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Tag: Victim

  • Commentary: Up from the ashes: How fire survivors rebuilt in time to get home for Thanksgiving

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    A month or so ago, with construction crews still plugging along, Ted Koerner lost sight of the finish line. He wasn’t sure when he’d be able to move back home to Altadena with Daisy May, his 13½-year-old golden retriever.

    Koerner’s home was destroyed in the Eaton fire in January, but he has pushed and persisted, trying to speed the rebuilding for Daisy’s sake as much as his own. Whatever time she had left, Koerner told me back in October, he wanted her to spend it where she’s comfortable and happy.

    “She’s almost 14,” he said, and that’s well beyond the average lifespan for her breed.

    On Tuesday, they made it back home, and it was hard to tell who was happier.

    “She’s been out here doing zoomies,” Koerner said on the front lawn, his favorite place to spend time with Daisy at their hilltop home. He has his morning cup of coffee out there while Daisy sniffs around, works her guard duty shifts, and takes in the million-dollar view, which stretches all the way to Santa Catalina Island.

    Koerner said friends and neighbors would be coming by over the holiday weekend to help celebrate the homecoming.

    “A neighbor down the street, who didn’t burn, is cooking three turkeys,” Koerner said.

    When the county inspector showed up Tuesday afternoon and told Koerner he was clear to move in, Koerner activated the video tab on his phone and asked the inspector to repeat what he’d just said.

    “You have permission to move in tonight,” the inspector said.

    Ted Koerner, 67, drinks a cup of coffee with a mug that makes an appropriate statement after moving back into his newly rebuilt home in Altadena.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    Koerner is believed to be the first person to move into a rebuilt house in Altadena, where 19 people were killed and nearly 9,400 structures were destroyed. Another Altadena project, an accessory dwelling unit, was also completed this month. And on Friday, I visited the nearly completed Pasadena home of Jun Li and Bobby Lujan, who were about to move in.

    “We already made final inspection,” Jun Li Lujan told me. “I don’t want to miss any holidays.”

    She said her new stove was on the way, and she planned to go with a classic Thanksgiving meal of turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing.

    “And pumpkin pie,” she said.

    Speedy returns are not the norm for victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires. The vast majority have either not yet begun the permitting process or are still in the early stages, and many are still undecided about rebuilding, due in part to financial considerations.

    In the Palisades, the first certificate of occupancy was issued recently for a “showcase” home that was built to market the work of the development company. Meanwhile, Palisades resident Craig Forrest, who lost everything in January, thinks his new house could be finished within a week or so, although he might not move in until the new year because the contract on his Santa Monica rental runs through December.

    So what’s the secret for him and others who have managed to rebuild in the same calendar year as the fires? In Forrest’s case, he said, the recipe included “fortitude, guts, will, strength, pushing through, making fast decisions, and having the financial wherewithal.”

    Having three teenagers was also a factor, Forrest told me. He said that rather than sink in despair, he chose to remain optimistic and keep moving to “show them what you do when something this traumatic and dramatic happens to you.”

    In the case of Jun Li Lujan, she had an insider’s edge. She builds houses for a living.

    Ted Koerner, 67, prepares to feed his dog Daisy May

    Ted Koerner, 67, prepares to feed his dog Daisy May. Koerner plans on having friends over for Thanksgiving. “The accomplishment alone is just getting home,” Koerner said.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    “Being a contractor, a designer and a project manager for many years, she knew what to do and how to do it quickly. … She’s a force of nature,” said her husband, Bobby Lujan, a musician and brother of the late Chicano artist Gilbert “Magu” Lujan.

    L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who attended an open house at the Lujan residence on Tuesday, told me that bureaucratic hurdles and other challenges have hampered rebuilding efforts. But she met neighbors of the Lujans who were encouraged by their rapid return.

    “It gives people hope,” Barger said. “Next week, two homes are going to get certificates of occupancy. One leads to two, leads to five, leads to 10. I feel like we’re on that road.”

    Koerner had Daisy as a motivator, along with a figure-things-out mentality from running an investigations and fraud-prevention company that deals with government agencies and multiple businesses. And he knew he didn’t want to live in limbo any longer than he had to, especially after staying in an Old Pasadena hotel for several weeks with other evacuees.

    “Every single person in the building was a victim,” Koerner said. “Every time the elevator opened … there were people standing there, leaning against the wall, sobbing. And I mean openly sobbing.”

    Landlords in the area were gouging renters, Koerner said, and he briefly considered living in his car before one of his employees offered a La Crescenta space that had just become available.

    Koerner was told by an Army Corps of Engineers official to pour his new foundation as soon as the contamination was cleared, even if he hadn’t gotten an insurance check yet. You don’t want to be “number 2,200 in line,” Koerner was told.

    Ted Koerner, 67, sits in the front yard of his newly built home

    Ted Koerner, 67, sits in the front yard of his newly built home with his dog Daisy May in Altadena.

    (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

    That was good advice, and it fit Koerner’s personality. He’s not one to waste time overthinking things, which is best illustrated by his philosophy that a house is a house, not a museum to one’s creativity.

    “OK, are you going to spend nine days deciding what color toilet?” Koerner said. “Or are you just going to pick one and live with it. It’s a toilet. It’s not a trophy.”

    Koerner robbed his retirement fund to front the start of construction and said that once insurance payments are added up, he’ll be a few hundred thousand dollars in the hole. But he’ll be home.

    Whenever there was a pause in the county’s permit machinery, Koerner said he let everyone up to and including the governor’s office know about it. He said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu and Barger — one of whose staffers called Koerner “tenacious” — helped keep things moving.

    Koerner also credits building manager Jossef Abraham of Innova Creative Solution for understanding that this was not simply about building a house. It was about getting a 67-year-old man struggling mightily with displacement, and a dog on her home stretch, back where they needed to be.

    “We were here on Sunday for six hours, just us, and I brought a bed for her and I fed her here,” Koerner said. “And when I laid down on the floor next to her … she leaned over and started catching the tears, one at a time, as they were rolling down my cheek.”

    Koerner stood in his new kitchen, going through everything and everyone he’s grateful for this holiday season. The longtime friends who offered support, the new friends he made in La Crescenta near his temporary home, his builder and his therapist, who taught him “how to let things flow through and get behind you.”

    “I’m first and foremost grateful that Daisy has been strong enough to hang in there,” Koerner said. “She has just stayed with me, and that is an answer to a daily prayer.”

    Koerner and Daisy May frolicked for a while in his new office, which had a golden glow in the morning light.

    Daisy seemed to have turned back the clock and had that expression dogs get, mouth open and eyes aglow, when it looks like they’re smiling.

    Koerner looked like he was celebrating a double holiday — Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one.

    steve.lopez@latimes.com

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    Steve Lopez

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  • Bride helps crash victim while still in her wedding dress

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    Moments after tying the knot on her wedding day, a bride who works as a nurse stepped in to save a life while she was still wearing her wedding dress.The same night Heather Schubert walked down the aisle celebrating her new union, she ended up at a crash scene.”We saw a man laying across the road, and his car, all the airbags were deployed,” Heather Ramsey Schubert said.Schubert and her husband were driving home on a Louisiana highway Saturday night, and the off-duty nurse saw a call to action.”When you’re a nurse and you always put other people first, that’s always my first instinct,” Schubert said.She wasted no time, rushing to help a man critically injured in a crash, before EMS arrived.”I assisted in the manner of seeing what his pupils were like if we had any trauma responses, which he, in fact, did have trauma. His pupils were not reactive to light,” Schubert said.Schubert works to save lives every day as a nurse at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. She says it’s just in her blood to protect.”There’s never a question or a hesitation; I will probably always be the person to run into the accident and see if I can help,” Schubert said.Critical care paramedic Steven Tafoya said emergency teams are trained on how to respond to situations like this.”Just because we’re off the clock doesn’t mean that instinct stops,” Tafoya said. “So what this lady did on her wedding day was remarkable and shows her commitment to health care in general.”Although it was not the ending Heather expected for her wedding day, she said she would not change a thing.”I would hope that anybody, whether they’re a nurse or not, anybody if they see someone in trouble would run and do the same thing,” Schubert said.The victim’s condition is unclear, but everyone involved hopes for a full recovery.

    NEW ORLEANS —

    Moments after tying the knot on her wedding day, a bride who works as a nurse stepped in to save a life while she was still wearing her wedding dress.

    The same night Heather Schubert walked down the aisle celebrating her new union, she ended up at a crash scene.

    “We saw a man laying across the road, and his car, all the airbags were deployed,” Heather Ramsey Schubert said.

    Schubert and her husband were driving home on a Louisiana highway Saturday night, and the off-duty nurse saw a call to action.

    “When you’re a nurse and you always put other people first, that’s always my first instinct,” Schubert said.

    She wasted no time, rushing to help a man critically injured in a crash, before EMS arrived.

    “I assisted in the manner of seeing what his pupils were like if we had any trauma responses, which he, in fact, did have trauma. His pupils were not reactive to light,” Schubert said.

    Schubert works to save lives every day as a nurse at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. She says it’s just in her blood to protect.

    “There’s never a question or a hesitation; I will probably always be the person to run into the accident and see if I can help,” Schubert said.

    Critical care paramedic Steven Tafoya said emergency teams are trained on how to respond to situations like this.

    “Just because we’re off the clock doesn’t mean that instinct stops,” Tafoya said. “So what this lady did on her wedding day was remarkable and shows her commitment to health care in general.”

    Although it was not the ending Heather expected for her wedding day, she said she would not change a thing.

    “I would hope that anybody, whether they’re a nurse or not, anybody if they see someone in trouble would run and do the same thing,” Schubert said.

    The victim’s condition is unclear, but everyone involved hopes for a full recovery.

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  • Pope Leo XIV accepts resignation of Spanish bishop accused of abuse in first known case for pontiff

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    Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”“The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.

    Pope Leo XIV on Saturday accepted the resignation of an ailing Spanish bishop who is under church investigation for allegedly sexually abusing a young seminarian in the 1990s, the first known time the new pontiff removed a bishop accused of abuse.

    A one-line statement from the Vatican said Leo had accepted the resignation of Cádiz Bishop Rafael Zornoza, 76. It didn’t say why, but Zornoza submitted his resignation to the pope last year when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops.

    It hadn’t been accepted though until the El País newspaper reported earlier this month that Zornoza had been recently placed under investigation by a church tribunal. The daily, which since 2018 has exposed decades of abuse and cover-up in the Spanish Catholic Church, said Zornoza was accused of abusing a young former seminarian while he was a young priest and directed the diocesan seminary in Getafe.

    The report, quoting a letter the former seminarian wrote the Vatican over the summer, said Zornoza fondled him and regularly slept with him from when he was 14-21 years old. The former seminarian’s letter said Zornoza heard his confession and persuaded him to see a psychiatrist to “cure” his homosexuality.

    The diocese of Cádiz denied the accusations against Zornoza but confirmed the investigation was being carried out by the church court in Madrid, known as the Rota. In a Nov. 10 statement, the diocese said Zornoza was cooperating with the investigation and had suspended his agenda temporarily “to clarify the facts and to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of cancer.”

    “The accusations made, referring to events that took place almost 30 years ago, are very serious and also false,” the statement said.

    It is believed to be the first publicly known case of a bishop being retired, and being placed under investigation for alleged abuse, since the Spanish church began reckoning in recent years with a decades-long legacy of abuse and cover-up that has rocked the once-staunchly Catholic Spain.

    Leo didn’t immediately name a temporary leader of the diocese.

    In 2023, Spain’s first official probe of abuse indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands, based on a survey that was part of a report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman. The ombudsman conducted an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.

    Spain’s Catholic bishops apologized but dismissed the interpretations of the ombudsman report as a “lie,” arguing that many more people had been abused outside of the church.

    The Spanish Catholic hierarchy then did its own report, saying in 2024 that it had found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. It then launched a plan to compensate victims, after Spain’s government approved a plan to force the church to pay economic reparations.

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  • Ex-LAPD officer staged police raid in $350,000 crypto heist, prosecutor says

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    One night last December, six men met at a home in the Hollywood Hills to plot a kidnapping, prosecutors say.

    Their alleged target was a 17-year-old operator of a cryptocurrency business. His abductors, authorities charge, included a felon with ties to Israeli organized crime and a former officer from the Los Angeles Police Department.

    Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Brownstone on Friday disclosed details of the alleged kidnapping at bail hearings for the alleged gangster, Gabby Ben, and the former officer, Eric Halem. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

    Ben, 51, has twice been convicted of fraud and deported to Israel, according to court records. Along with his blue jail jumpsuit, he wore a yarmulke and towel around his neck. He shrugged and shook his head when Brownstone said he has “ties to the Israeli mafia.”

    Halem, 38, who appeared in court in an orange jumpsuit, served 13 years in the LAPD. By the time he left the department in 2022, he had developed lucrative side hustles, including a luxury car rental business and an app that allowed actors to audition remotely. He was also flirting with the idea of developing a reality show about his life, former associates told The Times.

    Around 2 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2024, Halem, Ben and four other men drove in two cars — Ben’s rented Lamborghini Urus and a Range Rover — to a luxury high-rise in Koreatown where the alleged victim lived, Brownstone said in court.

    Dressed in dark clothing, Halem, Ben and two other men punched in the access code to the victim’s apartment, Brownstone said. The teenager wasn’t home, but the intruders found his girlfriend in a closet and restrained her with LAPD-issued handcuffs, according to the prosecutor.

    “Everyone was armed,” Brownstone said. “They claimed they were from the Los Angeles Police Department and they were executing a search warrant.”

    When the intended victim returned home, the men handcuffed him and demanded he open his crypto wallet on his phone and computer, Brownstone said. The teen tried to bluff by showing an empty digital wallet, she said.

    The intruders threatened to shoot the teenager in the foot and waterboard him if he didn’t surrender his crypto, turning on a shower to emphasize the threat, the prosecutor said.

    Only then did he provide the code to a safe that held a “hard-wired” crypto wallet stored on a thumb drive, Brownstone told the judge. The wallet contained $350,000 in crypto, she said.

    Surveillance footage showed Ben, Halem and the other intruders leaving the victim’s apartment building about 25 minutes after they entered, according to the prosecutor. They did not touch the Rolex watches or stacks of cash inside the safe and scattered throughout the apartment.

    Halem’s attorney, Megan Maitia, cast doubt on the “alleged motive” for the case, questioning how the young man described by authorities as a victim had accumulated so much crypto.

    “How does a 17-year-old do this?” she asked.

    Maitia argued it wasn’t her client who’d threatened to hurt the teenager, but a sixth, still-unidentified suspect who “everyone thought was the most dangerous.”

    Brownstone told the judge that police are still searching for a sixth suspect.

    Maitia asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Wilson to grant her client bail. Far from the high-flying, deep-pocketed wheeler-dealer he was portrayed to be, Halem, a father of two, was now broke, his lawyer said. His house was encumbered with liens and he’d sold a “prop plane” that prosecutors cited when arguing he was a risk to abscond, Maitia said.

    “The bank accounts are empty,” she told Wilson.

    Maitia also argued Halem was in danger in the Los Angeles County jails. “He worries he is going to be killed because he was a cop,” she said.

    Wilson said she would order the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails, to protect Halem but was not moved to grant him bail.

    Nor did she approve the release of Ben. His attorney, Kellen Davis, said his client had no violent convictions and always complied with court orders “from the limited record he does have.”

    Ben was convicted of orchestrating a “bust out” scheme by paying people to open bank accounts that were later used to commit fraud, court records show. He was also accused of defrauding elderly people after entering their homes disguised as an HVAC technician and secretly photographing driver’s licenses and bank statements.

    Ben, who lived in Los Angeles and Miami, owned healthcare and assisted living facilities, Davis said. “They are legitimate and he’s been operating them for years,” he told Wilson.

    The judge wasn’t persuaded. Wilson called the allegation that Ben and his co-defendants posed as policemen “extremely troubling,” and she said there was a chance he could cause “great bodily harm to others” if let out of jail.

    Times staff writers Libor Jany and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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    Matthew Ormseth

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  • At Trump’s urging, Bondi says US will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes

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    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimesA JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.Trump changes course on Epstein filesTrump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.“I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”__Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

    NEW YORK —

    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.

    Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

    Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

    Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

    Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

    “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”

    In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

    The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.

    It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.

    None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimes

    A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

    “The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.

    Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.

    Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”

    Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.

    Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.

    Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

    On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.

    After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”

    Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”

    Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.

    Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.

    Trump changes course on Epstein files

    Trump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.

    On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.

    White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.

    Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.

    The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.

    “I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.

    Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”

    __

    Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

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  • Epstein emails say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

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    More documents related to Jeffrey Epstein were handed over to the House Oversight Committee this week, including the letter and drawings signed with President Donald Trump’s name in the so-called birthday book. Now ahead of the public release on Monday, Democrats on the committee posted on social media revealing the page first reported on by the Wall Street Journal back in July. While old images circulating online of his signature on other documents do seem to resemble the signature in the. The president has repeatedly denied writing the letter and sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said in part, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. The committee also released Epstein’s last will and testament, entries from his address book and the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The panel has been investigating the Epstein case and subpoenaed the estate for documents as part of its ongoing probe. We’ve got *** lot more documents we expect to get in. Uh, we’re gonna bring *** lot of people in for depositions, so this investigation is moving along very rapidly and hopefully we’ll get some answers for and some justice very soon. But some say the committee isn’t going far enough. In *** separate effort, *** bipartisan pair of House lawmakers is working to force *** vote on *** measure calling for the full release of documents related to Epstein. They need 218 signatures on *** discharge petition in order to bypass leadership and force the vote, reporting at the White House, I’m Julie Vanbrook.

    Epstein emails released by Democrats say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

    Updated: 8:11 AM PST Nov 12, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.The emails made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.The messages are part of a batch of 23,000 documents provided by Epstein’s estate to the Oversight Committee. The release resurfaces a storyline that had shadowed Trump’s presidency during the summer when the FBI and the Justice Department abruptly announced that they would not be releasing additional documents that investigators had spent weeks examining, disappointing conspiracy theorists and online sleuths who had expected to see new revelations.In an April 2, 2011, email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. (Redacted name) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”Maxwell replied the same day: “I have been thinking about that.”The name of the person said to have spent time with Trump was blacked out of the email, but House Democrats identified the person as a “victim.”In a separate 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”She said in a statement that the unnamed person referenced in the emails is Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager and who died by suicide in April. Andrew has rejected Giuffre’s allegations and said he didn’t recall meeting her.Leavitt said in a statement that Giuffre had “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” the statement said. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”Giuffre came forward publicly after an initial investigation ended in an 18-month Florida jail term for Epstein, who made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty instead to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution. He was released in 2009.In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, club, when she was approached in 2000 by Maxwell.Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    WASHINGTON —

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.

    The emails, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

    In one 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with a person whose name is blacked out of the emails but who House Democrats identified as a “victim.” Epstein wrote that Trump “has never once been mentioned.”

    In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

    The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

    Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.

    Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

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  • Christian missionary father and daughter died when plane bound for Jamaica crashed in Florida

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    A Christian missionary father and his daughter were killed when a small plane bound for a hurricane relief mission in Jamaica crashed in a South Florida neighborhood.Christian ministry organization Ignite the Fire identified the two victims of the Monday morning crash as the group’s founder, Alexander Wurm, 53, and his daughter Serena Wurm, 22.The pair were bringing humanitarian aid to Jamaica, according to the organization, when the Beechcraft King Air plane they were flying in crashed into a pond in a residential area of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, narrowly missing homes. As of Tuesday morning, investigators had not reported any other victims. In recent weeks, Alexander Wurm had helped deliver medical supplies, water filters and StarLink satellite internet equipment to Jamaica for the relief organization Crisis Response International, according to a video statement the group posted online. “He really made a difference in the lives of the people on the ground by getting the resources in that he did. He saved lives and he gave his life,” Crisis Response International founder Sean Malone added. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was manufactured in 1976 and its registered owner is listed as International Air Services, a company that markets itself as specializing in providing trust agreements to non-U.S. citizens that enable them to register their aircraft with the FAA. A person who answered the company’s phone Monday afternoon declined to answer questions from a reporter, stating “no comment” and ending the phone call.Posts by Alexander Wurm on social media in recent days suggested the evangelist had recently acquired the plane to further his missionary work across the Caribbean, describing the aircraft as “an older King Air with brand new engines,” and “perfect” to ferry deliveries of generators, batteries and building materials to Jamaica. Photos and videos on social media show Wurm posing for a picture in the plane’s cockpit and unloading boxes of supplies from the packed aircraft with teams of volunteers.The flight tracking website FlightAware shows the plane made four other trips to or from Jamaica in the past week, traveling between George Town in the Cayman Islands and Montego Bay and Negril in Jamaica, before landing in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. A powerful Category 5 storm, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Oct. 28 and tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted relief organizations to mobilize.

    FLORIDA, USA —

    A Christian missionary father and his daughter were killed when a small plane bound for a hurricane relief mission in Jamaica crashed in a South Florida neighborhood.

    Christian ministry organization Ignite the Fire identified the two victims of the Monday morning crash as the group’s founder, Alexander Wurm, 53, and his daughter Serena Wurm, 22.

    The pair were bringing humanitarian aid to Jamaica, according to the organization, when the Beechcraft King Air plane they were flying in crashed into a pond in a residential area of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, narrowly missing homes. As of Tuesday morning, investigators had not reported any other victims.

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    In recent weeks, Alexander Wurm had helped deliver medical supplies, water filters and StarLink satellite internet equipment to Jamaica for the relief organization Crisis Response International, according to a video statement the group posted online.

    “He really made a difference in the lives of the people on the ground by getting the resources in that he did. He saved lives and he gave his life,” Crisis Response International founder Sean Malone added.

    According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was manufactured in 1976 and its registered owner is listed as International Air Services, a company that markets itself as specializing in providing trust agreements to non-U.S. citizens that enable them to register their aircraft with the FAA. A person who answered the company’s phone Monday afternoon declined to answer questions from a reporter, stating “no comment” and ending the phone call.

    Posts by Alexander Wurm on social media in recent days suggested the evangelist had recently acquired the plane to further his missionary work across the Caribbean, describing the aircraft as “an older King Air with brand new engines,” and “perfect” to ferry deliveries of generators, batteries and building materials to Jamaica.

    Photos and videos on social media show Wurm posing for a picture in the plane’s cockpit and unloading boxes of supplies from the packed aircraft with teams of volunteers.

    The flight tracking website FlightAware shows the plane made four other trips to or from Jamaica in the past week, traveling between George Town in the Cayman Islands and Montego Bay and Negril in Jamaica, before landing in Fort Lauderdale on Friday.

    A powerful Category 5 storm, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Oct. 28 and tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted relief organizations to mobilize.

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  • A shadowy L.A. crime ring is hijacking the IDs of foreign scholars, fraud expert says

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    Using apartments in the San Fernando Valley and Glendale area, a shadowy group of identity thieves has been quietly exploiting a new kind of victim — foreign scholars who left the U.S. years ago but whose Social Security numbers still linger in American databases, according to a cybercrime expert.

    Criminals are resurrecting these dormant identities and submitting hundreds of applications for bank accounts and credit cards, says David Maimon, head of fraud insights at SentiLink and a criminology professor at Georgia State University. The Southern California-based fraudsters can then max out lines of credit while unknowing victims live halfway across the world, he says.

    Sgt. Frank Diana, with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Fraud and Cyber Crimes Bureau, said organized crime rings in the county are highly skilled at stealing identities, concealing their IP addresses and laundering their loot to make it hard to detect.

    Local identity crime rings “are doing it to make millions of dollars, live in nice houses, all at the expense of taxpayers,” Diana said. “It’s not their money, but they’re living like kings.”

    Maimon and his colleague Karl Lubenow said they uncovered this tactic of stealing foreign scholars’ IDs through their work at SentiLink, a company that works with financial institutions to verify identities and detect fraud.

    At first they were asked to examine applications where foreign movie stars and athletes were probably being impersonated.

    In the process, they said, their investigation unearthed something much larger: hundreds of applications submitted to major credit issuers from a set of similar California street addresses and IP addresses in September.

    As they sifted through the files, they saw that, in addition to targeting a handful of foreign celebrities, the fraudsters were impersonating scores of former foreign scholars who had come to the U.S. as long ago as 1977 and left as recently as 2024.

    These scholars were required to obtain Social Security numbers to work on campus in roles such as research or teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows or visiting lecturers. They are no longer living in the U.S., but their personal information remains scattered across school databases and credit bureaus, which according to Maimon makes them prime prey for opportunistic hackers and fraudsters.

    Should victimized scholars seek to return to the U.S., they would encounter a massive pile of debt and a crippling credit score that could prevent them from gaining work or housing, Maimon said. Meanwhile, financial institutions are liable for the debt, which can ultimately increase the cost of their services to all customers, he added.

    Most of the applications that Maimon identified as fraudulent originated at apartments at six key addresses in Van Nuys, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Glendale and Thai Town. It’s likely that crime ring members use addresses they have access to so that they can pick up credit cards, checks and other sensitive documents sent in the mail, Maimon said.

    The nexus of these addresses falls in the Burbank and Glendale area, which Maimon points out is the home of Armenian Power, an organized crime group known for conducting sophisticated financial crimes.

    He also noted that scholars from Turkey, Armenia’s historical rival, accounted for about half of all fraudulent applications. The remainder were impersonating scholars from a variety of countries such as Japan, India, the Netherlands, Portugal and Greece.

    “They [Armenian Power] have been involved in identity theft and white-collar crime for the last 15 years or so,” Maimon said. “It leads us to believe that these guys are essentially stealing all these identities and using them in order to create all those bank accounts and credit lines.”

    Sgt. Diana said that the tactics used by the alleged identity theft ring that Maimon discovered align with those often used by Armenian crime groups, which tend to be based in the Burbank and Glendale areas.

    Although Diana does not know whether Armenian groups are behind fraud attempts targeting foreign scholars, he said these groups are responsible for a significant portion of organized financial crime in L.A. County.

    “We run into a lot of sophisticated Armenian crime groups that are experts on identity theft,” he said. “That’s what they do for a living and [they] make a lot of money.”

    The Sheriff’s Department is not currently investigating any identity theft cases involving foreign scholars, he said. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department said the department did not currently have any investigations related to this topic. The Burbank Police Department declined to comment.

    Maimon has not reported his findings to authorities, in part due to fear of retaliation from the criminals involved, he said. His previous efforts to shine a light on fraudsters led to his Social Security number and personal information being released on the dark web, resulting in years of identity theft attempts, he said.

    He has reported his findings to the affected financial institutions through his role as a fraud investigator.

    One of the financial institutions, which did not wish to be named due to security concerns, said in a statement that it first realized something was awry after seeing a series of suspicious high-dollar transactions in L.A. and Kern counties coming from accounts in the Glendale area. The majority of the account holders only had addresses dating back to 2023 and very limited credit history.

    The institution said it was continuing to receive fraudulent applications using the identities of former foreign scholars. Once applications are flagged, the institution asks for additional verification information, which it very rarely receives.

    Major data hacks have exposed millions of Americans’ personal information, which is now readily available for purchase on the dark web, Diana said.

    In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 1.1 million identity theft complaints and about 2.6 million complaints of related fraud resulting in total financial losses of more than $12.7 billion, according to a report by consumer credit reporting company Experian.

    Maimon said that artificial intelligence has increased the ease with which criminals can carry out identity theft.

    Once fraudsters have obtained a victim’s name, date of birth and Social Security number, they can easily use AI tools to generate a picture of a driver’s license or passport. They can even create a realistic-looking video of an AI person holding the photo ID and turning their head side to side, which is an additional security requirement at some institutions.

    Both the ID and the person are fake in this video, an example of how AI can be used to try to evade security measures at financial institutions.

    Identity fraud cases are also notoriously difficult to prosecute as criminals hide behind a web of shadowy IP addresses. In addition, there is typically a significant delay between when fraud is committed and when the victim finds out — often by receiving a letter from a collection agency months later, at which point the evidence trail may have gone cold, Diana said.

    “We’re often a day late and a dollar short,” Diana said.

    In the case of the foreign scholars’ stolen identities, the victims may never find out, providing even more protection for the Southern California perpetrators.

    Diana warns all Angelenos to remain vigilant for signs of identity theft by frequently checking their credit score.

    He recommends people lock their credit at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. That way, if someone tries to open a fraudulent line of credit, the financial institution will be unable to access their credit report and probably will deny the application.

    Lastly, if anyone is a victim of identity theft, they should report it to a credit bureau, the FTC and local law enforcement, he said.

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    Clara Harter

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  • Driver dies, dog survives after vehicle goes over side of Santa Cruz Wharf in high surf

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    A dramatic scene unfolded at the Santa Cruz Wharf over the weekend when a vehicle went off the edge of the pier and into the water, sparking a frantic rescue effort that ended with authorities recovering a body and a dog.

    Witnesses reported seeing the vehicle break through the wooden railing at 9:44 a.m. Sunday. When firefighters arrived, they found the damaged section about two-thirds away from the start of the wharf.

    Visibility was limited and the surf was high — waves were about 12 feet — making it difficult to immediately find the vehicle, officials said.

    After about 10 minutes, the vehicle was spotted resting on its roof in about 30 feet of water, said Santa Cruz Fire Department Battalion Chief Josh Coleman at a news conference Sunday.

    “The victim was brought out of a vehicle, upside down, at the bottom of the ocean floor, with significant swelling, in 33 minutes,” Coleman said.

    The victim was pronounced dead at a local hospital. A dog was also pulled from the water and survived, officials said.

    The emergency response included 13 lifeguards, two jet skis and two boats.

    Emergency divers remained in the water for an hour to search the water in case there were any additional passengers in the vehicle, but none were found, authorities said.

    Authorities did not provide any detail about a potential cause for the incident or estimate on how fast the vehicle was traveling before it went off the edge of the wharf. The incident remains under investigation by the Santa Cruz Police Department.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • Man fatally shot in Long Beach, suspect flees

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    A man was fatally shot in Long Beach early Saturday after getting into a fight with a group of people at a local bar, police said.

    The shooting happened in the 100 block of La Verne Avenue before 1:39 a.m. following an altercation earlier in the evening, according to a news release from the Long Beach Police Department. The man suspected of shooting the victim during the confrontation fled the scene in a vehicle.

    Officers responded to the report of a shooting and provided medical aid until the Long Beach Fire Department arrived, but the victim died at the scene. It’s unknown whether the suspect knew the victim.

    The identity of the victim has not been released because the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner is notifying the man’s next of kin, police said.

    Anyone with information about the shootingis asked to contact homicide detectives at (562) 570-7244. Anonymous tips can be sent to “LA Crime Stoppers” by calling 800-222-TIPS (8477), downloading the “P3 Tips” app on a smartphone or by visiting www.LACrimeStoppers.org.

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    Queenie Wong

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  • Florida man arrested of hiding AirPods under woman’s vehicle to track her, police say

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    A man was arrested after he was accused of using AirPods to stalk a woman, according to the Winter Springs Police Department. On Tuesday, a woman told police she was in fear for her life after a man had been harassing her for some time. The suspect, Luis Rendon, was accused of constantly messaging and calling the victim using private or blocked numbers, the victim told police. He was also accused of sending her Zelle payment requests to her bank, using the “memo” box as a form of text message. Police said Rendon got a job where the victim worked “to be around her,” forcing the victim to change schedules. The victim told police that Rendon would come outside of her apartment in the middle of the night and threaten her to come out. Things escalated after Rendon started messaging the victim, claiming to know her whereabouts at all times and who she was with, according to police. The victim decided to have her vehicle inspected because she felt Rendon was following or tracking her.Upon inspection, an Apple AirPod case and earbuds were found inside a gray plastic bag, neatly tied into a ball and tucked away in the undercarriage of her vehicle.Police explained this device includes a tracking feature that enables users to monitor “MyDevices” by connecting it to the owner’s phone. Police spoke with Rendon about the claims against him, and he ultimately confessed to them. He told police he liked her and wanted to know where she was going. He was placed under arrest for stalking and invasion of privacy, according to police.

    LONGWOOD, Fla. —

    A man was arrested after he was accused of using AirPods to stalk a woman, according to the Winter Springs Police Department.

    On Tuesday, a woman told police she was in fear for her life after a man had been harassing her for some time.

    The suspect, Luis Rendon, was accused of constantly messaging and calling the victim using private or blocked numbers, the victim told police.

    He was also accused of sending her Zelle payment requests to her bank, using the “memo” box as a form of text message.

    Police said Rendon got a job where the victim worked “to be around her,” forcing the victim to change schedules.

    The victim told police that Rendon would come outside of her apartment in the middle of the night and threaten her to come out.

    Things escalated after Rendon started messaging the victim, claiming to know her whereabouts at all times and who she was with, according to police.

    The victim decided to have her vehicle inspected because she felt Rendon was following or tracking her.

    Upon inspection, an Apple AirPod case and earbuds were found inside a gray plastic bag, neatly tied into a ball and tucked away in the undercarriage of her vehicle.

    Police explained this device includes a tracking feature that enables users to monitor “MyDevices” by connecting it to the owner’s phone.

    Police spoke with Rendon about the claims against him, and he ultimately confessed to them. He told police he liked her and wanted to know where she was going.

    He was placed under arrest for stalking and invasion of privacy, according to police.

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  • Piano teacher to children of Hollywood stars fled country as jury decided sex abuse case

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    When jurors returned to a West L.A. courtroom to deliver their verdict in a child sex abuse case earlier this month, one key person was missing: the defendant.

    John Kaleel — a veteran piano teacher who has given lessons to the families of several Hollywood power players — faced allegations that he sexually abused one of his students in 2013.

    Kaleel, 69, pleaded no contest in 2016 to committing a lewd act with a teenage student, but later fought to have the plea overturned after realizing the felony conviction would be grounds for deportation to his native Australia. L.A. County prosecutors then retried him and, while the case was pending, he was released on his own recognizance.

    On Oct. 8 — the same day jurors in the Airport Courthouse found him guilty of five counts of sexual abuse — Kaleel slipped out of the country, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and court records.

    The Sheriff’s Department did not say where they believed Kaleel had fled to. Court records show prosecutors filed an application to seek an “Extradition/Fugitive Hardcopy Warrant,” but it contained no details about how he absconded and a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to answer questions.

    Kaleel’s attorney, Kate Hardie, said she last saw her client when she drove him home from court on Oct. 7, the day before the verdict was handed down, and has had no contact with him since. Kaleel has been a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. since the 1980s, according to Hardie. Attempts by The Times to contact Kaleel were unsuccessful.

    A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to discuss what steps it would take to get Kaleel back in custody in Los Angeles. Hardie said her client faces at least a decade in state prison at sentencing.

    Hardie accused the district attorney’s office of carrying out a “vindictive prosecution” against Kaleel, who had already served a year in jail and spent time in a federal immigration detention center after his original plea deal.

    Kaleel taught private lessons for more than a quarter-century in L.A., and his clients included “Hollywood industry professionals and students who have pursued successful music careers,” according to his website. The web page boasted testimonials from the creators of critically acclaimed television series, including “Mad Men” and “Orange Is the New Black,” who praised his work with their children.

    Emmy-award winning animation director Genndy Tartakovsky, who created several famous cartoons, including “Dexter’s Laboratory” and “Samurai Jack,” also referred to Kaleel as a “gift,” according to the website.

    “I have never seen my three children become more inspired or enthusiastic for anything as much as they did for your piano classes,” Tartakovsky said, according to an earlier version of Kaleel’s business website.

    The testimonials disappeared from the website on Monday, after The Times began contacting representatives for those quoted.

    Spokespersons for Jenji Kohan, who created “Orange Is the New Black,” and Matthew Weiner, the writer behind “Mad Men,” both denied giving Kaleel any endorsements or the permission to post any comment on his website. A representative for Tartakovsky declined to comment. Court records show Tartakovsky’s wife and one of his children, a former student of Kaleel’s, testified on the teacher’s behalf at trial.

    “Mr. Kaleel has always maintained his innocence and that he took his initial plea bargain on the advice of counsel to avoid a harsher sentence should he lose at trial,” Hardie said. “He later learned of the immigration consequences when he was placed in an immigration custody facility for 8 [or] 9 months and faced removal proceedings.”

    Hardie argued her client was the victim of a “trial tax,” which references prosecutors often seeking to punish defendants more severely when they don’t take a plea. Hardie also said Sheriff’s Department detectives interviewed many of Kaleel’s students “and found no other student who complained of Kaleel being inappropriate.”

    The alleged victim in the case first contacted the Sheriff’s Department in 2015. The boy said he was 15 when Kaleel acted inappropriately by asking “to take measurements of [the victim’s] body parts, including his penis,” according to court records.

    Two years later, Kaleel convinced the boy that they should masturbate together while on a FaceTime call because that’s “what friends do,” records show. In September 2013, prosecutors alleged, Kaleel invited the boy over and they smoked marijuana together before having oral sex.

    A friend of the victim also testified at trial that Kaleel attempted to engage in sexual conduct with him, but that count was not charged, according to court records. Hardie said her client had no physical contact with that boy.

    After Kaleel struck a plea deal, he was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and served with a deportation order. He successfully challenged his removal at the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2019, according to his former immigration attorney, Mfon Anthony Ikon.

    Ikon said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security then abandoned its attempts to deport Kaleel.

    Representatives for ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

    In 2022, Kaleel convinced a judge to overturn his plea to the initial sex crimes charge on the grounds that he didn’t fully understand the impact it might have on his immigration status, records show.

    Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. County prosecutor who has tried cases in the area for the last three decades, said it’s rare — but not unprecedented — for defendants to vanish on the eve of a verdict.

    “It’s an unusual situation,” he said. “But people’s conduct can be very unpredictable when they’re facing tremendous time in prison.”

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    James Queally

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  • Suspects kidnapped, tortured woman in cross-country scheme to commit fraud, authorities say

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    A 28-year-old New York man was arrested outside an outdoor mall in Chino Hills on allegations that he, along with a female partner, kidnapped a 51-year-old woman and drove her across the country to commit fraud to repay debts she owed, according to authorities.

    During the cross-country trek, the suspect, Rahson Govantes, and an unidentified woman are accused of torturing their victim by burning her with cigarettes and a curling iron, according to a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department news release.

    Deputies discovered the victim, a resident of North Carolina, and Govantes acting suspiciously and loitering outside a Sephora store in Chino Hills on Saturday afternoon, according to deputies.

    Booking photo of Rahson Govantes.

    (San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department)

    Deputies arrested Govantes and booked him on suspicion of aggravated mayhem, torture, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, the sheriff’s department said. Detectives are trying to determine whether there are additional victims, and released Govantes’ booking photo. Authorities have not been able to identify the other woman who was allegedly involved in the kidnapping, and she remains at large, according to the sheriff’s department.

    Anyone who may have been victimized by Govantes or anyone with information about the case can contact the Chino Hills Police Department at (909) 364-2000. Anonymous calls can be made to We-Tip Hotline at 1-800-78CRIME (27463) or at www.wetip.com.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • A killer targeted men using Grindr, police say. One survived to help catch him

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    When his date pulled out handcuffs, the man thought it was for consensual sex.

    He submitted to having his wrists cuffed and ankles bound together. Then the other man pulled out a baseball bat.

    The Feb. 22 incident, recounted in a detective’s affidavit, began on Grindr, a hookup app for gay men. It ended with the handcuffed man badly injured — but alive.

    With his cooperation, detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department said, they identified his alleged assailant as Rockim Prowell, 34, and suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d lured a victim using Grindr.

    Prowell was charged in September with killing two men whose deaths had gone unsolved for years, authorities said.

    “We needed to connect the dots,” said Det. Ray Lugo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

    Prowell has yet to enter a plea to charges of murder, attempted murder, carjacking, robbery, burglary and assault. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Carlos Bido, didn’t return a request for comment.

    The trail of evidence that led detectives to Prowell began in 2021, authorities say, when a married father of five left home at 1 a.m. for a date with a man he’d met online.

    Inglewood police officers found Miguel Angel King’s white Toyota CHR parked on Queen Street the afternoon of July 22, 2021. The vehicle’s hatchback area, Lugo said, was covered in blood.

    King, 51, had been reported missing by his wife and children days earlier, Lugo said.

    A native of Tijuana who came to Los Angeles as a child, King raised five children, including three girls he adopted from foster care, said his daughter, Angela King. He worked hard, running a child-care business and helping his sister with a burger restaurant, she said.

    As the family waited for news, Angela King said she tried to convince herself that her father was just taking an unannounced vacation.

    “I didn’t know what to think,” she recalled. “I was scared. My father was home every single night, every single day.”

    Lugo and his partner, Det. Leo Sanchez, reviewed King’s phone data and learned it was last active near a lagoon in Playa del Rey. Sheriff’s divers searched the water but found nothing.

    On Aug. 14, 2021, police discovered a decomposed body in the Angeles National Forest above Glendora, Lugo said. Two weeks later, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner identified the remains as King’s. The cause of death was a single gunshot to the head.

    Then the case went cold.

    Robert Gutierrez left home in South Los Angeles the evening of Aug. 21, 2023, an LAPD detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit. He told his nephew he was meeting someone he’d encountered on Grindr.

    Launched in 2009, Grindr is now a publicly traded company that claims more than 14 million users in 190 countries and territories.

    In a written statement, a Grindr spokesperson said the company cooperates with law enforcement and encourages people to use its video calling feature to verify connections for safety before meeting in person.

    “We take our role as a connector for the queer community seriously and work diligently to provide a safe environment for our users,” the spokesperson said.

    Police around the world have investigated homicides where killers met their victims on Grindr. In London, authorities investigated the deaths of four men in 2014 and 2015 who were drugged, raped and killed by a suspect they’d met on Grindr, the BBC reported.

    In 2023, a Scottish father of two was killed by a 19-year-old he’d met on Grindr. Only after Paul Taylor’s death did his family learn of his double life.

    “I will never have the opportunity to hear from Paul about his lifestyle choices,” his widow told a court, according to the BBC, “but I do not judge him.”

    Two days after Gutierrez left home, his nephew reported him missing.

    According to a search warrant affidavit, LAPD detectives searched impound logs and city license plate readers for Gutierrez’s black Infiniti FX35, finding nothing. His bank records showed someone had used his credit card to pay the $132.60 monthly rent for a storage unit in San Bernardino.

    When detectives got a court order to search Gutierrez’s Grindr account, they saw he’d made plans to meet someone at an apartment building on Imperial Highway in Inglewood, according to the affidavit.

    The man’s name: Rockim Lee Prowell.

    Prowell had a modest criminal record, but nothing to indicate violence. Detectives from the Beverly Hills Police Department arrested him in 2021 for burglary and theft, according to a probation report.

    The previous year, police were alerted to an intruder at a vacant five-bedroom house. They found a shattered sliding glass door and two televisions missing, the probation report said. In April 2021, a real estate agent showing a $19-million, 7,500-square-foot home arrived to find the property burglarized and three televisions stolen, according to the report.

    From surveillance footage, detectives identified the suspect’s car as a black Toyota Prius. In the video, the suspect appeared to be a white man with long curly brown hair, according to a law enforcement source who wasn’t authorized to discuss the case publicly and requested anonymity.

    Two weeks later, Beverly Hills officers spotted the Prius at Lexington Road and Beverly Drive, the probation report said. The car was outfitted with a stolen license plate.

    Prowell was behind the wheel. Inside the car, detectives found a brunette wig and a rubber mask resembling a white male that the law enforcement source said looked realistic enough to be “movie quality.”

    According to the probation report, Prowell, who is Black, admitted burglarizing the houses in Beverly Hills. He was homeless and had “fallen on tough times,” he said.

    He looked up properties that were listed for sale, knowing they’d be vacant, and burglarized them for televisions that he sold online, Prowell told police. With his background in construction, he said he knew that turning off the homes’ circuit breakers would disable their surveillance systems.

    The law enforcement official said Prowell was linked to burglaries in North Hollywood, Van Nuys, West L.A., Santa Monica, South Pasadena and Newport Beach, but there is no record of him being charged for those alleged crimes.

    Charged with burglary, grand theft and vandalism for the Beverly Hills break-ins, Prowell was released on bail May 6, 2021. He pleaded no contest four months later to two counts of burglary and one count of grand theft.

    When it came to the sentence that Prowell would receive, a probation officer wrote that his “callous and premeditated” crimes would have continued if he hadn’t been caught. But with no prior criminal history, Prowell was eligible for probation.

    The judge agreed with the officer’s recommendation of no jail time, sentencing Prowell to two years’ probation.

    By then, authorities allege, Prowell had already killed.

    Around 3 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2025, LAPD officers raced to 59th Place in South L.A., where they’d been dispatched by a report of “unknown trouble,” a detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit.

    They found a 40-year-old man with a broken leg, according to the affidavit and a statement by the L.A. County district attorney. The man, who is not named in the affidavit, told the officers a harrowing story.

    After messaging for months on Grindr, he and a man made plans to meet for the first time. His date, whose name he didn’t know, sent him an address. When he arrived, the man said he allowed himself to be handcuffed and have his ankles bound, thinking they were going to have consensual sex.

    Instead, his date pepper-sprayed him, beat him with a metal bat and demanded the PIN to his bank cards, he told police. After covering his eyes with a blindfold, gagging him with a sock and taping his mouth shut, the suspect dragged the man to a car, threatening to put him in the trunk.

    The man said he managed to get his legs free and ran out the garage door, screaming.

    The suspect — identified by police as Prowell — started the car and crashed into the man, breaking his leg. He got out of the car and tried to persuade the victim to come back inside, even removing the handcuffs, the affidavit said.

    Instead, the victim took off running and asked a neighbor to call the police. By the time the officers arrived, the suspect alleged to be Prowell had vanished.

    The victim recalled his date’s Grindr username, and detectives served a search warrant on the company, court records show.

    It’s unclear how detectives identified Prowell as the suspect, but Lugo said the surviving victim’s account was the break authorities needed.

    “Our case was a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Lugo said.

    When detectives searched a home associated with Prowell in Inglewood, they found Gutierrez’s Infiniti in the garage, according to a statement from the L.A. County district attorney’s office. His body has still not been found.

    Last month, prosecutors charged Prowell with murdering King and Gutierrez and attempting to kill the third victim who described being bound, assaulted and hit with a car.

    If convicted, Prowell faces life in prison without parole or the death penalty, prosecutors said in a statement. The district attorney’s office has yet to make a decision whether to seek capital punishment.

    Angela King said she wanted her father to be known for more than how he died.

    She cited the Gospel of Matthew: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

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    Matthew Ormseth

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  • House Republicans launch investigation into distribution of L.A. fire charity funds

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    WASHINGTON — Two House Republicans launched an investigation on Wednesday that will, in part, examine how a California charitable organization used a $500,000 grant that was meant to support victims of the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires, a move that is expanding congressional scrutiny over the response to the disaster.

    Reps. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to the head of the California Volunteers Fund asking for financial records related to a $500,000 grant it received from the disaster-relief charity FireAid, which raised an estimated $100 million for fire victims through its flagship benefit concerts in January.

    “It is not publicly known how the California Volunteers Fund distributed this $500,000, or what individuals or entities received funds,” Kiley and Jordan wrote in a letter Wednesday to Dave Smith, the fund’s chief executive. “It is also unclear whether the state-based California Volunteers, run out of the Governor’s Office, received any of the FireAid-originated funds via the California Volunteers Fund.”

    Kiley and Jordan added that they want to examine all documents and communications related to the California fires between the California Volunteers Fund and California Volunteers, an entity that the charity supports and is housed within Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.

    In their letter, they said FireAid has “come under scrutiny for diverting donations to nonprofits instead of providing direct relief to fire victims.”

    The California Volunteers Fund and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

    The congressional inquiry into the distribution of disaster relief funds comes after months of pressure from Republican politicians, including President Trump, who have questioned FireAid’s methods and priorities. In July, Kiley called for an investigation into the charitable funds, urging the attorney general to open an investigation into the matter.

    Politically, the investigation comes as Newsom — whose office was mentioned several times in the letter — becomes a frequent political target of Trump and Republicans amid speculation that he could be eyeing a potential 2028 presidential run.

    In response to the criticism, FireAid commissioned two audit reports, including an independent review led by law firm Latham & Watkins that found no evidence of fraud or misuse of funds. The reports were sent to local and federal officials and the Department of Justice.

    “The law firm conducted an independent review of the charity, and shared conclusive findings affirming that FireAid has acted in accordance with mission, has strong accountability measures and aid is reaching affected communities,” the FireAid organization said in a statement about the review findings at the time.

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    Ana Ceballos

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  • Epic Universe to reopen Stardust Racers roller coaster less than 3 weeks after guest’s death

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    Universal Orlando is set to reopen the Stardust Racers roller coaster weeks after a guest died after riding the attraction.On Sept. 17, 32-year-old Kevin Rodriguez Zavala lost consciousness after riding the Stardust Racers roller coaster. Zavala was later pronounced dead, and his death was ruled an accident. The manner of his death was determined to be “multiple blunt impact injuries,” according to the Orange County medical examiner.Since the incident, the ride has remained closed. In a letter sent to team members, Universal Orlando said that it conducted a comprehensive technical and operational review, which confirmed that the ride systems were functioning correctly. The letter stated that the review was conducted in conjunction with local and state officials. Additionally, the ride system manufacturer and an independent third-party roller coaster engineering expert conducted their own on-site testing, the letter said. Stardust Racers will reopen on Oct. 4 in the afternoon. Since the deadly incident, family members of the victim have requested a complete and transparent investigation into how this incident occurred. The family also requested that the ride remain shut down until the investigation is completed and they understand what went wrong. Since Zavalas’ death, more victims have come forward to report injuries sustained while riding the Stardust Racers roller coaster, according to attorney Ben Crump.Crump said the injuries other victims reported include problems with restraints, riders being thrown forward and hitting hard structures on the same ride. He said these are all consistent with the injuries Zavala suffered.The family believes that these accounts indicate that warning signs were overlooked and Zavalas’ death could have been completely avoided.>> Read full letter below:

    Universal Orlando is set to reopen the Stardust Racers roller coaster weeks after a guest died after riding the attraction.

    On Sept. 17, 32-year-old Kevin Rodriguez Zavala lost consciousness after riding the Stardust Racers roller coaster.

    Zavala was later pronounced dead, and his death was ruled an accident. The manner of his death was determined to be “multiple blunt impact injuries,” according to the Orange County medical examiner.

    Since the incident, the ride has remained closed.

    In a letter sent to team members, Universal Orlando said that it conducted a comprehensive technical and operational review, which confirmed that the ride systems were functioning correctly.

    The letter stated that the review was conducted in conjunction with local and state officials.

    Additionally, the ride system manufacturer and an independent third-party roller coaster engineering expert conducted their own on-site testing, the letter said.

    Stardust Racers will reopen on Oct. 4 in the afternoon.

    Since the deadly incident, family members of the victim have requested a complete and transparent investigation into how this incident occurred.

    The family also requested that the ride remain shut down until the investigation is completed and they understand what went wrong.

    Since Zavalas’ death, more victims have come forward to report injuries sustained while riding the Stardust Racers roller coaster, according to attorney Ben Crump.

    Crump said the injuries other victims reported include problems with restraints, riders being thrown forward and hitting hard structures on the same ride. He said these are all consistent with the injuries Zavala suffered.

    The family believes that these accounts indicate that warning signs were overlooked and Zavalas’ death could have been completely avoided.

    >> Read full letter below:


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  • Body Parts Found in Tualatin River Identified – KXL

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    Since August 8th, 2025, Detectives with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Team (MCT) have investigated the discovery of human remains found in the Tualatin River.  A kayaker found one body part on August 8th near the boat ramp of Rood Bridge Park.  A second body part was located approximately 1 mile downriver from the first body part on August 9th.

    Detectives believed that both body parts belonged to the same person but needed DNA analysis to confirm the identity.  Detectives worked in conjunction with the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office and the Oregon State Police Crime Lab to confirm the identity of the unidentified human remains.

    The victim has been identified as 34-year-old Ezequiel Avila-Ruiz. Avila Ruiz was known to camp in multiple areas, including around Rood Bridge Park. The Oregon State Police Crime Lab was able to confirm his identity using familial DNA comparison with living relatives. Avila-Ruiz’s family has been notified and is requesting privacy at this time.

    Detectives believe Avila-Ruiz was the victim of homicide and would like to speak with anyone who has information about Avila-Ruiz’s whereabouts after he was last seen on July 31st, 2025, near SE Baseline St and South First Ave in Hillsboro at approximately 5:40 p.m.

    Please contact detectives at the Sheriff’s Office by calling the Investigations Division at (503) 846-2500, referencing Avila-Ruiz and case number 50-25-11037.

    Original Media Release: Detectives Investigate Body Parts Found in Tualatin River

    On Friday, August 8, 2025, at 5:09 p.m., Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to Rood Bridge Park in Hillsboro after a recreational kayaker discovered a body part in the Tualatin River.

    Detectives from the Washington County Major Crimes Team (MCT) were dispatched to assist with the investigation, aided by searchers from several supporting teams. On August 9th, searchers discovered a second body part in the river but are not disclosing additional information at this time.

    The investigation is ongoing, and the identity of the victim has not been determined. The Medical Examiner’s office determines any information regarding the cause or manner of death.

    The Sheriff’s Office was supported by marine units, K9, a dive team, and ground searchers from the Clackamas and Columbia County Sheriff’s Offices. Searchers are continuing their efforts as additional information is discovered.

    If you have information about this incident and have not spoken to detectives, please contact the Sheriff’s Office Investigations Division at 503-846-2500, referencing case number 50-25-11037.

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    Brett Reckamp

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  • Deltona man arrested after gas station shooting Friday night

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    An 18-year-old Deltona man has been arrested and is facing several charges following a Friday night shooting outside a gas station.The Volusia Sheriff’s Office said Yeiriel Andres Tirado Diaz is facing charges of shooting into an occupied vehicle, discharging a firearm from a vehicle, and three counts of aggravated assault with a firearm. According to the sheriff’s office, Tirado Diaz pulled into the parking lot of the Circle K at 1380 Howland Boulevard in Deltona around 6:25 p.m. and shot at the victim who was pumping gas.The victim got into his car and fled the area along with two passengers as Tirado Diaz allegedly fired several more shots. Nobody was injured in the incident.The victim told the sheriff’s office that Tirado Diaz had been their best friend for several years, that the two were arrested together in 2024 and that Tirado Diaz was upset because the victim’s charges were dropped but not his own.Tirado Diaz remains in the Volusia County jail and is being held without bond.

    DELTONA, Fla. —

    An 18-year-old Deltona man has been arrested and is facing several charges following a Friday night shooting outside a gas station.

    The Volusia Sheriff’s Office said Yeiriel Andres Tirado Diaz is facing charges of shooting into an occupied vehicle, discharging a firearm from a vehicle, and three counts of aggravated assault with a firearm.

    According to the sheriff’s office, Tirado Diaz pulled into the parking lot of the Circle K at 1380 Howland Boulevard in Deltona around 6:25 p.m. and shot at the victim who was pumping gas.

    The victim got into his car and fled the area along with two passengers as Tirado Diaz allegedly fired several more shots. Nobody was injured in the incident.

    The victim told the sheriff’s office that Tirado Diaz had been their best friend for several years, that the two were arrested together in 2024 and that Tirado Diaz was upset because the victim’s charges were dropped but not his own.

    Tirado Diaz remains in the Volusia County jail and is being held without bond.

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  • Justice Department questions retired FBI agent’s role in $1.4 billion Sandy Hook lawsuit

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    A senior U.S. Justice Department official sent a letter to a lawyer for relatives of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, asking pointed questions about a retired FBI agent’s involvement in a defamation lawsuit that led to a $1.4 billion judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.Ed Martin Jr., who leads the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” asked in the letter whether retired agent William Aldenberg received any financial benefits from helping to organize the lawsuit, in which he was a plaintiff along with victims’ family members.Aldenberg, like the parents and other relatives of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has been the subject of false conspiracy theories spread by Jones on his “Infowars” broadcasts.Aldenberg was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the school and found the dead children. That then led to years of abuse from people who believed the shooting was a hoax, he has said. His share of the judgment totaled around $120 million.Martin sends lawyer letter asking about retired agentIn a Sept. 15 letter to Christopher Mattei, a lawyer who represents Sandy Hook families, Martin suggested he was scrutinizing Aldenberg’s role in the lawsuit.“As you may know, there are criminal laws protecting the citizens from actions by government employees who may be acting for personal benefit,” Martin wrote.Mattei responded to the letter in a text message to The Associated Press.“Thanks to the courage of the Sandy Hook families, Infowars will soon be finished,” he said, referring to the families’ efforts in court to liquidate Jones’ assets to help pay the judgment. “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”The Justice Department said it had no immediate comment Tuesday.Martin, who has been examining President Donald Trump’s claims of anti-conservative bias inside the Justice Department, has sent letters to a host of targets in other, unrelated matters, seeking information or making appeals, but it’s unclear whether such requests have amounted to anything.Jones posted a copy of the letter on his X account Tuesday, saying “Breaking! The DOJ’s Task Force On Government Weaponization Against The American People Has Launched An Investigation Into The Democrat Party / FBI Directing Illegal Law-fare Against Alex Jones And Infowars.”Retired agent testified at the trialAldenberg joined the relatives of eight Sandy Hook victims in suing Jones, alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress.Aldenberg was one of the first witnesses to testify at the trial in 2022. He broke down on the witness stand as he described entering the two classrooms where children and educators were shot.He also testified about how he and others in the community and law enforcement were targeted with threats and conspiracy theories, including one that claimed he was an actor who also pretended to be the father of a victim.Messages were left at a phone listing and email addresses listed for Aldenberg in public records.Relatives of the shooting victims testified that they were subjected to violent threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media because of Jones.Martin has been serving as head of the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group” since his nomination for top federal prosecutor in Washington was pulled amid bipartisan concerns about his modest legal experience and his advocacy for Jan. 6 rioters.Attorney General Pam Bondi created the group to scrutinize matters in which conservatives have claimed they were unfairly targeted or treated.Martin was also recently named a special prosecutor to help conduct the separate mortgage fraud investigations into Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.In his letter to Mattei, he asked for several pieces of information and requested that the lawyer respond by Sept. 29.In the letter, Martin asks Mattei to keep the correspondence confidential because “I do not wish to litigate this in the media.” On Sept. 14, Jones posted a photo on his X account of him and Martin together, saying the two met in Washington, D.C.Jones recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his appeal of the $1.4 billion judgment. He also is appealing a $49 million judgment in a similar lawsuit in Texas filed by two other parents of children killed in Newtown. He has cited free speech rights, but he has acknowledged that the shooting was “100% real.”Jones claims Democrats have been targeting him for his speech.He filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are now trying to liquidate Infowars’ assets in state court proceedings in Texas.

    A senior U.S. Justice Department official sent a letter to a lawyer for relatives of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, asking pointed questions about a retired FBI agent’s involvement in a defamation lawsuit that led to a $1.4 billion judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

    Ed Martin Jr., who leads the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” asked in the letter whether retired agent William Aldenberg received any financial benefits from helping to organize the lawsuit, in which he was a plaintiff along with victims’ family members.

    Aldenberg, like the parents and other relatives of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has been the subject of false conspiracy theories spread by Jones on his “Infowars” broadcasts.

    Aldenberg was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the school and found the dead children. That then led to years of abuse from people who believed the shooting was a hoax, he has said. His share of the judgment totaled around $120 million.

    Martin sends lawyer letter asking about retired agent

    In a Sept. 15 letter to Christopher Mattei, a lawyer who represents Sandy Hook families, Martin suggested he was scrutinizing Aldenberg’s role in the lawsuit.

    “As you may know, there are criminal laws protecting the citizens from actions by government employees who may be acting for personal benefit,” Martin wrote.

    Mattei responded to the letter in a text message to The Associated Press.

    “Thanks to the courage of the Sandy Hook families, Infowars will soon be finished,” he said, referring to the families’ efforts in court to liquidate Jones’ assets to help pay the judgment. “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”

    The Justice Department said it had no immediate comment Tuesday.

    Martin, who has been examining President Donald Trump’s claims of anti-conservative bias inside the Justice Department, has sent letters to a host of targets in other, unrelated matters, seeking information or making appeals, but it’s unclear whether such requests have amounted to anything.

    Jones posted a copy of the letter on his X account Tuesday, saying “Breaking! The DOJ’s Task Force On Government Weaponization Against The American People Has Launched An Investigation Into The Democrat Party / FBI Directing Illegal Law-fare Against Alex Jones And Infowars.”

    Retired agent testified at the trial

    Aldenberg joined the relatives of eight Sandy Hook victims in suing Jones, alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

    Aldenberg was one of the first witnesses to testify at the trial in 2022. He broke down on the witness stand as he described entering the two classrooms where children and educators were shot.

    He also testified about how he and others in the community and law enforcement were targeted with threats and conspiracy theories, including one that claimed he was an actor who also pretended to be the father of a victim.

    Messages were left at a phone listing and email addresses listed for Aldenberg in public records.

    Relatives of the shooting victims testified that they were subjected to violent threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media because of Jones.

    Martin has been serving as head of the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group” since his nomination for top federal prosecutor in Washington was pulled amid bipartisan concerns about his modest legal experience and his advocacy for Jan. 6 rioters.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi created the group to scrutinize matters in which conservatives have claimed they were unfairly targeted or treated.

    Martin was also recently named a special prosecutor to help conduct the separate mortgage fraud investigations into Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.

    In his letter to Mattei, he asked for several pieces of information and requested that the lawyer respond by Sept. 29.

    In the letter, Martin asks Mattei to keep the correspondence confidential because “I do not wish to litigate this in the media.” On Sept. 14, Jones posted a photo on his X account of him and Martin together, saying the two met in Washington, D.C.

    Jones recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his appeal of the $1.4 billion judgment. He also is appealing a $49 million judgment in a similar lawsuit in Texas filed by two other parents of children killed in Newtown. He has cited free speech rights, but he has acknowledged that the shooting was “100% real.”

    Jones claims Democrats have been targeting him for his speech.

    He filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are now trying to liquidate Infowars’ assets in state court proceedings in Texas.

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