The attack happened on the morning of April 11, when 44-year-old Anthony Griffin, who police say had shouted “I am Lucifer,” attacked three people at the station in roughly one minute, according to police, as reported by the New York Post. Griffin had carried a roughly 17-inch machete and began the rampage after leaving the 7 train before moving to the 4/5/6 train platform, the Post reports. A 65-year-old man caught up in the attack suffered severe head lacerations and a skull fracture.

According to the petition, Sumulong and Fermin were forced to search for NYPD officers on the platform themselves, only finding them after leaving the platform and reaching the general concourse. The proposed notice of claim accuses the city and its agencies of failing to immediately stop the assailant and keep subway platforms safe. Sumulong and Fermin have since developed post-traumatic stress disorder and are, per the petition, terrified of riding the subway again.

How the NYPD Says It Responded

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has defended the police response, saying officers gave clear commands, attempted to de-escalate and acted to protect New Yorkers, and that they confronted an armed individual who had injured multiple people and remained a threat. Body-camera footage released in May, according to the Post, shows police ordered Griffin to drop the machete more than 24 times before officers fired two shots, killing him. The Associated Press reported separately that Detective Ryan Giuffre fired those shots after commanding Griffin to drop the weapon over 20 times during an encounter lasting about one minute, with responding detectives identified as Ryan Giuffre and Anthony Manetta.

Griffin had three prior unsealed arrests but no documented history with the department as an emotionally disturbed person, Tisch said at an April press conference reported by The Guardian. Surveillance footage showed Griffin had entered the subway system in Queens at the Vernon Boulevard station around 9:30 a.m. that day before traveling to Grand Central and slashing his first victim on the 7 train platform, according to the same account. During the confrontation, Griffin reportedly yelled, “Shoot me, please!”

A Steep Legal Climb Against the City

Because Sumulong and Fermin missed the 90-day notice-of-claim deadline required under New York's General Municipal Law § 50-e for suing public entities like the city, the NYPD or the MTA, they must first convince a judge to let them file late. Attorney Joseph Napoli called the incident a classic case of inadequate security at a major New York City station, according to the Post. His firm, Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, said the victims are focusing on recovery and are not providing interviews or statements; Sumulong, Fermin and their attorney declined further comment.

Under the statute, judges weigh whether public agencies had actual knowledge of the essential facts within that 90-day window and whether the delay would substantially prejudice their defense, according to legal analysis published by the St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. Even if the late filing is approved, longstanding New York Court of Appeals precedent — including *Weiner v. MTA* and *Cuffy v. City of New York* — holds that transit authorities and municipal agencies generally owe no duty to protect individual riders from third-party criminal assaults unless a plaintiff can establish a special relationship with police, according to Justia Law. City Hall and the MTA did not return requests for comment on the petition.

A Spring of Subway Violence, and a Summer Uptick

The Grand Central attack triggered an immediate tactical shift within the NYPD Transit Bureau, which reassigned roughly 175 officers directly onto station platforms and train cars rather than keeping them stationed at fare turnstiles, as Hoodline reported at the time. It was followed by a string of other Midtown-area slashings that Hoodline has since covered, including an attack near 190th Street, another near 49th Street, and a stabbing near Bryant Park in August.

The lawsuit petition also lands amid conflicting narratives about subway safety. In December 2025, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a $77 million state commitment for enhanced NYPD subway patrols into 2026, touting that major transit crime in 2025 had reached its lowest non-pandemic level in 16 years, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But NYPD transit statistics released in August show major transit crime rose 10.9% in July compared with the same month last year, driven by grand larcenies and felony assaults, nearly 20% of which involved elderly riders, according to FOX 5 New York. For Sumulong and Fermin, both of whom are seniors themselves, that statistical backdrop underscores the stakes of their fight to hold the city accountable for what happened on the platform that morning.

According to U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer, Spitzer participated in a scheme that began in June 2020, when he conspired with Mendel Deutsch and Joshua Feldberger to defraud a mortgage lender out of $4.5 million tied to three properties in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. As reported by NBC10 Philadelphia, prosecutors say Spitzer made it appear that he owned the three properties and had agreed to sell them to Deutsch, when in fact the men had created fake documentation to falsely transfer control of the properties to Spitzer in the first place. The properties involved included addresses at 306 and 308 Malcolm X Boulevard, according to The Real Deal.

Feldberger facilitated the fraudulent transaction as the owner of the settlement company that handled the deal, prosecutors say — that company being Universal Abstract, a title insurance and settlement agency based in Lakewood, New Jersey, industry outlet Marketproof has reported. With the fake paperwork in place, Deutsch obtained a $4.5 million mortgage loan, and the trio made false statements to the lender claiming the settlement company had received more than $2 million from Deutsch at closing. Those false statements led the lender to fund the loan, and the proceeds were then used to cover Deutsch's supposed down payment, which had never actually been paid. The lender defrauded in the transaction was ConnectOne Bank, per The Real Deal's reporting.

A Pattern of Forged Deals Across Two States

The Bedford-Stuyvesant transaction was not an isolated incident. Officials say Spitzer was also responsible for losses tied to five additional fraudulent loan schemes carried out in 2019 and 2020, which together totaled more than $10 million. As part of that broader pattern, Spitzer, Deutsch and Feldberger created and sent letters falsely stating that Deutsch had deposited significant funds into escrow accounts that in reality held no such money.

Federal prosecutors previously detailed that the wider scheme involved identifying properties in New Jersey and Brooklyn that carried little or no existing mortgage debt, then forging the true owners' signatures to secure loans against those properties, according to the Department of Justice. The loans were then allowed to default, exposing the legitimate property owners to the threat of foreclosure and eviction, even though they had no knowledge the fraudulent loans existed.

A Second Scheme Exploited Pandemic Relief Funds

Beyond the mortgage fraud, Spitzer also fraudulently obtained approximately $1.8 million in government loans intended for small businesses distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer. He obtained Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which carried a maximum loan amount of $2 million, for businesses that had little or no actual operations. Qualifying small businesses were required to submit applications detailing information about their operations, employees, revenues or expenses, but officials say Spitzer submitted applications containing false statements about employee counts, revenues, cost of goods sold or lost rents. He also laundered some of the proceeds from the EIDL fraud, according to officials.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, had authorized the Small Business Administration to provide Economic Injury Disaster Loans to eligible small businesses struggling amid pandemic shutdowns. Spitzer's case is part of a much larger national pattern: a June 2023 report by the SBA Office of Inspector General estimated that more than $200 billion — roughly 17% of all COVID-19 EIDL and Paycheck Protection Program funds disbursed — went to potentially fraudulent applicants, out of more than $1.1 trillion in total pandemic relief funds distributed nationwide, per the Congressional Research Service.

That kind of delayed reckoning is possible because Congress passed the COVID-19 EIDL Fraud Statute of Limitations Act in August 2022, extending the window for prosecuting Economic Injury Disaster Loan fraud from five years to ten, the Congressional Research Service notes. The extension applies to both criminal prosecutions and civil enforcement actions, which explains why loans issued in 2020 and 2021 are still generating federal charges years later. As Hoodline has reported, federal prosecutors nationwide had charged more than 3,000 defendants in COVID-19 pandemic relief fraud cases through late 2024, achieving an 82% conviction rate, with more than 80% of those convicted receiving federal prison time.

Co-Defendants Already Pleaded Guilty

Spitzer was the last of the three co-defendants to reach a plea agreement. Feldberger pleaded guilty to bank fraud conspiracy on October 22, 2025, and Deutsch pleaded guilty to bank and wire fraud conspiracy on November 13, 2025, both admitting their roles before U.S. District Judge Edward S. Kiel, according to the FDIC Office of Inspector General. Deutsch is scheduled to be sentenced on October 6, 2026, while Feldberger is still awaiting a new sentencing date.

Bank and wire fraud conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine, while money laundering carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As part of his plea, Spitzer agreed to pay $1 million to the true owner of the Brooklyn properties and at least $1,845,400 to the SBA, and he agreed to pay full restitution to victims of the scheme. He further agreed to forfeit $2.25 million connected to the bank and wire fraud conspiracy and an additional $100,000 tied to laundering the fraudulent EIDL proceeds, for a total forfeiture of $2.35 million. Spitzer is scheduled to be sentenced on December 21, 2026.

The case fits into a broader joint enforcement push by the Department of Justice and the Federal Housing Finance Agency targeting commercial mortgage fraud schemes built on falsified ownership records and inflated financials, The Real Deal reports, with regulators increasingly focused on non-owner property claims and related-party transactions across the region's commercial real estate market.

The pairing marks Williams' first appearance at the US Open since 2022, and it comes just five days after she and sister Venus lost their first-round doubles match to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns at the Cincinnati Open, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Williams returned to tennis this past summer after stepping away from the sport, playing singles at Wimbledon along the way. She has not said whether she will also play singles at the US Open, even though the USTA is holding a women's wild card open for her if she chooses to compete, the Chronicle reports.

A Star-Studded Reimagined Event

The mixed doubles event Williams and Alcaraz are entering looks nothing like the sleepy sideshow it once was. Reimagined in 2025 as a 16-team showcase held during Fan Week with a $1 million prize pool, the US Open Mixed Doubles Championship earned the Sports Breakthrough of the Year award at the 2026 Sports Business Journal Awards, according to USOpen.org. The format uses short sets to four games and a 10-point match tiebreak in place of a third set, a quicker structure designed to fit inside Fan Week programming while still drawing top singles talent.

That overhaul appears to be working. The 2026 main draw features world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka paired with Novak Djokovic, 2025 runners-up Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, and Elena Rybakina with Taylor Fritz, per USOpen.org. Organizers also added an eight-team qualifying event this year to award two final main-draw spots, underscoring how competitive the event has become since its relaunch.

Alcaraz's Long Road Back From Injury

Williams will be walking onto the court with a partner who has not played a competitive match since April. Alcaraz has been sidelined by a right wrist injury he suffered at the Barcelona Open, a setback that forced him to miss Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the Cincinnati Open, as Hoodline previously reported. He spent weeks with the wrist immobilized in a cast during his rehabilitation before announcing his return to defend his US Open singles title.

Alcaraz enters New York with an eye-popping résumé at Flushing Meadows regardless of the layoff. He holds an 88.9 percent match winning percentage, a 24-3 record across five appearances, the highest men's singles win rate at the tournament in the Open Era, according to Xtreme Tennis News. He won US Open singles titles in 2022 and 2025, and in February he completed a career Grand Slam by winning the Australian Open, becoming the youngest man in tennis history to capture all four major singles titles at age 22 years and 272 days after beating Novak Djokovic in four sets in the Melbourne final, according to Sky News.

Williams' Own History In Mixed Doubles

Williams is no stranger to success in this particular event. She won two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles in 1998, at Wimbledon and the US Open, both while partnering Belarusian player Max Mirnyi as a 16-year-old, per the WTA. In fact, that Wimbledon mixed doubles title was her first career Grand Slam trophy. Across every discipline, Williams holds 39 total Grand Slam titles: 23 singles majors, 14 women's doubles titles won with Venus, and the two mixed doubles crowns, the WTA notes.

Her path back to competitive tennis this year has been anything but smooth. At 44, Williams made her competitive return in June at Queen's Club and then at Wimbledon after stepping away following the 2022 US Open, according to The Independent. Her Wimbledon singles return was cut short by a first-round injury, and last week's Cincinnati doubles loss with Venus marked the sisters' first non-Grand Slam WTA appearance together in a decade, since neither had played a tour-level event below a major or the Olympics since 2016.

What Comes Next At Flushing Meadows

The mixed doubles main draw is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday during Fan Week, with matches broadcasting live on ESPN2 and ESPN+ and reserved seating available in Arthur Ashe Stadium, per USOpen.org. Fan Week grounds admission remains free for fans wanting to watch practice courts and qualifying matches in person.

What remains unresolved is whether this will be a one-off doubles cameo or the start of a fuller comeback. Williams has not said whether she intends to use the singles wild card the USTA is holding for her, leaving open the possibility that her appearance alongside Alcaraz could turn into a full-fledged singles return at the tournament where she once dominated.

According to MyNewsLA.com, the male suspect wore a ski mask along with a gray, brown and green flannel shirt, while the female suspect was dressed in a black hat and a black dress, according to LAPD. The two were armed with the pocket knife, per an LAPD spokesperson, and left the premises with stolen goods before officers could catch up to them. No injuries were reported, according to the outlet's report.

A Familiar Address for Retail Crime

This is not the first time this exact Ross location has drawn police attention. In August 2023, two men stole merchandise from the same store in front of employees, an incident that led the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to file organized retail theft and grand theft charges, according to CBS News. That earlier case helped prompt the LAPD's Commercial Crimes Division to launch an Organized Retail Crime Task Force later that month, aimed specifically at coordinated retail hits and commercial robberies across the city.

The store sits inside the Ivy Station commercial complex near the border of West Los Angeles and Culver City, adjacent to the Metro E Line's Culver City station, according to Patch. The transit-adjacent location places it along a stretch of Venice Boulevard that has seen other recent public safety incidents, including a hit-and-run involving a bicyclist earlier this month.

What Suspects Could Face Under State Law

Taking property from a business through force or fear is prosecuted in California as second-degree robbery under Penal Code sections 211 and 212.5, a felony carrying a state prison sentence of two, three, or five years, according to the Palmdale Criminal Defense Law Firm. Because the suspects allegedly used a knife during the robbery, they could also face a mandatory, consecutive one-year sentence enhancement under Penal Code section 12022(b)(1), which applies when someone personally uses a dangerous or deadly weapon while committing a felony, per the Shouse California Law Group.

The case also lands amid a period of aggressive local enforcement against repeat retail theft. California voters passed Proposition 36 in November 2024, letting prosecutors file felony petty theft charges under Penal Code section 666.1 against shoplifters with two or more prior theft convictions, regardless of how much merchandise was stolen, as CalMatters reported. Between December 2024 and May 2025, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office filed more than 1,000 Proposition 36 felony theft charges against repeat offenders across the county.

A Broader Pattern Across Southern California

Statewide, the California Highway Patrol's Organized Retail Crime Task Force conducted more than 4,500 investigations, made over 5,100 arrests, and recovered 1.6 million stolen items worth over $74.6 million between 2019 and mid-2026, according to the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. Hoodline has previously reported on the task force's local hauls, and Ross stores in particular have been targeted before, including an alleged family-run theft ring broken up in Ventura County in 2024.

Citywide, commercial robberies like Friday's remain part of a larger crime picture even as overall violence trends downward. The LAPD's 2025 Crime Data Report, released in February, showed homicides fell 19 percent last year to their lowest level since 1966, though the department still logged 7,213 total robberies across Los Angeles during the year. In its most recent SEC filing, Ross Stores, Inc. acknowledged that inventory shrinkage tied to organized retail crime and professional theft remains an ongoing risk to operations and store safety across its more than 2,000 discount locations nationwide.

It remains unclear how much merchandise the two suspects made off with Friday night, whether store surveillance video captured their faces, or whether investigators are linking the robbery to other recent incidents in West Los Angeles. LAPD has not announced any arrests in the case.

Alvelo brings roughly 20 years of professional cooking experience to the venture, according to Secret NYC, and Pizza Pod frequently sets up near that Hell's Kitchen corner as well as outside Brooklyn breweries. Before launching the mobile pizzeria, he worked with the NFL and the New York Stock Exchange, per facts detailed in CNBC. Now he's the sole chef, delivery driver, dishwasher, mechanic, salesperson, accountant and social media manager behind Pizza Pod, bringing on a small team only for larger events.

From Backyard Grill to Trunk-Mounted Oven

The idea for Pizza Pod took shape after Alvelo was gifted a portable outdoor pizza oven, he told 1010 WINS in an August broadcast interview, building on roughly 15 years he'd already spent baking pizzas on outdoor grills. That gift eventually evolved into a commercial setup: Pizza Pod's mobile kitchen uses portable Ooni pizza ovens integrated into the trunk of the Smart car, powered by a front-mounted generator, according to a technical feature by NEPA Pizza Review.

Smart cars completely exited the North American market after the 2019 model year, making Fortwo conversions like Alvelo's increasingly rare, per local reporting cited by ABC7NY. The car's compact size, however, works in his favor on crowded New York City streets, where parking a standard food truck is often nearly impossible.

A Menu Built on Puerto Rican Roots and 72-Hour Dough

Pizza Pod's dough ferments for 72 hours and uses a blend of Italian double-zero flour and bread flour, according to CNBC. The menu has grown from a simplified three-pizza lineup Alvelo said he needed at launch, given the severe space constraints of working inside a two-seater car, to include cheese, guava pepperoni, truffle and mushroom, creamy artichoke and garlic, and ham and hot honey pies. The guava pepperoni pizza reflects Alvelo's Puerto Rican heritage, and pies sell for $16 to $20 each.

Alvelo said he can tell from customers' reactions alone whether they love or hate his pizza, and Pizza Pod has built a base of returning customers. The business averages about $12,000 in gross sales per month, with roughly 65% of that total coming in cash. Since March, Pizza Pod has generated about $24,000 in gross sales through card payments on Square, per CNBC's reporting.

Dodging Sky-High Manhattan Rents

Operating from a Smart car lets Alvelo sidestep Manhattan storefront costs, which commercial real estate reports show routinely range from $8,000 to more than $20,000 per month, as reported by ABC7NY. New York City's mobile food vending permits remain tightly capped, though Local Law 18 of 2021 and 2026 legislation authorized 2,200 new supervisory licenses annually starting in July, according to the NYC Health Department. That regulatory bottleneck has pushed many street entrepreneurs toward pop-ups, catering deals and private partnerships instead of full-term vending permits.

Pizza Pod fits into a much larger workforce: an estimated 20,000 of New York City's 23,000 total street vendors work as mobile food vendors across the five boroughs, per a report by the Immigration Research Initiative cited in City Council legislative records. Alvelo grows his business through pop-ups, catering, private events and partnerships, setting up at coffee shops, wine bars, breweries, street fairs, and corporate gatherings across the city.

Viral Crowds and a Brick-and-Mortar Dream

Pizza Pod has become something of a social media sensation, with WABC documenting frequent sidewalk crowds gathering across Manhattan and Brooklyn just to watch stone-fired pies bake out of a trunk. Alvelo treats the Smart car setup as a test batch phase, according to NBC26, with his long-term goal being an eventual brick-and-mortar pizzeria in New York City.

Alvelo is the father of a son named Axel, who is about to turn 3. He said people don't need the perfect space or unlimited resources to begin building something, a philosophy that's carried a two-seater car and two trunk-mounted ovens from a novelty pop-up to a business with returning customers across two boroughs.

The panel, which delivers power to the entire building at 2140 Kuhio Avenue, failed after the storm's rain intruded into the building's electrical systems, according to Hawaii News Now. Pam Cohen, a resident on the building's 20th floor, told the station she brought up all her water and food and tried not to use the bathroom during the outage, eventually opting to stay at a hotel instead. She said she felt especially for people unable to use the stairs, since the building's elevators were also affected by the outage.

Why the Water Went Out Too

The loss of running water alongside electricity was not a coincidence. In Hawaii high-rise buildings, municipal water reaches upper floors only through electrically powered booster pumps, meaning outages lasting more than six to eight hours typically knock out running water once a building's storage tanks empty, according to Hawaiʻi Public Radio. That mechanical link meant Four Paddle's six-day power failure became, almost immediately, a six-day water failure as well.

Built in 1974, the Four Paddle Condos tower contains 250 studio and one-bedroom units, according to HIcondos.com. Thomas Hall, who works for Submeter Hawaii, said property managers should check and seal potential leaks near power sources, noting that building openings near electrical equipment can cause water intrusion and catastrophic failure. Hall also advised buildings to prepare for changing weather and another approaching storm.

Residents Say Communication Fell Short

Summer Richardson said the power outage made digital communication difficult because the building's management systems were down along with everything else, and residents broadly felt that management's communication during the crisis was insufficient. Cohen said property managers should communicate contingency plans clearly to residents before the next hurricane, and that property managers should review those plans before storm season returns.

Stephanie Shinno, who works for Guardian Management and recently became the new property manager for Four Paddle Condos, arranged emergency repairs with an electrical contractor to get the building back online. Guardian Management, a Honolulu-based firm founded in 2019 that handles site management and maintenance for Association of Apartment Owners properties, told residents it was working as quickly as possible given the circumstances, per Hawaii News Now.

Part of a Wider Waikiki Pattern

Four Paddle was not the only Waikiki tower knocked offline by Lala. At Canterbury Place, a 41-story building on Ena Road, a backup generator failure left residents without electricity, running water, or working elevators for days, as Hoodline previously reported. Both incidents unfolded against a backdrop of severe storm damage across the island; Tropical Storm Lala left more than 200,000 utility customers statewide without power, including roughly 130,000 in Honolulu County alone, according to the Hindustan Times.

The scale of the outages strained repair crews across Oahu, complicating efforts to dispatch specialized electrical contractors to individual high-rises. The Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation reported road washouts on Māmalahoa Highway in Pāhala and extensive flooding that downed utility lines across Oahu, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island. The City and County of Honolulu had fully activated its Emergency Operations Center and opened eight hurricane refuge centers as the storm brought damaging winds and flood threats to the island, according to the Office of the Mayor.

Aging Towers Face Mounting Pressure

Four Paddle's struggles also point to broader challenges facing Waikiki's older residential stock. Under Honolulu Ordinances 18-14 and 19-4, residential high-rises built on Oahu before 1975 must undergo Life Safety Evaluation assessments and implement fire sprinkler retrofits or alternative safety upgrades, with roughly 80% to 90% of eligible buildings requiring upgrades under initial municipal assessments, per the Honolulu City Council. That regulatory and financial pressure sits alongside the kind of routine maintenance failures that left Four Paddle's residents in the dark.

Hawaii's hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, and high-rise safety guidance calls for multi-story residents to clear lanais 48 hours before storms and keep 14-day emergency kits on hand, given the elevated risks upper-floor occupants face from stairwell reliance and heat buildup during extended outages. For residents like Cohen, the six days without power at Four Paddle offered a preview of exactly those risks — and a reminder that, with more storms still possible this season, building management's next contingency plan may be put to the test again.

The incident, first reported by MyNewsLA.com, remains an open investigation, with detectives working from physical evidence at the scene rather than a cooperative victim or witness account. No arrests have been announced, and police have not released a suspect description tied to this case.

A Pattern of Late-Night Gunfire in Central Long Beach

This is not an isolated event for the corridor. Just six days earlier, officers responded to another so-called “no-hit” shooting on August 15 in the 1200 block of Pine Avenue, less than a mile away, where they recovered physical evidence of gunfire but no reported injuries, according to the City of Long Beach. In both cases, the suspects fled before police arrived, leaving investigators to reconstruct what happened from shell casings and scene evidence alone.

The 1000 block of Long Beach Boulevard itself has a documented history of violence. On December 9, 2025, police responded to a physical altercation on the same block that escalated into a stabbing, leaving an adult male hospitalized with upper-body wounds, per city records. Further back, homicide detectives investigated a fatal shooting there on June 27, 2023, that killed 64-year-old Isaac Marshell IV and eventually led to multiple arrests. In June 2024, that stretch of the boulevard was shut down for four hours during a SWAT standoff after a woman pointed a replica firearm at a security guard and officers inside an apartment building before surrendering, with SWAT deploying gas after de-escalation efforts failed.

How “No-Hit” Shootings Get Prosecuted

Cases like Friday's present a distinct legal challenge because no victim was struck. Under California law, discharging a firearm without hitting anyone can be charged under Penal Code Section 246.3 for negligent discharge, a “wobbler” offense punishable by up to three years in custody, or escalated to a felony under Section 246 if the gunfire was aimed at an occupied structure or vehicle, according to the Shouse Law Group. Whether either charge applies here depends on facts investigators have not yet disclosed.

The Long Beach Police Department maintains an online blotter that publishes daily recap reports of overnight shootings and stabbings, offering early transparency even while investigations are still underway. That practice explains why suspect descriptions and motives in cases like this are often marked simply as “under investigation” in the earliest releases.

Citywide Progress Against a Local Hotspot

The shooting comes even as Long Beach's broader crime numbers have been trending sharply downward. The city recorded a 36% reduction in shootings and a 26% decrease in homicides in 2025 compared to the prior year, marking five-year lows in citywide gun violence, per city data. Yet incidents like Friday's underscore how gains at the citywide level can coexist with persistent trouble spots along specific commercial corridors.

City officials have responded with a data-driven public safety plan launched in 2026 that targets commercial hotspots within 500 feet of alcohol-licensed businesses and smoke shops, aiming to curb late-night violent crime through walking beats and bike teams deployed during peak-risk hours. Long Beach has also pointed to demographic data showing that adults ages 18 to 29 account for 43% of assault-with-a-deadly-weapon victims citywide, a statistic driving intervention programs such as S.T.R.O.N.G. Beach and PATH, which pair law enforcement with job training and youth development.

Long Beach police patrol officers field an average of 594 calls for service per day citywide, with an average response time of 5.8 minutes, according to the Signal Tribune. That workload offers some context for how quickly a suspect can flee a scene before officers arrive, as happened both on Pine Avenue and now on Long Beach Boulevard. The investigation into Friday's shooting remains ongoing, and no further details on a possible suspect have been released.

The Guggenheim says its chain of ownership is clear: Solomon R. Guggenheim bought the painting from London's Gallery Zwemmer in 1936, and it was recorded under his name in Christian Zervos's 1949 Picasso catalog. The 13.5-by-10.5-inch oil-on-canvas piece was on loan to the University of Pittsburgh for a campus exhibition when it vanished, and it was due back at the Guggenheim by the end of February 1961. According to the New York Post, a University of Pittsburgh student first reported the theft from the student union building on February 6, 1961, and the disappearance made the front page of the campus paper, The Pitt News, two days later.

A Trail That Went Cold for Decades

Police and the FBI opened an investigation into the theft in 1961, and museums across North America were alerted to be on the lookout for the missing painting, per the Post's reporting. Authorities offered a $100 reward for information at the time — a modest sum even then, given that the painting itself was estimated to be worth as much as $100,000 in 1961. The trail then went cold for more than six decades.

The painting resurfaced only in 2023, when a Christie's researcher discovered it while evaluating a possible private sale for the Handlers, who had purchased it from the now-shuttered Manhattan gallery Beadleston Fine Art in 1999. Beadleston Fine Art closed in 2002. Christie's alerted the Guggenheim, and the museum formally demanded the painting's return that August — a demand the Handlers rejected, according to Artlyst. The painting has remained in storage at Christie's while the dispute has dragged on.

How New York Law Shapes the Case

The lawsuit's viability rests heavily on a legal doctrine the Guggenheim itself helped create. In the 1991 case Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation v. Lubell, New York's highest court ruled that the three-year statute of limitations for recovering stolen art from a good-faith purchaser does not start running at the time of the theft or resale — it starts only when the true owner demands the work's return and is refused, according to Justia Law. That same ruling held that owners of stolen artwork have no obligation to actively search for missing pieces to preserve their legal claims, a standard that anticipates arguments defendants might raise about a museum's delay in locating its property.

That doesn't mean the Handlers are without options. Under New York law, possessors of stolen art can still raise an equitable defense known as laches if they can show the original owner unreasonably delayed demanding the work back after learning where it was, and that the delay caused them harm, according to the Harvard Law Review. Court papers reviewed by the Post do not establish that the Handlers knew the painting had been stolen when they bought it in 1999. Neither the Handlers nor attorneys for either side responded to the Post's inquiries.

Clearing the Museum's Own Title First

Before it could sue, the Guggenheim had to settle its own paperwork. After the 1961 theft, the museum had collected a $7,000 payout from its insurer, Chubb — a routine step that can otherwise cloud legal ownership of a recovered artwork until the proceeds are repaid. The Guggenheim repaid Chubb in full in late 2023 once the painting resurfaced, restoring its sole legal title, according to Hyperallergic.

A Guggenheim spokesperson said the museum has always been the painting's rightful owner and expects its recovery, per the Post. This is not the first time the institution has gone to court over a stolen piece from its own collection: in the late 1980s, the Guggenheim sued to recover Marc Chagall's 1912 gouache The Cattle Trader, which had been stolen by a mailroom employee two decades earlier. That earlier case produced the very Lubell ruling now underpinning the Picasso lawsuit.

A Honeymoon Painting Turned Legal Battleground

Picasso painted Femme dans un Fauteuil in 1918 during his Synthetic Cubist period, while honeymooning near Biarritz, France, with his first wife, Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, according to the same Hyperallergic report. Picasso, who died in 1973 at age 91, produced an estimated 50,000 works over a 78-year career — a body of work so vast that a single small canvas could vanish for six decades before its story caught up with it.

The painting's exact current value has not been publicly disclosed, though it is estimated to be worth millions of dollars today, a staggering jump from its 1961 valuation of between $10,000 and $60,000, according to the Economic Times. Lawrence Jay Handler is a practicing internal medicine physician in Massachusetts, while his wife, Wendy Cohen Handler, operates a private art and jewelry brokerage. How the painting traveled from a Pittsburgh student union in 1961 to a Manhattan gallery by 1999 remains unclear, leaving one of the case's central mysteries unresolved as the lawsuit moves forward.

The San Diego City Council is expected to give final approval to the payout on Tuesday, August 25, according to Times of San Diego. The sinkhole forced residents to leave the eight-unit complex, and city engineers ultimately red-tagged the building on October 3, 2023, declaring it unsafe for occupancy roughly six months after the pipe first gave way, according to CBS 8. That station's reporting indicates heavy machinery vibrations from repair work, combined with Tropical Storm Hilary, worsened the ground movement in the months before the red tag went up.

A Slow-Motion Collapse Beneath Gilman Drive

The city had responded to the initial failure by issuing a sole-source emergency contract worth up to $5.5 million to Orion Construction Corporation in May 2023, tasking the firm with replacing 70 linear feet of the collapsed 132-inch corrugated metal storm drain pipe buried 45 feet beneath the property, according to the City of San Diego. But the repair effort itself became part of the problem: another drainpipe failure caused the ground to sink further, and the same CBS 8 report on the lawsuit details allegations that heavy excavation machinery operated within feet of residents' balconies and caused building foundations to shift by up to seven inches.

Once displaced, 12 families across the complex were placed in city-funded hotel rooms while engineers conducted ground stabilization work and structural assessments that stretched past March 2025, per the same CBS 8 account. The homeowners association and seven condominium owners filed legal claims against the city and the construction company in 2024, alleging negligence tied to both the original pipe failure and the subsequent repair work.

What the Settlement Covers, and What It Doesn't

The $10 million deal headed to the council resolves the claims of the homeowners association and one condominium owner, but it does not close the book on the case. A separate lawsuit filed by the other condominium owners and some renters remains ongoing and is not part of this settlement, leaving open the question of how much more the city may ultimately pay out over the same sinkhole.

Legal exposure of this kind is difficult for California cities to avoid. Under inverse condemnation law derived from Article I, Section 19 of the California Constitution, local governments can be held strictly liable when public stormwater infrastructure fails and damages private property, regardless of whether negligence is ever proven, according to the Peterson Law Group. Property owners seeking to sue the city must first file a formal administrative claim with San Diego's Risk Management Department within six months of an incident, per the City of San Diego's Government Claims Act procedures.

Part of a Wider Pipe Network in Trouble

The Gilman Drive collapse was not an isolated failure. In February 2024, a separate emergency sinkhole opened along the same 132-inch storm drain trunk line at 8900 Villa La Jolla Drive, prompting the San Diego City Council to approve another emergency design-build contract with Orion Construction that eventually grew to more than $13 million, according to city council records.

The pattern points to a much larger financial hole. San Diego faced an estimated $1.6 billion budget deficit dedicated specifically to stormwater infrastructure as of January 2025, with an average annual funding shortfall of $274 million, according to San Diego Coastkeeper. A separate report from the city's Independent Budget Analyst projected the overall five-year infrastructure funding gap would exceed $6.5 billion in 2026, driven largely by aging post-World War II drainage and utility systems, as reported by FOX 5 San Diego.

This is not the first time such failures have hit the city's checkbook this year. In February, the San Diego City Council approved a $6.3 million settlement from its Public Liability Fund to reimburse 17 insurance companies for property claims tied to storm drain failures during January 2024 storms, as Hoodline previously reported. Taken together, the payouts suggest San Diego's deferred maintenance on aging pipes is increasingly being paid for not through routine capital budgets, but through settlements and liability reserves.

Windy Saturday With Mostly Sunny Skies

The National Weather Service Honolulu office expects mostly sunny conditions Saturday, with east-northeast winds between 15 and 21 mph and gusts as high as 29 mph, the National Weather Service reports. For most Honolulu residents, the main practical issue will be wind rather than rain, especially around exposed beaches, parks and outdoor gathering spots.

Saturday night stays warm near 79 degrees, with winds around 20 mph and gusts up to 28 mph. Isolated showers have a 20% chance and are most likely after midnight, so late-night plans may want a little flexibility.

Sunday Brings Gustier Winds And More Showers

Sunday starts with isolated showers before noon, then turns mostly sunny, with a high near 87 degrees. Winds will strengthen to 20 to 24 mph, with gusts up to 35 mph, making exposed trails, waterfronts and higher terrain feel noticeably rougher.

Sunday night is expected to be the wettest period for Honolulu, with scattered showers, mostly cloudy skies and a 50% chance of rain. Rainfall amounts could reach between a tenth and a quarter of an inch, while Monday keeps scattered showers in the forecast with a high near 87.

Boaters Face Rougher Waters

A Small Craft Advisory covers Oahu's windward and leeward waters and Kaiwi Channel through 6 p.m. Sunday. The National Weather Service says trade winds will build as Tropical Storm Moke passes south of the islands, with tropical-storm-force conditions possible in offshore waters, according to its marine forecast.

Big Island Flood Risk Is Higher

Honolulu is not under the Big Island Flood Watch, but Moke is expected to bring heavier, more persistent rain to windward and southeastern parts of the Big Island from late Saturday night through Monday afternoon. Forecast rainfall there ranges from 5 to 10 inches, with locally higher totals possible, while the other islands could see up to a few inches.

For Honolulu, the takeaway is a classic trade-wind weekend with stronger-than-usual gusts, mostly usable daytime weather and a better chance of passing showers after dark. More typical, drier trade-wind conditions are expected to return by Wednesday.

The $1,000,000 project, formally known as SFUSD Project #12367, involves exterior plaster repairs, swapping wood windows for aluminum ones, and removing lead-based paint from the building's exterior, according to bid records reviewed by the San Francisco Builders Exchange. As reported by The San Francisco Standard, a May 26 family newsletter told parents the work would be completed during summer break, and Phase 1 paint removal — covering the school's south and east elevations — was originally scheduled to run from June to October 2026. Neither that May newsletter nor last Tuesday's welcome-back email mentioned the word lead in the subject line or body text, per the outlet's review of the messages.

School officials told roughly 50 parents gathered for a 9 AM meeting Friday in the school auditorium that a late window delivery contributed to the delay, and Phase 1 work has now been pushed to December 30, 2026. Replacement windows aren't expected to arrive until October, and the Standard's reporting notes that window installation was delayed in part by the need to find a second replacement-window contractor. Phase 2 work, covering the north and west elevations, has also slipped, moving from an original June-to-October 2027 window to a new start date of August 30, 2027.

Parents Say They Were Kept In the Dark

Several parents told the Standard the district had not been transparent about the lead issue. One anonymous parent said the school had not shared remote instruction options and that, per an email reviewed by the outlet, some parents had found lead in the school yard themselves. That same parent said flatly that there was no communication from the district about what was happening.

Multiple families said they planned to keep their children home in the coming weeks until the district could demonstrate the campus was safe, and some pulled their kids from the school entirely during the first week of classes. An anonymous parent said she planned to keep her daughter home as well.

District Says Work Is Safe, Committed to Transparency

SFUSD said it takes seriously the health and safety of students, staff, and school communities, and said it is committed to transparency throughout the project, according to the Standard's reporting. The district said the exterior work will last two weeks and will occur outside school hours, and it uses a chemical-based stripping agent specifically to prevent toxic dust from spreading. Katrina Kincade told the outlet it is safe for students to be at school during the work. SFUSD had not, per an email cited by the Standard, provided families with an alternative location during the lead paint removal. An August FAQ distributed to families said the paint removal took longer than originally anticipated, while a May FAQ had said destructive work would occur during summer break.

The regulatory backdrop helps explain why the containment barriers and warning signs went up in the first place. San Francisco's Exterior Lead Paint Work Practices Ordinance, part of Building Code Chapter 36, requires contractors disturbing pre-1979 exterior painted surfaces to set up containment barriers, post warning signs, and notify nearby occupants rather than sanding or scraping paint in the open. Federal rules add another layer: under the EPA's Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule, elementary schools built before 1978 are classified as child-occupied facilities, meaning any work disturbing more than 20 square feet of exterior paint requires lead-safe certified firms and trained renovators. California's Lead-Safe Schools Protection Act similarly requires public school districts to use state-certified lead abatement workers and follow state health guidelines during repairs, a mandate lawmakers passed in 1992 after surveys found widespread lead paint in older California school buildings.

A 130-Year-Old Building With a History of Lead Concerns

The De Avila campus at 1250 Waller Street dates to 1896, when it opened as the Dudley Stone School and survived the 1906 earthquake and fire before later becoming William R. De Avila Elementary and, in 2009, one of SFUSD's Chinese immersion campuses. That age is precisely why lead paint remains embedded in the building's exterior surfaces; a survey cited by the Labor Occupational Health Program found lead paint present in roughly 96% of public elementary school buildings statewide, making De Avila's situation part of a broader pattern rather than an isolated one.

This isn't the district's first brush with lead concerns. SFUSD has previously found elevated lead levels in drinking water at three schools — West Portal Elementary, Malcolm X Elementary, and San Francisco International High School — in 2017. At International High's gym water fountain, testing that year found 860 parts per billion of lead, about 60 times the federal action threshold, prompting district officials to shut down the contaminated taps and provide bottled water during the shutdown.

The CDC maintains a blood lead reference value of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter to flag children with elevated blood lead levels, and the agency says no safe level of lead in a child's blood has been identified, since even small amounts can cause irreversible neurological damage. SFUSD's own health and safety guidelines acknowledge that children ages 1 to 6 are especially vulnerable to lead exposure and warn that even minor exposure can lead to learning and behavioral difficulties, which helps explain the intensity of the parent reaction this week.

The renovation delay comes as De Avila, a National Blue Ribbon School in 2021 and a three-time California Distinguished School honoree, serves roughly 400 students in grades TK through 5th. SFUSD has separately announced plans for a new wall-to-wall TK–8 Mandarin immersion school set to open for the 2027–28 academic year, part of a broader expansion of language immersion programming across the district.

According to the New York Post, the loft units in the gated building were originally designed as artist studios for Gehry, Arnoldi, and their friends when the complex was built in 1992. The current sellers, who purchased their unit for $1.33 million in 2014, are relocating to New York for work and told the outlet that, given the choice, they would never leave the loft.

Unit 2 in the same complex, currently listed separately at a comparable price point, was selected and reserved by Arnoldi himself as his personal studio space when he and Gehry co-developed the property, according to Dwell. That unit's listing also notes that original Gehry-designed furniture, cabinets, and shelving remain built into the property, a detail that underscores how much of the complex's original architectural character has survived intact across more than three decades.

Inside the Live-Work Layout

The listed loft is laid out as a minimalist triplex that resembles a townhouse more than a typical condo, per the Post. The main floor carries 17-foot ceilings and includes an open living room, dining area, and custom chef's kitchen finished with millwork, concrete countertops, and stainless steel appliances. A mezzanine level and third floor with 15-foot ceilings sit above, while the second floor has 12-foot ceilings.

The main bedroom occupies the entire upper floor and features panoramic Pacific vistas, a large walk-in closet, and a spa-like bath finished in marble slabs, the Post reports. Industrial-scale windows and oversized skylights flood the interior with natural light, and the large open wall spaces that once displayed artwork remain a defining feature. The building includes two parking spaces in an underground garage and additional storage.

The property is currently configured as an art gallery and private residence, though the Post notes the next owner can reconfigure the space according to their preferred use. Residents over the years transitioned the units into live-work spaces, and the loft's public records show only one sale since 2014, which closed in 2024.

A Complex Born From Friendship and a Pritzker Prize

Gehry designed the six-unit building in collaboration with Arnoldi shortly after receiving the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, according to The Spaces. The pair were part of a Westside Los Angeles art and design community in the 1970s and 1980s that also included Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, and Ed Moses, per the Guggenheim. Gehry's other notable Santa Monica-area works from that era include his own Deconstructivist home, which the Post notes he lived in at 1002 22nd St., and the Chiat/Day Binoculars Building.

Gehry died in December 2025, and gehry-designed residences remain in high demand, according to the Post. Hoodline previously covered the architect's death, and separately reported on the demand for his work in a piece on the passing of the Pritzker Pavilion's designer.

Gehry's designs have fetched striking sums elsewhere on the market. Actor Patrick Dempsey owned a corrugated-metal Gehry design from the 1960s known as the Tin House at 29715 Cuthbert Road in Malibu, buying it for $7 million in 2009 before selling it in 2015 for $15 million, exceeding its asking price by $500,000, the Post reports.

Density Rising Around a Boutique 1990s Building

The listing broker on the Santa Monica loft is Brandon Assanti of The Agency, according to the Post. The building sits about twelve blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica's Mid-City area, near the Metro E Line Expo station and the Bergamot Station arts district, per Dwell.

That location places the boutique, six-unit complex squarely inside a neighborhood now facing major change. Santa Monica's Bergamot and Mid-City corridors are undergoing significant transit-oriented redevelopment in 2026, including an eight-story, 353-unit project proposed at 1633 26th Street, as Hoodline has reported on that housing push. The contrast leaves Gehry and Arnoldi's low-slung 1992 artist studios standing as a quiet holdout amid the neighborhood's push toward high-density housing near transit.

That gap between the mayor's public foreign policy positions and his department's institutional ties to Israel is the subject of new reporting from City & State New York, which found that Mamdani has never directed the NYPD to stop cooperating with Israeli National Police, nor to stop attending conferences or trainings in Israel. The outlet reported that NYPD officials took official trips to Israel in September 2025 for counterterrorism and antisemitism training, and that the department's liaison officer in Israel returned to the post after reportedly leaving the job a week before Mamdani's election, according to an NYPD spokesperson cited in the report.

A Liaison Post Dating Back Decades

The NYPD's presence in Israel is not new. The department sent officers to a law enforcement exchange program in Israel as early as 2002, and began formally stationing an officer there through its international and domestic liaison program in 2007, per City & State's reporting. That liaison, Charlie Benaim, a former IDF officer, has been based at Israel National Police's Sharon District headquarters in Kfar Saba since 2012. The NYPD has also continued to observe Israeli police and border guard methods in the West Bank, the outlet reported.

The liaison program itself is partially funded by the New York City Police Foundation, a private non-profit, which insulates the arrangement from direct City Council budget votes. The NYPD also contracts with Terrogence Global, an Israeli intelligence firm founded by former soldiers from the IDF intelligence corps, according to City & State. An NYPD spokesperson told the outlet the department has no trips planned to Israel for 2026.

Mamdani's Rhetoric Versus His Record

Mamdani's public statements on Israel have grown sharper since taking office. He has accused Netanyahu of genocide, released a video commemorating Nakba Day, and said in a video that the ICC-wanted Netanyahu is a war criminal. Describing the NYPD's ties to Israeli law enforcement, Mamdani has said the relationship involved joint training, and in a widely noted remark reported by City & State, he said: “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF.”

But Mamdani has also acknowledged the limits of his own authority. He said he did not have authority to arrest Netanyahu outright, even as he said he would instruct the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu should the Israeli leader enter New York City. Netanyahu, for his part, insisted he would attend the U.N. General Assembly regardless of Mamdani's claim that he was not welcome in the city. Law enforcement sources described Mamdani's encouragement of protests during Netanyahu's U.N. visit as reckless and unfair to NYPD officers, according to the New York Post.

Retaining Tisch, a Self-Described Zionist

Perhaps the clearest sign of the administration's cautious approach is Mamdani's decision to retain Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner. Tisch describes herself as a proud Zionist, and Mamdani has defended her performance in the role, saying, “I would not have someone serving our city if I was not confident in what they were doing.” The pro-Palestinian group Pal-Awda has demanded Mamdani fire Tisch and released a list of demands for the mayor, a demand he has not acted on.

Mamdani has not tried to implement BDS policies since becoming mayor, despite supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel as a public stance. As an Assembly member, he called for a boycott of Cornell Tech — a partnership between Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology — but he has since said he would not support such a boycott, according to a statement cited by City & State.

Legislative Legacy Versus Executive Restraint

Mamdani's most concrete anti-settlement action remains legislative rather than executive. As an Assembly member, he sponsored the Not on Our Dime Act, which aims to prevent New York-registered charities from funding activity connected to illegal Israeli settlements. In January, as mayor, he revoked Eric Adams' anti-BDS executive order, one of his first acts in office. But that revocation undid a restriction on city agencies rather than creating any new mandate to sever NYPD ties with Israel.

City Hall has no travel edict prohibiting travel to any country, including Israel, and the New York City Council has no planned events in Israel at this point, though Council Member Julie Menin said she planned to lead a mission to Israel during her tenure. Sam Raskin said no City Hall officials had traveled to Israel for official business under the Mamdani administration. Separately, Mamdani acknowledged there had been a miscommunication about a security escort for Rama Duwaji's planned trip to Lebanon and Syria, after the NYPD denied its detail would escort her — a detail Hoodline previously reported raised its own cost questions.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu's own campaign has cast Mamdani as a top political foe, featuring him prominently in campaign ads, a dynamic Hoodline covered when a poster placed the mayor beside Iran's Ayatollah. The contrast underscores the story's core tension: a mayor who has become an international lightning rod for his Israel rhetoric while the police department beneath him keeps its decades-old institutional ties to Israeli security services fully intact.

The approval, first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, marks the second time in three years that city planners have signed off on development at this site. The four-story building will include 6 studio units, 42 one-bedroom units and 39 two-bedroom units, along with a pool, fitness areas, a resident lounge and 108 on-site parking spots. Commissioner Bridget Kimball said the site is suitable for a large development, while Brent Whittaker said the condominiums would provide diversity to an area dominated by commercial businesses.

The project's footprint is nearly identical to what commissioners approved in October 2024, when the same site was set to become an 87-unit rental complex called Camino Apartments, according to The Coast News. That earlier plan called for 75 market-rate rental apartments and 12 affordable units. A city staff report attributed the shift away from rentals to the previous developer's inability to obtain funding for rentable apartments, leading builder Nolen Communities to pursue for-sale condos instead.

A Site Shaped by State Housing Mandates

City officials had limited room to reject the project regardless of format. The 1.93-acre parcel was rezoned for high-density multi-family housing, up to 30 units per acre, during Encinitas's 5th Cycle Housing Element update, a move required to help the city meet state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation quotas, the same Coast News reporting shows. Because the project also qualifies under California's density bonus law, planning staff determined it was statutorily exempt from full environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

That legal framework was tested once already. In January 2025, former planning commissioner Rubén Flores appealed the project's original approval to the City Council over the planned removal of two Torrey Pine trees, but the council voted 2-1 to deny the appeal, one vote short of what was needed to overturn it, per the same Coast News account. Councilmember Luke Shaffer voted against denying the appeal, while Deputy Mayor Joy Lyndes was absent. This time around, the design review permit required no City Council approval at all.

Commissioners Split Over Ownership Versus Rentals

Not every commissioner was on board. Michael Quinn voted against the project, citing concerns over traffic, entrance design and on-site parking, while Steve Dalton recused himself from the vote due to a conflict of interest. The commission also raised broader worries about congestion on El Camino Real and pressed the developer on its decision to sell rather than rent the units.

Kimball proposed a condition aimed at preventing the condos from becoming second homes or short-term vacation rentals, an outcome commissioners worried could undercut the project's value as local housing stock. Nine units will be set aside for very low-income families, down from the 12 affordable units planned under the 2024 rental version. San Diego County's area median income currently stands at $130,900, putting the very low income threshold at roughly $70,000 for a two-person household, which is 50% of that county figure.

A Developer With Local Roots

Nolen Communities is led by managing partner Brian Grover, a former principal at Encinitas-based environmental planning firm Dudek. Grover previously developed Fox Point Farms, a 21-acre agrihood in Leucadia built around a working organic farm that includes 250 residential units, according to background reported by The Coast News.

The shift from rentals to condos comes as Encinitas's rental market keeps climbing. One-bedroom rents in the city averaged $2,950 a month in August, a 6% year-over-year increase, according to Hoodline. That backdrop has sharpened local debate over whether new housing supply along corridors like El Camino Real should prioritize rentable apartments that ease pressure on renters or entry-level ownership opportunities that let residents build equity.

The El Camino condo project isn't an isolated case. The same commercial strip has already absorbed the 120-unit Sage Canyon Apartments south of Sage Canyon Drive, approved with 24 low-income affordable units under the same state density bonus provisions, the Coast News reported in January. Encinitas has also weathered years of legal battles over density bonus enforcement, including lawsuits from the Building Industry Association of San Diego challenging city attempts to limit base density calculations and affordable housing concessions, according to reporting from Voice of San Diego.

A Report Filed by a Worried Family Member

According to Maui Now, a concerned family member reported Maeda-Kalani missing on August 20, prompting the Maui Police Department to open an investigation under report number 26-021470. The teen had last been seen around 7:20 a.m. that day being dropped off at his school in Kahului, and he did not attend any classes after 11 a.m., the outlet reported.

Police described Maeda-Kalani as standing about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing approximately 220 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with an unknown design, light blue pants, and black shoes. Investigators noted he had neither a phone nor access to a vehicle, details that made the search for information from the public especially important as officers worked to retrace his movements.

Case Closed Within a Day

The resolution came quickly. At 3:09 p.m. Friday, the Maui Police Department updated the case to say Maeda-Kalani had been located safe and in good health, and the department thanked the community for its help, per the same account. The turnaround, from an initial family report to a confirmed safe recovery, took less than 24 hours.

That speed lines up with how Hawaii law directs police to handle these cases. Under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 577-27, agencies that receive a missing child report from a parent or guardian must immediately notify all on-duty officers, alert other county agencies, and log the case into the state's Juvenile Justice Information System, according to Justia Law. That statutory mandate helps explain why bulletins on missing minors in Maui County tend to move fast, both in reaching the public and in reaching a resolution.

A Statewide System Built for These Cases

Behind the scenes, the state's Missing Child Center Hawaii, established under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 28-121 within the Department of the Attorney General, serves as a clearinghouse coordinating county, state, and federal efforts on missing and runaway children, per the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General. State officials with that center have said roughly 2,000 children are reported missing across Hawaii every year, with the vast majority classified as runaways involving teens averaging 15 and 16 years old.

Hawaii also runs the MAILE AMBER Alert system, a statewide emergency notification framework named in memory of 6-year-old Maile Gilbert following her 1985 abduction and murder on Oahu, according to AMBER Advocate. Compiled federal and state data has placed Hawaii eighth in the nation for per-capita missing persons cases, with more than two-thirds of the state's missing child cases originating on Oahu.

Part of a Busy Month for Maui Police

Maeda-Kalani's case is one of several missing person searches the Maui Police Department has opened and closed in Kahului this month. The department also announced safe recoveries for 38-year-old David Lewis and 38-year-old Henry Maclure in August, both located safe after public bulletins were issued asking for the community's help.

Maui Police continue to ask anyone with information relevant to open cases to call the department's non-emergency dispatch line at 808-244-6400, while reserving 911 for active emergencies. The department's steady cadence of appeals and follow-up updates, this case included, has become a familiar rhythm in Central Maui as officers work through the roughly 2,000 juvenile reports filed statewide each year.

According to CBS Chicago, Area Two detectives are investigating the shooting, and no arrests had been made as of the initial report. The victim was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, the outlet reported. Police have not released details on the vehicle beyond its description as a white sedan, and the exact nature of the argument that preceded the gunfire remains unknown.

A Block With a Violent History

The 8000 block of South Vincennes Avenue is no stranger to gun violence. In February 2024, three people — including 14-year-old Amere Deese — were killed inside a home on the same block after an altercation escalated into gunfire, according to WTTW News. A teenager named Antonio Velasco was arrested and charged as an adult in that case in March 2024, and just last month, a second 16-year-old suspect was arrested by Chicago police and federal marshals and charged with three counts of first-degree murder in connection with that same triple killing.

It is unclear whether Saturday's shooting has any connection to that earlier case, but the recurrence of gunfire on the same stretch of Vincennes Avenue adds another grim chapter to the block's recent history.

Part of a Bloody Summer in Chatham

Saturday's shooting is the latest in a string of violent incidents to hit Chatham this summer. Just six days earlier, on August 16, a 31-year-old man was critically injured in a daylight shooting on the nearby 8000 block of South Ingleside Avenue, a case Hoodline reported on a familiar block with no suspects in custody. In late June, a drive-by shooting in the 8200 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue killed a 20-year-old man and wounded two others when a gunman inside a black sedan opened fire before fleeing northbound.

Earlier in the year, Chatham saw a fatal multi-person ambush on Calumet Avenue and a stickup that turned violent in an alley, wounding a 24-year-old man. A 2024 analysis cited in local reporting found that Chatham has one of Chicago's highest shooting fatality rates, with roughly one in three gunshot victims in the neighborhood dying from their injuries — a statistic that has fueled calls from community organizations for more street-level intervention.

Trauma Care and the Legal Stakes

The victim's transport to the University of Chicago Medical Center places him within a hospital system that has treated gun violence patients on a large scale since reopening its Level 1 adult trauma center in 2018, ending a nearly 30-year gap during which the South Side lacked an adult trauma facility, according to UChicago Medicine. Between May 2018 and March 2023, the trauma program treated more than 18,400 adult patients, with gunshot wounds and other penetrating injuries accounting for roughly 40 percent of those admissions. A study published in JAMA Surgery in March found the trauma center's opening was associated with a 3.9 percent reduction in firearm mortality across its service area, an estimated savings of 39 lives per 1,000 shooting injuries.

If a suspect is identified and charged, Illinois law treats discharging a firearm and injuring another person as Aggravated Battery with a Firearm, a Class X felony carrying a mandatory prison sentence of six to 30 years with no eligibility for probation, per the Luisi Legal Group. Class X felonies represent the most severe felony classification in Illinois short of first-degree murder.

The shooting falls within Chicago's 6th Police District, which serves Chatham along with Auburn Gresham and Greater Grand Crossing, with Area Two detectives handling felony investigations. As of the initial report, the identity of the shooter, the vehicle's details, and the substance of the argument that led to gunfire all remained unknown, and it is unclear whether investigators will be able to pull license-plate reader or surveillance footage from the corridor to advance the case.

California Highway Patrol officials said the truck was traveling eastbound when the single-vehicle crash occurred, killing one person, as reported by MyNewsLA.com. No information about the victim had been released as of the report. A CHP spokesperson relayed the crash location and time to the outlet, but did not disclose what caused the truck to crash, leaving open questions about whether speed, mechanical failure, or impairment played a role.

Freeway Shut Down for Hours

CHP issued a SigAlert at 2:56 a.m. that closed the No. 3, 4, and 5 lanes of the freeway, according to the same account. The alert was cancelled at 6:20 a.m., reopening the lanes to the more than 250,000 vehicles that typically pass through this stretch of I-10 each day, per data cited by Santa Monica Traffic Cameras. A SigAlert is the official designation CHP uses for any unplanned incident that shuts down one or more lanes for at least 30 minutes, a system that traces back to 1955 and Los Angeles radio executive Loyd C. Sigmon, according to the Los Angeles Almanac.

Another Predawn Fatality on the Same Corridor

This is not the first deadly early-morning incident along this stretch of freeway in recent memory. Three weeks earlier, a pedestrian was struck and killed near Vermont Avenue around 3:45 a.m. on August 3, in a crash Hoodline previously reported also triggered a multi-lane closure. In December 2025, CHP investigated a separate deadly collision between Fairfax and La Brea avenues in Mid-City, where witness reports suggested illegal street racing between two drivers may have been a factor, according to FOX 11. And in August 2022, CBS Los Angeles reported that 67-year-old Robert Brown was struck and killed while walking in the eastbound lanes of the I-10 near La Brea Avenue around 4 a.m., per a CHP report relayed at the time.

Why the Overnight Hours Are So Dangerous

The timing of Saturday's crash lines up with a broader pattern researchers have identified across Los Angeles County. A 2026 countywide traffic safety analysis of more than 204,000 crashes from 2021 to 2025, using CHP SWITRS data, found that 2 a.m. is statistically the single most dangerous hour to drive, with a 5.03% fatality rate per crash and alcohol involvement in 39.4% of incidents, according to Jacoby & Meyers. Nationally, single-vehicle collisions like Saturday's account for 52% of all motor vehicle crash fatalities, per 2024 data published by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Los Angeles County alone accounts for roughly 19% of California's traffic fatalities, contributing to more than 3,800 fatal crashes recorded statewide each year, according to figures compiled by Maison Law. Under California Vehicle Code Section 16000, any driver involved in a collision resulting in death, injury, or significant property damage is required to file an SR-1 report with the DMV within 10 days, regardless of fault or whether law enforcement investigated, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Santa Monica Freeway has carried traffic through this corridor since its central section opened in March 1962, completing an eastern bypass loop around Downtown Los Angeles, according to historical records from California Highways. More than six decades later, the corridor remains one of the busiest — and, based on this recent string of predawn fatalities, one of the more perilous — freeway stretches in the region. CHP has not released further details on Saturday's crash, and the driver's identity remains unknown.

According to KSNV, police describe Lucifer as mostly nonverbal but say he will respond to the nickname “Peanut.” The outlet reports he was last seen without clothes, wearing only a diaper, in the east valley near South Mohave Road and East Tompkins Avenue. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at 702-828-3111, email missingpersons@lvmpd.com, or reach the Missing Persons Detail directly at 702-828-2907 during business hours.

A Search Complicated by Extreme Heat

The search is unfolding under an Extreme Heat Warning covering the Las Vegas Valley through Sunday, with forecast highs reaching 107 to 109 degrees, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Hoodline reported separately on the broader heat emergency gripping the region as the search for Lucifer got underway. For a child who is unclothed and largely unable to communicate, that kind of desert heat raises the risk of heatstroke and dehydration considerably.

As part of the response, police have asked hospitals to check their patient registries for any sign of Lucifer, and hospitals are required to notify law enforcement immediately if they have information about him. That request is grounded in federal privacy law: the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits healthcare providers to disclose limited protected health information to police seeking a missing person, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with disclosures limited strictly to identifying information and treatment times.

Why No AMBER Alert Has Been Issued

No AMBER Alert has gone out for Lucifer, and the reason lies in the strict criteria governing the system. Under federal guidelines and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department policy, AMBER Alerts require confirmed evidence of an abduction involving imminent danger, along with descriptive suspect or vehicle information, meaning wandering cases without confirmed abduction evidence do not trigger the statewide emergency broadcast, per the department's own missing children procedures.

Nonverbal wandering cases present their own set of urgent tactical challenges for search teams. Research compiled by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children found that nearly 49% of children with autism spectrum disorder attempt to wander or elope from safe environments, and more than one-third of those children are nonverbal or unable to communicate basic details like their name or address. A ten-year analysis by the organization also found that drowning is the leading cause of accidental death among recovered autistic children who wander, which is why search teams typically inspect nearby water sources first, and why nonverbal children often do not call out or respond when searchers call their names.

What Happens If He Is Found

Department procedure directs that when a missing or unattended child is found and parents cannot be immediately reached, the minor is brought to Child Haven, Clark County's designated emergency youth shelter, where they receive immediate temporary care and a medical evaluation. Missing child cases are not rare in Nevada: the Nevada Missing Children Clearinghouse reports that more than 8,000 children are reported missing across the state each year, with roughly 200 categorized as endangered or abducted, according to Nevada Child Seekers. The nonprofit, established in 1985 as the state's only organization dedicated exclusively to missing children, says it maintains a recovery rate above 90% in critical cases through volunteer search deployments.

For now, investigators are relying on the public's eyes and ears. Anyone who may have seen Lucifer Heckler, or who has any information about his whereabouts, is asked to call the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

According to a report from The Journal News, the restaurant is owned by Mersina Ocampo and George Ocampo, the same husband-and-wife team behind the original Breakfast & Burger Club at 84 Main Street in Nyack. That flagship, launched in 2021 as a 1950s-themed diner, built a following on nostalgic touches and comfort food, according to a Facebook post from Lohud Food. The New City address has been cited as both 191 and 195 South Main Street, and the space previously housed The Place, a bar and live-music venue that closed in June 2025 after eight years, as reported by Daily Voice.

A Much Bigger Footprint Than the Original Diner

Where the Nyack location built its reputation on cozy, retro charm, the New City build-out goes considerably bigger. The Lohud Food post describes three distinct bars inside the new restaurant, including an ice cream bar and a coffee bar pouring sand-brewed Turkish coffee, along with an outdoor patio, a lounge area and a dedicated children's play space. The menu carries over Breakfast & Burger Club staples like Greek coffee and cinnamon swirl pancakes, per The Journal News, while adding spinach pies, croissants and a Big Mac-style burger, according to the same Lohud Food account. A full liquor license is reportedly still pending as the restaurant prepares for its grand opening.

The Journal News photo gallery, shot on August 20, documents both the exterior and interior of the new space, including menu items like the crispy Biggie Mac wrap and the El Paso quesadilla. Photographer John Meore captured the images for the outlet ahead of the location's debut.

A Real Estate Deal Tied to a Changing Corridor

Securing the South Main Street lease involved commercial real estate brokerage Rand Commercial, which represented Mersina Ocampo in the transaction, according to a Facebook post from Paul Adler of Rand Commercial. The deal lands amid broader change at Town Plaza Shopping Center: a May 2026 redevelopment proposal outlined by the Rockland County Business Journal called for 29 residential apartment units to be added above two retail buildings at the plaza. That kind of second-story residential build-out is permitted as-of-right under Clarkstown's New City H-3 Hamlet Zone, a zoning designation intended to encourage mixed-use development along South Main Street in line with the town's comprehensive plan, the outlet reported.

The Ocampos have a history of civic involvement stretching back to their Nyack restaurant's early days. The original location sponsored the Nyack Chamber of Commerce Holiday Lights in 2023 and donated prizes for the Nyack Halloween Parade in 2022, according to Patch. Whether that kind of community sponsorship extends to New City remains to be seen, but the expansion itself signals a bet on South Main Street's continued growth as both a dining and residential corridor.

The transformation was completed at the 920 Campbell Street campus, according to KTVU, which first reported the milestone. Prescott Elementary dates back to the late 1860s and holds particular significance in West Oakland, having been the school where Ida Louise Jackson became Oakland's first Black public school teacher in 1925, a legacy detailed by the Oakland Public Library. Jackson went on to teach in Oakland public schools for 28 years, breaking racial barriers that had kept Black educators out of the city's classrooms.

Today, Prescott serves a small but heavily disadvantaged student body. During the 2024-2025 school year, the K-5 campus enrolled 135 students, with 95% designated as socioeconomically disadvantaged and a population that is 55% African American and 34% Hispanic or Latino, according to data from the California Department of Education. The Title I campus is exactly the kind of school the Curry Foundation says it built its model around when it launched its $50 million fundraising campaign for Oakland Unified School District students in September 2023, an effort in which Stephen and Ayesha Curry personally fund 100% of the foundation's administrative and fundraising expenses, according to Beyond Sport.

Replacing Asphalt With Purpose-Built Play

The physical work at Prescott followed a model the foundation has repeated across the district: partnering with the nonprofit KABOOM! and contractor Court Builders Northern California to design student-driven play structures and install shock-absorbing Sport Court modular surfaces in place of aging, cracked asphalt, according to Court Builders Northern California. Many older East Bay schoolyards still feature the kind of unforgiving pavement that has long presented safety hazards during recess.

The approach traces back to June 2021, when the foundation completed its first schoolyard transformation at Oakland's Franklin Elementary, installing a student-designed playground, a multi-sport court, a sensory garden and a community mural with the help of local artists, agricultural designers and volunteer builders, according to KABOOM!. That build served as the blueprint that has now been replicated 25 times across the district.

Why Oakland's Schoolyards Became A Priority

The push to rebuild campus play spaces is grounded in physical activity and equity data that the Oakland Unified School District has cited to justify its Living Schoolyards initiative, launched in 2019. Only 14% of Oakland youth meet the CDC-recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity, compared with a 23% national average, while residents of non-white majority neighborhoods have access to 66% less park space per person, per the district's own policy data.

That gap has drawn institutional funding beyond the Currys' own foundation. In December 2023, Kaiser Permanente awarded a $2.5 million grant through the East Bay Community Foundation to support the target of revitalizing 25 schoolyards districtwide and to help operationalize OUSD's Central Kitchen facility, which distributes meals to nearly 35,000 public school students across Oakland, according to Kaiser Permanente.

A Broader Bet On Oakland Youth

The schoolyard work sits alongside a wider athletic and academic investment. Since 2021, Eat. Learn. Play., Under Armour and Curry Brand have put more than $3.6 million into Oakland youth sports, a commitment the foundation says helped drive a 300% increase in middle school sports participation across the district through 2025. Separately, the foundation has committed $25 million over five years toward literacy initiatives, funding high-dosage tutoring at more than 20 elementary schools and backing over 2,000 teacher projects aimed at students reading two or more grade levels behind, according to Hinchilla.

The foundation has also worked to document its process publicly. In January, it released “Building Joy: A Movement to Reimagine Oakland's Schoolyards,” a 20-minute mini-documentary following the collaborative, student-centered design work alongside OUSD and KABOOM!, a project that went on to win a Bronze Telly Award in Advocacy and Causes in June.

West Oakland's Ongoing Challenges

Prescott's milestone arrives even as West Oakland schools continue to face pressures beyond the schoolyard itself. Hoodline has previously reported on gunfire near the campus that rattled the surrounding block, underscoring the community safety concerns that persist alongside academic recovery efforts and long-term district budget pressures in the neighborhood. The new play space does not resolve those broader issues, but it represents a tangible investment in a campus that has weathered them.

The Prescott build also builds on a string of recent Curry family initiatives tied to Oakland's schools. Stephen Curry was recently honored with the Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award for the foundation's schoolyard and meal work, and he separately partnered with Davidson College to establish full-ride scholarship pipelines for lower-income Oakland Unified students, efforts that together paint a picture of sustained, multi-front investment in the district well beyond a single playground rebuild.

The shop occupies the former space of a gluten-free bakery, according to Aloha State Daily, which first reported on the new business. That prior tenant, Puʻuwai Aloha Bakery, had served gluten-restricted and vegan diners in Honolulu before its storefront closed, per Amy Burkhart, MD, RD. Hopohni sits next to a laundromat and relies on street parking, with hours currently running 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays — though the shop notes those hours are subject to change.

Kalua Pig Meets Thin Crust

The menu centers on whole pizzas and grab-and-go slices, with a lineup that includes tomato, cheese, and pepperoni pies alongside more inventive combinations. The pig pizza, a customer favorite, layers mozzarella, pecorino romano, kalua pig, lomi medley and chives over a crème fraiche base, running $6 per slice or $29 for a whole pie. It's a thin-crust reinterpretation of traditional Native Hawaiian luau staples — smoky, pit-roasted pork and a fresh tomato-onion salad — with kalua pig traditionally cooked in an underground earth oven known as an imu, according to Frommer's.

The mushroom pizza, another customer favorite, piles chopped cremini mushrooms, garlic, Italian parsley, white onions, lemon zest and chives onto a tomato-mozzarella-parmesan base for $5.50 a slice or $27 for a whole pie. The pina pizza takes a tomato-based approach with chopped pineapple, pickled red onions, jalapeño, chorizo and cilantro for $6 a slice or $29 whole. A chimichurri pie, built on a crème fraiche base with mozzarella, chimichurri and extra-virgin olive oil, runs $5.50 a slice or $27 for a whole pizza. The cheese pizza can include ricotta, while the pepperoni can be dressed up with hot peppers and Hawaiian chili-infused extra-virgin olive oil, or with sweet peppers and date syrup. Hopohni also plans to roll out rotating weekly specials.

A Corridor Between Homestead and Hospital

The address places Hopohni at a distinctive crossroads. Papakōlea, the neighboring homestead community on the slopes of Punchbowl Crater, is the only Native Hawaiian homestead located within Honolulu's urban core, established under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921, per the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Those homestead lands are reserved for eligible Native Hawaiian beneficiaries. Lusitana Street also doubles as a healthcare corridor, home to multiple outpatient facilities for The Queen's Medical Center, including a physicians' office building down the road, according to The Queen's Health Systems — Hawaii's largest medical facility. That mix of homestead residents, hospital staff and patients gives a takeout-focused slice shop a built-in stream of potential foot traffic.

Above it all looms Punchbowl Crater, known natively as Pūowaina, or hill of deposits, which carries deep significance in both Native Hawaiian culture and modern military memorial history as home to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, according to Aloha Authentic. The Punchbowl and Pauoa area has long been home to family-owned neighborhood eateries, including nearby Liliha Bakery and Helena's Hawaiian Food in neighboring Kalihi, per Locations Hawaii. Lusitana Street has also drawn attention for less appetizing reasons — in April, Lusitana Street cops probe attempted murder after Honolulu police, fire and emergency medical personnel responded to an attempted murder investigation along the same corridor.

Part of a Wider Oahu Pizza Boom

Hopohni's arrival fits into a broader 2026 wave of pizza expansions across Oahu, which has included Canio's Pizza launching New York-style slice service in Waikiki and Zephanie's Pizza expanding its taro-crust pies on the North Shore, per Aloha State Daily reporting. New slice counters and specialized crust concepts have gained traction across the island this year. Honolulu's growing appetite for artisanal pizza was also on display in June, when the annual Festa Italiana street festival in nearby Kakaʻako featured multiple local pizza vendors and Italian specialty foods alongside street performances, as Hoodline reported in its piece on Festa Italiana's pizza and pasta party.

For now, Hopohni is settling into its Lusitana Street storefront with its case of grab-and-go slices and a menu built around local flavor combinations. Customers can reach the shop at 808-663-5472, though as with the hours, details are subject to change as the young business finds its footing in a neighborhood with deep roots.

According to a court complaint detailed by NBC 5 Chicago, Douglas alleged she became ill after eating a Wendy's meal delivered via DoorDash from the location at 8645 S. Stony Island Ave. on the South Side. The complaint states she contracted a Campylobacter intestinal infection on August 5, 2025, and went on to suffer gastroenteritis, acute infectious colitis, leukocytosis, dehydration and hypokalemia secondary to diarrhea. Her medical bills, which totaled $93,578, included two hospitalizations, the outlet reported.

The lawsuit accuses Wendy's of failing to use safe and proper food storage, preparation and handling practices, failing to adequately prepare the meal for human consumption, and failing to eliminate Campylobacter and other illness-producing bacteria, according to the court filing cited by the station. Court documents state the food was contaminated with Campylobacter and other illness-producing bacteria when it left Wendy's control.

A Beef Order, But a Poultry-Linked Pathogen

The case is medically notable because Campylobacter is a pathogen predominantly linked to raw or undercooked poultry, meaning Douglas's claim involving a beef cheeseburger hinges on proving cross-contamination inside the restaurant's kitchen, according to Yahoo News NZ. The outlet reported the federal civil lawsuit was officially filed August 20, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois under docket number 1:26-cv-10092, naming Wendy's Properties, LLC as the defendant.

Nationally, Campylobacter bacteria infect an estimated 1.5 million people in the United States each year, making campylobacteriosis one of the most common causes of bacterial diarrhea, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published by Virginia Tech Extension. CDC surveillance studies published in PubMed show that while adults 65 and older make up a smaller share of total Campylobacter cases, patients in that age group face significantly higher rates of hospitalization and severe complications than younger patients — clinical context that helps explain the scope of Douglas's illness and bills.

Why the Case Landed in Federal Court

Wendy's argued the lawsuit should be heard in federal court rather than in local proceedings where it was originally initiated, citing that the parties are from different states as grounds for federal jurisdiction. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, corporate defendants can remove state personal injury lawsuits to federal district court when the dispute involves citizens of different states and the amount in controversy exceeds the $75,000 statutory threshold. Douglas is seeking more than $75,000 in damages, meeting that jurisdictional bar.

Because DoorDash acted only as the delivery intermediary, the platform is generally shielded from food product liability claims — commercial liability insurance for third-party delivery services typically covers motor vehicle liability and courier injuries but explicitly excludes contamination claims, according to Latent Insurance. That leaves Wendy's as the sole defendant, and it means Douglas must show the food was already contaminated before it left the restaurant's kitchen.

Illinois Law Sets the Bar for Food Safety

Illinois law offers a statutory backbone for claims like Douglas's. Under the Illinois Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, food is legally classified as adulterated if it contains any poisonous or deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health, creating civil liability exposure for commercial food vendors, according to the Illinois General Assembly. Separately, the Illinois Food Handling Regulation Enforcement Act requires restaurant food handlers to receive certified training in time and temperature controls, sanitation, and methods to prevent cross-contamination — the standard of care at the heart of Douglas's negligence allegations.

This isn't the chain's first brush with foodborne illness litigation. In August 2022, Wendy's removed sandwich romaine lettuce across several states after a multistate E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to its restaurants infected 109 people and hospitalized 52 across six states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health filings also document earlier localized E. coli outbreaks tied to Wendy's franchise locations, including one in Marion County, Oregon in 2000 and another in Ogden, Utah in 2006, as reported by Yahoo News NZ.

NBC Chicago reported it reached out to Wendy's for comment on the lawsuit. Whether laboratory isolate testing or local health department inspection records will directly tie the pathogen strain to the Stony Island Avenue kitchen's inventory or practices remains an open question as the case proceeds in federal court.

According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Hansen called 911 on July 19, 2007, and initially told police that she and MacNeil had been surprised by a masked intruder dressed in black. Police found her with her wrists zip-tied behind her back. She later said the gunman shot MacNeil after he refused to give up the combination to his safe, but prosecutors said the true story was far different: her own sibling, now known as Aerith Asora, was the one who pulled the trigger, and the two had staged the scene to look like a home-invasion robbery.

Prosecutors identified Hansen as the mastermind of the plot, arguing that she and Asora conspired to kill MacNeil for financial gain. Court evidence, detailed by the San Diego County District Attorney's Office, showed Asora bought black clothing at a Goodwill store in Phoenix on July 18, 2007, the day before the killing, then drove to San Diego and hid inside MacNeil's home while he made plans to take Hansen to dinner. Prosecutors said Asora had Hansen zip-tie MacNeil's hands before Hansen herself was restrained, and that Asora shot MacNeil after he freed himself.

A Split Verdict for Siblings Tried Together

Hansen and Asora were tried together in San Diego Superior Court in 2009 but before two separate juries, and the two panels reached different conclusions about the crime. Hansen's jury found true a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, while Asora's jury rejected that same allegation. Both siblings were convicted of first-degree murder; Hansen was sentenced to life without parole, while Asora received 25 years to life.

Hansen's sentence did not stay at life without parole. In July 2015, San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederic Link resentenced her to 25 years to life, citing U.S. Supreme Court rulings that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional, as reported by the Times of San Diego. The judge pointed to defense testimony describing childhood physical abuse by Hansen and Asora's mother, who died by suicide in 2006, the year before the murder.

Youth Offender Law Opened the Door to Parole

Hansen's path to parole ran through California Penal Code § 3051, which the state expanded in 2017 to require the Board of Parole Hearings to give great weight to the hallmark features of youth — including brain development, immaturity, and capacity for rehabilitation — when reviewing parole for people who committed their crimes before age 26, as Hoodline has previously reported. Both Hansen and Asora had their first parole hearings in 2025 under those youthful offender provisions, and both were denied.

Hansen was told after her January 7, 2025 hearing that she could try again in three years. Instead, she successfully petitioned the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for an administrative advancement, and corrections officials agreed to move her hearing forward, according to the district attorney's office. That led to her Friday hearing, less than 19 months after her initial denial, where the board found her suitable for release. Hansen has a transitional housing placement lined up outside San Diego County if she is released.

Asora's outcome went the other way. At a July 30, 2025 parole suitability hearing, commissioners denied Asora parole for a full five-year period under the youth offender rules, with the next eligibility review not set until 2030, per The Coast News. Asora separately lost a post-conviction legal fight in March 2022, when California's Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled in Gann v. Acosta that stepfathers qualify as immediate family under prison regulations barring overnight conjugal visits for violent offenders, rejecting Asora's argument that the stepparent bond had ended when the siblings' mother died before the murder.

DA's Office Says It Stands With MacNeil's Family

District Attorney Summer Stephan called the killing a callous, premeditated murder motivated by greed and said her office was deeply disappointed by the decision to grant Hansen parole, standing with MacNeil's family in opposing her release. MacNeil was admitted to the California State Bar in 1970 and worked for the district attorney's office for six years before entering private practice as a defense attorney, a biography the DA's office highlighted in underscoring the case's resonance within the local legal community.

The district attorney's office said it has not yet decided whether it will continue fighting Hansen's release. The parole grant now faces a 120-day review by the California parole board, and the Governor's office has a separate 30-day window in which it may revoke the decision. The office noted that nearly 70% of the parole hearings handled by its Lifer Team stem directly from California's expanded youth offender and elder parole laws, a trend it says has reshaped its caseload in recent years.

The numbers underscore how rare Hansen's outcome remains. Of 571 parole hearings scheduled for life-sentenced inmates in San Diego County in 2025, only 49 resulted in parole grants, while the remaining 522 ended in denial, postponement, or stipulation to denial, according to the district attorney's office.

Aiken signed the lease on the space in March 2025, according to The Wave, which reported that he opened the restaurant only after more than a year of delays and challenges working through city approvals. One milestone arrived on July 24, when the gas was finally turned on and hot water reached the building — a moment Aiken described, per the same account, as an overwhelming feeling of joy. The 800-square-foot space had previously housed Avoid the Day Bookstore & Cafe, a community bookstore and coffee shop that opened in February 2020, and Aiken spent over a year renovating it into a counter-service slice shop, according to The Strong Buzz.

Before Crown Square had a permanent address, Aiken was already known locally as the operator of Seany Pizza, a personal wood-fired Neapolitan pizza stand at the Beach 97th Street Rockaway Bazaar. He also ran a residency at Rockaway Beach Brewery from 2019 to 2021 before opening a boardwalk spot at Beach 97th in 2022, per background reporting cited by Eater NY. That trajectory traces back to 2018, when Aiken began teaching himself pizza-making after buying Ken Forkish's cookbook The Elements of Pizza, later apprenticing at Speedy Romeo in Clinton Hill and receiving mentorship from Paulie Giannone of Paulie Gee's.

Why Detroit-Style, and Why the Name

Detroit-style pizza traces back to 1946, when Buddy's Rendezvous in Detroit, Michigan started baking square pan pies in rectangular forged-steel drip trays borrowed from local automotive plants, according to Buddy's Pizza. Those heavy-duty blue steel industrial pans, per The Wave, gave the style its signature thick, chewy, airy crust and its edge-to-edge caramelized cheese border. Aiken summed up the format simply, telling The Wave that Detroit-style pizza has cheese on top, sauce on top of the cheese, and crispy burnt edges — with stripes of thick tomato sauce added after baking rather than before.

The restaurant's name comes from that caramelized cheese border itself, known in the trade as the frico, which forms along the top edges of a square pie as it bakes and resembles a crown. Authentic versions of the style lean on Wisconsin brick cheese rather than low-moisture mozzarella, letting the high-fat cheese melt down the sides of high-rise pans to form that caramelized edge, according to The Rockaway Times. The outlet notes that while Detroit-style has caught on in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, Crown Square marks the first dedicated version of the format to reach the Rockaway peninsula.

A Knicks-Inspired Room and an Eight-Slice Pie

Inside, the shop was built around a New York Knicks color scheme, with dark-stained oak banquettes, hard maple shelving, blue-and-white square tiled floors, and chairs with pops of orange, aiming for a modern NYC hip-hop aesthetic per The Strong Buzz's description. The Crown Square Pizza sign itself went up in May 2026, designed by Emma Hastil and Chris Cristiano, months before the doors opened.

The menu runs six pizza offerings on square slices and small four-slice pies, alongside large eight-slice pies. Options include a Margherita with fresh basil and grated Parmigiano Reggiano, a Great White with ricotta, roasted garlic, Parmigiano Reggiano, and fresh basil, a Sausage and Onion pie with sweet Italian sausage and roasted onion, a cheese pizza with a house cheese blend and tomato sauce, an Ezzo Cup pepperoni pizza, and the Sweet & Salty by the Sea, topped with Ezzo pepperoni, gorgonzola cheese, and Mike's Hot Honey. Rounding out the menu are buffalo wings, cheesy garlic bread, Caesar and arugula salads, dipping sauces, extra toppings, and soft drinks.

Aiken also plans to expand into breakfast and weekend service, with pastries from Brooklyn-based Native Bakery, breakfast burritos, bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches, coffee, and a weekend breakfast pizza on the horizon. That morning and takeout-and-delivery focus fits a business model common to Rockaway's beach economy: with boardwalk concessionaires typically running only in summer, an off-boardwalk storefront designed for year-round orders is what keeps the lights on through the quiet winter months.

Early Reviews and a Year of Anticipation

Crown Square Pizza wasn't a total surprise to the neighborhood by the time it opened. The shop offered public tastings of its square slices at the Rockaway Hotel's second annual Rockaway Food Fest back in November 2025, giving locals a preview nearly a year before the storefront's debut. Early customer response has been enthusiastic: Patrick Clark called the pizza a five-star winner, John Cori gave it two thumbs way up, and Joseph Hanning praised it as absolutely fantastic, adding that he expects Crown Square Pizza will be around for a long time.

The opening also lands amid a broader wave of investment along Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 116th Street, where new year-round food ventures such as Los Tacos de la Playa and Adrienne's Provisions have joined the mix in 2026, according to The Rockaway Times. Detroit-style pizza has been spreading well beyond Michigan and Manhattan in recent months, with Hoodline previously covering Frico's Sacramento debut and a Boston-area shop's move to a seaside Revere Beach spot. For Aiken, though, the milestone is a hyper-local one: after years running a boardwalk stand and pop-up residencies, he now has a permanent, year-round address on the peninsula where he grew up.

The collision involved a motorcycle and two other vehicles, according to initial dispatch logs from the California Highway Patrol, which indicated the motorcycle was initially blocking lanes on the freeway. As reported by MyNewsLA.com, a CHP spokesperson confirmed one motorist was killed in the crash, though authorities said they had no information on the victim's identity as of Saturday. All lanes reopened at 2:23 a.m. Saturday after CHP officers finished their investigation at the scene.

The stretch of freeway where the crash occurred falls under the jurisdiction of the CHP's West Los Angeles field office, known as Station 565, which operates out of Culver City and handles traffic enforcement along both the 405 and 10 freeway corridors, per CHP's Southern Division. It's geographically the smallest field office in that division, but it oversees some of the busiest freeway miles in the country.

A Corridor With a History of Deadly Crashes

This is not the first fatal collision to strike this particular stretch of the 405 in Palms. Almost exactly a year earlier, on August 31, 2025, a fatal multi-vehicle crash on the southbound 405 near West Pico Boulevard claimed the life of 39-year-old Crystal Diaz Martinez, according to Belsito Communications. That crash also happened in the early morning hours in the same general vicinity.

Just six days before Friday's crash, a multi-vehicle collision on the southbound 405 near Victory Boulevard sent five people to the hospital after two vehicles plunged 200 feet down an embankment, Patch reported. Emergency responders had to use hydraulic rescue tools to free trapped victims in that incident. The recurring severity of crashes along this corridor underscores just how much traffic the freeway carries: federal data lists Los Angeles County's stretch of the 405 as one of the most heavily traveled freeways in the nation, carrying an estimated 379,000 to 383,500 vehicles a day.

Motorcycle Deaths Still Outsized Despite Statewide Drop

Motorcycle fatalities across California actually fell 10.2%, from 649 in 2022 to 583 in 2023, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety. Even with that decline, motorcyclists still accounted for 14% of all traffic deaths statewide despite representing only a small fraction of registered vehicles. Los Angeles County logged 553 motorcyclist fatal and injury victims in 2023, ranking 12th out of 15 comparable large counties for motorcycle collision victims relative to daily vehicle miles traveled, a lower ranking that reflects poorer comparative safety performance.

California remains the only state that explicitly legalizes motorcycle lane splitting, under Vehicle Code Section 21658.1, enacted in 2016, according to FindLaw. CHP guidelines advise riders against splitting lanes when surrounding traffic is moving faster than 30 mph, though it remains unknown whether lane splitting or speed played any role in Friday's crash. Investigators have not released any findings on the cause.

The broader picture in Los Angeles remains grim. Traffic fatalities in the city reached 302 in 2024, marking the second consecutive year that vehicular deaths outpaced total homicides citywide, per Crosstown LA. That figure did represent a 12.5% decline from the previous year, though it remained well above pre-pandemic averages.

What Investigators Still Don't Know

Basic CHP collision reports are typically finalized within 10 business days, though complex fatal investigations involving multiple vehicles can require specialized review by the agency's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team, according to the Yaghmai Law Firm. The identity of the victim, whether speeding or lane splitting contributed to the crash, and whether any drivers involved will face citations remain open questions pending that investigation.

The crash adds to a string of fatal or severe collisions on the 405 through the Los Angeles area this year alone. Hoodline has previously reported on a similar fatal crash involving a motorcyclist on the southbound 405 near Long Beach Boulevard, as well as a fatal pre-dawn crash on the freeway in Orange County days later. CHP has not indicated when further details about Friday's crash will be released.

The crash happened around 11 a.m. Wednesday when the boat hit something in the river, sending two people into the water, according to The Sun News. Brennan Moore, assistant chief of training and operations with Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire Rescue, said the surviving boater told rescue crews he had seen John Rabon floating down the river. The other boater was taken to the hospital and is expected to be okay, Moore said. As reported by Post and Courier, the response drew in Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire Rescue, Horry County Fire Rescue, the Horry County Police Department, TowBoatUS, and SCDNR.

Emergency responders believe the boat struck a submerged log near Prince Creek in the Blackmoor area, per Murrells Inlet Patch. Search commanders set up their staging area at a private boat ramp near the Blackmoor Golf Club on Longwood Drive, the same stretch of river where the surviving boater was located when emergency calls came in around 10 a.m. Wednesday, the outlet's report notes.

Sonar and Drones Guided the Overnight Search

Crews spent all day Wednesday combing the water with aerial drones and side-scan sonar before pausing operations overnight, the same report states. Dive teams resumed the search the next morning, and an SCDNR boat located the missing man's body shortly before 11 a.m. Thursday. Crews continued the underwater search throughout the effort, according to the same account. Authorities identified the missing boater as John Rabon, 66, of Aynor.

Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire Rescue, the district that led the initial response, is a special-purpose agency created in 1966 that covers roughly 25 square miles spanning Horry and Georgetown counties, according to the Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire District. The district maintains dedicated water rescue units, including rescue boats and jet skis, and operates four stations.

A Previous Fatal Crash on the Waccamaw

A separate fatal recreational boating crash occurred on the Waccamaw River in Horry County earlier this year. On May 8, 19-year-old Canon Burkett of Conway was killed in the crash, an incident the Horry County Coroner's Office identified as the county's first recreational boating fatality of 2026, according to MyrtleBeachSC News. That crash also left two other passengers critically injured.

Local emergency personnel undergo specialized boat operation training for the Waccamaw River, according to Horry County Fire Rescue. The river stretches 140 miles through coastal North and South Carolina, and submerged timber remains a recurring hazard along its length. A similar tragedy played out in July 2023, when multi-agency search teams that included SCDNR and local fire rescue crews recovered the body of 72-year-old Pawleys Island resident Fred Walters from the river in Georgetown County after his boat was found idling unmanned, according to Carolina Sportsman.

What South Carolina Law Requires After a Crash

SCDNR was involved in the incidents described above. The article also discusses reporting after a crash and recreational-vessel safety equipment, with links to eRegulations and the Campfire Collective.

It remains unclear whether SCDNR's investigation into Wednesday's crash will address life jacket use at the time of impact, or whether recent water levels contributed to the submerged hazard near Prince Creek. Whether state or local officials will issue updated navigational advisories for the Waccamaw River following this second fatality of the season also remains an open question as the investigation continues.

The search began after deputies responded to Tagmeyer Beach in Willow Creek at 10:14 AM on Wednesday, following a report that a swimmer had been seen struggling in the river the day before, per Redheaded Blackbelt. Deputies found the individual's vehicle still parked overnight at the beach, which prompted an extensive search of the river and the surrounding river bar. The Sheriff's Office Special Services Division assisted deputies in that search, and they ultimately located two deceased individuals in the water.

The Sheriff's Office has notified the next of kin of both Lex Rincon and Krishna Rincon, who were brothers. While the circumstances surrounding the deaths remain under investigation, officials say they appear consistent with drowning. The precise cause and manner of death remain pending, with autopsies scheduled for early next week.

A Deadly Summer Along the Trinity Corridor

The Rincon brothers' deaths bring the total number of summer fatalities on the Trinity River in Humboldt County to five this year, a toll made up of four drownings and one natural cardiac event, according to Redheaded Blackbelt's reporting on the county's mortality data. On July 16, a person drowned in the Campbell Creek area of the river in Hoopa after stepping into chest-deep water and being swept under by strong currents; rescuers recovered that individual using a patrol boat and attempted CPR before declaring them deceased, per the county.

Two days later, a 45-year-old woman tubing on the river near Burwood Lane in Willow Creek drowned after her inner tube overturned in strong currents and her life vest snagged on a submerged tree branch, according to Lost Coast Outpost. Friends managed to free her from the branch and performed CPR before emergency crews arrived, though she did not survive. The incident underscored how even flotation gear cannot guarantee safety when underwater hazards are involved.

An autopsy completed yesterday also clarified an earlier case: a 63-year-old man recovered from the river at Kimtu Beach on July 22 died from a sudden natural cardiac event rather than drowning, reversing the apparent-drowning classification given by initial emergency reports in July, the county's findings show.

Cold Water Hiding Beneath a Hot Summer

The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office warned in July that high summer air temperatures can mask deceptively cold river water, which is capable of causing muscle paralysis and cold shock within seconds, as reported by SFGATE. Even when the surface looks calm, officials say, cold water temperatures fed by upstream conditions remain hazardous throughout the summer season. National U.S. Coast Guard statistics cited by Hoodline show that 87 percent of recreational boating drowning victims were not wearing a life jacket at the time of the incident, a figure that safety agencies point to when urging voluntary life jacket use during open-water recreation.

Because so much of unincorporated Humboldt County lies far from the nearest fire station or hospital, the Sheriff's Office leans on multi-agency dispatch partnerships with tribal law enforcement and volunteer fire departments, including the Hoopa Tribal Police Department, whose officers are often positioned closer to river emergencies than county units. In May, the Sheriff's Office received a $5,000 community donation to purchase 10 water rescue kits for patrol vehicles across the county, equipping first-arriving deputies with gear before specialized swift-water teams can reach the scene.

The dangers of the river's swift currents and tree-entanglement hazards are not new. In May 2024, searchers recovered the remains of a 19-year-old man from the Trinity River near Hoopa after a multi-week search, following his disappearance at Tish Tang Campground the previous month — a case that illustrated how difficult river bar terrain can extend recovery efforts for weeks. The cause and manner of death for Lex and Krishna Rincon remain undetermined pending the autopsies scheduled for next week.

The festival is presented by the Ki-hoʻalu Foundation, Outrigger Hotels and Resorts, and the Waikīkī Aquarium itself, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Headliners include Ledward Kaapana, Jeff Peterson, George Kuo, and Bobby Moderow, joined by a lineup of performers that includes Walt Keale, Dwight Kanae, Kamuela Kahoano, Darrell Aquino, Kahiau Lam Ho, Kawika Kahiapo, and Lt Smooth.

Festival founder Milton Lau created the event in 1982 as a tribute concert, and the same report notes that slack key was largely a grassroots tradition outside the mainstream at the time. Lau, who still presents the Waikiki edition today, has since expanded the festival to other parts of Oahu, the neighbor islands, and the U.S. mainland, per the newspaper's account.

A Tribute That Became a Movement

According to historical background on the tradition, Lau organized that first 1982 concert to honor his late friend Gabby Pahinui, the slack key master who helped popularize the style during the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance. The style itself, known as kī hōʻalu, dates back to around 1832, when Mexican and Spanish paniolo brought in by King Kamehameha III to manage cattle on Hawaiʻi Island introduced acoustic guitars, which local musicians later retuned into open tunings around campfires.

That paniolo lineage runs directly through this year's lineup. Headliner Jeff Peterson grew up on Maui's Haleakala Ranch as the son of a paniolo before going on to contribute as a featured artist on two Grammy-winning recordings, according to background compiled by Kamaka Hawaii. Ledward Kaapana, another headliner, grew up without electricity or television in the rural black sand village of Kalapana and learned slack key from his mother and uncle, a path that led to a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship and induction into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 2024.

Fresh Hardware for a Rising Star

Also on the bill is Anthony Pfluke, a 2026 Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winner who took home Contemporary Acoustic Album of the Year for Kuʻu Lei Lokelani and co-won Hawaiian Music Video of the Year at the 49th Annual Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards on July 11, according to Outrigger Resorts. Pfluke was an eight-time finalist at this year's awards after previously winning the Kani Ka Pila Grille Talent Search in 2022.

The Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards, established in 1978 by the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts, function as Hawaiʻi's regional equivalent of the Grammys, per Maui Now's coverage of this year's ceremony. Fellow headliner George Kuo carries his own pedigree, having joined the legendary group The Sons of Hawaii in 1982 after studying under traditional masters Ray Kāne and Sonny Chillingworth during the 1970s; he later won a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for Instrumental Album of the Year for his solo record Aloha No Nā Kūpuna.

National Recognition, Then a Reshuffle

Slack key guitar briefly had its own dedicated category at the national Grammy Awards, with the Recording Academy presenting a Best Hawaiian Music Album award from 2005 until it was eliminated in a broader restructuring in 2011, according to Ukulele Magazine. Compilation albums featuring the genre's top players dominated that category throughout its six-year run, underscoring how far the once-guarded family tradition had traveled from campfire origins to the national stage.

Tickets and Venue

Tickets cost $25 at the door, with Hawaii residents and military personnel paying $15 upon providing identification; children 12 and younger get in free. Festival proceeds benefit the Waikīkī Aquarium, which opened on March 19, 1904, and has been administered by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa since 1919, making it the second-oldest operating public aquarium in the United States. The aquarium, which now houses more than 3,000 marine specimens, was originally built by the Honolulu Rapid Transit and Land Company to encourage trolley rides out to Kapiʻolani Park — a detail Hoodline noted in its own coverage of the venue's seal's Waikīkī return last year.

The deal was first reported by The Wave, which detailed how broker Jeffrey Lopez of Lee & Associates NYC approached Guarneri about the move and ultimately handled the direct lease transaction. Lopez represents The Marcal Group, the landlord behind One Sixteen, a roughly 130,000-square-foot mixed-use development at 133 Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park with about 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space beneath its residential condominiums. Guarneri, a local franchisee since 2014, told the outlet that his existing space has been outgrown and that the relocation will better serve the community and expand the customer experience.

“We're excited to bring Carvel, Cinnabon, and Auntie Anne's together in one modern location,” Guarneri said, per the same account, adding that he has operated in the Rockaway area for many years. The combined shop is expected to create a destination for both residents and visitors, welcoming longtime customers alongside new faces drawn to One Sixteen.

Why Three Brands Under One Roof Makes Business Sense

The Rockaway Park move fits into a much larger corporate strategy. Parent company GoTo Foods, the multi-brand platform that formed in February 2024 when Focus Brands rebranded and now oversees more than 6,700 locations worldwide, including Carvel, Cinnabon, and Auntie Anne's, according to GoTo Foods. Carvel itself dates back to 1934 and became the foundational acquisition for private equity firm Roark Capital Group in 2001, the company notes, crediting the chain with pioneering soft-serve ice cream and signature ice cream cakes in the eastern United States.

During 2024 alone, GoTo Foods signed 353 co-branding franchise agreements across 173 locations in 24 states, with nearly half of those deals aimed at streetside real estate rather than traditional mall food courts, according to the company's own reporting on its expansion. Streetside co-branding lets franchisees like Guarneri share real estate costs while capturing multiple dining dayparts — morning cinnamon rolls, afternoon pretzels, and evening soft-serve — all from a single lease. GoTo Foods went further in April 2025 with the launch of Cinnabon Swirl, its first original dual-branded concept merging Cinnabon baked goods with Carvel soft-serve, as reported by Restaurant Dive, which described cross-brand menu items like warm cinnamon roll sundaes topped with soft-serve.

A Growing Retail Anchor Near the Boardwalk

One Sixteen was designed to bring best-in-class operators and everyday conveniences to the Rockaway community, and its ground-floor retail lineup has been building steadily since the eight-story building opened. Developed by The Marcal Group and designed by Fischer + Makooi Architects, the complex includes 86 condominium residences and eight adjoined townhouses, according to New York YIMBY. Completed in 2021, the building sits between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean boardwalk and offers residents a 4,600-square-foot roof deck, a fitness center, and a resident lounge, per Blocks & Lots.

Lee & Associates NYC has a track record at the property, having also arranged Orangetheory Fitness's 3,200-square-foot lease at One Sixteen back in October 2019, when broker Jeffrey Lopez and executive managing director Jaime Schultz represented both the landlord and the tenant, according to the Mann Report. The new triple-brand store sits along Beach 116th Street, the neighborhood's primary commercial corridor and one of the three main business districts in Queens Community Board 14, per city planning documents. One Sixteen also offers access to the NYC ferry and the Rockaway beachfront, putting the future storefront within reach of both year-round residents and summer crowds.

Timed to Transit Upgrades and Beach Season

The combination store's 2027 debut follows recent transit investment in the immediate area. In June 2026, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rolled out new subway cars on the Rockaway Park Shuttle terminating at Beach 116th Street, replacing 1970s-era train sets with updated cars featuring wider doorways built to handle heavy beachgoer traffic. Combined with the ferry access and boardwalk proximity One Sixteen already offers, the site places the new combined store directly in the path of both commuters and summer visitors headed to the beach.

For Guarneri, the move caps more than a decade of running Carvel in Rockaway Park under one banner and marks his entry into a multi-brand format that GoTo Foods has been pushing nationally. Financial disclosures show co-branded Cinnabon and Carvel franchises carry an initial fee of $71,000, with ongoing net sales royalty fees of approximately 6 percent, according to GoTo Foods franchise documentation. Whether that formula pays off at Beach 116th Street will become clearer once the doors open in the first quarter of 2027.

A Local Take on a Tony-Nominated Hit

Based on Tina Fey's Paramount Pictures film, the musical follows Cady Heron, a smart new girl who moves from Africa to Chicago's North Shore and enters North Shore High, where she becomes entangled with the Plastics, the school's ruling clique led by Regina George, according to Shaw Local. Fey wrote the book for the stage version, with music by Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Neil Benjamin. The musical originally opened on Broadway at the August Wilson Theatre in April 2018 and went on to earn 12 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score, according to Playbill.

This is not a touring production stopping through Aurora. Paramount Theatre self-produces its Broadway Series entirely in-house, building sets and sewing costumes on-site rather than hosting a traveling roadshow, a model launched under Artistic Director Jim Corti in 2011, per Paramount Theatre's own account. That approach places Aurora's Mean Girls staging in the same category as an original regional premiere rather than a national tour stop.

New Director, Local Star Power

Devon Hayakawa is making a solo directorial debut with this production, after previously serving on directing teams for Paramount's stagings of South Pacific, Come From Away, Cats, and Disney's Frozen, as reported by Chicago Star Media. Hayakawa is working alongside choreographer Kasey Alfonso and music director Kory Danielson on the mainstage show.

Leading the cast is Des Plaines native and Joseph Jefferson Award winner Elizabeth Stenholt as Cady Heron, who previously starred in Paramount's productions of The Wizard of Oz, Fun Home, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the Daily Herald reports. Broadway actor Dariana Mullen makes her Chicago-area stage debut as Regina George, stepping into the role of the Plastics' queen bee for this run.

Tickets, Showtimes, and Accessibility Options

Previews begin Wednesday with no matinee that day, while Wednesday performances during the regular run are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday shows run at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., according to the show's Shaw Local listing. Single tickets range from $34 to $109, with additional fees applied to phone and online orders, and tickets and subscriptions are available through paramountaurora.com, by calling 630-896-6666, or at the Paramount box office, which is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and stays open until show time on show days.

Paramount has also built accessibility into the run, scheduling Pay What You Can performances on August 27 and August 29, along with an Open Captioned performance on September 30 and an ASL-interpreted performance on October 9, per Paramount Theatre. Those options are part of the venue's broader civic mission across its seasonal lineup. Separately, the Paramount School of the Arts hosted a four-week Mean Girls Broadway Intensive in July and August for students in grades 6-12, connecting youth arts students with the mainstage production's cast and creative team and including admission to the show's final dress rehearsal.

Anchoring a Landmark Season in a Historic Venue

Mean Girls opens Paramount's 15th Broadway Series, a four-show lineup that also includes a world-premiere adaptation of A Christmas Carol running November 11 through January 3, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George running February 10 through March 28, 2027, and an 1980s-inspired staging of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat running April 28 through June 13, 2027, according to the Daily Herald. Subscribers can access a Buy Two, Get Two Free package covering all four shows, with four-show packages starting at $73.

The production unfolds inside a building with its own outsized history. Built in 1931 by Chicago architectural firm Rapp & Rapp in an Art Deco and French Renaissance style, the 1,885-seat Paramount Theatre was one of Illinois's first air-conditioned movie palaces outside Chicago and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, according to the City of Aurora. The theater, located at 23 E. Galena Blvd. in downtown Aurora, was originally commissioned by Paramount Pictures as a flagship model house for early talking films.

Paramount's Broadway Series has grown into the largest subscription theater program in the United States, with more than 40,000 subscribers today after starting at 30,000 in its fifth season, per the City of Aurora. The Aurora Civic Center Authority, which operates Paramount Theatre alongside Copley Theatre, Stolp Island Theatre, RiverEdge Park, and the Paramount School of the Arts, generated an estimated $54 million economic impact for the city in 2024, underscoring how deeply the venue is woven into downtown Aurora's economy.

The shop, co-owned by siblings Marissa Ray and Dalton Ray, began as a converted 1960s trailer serving coffee and breakfast sandwiches, according to The Kansas City Star. The collaboration with Entity Lounge started in July, and the permanent daytime cafe opened a little more than a month later. Entity Lounge itself launched in June 2024 as a dual-concept venue, founded by longtime friends Kirt Rithmixay, Belly Vang and Patricia Ghavami to serve specialty coffee by day and craft cocktails by night, per the Johnson County Post.

From Farmers Market Stall to Storefront

Black Rose debuted at the Overland Park Farmers Market, and Marissa Ray said the business was overwhelmed on its first market day in 2025, according to the Star's report. She said regular market customers showed up to support the new permanent location, and told the outlet that the opening felt like a positive milestone for the business. On opening day, the shop saw waves of customers, the paper noted.

The Star's report quotes longtime customer Mary Ann Dolan, who visited the new storefront and praised the food, saying Black Rose Coffee Co. has excellent pastries. Black Rose is not abandoning its market roots: Ray said the company will continue attending the farmers market and doing pop-ups and private events even with a storefront now open. That market has plenty of pedigree to lean on — the Overland Park Farmers Market was voted “America's Favorite Farmers Market” in 2022 after pulling more than 12,000 votes in a national competition among 7,000 participating markets, according to the Johnson County Post. It has also served as a launchpad for other local vendors, including taqueria Taco Naco KC, which held market pop-ups in 2020 and has a restaurant at 8220 Metcalf Avenue, the outlet reported. The Kansas Department of Agriculture said more than 110 farmers' markets were registered statewide in 2025, underscoring the scale of the market network in which Black Rose built its following.

What's on the Menu

The menu leans on a signature Black Rose latte made with black sesame, rose and vanilla, priced at $7 for a 12-ounce cup and $7.50 for 16 ounces. Customers wary of floral flavors are steered toward the cardamom latte instead, per the Star's account. Espresso drinks, matcha, teas and egg bites round out the drink and snack lineup, alongside assorted pastries.

Food options include a signature breakfast sandwich for $10 and a loaded breakfast burrito, plus a breakfast sandwich built with custard egg, bacon, pepper jam, scallion aioli and a potato bun, served on a hashbrown side for an extra dollar. Drinks and other items across the menu run between $3.50 and $8.25, according to the same report.

Behind the Beans

Black Rose brews with beans from Hermetheus Coffee, an Olathe-based roaster. Founder Jason Scott, a former Olathe elementary school teacher and IT professional, built a proprietary robotic roasting system called the Roaster Co-Pilot that adjusts roasting heat twice per second, according to the City of Olathe. What started as a personal hobby has scaled quickly: Hermetheus acquired Idaho-based equipment manufacturer Coffee Crafters in December, with manufacturing operations continuing, per Daily Coffee News. Locally, Hermetheus also runs its own cafe inside the Downtown Olathe Library at 260 East Santa Fe Street.

Before landing at Entity Lounge, Black Rose tested suburban demand with hyper-local pop-ups, according to a post shared on Facebook. The Switzer Road location sits within the multi-building CityPlace development near College Boulevard, a mix of luxury apartments with ground-floor retail and wellness businesses, the Johnson County Post has reported. The business is located on Switzer Road.

Hours and What's Next

Black Rose Coffee Co. is open from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday through September 1, after which hours shift to Tuesday through Saturday, per the Star's reporting. The shop will also host pop-ups and private events going forward, and Black Rose plans to keep its farmers market presence every Wednesday and Saturday.

Syanne's condition traces back to a routine screening days after her August 2024 birth, when California's mandatory newborn blood panel flagged an absence of T cells, a hallmark of severe immune deficiency. According to BioPharm International, that screening tool, which uses T-cell receptor excision circle assays, has been used to test all California newborns for severe combined immunodeficiency since 2010. Doctors eventually diagnosed Syanne with congenital athymia, an ultra-rare condition affecting an estimated 17 to 24 newborns nationwide each year, in which infants are born without a functioning thymus gland and cannot naturally produce T cells to fight infection.

As CBS News Los Angeles reports, Syanne received a thymus implant intended to help her body produce those infection-fighting T cells on its own. Any exposure to germs or infection could still prove fatal for the toddler, whose family has lived in near-total isolation for two years near Santa Clarita. The outlet's report, written by Laurie Perez, notes that Syanne's body has not rejected the transplant itself, even though her immune system has developed less than doctors had hoped.

A Cross-Country Trip for a One-Of-A-Kind Treatment

Syanne's transplant came from Rethymic, the only FDA-approved regenerative tissue therapy for immune reconstitution in children with congenital athymia, according to a statement from Sumitomo Pharma, which developed the therapy over nearly three decades of research led by Dr. M. Louise Markert at Duke University. The federal agency approved the treatment in October 2021. Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, remains the only medical center in the country that performs the cultured thymus tissue implantation, per Duke Health, which meant the Landron family had to travel across the country for the surgery itself.

Before that trip, the family relocated from Ventura to Canyon Country in the Santa Clarita Valley to stay closer to UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital for urgent medical care, as the Santa Clarita Valley Signal reported in May 2025. Syanne's father serves in the U.S. Navy, and her mother paused her middle school teaching career in Oxnard to help maintain the strict isolation protocols her daughter's condition required. The wholesale cost of Rethymic runs approximately $2.7 million, and the family received official medical and financial approval for the transplant in May 2025, before Syanne could travel for the procedure.

Doctors Call Reaching Age Two Remarkable

Dr. Caroline Kuo, Syanne's primary care physician at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and an associate professor specializing in pediatric allergy, immunology, and gene therapy research, said Syanne reaching her second birthday is remarkable. Long-term clinical trial data submitted for the therapy's FDA approval showed that 21 of 95 treatment-naive athymic infants died within their first year after implantation, but those who survived past that milestone achieved a 94% long-term survival rate over a median follow-up of more than a decade. Doctors and nurses joined Syanne's second-birthday party at the hospital, even as she celebrated the milestone in isolation rather than at home.

The lag in Syanne's immune development falls within a known biological window. It typically takes six to 12 months for implanted thymus tissue to begin producing new T cells, according to Duke Health, a delay that leaves patients severely immunocompromised and vulnerable to life-threatening infections during the transition. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also identified specific risks tied to the non-vascularized tissue implants, including graft-versus-host disease, cytokine release syndrome, autoimmune complications, and low blood magnesium or platelet levels, all of which doctors continue to monitor during Syanne's hospital stays.

A Rollercoaster That Has Not Let Up

Syanne's father, Alex Landron, described his daughter's medical experience as a rollercoaster. Her mother, Marilyn Landron, said their life is not like everybody else's, and recalled that Syanne has told her she wanted the procedures to stop, a sign that even at two years old, the toddler can verbalize her pain. Marilyn Landron also said a second transplant chance for children like Syanne is uncommon, underscoring how much rides on her daughter's fragile recovery.

Doctors are now waiting to see how Syanne's condition develops further, and she is set to undergo more hospital tests in the days ahead. Per the article, Syanne has not had the expected immune-system development doctors were hoping for at this stage of her recovery. For now, her family remains in the same holding pattern they have lived in for two years, watching for the moment her body finally begins to fight back on its own.

The ribbon-cutting and art open house, held at the 70-year-old former elementary school building at 300 Napa Junction Road, was spearheaded by the American Canyon Arts Foundation, which has hosted art classes, events, and meetings at the center for years, according to The Napa Valley Register. The foundation invited local artists to contribute ideas for the project in both 2019 and 2020, and the concept for the mosaic itself was developed by St. Helena-based Nimbus Arts, a countywide nonprofit that promotes art access and education across the Napa Valley. The final design was created by Anne Pentland and Yarra Bolla.

A Pandemic Delay and a Costly Installation Puzzle

The Register's reporting notes that the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the mosaic's creation, and even after the design was finalized, the foundation faced another obstacle: how to actually install it. Mark Joseph, who attended the mosaic event, said the foundation struggled over how to mount the piece, and it ultimately took three more years to find a solution. The group decided to adhere the mosaic to the building's wall rather than make it freestanding, a choice the same report says reduced project costs.

Debbie Casper, who teaches at the Mikolajcik Center, described the finished mosaic as gorgeous and said every city should have statement pieces like it. Casper's remark reflects a broader ambition behind the project: the American Canyon Arts Foundation has said it aims to showcase American Canyon's creative community and transform the center into a hub and incubator for talent.

A Young Artist's Portfolio Steals the Show

Among the attendees was six-year-old James Kakish Jr., who showed a portfolio to a Register reporter that included a multicolored frog, a dragonfly painted in watercolor, and a pathway lined with flowering trees. Kakish Jr. attends art classes at the Mikolajcik Center every Thursday, a routine his grandmother introduced him to, and he told the reporter he prefers drawing over painting because he can erase his mistakes. His mother, Giovanna Kakish, praised Casper's dedication to nurturing student creativity, and the Register's account notes that his skills have grown weekly under her teaching. Other attendees named in the report included Pierre Washington, Melissa Lamattina, and Brando Cruz, who joined residents staying afterward for refreshments and displays of local artwork.

Part of a Broader Investment in Arts Infrastructure

The mosaic's debut arrives amid a wider pattern of civic investment in American Canyon's arts spaces. The city leased the American Canyon Arts Foundation dedicated space in Rooms 5 and 6 at the Mikolajcik Center in 2023, giving the group, founded in 1992 shortly after the city incorporated, a permanent home for its programming, according to the American Canyon Arts Foundation. The center now serves as the city's de facto arts and culture space, offering life and figure drawing classes alongside art instruction for all ages, and doubling as a multi-use facility that has hosted high school fundraiser events, toddler play groups, and community holiday celebrations, per The American Canyon Current.

Municipal records show the foundation requested $4,000 from the City of American Canyon's Community Grant Program in late 2025 for a Mural Art Project at the Mikolajcik Center, part of a $30,000 municipal grant allocation. The mosaic project itself drew backing from a coalition of funders, including Arts Council Napa Valley, the city, the American Canyon Community Parks Foundation, and individual local donors. More recently, in July 2026, Arts Council Napa Valley named the foundation among five organizations receiving a share of $20,000 in summer Community Fund grants backed by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Growing Programming and Recent Civic Recognition

The Mikolajcik Center's calendar has continued to expand this year. In August, the American Canyon Arts Foundation introduced open bi-weekly Jazz Jam sessions led by musician Oliver Graham, adding to its regular monthly Third Thursday visual art receptions, according to Creative Directory Napa Valley. The growth follows national recognition the City of American Canyon received in November 2025 as an award winner for excellence in education, arts, and culture, a distinction that highlighted public-private partnerships between the city, the arts foundation, and local school districts.

The mosaic dedication also echoes another recent transformation of a legacy municipal building. In January 2026, American Canyon reopened its library after a fresh renovation on Crawford Way following a $119,000 county-funded project that modernized a former city hall building. Together, the projects suggest a city increasingly turning to its older public buildings as canvases for community life, with the wetlands mosaic now standing as the newest, and most visible, addition to that effort.

According to Hawaii News Now, the family sheltered inside the home as Hurricane Lala passed south of Hawaiʻi, only deciding to leave once the structure itself began to fail. Rain drenched everything inside as the ceiling collapsed, and glass from the shattered bedroom windows blew into the playpen where 11-month-old Dusty Lou had been resting just moments earlier. No one in the family was injured, but the home itself — which has served as a family anchor going back to Dusty Lou's great-grandfather's house on Awalau Road — was left in ruins, per the outlet's report.

A Father's Fear and a Family's Escape

Joey Maldonado told the station that being responsible for his family without a secure home to offer them is frightening. He has been sleeping in his truck since the storm, while the rest of the family works to find stable shelter. Ten-year-old Makoa, described in the report as part of Maui's next generation of paniolo for his roping skills, is among the five family members now navigating life without a home.

Loved ones have since created a GoFundMe page to help the Maldonados rebuild, and the family has received an outpouring of community support that Joey Maldonado said has baffled him. Their most urgent need, per the family, is simply a roof over their heads — and a safe haven for Dusty Lou.

Storm's Statewide Scale

The damage to the Maldonado home fits into a much larger picture of destruction across the islands. Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi found that Hurricane Lala dropped roughly 1.3 trillion gallons of water statewide between August 14 and August 16 — equivalent to nearly 1.9 million Olympic-size swimming pools — with Maui County alone absorbing an average of 6.6 inches of rainfall, according to Maui Now. Governor Josh Green's statewide emergency proclamation, issued as the storm intensified, cited hurricane-force winds, cut-off roads, and more than 250,000 customers left without power.

Hurricane Lala never made official landfall, but its close pass still generated destructive wind gusts and dumped enormous rain totals that hit older, multi-generational homes like the Maldonados' especially hard, as reported by Inside Climate News. The outlet notes that direct hurricane impacts remain historically rare in Hawaiʻi, with only two hurricanes ever making direct landfall on the islands before this year, meaning many homes were built under building codes that never anticipated a storm like this one.

Why Insurance Often Falls Short

Families in the Maldonados' position frequently discover that their coverage does not match their losses. Standard homeowners policies in Hawaiʻi exclude damage from hurricane-force winds and flooding entirely, according to Carr's Insurance Agency, requiring separate hurricane and flood endorsements that lenders typically mandate only for mortgaged properties — leaving paid-off or inherited homes like the Maldonados' potentially uncovered. Even families who do carry hurricane policies face steep deductibles calculated as a percentage of a home's insured value, typically 2% to 5%, per First Insurance Company of Hawaii — meaning a home insured for $500,000 could carry a $25,000 out-of-pocket threshold before any payout arrives.

That gap helps explain why displaced families so often turn to grassroots fundraising and volunteer labor rather than waiting on insurance alone. Disaster relief group Team Rubicon began deploying Quick Reaction Forces across the state starting August 19 to conduct welfare checks, clear downed trees, place roof tarps, and muck out flooded homes, with operations expected to continue into September across Maui, Hawaiʻi Island, and Oʻahu.

Documenting Damage and Seeking Relief

Maui County has urged residents and business owners with storm damage to submit reports through the Crisis Track tool at mauirecovers.org, a step officials say helps local agencies document the disaster's full scope and support requests for state and federal relief funds. Property owners dealing with uninhabitable homes may also apply for real property tax remission, which can reduce a home's assessed value and annual tax bill, though it does not directly fund rebuilding costs.

Black mold has already begun spreading inside the Maldonado home, a hazard made worse in the storm's aftermath before power is restored to run pumps and dehumidifiers. Hawaiian Electric announced that power was fully restored to nearly all affected customers on Maui and Oʻahu by August 20, two days ahead of its target, but for the Maldonados, the more immediate problem remains a house with no roof, spreading mold, and a family still searching for somewhere safe to land.

Coleman, who was 39 at the time of the shooting and is now 45, pleaded guilty in March 2024 to second-degree murder rather than first-degree murder, according to CWB Chicago. Prosecutors said Coleman helped instigate the confrontation that led to the gunfire, though he was not accused of firing the weapon himself. Judge John Lyke presided over both Coleman's and Drew's sentencings.

Under Illinois law, second-degree murder is a Class 1 felony carrying a sentencing range of four to 20 years, and it makes defendants eligible for a 50% day-for-day reduction in their time served — a stark contrast to first-degree murder, which mandates that inmates serve their full term, according to the Law Office of Clyde Guilamo. Coleman has already earned 2,732 days of Cook County jail credit, which is expected to offset the bulk of his remaining sentence.

How a Non-Shooter Faced a Murder Charge

Coleman's conviction rests on Illinois' law of accountability, a legal doctrine that allows prosecutors to convict someone of murder without proving they fired a shot or caused direct physical harm, as long as they solicited, aided, or shared in a common plan that led to a killing, per the Restore Justice Foundation. Prosecutors used that framework to argue Coleman set the fatal encounter in motion by throwing a punch at a 16-year-old boy who ducked out of the way.

According to the seed reporting, Brandon McGhee had stopped at a convenience store with friends on the 1900 block of North Western Avenue when Coleman, Drew, and a third person — who appeared to have Puerto Rican flags wrapped around them, per the same account — crossed the street and demanded to know the victims' gang affiliation. McGhee and the 16-year-old boy exited a vehicle as the confrontation escalated. Drew reached toward his waistband as if for a weapon before opening fire, striking McGhee in the neck and the teenager in the arm. Coleman fled in one direction while Drew and the third person ran the other way.

McGhee died from his injuries. His friends and family have stated he had no gang ties, and police said neither he nor the wounded teenager had any prior contact with the Chicago Police Department.

A Weekend of Bloodshed Across Chicago

The shooting happened just before 7 p.m. on June 20, 2020, during Puerto Rican Day festivities that coincided with Father's Day weekend — a stretch during which at least 102 people were shot and 14 killed across Chicago, according to AP News, the highest number of shooting victims recorded in a single Chicago weekend up to that point in 2020. The intersection sits on a commercial stretch of North Western Avenue between Armitage Avenue and Cortland Street, where Logan Square meets Bucktown near the CTA Blue Line station, according to CBS Chicago. The wounded teenager was taken to AMITA Health Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center in good condition.

A stray bullet from the confrontation pierced the windshield of a passing car on Western Avenue, cutting one occupant with flying glass and narrowly missing both people inside, underscoring how the daytime gunfire endangered bystanders far beyond the intended targets. In the aftermath of that violent weekend, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown publicly criticized existing electronic monitoring systems and called for stricter oversight of violent repeat offenders, according to CBS News.

A Convicted Killer Already on Parole

Coleman was on parole at the time of the 2020 shooting, having been released in 2018 after serving 20 years of a 40-year sentence for a 1998 Illinois murder conviction, the seed report notes. Drew, meanwhile, evaded capture for a year after the shooting. Investigators identified him by matching distinctive tattoos in his social media photos to security footage of the gunman, securing an arrest warrant within two weeks. Surveillance footage showed Drew changing his shirt after the attack, and police recovered his discarded gun in an alley behind the 1900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue about 20 minutes later. He wasn't arrested until a traffic crash in July 2021.

Drew ultimately pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder, receiving consecutive sentences of 25 years and 10 years for a total of 35 years. Under Illinois' Truth-in-Sentencing law, he must serve 100% of the murder sentence and 85% of the attempted murder sentence before he's eligible for release.

According to a press release from the New York Attorney General's Office, the Office of Special Investigation concluded that prosecutors could not disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that Troopers Kevin Jacks and James Curtin acted in self-defense. Investigators found that Loftus lowered and then raised what appeared to be a gun toward them despite repeated commands to drop it. As reported by News 12 Hudson Valley, Attorney General Letitia James said prosecutors would not be able to prove that Jacks and Curtin's use of deadly force was unjustified.

A 2:30 a.m. Call to a Rural Mobile Home

The confrontation began when troopers responded to the Deerpark mobile home at approximately 2:30 a.m. after receiving a 911 call reporting a domestic assault. As CBS News reported, they encountered a male victim on the front porch suffering from a knife laceration to his stomach; he was treated at the scene for non-life-threatening injuries. Deerpark, a rural township of roughly 7,500 residents covering 67.9 square miles near the Pennsylvania border, relies heavily on New York State Police Troop F patrols out of the Greenville barracks, according to Orange County municipal records.

Body-worn camera footage released by the Attorney General's Office in August 2025 showed Curtin and Jacks taking cover behind vehicles and repeatedly shouting at Loftus to raise her hands and drop the weapon before discharging their service firearms. The footage was made public as part of Attorney General directives requiring the release of body-camera video during Office of Special Investigation reviews to promote transparency. After troopers administered initial medical aid on scene, per the same account, Loftus was transported by emergency medical services to Bon Secours Community Hospital in nearby Port Jervis, where she was pronounced deceased.

The Troopers Involved

Trooper Kevin Jacks had served with the New York State Police since March 2016, while Trooper James Curtin had joined the force nine months earlier, in July 2024, with both assigned to Troop F in Greenville. Both troopers were placed on voluntary administrative leave following the shooting while the state investigation proceeded, the outlet's report noted.

The Legal Standard Behind the Decision

Under New York Penal Law Section 35.30, a law enforcement officer is legally authorized to use deadly physical force when the officer reasonably believes such force is necessary to defend against another person's imminent use of deadly physical force. Because the pellet gun Loftus was holding was reportedly indistinguishable from a lethal handgun in the moment, prosecutors determined they could not disprove that the troopers held an objectively reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary. Legal justification under this standard evaluates what a reasonable officer would believe given the perceived threat at the precise moment of the encounter.

The case was reviewed under New York Executive Law Section 70-b, which took effect in April 2021 and requires the Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation to assess any incident where a law enforcement officer may have caused a civilian death, regardless of whether the officer was on duty or the civilian was armed. That statute displaced local district attorney jurisdiction over fatal police encounters statewide. According to the Fifth Annual Report of the Office of Special Investigation, the agency conducts more than 200 such investigations annually into civilian deaths involving police or peace officers across New York, and it issues public investigative reports whenever it determines criminal charges are not warranted.

A Familiar Pattern in Imitation-Weapon Cases

The Loftus case echoes a separate 2026 investigation in which the Attorney General's Office similarly concluded that officers were legally justified in using deadly force against an individual who refused commands to drop a weapon later identified as a non-lethal replica, as Hoodline reported in a Bushwick case. In both instances, prosecutors weighed whether an officer's perception of imminent danger was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, rather than what the weapon turned out to actually be.

Hoodline first covered this case in April 2025, when the Attorney General's Office opened its inquiry into Loftus's death. Friday's announcement closes that investigation, more than a year after the shooting, with no criminal charges filed against either trooper.

The crash left Danbom with a dislocated shoulder and a leg so badly disfigured that he later underwent a below-the-knee amputation, according to details reported by the Los Angeles Times. Danbom sued the City of Los Angeles over the crash, and the jury delivered its verdict on August 13, awarding him the full $28 million he sought. His attorney, Filippo Marchino of The X-Law Group, said it is the largest California jury verdict reported for a below-the-knee amputation case.

At the center of the case was a dispute over whether the firetruck, driven by LAFD apparatus operator Vincent Leong, ever stopped before entering the intersection. Video from the crash scene shows the truck moving through the intersection without stopping, and the lawsuit alleged the 65,000-pound fire tender failed to stop or slow before entering the busy crossing. Leong said in an interview transcript that the truck did stop at the intersection before proceeding — a direct conflict with what the Times reports the video shows. Marchino said the defense claimed the truck stopped despite the video evidence to the contrary.

What the Rules Require of Emergency Drivers

California Vehicle Code Sections 21055 and 21056 exempt emergency vehicles responding to calls from standard traffic laws, including red lights, but the statutes still require drivers to operate with due regard for the safety of other motorists and pedestrians, according to the Scranton Law Firm's overview of emergency vehicle liability law. The city's own firefighters' driver manual requires the first apparatus in a convoy to stop at all red lights and stop signs, a standard plaintiffs pointed to in arguing that Leong's truck should have come to a full stop before crossing Vermont Avenue.

The city garbage truck driver was accused separately of making an unsafe right turn, though the core of Danbom's case centered on the firetruck collision itself. Marchino, who represented Danbom, has a track record of securing large recoveries against public and private defendants, including a $60.38 million judgment tied to the 2013 Venice Boardwalk tragedy and a $78.75 million class-action settlement against Delta Air Lines in August 2025 over an emergency jet fuel drop, according to Courthouse News.

A Long Road Through the Courts

Danbom formally filed his civil suit against the city in Los Angeles County Superior Court on August 26, 2022, under case number 22STCV28056, according to court records published by Rulings.law. The city fought the case from the outset, filing a demurrer in November 2022 that sought to have the lawsuit dismissed as time-barred. The court ultimately evaluated evidence that an earlier prelitigation government claim, submitted by a former law firm representing Danbom, had been unauthorized and legally void — allowing the case to proceed toward the trial that concluded nearly four years after it was filed.

The Los Angeles City Council's Budget and Finance Committee held closed executive sessions in August 2025 to consult with city attorneys on potential settlement strategies for the litigation, according to city council records, showing officials were weighing their exposure a full year before the jury's verdict. Marchino said he would have accepted half of the jury's eventual award, and he blamed the City Attorney's Office for the size of the final verdict, saying the case could have been settled for significantly less. The Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office did not respond to requests for comment, per the Times report.

A City Drowning in Legal Payouts

The Danbom verdict lands amid a broader financial reckoning for Los Angeles. City legal payouts have climbed from about $64 million a decade ago to $289 million last year, the Times reported. A separate financial report from City Controller Kenneth Mejia in February found the city spent $287 million on liability claims in fiscal year 2024–25 — exceeding its $87 million legal budget by 228% — and that General Fund reserves fell from $648 million to $402 million over two years, according to the Southern California Record.

Traffic collisions involving city vehicles have been a consistent driver of those costs. A five-year breakdown of payouts showed vehicle collisions accounted for 18% of all liability dollars, tied with civil rights claims and trailing only dangerous infrastructure conditions at 32%, per the same Times analysis. Collision claims involving LAPD vehicles alone have exceeded $115 million across 1,289 processed claims between fiscal year 2020 and late 2025, according to the City Controller's claims dashboard. Other recent cases echo Danbom's: a Los Angeles jury awarded nearly $49 million in 2025 to a man left in a coma, and a motorcyclist received $11 million in 2024 after being hit by a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power driver.

Political Fallout and a City Under Fire

City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo warned city leaders in March 2025 that uncontrolled legal liability costs were contributing to a projected $400 million municipal budget shortfall for fiscal year 2025–26, prompting consideration of hiring freezes and departmental spending cuts, according to MyNewsLA.com. Outgoing City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has argued that rising payout costs stem from juries becoming increasingly antagonistic toward local government. Feldstein Soto failed to advance out of the June 2026 primary.

The American Tort Reform Association ranked Los Angeles the top “Judicial Hellhole” in the country in July, pointing to a concentration of “nuclear verdicts” exceeding $10 million in personal injury and auto accident trials. For Danbom, the legal and fiscal debate is secondary to the outcome of a crash that cost him his leg — a jury has now decided the city bears responsibility, and the case adds another entry to a growing ledger of high-dollar judgments straining Los Angeles' finances.

The bright yellow blooms come from tickseed sunflower, a plant that produces its signature color across the meadow near the Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, according to WZTV. Nature center naturalists have been fielding questions from eager visitors and are offering flower-viewing tips ahead of the peak, per the station's report. The Observation Deck Overlook Loop meadow has been identified by nature center staff as the best place to take in the display, with the Ecology Trail and the Overlook Loop both leading directly to the superbloom meadow.

For visitors who can't walk far on trails, the nature center is offering an accessible viewing option, the same report notes. Staff have also recommended a spot under the train trestle as a way to catch a drive-by preview of the superbloom without leaving the car. Alongside the tickseed sunflower's yellow, the meadow features ironweed's purple blooms, adding a second layer of color to the late-summer landscape.

A Meadow Built By Design, Not Accident

The superbloom isn't a wild accident of nature. According to a social media update from Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms, the primary meadow was once mowed turf grass before it was ecologically restored into a native ecosystem through a partnership between Metro Parks Nashville, the Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, and the nonprofit. That transformation turned an unremarkable patch of urban grass into a genuine floodplain prairie habitat.

Tickseed sunflower, known scientifically as Bidens aristosa, is a North American native annual that thrives in moist bottomlands like the Cumberland River floodplain, producing dark brown seeds with barbed awns that stick to passing animals and clothing, per the Missouri Department of Conservation. That seed-dispersal trait is part of how the plant naturally spreads across the meadow year after year. Beyond the yellow sunflowers and purple ironweed, the restored meadow also hosts white late boneset, rounding out a late-summer native floral community, according to Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms.

Why Naturalists Want Everyone Off the Grass

Visitors are prohibited from going off-trail for photoshoots and from picking the flowers, restrictions the Shelby Bottoms Nature Center enforces by asking everyone to stay on trails and leave no trace. Those rules exist to protect the environment and wildlife within the meadow. Trampling the delicate annual seed bank can jeopardize the very blooms that draw crowds back each year, since the sunflowers need to reseed themselves naturally to return.

The stakes go beyond aesthetics. Native late-summer wildflowers like tickseed sunflowers offer essential late-season nectar for bees and butterflies before winter, while their mature seed heads become a food source for songbirds, quail, and waterfowl, per the Missouri Department of Conservation. Purple ironweed and boneset extend that ecological function further into the season, giving pollinators a longer runway before colder weather sets in.

A Park Complex Still Under Restoration

The bloom sits within the Shelby Bottoms Greenway and Natural Area, a 960-acre stretch of protected Cumberland River floodplain located under four miles east of downtown Nashville, according to The Cultural Landscape Foundation. The park offers more than five miles of paved, ADA-accessible paths alongside more than five miles of primitive unpaved trails, giving visitors multiple ways to reach the meadow. Restoration work is happening elsewhere in the complex too: the adjacent 130-acre Cornelia Fort Airpark trailhead has a brief closure scheduled this month for maintenance and grassland habitat restoration.

That airpark project ties into a broader push for native grassland reconstruction. Nashville.gov, the city's official government portal, notes that the Shelby Bottoms Nature Center hosted a public presentation earlier this year with the Southeastern Grasslands Institute focused on restoring historic prairie habitat at the Cornelia Fort site. The nature center itself, which opened at the park's main trailhead in late 2007 under the Metropolitan Board of Parks and Recreation, was designated a certified Tennessee Smart Yard in August 2022, incorporating green roofs and drainage swales designed to protect the Cumberland River ecosystem, according to the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.

Shelby Park first opened on July 4, 1912, on 151 acres of former amusement park land along the river. Today, the combined footprint of Shelby Park, Shelby Bottoms, and Cornelia Fort Airpark spans more than 1,000 acres, making it Nashville's third-largest public park complex, as Hoodline previously reported. As peak bloom approaches, park officials are betting that a century-old greenway can keep drawing crowds while still protecting the fragile prairie that makes the late-summer spectacle possible each year.

According to the Fremont Police Department, additional officers detained fleeing subjects in the area shortly after the shooting, and those individuals were taken into custody without incident. Police described the case as an active investigation and said they believe there are no outstanding subjects or ongoing threats to public safety. The department has not released the identity of the victim or the people detained, nor has it disclosed any charges.

The scene sits in Fremont's Cabrillo neighborhood, a residential area bordered by Interstate 880 between Nicolet Avenue and Frobisher Drive, according to CBS News. A neighbor living across the street said his home surveillance camera recorded a loud, gunshot-like bang around 12:12 PM, followed shortly by someone fleeing on foot down the street and the sound of a baby crying, as reported by ABC7. Emergency scanner traffic relayed by ABC7 described a single male victim in cardiac arrest with a gunshot wound to the chest, and dispatch chatter hinted the shooting may have stemmed from a robbery — though police have not publicly confirmed a motive.

A Street With a Troubled Recent History

This is not the first time San Pedro Drive has drawn police attention this year. In February, Fremont officers responding to a welfare check on the same street found a neglected juvenile locked in a room, according to the Tri City Voice, which reported that police logs noted severe child neglect and medical complications; the case led to an arrest and the child being placed into protective custody. It is unclear whether that earlier incident has any connection to Friday's shooting.

Friday's killing is the third homicide Fremont has recorded in 2026. The city's first came on January 3, when, per the Fremont Police Department, a 93-year-old man shot his 86-year-old spouse in a parking lot on the 5000 block of Mowry Avenue before surrendering to arriving officers — a case Hoodline previously covered. The second occurred on February 3 in the Centerville neighborhood at Central Avenue and Joseph Street, leading to the April arrests of two suspects, ages 19 and 42, by Hayward police during an unrelated trespassing call.

Broader Context Amid a Violent Year

Fremont has also seen other high-profile violence in 2026 beyond its homicide count. On July 24, a fatal officer-involved shooting by Fremont police triggered an independent investigation by the California Department of Justice under Assembly Bill 1506, which mandates state review of fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians. That comes even as statewide numbers point the other direction: the Public Policy Institute of California reports that California's overall homicide rate fell 29.4% between 2021 and 2024 following a pandemic-era surge, with violent crime dropping 5.3% in 2024 alone.

San Pedro Drive connects to Thornton Avenue, where the Metropolitan Transportation Commission approved multimodal Complete Streets upgrades in March, including buffered bike lanes and curb extensions, following state route relinquishments. The infrastructure changes are unrelated to Friday's shooting but reflect ongoing shifts in the surrounding residential corridor.

What Investigators Are Asking For

The identities of the victim and the detained subjects remain undisclosed, along with any charges that may follow. Fremont police are asking anyone with information to contact the department's Investigations Unit at (510) 790-6900, or to submit an anonymous tip through the Fremont Police Department's website or by texting “Tip Fremontpd” along with a message to 888-777. Anyone with questions for the department can also reach its media contact at fremontpdpio@fremont.gov.

According to CBS News, Powered by Women is an eight-year-old community built for women entrepreneurs, and Sacramento women can now purchase tickets for the three-day event. The conference itself, per details posted by Powered by Women, will spread its programming across the Sacramento State University Union Ballroom, McKinley Park, and Sanctuary, giving each day of activities its own distinct setting and purpose.

A Three-Day Lineup From Masterminds to Matcha

Day one kicks off September 25 with an exclusive VIP Night at Sanctuary featuring the Northern California debut of “The Founder's Table,” a traveling mastermind session in which every attending founder gets direct feedback on a major business challenge, the event listing notes. VIP ticket holders also get access to an editorial portrait studio that evening.

Day two, on September 26, functions as the core of the gathering back at Sacramento State, with 15 speakers, two keynotes, podcast-style panels on visibility and sales, a Vendor Village marketplace reserved for women-owned businesses, complimentary professional headshots, and a Golden Hour happy hour rounding out the day's programming.

The conference winds down September 27 with an outdoor Wellness Morning at McKinley Park, featuring a group walk with Good Vibes & Strides, PopPilates sessions, wellness activations, and a coffee and matcha connection hour designed as an informal close to the weekend.

What It Costs to Attend

Ticket pricing for the September gathering ranges from $257.75 for General Admission, which covers days two and three, up to $457.75 for full-weekend VIP access that includes the Sanctuary mastermind night, according to PBS KVIE Abridged.

From Informal Meetups to a Multi-City Network

Powered by Women was originally founded in 2018 under the name Women of Sacramento by CEO Bri Norberg, created as an informal networking alternative to traditional, pitch-heavy corporate mixers, according to the organization's own account of its history. Since then it has grown from local meetups into a network spanning Northern California, Southern California, and Arizona.

The Sacramento-founded organization also works alongside other regional business groups, including co-hosting events such as the Ghoul Friends in Business Mixer with the Sacramento chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, according to NAWBO Sacramento.

The Bigger Economic Picture

The conference's focus on sales panels and hands-on mastermind feedback lines up with broader numbers on women-owned businesses in the state. California leads the nation in female entrepreneurship with 1.5 million women-owned businesses, representing nearly 40% of all state enterprises, which generated $580 billion in revenue between 2019 and 2023, according to a report from HRWatchdog.

Yet national data points to a persistent gap between business formation and business growth. U.S. women-owned employer businesses grew by 8% between 2022 and 2025, four times the growth rate of men-owned businesses, but their revenue grew at just 7.7% compared to 18.1% for men, and 91% of women-owned businesses nationwide operate with no employees, per figures Norberg shared in a video posted to Facebook.

Local institutional support exists to help close that gap. The Sacramento-based California Capital Women's Business Center received state funding from the California Office of the Small Business Advocate to administer programs like License to Care, which connects local childcare startups to Dream Fund grants of up to $10,000, according to the California Office of the Small Business Advocate. Programming like Powered by Women LIVE fits into that same ecosystem, aiming to turn a weekend of networking and mastermind feedback into measurable business growth for the women founders who show up.

According to Food Poison Journal, Zaragoza ordered the chalupa supreme box meal through the Taco Bell app on July 11, and the meal contained fresh shredded iceberg lettuce. He developed bloody diarrhea after working until he could no longer stand, and went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital's emergency department on July 15, where he received intravenous fluids before being discharged the following afternoon. Sanchez drove him to the hospital, stayed the night, and, per the same account, did not sleep for the first five days of his illness.

Zaragoza was not tested for cyclospora until a third clinic visit on July 26, and his test did not return a positive result until August 4 — 23 days after his first symptom appeared. The lawsuit attributes that delay in part to how the parasite is detected: a routine ova and parasite examination misses cyclospora unless a doctor specifically requests testing by name, the article notes. The CDC confirms this diagnostic gap, stating that routine stool exams and standard ova and parasite tests do not reliably detect Cyclospora cayetanensis, requiring providers to request modified acid-fast staining or specialized PCR molecular testing.

A Ten-Count Complaint Against the Lettuce Supplier

The complaint, brought by attorneys Gary A. Newland and Erin A. Adamski of Newland & Newland LLP along with William Marler representing the plaintiffs pro hac vice pending, includes ten counts: strict product liability, breach of express and implied warranty, negligence, and loss of consortium claims against each company, with Sanchez bringing the loss-of-consortium claims. Notably, the complaint does not name a restaurant, franchisee, or Taco Bell entity, focusing liability instead on the growers and processors of the lettuce itself.

The suit pleads that the lettuce was adulterated under the Illinois Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which under Section 3.1 (410 ILCS 620/3.1) classifies a food product as adulterated if it contains any added poisonous or deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health, according to the Illinois General Assembly. Zaragoza and Sanchez allege that shredded iceberg lettuce grown, processed, and distributed by the Taylor companies carried Cyclospora cayetanensis, and Zaragoza is counted as one confirmed illness in the federal case total.

Why the Parasite Points Back to the Field, Not the Kitchen

Cyclospora comes from human sewage entering water and gets onto leaves in fields weeks before shredding or serving, with no kill step available to remove it once contamination occurs, per Food Poison Journal's reporting. That biology lines up with CDC clinical guidance explaining that oocysts shed in human stool require one to two weeks in favorable environmental conditions to mature and become infectious, making direct person-to-person transmission unlikely and pointing investigators toward agricultural water or soil contamination weeks before consumption.

The FDA announced its investigation into shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell on July 16, and named Taylor Farms de Mexico in that lettuce investigation the following day. Taylor Farms responded the same day, July 17, by voluntarily recalling all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico, temporarily suspending production at its central Mexico facility, and commissioning independent experts to review its food safety protocols, according to a statement posted by Taylor Farms.

Federal Inspectors Widen the Search

Federal inspectors from the FDA began onsite inspections and environmental sampling at Taylor Farms de Mexico's processing facilities on August 13, working in coordination with Mexican government officials, as reported by Food Safety Magazine. Days later, on August 21, the FDA expanded its distribution warning, revealing that recalled lettuce may have reached nine additional jurisdictions — including California, Washington state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico — beyond the 31 states previously identified, according to The Washington Post. Taylor Farms has noted, as of late August, that FDA product testing had not yet yielded confirmed positive samples for cyclospora.

As of August 20, the FDA and CDC had reported 10,930 illnesses and at least 454 hospitalizations across 17 states tied to the outbreak, along with two deaths. Illinois is one of those 17 states, and the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 1,437 confirmed and probable cases and 69 hospitalizations statewide as of August 18. A broader fifty-state cyclospora tally, which includes cases beyond the specific lettuce-linked cluster, stood at 31,521 cases as of August 19, and CDC surveillance recorded more than 13,800 total laboratory-confirmed domestically acquired cyclospora cases nationwide during the summer season, per Food Safety Magazine.

Treatment Gaps and a Wider Legal Push

The CDC identifies trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, commonly known as Bactrim, as the primary effective treatment for cyclosporiasis, and notes that no highly effective alternative antibiotic regimen exists for patients with sulfa allergies. The CDC's national Health Alert Network advisory on the outbreak went out July 14, one day before Zaragoza first went to the emergency room.

William Marler, who has represented more than 10,000 people since 1993 — including Brianne Kiner in the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that year — founded Food Safety News in 2009 and teaches at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His firm, Marler Clark, already represents more than 400 people across 20 states in this outbreak and expects to file more cases, according to Food Poison Journal. The FDA's 2013 environmental assessment had previously asked whether cyclospora is a hazard in the growing region tied to this supply chain, a question that has resurfaced amid the current investigation.

Fallout Beyond the Courtroom

The outbreak's reach has extended into the restaurant industry more broadly. Drive-thru chain Salad and Go cited consumer anxiety over the outbreak as a factor in depressed sales when it closed all 70 of its locations following bankruptcy in August, even though the chain did not buy lettuce from the supplier at the center of this case, Hoodline previously reported. State health departments from North Carolina to Tennessee have spent the summer tracking their own local case counts and urging residents to request specific diagnostic testing for persistent diarrhea, while Zaragoza and Sanchez's Illinois filing marks the first time those national numbers have translated into a courtroom claim.

The Hawaiʻi State Department of Health posted the bad-batch alert early Saturday morning, warning residents not to use drugs alone, to always carry naloxone, and to use fentanyl test strips before consuming any illicit substance. The agency said evidence points to a tainted supply moving through Honolulu, though it did not specify how many suspected overdoses have occurred or where in the city they took place. The department's post also directed people to spread the word and pointed to statewide resources for naloxone and treatment support.

Why Fentanyl in Cocaine Is So Dangerous

Cocaine users typically carry no physical tolerance to opioids, which makes even a trace amount of fentanyl in a stimulant supply potentially lethal. Synthetic fentanyl is roughly 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health advisories cited by the Hawaiʻi Island Fentanyl Task Force, with a dose as small as 2 milligrams considered potentially lethal for someone without opioid tolerance. Because fentanyl is odorless and invisible when mixed into powder, users often have no way of knowing their supply has been contaminated.

That contamination risk has been building for years. Fentanyl-involved overdose deaths in Hawaiʻi rose from nine in 2014 to 103 in 2023, according to Hawaiʻi Department of Health figures cited by the Hawaiʻi Island Fentanyl Task Force, driven largely by illicit fentanyl being laced into stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine. CDC data reported by USAFacts in May showed Hawaiʻi recorded 333 total drug overdose deaths in 2024, an age-adjusted rate of 23.0 deaths per 100,000 residents.

What to Do If You Witness an Overdose

State guidance instructs anyone who witnesses a suspected overdose to call 911 immediately, administer naloxone, and keep the person awake and breathing while laying them on their side until help arrives. Because of fentanyl's potency, multiple doses of naloxone may be needed to reverse an overdose, according to the department's alert. Free naloxone is available at distribution sites statewide, with locations mapped on the state's Opioid Settlement Program website, and free fentanyl test strips can be obtained through the Hawaiʻi Health and Harm Reduction Center by calling 808-521-2437 or visiting its offices at 677 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 226, in Honolulu, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Anyone in crisis or looking for support can also call, text, or chat with 988 at any time, per the department's alert. Hawaiʻi law offers additional protection for bystanders who step in: under Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes § 329-43.6, the state provides limited immunity from arrest, charge, prosecution, or civil asset forfeiture for personal drug or paraphernalia possession for people who seek emergency help during an overdose, according to Justia Law. The Good Samaritan protection is designed to remove the legal fear that can delay a 911 call during a life-threatening drug poisoning.

State Has Ramped Up Harm Reduction Infrastructure

The warning lands amid a broader state effort to expand access to overdose-reversal tools. The Hawaiʻi Department of Health and community harm reduction partners had installed 155 public naloxone distribution boxes and 24/7 free harm reduction vending machines across Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island by late 2025, according to the Hawaiʻi Health & Harm Reduction Center. The vending machines allow people to obtain free Narcan nasal spray anonymously, without a prescription or insurance.

In February 2025, the department launched a public online portal tracking the allocation of more than $100 million in national opioid settlement funds, including data dashboards on overdose emergency room visits, settlement spending, and naloxone distribution locations statewide, as Hoodline reported at the time. That effort followed the department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division launching the Hawaiʻi Overdose Initiative Action Plan in January 2025, a multi-sector strategy targeting polysubstance use and equitable harm reduction access across government agencies, healthcare providers, and community groups.

The Honolulu alert also arrives against a backdrop of escalating fentanyl trafficking on Oʻahu. In January, federal authorities indicted a Hawaiʻi Army National Guard soldier after recovering 3.5 kilograms of fentanyl hidden inside a locker room at a Kapolei Guard facility, a seizure that dwarfed prior monthly Honolulu Police Department averages of roughly 600 grams in early 2025, Hoodline previously reported. Federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Hawaiʻi apply statutes carrying mandatory minimum prison terms of 20 years to life for drug distribution that results in a fatal overdose.

While methamphetamine remains Hawaiʻi's primary illicit drug threat, with meth-involved overdose fatalities rising 8% statewide in 2025, polysubstance contamination involving fentanyl in cocaine and street pills represents the fastest-growing fatal risk, according to state prosecutor reports and local coverage. It remains an open question whether recreational cocaine users in Honolulu regularly carry naloxone or know how to administer it, a gap health officials are trying to close through the expanded network of vending machines and distribution boxes across the islands.

Nassau County police said Rahmani was driving a 2023 GMC SUV when she lost control of the vehicle in the driveway at 1192 Elinor Road, according to the Herald Community Newspapers. The SUV struck a tree and an unoccupied 2006 Honda before plunging into the in-ground pool. Emergency responders arriving on scene found the vehicle partially submerged with all four tires off the ground, as reported by Daily Voice.

Rahmani had already been pulled from the SUV by the time officers arrived, and responding police began CPR and other emergency life-saving measures on scene, the outlet's report notes. Despite the vehicle landing in the pool, a family source told JNS that Rahmani did not drown. According to that account, she remained conscious enough after the crash to call for help herself, and she died in an ambulance while being transported to the hospital.

Community Responders Rushed to the Scene

The emergency response in Hewlett drew both medical and police helicopters, along with on-scene assistance from Achiezer, a Five Towns-based Jewish community crisis support organization, per 5 Towns Central. Fox 5 NY also reported that a car had plunged into a backyard swimming pool on Long Island, drawing wider attention to the crash beyond the immediate community.

Rahmani served as middle school math coordinator and teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockaway, known as HAFTR, according to Matzav.com. Her husband, Matthew Rahmani, serves as president of Irving Place Minyan in Woodmere. Word of her death spread quickly through Five Towns institutions where the family is well known.

Funeral Set for Sunday in Hewlett

A levaya was scheduled for Sunday at 11 a.m. at Boulevard-Riverside Chapels at 1450 Broadway in Hewlett, according to 5 Towns Central. Shiva details were expected to be announced separately. As of Friday night, Nassau County police had not disclosed what caused Rahmani to lose control of the SUV, and the fatal crash remained under investigation, as reported by Newsday.

The crash unfolded in Hewlett Bay Park, an incorporated village of just 428 residents where average household income exceeds $550,000, ranking it among the ten wealthiest municipalities in New York State, per Daily Voice. Vehicle submersion crashes remain a rare but recognized hazard nationally; federal crash data compiled by NHTSA and cited by Safe Ride 4 Kids show an average of 384 traffic fatalities each year in the United States involve vehicles submerged in water. Automotive safety researchers note that power windows in submerged vehicles frequently short-circuit within seconds of water contact, according to Murray Guari Perry Trial Attorneys, making rapid extrication crucial in these situations.

Whether a medical episode, mechanical failure, or driver error caused Rahmani to lose control remains an open question for investigators. VINnews, which first reported on the tragedy, noted the crash occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. Friday. Nassau County police have not released further findings as the investigation continues.

According to surveillance footage released by the Austin Police Department and reported by KVUE, Williams arrived at the Baden Lane park at 3:55 a.m. and sat on a low wall near the playground. A 911 call had come in at 3:51 a.m. reporting that a teenager at the park may have had a gun, and that the person was messing with his waistband, according to the San Antonio Current's telling of the incident. Officers approached him at 4:02 a.m. He appeared to lift his shirt and reach for his waistband, and two officers emptied and reloaded their chambers before he went down — with officers continuing to fire even after he had hit the ground, according to the San Antonio Current. Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services was called to the scene only after officers determined no one else was present. It was Williams himself who had placed the 911 call.

Police Chief Points to the 911 Call as Proof

Davis, who has served as Austin's police chief since 2024, said following the shooting that “all points are indicating that this was a suicide by police,” per the Current's reporting. She and other department defenders point to the fact that Williams placed the 911 call himself and to his hand movement toward his waistband as evidence he deliberately provoked a fatal police response. What turned out to be in his waistband, though, was a water bottle — not a weapon.

Williams' family has rejected that framing entirely. Cluren Williams called the suicide-by-cop characterization irresponsible and dehumanizing. Ameer Alogaili, a 16-year-old former classmate of Williams, remembered him as a little kid at the park who could put a smile on everybody's face — a portrait sharply at odds with the department's account of a teenager bent on forcing his own death.

Civil Rights Groups Call the Label Junk Science

Black Lawyers for Justice announced an independent civil rights investigation on August 5 into the shooting, calling for a local grand jury indictment and a U.S. Department of Justice probe, according to KVUE. The organization argued officers acted like a firing squad against an unarmed teenager. The following day, the National Police Accountability Project issued a public statement arguing that the department's immediate suicide-by-cop designation was a rush to judgment that bypassed de-escalation tactics and attempted to shield officers from liability, noting that officers cannot determine mental intent without a professional psychiatric evaluation.

Chas Moore, who founded the Austin Justice Coalition, said he could not believe a 17-year-old Black boy knew about suicide by cop, according to the Current's reporting. Moore and other critics have called the theory junk science outright. The skepticism has spilled into the streets and city hall: protesters rallied outside Austin City Hall, interrupted a city council meeting after Williams' death, and at one point entered the Travis County District Attorney's office.

What Suicide by Cop Actually Means — And What It Doesn't

The term itself is contested territory. Per the FBI's 2014 bulletin, suicide by cop describes situations in which individuals deliberately place themselves or others at grave risk in a manner that compels police to use deadly force — a definition focused on actions that force a response, not on assumed intent after the fact. The Current notes the term was reportedly coined by a police officer-turned-psychologist in the 1980s, and researchers say it remains a divisive and poorly defined label decades later.

A 1998 study of officer-involved shootings by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, indexed on PubMed, found that 11 percent of incidents met suicide-by-cop criteria, with 70 percent of those shootings occurring within 30 minutes of officers arriving on scene. More recent research cited by the Current estimated that 10 percent to one-third of annual police shootings nationally were suicides by cop, though an Observer analysis of 100 such incidents over the previous 20 years found police confirmed the person actually had a gun in only just over one-third of cases — and some cases involved replica guns, BB guns, or misidentified objects such as water bottles. The same analysis found police used the suicide-by-cop label in the majority of cases reviewed but were not always clear about why the label applied, and the United States has no national database tracking how often it's invoked.

Medical research complicates the police determination further. A National Institutes of Health-republished American Psychiatric Association journal article stated in 2020 that it is clinically impossible to predict whether a specific individual will die by suicide, noting that psychiatric evaluations assess risk factors rather than foretell outcomes — a finding critics say undercuts officers making that call in real time, without training, based on a few seconds of behavior.

National Guidelines Call for Patience, Not Gunfire

The Police Executive Research Forum created the first training guide for potential suicide-by-cop incidents in 2019, a 12-page protocol instructing officers to take cover, make small requests, avoid pointing weapons, and exercise patience to resolve incidents safely. Chuck Wexler, the organization's executive director, has said the label's underlying goal is to prevent tragedies and better understand police shootings — not to close the book on them. Critics argue that in Williams' case, the label was applied to do the opposite: shift blame for a police shooting onto the victim and insulate officers from liability, a strategy the suicide-by-cop theory has been used for in several past trials, according to the Current's reporting.

Austin's Broader Reckoning With Crisis Response

Williams' shooting was logged as a police call rather than a mental health call, even though the city has maintained a dedicated mental health police unit since 1999. The case has become entangled with Austin's ongoing effort to restructure emergency dispatch, including separating dispatch operations from the Austin Police Department — a reform Hoodline previously reported is meant to route mental health calls to more appropriate, non-lethal responses. The Austin City Council approved a budget including more than $1 million to fund that restructuring following Williams' death.

In the shooting's immediate aftermath, the Austin Police Oversight office emphasized a Know Your Rights campaign, as reported by FOX 7 Austin, aimed at educating residents on navigating encounters with law enforcement. Williams' death was also part of a wider pattern this summer: it was the second of three officer-involved shootings in Austin between July 11 and August 12, Hoodline's earlier coverage of a later I-35 standoff noted, with the Austin Police Oversight office maintaining an online dashboard that logs all local use-of-force cases. No charges or findings have resolved whether officers followed PERF's de-escalation protocols that night, and that question remains open as investigations continue.

According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, the city cited unresolved concerns around public safety, limited parking, access for neighboring businesses, and compliance with the market's conditional use permit. Malibu officials said releasing the deed restriction would require agreement from all six original parties to the deed, a hurdle that has so far kept any permanent fix out of reach. The outlet reported that Assistant City Manager Joe Irvin said, “This is not about shutting down a farmers market that our community values.”

How the Market Ended Up at Legacy Park in the First Place

For more than 16 years, the market operated free of charge in the county-owned Civic Center lot near the Malibu library, per the Santa Monica Daily Press. That changed when construction of the Santa Monica College Malibu satellite campus, a $25 million project, encroached on the lot and a fence cut the parking area roughly in half in 2022. The market relocated to Legacy Park in January 2023 after Perenchio's son, John Perenchio, allowed temporary use of the park during the campus construction.

The city's temporary permits for that arrangement lapsed in October 2023, and the same month, Malibu fined the market's organizers thousands of dollars for continuing to operate at Legacy Park without a valid permit, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported. Radio coverage from 99.1 KBUU Radio Malibu put the fine at an estimated $6,540 following eight consecutive weeks of unpermitted operation, and noted at the time that the county lot had room for up to 76 vendors. That same month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors considered a motion from Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to approve a fee waiver and extend a temporary license allowing the market to return to the Civic Center lot, according to The Malibu Times.

Paperwork Delays and a Wildfire Kept Pushing the Return Back

Even with county approval in hand, paperwork delays and space disputes stalled the market's move back to the Civic Center lot, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported. Then, in February 2025, Los Angeles County paused use of the lot altogether for Palisades Fire recovery operations, pushing the market right back to Legacy Park. The city says it issued urgency ordinances allowing temporary parking arrangements during that period, but the underlying deed problem at Legacy Park never went away.

Legacy Park itself was never built with a market in mind. The $35 million, 15-acre site opened in October 2010 as an environmental engineering project designed to capture, filter, and disinfect up to 2.6 million gallons of stormwater and urban runoff daily before it reaches Santa Monica Bay, according to the City of Malibu. Its construction drew $5 million in private donations from more than 1,000 community members, per Western City Magazine, a level of community investment that helps explain why the site's original donors and deed holders have strictly enforced its anti-commercial restrictions.

Parking, Safety and a Six-Event Cap

City officials say market vendor vehicles and booths currently occupy nearly 40 percent of available public parking in the Civic Center area, and that summer visitor traffic has heightened safety risks at the park. Each market held at Legacy Park counts against a six-event annual cap the city has applied to commercial activity there since October 2023, per the Santa Monica Daily Press's reporting, leaving little room to simply let the weekly Sunday market continue as-is.

The Malibu Farmers Market is run by the nonprofit Cornucopia Foundation, led by President Debra Bianco, which the Malibu City Council formally commended in October 2024 for 25 years of community and environmental service, according to The Malibu Times. Beyond its regular Sunday produce sales, the market also hosts monthly “Vintage, Art & Brunch” gatherings at Legacy Park that require vendors to follow strict promotional and plastic-free guidelines, according to the market's own event listings — an expanded footprint that has added to the parking and traffic pressure the city cites.

City Says It Wants the Market to Stay in Malibu

Malibu officials maintain they remain supportive of the farmers market continuing to operate somewhere in the city. The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that the city worked with the market operator to try to accommodate continued operations and has offered to host the market at an approved location near City Hall while its permanent license is processed by Los Angeles County. City officials say they are committed to working with the market to eventually return it to its approved home on the county lot, and that John Perenchio has declined further exceptions to the deed restriction at Legacy Park.

Why the Cornucopia Foundation has resisted moving back to the county lot's approved footprint, despite the county's approval and the city's offer of a temporary City Hall–area site, remains an open question; organizers have pointed to space constraints and a preference for Legacy Park's park-like setting, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. Under California Department of Food and Agriculture rules, Certified Farmers' Markets must operate under active permits approved by county agricultural commissioners and comply with local land-use zoning, meaning the market's state certification could be at risk if the permitting standoff drags on. The disruption echoes what happened at the nearby Pacific Palisades Farmers Market, which stayed shuttered for 19 months after the January 2025 Palisades Fire before reopening on Swarthmore Avenue this month on a shifted Wednesday schedule.

The alert, first shared in a post from the Bartlett Police Department on Facebook, lists McKinney's NCIC number as M269030442 and notes that the Memphis Police Department is handling the missing-person case. Methodist University Hospital, where McKinney was last seen, is a 617-bed acute care teaching facility at 1265 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis and serves as the principal adult private teaching hospital for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, according to the UTHSC Department of Surgery. The hospital sits along busy Midtown transit routes and commercial corridors, which could complicate efforts to track his path on foot.

Anyone with information on McKinney's whereabouts is asked to contact the Memphis Police Department at 901-636-4447 or the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's 24-hour hotline at 1-800-TBI-FIND. It remains unclear whether McKinney left the hospital on foot or in a vehicle, what specific medical condition prompted the alert, or which direction he may have traveled from Midtown Memphis, according to the research surrounding the case.

Why Tennessee Issues Silver Alerts

Tennessee's Silver Alert program is authorized under Tennessee Code § 38-6-121, which allows statewide missing-person alerts for adults age 60 or older, people with documented dementia, or adults 18 and older with intellectual, developmental, or physical disabilities believed to be in imminent danger, per Justia Law. Before the state can broadcast an alert, local police must first establish that a missing adult meets those legal vulnerability standards. State guidelines also require local departments to enter a missing vulnerable adult report into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database before the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation can issue a statewide Silver Alert.

Tennessee first enacted Silver Alert legislation in August 2009, becoming the ninth state in the nation to do so, and later overhauled the system in May 2021 under Public Chapter 350 to centralize oversight under the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, according to Elder Care Law of Tennessee. Early efforts were limited by budget constraints before the statutory updates standardized the protocol statewide. In February 2026, the agency reported that its Silver Alert program, run in partnership with Alzheimer's Tennessee, had helped safely locate and return home more than 500 missing individuals since it began.

Tools Police Can Use to Track a Missing Vulnerable Adult

Memphis and Shelby County law enforcement have access to roughly 600 Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras, which are integrated with missing-person databases so officers are automatically alerted if a vehicle tied to an active Silver Alert is detected on the road. The technology could prove useful if McKinney obtained access to a car, though it remains unknown whether he is traveling by vehicle or on foot.

In January 2025, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation also launched the TBI Find mobile app and the SafeSeniorTN.com web portal, giving the public real-time Silver Alert notifications and letting families build digital CareKits with medical information and photos ahead of time. Nationally, roughly 60 percent of people living with dementia or cognitive impairments will wander away from home or a care facility at least once during their illness, according to the Alzheimer's Association, underscoring why quick public reporting matters in the earliest hours of a disappearance.

Recent Silver Alerts Across Tennessee

McKinney's case is one of several active Silver Alerts issued across Tennessee in recent days. Memphis Police issued a similar alert earlier this week for Kenneth Howell, 69, last seen Tuesday, while a separate alert sought Nashville resident Kareem Muhammad, 54, also missing since Tuesday. Just over a week ago, a 73-year-old Germantown grandmother who had gone missing in Memphis was found safe following a Silver Alert, a reminder that these cases can end with a family reunited.

Anyone with information about Walter McKinney's whereabouts should call the Memphis Police Department at 901-636-4447 or the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's hotline at 1-800-TBI-FIND.

According to FOX 10 Phoenix, the alleged assault happened on July 1 while the teenager was sunbathing on a float at the pool. Casillas approached her on the float, grabbed her in what police described as a bear hug, and pulled her into a deeper section of the pool. He also offered to apply sunscreen to her back, according to the outlet's account of court records.

Court records state the teenager told Casillas she was 16 years old before the alleged assault, a detail that matters under Arizona law. Sexual conduct with a minor between the ages of 15 and 17 is classified as a Class 6 felony when there is no position-of-trust relationship between the accused and the victim, according to Arizona Revised Statutes covered by FindLaw. The same statute eliminates mistake of age as a defense, meaning prosecutors would not need to prove Casillas knew the teen's exact age even without that alleged disclosure, per an explanation from Stone Rose Law.

How the Recorded Call Became Central Evidence

The teenager and her family had returned from a trip out of town for a relative's funeral before detectives arranged to monitor a phone call between her and Casillas on August 18, the report notes. During that recorded conversation, per police, Casillas made incriminating admissions about touching the teenager and apologized to her.

Chandler detectives were legally able to monitor the call without a wiretap warrant because Arizona is a one-party consent state, meaning law enforcement can record a phone conversation as long as one participant — in this case, the teenage victim — agrees to it, according to a legal explainer from the Digital Media Law Project. Pretext calls like this one are a standard investigative tool in Arizona sex crime cases. When Chandler police later interviewed Casillas following his arrest, court records indicate he initially denied touching the teenager before admitting the assault happened, per those same records.

Investigators also obtained apartment pool surveillance footage that confirmed the victim and Casillas were together in the pool during the timeframe described in the case, and court documents state Casillas sexually assaulted the victim. Casillas was booked into Maricopa County jail and charged with felony sexual conduct with a minor. He is being held on a $250,000 bond and is scheduled for his next court date on August 27.

A Criminal Record That Could Shape Sentencing

Casillas has an extensive criminal record in Arizona, including prior convictions for drug offenses, weapon violations, and criminal damage, as well as a previous arrest for smuggling illegal migrants, the station's report states. That history could carry significant weight if he is convicted on the current charge. Under Arizona Revised Statutes covered by the Salwin Law Group, a defendant convicted of a Class 6 felony with two or more historical felony convictions faces a mandatory prison term of 2.25 to 5.75 years and becomes ineligible for probation — a stark contrast to the probation eligibility available to first-time offenders under the same statute.

His prior human smuggling arrest also underscores how seriously Arizona treats that offense. Human smuggling for profit is a Class 4 felony carrying up to 3.75 years in prison, but it escalates to a Class 2 felony punishable by up to 12.5 years if the smuggled individual is an unaccompanied minor, according to Brandon White Law. It remains unclear whether the Maricopa County Attorney's Office will seek additional charges or formally allege Casillas' prior felony convictions to trigger those mandatory sentencing enhancements when he appears in court on August 27.

Maricopa County procedures required Casillas to appear before a judicial officer within 24 hours of his arrest, which is how his $250,000 bond was set so quickly, per guidance from the Nova Law Group. Because he remains in custody, court rules generally require felony defendants held on bond to receive a trial date within 120 days of their initial appearance unless extraordinary circumstances justify a delay, according to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

Case Unfolds in a Fast-Growing Corner of Chandler

The apartment complex where the alleged assault occurred sits within Chandler's Price Technology Corridor, a commercial and residential hub near Loop 101 and Loop 202 that anchors much of the East Valley's tech-driven growth, according to real estate data from Redfin. The area has drawn major technology companies, data centers, and dense new housing in recent years.

The case also comes amid a broader decline in reported sexual assaults across Chandler. Arizona Department of Public Safety statistics show reported sexual assaults in the city dropped 54% in 2024 to 51 incidents, part of an overall 23% annual decline in local violent crime, according to the Chandler Independent. Chandler, the fourth-largest city in Arizona, is policed by 348 sworn officers across 18 patrol beats serving roughly 288,000 residents, per the Chandler Police Department.

The scale of the fix reflects the age of what it's protecting. As The Sacramento Bee reports, the current Boiler Shop building dates to 1882, while the Erecting Shop includes a portion dating back to 1869 — the same year Sacramento served as the western terminus while the transcontinental railroad was being completed, when the Boiler Shop's wooden predecessor first went up. Together the two buildings have been in continuous use for more than 150 years, and Roebbelen Construction is handling the roof replacement using in-kind materials chosen specifically to protect the buildings' character-defining features.

The buildings' age is precisely why the repair matters so much to the people who work inside them. Albert Di Paolo, restoration and maintenance lead worker for the California State Railroad Museum, has spent about 25 years with State Parks and previously worked on the Disneyland Railroad and the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg, per the Bee's reporting. He's now among roughly five or six workers who show up each day to tend to historic engines inside the shops, which the California State Railroad Museum Foundation uses for maintenance and storage.

A Working Museum Hiding Inside Old Iron

The collection inside these walls reads like a timeline of American rail technology. It includes a 1929 diesel-electric Ingersoll Rand locomotive, described as one of the earliest surviving diesel locomotives anywhere, along with Southern Pacific's first diesel locomotive dating to 1939 and a 1911 gasoline-powered car built by the Hall-Scott Motor Car Company in Berkeley. The 1948 General Motors F7 locomotive, which runs on diesel and produces 1,500 horsepower, may eventually pull museum excursion trains along the Sacramento River to Sutterville Road — but the same report notes it needs at least $200,000 in additional funding before its engine can run again. Di Paolo has called the F7 basically the locomotive that ended the steam engine.

Robert Smith, a California State Railroad Museum Foundation employee, is currently upgrading electrical connections for the museum's Polar Express holiday train, work he says is meant to make the seasonal attraction more reliable. The shops themselves were built for exactly this kind of hands-on train work: the Erecting Shop originally had room for 10 locomotives and eventually expanded to hold 25, while the Boiler and Erecting shops together were designed as a one-stop operation for building everything a train needed, enabling on-site production of components rather than relying on outside parts.

The Locomotive That Inspired Disneyland

One piece of shop history reaches all the way to Anaheim. Central Pacific 173, a locomotive built inside the Erecting Shop, reportedly inspired Walt Disney after he saw a model of it — and Disneyland Railroad No. 1 was based on that same engine, according to the Bee's account. The Boiler and Erecting shops are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a designation reflecting their role as some of the only American railroad structures still standing from the era of the First Transcontinental Railroad's completion in May 1869, according to the City of Sacramento.

That historical weight is part of why the roof project has been treated as urgent. The current repair follows structural degradation tied to wind damage during the January 2023 storm system, which prompted California State Parks to file an emergency California Environmental Quality Act exemption that March to install scaffold shoring and stabilize the roof, according to filings reviewed via CEQAnet. Engineering evaluations from Buehler Engineering describe the broader Central Shops complex as spanning 356,000 square feet across eight historic buildings, framed with cast-iron columns from 1869 and heavy-timber roof trusses originally built from repurposed railroad ties.

Funding, Ownership and What Comes Next

State Parks formalized its long-term control of the site back in 2018, acquiring fee ownership of the Boiler Shop and signing a 30-year lease with purchase options for the Erecting Shop, according to California State Parks. The current roof project is funded through Proposition 68 and Proposition 84 bond measures, with Proposition 68 alone representing a $4.1 billion, voter-approved 2018 measure dedicated to state park historic-resource protection, per Ballotpedia.

Museum officials see the repair as a step toward eventually opening the shops to the public. Kim Whitfield has said the goal is to create hands-on activity space focused on engineering, trains and railroading, and one of the two shop buildings might eventually become an educational area addressing both the past and future of railroading — potentially welcoming schoolchildren into the space, the Bee reports. The roof crews, meanwhile, are contending with limited access to both buildings while they work.

Not every historic shop building at the Railyards is headed toward a museum future. LDK Ventures, which is handling redevelopment of the broader 244-acre Sacramento Railyards, controls the smaller historic structures on site and is adapting some of them into event space — including plans for a concert venue inside the former Paint Shop. The Sacramento Bee notes LDK Ventures is separately converting that building into what has been described elsewhere as a $125 million, 3,500-capacity live entertainment venue, a project detailed by the Sacramento Bee's sister coverage of the site.

The roof project unfolds against a backdrop of political friction over how the rest of the Railyards gets built out. Sacramento officials pulled a planned vote to expand the Railyards Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District from 42 acres to 238 acres after filing errors and objections from labor union UNITE HERE Local 49 over affordable housing commitments, as Hoodline previously reported. That financing district was designed to generate more than $200 million for site-wide roads and utilities, underscoring the scale of investment surrounding the historic shops even as their own restoration moves forward on a separate, state-funded track. Just half a mile south, the main California State Railroad Museum already draws more than 500,000 visitors annually to its 225,000 square feet of exhibit space and holds status as an official Smithsonian Affiliate — a reminder of the audience the shop buildings could eventually reach once their roofs, and their history, are secured.

The schedule was shared by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department in a Facebook post announcing the day's lineup. The Whale's Tail is associated with the department, which oversees the seasonal garden bar as part of its broader programming along the promenade. The venue promotes updates through its social media handle, @thewhalestail_sf.

This weekend's musical focus follows a different kind of gathering just days earlier, when the bar leaned into its tabletop game setup during what Hoodline described in its giant game night coverage of the Gamers Weekend activation, complete with food trucks and lawn games. Sunday's lineup swaps the board games for a full slate of live sets, though the venue's family- and dog-friendly seating and rotating food trucks remain part of the draw.

Who's Playing and When

Ken Newman, who opens the day at 12:15 PM, is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who performs both solo and as the frontman of the blues group Ken Newman & The Berkeley Bronx across local Illuminate LIVE venues, according to a Facebook post detailing the roster of local musicians featured this summer. Jules Buckner follows at 1:30 PM and Quinn Widener takes the stage at 2:45 PM, rounding out the early afternoon before the headline slot.

Closing the day at 4 PM is The Welcome Matt, the stage name of San Francisco singer-songwriter Matt Reagan, a regular featured act in Illuminate LIVE's summer concert lineups at both the Golden Gate Park Bandshell and JFK Promenade, as noted by Secret San Francisco. Reagan regularly performs acoustic sets across the city's community stages, part of a wider roster that keeps The Whale's Tail's weekend schedule filled through the summer.

A Venue Built on a Once-Contested Roadway

The Whale's Tail takes its name from Street Whale, a 49-foot-long humpback whale sculpture and street painting built from reclaimed wood by Bay Area artist Reuben Rude along JFK Promenade in 2022, per Atlas Obscura. The installation was one of the flagship public art pieces introduced after JFK Drive was pedestrianized, giving the garden bar both its branding and its backdrop.

That pedestrianization became permanent when San Francisco voters passed Proposition J in November 2022 with 63% approval, according to FoundSF, legally preserving 1.5 miles of the roadway for pedestrian and recreational use after the closure began as an emergency pandemic measure in 2020. The shift has reshaped how people move through the park: overall Golden Gate Park visitation rose 36% to more than 8 million visitors following the car-free designation, per a September 2025 report from the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.

The bar itself evolved from a simple Beer and Wine Garden into its current form in May 2024, when the seasonal venue was rebranded as The Whale's Tail and expanded its menu to include brunch cocktails alongside beer and wine, according to SFGATE. It now operates as part of The Golden Mile, an open-air art and recreation corridor built through a partnership between arts nonprofit Illuminate, the city parks department, and event producer Non Plus Ultra, a collaboration that also maintains public pianos, large-scale murals, and yellow lounge chairs along the promenade.

New Leadership, Same Weekend Rhythm

Oversight of the park now falls to Sarah Madland, whom Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed General Manager of the Recreation and Park Department in May, placing a veteran official who previously helped oversee the car-free JFK transition at the helm of city parks. Madland served as the department's Director of Policy and Public Affairs for 16 years before her appointment.

The live music at The Whale's Tail fits into a much larger civic effort: Illuminate produces more than 400 free live music events annually across San Francisco through its Illuminate LIVE initiative, including over 125 free shows at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell each season. The Whale's Tail's 2026 season runs every Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 PM through October, with free entry, lawn games, rotating food trucks, and live music continuing through the fall.

The steakhouse opened inside the InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile on August 23, 2011, taking over the space previously occupied by the hotel's restaurant Zest, according to CBS News. That opening marked Jordan's return to the Chicago dining scene, 12 years after his original tourist-oriented restaurant on LaSalle Street had shut its doors. Couper joined ABC7 Chicago to discuss the anniversary and what has kept the concept relevant on Michigan Avenue for 15 years.

From LaSalle Street Sports Bar to Magnificent Mile Fine Dining

Jordan's Michigan Avenue venue is actually his second major restaurant concept in Chicago. The original Michael Jordan's Restaurant at 500 N. LaSalle Street operated during the Bulls' 1990s championship run before closing in 1999, per CBS News. Rather than repeat that high-volume, tourist-attraction model, the Magnificent Mile location pivoted toward upscale steakhouse dining, a shift that appears to have paid off given its now 15-year run.

The current restaurant spans 7,000 square feet across two levels of the InterContinental, with a 160-seat main dining room on the second floor, a ground-floor lobby bar seating up to 90, and private event space for as many as 275 guests, according to Travel Agent Central. That footprint underwent major renovations before the 2011 launch, giving the space room for both intimate dinners and larger private events under one roof.

Jersey Number 23 Woven Into the Menu

Jordan's basketball legacy shows up throughout the menu and design, not just in framed jerseys on the wall. Signature offerings include a 23-layer chocolate cake, a 23-ingredient chopped salad, and a 23-ounce bone-in prime ribeye, as detailed by Time Out. Those numerical nods extend across both portioning and interior touches, giving longtime diners a wink to Jordan's playing days even as the restaurant has moved well past its athlete-owned novelty phase.

On the beef side, the restaurant has partnered with local Chicago purveyor Meats by Linz since it opened in 2011, supplying a custom-portioned 16-ounce, 45-day dry-aged Prime Delmonico ribeye. Per Meats by Linz, the beef is dry-aged specifically to Jordan's preferred specifications, a supply-chain relationship that has stayed intact for the entirety of the restaurant's run.

Leadership and Licensing Behind the Brand

Couper has been with the restaurant nearly as long as it has existed. He originally joined as Executive Sous Chef for the 2011 launch before being promoted to Executive Chef in late 2014, according to Shared Experiences, and now holds the title of Culinary Director overseeing kitchen operations. That continuity in leadership is part of why the restaurant sat him down for the anniversary interview with ABC7 in the first place.

The Michigan Avenue location is operated by Chicago-based Cornerstone Restaurant Group under a trademark licensing arrangement with Jordan's company, Jump Higher LLC, and hotel owner Strategic Hotels & Resorts, per CBS News. Cornerstone has since expanded the Michael Jordan's Steak House brand beyond Chicago to casino resorts in Connecticut, Washington state, and South Korea, according to Cornerstone Restaurant Group, making the Michigan Avenue flagship the launchpad for a wider international portfolio.

Competing in Chicago's Steakhouse Market

Fifteen years is a long time to hold ground in Chicago's fine-dining scene, which remains one of the largest independent steakhouse markets in the country. Rival legacy steakhouse Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse generated upwards of $30.9 million in sales at its flagship Rush Street venue in 2025, according to prior Hoodline reporting, underscoring just how competitive the city's steakhouse landscape has become.

Against that backdrop, Michael Jordan's Steak House has leaned on its blend of celebrity branding, local sourcing, and steady kitchen leadership to keep drawing both Chicagoans and visitors along Michigan Avenue. The $15 anniversary menu, running through the milestone celebration, gives longtime fans and first-time diners alike a low-cost way to sample the restaurant's greatest hits fifteen years after it first opened its doors.