Star News

Authorities say the new search follows charges filed last month against James Elmore in two longtime Galveston County killings. BACLIFF, TX — Investigators searched a home in Bacliff on Thursday as part of the long-running Texas Killing Fields investigation, focusing on a property tied to James Elmore Jr., the man charged last month in the 1984 death of Laura Miller and the 1986 death of Audrey Cook. The search marked the latest turn in one …

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Authorities say two speeding drivers helped cause the wreck that killed 3-year-old Anna and badly injured her pregnant mother. TUCSON, AZ — A 16-year-old boy accused in a high-speed Tucson crash that killed a 3-year-old girl and seriously injured her pregnant mother will be prosecuted as an adult, authorities said, placing him in the same criminal posture as the 22-year-old driver already jailed in the case. The decision raises the stakes in a case that …

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Prosecutors said a 16-year-old girl was abducted at gunpoint, assaulted in a van and rescued within about 30 minutes after she signaled a gas station clerk for help. HAMTRAMCK, MI — A 48-year-old Hamtramck man was charged Thursday in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl who prosecutors said was taken at gunpoint while waiting for a school bus and rescued a short time later at a Detroit gas station. Donald James Joseph …

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Two boys, ages 12 and 14, were shot near a Northeast Washington convenience store during spring break. WASHINGTON, DC — Police in Washington said Wednesday that the shooting that killed two boys in the city’s Mayfair neighborhood appeared to be targeted, after gunfire erupted outside a convenience store Tuesday afternoon and left the children dead. The deaths of 14-year-old Tyale Coates and 12-year-old Mhilo Young have shaken a Northeast neighborhood already strained by recent gun …

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A former student wounded 16 people in Şanlıurfa a day before a 14-year-old boy killed nine people at a middle school in Kahramanmaraş. ANKARA, TURKEY — Two school shootings on back-to-back days in southeastern Turkey left nine people dead and 29 others wounded, jolting a country where such attacks have been rare. The second and deadlier attack struck a middle school in Kahramanmaraş on Wednesday, one day after a former student opened fire at a …

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Federal prosecutors said the shipment from China was disguised as clothing, and the plea deal calls for the researcher’s removal from the United States. INDIANAPOLIS, IN — A former Indiana University postdoctoral researcher has been sentenced to more than four months in prison after admitting he smuggled E. coli DNA from China into the United States in a package listed on customs forms as women’s underwear, federal prosecutors said. The case matters because it sits …

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Neighbors said workers renovating a nearby home made the discovery Sunday, prompting a larger search the next day. DETROIT, MI — FBI agents and Detroit police spent hours digging through a vacant lot on the city’s west side after workers nearby reported finding what appeared to be human remains, opening an investigation that drew heavy equipment, forensics crews and anxious neighbors to the block. The search matters because it turned an ordinary residential lot near …

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Investigators say three unprovoked assaults across East and South San Jose over two weeks led to an arrest after a separate barricade and machete incident. SAN JOSE, CA — San Jose police say they have arrested a 32-year-old city resident accused of a string of sudden attacks on strangers, including two elderly men, after a separate domestic dispute on Sunday ended with officers persuading him to surrender from a home. Authorities identified the suspect as …

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New footage from Pauls Valley High School captures the moment Principal Kirk Moore rushed an armed former student after gunfire erupted in the lobby. PAULS VALLEY, OK — Newly released surveillance video shows a high school principal sprinting from his office and tackling an armed former student who had entered the school lobby on April 7, a confrontation that left the principal wounded and authorities saying other students were spared. The video has renewed attention …

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Investigators say new DNA testing linked Nancy Jean Trottier to the newborn found dead on a North Dakota campus in 1981. VALLEY CITY, ND — An Arizona woman has been arrested and charged with murder in the 1981 death of a newborn girl known for decades as Baby Rebecca, a long-unsolved North Dakota case that investigators say was finally cracked through genetic genealogy and later DNA testing. Nancy Jean Trottier, 65, was taken into custody …

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