Photo of Madeline, via the Oregon City Police Department
The Oregon City Police Department is asking for the public’s help in locating a missing 11-year-old girl who was last seen Tuesday evening.
Madeline Cornwell was last seen by a friend on February 24 at approximately 6:00 p.m. in the 1200 block of Jackson Street in Oregon City, according to police.
Madeline is described as about 5 feet tall and weighing approximately 90 pounds. She has short brown hair with bright red coloring. At the time she was last seen, she was wearing a gray sweatshirt, black leggings, and carrying a black backpack with embroidered roses.
Police said she may be attempting to travel to Portland, though she is not familiar with public transportation.
Authorities urge anyone who sees Madeline to call 911 immediately and reference OCPD case number 26-003525.
The police department has not released additional details about the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
Beginning March 30, 2026, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department will require day-use parking permits at 22 additional state parks across Oregon.
The fee is $10 per day for Oregon residents and $12 per day for out-of-state visitors. The permit is valid for the full day of purchase at any Oregon state park that charges for parking.
Currently, parking permits are required at 46 parks, while fees are waived at more than 150 others. The 22 additional parks were selected based on amenities that require ongoing maintenance and operation, including restrooms, trails, paving, irrigation systems and boat ramps.
“These updates are about protecting the experiences visitors love,” said Interim Director Stefanie Coons. “We know fee changes are tough and we truly appreciate the support from visitors. These changes help us take care of things people count on like restrooms, boat ramps, and trails, so we can keep parks safe, clean, and welcoming for everyone.”
Access to parks will remain free for visitors who walk, bike or use public transportation. Drivers can show proof of payment by displaying a current camping hangtag, a valid 12-month parking permit, or by associating their license plate with a permit purchased online or through posted QR codes.
An annual 12-month parking permit costs $60 for Oregon residents. The 24-month permit is no longer for sale, though existing permits will be honored until they expire.
In addition to the expanded parking fees, a new $10 charge will take effect March 30 at 19 RV dump stations across the state park system. Officials say the fee will help cover maintenance costs and support more sustainable operations. Visitors can pay by scanning a QR code at the site or paying online.
The department is funded primarily through constitutionally dedicated lottery funds, recreational vehicle license plate fees and park visitor fees. It does not receive general fund tax dollars.
Parks Adding Day-Use Parking Fees March 30
Agate Beach State Recreation Area
Angel’s Rest Trailhead
Banks-Vernonia State Trail
Bob Straub State Park
Brian Booth State Park
Bridal Veil Falls State Scenic Viewpoint
Cape Blanco State Park
Cape Meares State Scenic Viewpoint
Carl G. Washburne Memorial State Park
Devil’s Punchbowl State Natural Area
Elijah Bristow State Park
Fogarty Creek State Recreation Area
Gleneden Beach State Recreation Area
Governor Patterson Memorial State Recreation Site
Lake Owyhee State Park
Latourell Falls Trailhead at Guy Talbot State Park
Molalla River State Park
Oceanside Beach State Recreation Area
Roads End State Recreation Site
Umpqua Lighthouse State Park
Wallowa Lake State Park
William M. Tugman State Park
Park officials recommend visitors check individual park webpages before heading out, as conditions, construction and seasonal closures can change quickly.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will join several other Democratic elected officials and well-known actors in giving unofficial responses to President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, according to a news release about the event.
Organizers are calling the “State of the Swamp” a boycott of Mr. Trump’s address. Frey and Johnson are expected to join Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer, actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo, journalists Don Lemon and Jim Acosta and several others at the event. It’s scheduled to take place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger will deliver the official Democratic response to Mr. Trump’s speech, according to party leaders in Congress.
“There are moments in our country’s history when leadership is measured not by party loyalty, but by moral clarity. This is one of those moments,” Frey said in the release.
Johnson added, “Donald Trump’s vision for America runs counter to the hopes and aspirations of the working people who wake up every single day and make our cities run.”
Minneapolis and Chicago have both faced an influx of federal agents as part of a nationwide immigration crackdown by the Trump administration. Organizers, without expanding, cited the cities as faces “of the resistance to lawless actions” of the administration.
Border czar Tom Homan said on Sunday that more than 1,000 immigration agents have left Minnesota since he announced the end of Operation Metro Surge, and several hundred more were expected to leave in the coming days.
Johnson last month signed an executive order directing members of the Chicago Police Department to investigate and document any alleged illegal activity by federal immigration agents. Police will preserve and provide evidence of felony violations to the Cook County State’s Attorney.
Defiance.org, which is organizing the event, is a club for people “willing to take peaceful, lawful, defiant action to defend democracy” from Mr. Trump, according to its website.
WCCO is reaching out to Frey’s office for comment.
About two hours north of Philadelphia is the small town of Macungie, with a population of less than 4,000. And two weeks ago — Macungie and specifically Emmaus High School — had something big to celebrate.
Indiana University starting Defensive Lineman Mario Landino, who played football at Emmaus High School, is now a College Football National Champion.
Indiana may have been known primarily for its basketball program, with legendary Coach Bobby Knight, and for the 1986 film Hoosiers starring Gene Hackman. Not anymore.
And while 65 NCAA Football Teams have been undefeated since the AP started polling in 1936, Indiana is only one of two teams to finish 16–0. The other — the 1894 Yale Football Team. Indiana ran through their 2025 D1 College Football season, including a 13–10 win over Ohio State.
The Oregon Supreme Court ruled this week that criminal cases must be dismissed if the state fails to provide a court-appointed attorney within set time limits, a decision that will immediately result in the dismissal of more than 1,400 cases across Oregon.
In its opinion in State v. Roberts, issued Tuesday, the court held that misdemeanor cases must be dismissed if a defendant is not appointed an attorney within 60 days, and felony cases must be dismissed if no attorney is provided within 90 days. The court said the remedy is required to protect defendants’ constitutional right to counsel.
State officials say the ruling will have an immediate and widespread impact. According to prosecutors, 1,465 cases statewide are subject to dismissal under the decision, including 915 cases in Multnomah County and 263 in Washington County.
The cases affected include charges such as drug trafficking, aggravated theft, firearms and weapons offenses, felony driving under the influence of intoxicants, and strangulation, prosecutors said. They warned that the dismissals will affect crime victims and public safety.
In a joint statement, prosecutors said they respect the court’s ruling and agree that access to legal representation is a fundamental right. However, they argued that the decision fails to account for the rights of victims and the public, and highlights what they describe as a long-standing breakdown in Oregon’s public defense system.
“Oregon’s public defense system is broken,” the statement said, adding that the state has struggled for years to ensure that defendants are appointed lawyers in a timely manner.
The ruling comes amid an ongoing shortage of public defenders in Oregon, which has left hundreds of defendants without legal representation at various points in the criminal process. State officials and lawmakers have convened work groups and emergency task forces in recent years to address the issue.
Prosecutors disputed claims that the crisis is driven by a lack of funding or an overwhelming number of cases. They pointed to state spending of more than $300 million per year on public defense, which they said is nearly four times the national per-capita average. They also noted that hourly rates for public defenders in Oregon rank among the highest in the country, and that statewide criminal case filings are about 15% lower than they were before the crisis began.
Despite those figures, the problem has persisted, they said.
Prosecutors said their offices have taken steps to reduce the strain on the system, including modifying charging practices, creating special resolution dockets, and implementing efficiency measures. They also said they have participated in legislative hearings and advisory groups and supported proposals they believed would help address the shortage.
After four years of what they described as a continuing crisis, prosecutors said they believe a long-term solution must come from state leadership. They welcomed Gov. Tina Kotek’s appointment of Jessica Sanchagrin as permanent director of the Office of Public Defense Services, but said immediate action is needed to prevent further case dismissals.
They called on the governor and the agency’s leadership to implement short-term solutions quickly, warning that the consequences of inaction are already being felt in courts across the state.
Federal immigration agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless there’s a likelihood of escape, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a preliminary injunction in a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of arresting immigrants they happen to come across while conducting ramped-up enforcement operations — which critics have described as “arrest first, justify later.”
Similar actions have drawn concern from civil rights groups across the country amid President Trump’s mass deportation efforts. The nonprofit law firm Innovation Law Lab brought the lawsuit.
With Wednesday’s ruling, Oregon now joins Colorado and Washington, D.C., as jurisdictions where the Trump administration is barred from conducting warrantless arrests without first verifying that the arrestee is a flight risk. There is also a pending lawsuit over warrantless arrests in Minnesota. The government is appealing the rulings in Colorado and D.C.
In a memo last week, Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, noted that agents should not make an arrest without an administrative arrest warrant issued by a supervisor unless they develop probable cause to believe the person is likely to escape from the scene.
Lyons also expanded the grounds that ICE agents and officers can cite to conclude that getting an administrative arrest warrant for someone they encounter would give that person an opportunity to flee while the warrant is being sought.
But in a court hearing Wednesday, the judge heard evidence that agents in Oregon have arrested people in immigration sweeps without such warrants or determining escape was likely.
That included testimony from one plaintiff, Victor Cruz Gamez, a 56-year-old grandfather who has been in the U.S. since 1999. He told the court he was arrested and held in an immigration detention facility for three weeks despite having a valid work permit and a pending visa application.
The hearing also featured testimony from a person identified as M.A.M. who described a video she took of two armed immigration agents bursting into a bedroom to look for somebody who did not live there. The video of the October raid circulated widely on social media, and a person in the house spoke with CBS News last year.
Kasubhai concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail, and said there is “ample evidence in this case that established a pattern of practice of executing warrantless arrests without sufficient evidence.”
Kasubhai also said the actions of agents in Oregon — including drawing guns on people while detaining them for civil immigration violations — have been “violent and brutal,” and he was concerned about the administration denying due process to those swept up in immigration raids.
“I’m concerned, as a public servant, and as someone who has to, by virtue of my oath, to uphold the constitution, when I see actions and behavior on behalf of our executive branch that does not observe that same commitment,” the judge said. “Due process calls for those who have great power to exercise great restraint … That is the bedrock of a democratic republic founded on this great constitution. I think we’re losing that.”
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, is calling on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave his city after federal agents deployed tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators, including young children, outside an ICE facility over the weekend.
Mayor Keith Wilson characterized the protests on Saturday as peaceful, as federal agents reportedly used tear gas, pepper balls, flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets against the anti-ICE demonstrators.
Wilson urged ICE agents to resign and for the agency to leave Portland, denouncing their “use of violence” and the “trampling of the Constitution.”
“Today, federal forces deployed heavy waves of chemical munitions, impacting a peaceful daytime protest where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces,” he said in a statement on Saturday.
Mayor Keith Wilson characterized the protests in his city as peaceful, as he called for ICE to leave.(Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave. Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame. To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children. Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people,” the mayor continued.
The mayor added that this nation “will never accept a federal presence where agents wield deadly force against the very people they are sworn to serve.”
“I share the impatience with those who demand we use every legal tool at our disposal to push back against this inexcusable, unconscionable, and unacceptable violence against our community,” Wilson said. “I share the need to act. Actions that can withstand the scrutiny of the justice system take time – and we cannot afford to lose this fight.”
Federal agents deployed tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators, including young children, outside an ICE facility in Portland.(Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Portland officials are working to operationalize an ordinance, which went into effect last month, that imposes a fee on detention facilities that use chemical agents, the mayor said.
“As we prepare to put that law into action, we are also documenting today’s events and preserving evidence. The federal government must, and will, be held accountable,” he wrote.
“Portland will continue to stand firmly with our immigrant neighbors, who deserve safety, dignity, and the full protection of the communities they help build,” he continued. “We are also proud of the Portlanders who showed up today in peaceful solidarity, demonstrating the strength and clarity of those shared values in the face of federal overreach.”
This comes amid national unrest and bipartisan scrutiny of immigration enforcement tactics following two killings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents last month in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration has faced bipartisan scrutiny over its immigration enforcement tactics following two killings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.(Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, and Alex Pretti was fatally shot on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez while he was recording immigration enforcement operations in the same city.
Pretti, an ICU nurse, appeared to be attempting to assist a woman agents had knocked down when he was sprayed with an irritant, pushed to the ground and beaten, according to video and witness accounts. An agent was later seen pulling Pretti’s lawfully owned firearm from his waistband before other agents fired several shots, killing him.
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators — including young children — outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.
Thousands of people attended the “ICE out” protest on Saturday in South Portland, according to the Portland Police Bureau. The protest began near Elizabeth Caruthers Park, and demonstrators later moved to an ICE facility a few blocks away, CBS affiliate KOIN reported. That’s where witnesses said agents deployed tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets.
Erin Hoover Barnett, a former OregonLive reporter who joined the protest, said she was about 100 yards from the building in Portland’s South Waterfront when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with gas.
“To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers, people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying,” Barnett wrote in an email to OregonLive.
The use of tear gas continued intermittently through the night as the group of protesters dwindled, KOIN reported.
The federal government “must, and will, be held accountable,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said Saturday night. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children.
Wilson also said the city would be imposing a fee on detention facilities that use chemical agents.
The mayor said the daytime demonstration was peaceful, “where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat and posed no danger” to federal agents.
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson wrote in his statement Saturday night. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”
The Portland Fire Bureau sent paramedics to treat people at the scene, police said. Police officers monitored the crowd but made no arrests on Saturday.
In a statement posted Sunday to social media, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek condemned the presence of ICE in the state.
“Trump’s ICE has no place in Oregon,” Kotek wrote. “The use of tear gas against families, children, and peaceful demonstrators yesterday is a horrific abuse of authority that undermines public safety and violates constitutional rights. Federal agents must stand down and be held accountable.”
The Portland protest was one of many similar demonstrations nationwide against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities like Minneapolis, where in recent weeks federal agents killed two residents, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
In downtown Los Angeles, federal officers also deployed tear gas into the crowd on Saturday after local police issued an unlawful assembly order, CBS LA reported. At least eight people were arrested, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Federal agents in Eugene, Oregon, deployed tear gas on Friday when protesters tried to get inside the Federal Building near downtown. City police declared a riot and ordered the crowd to disperse.
President Trump posted Saturday on social media that it was up to local law enforcement agencies to police protests in their cities. However, Mr. Trump said he has instructed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have federal agents be vigilant in guarding U.S. government facilities.
“Please be aware that I have instructed ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property. There will be no spitting in the faces of our Officers, there will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars, and there will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors,” Mr. Trump wrote. “If there is, those people will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”
It was Thursday, Dec. 1, 1988, when Deborah Atrops, known as Debe, was found murdered in her car, next to a construction site in Beaverton, Oregon. Debe had been reported missing two days earlier by her estranged husband, Bob Atrops, who lived about five miles away on a rural road.
Deborah “Debe” Atrops holds her infant daughter, Rhianna.
Washington County District Attorney’s Office
On the night she went missing, Bob says Debe, who was then 30 years old, never arrived to pick up their baby, Rhianna, as expected.
Allison Brown: It think that it’s important for everyone to know that just because a case goes unsolved doesn’t mean that it’s forgotten.
Allison Brown is a senior deputy district attorney in Washington County Oregon, who, along with attorney Chris Lewman, joined a team of investigators working on Debe’s unsolved murder. Brown says they hoped talking to the original detectives, witnesses, and looking at the evidence again, might give the old investigation new momentum.
Allison Brown: There were opportunities for forensic analysis that were not available in 1988.
DEBE ATROPS DISAPPEARS
Debe Atrops was last seen alive on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 1988. Bob Atrops called the Tigard, Oregon, police that night at 9:40 p.m.
DISPATCHER: This is Tigard Police. May I help you?
BOB ATROPS: … My wife is running about three hours overdue from a hair appointment. I was getting a little concerned. … We live in Sherwood. …
DISPATCHER: OK, what’s her name? …
BOB ATROPS: Deborah Atrops.
DISPATCHER: OK, and what kind of vehicle would she have been driving?
BOB ATROPS: It’d be a black Honda Accord.
Bob told the dispatcher Debe hadn’t shown up after an appointment in Tigard, about eight miles from his house, at a hair salon called Razz Ma Tazz.
BOB ATROPS: Called and let it ring, ring, ring about 20 times …
DISPATCHER: It would probably be easier for you to make a run down her path to, you know, how she would go … than it would be for us.
Debe and Bob Atrops.
Family home video
Bob says he drove the route and saw no sign of Debe. He called Tigard police back at 10:25 p.m.
DISPATCHER: Why don’t we give it another hour … and, if you haven’t heard anything, give me a call back.
Bob did call back — a third time — at 11:29 p.m.
BOB ATROPS: Hey, this is Bob Atrops again. Have you heard anything or—?
DISPATCHER: No, and the guys have gone out and looked. It’s real foggy out, but they have checked around the area.
DISPATCHER: … Did you go to the Razz Ma Tazz and see if her car was there at all?
BOB ATROPS: Yeah, I did. I drove up there’s no car …
DISPATCHER: There’s no friends or anything she might have gone to visit?
BOB ATROPS: No. Checked. Called everyone I can think of.
But the one call Bob did not make that night was to Debe.
DISPATCHER: OK sir, we have checked around the Sherwood area and we can’t find her car at all.
The dispatcher suggested Bob call the Washington County Sheriff, which he did at 11:34 p.m., and they opened a missing person’s case the next morning. But Debe Atrops would not be a missing person for long.
Det. Michael O’Connell: Even though I’ve been retired for years, it still kind of hung over me.
Washington County Sheriff’s Detective Michael O’Connell remembers responding to the scene when Debe’s car was found. The license plates had been taken off, the window was open and the keys were inside. O’Connell’s partner called Bob Atrops.
DETECTIVE LAZENBY: With you being the husband —
BOB ATROPS: Uh-huh.
DETECTIVE LAZENBY: — we need permission. We’d like to search the car …
BOB ATROPS: OK.
DETECTIVE LAZENBY: And I’d like to know if that’d be alright with you.
BOB ATROPS: Sure.
A few minutes later police found Debe’s body face down in the trunk.
Det. Michael O’Connell: She was nicely dressed. … Still had her coat on … Looked like she’d been placed somewhat carefully in the trunk.
Investigators are seen searching Debe Atrops’ car for evidence. The young mother’s body was found in the trunk of her car on Dec. 1, 1988, in Beaverton, Oregon.
Washington County District Attorney’s Office
Police say Debe had been strangled, and there were no signs of sexual assault. There was mud on her coat and shoes, the front passenger tire and the steering wheel of the car. Law enforcement scoured her vehicle for evidence.
Det. Michael O’Connell: It looked like someone may have tried to wipe down the hood. There were, like, broad clothing swipes, like, someone maybe was trying to destroy fingerprints.
O’Connell and his partner went to Bob’s house to tell him they had found his wife’s body. A witness who saw Bob later that day told the cold case team Bob was “very calm, much calmer than I would expect.”
Allison Brown | Prosecutor: It wasn’t consistent with a grieving, estranged husband.
Debe’s stepfather, Ed Holland, says her mother, Gloria, who was close to Debe, was overwhelmed with grief.
Ed Holland: She broke down … and I held her, and that’s all I could do … She just laid there, sobbing.
Police searched outside Bob’s home for any further clues.
Det. Michael O’Connell: The driveway was a mix of mud, dirt, and gravel. And it looked like … her car may have driven through some of the mud.
Bob had said Debe was last there about a week before her murder. Police took photos of the tire tracks outside his house and collected soil from his driveway and lawn.
Det. Michael O’Connell: Just to make sure we weren’t missing anything.
Police never found any tire tracks that matched Debe’s car on Bob’s property. Yet Bob Atrops was an obvious suspect. But he wasn’t the only man in Debe’s life. Since she had moved out five months before, Debe had been dating—and those relationships were complicated.
Ed Holland: Debe had very good taste and was a good judge of people, but a terrible judge of men. Every man that she seemed to hook up with was a problem.
WHO KILLED DEBE ATROPS?
Rhianna Stephens: It was great growing up with my dad. He was an amazing dad.
Young Rhianna Stephens with her father Bob Atrops.
Rhianna Stephens
Natalie Morales: Do you have memories of him being hands on? …
Rhianna Stephens: Yeah. My dad was very hands on … I knew that I was his number one.
Rhianna Stephens: I remember being at my grandpa’s house with my cousin, going through old photo albums and finding a picture of this woman. And I was like, “Who’s that?” And she just kind of was like, “That’s your mom.” … From that point on, I always remember knowing the story.
Debe Atrops’ daughter Rhianna Stephens says she learned about her mother’s murder when she was 6 or 7 years old. She says growing up, her dad only shared fond memories of her mom.
Rhianna Stephens: I didn’t know that they had separated. … Anything that I had ever heard about her was always good from him.
But things were not always good in Bob and Debe’s marriage. Debe’s stepfather, Ed Holland,remembers meeting Bob, a construction product salesman, and talking to Debe’s mother about how quickly Bob and Debe walked down the aisle.
Debe and Bob Atrops on their wedding day in June 1987.
Darlene Lufkin
Ed Holland: They were still in a courtship when they got married. … I said to Gloria, I said, “This is way too fast.” … She says, “Well, if they’re in love, why not?”
Debe’s friend Darlene Lufkin says, like Holland, she was not confident the relationship had a strong foundation.
Natalie Morales: How long did they know each other?
Darlene Lufkin: Just a few months it seems like. … It takes time to get to know someone. And I don’t think she really knew Bob yet.
Bob and Debe got married in June 1987 and adopted Rhianna the following March.
Because of conflicts in their marriage, just a few months after bringing Rhianna home, Debe moved into her own apartment in Salem, 30 miles away from Bob. Investigators say Debe had soon reconnected with an old boyfriend, Jeff Freeburg.
Natalie Morales: You said he was the one for her, perhaps …
Darlene Lufkin: That’s the one she kept wanting to go back to. … She really, really liked him. And I don’t think he was just ready for that kind of relationship yet.
Debe Arops was dating John Pearson at the time of her death.
By September 1988, Debe had a new boyfriend—a man she met at work—named John Pearson. Pearson was separated from his wife and had two young boys.
Darlene Lufkin: But I remember she was on the phone at my house once with him.She handed me the phone, and he said how much he was looking forward to meeting me and the girls. …
Darlene Lufkin: When Debe was seeing people for some reason, she wanted them to meet me and my girls.
Lufkin says she and Debe had grown close in their 20s when Darlene was a single mom.
Darlene Lufkin: She’s really the only friend I had that enjoyed spending time with my daughters. And I treasured that.
In that autumn of 1988, although Debe was dating Pearson, she stayed in touch with Freeburg. He loaned Debe $8,000.
Natalie Morales: He had lent her money to buy… a car. Could there have been motive in that?
Allison Brown: He was wealthy … So, I think he was happy to help Debe.
Back in 1988, detectives had asked Freeburg for his alibi on the night Debe was last seen alive— and he said he was home except for going out briefly to get some dinner.
Det. O’Connell: He seemed very straightforward. Didn’t hesitate to answer our questions. Didn’t seem to be hiding anything.
Police had also questioned John Pearson, who said he was with his children and his estranged wife that night. Pearson knew about Debe’s hair appointment and gave detectives a detailed description of many items inside her car.
Natalie Morales: John Pearson … told police back then that there was a Burger King bag … as well as a box with cranberries and a child car seat. … Seems like a lot of details about … the car.
Allison Brown: Yeah.
Pearson also told police there “wasn’t enough room in the trunk for a body”and that “stuff would have to have been taken out”… but O’Connell says Pearson had seemed truthful back in 1988.
Det. O’Connell: He was mostly accessible. … Didn’t appear to be trying to throw us off or anything.
And prosecutors Chris Lewman and Allison Brown say there is an innocent reason John Pearson knew so much about Debe’s car.
Allison Brown: They were seeing each other every day. … I mean, something to look into for sure, which is why they did multiple interviews of John Pearson and a polygraph in 1988. …
Natalie Morales: And did he pass the polygraph?
Allison Brown: He did. And he was willing to do it and basically do everything that they asked him to do.
Bob Atrops hired a lawyer a week after Debe’s body was found and declined to take a polygraph. Detective O’Connell says, Bob did not seem very worried about finding out who killed his wife.
Det. O’Connell: He was kind of removed. … just kind of distant.
O’Connell and his partner looked into the calls Bob said he made the night Debe went missing.
Bob told detectives he called the babysitter, Debe’s boss, and her parents while he was home waiting for her. They all confirmed he did call them that night – but there was a hitch. Those three calls were long distance and should have shown up on his phone bill.
Det. Michael O’Connell: That was a problem. Those phone calls were not there.
While detective suspected Bob Atrops killed Debe, they didn’t have enough evidence to connect him to the crime.
Rhianna Stephens
By now detectives suspected Bob had killed Debe. They thought there was no record of those three phone calls because Bob was out of the house that evening disposing of Debe’s car and her body. Police began looking for evidence Bob made those calls from somewhere else.
Det. Michael O’Connell: It involved checking payphones. … We looked at every angle. … We struck out.
They did not find proof that Bob was lying or evidence connecting him to Debe’s murder.
Det. Michael O’Connell: I didn’t like the thought of it just remaining unsolved.
O’Connell and his partner had a final meeting with Bob in 1990—asking him to account for those missing calls, or to admit he had killed his wife. But Bob maintained his innocence.
Det. Michael O’Connell: And then it kind of went dead.
When the cold case team next interviewed Bob in 2022, they asked again about those phone calls and heard a very different story.
DET. WINFIELD: I’ll be honest with you, Bob. Your story that you’re telling us today is significantly different than what you told investigators back in the day … And so, my question is … what really did happen?
A NEW LOOK AT THE COLD CASE
Darlene Lufkin: We spent a lot of time … together. … We took the girls to the beach … went to … music in the park with picnic dinners.
It’s been more than 30 years since Darlene Lufkin last saw her friend Debe Atrops, but she says she still feels the loss.
Natalie Morales: Sounds like you have really fond memories of Debe.
Darlene Lufkin: Oh yeah. … I miss her every day still.
Lufkin, like many in Debe’s life, longed for answers and in 2022 she got one step closer when the cold case team sent Debe’s coat and those soil samples for testing.
There was mud on Debe Atrops’ coat, her shoes and her car. Soil samples and a DNA sample from her coat was sent to an FBI lab for testing.
Bob Atrops’ defense
Allison Brown: The soil was sent to the FBI lab. The DNA was sent.
While they waited, the cold case team continued to examine Bob’s behavior back in 1988, which prosecutors say was suspicious from that first call.
Allison Brown: He calls law enforcement within, you know, probably 20 minutes of calling their friends and family and to us that seemed, a little quick … So, we believe he was attempting to … get his story out there and to portray himself as a concerned husband and try to … develop that narrative that he wanted to early on.
Detective O’Connell says he had the same feeling. Remember, Bob had called police four times that night.
Det. Michael O’Connell: What’s the Shakespeare quote? He protests too much? It was interesting to us that he was calling so frequently and so soon. … It didn’t seem normal.
The cold case team also turned their attention to the road where Debe’s car was found — next to that construction site. Bob’s former boss at Allied Building Products told them he believed Bob had a connection there.
Allison Brown: He was … selling roofing products … we knew, I knew that he was selling products in that area.
In 2022, the results from those DNA tests came back. The lab said they found a mixture of DNA on the collar and shoulder of Debe’s coat.
Allison Brown: They swabbed that area of her coat, because if you’re strangled, that would be the area … you’d have contact with.
The lab compared that sample from Debe’s coat to her boyfriend at the time, John Pearson.
Allison Brown: It’s not present.
And neither was her ex-boyfriend, Jeff Freeburg.
Allison Brown: Jeff Freeburg … not present.
But the lab said Bob could not be excluded as a contributor to that DNA mixture.
Chris Lewman: We can’t say it’s a match. It’s just, it’s moderate support that it’s more likely Mr. Atrops than an unknown individual.
Prosecutors admit, while the DNA from Debe’s coat excludes Freeburg and Pearson, it does not make a complete case against Bob Atrops.
Allison Brown: I think it’s another piece. … There are many, many different pieces. It was a very fact intensive case.
Another one of those pieces, they say, is the mud.
Allison Brown: This murder was connected to mud. Her body was covered in mud, there was mud on the outside of the car, on the inside of the car.
The FBI lab concluded that the mud on Debe Atrops’ tire did not match the mud where her car was found. However, they said that mud from Debe’s car tire was “indistinguishable” from the mud found in Bob Atrops’ front lawn.
Washington County District Attorney’s Office
The FBI lab, which examined this evidence, concluded that the mud on Debe’s car tire did not match the mud where her car was found. However, that mud on the tire, they said, was “indistinguishable” from the mud from Bob’s lawn in color, composition and texture. This is evidence, prosecutors say, that Bob was lying when he said Debe did not come to his house the night she went missing.
Allison Brown: According to the defendant’s interview, she had not been to his house for about 10 days.
Bob Atrops hadn’t spoken to police about the case since that final conversation with detectives in 1990. But in 2022, he agreed to talk to the cold case team.
Investigators asked Bob about those calls to friends and family that didn’t appear on his phone bill back in 1988.
DET. WINFIELD: It is October 19th, 2022 … here with … Bob Atrops.
DET. WINFIELD: You made those phone calls?
BOB ATROPS: Yes.
DET. WINFIELD: From your house?
BOB ATROPS: Yes.
DET. WINFIELD: Using your home phone?
BOB ATROPS: With an MCI card.
DET. WINFIELD: No.
BOB ATROPS: Yes.
DET. WINFIELD: No.
Bob now said he had used an MCI calling card to make those missing long distance calls from home.
BOB ATROPS: Yeah, an MCI card from Allied Building Products …
DET. WINFIELD: That is not what you told investigators. … and you said, “I made those calls from my home phone.”
BOB ATROPS: Yes.
DET. WINFIELD: “Using my home long distance.”
BOB ATROPS: But you dial in, and … you punch in the code and then you can complete the long-distance call.
Prosecutors say Bob didn’t have that MCI calling card in 1988, and what’s more, prosecutor Chris Lewman says, this story doesn’t make sense.
Chris Lewman: In 1988, to make a calling card, you had to input about a 16-digit calling card number and then another six- or eight-digit code. And if you’re frantically looking for your wife, why take the time to do that, and enter all those numbers?
In 2023, prosecutors brought the case to a grand jury—who voted to indict.
Rhianna Stephens: I got a phone call on March 2nd of 2023 at five o’clock in the morning … that my dad had just been arrested. … I was just in shock.
On March 2, 2023, Bob Atrops was arrested for the 1988 murder of his estranged wife. He pleaded not guilty.
Washington County District Attorney’s Office
Rhianna says Bob is a loving dad, and a doting grandfather to her three children.
Natalie Morales: What was it like seeing your dad … front page story?
Rhianna Stephens: It was awful to see the news … making him out to be this terrible person that he just isn’t. …
Rhianna Stephens: He didn’t do this.
Cold case detectives spoke to Bob Atrops again after his arrest.
DET. WINFIELD: My opinion is, you’ve told yourself a story for the last 34 years, and you’ve told yourself the story over and over and over again to the point that it’s become the truth for you … It doesn’t make it true, but it makes it easier for you to tell that story.
BOB ATROPS: I don’t believe that, but OK.
DET. WINFIELD: What part don’t you believe?
BOB ATROPS: A story that I created, I guess. …
DET. WINFIELD: You don’t believe that you created a story?
BOB ATROPS: No.
DETECTIVE WINFIELD: OK. …
DETECTIVE WINFIELD: You just are not in a position to acknowledge that you played a role in her death.
BOB ATROPS: No, I did not.
Bob Atrops pleaded not guilty to Debe’s murder. Attorney April Yates argues it’s more likely Debe’s killer was her boyfriend at the time, John Pearson, than Bob.
April Yates: John Pearson not only had motive, he had opportunity. He knew where Debe Atrops was going to be. He knew about her hair appointment. And also, he knew an incredible amount of detail about her car.
But prosecutors say Pearson had nothing to do with Debe’s murder. Back in 1988 he told police that, about a week before the murder, Bob confronted Debe because he was suspicious she was in a new relationship. Pearson said Debe was afraid if Bob found out it was true, he would kill her. The prosecution planned to call Pearson as a witness in Bob Atrops’ upcoming trial.
Chris Lewman: We wanted to have him testify … because we found him credible.
But that would never happen. Pearson, who had been ill, and had an outstanding warrant for a DUI in Oregon, stopped responding to detectives. When authorities located him in Arizona, five days before opening arguments were to begin, John Pearson killed himself.
Janis Puracal: John Pearson fled the state … He was on the run.
Attorney Janis Puracal was part of the defense team.
Janis Puracal:Police find him in a trailer in the desert in Arizona. When police surround that trailer, he … ends his life, rather than coming back to Oregon to answer questions about Debe Atrops murder. Those are the facts. Prosecution can spin it all they want, but those are the facts.
DID BOB ATROPS MURDER HIS ESTRANGED WIFE?
Rhianna Stephens: I’m trying to be strong for my dad.
In spring 2025, Robert Atrops’ murder trial began at the Washington County Courthouse. Prosecutors worried the jury might get stuck on details they could not explain.
Allison Brown: In a case where we need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, we’re not going to be able to answer every single detail of what happened that night.
ALLISON BROWN (in court): Remember, the appointment’s supposed to end around 7:15 … By 9:40 p.m., he’s calling 911.
At the trial, which allowed audio but not video recording of witnesses, attorney Allison Brown argues that Bob Atrops intentionally misled the police — starting with those four calls he made to them the night Debe was last seen alive.
Allison Brown: He didn’t tell the law enforcement officials that they were separated, that they lived separately … So, he didn’t actually give them the information that they would need to find her.
Prosecutors noted Bob Atrops called police four times the night Debe Atrops went missing in November 1988, but he never called her apartment.
Family photo
Bob didn’t tell police Debe lived in Salem until the next day. Even more incriminating, prosecutors say, is the fact that Bob Atrops did not call Debe the night she went missing — or ever.
Chris Lewman: He never called her apartment.
Allison Brown: … that would’ve been the first phone call, right? … Someone hasn’t showed up. You’re expecting them. You call them.
Natalie Morales: Mm.
Allison Brown: … not only was that not the first phone call, but he never made that phone call at all.
At trial, prosecutors played Bob’s interview with investigators in 2022 where he explained why he didn’t ever make that call.
DET. CAREY: Did you ever call Debe’s place?
BOB ATROPS: Her house? No … I didn’t even consider that as an option …
DET. CAREY: So, let me rephrase and correct me if I’m right, you never considered calling the place she lives?
BOB ATROPS: Not when she was supposed to be in our vicinity, no.
Prosecutors also want the jury to hear more about the troubles in Bob and Debe’s marriage. Debe’s friend Christy Knapp testified to an encounter with Bob at his house, soon after Debe moved out.
CHRISTY KNAPP (court audio): We went there to get some serving dishes. … We walked into the entry, and he just started freaking out and screaming. … He seemed really, really tall, and really scary. … It was terrifying.
Another friend, Tami Nelsen, told police in 1988 Debe had confided in her that Bob Atrops had choked her in a violent confrontation shortly before she moved out. Nelsen told the jury Debe was still worried about Bob after their separation.
ALLISON BROWN (court audio): What did she say she was concerned about?
TAMI NELSEN: Well, she was concerned that he’d kill her. … And I thought she was teasing to begin with … you know, or she was being dramatic.
ALLISON BROWN: Yeah.
TAMI NELSEN: And so, I turned around and I looked at her, and I saw that she was genuinely scared.
Nelsen had also told police in 1988 that a few months before her murder, Debe was worried about Bob finding out about her relationship with John Pearson. Nelsen later told the cold case team Debe had said, “If anything happens to me Bob did it.”
Allison Brown: Debe is predicting her own murder. She is telling friends and family if he finds out about this, he will kill me.
Natalie Morales: Mm-hmm.
Allison Brown: And she was right.
But in their cross-examinations, the defense suggests these stories Debe told are not reliable and they say Debe had a history of making up false tales.
April Yates: She had told different stories to different people, and these things were verifiably not true.
Some of Debe’s friends say she did tell questionable stories, often about her health. Darlene says she thought Debe might have done it for attention.
Darlene Lufkin: One time she said that she went to work out … her stomach flipped or something and she had to go get emergency help with it … It didn’t seem real to me.
Attorney April Yates says there is a simple explanation for why Bob Atrops didn’t call Debe that night—he had spoken to her stepfather, Ed Holland.
April Yates: Ed told Bob that he had been by Debe’s apartment … and she wasn’t home. … There was no reason for Bob to call.
April Yates: And the next morning, Debe’s parents went to her apartment again, as did law enforcement, so there was no reason for Bob to call or go there. The fact that the state is trying to make something out of that — it’s a red herring.
During trial, the babysitter and Debe’s stepfather testified that Bob had called them the night Debe went missing, which supports Bob’s story. Attorney Stephanie Pollan says the best explanation for why those so-called missing calls weren’t on his phone bill is that the billing equipment was faulty.
Stephanie Pollan: We found the engineer … and he testified that this equipment failed all the time.
But the cold case team believes Bob made those calls while he was out of the house, getting rid of evidence, to help him create a false alibi. And they say it was impossible to check every payphone in the area back in 1988.
Allison Brown: What was significant is he’s not where he said he was, he’s not at home. Why would he lie about where he was that night?
While the state emphasized the link between the mud on Debe’s tire and the soil from Bob Atrops’ front yard, the defense says that this soil is everywhere in the region and is as common as — dirt.
April Yates: This soil is everywhere. … My yard, her yard, the DA’s yard. It doesn’t make us suspects in a murder.
Back in 1988 police didn’t collect mud from Jeff Freeburg’s property, or John Pearson’s. They only took samples from where Debe’s car was found and from Bob Atrops’ driveway and lawn. Then there was the matter of the DNA from Debe’s coat.
April Yates: … the DNA in this case doesn’t tell the jury anything about who killed Debe Atrops.
Attorney Yates points out that the amount of DNA on Debe’s coat that the lab had said could be consistent with Bob Atrops was miniscule—the equivalent of about six skin cells.
April Yates: And this very low level of DNA is consistent with something called transfer DNA … People who have babies and shared custody transfer DNA all the time.
Natalie Morales: So, in your opinion, this DNA was not strong evidence?
April Yates: This DNA was not only not strong evidence—it doesn’t mean anything.
The defense argues there is a much more important DNA result from Debe’s autopsy.
Janis Puracal: One of the very first items that the lab tested for DNA were vaginal swabs taken from the autopsy.
Attorney Janis Puracal specializes in evidence that can lead to wrongful convictions. She says the DNA from Debe’s autopsy does not point to Bob Atrops.
Janis Puracal: The semen came from John Pearson. … and the likelihood ratio … is 94.6 sextillion. … it’s an enormous number.
Attorney Janis Puracal says the DNA from Debe Atrops’ autopsy points to John Pearson – not Bob Atrops.
Prineville, Arizona, Police Department
And she points out Pearson’s DNA at autopsy contradicts his statement to police from 2022.
Janis Puracal: John Pearson told law enforcement that he did not have sexual contact with Debe Atrops in the 72 hours before she was murdered, and definitely not on the day that she was murdered. But they found that semen … two days later, at the autopsy. Everything is telling us that that … was most likely deposited on the day that she was murdered.
And the defense reminds the jury, John Pearson was avoiding the cold case team in the months leading up to his suicide. In its closing statement, the defense says the state just doesn’t have enough to make its case against Bob Atrops.
But prosecutors argue all of the pieces point in one direction — to Bob Atrops.
Allison Brown: Like you hear: motive, means and opportunity, he had it all.
Now, after two weeks of testimony, it is time for the jury to decide.
Allison Brown: We didn’t know if that would be enough or not. … it’s incredibly nerve-wracking.
“WE ARE GRIEVING SOMEONE THAT IS STILL ALIVE”
“I know my dad. … I know his heart,” Rhianna Stephens told “48 Hours “… And I know that he’d never be able to live with himself doing that.”
CBS News
Natalie Morales: What did you think before the jury left to go deliberate? Did you feel confident?
Rhianna Stephens: I didn’t feel confident. I just— because of the fear of the unknown. … I don’t feel like any evidence was actually given that proves my dad did this. … because he didn’t. There is no evidence that he did this.
On April 17, 2025, the jury reached a decision.
Stephanie Pollan: It was six hours that they were deliberating. … we thought that that was a quick verdict and that could be a good thing.
JUDGE OSCAR GARCIA (court audio): My understanding, the jury has a verdict in this case. Is that correct?
FOREPERSON: Correct. …
JUDGE OSCAR GARCIA: To the charge of murder in the second degree, the jury has found the defendant guilty.
Guilty. Thirty-seven years after her death, Robert Atrops was found guilty of murdering Debe Atrops.
April Yates: It was like the room went dead silent … and everything was still in that moment.
Rhianna Stephens: We all crumbled. We are grieving someone that is still alive. …
Natalie Morales: Were you able to say anything to your father in that moment right after?
Rhianna Stephens: No. I —
Natalie Morales: Hug him, nothing?
Rhianna Stephens: I haven’t been able to hug my dad in over two years.
April Yates: We had so many family and friends of Bob behind us. … It was really hard, for them especially, to see this happen to their loved one.
Natalie Morales: I could see it’s hard for you, too.
April Yates: It is hard. It’s hard to have an innocent client get convicted.
Prosecutors say they are glad that justice was served.
Natalie Morales: This case took 37 years to finally be resolved. Are you satisfied that we know the truth about what happened to Debe Atrops?
Allison Brown: Yeah, absolutely … There’s no other people … no other suspects, no one else with the motive. … We feel absolutely a hundred percent sure that he’s the one who committed this crime.
Prosecutors are confident the investigation proved the other men in Debe’s life, including Jeff Freeburg, were not involved in her murder. Freeburg declined “48 Hours”‘ request to comment on the case.
Allison Brown: There just really wasn’t any information that pointed in the direction of Jeff Freeburg … he gave his DNA freely … There really just wasn’t any motive, evidence, or anything else that caused him to be a significant suspect.
And, they say, John Pearson’s suicide was an unrelated tragedy.
Chris Lewman: He had an open criminal case …I believe he thought they were there to arrest him for this misdemeanor warrant and took his life.
Allison Brown: There was quite a bit of investigation that was done by our detective after he committed suicide to show it had nothing to do with guilt for Debe’s murder.
When “48 Hours” reached out in 2025, Pearson’s lawyer declined to comment on the case. Prosecutors say Pearson’s family told them he had wanted to testify at Bob’s trial.
Chris Lewman: I thought that it would be important for him to … relay all the things he knew, including those statements that Debe made back in 1988, that … Bob’s going to kill me if he finds out about us.
As for the defense’s argument that Debe had a history of making up stories, prosecutors say this is unfortunately consistent with life inside an abusive relationship.
Allison Brown: When someone’s going through a domestic violence situation, they are in a way living a lie.
Natalie Morales: Bob’s side of the courtroom … was full. … Did that strike you as interesting?
Allison Brown: It depends on the case.
Chris Lewman: Yeah, I mean, I think he had a large support system and it’s not uncommon for people … in a domestic abuse situation to kind of go unknown as a DV abuser … And I think Bob was good at that. I mean, he was a salesman.
After all these years, Darlene Lufkin says she thinks the jury got it right.
Darlene Lufkin: I had my suspicions all along …
Natalie Morales: You believed that that was the right verdict?
Darlene Lufkin: I do. … I just feel that the question’s been answered now.
At her father’s sentencing in July 2025, Rhianna Stephens made an emotional appeal for leniency.
With Bob Atrops at her side, an emotional Rhianna Stephens addresses the judge at her father’s sentencing.
CBS News
RHIANNA STEPHENS (in court): When I was 8 months old, someone robbed me of getting to have a life with my mom, there to support my every milestone. … Thirty-six years later, I’m being robbed of my father, the man that was there for all of those milestones. … I need him in my life.
Attorney Pollan read a letter from Bob Atrops’ current wife who has been married to him since 2011.
STEPHANIE POLLAN (reading letter in court): “My husband has always been a devoted and loving father to his daughter.”
Despite these appeals, the judge sentenced Robert Atrops to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Natalie Morales: When you lost your mom at a young age, and you said, now you grieve your dad who’s still alive, how do you make sense of what’s happening?
Rhianna Stephens: I can’t make sense of what’s happening. I just have to live through it and keep fighting.
Home video of Debe Atrops and her daughter Rhianna.
Ed Holland
Darlene Lufkin: She truly loved Rhianna …
Natalie Morales: What do you want people to know about your friend, Debe?
Darlene Lufkin: That she didn’t deserve this … that she was a light that should still be here.
Natalie Morales: Do you think about your mother now?
Rhianna Stephens:I do think about her.I wonder what life would’ve been like. … had I gotten to live … my whole life, grow up having my mom.
Robert Atrops will be eligible for parole in 2048. He will be 93 years old.
Produced by Sarah Prior. Ken Blum and Grayce Arlotta-Berner are the editors. Chelsea Narvaez is the field producer. Rebecca Laflam is the associate producer. Danielle Austen, Cindy Cesare, and Sara Ely Hulse are the development producers. Lourdes Aguiar is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
VANCOUVER, WA / PORTLAND, OR – The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program reached a major milestone, as officials announced that the U.S. Coast Guard has approved the construction of a fixed-span replacement across the Columbia River.
The new bridge, designed with 116 feet of vertical clearance, will eliminate bridge lifts, improve earthquake resilience, and keep river traffic, vehicles, transit, and air traffic moving without interruptions.
“A fixed-span bridge has overwhelming support from the maritime industry, businesses and community groups,” said Washington Governor Bob Ferguson. “This is the right decision for our economy and for commuters who use this bridge every day.”
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek added that the Coast Guard decision gives the program “the clarity it needs to advance and build a safer, multimodal river crossing and corridor that will serve both states for generations.”
With federal approval in hand, the IBR Program will finalize updated cost estimates, select a final bridge design, identify a construction contractor, and continue working on the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
The Interstate Bridge, built more than a century ago, will finally get a modern replacement designed to serve both Washington and Oregon for decades to come.
Word in Hazelwood spread quickly. When Andrea Valderrama, who represents Outer East Portland in the Oregon State Legislature and lives in the neighborhood, saw her elementary-school-aged daughter an hour later, she was horrified to learn that her child was already aware of an incident. “It was not the standard, ‘How was your day at school?’ conversation,” Valderrama told me. “It was an indication, as a mom, of the impact these ICE enforcement actions are having on our kiddos.”
The district Valderrama represents is forty-eight per cent nonwhite, and seventeen per cent identify as Hispanic, including Valderrama, whose parents are Peruvian. “East Portland has a significant number of immigrants, refugees, and families of color,” she said, “more so than other parts of the city.” The community had been besieged by D.H.S. raids since Trump retook office. Valderrama described “ICE agents breaking down doors” and “causing property damage, drawing guns regularly.” This has affected the disposition of the neighborhood. “There has been increased fear and concern because there’s been an increased use of excessive force and violence and traumatic separation of families,” she told me.
Now, just a day after the fatal shooting of Good, in Minneapolis, two people had been shot down the street from Valderrama’s home. That night, she joined Mayor Wilson and other community leaders to address the public. “My family came to this country fleeing really the same type of violent tactics that we’re seeing in my neighborhood and in this city and across this country,” Valderrama said from the podium. The mayor, after questioning D.H.S’s version of events, had a message for the Feds. “We are calling on ICE to halt all operations in Portland,” he said, “until a full and independent investigation can take place.”
Nearly all the questions at the press conference were for Bob Day, Portland’s chief of police. A ginger-haired former aspiring pastor, Day seemed visibly troubled by the shooting. Did he expect the Feds to involve his department in the investigation? “I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “Frankly, there’s a lot of competing interests, as we know.” Just before the briefing, D.H.S. alleged the two shooting victims had ties to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational organization accused of crimes including kidnapping, human trafficking, and contract killings. Is the gang active in Portland? “I don’t have any information that would link that at this time,” Day said. He didn’t even know the victims’ names yet.
Throughout the night and into the next morning, the story ran through the maw of cable news and social media, following the same patterns as the story of Good’s killing earlier in the week. Observers were either on the side of the shooting victims, who were recovering in the hospital, or on the side of the federal agents, who had reportedly been assaulted with a vehicle. Except in this case, with no video footage, the online and talk-show combatants had less to draw from.
On Friday, just before 8 A.M. local time, D.H.S. announced new details on X, writing that Nino-Moncada “is a criminal illegal alien from Venezuela and suspected Tren de Aragua gang member” and was “arrested for D.U.I. and unauthorized use of a vehicle.” The post also accused Zambrano-Contreras of playing “an active role in a Tren de Aragua prostitution ring” and being “involved with a prior shooting in Portland.”
Hours later, Day held another press conference. Standing at the same podium, he was even more solemn than before. He recapped the events of the prior night, when hundreds of people outside City Hall and outside the ICE facility protested the shootings in Portland and Minneapolis. Six people had been arrested for disorderly conduct. And he announced that, after doing some digging into the department’s backlog of cases, there was “a nexus” between the shooting victims and Tren de Aragua. A shooting in the area, in July, 2025, had ties to one of the victims, he said. But he couldn’t say which victim, Nino-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras, was connected to the prior shooting, or what exactly those ties were, although he noted that they were not identified as suspects. He could only say that, in the aftermath of the July shooting, a victim in that incident had told police that Tren de Aragua was involved. (An attorney for Nino-Moncada characterized accusations of his connection to Tren de Aragua as “without evidence,” while an attorney for Zambrano-Contreras said that the federal government “has a well-documented history of making false and inflammatory statements about immigrants, Venezuelans in particular.”) Day also said that Zambrano-Contreras had once been arrested for prostitution. (It was unclear if she was charged with a crime, or if Nino-Moncada was charged after his D.U.I. arrest. But earlier this week, Nino-Moncada was charged with aggravated assault of a federal officer, in connection with the Border Patrol shooting. He pleaded not guilty.)
A large earthquake was reported at 7:25 p.m. Thursday off the Oregon coast. The magnitude 6.0 quake occurred 183 miles from Bandon, Ore., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles and had an estimated intensity of VI on the modified Mercalli intensity scale, which signifies strong shaking.
In the last 10 days, there have been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
Find out what to do before, and during, an earthquake near you by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
This story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
Updated agency policy says postmarks might not indicate the first day the Postal Service received the mail but rather the day it was handled in one of its processing centers. Those centers are increasingly likely to be further away from certain communities because of recent USPS consolidations, which could further delay postmarks, the 16 senators wrote.
“Postmark delays are especially problematic in states that vote entirely or largely by mail,” they wrote to Postmaster General David Steiner, noting that many states use postmark dates to determine whether a mail ballot can be counted. “These changes will only increase the likelihood of voter disenfranchisement.”
The consequences could be particularly acute in rural areas where mail has to travel farther to reach regional processing centers, they added.
“In theory, a rural voter could submit their ballot in time according to their state law, but due to the changes you are implementing, their legally-cast ballot would not be counted as it sits in a local post office,” they wrote. “As we enter a year with many local and federal elections, the risk of disrupting this vital democratic process demands your attention and action.”
The Postal Service has received the letter and will respond directly to those who sent it, spokesperson Martha Johnson said.
“While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed,” its website says. “This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.”
Johnson said the language in the final rule “does not change any existing postal operations or postmarking practices.” She added that the agency looked forward to “clarifying the senators’ misunderstanding.”
“Our public filing was made to enhance public understanding of exactly what a postmark represents, its relationship to the date of mailing and when a postmark is applied in the process,” she said.
People dropping off mail at a post office can request that a postmark be applied manually, ensuring the postmark date matches the mailing date, the Postal Service’s website says. Manual postmarks are free of charge.
The agency said the “lack of alignment” between the mailing date and postmark date will become more common as it implements its initiative to overhaul processing and transportation networks with an emphasis on regional hubs. The aim of the initiative is to cut costs for the agency, which has grappled with losses in the billions of dollars in recent years.
Under the plan, the Postal Service got rid of twice-daily mail dispatches from local post offices to regional processing centers. That means mail received after the only transfer truck leaves sits overnight until the next daily transfer, the senators wrote.
Election officials in states that rely heavily on voting by mail expressed concern with the change.
“Not being able to have faith that the Postal Service will mark ballots on the day they are submitted and mail them in a timely manner undermines vote-by-mail voting, in turn undermining California and other elections,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement.
She said her office will “amplify messaging to voters” who use mailed ballots that they must return their ballots early if they plan to use the post office.
Election officials in Washington state, where voting is done almost entirely by mail, are recommending that those who return their ballot within a week of Election Day do so at a drop box or voting center.
“Given the operational and logistical priorities recently set by the USPS, there is no guarantee that ballots returned via mail will be postmarked by the USPS the same day they are mailed,” the secretary of state’s office said in a statement.
The senators urged Steiner to restore “timely postmarks” and fully stand up an election mail task force. The Democratic lawmakers who signed the letter represented California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Wastewater testing can alert public health officials to measles infections days to months before cases are confirmed by doctors, researchers said in two studies published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Colorado health officials were able to get ahead of the highly contagious virus by tracking its presence in sewer systems, researchers wrote. And Oregon researchers found wastewater could have warned them of an outbreak more than two months before the first person tested positive.
The findings add to evidence that wastewater testing is a valuable weapon in tracking disease, including COVID-19, polio, mpox and bird flu.
Peggy Honein, director of the CDC’s division of infectious disease readiness and innovation, said the proposed funding level would “sustain some of the most critical activities” but “it would likely require some prioritization.”
The national system covers more than 1,300 wastewater treatment sites serving 147 million people. It includes six “centers for excellence” — Colorado among them — that innovate and support other states in expanding their testing.
The funding cut is still a proposal, and Congress has started pushing back against cuts to health care in general.
But state health departments say they are preparing for a potential loss of federal support regardless. Most state programs are entirely federally funded, Honein said.
Colorado started its wastewater surveillance program in 2020 with 68 utilities participating voluntarily. The program has since narrowed in its focus even as it grew to include more diseases, because it is 100% federally funded, said Allison Wheeler, manager of the Colorado’s wastewater surveillance unit.
The work is funded through 2029, Wheeler said, and the department is talking to state leaders about what to do after that.
“I know that there are other states that haven’t been as fortunate as us,” Wheeler said. “They need this funding in order to sustain their program for the next year.”
Measles found in wastewater before patients are diagnosed
In the Colorado study, which Wheeler co-authored, officials started testing wastewater for measles in May, as outbreaks in Texas, New Mexico and Utah were growing and five cases had been confirmed in Colorado.
In August, wastewater in Mesa County tested positive about a week before two measles cases were confirmed by a doctor. Neither patient knew that they had been exposed to measles. As they traced 225 household and health care contacts of the first two patients, health officials found five more cases.
In Oregon, researchers used preserved sewage samples from late 2024 to determine if sewage testing could have discovered a burgeoning outbreak.
The 30-case outbreak spanned two counties and hit a close-knit community that does not readily seek health care, the study’s authors wrote. The first case was confirmed on July 11 and it ultimately took health officials 15 weeks to stop the outbreak.
The researchers found that wastewater samples from the area were positive for measles about 10 weeks before the first cases were reported. The virus concentration in the wastewater over the weeks also matched the known peak of the outbreak.
“We knew that we were missing cases, and I think that’s always the case in measles outbreaks,” said Dr. Melissa Sutton, of the Oregon Health Authority. “But this gave us an insight into how much silent transmission was occurring without us knowing about it and without our health care system knowing about it.”
State see value in sewage tracking
Other states, such as Utah, have integrated wastewater data into their public-facing measles dashboards, allowing anyone to track outbreaks in real time.
And in New Mexico, where 100 people got measles last year and one died, the testing helped state health officials shrink a vast rural expanse. The state’s system flagged cases in northwestern Sandoval County while officials were focused on a massive outbreak 300 miles (483 kilometers) away in the southeast, said Kelley Plymesser, of the state health department.
The early warning allowed the department to alert doctors and the public, lower thresholds for testing and refocus their resources. The outbreak ended in September. But because measles continues to spread across the Southwest, the state is still using the system to look for new cases.
Sutton, of Oregon, said she’s hopeful federal leaders will see the power of the system, its adaptability, affordability and reach.
“The widespread use of wastewater surveillance in the United States is one of the greatest advancements in communicable disease surveillance in a generation,” she said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.
Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.
The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not identify the agent who fired the shots.
The shooting, which came one day after a federal agent shot and killed a driver in Minneapolis, prompted protests over federal agents’ aggressive tactics during immigration enforcement operations. The Department of Homeland Security has said the two people in the truck entered the U.S. illegally and were affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.
The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.
During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle.
An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for Nino-Moncada. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.
The agent’s affidavit said that after being read his rights, Nino-Moncada “admitted to intentionally ramming the Border Patrol vehicle in an attempt to flee, and he stated that he knew they were immigration enforcement vehicles.”
In a statement on Monday, the Justice Department described the damage to the border patrol vehicle as “significant,” posting images that show serious damage to the front bumper and both headlights.
Image released by the DOJ shows the damage to the border patrol vehicle.
Justice Department
His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She faces a charge of illegal entry into the U.S., which federal prosecutors in Texas filed last week. The federal public defender’s office for the Western District of Texas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek have condemned the shooting and demanded a halt to federal immigration operations.
“ICE agents and their Homeland Security leadership must be fully investigated and held responsible for the violence inflicted on the American people — in Minnesota, in Portland, and across the nation,” Wilson said in a statement on Friday.
Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuelan nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang. The Trump administration last year designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization.
“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”
Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, whose office represents Nino-Moncada, said in a statement last week that the shooting and the accusations against Nino-Moncada “follow a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”
Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.
Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.
Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.
The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not identify the agent who fired the shots.
None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.
The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.
During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle. An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for him. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.
The agent’s affidavit said that after being read his rights, Nino-Moncada “admitted to intentionally ramming the Border Patrol vehicle in an attempt to flee, and he stated that he knew they were immigration enforcement vehicles.”
His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuela nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang.
“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”
Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, whose office represents Nino-Moncada, did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the federal shooting of and the subsequent accusations against Nino-Moncada and his passenger follow “a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”
Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.
Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.
Johnson reported from Seattle.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Protests against immigration enforcement were planned for cities and towns across the country on Saturday after one federal officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis and another shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.
The demonstrations come as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pushes forward in the Twin Cities with what it calls its biggest-ever immigration enforcement operation. President Trump’s administration has said both shootings were acts of self-defense against drivers who “weaponized” their vehicles to attack officers.
Demonstrators march through the streets of Boston, Massachusetts, on Jan. 10, 2026, during a demonstration over the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Joseph Prezioso /AFP via Getty Images
Indivisible, a social movement organization that formed to resist the Trump administration, said hundreds of protests were taking place in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and other states. Many were dubbed “ICE Out for Good” using the acronym for the agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Indivisible and its local chapters organized protests in all 50 states last year.
An Indivisible protest was underway in Philadelphia on Saturday morning, CBS Philadelphia reported. Protestors are set to march to the federal detention center in the city and join another group holding a rally there.
A crowd of protesters in Philadelphia on Saturday, January 10.
Chopper 3/CBS News Philadelphia
Thousands of people marched in Minneapolis on Saturday.
“We’re all living in fear right now,” said Meghan Moore, a mother of two from Minneapolis who joined the protest. “ICE is creating an environment where nobody feels safe and that’s unacceptable.”
Connor Maloney said he was attending the Minneapolis protest to support his community and because he’s frustrated with the immigration crackdown.
“Almost daily I see them harassing people,” he said. “It’s just sickening that it’s happening in our community around us.”
He was among thousands of protesters, including children, who braved sub-freezing temperatures and a light dusting of snow, carrying handmade signs saying declaring, “De-ICE Minnesota!” and “ICE melts in Minnesota.”
They marched down a street that is home to restaurants and stores where various nationalities and cultures are celebrated in colorful murals.
Steven Eubanks, 51, said he felt compelled to attend a protest in Durham, North Carolina, on Saturday because of the “horrifying” killing in Minneapolis.
“We can’t allow it,” Eubanks said. “We have to stand up.”
Protests held in the neighborhood so far have been peaceful, in contrast to the violence that hit Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Near the airport, some confrontations erupted on Thursday and Friday between smaller groups of protesters and agents guarding the federal building used as a base for the Twin Cities crackdown.
Minneapolis police said at least 30 people were cited and released during Friday night protests in the city that drew hundreds of people. Police said protesters threw ice, snow and rocks at officers, police vehicles and other vehicles, but no serious injuries were reported.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stressed that while most protests have been peaceful, those who cause damage to property or put others in danger will be arrested. He faulted “agitators that are trying to rile up large crowds.”
“This is what Donald Trump wants,” Frey said of the president who has demanded massive immigration enforcement efforts in several U.S. cities. “He wants us to take the bait.”
The Trump administration has been surging thousands of federal officers to Minnesota under a sweeping new crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. More than 2,000 officers were taking part.
Some officers moved in after abruptly pulling out of Louisiana, where they were part of another operation that started last month and was expected to last until February.
