Over the course of his hockey career, Andrew Brunette played for six different teams and has coached two more – including his current gig behind the bench for the Nashville Predators. So one would think that by now, walking into Grand Casino Arena some two decades after he spent three seasons in a Minnesota Wild sweater, it would feel like just another rink.

Not so.

“I think you always feel it,” Brunette said before his Preds faced the Wild on Tuesday night. He noted that while watching video of Minnesota’s previous game, versus Colorado, the Wild were decked out in replica sweaters from the early 2000s, when Brunette was a forward on the ice in St. Paul.

“It brings back a lot of memories for sure,” he said. “My whole tenure here was something I’ll never forget.”

And as the franchise celebrates 25 years, few Wild fans would argue that Brunette scored the biggest goal, so far, in Minnesota’s second stint with a NHL team. Round one of the 2003 playoffs, Game 7 in Denver versus the Avalanche, overtime, and Brunette stuffed the puck past legendary goalie Patrick Roy, giving the Wild their first-ever playoff series win.

“It was a little bit devastating for me. I was a big fan of Colorado back in the day because we used to live in Colorado and my dad coached there,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno recalled, conjuring up many details from a game he watched back home in Canada at age 12. The blow of seeing the Avalanche lose that one was softened a bit because Foligno and Brunette are both from Sudbury, Ontario.

“It was a heartbreaker, but it was also really cool, because it was a Sudbury kid that did it,” Foligno said. “Probably the biggest goal of his career. Crazy play, and then you could see Patty Roy, he always does that little head shake afterward. There was probably a swear word in French or something. That always sticks with me.”

Among the many historical photos of Wild games and stars from the past 25 years hanging in the Grand Casino Arena pressbox is one of Brunette, arms outstretched, mouth wide open as he skates away from the crease, without his stick, to celebrate the uncharted territory the Wild were visiting at that moment. Behind Brunette, one can see Roy, kneeling in some disbelief, as the final puck he faced in a hall of fame career eluded him. Roy retired after more than 1,200 games in the summer of 2003.

“Roy’s like, ‘If he scored on me, I’m done. I retire,’” Brunette joked about watching the play all these years later. “It’s funny, you see it and it looks so slow. And I thought it was actually fast.”

In his first season as a head coach, Brunette took over the Florida Panthers in October 2021 and led them to an Atlantic Division title and the NHL Presidents’ Trophy, given to the team with the best regular season record. But after a loss to rival Tampa Bay in round two of the playoffs that season, he was fired.

Brunette is currently in his third season as the head coach in Nashville.

“I think Bruno does a good job. I think he’s a smart guy, smart coach,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “His teams play with good structure and his teams have an offensive element. I think in his brain, his mind as a coach comes out in his teams.”

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By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and MEGAN JANETSKY

Air traffic controllers lost communication for about 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed off the Texas coast in thick fog, killing at least five people, Mexico’s president said Tuesday.

Authorities initially believed the plane had landed safely at its destination in Galveston, near Houston, before learning it had gone down Monday afternoon, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. A search-and-rescue operation in waters near Galveston pulled two survivors from the plane’s wreckage, while one remained missing, Mexico’s Navy said.

In this image provided by Sky Decker Jr., authorities and volunteers respond to a Mexican Navy plane crash near Galveston, Texas, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Sky Decker Jr. via AP)

U.S. authorities are investigating the cause, but the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that it could take a week or more to recover the aircraft.

“What happened is very tragic,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing, noting that sailors were among the dead. The Mexican Navy officers had been working with a group that transports Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston.

Plane was too low as it descended

As the twin turboprop Beech King Air 350i approached Sholes International Airport in Galveston, radar shows it was far too low, said Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration crash investigator.

A navigation system for the runway where the plane was supposed to land had been out of service for about a week, Guzzetti said. The system sends signals to the airplane cockpit that helps pilots navigate in the kind of bad weather that had enveloped the area. The fog was so thick that meteorologists estimated only about a half-mile of visibility.

The pilot should have aborted the landing if the runway wasn’t visible at an altitude of 205 feet, climbing back up before trying again or looking for another airport entirely, Guzzetti said.

Guzzetti said the reported radar track shows that the pilot was descending rapidly below 200 feet, a full 2 miles away from the runway.

“Maybe there was some sort of mechanical malfunction,” he said. “But just looking at the recorded flight track and comparing it with the weather and the airport equipment outage, seems to me that this landing approach should never have occurred.”

Witness describes crash scene

The plane crashed in a bay near the base of the causeway connecting Galveston Island to the mainland. The popular beach destination is about 50 miles southeast of Houston.

A map showing where the Mexican Navy plane crashed Monday. (AP Digital Embed)

Sky Decker, a professional yacht captain who lives about a mile from the crash site, said he jumped in his boat to see if he could help. He picked up two police officers who guided him through the thick fog to the nearly submerged plane. Decker jumped into the water and found a badly injured woman trapped beneath chairs and other debris.

“She had maybe 3 inches of air gap to breathe in,” he said. “And there was jet fuel in there mixed with the water, fumes real bad. She was really fighting for her life.”

He said he also pulled out a man seated in front of her who had already died.

Investigators dig into the cause

Crews from the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration rushed to the scene.

Galveston Police officers watch the water on Galveston Bay west of the Galveston causeway, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, near Galveston, Texas, as emergency personnel search for a small airplane that went down in the bay in heavy fog. (Jennifer Reynolds/The Galveston County Daily News via AP)

A spokesperson for the NTSB said in an email that investigators will review maintenance records, weather forecasts and air traffic control communications. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days.

Guzzetti said the investigation also will likely look into how serious the young patient’s medical condition was and how motivated the pilot was to land.

“There have been previous accidents in the air medical community where pilots try to push their luck in order to save the patient,” he said.

The aircraft had a “very, very proven design,” said aviation safety expert John Cox. He said it’s the latest version of a series that has been in use since the 1960s and would have been outfitted with all the modern electronics, avionics and equipment.

Plane was helping with medical mission

Mexico’s Navy said the plane was helping with a medical mission in coordination with the Michou and Mau Foundation.

The charity was founded after a mother died trying to save her kids from a fire. One child died, while another survived after receiving treatment at Shriners Children’s Texas in Galveston. Over 23 years, the foundation has helped transfer more than 2,000 patients to that hospital and other medical facilities with burn expertise, according to the charity’s website.

In a social media post, the foundation offered condolences to the families of the crash victims.

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Shriners Children’s Texas said in a statement that it learned of the crash with “profound sadness” but wasn’t able to provide any information about the child’s condition because the child hadn’t yet been admitted.

Crash comes amid focus on aviation safety

This latest crash comes amid a year of intense scrutiny on aviation safety after a string of high-profile crashes and the flight disruptions during the government shutdown driven by the shortage of air traffic controllers.

The January midair collision between an Army helicopter and an airliner near Washington, D.C., was followed by the crash of a medical transport plane in Philadelphia. This fall’s fiery UPS plane crash only added to the concerns. Still, the total number of crashes in 2025 was actually down a bit from last year, and experts say flying remains safe overall.

Hallie Golden contributed to this report.

By JEFF MARTIN

ATLANTA (AP) — Three inmates who escaped from a jail east of Atlanta, including a murder suspect, commandeered a terrified Lyft driver’s car to reach south Florida before she was rescued and they were captured, according to details revealed in court records.

The driver told FBI agents that the men used a fake name to order the ride, put a rope around her neck from behind her, dragged her into the backseat and threatened to kill her, according to a court affidavit filed late Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press.

The inmates were able to “compromise” a portion of a cell inside the DeKalb County Jail to make their escape, said DeKalb County Chief Deputy Temetris Atkins. He didn’t provide more specifics because jailers don’t want other inmates to know the facility’s weaknesses.

“We repaired the area that was compromised, and we’re looking at other areas that are similar to that to fortify them to make sure that they are not compromised in the same manner,” Atkins said at a Tuesday news conference.

DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox described the jail as an “aging facility that’s deteriorating right before our eyes.” The jail is in Decatur, about 10 miles east of downtown Atlanta.

DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox speaks to journalists Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025, during a news conference in Decatur, Ga., about the escaped inmates who were captured late Monday. (Ben Gray /Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

The escape was discovered early Monday during a routine security check, authorities said. After jailers realized the three were gone, investigators listened to recordings of conversations they’d had on recorded phone lines. They learned that one of the inmates had contacted people on the outside who helped them evade capture after the escape, U.S. Marshal Thomas Brown said.

The inmates were picked up by an unnamed man and taken to one of their girlfriends’ homes, Brown said. Then, a Lyft ride was ordered using a fake, female name.

Officers tracked the car as it traveled to south Florida with the aid of license plate readers, devices that can alert law enforcement to the locations of wanted vehicles. When they caught up with the car and tried to stop it, one of the inmates jumped out and ran but was arrested along with a second inmate, according to a court affidavit.

Investigators also learned that the men used the Lyft driver’s credit card for a short-term rental of a home in Miramar, Florida, where officers apprehended the third inmate and rescued the driver, court records state.

The driver told investigators that she was held in the car for six to 10 hours as they tried to gain access to her phone and online banking records. After trying to escape once, she endured “increased threats of being shot, raped, and tortured,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit.

“As you can imagine, the Lyft driver is very traumatized by this,” Brown said.

All three inmates were charged with kidnapping as well as the escape, according to criminal complaints. The court documents did not yet list the names of any lawyers who might be able to speak on their behalf.

The inmates range in age from 24 to 31, with the youngest one charged with murder and armed robbery. The other two inmates face charges that include armed robbery and arson.

The sheriff’s office had warned that the men might be armed and were considered dangerous after their escape.

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The inmate accused of murder and armed robbery, Stevenson Charles, 24, has had several run-ins with law officers in Georgia and Florida. He had been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of kidnapping and bank robbery, a federal agent wrote in a Monday affidavit regarding the recent jail escape.

After being sentenced, the agent wrote, Charles was turned over to DeKalb County authorities on Dec. 5 to face the murder charge, details of which were not immediately available. A federal criminal complaint charging him with the escape does not list an attorney who could be contacted to comment on his behalf, and it wasn’t clear whether he has one at this early stage of the case.

In one of multiple cases involving Charles in South Florida, he is accused of meeting a man through the Grindr online dating application and then pulling a gun on him when they met in person at a Miami residence in 2022. Charles then drove the man to various Miami area banks, withdrawing money from the victim’s accounts, court records show.

By AAMER MADHANI

The Trump administration is deploying 350 National Guard troops to New Orleans ahead of the New Year, launching another federal deployment in the city at the same time that an immigration crackdown led by Border Patrol is underway.

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Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Tuesday that Guard members, as they have in other deployments in large cities, will be tasked with supporting federal law enforcement partners, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Parnell added that the National Guard troops will be deployed through February.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, praised President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for coordinating the deployment and predicted the Guard’s presence would have a positive impact.

“It’s going to help us further crack down on the violence here in the city of New Orleans and elsewhere around Louisiana,” Landry said in an appearance on the Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show.” “And so a big shoutout to both of them.”

Critics have argued a National Guard deployment is unwarranted and could cause fear in the community, and they point out that New Orleans has actually seen a decrease in violent crime rates.

The deployment of the National Guard to the Democrat-led city comes as Border Patrol agents have been carrying out an immigration crackdown since the beginning of the month. According to the Department of Homeland Security, agents have arrested several hundred people during the first couple weeks of what is expected to be a months-long operation that has a goal of 5,000 arrests.

Back in September, Landry asked Trump to send a 1,000 federally funded troops to Louisiana cities, citing concerns about crime. Landry has praised Trump for sending troops to other cities, including Washington and Memphis, Tennessee.

The president has also taken a shine to Landry. Trump on Sunday announced he was appointing the governor to serve as his special envoy to Greenland, the strategic, vast, semi-autonomous territory of Denmark that Trump has said the U.S. needs to take over.

New Orleans has been on pace for much of the year to have its lowest number of murders in decades, according to preliminary data from the city’s police department. There have been 97 homicides in 2025 as of Nov. 1, including 14 revelers who were killed on New Year’s Day during a truck attack on Bourbon Street.

A U.S. Army veteran driving a pickup truck that bore the flag of the Islamic State group wrought carnage on New Orleans’ raucous New Year’s celebration as he steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police.

There were 124 homicides last year and 193 in 2023, according to city figures. Armed robberies, aggravated assaults, carjackings, shootings and property crimes have also trended downward.

New Orleans is no stranger to having National Guard members in the city. In January, 100 Guard members were sent to the city to help with security measures following the New Year’s Day truck attack. Guard members were also present for major events in the city this year, including the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras.

Associated Press reporter Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.