lives in the homes of Black and brown families, where older brothers pass on tips to boys who will one day grow up to become construction workers and help build condos on the land where a man named Charles Stuart once called 911 to say he and wife were shot. It’s a lesson, if you’re looking. But it doesn’t have to be a lesson that is only about the terrible things people do to each other, and the way people fail to live up to their ideals. Take, for example, the 6-foot, 5-inch Black man with a giant smile who comes home to Mission Hill every so often to buy custom hats in bulk. The ball caps are black, with the word “LOVE” in red letters. DonJuan Moses, next to a projection of a 1989 image of police officers detaining a man in Mission Hill. Moses was 11 years old when police burst into his family's home and arrested his cousin. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The man’s name is DonJuan Moses. He was the 11-year-old boy watching his family play cards in their Mission Hill apartment back in ‘89, when the police barged in and took his cousin away because he matched Chuck’s description. Black man. DonJuan’s fear of the police has never left him. He keeps a dashcam on his windshield, backed up to his hard drive, because he’s afraid of what may happen if he gets pulled over. His trauma doesn’t come from the Stuart case alone — his father spent 41 years in prison for murder, until he was exonerated and freed in 2020. But out of all this fear and anger, DonJuan has found something beautiful. DonJuan buys the LOVE hats because he works in a hospice, and he likes to give the hats to the patients. He wants them to know that, even if they have no family, they’re not going to die alone. He will be there. “Give them what you ain’t never had. Love,” he said. “Give them something that we are not promised.” This type of love — joy, even — was evident on a cold winter night in 2022, a mile or so from that once-bleak corner where Carol and Christopher Stuart were killed. A group of Black and Latino high school students trickled through the door of a meeting room, where their mentor, George “Chip” Greenidge Jr., waited for them. Chip knows Mission Hill. His dad has lived there since the 1980s. When the shooting happened, Chip watched his neighborhood convulse. When the police swept through, Chip’s dad banned him from visiting. So he watched it unfold on TV, with everybody else. A world away, Carol’s family, the DiMaitis, were watching, too. And their reaction to the crime would change the course of Chip’s life. After the DiMaitis lost their daughter and grandson in such a horrifying, public way, they didn’t want to keep talking about the awful things done in Carol’s and Christopher’s names. They did want a way to remember them. They wanted Carol’s legacy to be about something other than her husband’s terrible crime. So a few weeks after Chuck’s suicide, Carol’s family announced the creation of a foundation, the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation, that would grant college scholarships to the residents of Mission Hill and promote better race relationships throughout Boston. “There has been so much said and written about this terrible tragedy in our lives that we don’t want to add to that today,” said Carol’s father, Giusto. “Carol was a loving, caring person who always thought of the other person first. She loved to help those less fortunate than herself and was constantly trying to improve their place in this world.” 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript Over the next month, the foundation garnered more than $270,000 in donations. The letters and support poured in from across the country. Vice President Dan Quayle sent $150, as did Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. Governor Michael Dukakis donated $50, along with a lunch invite. And soon, the foundation put that money to use. One of its first scholarship recipients was a young man named Chip. Chip remembers one day, when all the scholars the foundation had sponsored came together. Carol’s mother and father were there, and Chip remembers the way her mother Evelyn hugged him so tight, smiling so hard. “She was proud to call us her kids,” Chip said. “She was very proud that this scholarship fund was a way to have the wonderful legacy of her daughter and her grandson to live on.” Of all the many victims of the Stuart murder case, none suffered more personal or devastating losses than the DiMaiti family. Yet it was the DiMaitis — not City Hall, and certainly not the Police Department — who sought to build bridges. George “Chip” Greenidge, beneath a projected 1995 photo of himself and other organizers of the Young Black Boston conference. Greenidge was one of the first recipients of the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Scholarship in Mission Hill set up by her family after her death. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) Their foundation helped Chip pay for tuition at Morehouse College. These days, he’s finishing a PhD at Georgia State University, and he’s a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. And in early 2023, Wu appointed him to Boston’s Reparations Task Force, where he will help examine the wrongs that the city has done to Black residents. “The push was that we would always give back to the neighborhood of Mission Hill and Roxbury,” he told the Globe. “And that’s what I’ve done. Always.” Chip is a busy guy. On that cold winter night in 2022, he obliged two reporters who asked for an interview, but then his students started badgering him and joking and laughing and generally being teenagers. Finally, he had to stop talking and focus on them. “How’s everyone doing today? How’s everyone doing today!?” Chip bellowed, clapping his hands and grinning as the kids met his goofy greeting with their own. “Good, good, good, good.” Then he introduced the reporters. “This is the Boston Globe right here,” he said. “Anyone ever hear of Charles Stuart before?” The kids all just stared at him. “Anyone heard of Carol Stuart before?” he tried again, and this time the kids said no, together. 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript “Everybody? No? Not at all?” Chip said. “OK. Well, we’re going to get our session started.” For 34 years, Chuck Stuart and all the trauma he sowed have served as a mark against the city, a slice of history that’s been impossible to move past. Racial divisions haven’t disappeared. But this is also not the same city that fell for Chuck’s hoax. That was plainly apparent in the warm meeting room, where Chip Greenidge was helping a group of Black and Latino teens write their college essays. These teens haven’t forgotten the nightmare in Mission Hill. They don’t know that history at all. Which means they don’t have to live with it, either. So they’re free, to put pens to paper, and set off to write the next chapter of Boston’s story. About this story To report “Nightmare in Mission Hill,” Globe journalists spent thousands of hours, over two years, examining documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video. The team conducted more than 250 interviews. Quotes within this story were either taken directly from sworn testimony, police interviews, audiotapes, or were heard by reporters. In cases where someone recounted dialogue or comments, those words appear in italics. Click here for more information on sourcing.

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crime

Gypsy Rose Blanchard out of prison years after persuading boyfriend to kill her abusive mother

Mejía’s son is a second grader in the South End at Blackstone Elementary School, where 48 percent of the students are non-native English speakers and classes are taught entirely in English. Although Mejía speaks in Spanish with her son at home, she fears, little by little, he’ll lose their common tongue, and with that, his connections to his roots and any academic and professional opportunities afforded by being bilingual. “You can put the language in front of him and he won’t understand it,” Mejía, 45, of Roxbury, said through an interpreter. A few months ago, María Mejía’s son traveled to her native Dominican Republic with his grandmother. Almost immediately, the 8-year-old wanted to go home, she said. No one spoke English, he complained. He felt uncomfortable in a country where Spanish is the dominant tongue. His admission nearly broke his mother’s heart. Advertisement Mejía and other parents from diverse backgrounds have long complained about how Boston Public Schools teach their children, prioritizing learning English through immersion over retaining and developing their native language skills. But the district’s latest plan for educating its multilingual students has stroked fears that BPS is not only putting children’s bilingualism at risk, but their ability to learn other subjects, such as math, science and history. On Oct. 18, BPS unveiled a multipart inclusion plan to overhaul its special education and multilingual programs, made as part of a deal with the state to avoid a takeover of the district and being labeled “underperforming.” But the plan has been mired in controversy from the start: Two weeks after BPS formally introduced the plan, nine members of a 13-person task force charged with advising the School Committee on how to best serve the needs of English learners resigned in protest, calling the changes “ill-advised” and “harmful” to students. Advertisement Some Spanish-speaking families have also begun circulating an online petition, demanding that BPS immediately postpone implementing the inclusion plan, arguing that parents weren’t given enough time to participate in or understand it. In late December, several met with representatives from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which is overseeing the BPS’s progress in addressing its long-standing problems, to urge the agency to push back on the district. “They’re trying to make a plan for inclusion,” said Mejía, one of the parent advocates who met with DESE, “but it’s going to hurt a lot of children.” Critics claim BPS has historically failed to serve the needs of its English learners, who equal nearly a third of all students in the district. The district’s treatment of English learners has been subjected to state and federal intervention for failing to provide them with appropriate services, and the office in charge of English learners has been rife with turnover. BPS sees “concerns mostly in Black or white,” said former School Committee member Miren Uriarte, who resigned from the English learners task force. “And immigrant kids,” she added, “did not fit on either side.” Uriarte said the district should significantly expand bilingual programs, so non-native English speakers can learn core academic subjects in their primary language. A retired UMass Boston professor, Uriarte has conducted research on the district’s methods for teaching students learning English and found that English learners who are only taught in English have worse academic outcomes, including far higher drop out rates. Advertisement Under the district’s plan, students learning English will be split from their English-speaking peers for up to an hour and a half of direct English instruction a day, rather than spending their entire days in Sheltered English Immersion, or SEI, classrooms, where they are taught separately from their English-speaking peers. The plan will gradually take effect and by the 2026-27 school year, all English learners in grades K-12 will be taught in inclusive settings with access to English as a Second Language, or ESL, services. Teams at every school were expected to deliver school-level plans on Dec. 5, including recommendations on shifting resources and ensuring they have the necessary staff. BPS guidance for inclusion planning teams states the future of English learner education in the district could include dual-language programming — considered among researchers to be the gold-standard of bilingual education — if schools choose to offer it. The district’s incoming chief of of multilingual and multicultural education, Joelle Gamere, the seventh person to helm the office since 2019, told the Globe in an interview she was committed to expanding dual-language programs, noting that students who are taught in both their native language and English yield better results based on her experience starting Mattahunt Elementary’s Haitian Creole academy. At the same time, the district has rolled back specific goals for expanding dual language: In a strategic plan submitted to the state last year, the district said it would add 25 new bilingual programs by June 2025. A revised plan from October makes no mention of the 25 new dual-language programs the district had previously pledged to launch. Advertisement Sarah Fuller, an inclusion specialist at the Blackstone school, said while teachers support inclusion, schools haven’t been given enough time to develop their inclusion plans — especially for implementing more complex programs like dual-language — and guidance from the district has been limited and unclear. And to make inclusion work, Fuller said, high-needs schools like hers will need additional staff, including more ESL teachers. But after submitting Blackstone’s plan earlier this month, which calls for hiring more personnel, the district told school leadership they “were asking for too much,” Fuller said. “We’re just so frustrated,” she said. “It all seems like the district is either ignoring or does not care.” A SEI teacher on the inclusion planning team at a high-needs elementary school said she also is in favor of inclusion in theory, but she worries students like hers, many of whom have low-level English proficiency, will fall behind in a general education setting without more thoughtful planning and more staff. In SEI classrooms, non-native English speakers are taught with curriculum designed specifically for them, and they have more opportunities to communicate with peers and teachers in their native language. “If they’re fully surrounded in English, it’s very overwhelming,” said the teacher, who asked not to be identified to protect her job, which hangs in the balance under the district’s new plan. “They don’t participate. They’re not really getting work done.” Advertisement District officials have said the new inclusion plan aligns with feedback from and standards set by DESE and the US Department of Justice. A routine monitoring assessment last summer by DESE of the district’s SEI programs found they do not meet current state requirements and that some students in these programs feel isolated from their English-speaking peers. BPS has also defended the plan, citing an August 2022 letter from the Justice Department stating the district must avoid “unnecessarily” segregating English learners. The Justice Department has never mandated the complete dismantling of BPS’s SEI programs, said Roger Rice, executive director of Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy, an organization that sued the district in the ‘90s for failing to adequately support its growing English learner population. In 2010, after probes by the US Department of Justice and Department of Education found the district had violated the civil rights of English learners, BPS reached a settlement agreement with the federal government, requiring the district to reform its programs for English learners. The settlement lists a variety of programs that BPS can provide its English learners, including SEI and bilingual education, stipulating only that the district must avoid completely segregating them from their English-speaking peers and include them in general education classes such as music, gym and art. “In other words, DOJ is not telling Boston how it has to teach [English learners],” Rice said. The state’s current guidance on English learner services also explicitly encourages school districts to use a variety of English learner programs, including SEI, dual language, and transitional bilingual programs, noting that students’ needs vary significantly. “It’s all a cover to move kids from their current placements in SEI into general ed. with ESL,” said John Mudd, one of the task force members who resigned, of the district’s plan. “They’re doubling down in the wrong direction.” Just 7 percent of English learners are in the district’s dual-language programs in which students receive instruction in two languages. Meanwhile, nearly half of beginner to intermediate level English learners already are being taught in general education classrooms, with as much as an hour and a half of ESL instruction during the school day, according to district projections, while the rest are mostly in SEI classrooms. If the Blackstone had offered a dual-language program, Mejía said she would have seized on the opportunity for her son. She wants him to retain his ability to speak Spanish as she considers his future career and college prospects. “He’ll go to university, get a job, and he’ll be able to help a lot of people who speak multiple languages,” she said. “If they know more than one language, they’re able to open many doors.” Deanna Pan can be reached at deanna.pan@globe.com. Follow her @DDpan.

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crime

How a Suspected Indian Murder-for-Hire Plot on U.S. Soil Was Foiled

The trial of a 76-year-old Alabama man accused of the 1988 killing of an 11-year-old girl in Massachusetts ended Wednesday with a judge declaring a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury. Marvin C. McClendon Jr. had pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in connection with the death of Melissa Ann Tremblay. McClendon was arrested last year, decades after Tremblay disappeared. McClendon was linked to the killing through DNA evidence, according to the prosecutor. McClendon’s lawyer, Henry Fasoldt, said his client appreciated the jury being “deliberate and thoughtful” and looks forward to trying the case again. “Mr. McClendon maintains his innocence and I believe he’s innocent,” Fasoldt said. A spokesperson for the Essex County District Attorney’s office said they plan to retry McClendon. No new trial date has been set. Tremblay, of Salem, New Hampshire, was found in a Lawrence trainyard on Sept. 12, 1988, the day after she was reported missing. She had been stabbed and her body had been run over by a train, authorities said. The victim had accompanied her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to a Lawrence social club not far from the railyard and went outside to play while the adults stayed inside, authorities said last year. She was reported missing later that night. Lawrence and Salem are just a few miles apart. McClendon, a former employee of the Massachusetts prisons department, lived near Lawrence in Chelmsford and was doing carpentry work at the time of the killing, authorities said. He worked and attended church in Lawrence.

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crime

16-year-old, 19-year-old killed in second shooting in Lynn this week

It was a mild Sunday evening in Surrey, a city near Vancouver, British Columbia, and Hardeep Singh Nijjar was ready to drive home after spending the day at his Sikh temple. He had told a friend that he thought he was being followed, but that night, he was just eager to celebrate Father’s Day with his family. Mr. Nijjar was heading out of the parking lot in his truck when he was ambushed. Two masked gunmen unleashed a burst of gunfire and then sped off in a getaway car. Mr. Nijjar was dead. The murder that day in June became part of a chain of events that would ricochet around the world, with federal agents in the United States working furiously behind the scenes to untangle an international assassination plot that they believed was directed by someone inside India’s government. The geopolitical implications were huge, and the clock was ticking: The next murder being planned was for someone on U.S. soil. That explosive tip had come into the Drug Enforcement Administration through an unexpected avenue, according to court records and interviews with people familiar with the investigation — accounts that, taken together, provide a detailed picture of how the episode unfolded.

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crime

Two people arrested after 22-year-old brazenly killed inside Brockton restaurant

A 16-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were killed in the second shooting to happen in the city of Lynn this week, according to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office. The shooting happened near 10 Camden St., which is around the corner from the AL Prime gas station, at around 10:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 27, the office said Thursday. The two teens were brought to North Shore Medical Center for treatment. Both were later pronounced dead at the hospital, officials said. “We offer condolences to the families of the two victims in last night’s shooting and we will offer support to the school communities grieving these losses,” Lynn Mayor Jared C. Nicholson said in a statement. Read More: Seven people hospitalized in serious rollover crash in Berlin Wednesday night The first shooting happened at Pizza Hut at 39 State St. at around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 26, according to the district attorney’s office. Three people were found with multiple gunshot wounds and brought to Massachusetts General Hospital with serious injuries, police said. They were said to be in stable condition as of Thursday. Authorities believe both shootings were targeted, but did not say if they were connected. “This violence is devastating, infuriating, and utterly unacceptable,” Nicholson added. “We will respond with increased police presence as needed and renewed urgency and clarity in our efforts for peace, justice, and a safer community.” Lynn Police Chief Christopher Reddy said his department and Massachusetts State Police are investigating both shootings. Reddy asks anyone with information about either incident to contact investigators at 781-477-3190.

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crime

Investigation into Dedham stabbing that ended with 1 dead continues

Two people have been arrested days after a 22-year-old man was brazenly shot and killed inside a hibachi restaurant in Brockton, Massachusetts, officials announced Monday night. Citing an "around-the-clock investigation," Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz announced the arrests Monday night in connection with Joe Araujo's shooting death Friday night at Hibachi Sushi Supreme Buffet on Crescent Street. The men, whose names were not released, are scheduled to be arraigned in Brockton District Court on Tuesday. Officials didn't say what charges they are facing. BROCKTON SHOOTING UPDATE A non-stop investigation by @MassStatePolice @BrocktonPolice leads to 2 men under arrest tonight charged in connection with the brazen fatal shooting of a man inside a Brockton restaurant. The pair are scheduled to be arraigned in BDC tomorrow. — DA Tim Cruz (@PlymouthCtyDAO) January 16, 2024 Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. Joe Araujo was 22 years old. He was inside the Hibachi Sushi Supreme Buffet on Friday night when a man wearing a ski mask walked in and opened fire, killing him. The entire thing was caught on surveillance video. Follow NBC10 Boston on... Instagram: instagram.com/nbc10boston TikTok: tiktok.com/@nbc10boston Facebook: facebook.com/NBC10Boston X: twitter.com/NBC10Boston Araujo's family told NBC10 Boston earlier Monday that they were searching for answers after their loved one was gunned down, leaving them shocked and heartbroken. The 22-year-old leaves behind two children. “It’s been like hell. Nothing could take this pain away,” his sister Andrea Monteiro said. As the family started to plan his funeral, they were left wondering who could do such a thing, vowing to find justice. "Who did this to my son?" Ana Inocencio said. "He has to pay. Sooner or later he has to pay." The entire incident was caught on surveillance video, which the district attorney’s office released on Saturday with a warning for graphic content. The video shows the brazen gunman walk right up to the victim's table, pull out a gun and shoot Araujo at point blank range before fleeing. There were families with children inside at the time, and the video shows their mad dash to safety. "This video just replays in my head over and over and over," Monteiro said, telling us she forced herself to watch the video of her younger brother's final moments one time. "Something that I can never get out my head. Ever." One person was shot dead in a restaurant in Brockton and investigators say it was a targeted attack. The district attorney's office had said they believed Araujo was targeted by the suspect who was wearing a mask at the time of the shooting. "I just don’t understand why," Vera Lopes said of the shooting that claimed her brother's life. "He was loved by many," Monteiro added. The grieving family was hoping someone would see the video and help them get justice. “I just want you to come forward, even if you don’t give a name, even if you drop a letter in one of our mailboxes, anything, any little hint, we’ll take it,” Monteiro said before the arrests were announced. "We're gonna get justice. We're gonna find who this person is. Even if we stay awake day and night and we don't get rest, we're gonna find the killer." A person is dead after a shooting inside a restaurant Friday evening. Police said Friday that officers responded to the Crescent Street restaurant around 7:25 p.m. and found one victim with life-threatening injuries. The man was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The victim was identified on Saturday as Araujo, of Brockton. The district attorney's office had said this was not a random act of violence. Witnesses told NBC10 Boston on Friday that a man with a mask walked in and opened fire on someone inside the restaurant. Araujo was the only person injured in the shooting. Police were seen outside the restaurant on Friday searching a vehicle with yellow crime scene tape wrapped around it, but so far no information has been released on its relevance. The sushi restaurant is located in a strip mall, right next to a furniture store, a Dollar Tree store and some other restaurants. People nearby say it's generally a safe area. "This plaza is super busy usually, and it's pretty safe," said Satish Patel, of Brockton Liquors. "I have never worried about it. Until like 10 o'clock at night it's pretty safe." An investigation is active and ongoing by state and local police.

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crime

Up to 40 antique wooden benches valued at more than $100K stolen from Springfield's Union Station

SPRINGFIELD - Union Station's rebirth is underway, but the chance at recapturing the retro-elegance and charm of the original may have - literally and figuratively - left the station. Between 30 and 40 of the station's historic wooden benches, each roughly 18 feet long and weighing 1,000 pounds with a value of up $100,000 on the antiques market, have disappeared, officials admit. "They were apparently stolen," said Kevin Kennedy, the city's chief development officer. "Not 'apparently' - they were stolen." The benches can be glimpsed in a number of file photos in The Republican archives with those dated July 2, 2014 and Jan. 16, 2015 depicting at least eight benches on the construction site. "It's very strange that the benches walked away," said Christopher Moskal, executive director for the Springfield Redevelopment Authority, which has owned Union Station since 1989 and is leading its recent renovation. Where the benches went remains a mystery, as is who took them from a sealed renovation site and how. The station building remained closed for more than 20 years, but closest anyone can give as an answer to when some of the benches went missing was 2012, prior to the start of the ongoing construction project. What is known is that minus the original benches, Union Station may have to be fitted with more modern furniture when it opens as expected in December. And it also means is that Springfield, for all its emphasis on preserving Union Station's history, may well miss out the chance to create a modern transportation center that still harkens back to the golden age of rail travel. Anyone who has ever been to refurbished train stations in New Haven, Baltimore or Los Angeles knows what that means. "That's the frustrating part of all this," Kennedy said. "To say it is a disappointment would be an understatement." Moskal said no one knows when the benches were stolen but they figure it was sometime during May 2012. At that time, SRDA staff and historical consultants were going through Union Station regularly in advance of the start of construction to take inventory of what artifacts were there and determining whether they were worth preserving. One week the benches were there, Moskal said, and the next week they were gone. Not all of the benches were gone, he said. It was just the ones that were worth anything. "All the good benches were gone," Moskal said. He described the ones that remained as "pieces of benches" in a pile that turned out to be "nothing but garbage - wet, deteriorated and moldy" from leaks in the roof that developed over the years the station was vacant. Of that pile of garbage, the city was able to restore a single bench at the Department of Public Works facility on Tapley Street, he said. The one bench will be displayed in the station, much like the restored original barber chair, as an exhibit to the station's past. Ironically, one month after the benches went missing, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, Union Station's biggest advocate and political benefactor, toured the facility with Moskal and Mayor Domenic J. Sarno. If anyone mentioned their disappearance to Neal, he never let on to the press. A June 22, 2012, article in The Republican described Neal pointing at some benches in the corner and saying "And these great wooden benches ... I'm so glad to see that these are going to be restored." The benches Neal saw are apparently the same ones that Moskal described as the pile of wet, deteriorated and moldy garbage. Neal spokesman William Tranghese on Friday that when Neal toured the station at that time, he did not know the other benches were missing. Neal has toured different Union Stations across the county to get ideas how they were successfully renovated. He has also met with Amtrak officials at his office to discuss the Springfield project, its history, landscape and how its original integrity can be maintained. Neal has also invited the same Amtrak officials to tour the project in Springfield and to give a presentation city officials and residents. In a prepared statement released by Neal's office in April, Neal said the city has "one chance to get this important project right." His goal all along has been the renovation and refurbishment of Union Station to turn the downtown landmark in to something that will be a source of "considerable civic pride," he said. Neal cited other train stations in Baltimore, New Haven, St. Louis and Los Angeles as examples of restoration projects that have been done with an attention to detail. "My goal with Union Station has always been to restore the historic building to its original splendor. And we are almost there. I would like visitors to the refurbished station to enjoy the same vibrant and elegant terminal that travelers did more than 50 years ago," the statement reads. "That means acquiring and recovering period benches, lighting, signage and other related artifacts that were a part of the rail structure's long and rich history." Tranghese on Friday said that while Neal considers it to be a great disappointment that the benches are missing, he disagrees with the suggestion that the main concourse will have to be fitted with modern furniture as a result. He said Neal is speaking with officials at Amtrak and with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation about obtaining "authentic replacement benches." His office is also working with the city to restore many of the original station artifacts that have been removed to the city's Tapley Street facility. "The restoration of Union Station has been a priority of the Congressman for nearly four decades. He has invested a considerable amount of time and energy in this important preservation project. The disappearance of these benches will not change that," Tranghese said. When Union Station opened in 1926, it was considered one of the most modern train stations in the country. At the time when rail travel was the fastest means of transport, Springfield, a major city in the Northeast with railroad lines running north-south and east-west, was one of the busiest stations. At the station's grand opening in late December 1926, newspaper accounts noted that between 20,000 and 30,000 people toured every nook and cranny of the new station, which had restaurants, barber shops and multiple newsstands. It also had a large waiting room described as having row upon row of benches with enough seats for 650 travelers. A Dec. 20, 1926 article in the Springfield Daily Republican noted that despite the crowd, the station's "unusually large size" could accommodate it easily. "It was noted the traveling public made particular use of the waiting benches in the new subway at the start of things. These seats are near the doors to the stairway and proved their usefulness at once." Over the years, the same benches would be mentioned several times as weary passengers waited for trains, mothers tended to children, college students clustered while heading home for Christmas, and GIs on the way to and from posts sometimes stretched out to nap. In August 1958, when a fire in New York caused delays of three hours or more in Springfield, the Republican reported "scores tried to sleep on the wooden benches." But nine years later in 1967, reporter Frank B. Murray, for whom the street outside Union Station in named, went through the station, saw main hall partitioned off, the wooden benches empty, and concluded "the romance of railroading - as we knew it - is gone." Union Station closed in 1973 when Amtrak converted the station to the present Lyman Street facility. The Springfield Redevelopment Authority acquired the building in 1989. The benches had been a staple inside the building from the time it opened until well after it closed, and until 2012 when it was discovered they were no longer there. Moskal said that when the benches were discovered missing, he contacted Sarno, who in turn notified then-Springfield Police Commissioner William Fitchet. Moskal said Fitchet notified him that he would increase patrols around Union Station. He also asked for a key to the property to allow officers access to the facility in case there were addition reports of someone inside. A key was delivered, Moskal said. A few weeks later, the SRDA staff noticed that a large strip of copper was missing from the roof of the former baggage area of the building. Again he notified Sarno, who contacted Fitchet, who assigned an officer to the case. Moskal said he remembers Detective Michael Carney and another detective whose name he cannot remember coming to Union Station on June 4, 2012, to investigate the theft of the benches and the copper. He remembers the date specifically because both officers after a while left in a hurry to respond to the scene of the fatal shooting of officer Kevin Ambrose during a domestic disturbance in Sixteen Acres. Springfield police said they could find no records of a reported theft or an investigation involving Carney at Union Station. Fitchet retired in 2014. Carney retired in January. Carney, reached by telephone recently, said he recalls going to Union Station to investigate a reported theft, but he cannot recall an exact date or even a general time period. At times, the robbery unit was typically working on 40 to 50 cases per month and sometimes as many as 70 cases. "I do know there's a report. We did go out there," Carney said. Springfield police could not locate an incident report. Carney remembers that they took photos of the scene, conducted interviews and took notes. He said he remembers getting the call on June 4 of that year to respond to the scene of the Ambrose murder, but he does not recall what he was working on before that. Typically, they would investigate during the first part of the shift and then return to the station to write up their notes as part of the case file. If they were there in the morning prior to Ambrose's death, it is likely they would not have returned to the case for a few days as the tragedy became a top priority. "On June 4, our minds were not there," he said. Exactly how many benches were in Union Station? Moskal said the number missing is between 30 and 40. He estimated the number of dilapidated benches to be eight or nine, of which one was salvageable. That would put the total at a minimum of 38 to and a high of 49. No exact count is available, but articles through the years have said the waiting room seating capacity was 650 people. If the 18-foot-long benches were projected to seat 12 people each, it would mean 54 benches. If they were intended to seat 14, because people in the 1920s were on average thinner than they are now, it would require 46 benches. Newspapers accounts of the station over the years have described the waiting room area has having rows and rows of benches. Even as late as 1961, when rail travel was in decline in the dawning of the age of commercial air travel and the interstate highway system, a Republican article described a near-empty station with "row on row of the great benches, worn smooth by thousands who had lingered there." A Jan. 16, 2015 file photo of benches from the original train station at left as work gets underway at the Union Station building. The long wooden benches were a staple of Union Station from the day it opened in 1926. They sat idle in the station for more than 20 years and as renovation of the station ramped up, they went missing. The benches were to be a key part of the renovation project. They were going to be refurbished and set up in the main hall, similar to the station project in New Haven. The rehab of Union Station was intended to draw heavily on the station's history, Kennedy said. The benches were to serve a functional role in allowing people to sit, but they were also supposed to harken back to the station's heyday, just like the restored barber's chair, the old incoming and departing chalkboard, and the antique clock. "That is the frustrating part of all of this," Kennedy said. With the construction ongoing, Union Station is a beehive of activity during the day. At night it is locked up. But prior to the start of construction, Union Station in 2012 was empty and abandoned, much as it had been since the mid-1970s. "Given the size of the benches, getting them out of there would be no small task," Kennedy said. "They would have to have a truck to get them out of there." Moskal said it would be difficult to drive a truck up to the abandoned station without someone noticing. "You couldn't just take the benches out without someone saying, 'What's going on?'" he said. Kennedy said the missing benches, if in good condition, would fetch a high price in the antiques circuit. As an example, the restored original barber chair that is being returned to Union Station had an estimated worth of $5,000. "You can imagine what a bench - or 10 benches - would be worth," he said. Peter Imler of Stanton Auctions, an auctioneering and appraising business in Hampden that specializes in antique furniture, said he is not sure what each of the benches would be worth. Looking at a Republican file photo of one of the benches that was in good condition, he said he would probably appraise its worth at $2,500. That estimate is due to its size, which he said would likely limit the field of prospective buyers. "It's hard to place a realistic value on something like this because at its size it is not really a household antique and therefore has a limited appeal from a usage standpoint," he said. "In other words, few people would be looking at this and saying, 'Gee, this would look nice in my home.'" Using Moskal's count of 30 to 40 benches, if each were worth $2,500, the total haul would be worth $75,000 to $100,000 Kennedy and Moskal said that minus the original benches, Union Station will have to purchase more modern furniture. "The cost of replacing them would be astronomical," Moskal said. Moskal said the plan for the past few years has been to make the main concourse a multi-use facility. During the day when traffic is higher, there will be tables and chairs for travelers. At night when traffic is less, the facility could be used for special events and the tables and chairs could be moved out of the way. It is nearing the point where they need to order furniture in time for the station's opening in December, he said. If more benches were available, Moskal said they would be incorporated into the finished station. "Would we use them? Without a doubt," he said. "We would reuse them in a minute." He said they would not fit in with the plans for the multi-use concourse, but they could be used elsewhere in the building. In the months since they were discovered missing, Moskal said SRDA staff, sometimes aboveboard and sometimes incognito, have tried to find traces of the benches. They've checked eBay, craigslist and other social media. They've gone to tag sales and flea markets, and reached out to antiques dealers and pawn shops. And the end result was to find nothing. Not a trace. "We couldn't get anyone to say, 'We got some benches,'" he said. "We did as much as we could," he said. "But they are gone. Gone."

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crime

Metaverse predator caught in first-ever virtual sexual assault case. Heres how rape culture is spilling into VR.

Investigation into Dedham stabbing that ended with 1 dead continues Share Copy Link Copy PEOPLE INVOLVED ARE ALL CONNECTED. MATT. WELL, DOUG, THE NORFOLK COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY GAVE AN UPDATE LATE LAST NIGHT SAYING THOSE TWO FEMALES ARE RECOVERING IN BOSTON AREA HOSPITALS WHILE INVESTIGATORS TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW THIS ALL HAPPENED. NOW, POLICE SAY THEY RECEIVED A911 PHONE CALL AROUND 6:00 LAST NIGHT ABOUT A STABBING AT A HOME ON JACKSON POND ROAD. ANOTHER CALLER TOLD OFFICERS THERE WAS A MAN IN SERIOUS DISTRESS AROUND THE CORNER ON COUNTRY CLUB ROAD. OFFICERS SAY THEY HAD TO TASE AND PEPPER SPRAY. THAT MAN TO SUBDUE HIM AND THAT WHEN HE STARTED TO SHOW EVEN MORE SIGNS OF PHYSICAL DISTRESS. LIFE SAVING MEASURES WERE TAKEN. AND THE DA SAYS THE MAN DIED AT THE HOSPITAL. IT WAS QUITE OBVIOUS TO ANYBODY WHO SAW HIM THAT HE HE WAS HAVING SOME ISSUES. HE NEEDED HELP OF SOME KIND AND HE NEEDED ASSISTANCE. AND THEY TRIED TO OBVIOUSLY DO THAT. AND TRIED TO TALK WITH THEM. AND THAT OBVIOUSLY BECAME A CHALLENGE. NOW, THE DA SAYS THE MAN AND THE TWO FEMALES STABBED ARE RELATED, BUT DIDN’T SAY HOW THEIR IDENTITIES AND AGES HAVE NOT BEEN RELEASED. THE DEDHAM POLICE CHIEF SAYS HE IS CONFIDENT THIS IS AN ISOLATED INCIDENT AND THERE IS NO ONGOING THREAT TO THE PUBLIC REPOR GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. Your Email Address Submit Privacy Notice

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crime

After Rise in Murders During the Pandemic, a Sharp Decline in 2023

Sign up for Reckon’s latest newsletter dedicated to the fight for reproductive justice, a weekly repro rundown covering the good, the fair-to-middlin' and the ugly in repro news. Enter your email to subscribe to Reproductive Justice with Reckon. TRIGGER WARNING: This story mentions physical and virtual sexual assault. UK police are currently investigating a sexual assault case that is the first of its kind: the rape of a minor in the metaverse. The Daily Mail reported on Jan. 1 that a girl, described as under the age of 16, was in an online room with other users, wearing a virtual reality headset, when her avatar was gang raped by several adult males online. Though there was no physical harm, officers said that she’s experiencing the same psychological trauma that occurs when someone is raped in the real world. According to Wired, the metaverse doesn’t refer to one specific platform, but rather a way we interact with technology, including virtual reality and augmented reality, similar to the concept of “cyberspace.” Tech Target describes the metaverse as the next iteration of the internet, in which we experience a shared and immersive virtual space. Though the concept is newer to some consumers, experts are predicting mass growth of these virtual worlds. Research by Pew Research Center and Elon University in 2022 found that 54% of 624 tech experts, innovators, researchers, and developers said that by 2040 they expect the metaverse to be a more refined, full-immersive and well functioning aspect of daily life for half a billion people globally. Virtual assault and victim-blaming Psychotherapist and vice president of Metaverse Research for Kabuni, Nina Jane Patel documented her own virtual assault experience on Medium, which is very similar to the UK minor’s. Patel he described being verbally and sexually assaulted by 3 or 4 male avatars who virtually gang raped her avatar in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, previously Horizon Venues. According to Patel, the immersive experience and embodiment connected to a user’s avatar, which is essentially their virtual body, causes users to feel similar sensations towards their virtual body and environment. “When you put on a headset and enter a virtual world, you’re engaging from the top of your head to the tips of your toes with other avatars in the virtual environment. The technology has developed such that it feels very authentic and natural. It feels and is perceived as very real,” Patel wrote in The Telegraph after the latest case broke. Patel even says she experienced questions of the validity of her experience and victim-blaming responses, telling her that she should have just removed her headset or that she deserved it – what many rape victims face in the physical world. It was the same old victim-blaming story that plays out in the real world: the equivalent of ‘just don’t wear the miniskirt and high heels,” she wrote. “I knew what I had felt, but I started to question myself: I must have done something wrong; been in the wrong space; clicked the wrong button. I started to blame myself; perhaps this brave young girl who reported the alleged incident to the police did as well.” This isn’t a new or uncommon phenomenon.According to a VR research project led by behavioral scientist Jessica Outlaw, 49% of women who identify as regular users reported being sexually harassed at least once. Users reporting virtual assault trace back to 2016, when VR became more readily available to consumers. In October 2016, a female gamer using the name Jordan Belamire also took to Medium to detail her experience of being virtual groped on QuiVr, an archery game. “I’ve been groped in real life, once in a Starbucks in broad daylight. I know what it’s like to happen in person… The shock and disgust I felt [in QuiVr] was not too far off from that,” she told CNN. The internet and kids The impact of the internet and social media on children is constantly debated. For example, the current “10-year-olds in Sephora” conversation questions whether social media is driving young girls to grow up too quickly as they consume makeup and skincare videos posted by their favorite influencers. In May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning on the impact of social media on children’s mental health, stating that there is less evidence suggesting the safety of social media than dangers it poses to children’s mental health. “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address,” he said. Internal research conducted by Facebook in 2021 – and exposed by the Wall Street Journal – showed that the company is aware that it makes body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls. But immersion takes these experiences to the next level, blurring the lines between the physical virtual worlds and companies are banking on children’s interest in technology. Meta is currently marketing towards a younger audience. In April 2023, Meta’s main VR social app Horizon Worlds lowered its age requirement from 18 to 13, and two months later it lowered the age recommendation for its VR headsets from 13 to 10, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. These are still considered the early days of virtual reality, with only 29% of U.S. teens currently owning a VR headset, but the Institute of Engineering and Technology predicts that the next generation of children will spend over 2 hours 45 minutes in VR a day, adding up to 10 years over their lifetimes. A bipartisan group of 42 U.S. attorney generals banded together in October to sue Meta, claiming that Facebook and Instagram are addictive and aimed at children. “This is a tough time in America. We have polarization the likes of which we have not seen since the Civil War,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said at a press conference. “And so for all of the attorneys general from both parties, people who frequently disagree very vocally and very publicly, to all come together and to move in the same direction, I think that says something.”