By JEFF MARTIN and MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A man who was unresponsive after riding a roller coaster at Universal Orlando Resort’s newest park died from blunt impact injuries, a medical examiner said Thursday.

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Joshua Stephany, the medical examiner for the Orlando area, ruled the death an accident after performing an autopsy. The statement from Stephany did not mention any details about the injuries, including where on the body they were found.

The man in his 30s was found unresponsive after riding the coaster at Epic Universe on Wednesday, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Orlando said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Dennis Speigel, CEO and founder of consulting firm International Theme Park Services, called the autopsy’s conclusion “pretty shocking,” and he said it raised more questions than it answered.

“Was it the head or the chest? Was he banging around? Was he in his seat properly?” Speigel said. “Was it an accident caused by the ride or him doing something?”

The medical examiner’s office didn’t respond to an email seeking further details on the injuries.

The roller coaster involved was Stardust Racers, Universal officials said in a statement. It’s described on the resort’s website as “a breathtaking, dual-launch coaster reaching incredible speeds up to 62 mph.”

FILE – Guests ride on the Stardust Racers roller coaster at Epic Universe Theme Park at Universal Resort Orlando, April 10, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux, file)

“We are devastated by this tragic event and extend our sincerest sympathies to the guest’s loved ones,” a Universal Orlando Resorts spokesperson said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating with Orange County and the ongoing investigation. The attraction remains closed.”

After the autopsy was released, Universal said it couldn’t comment beyond its earlier statement because of the ongoing investigation.

Universal opened the park in May. It has five themed sections and a 500-room hotel.

It’s the first major, traditional theme park to open in Florida since 1999, when Universal Islands of Adventure debuted, though Universal opened a themed Orlando water park, Volcano Bay, in 2017.

The addition of Epic Universe brought the total number of parks at the Florida resort to four, including Universal Studios.

Florida’s largest theme parks are exempt from state safety inspections, unlike smaller venues and fairs. Instead, the largest theme parks like Walt Disney World and Universal conduct their own inspections and have their own protocols, but they must report to the state any injury or death.

In the second quarter of this year, there were a dozen reports from Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld Orlando. They ranged from a 78-year-old woman becoming unresponsive on a child-friendly carousel at SeaWorld to an 87-year-old woman with a preexisting condition losing consciousness after going on the Dinosaur ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Since Epic Universe opened in May, there have been three reports made. In May, a 63-year-old man with a preexisting condition experienced dizziness and “an altered state of consciousness” and a 47-year-old woman with a preexisting condition had a “visual disturbance” and numbness after going on the Stardust Racers coaster, on separate days. A 32-year-old man experienced chest pains after going on the Hiccup’s Wing Gliders ride, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By R.J. RICO

A decomposed body found inside an impounded Tesla in Los Angeles has been identified as that of a teenage girl who went missing last year.

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Several local news outlets reported the vehicle was registered to the singer d4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, 20. Neither his representatives nor police responded to requests for comment. Authorities have not implicated d4vd in her death.

Celeste Rivas, 15, was found dead inside the vehicle, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Wednesday. Officials have not determined her cause of death.

The body was discovered Sept. 8 at a tow lot in Hollywood after someone noticed a stench coming from the Tesla, police said, according to news outlets.

In a statement, the medical examiner’s office said the body “was found severely decomposed.”

“She appears to have been deceased inside the vehicle for an extended period of time before being found,” officials said.

An unnamed representative for d4vd told NBC Los Angeles that the singer has been cooperating with authorities since the body was found. It’s not clear why his car had been impounded.

Celeste was last seen in April 2024 in Lake Elsinore, about 60 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. She was 13 at the time.

D4vd (pronounced “David”) is a Houston-born singer-songwriter who went from recording music in his sister’s closet to becoming one of Gen Z’s most buzzed-about artists. His music blends indie rock, R&B, and lo-fi pop, which has made him a fresh, genre-bending voice in today’s alt-pop scene.

D4vd broke through in 2022 with the hit “Romantic Homicide,” which went viral on TikTok and peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He then followed with “Here With Me,” which further cemented his moody, emotional style. Each of those two songs has racked up more than 1.5 billion streams on Spotify.

D4vd has since signed with Darkroom and Interscope — home to Billie Eilish — and released his debut EP “Petals to Thorns” and a follow-up, “The Lost Petals,” in 2023. He released his first full-length album, “Withered,” in April.

AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

John Harris, the former Gophers hockey player who later dominated Minnesota amateur golf, died Wednesday at the age of 73. According to the Minnesota Golf Association, the cause was a recurrence of Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Harris, who grew up in Roseau, was the MGA player of the year 10 times, and nine times in succession from 1987-95. He won four Minnesota State Amateur titles and joined the PGA Champions Tour in 2002 and won a tournament, the Commerce Bank Championship in 2006.

He won the 1993 U.S. Amateur tournament and was a member of the U.S. Walker Cup team four times.

He became director of golf at his alma mater in 2010 but resigned a year later when the women’s head coach, Kathryn Brenny, claimed he was letting his son-in-law run the women’s program instead and creating a hostile work environment. In March 2014, a Hennepin County judge awarded Brenny $359,000 in a related discrimination lawsuit.

Harris turned pro twice, the first time after qualifying in Q School in 1975. He played in the U.S. Open three times, and in 1994 finished tied for 50th at the Masters in Augusta, Ga.

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A guy I knew in college once told me, as I struggled to make a point in a dorm lounge argument, that I had “the verbal acuity of shampoo.” The put-down was so devastating that it immediately ended discussion. I think of the line nearly every time I fumble for a word or write a bad sentence.

This was at the University of Chicago, which has a culture of argument. Some of the arguments are dead serious: In its commitment to free expression, the university has repeatedly stood up to inveigling plutocrats, investigating politicians, cancel culture commissars and encampment bullies. Some of them are not so serious. Every year since 1946, the university’s greatest scholars have debated the universe’s dumbest subject: whether latkes or hamantaschen are the better Jewish food. (Latkes, obviously.)

As undergraduates, we were conscripts in this culture. This wasn’t particularly political. I can remember witnessing only one tiny protest — against Douglas H. Ginsburg, the circuit court judge, of all people — in my four years at the college. But nearly every undergraduate could not avoid reading the classics of Western thought. Far from being a form of ideological indoctrination, it was an antidote to it.

What is the soul of the Western tradition? Argument. Socrates goes around Athens investigating the claims of the supposedly wise and finds that the people who claim to know things don’t. The Lord threatens to destroy Sodom for its alleged wickedness, but Abraham reproaches and bargains with him — that for the sake of 10 righteous people he must not destroy the city.

In both traditions, Athens’ and Jerusalem’s, the lone dissenting voice is often the heroic one.

To read Western philosophy and literature was our chance to understand these dissents. Where did the anti-federalists differ from the federalists, or John Locke from Thomas Hobbes, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau from them both? The curriculum made us appreciate that the best way to contend with an argument was to engage with it rather than denounce it, and that the prerequisite to engagement was close and sympathetic reading. Reading Marx didn’t turn me into a Marxist. But it did give me an appreciation of the power of his prose.

I came to Chicago when Western civilization courses were falling out of fashion at other universities, as was the idea of a core curriculum, as was the idea that underlay the core: that there was a coherent philosophical tradition based in reasoned argument and critical engagement that explained not only how we had arrived at our governing principles but also gave us the tools to debate, preserve or change them.

In place of that idea, higher education in the United States has generally opted for a kind of consumer-driven relativism. Students are no longer treated as promising minds in need of becoming acquainted with a great tradition. Instead, they are viewed as credential-seeking customers, entitled to an a la carte education. If there is one overriding belief, it is that identity — racial, sexual, religious and so on — is an inviolable aspect of self that can negate any argument that seeks to question or discomfit it.

All this has happened in tandem with the digital transformations of this century, which have further pushed us into personalized bubbles of ideology and information. The effect of the new technologies has generally been terrible for our health, psychological as well as political. But I don’t think it would have been as bad if we hadn’t first given up on the idea of a culture of argument rooted in a common set of ideas.

Which brings me to Charlie Kirk.

Kirk, to my way of thinking, was not a real conservative, at least in the American sense. The point of our conservatism is to conserve a <em>liberal</em> political order — open, tolerant, limited and law-abiding. It’s not about creating a God-drenched regime centered on a cult of personality leader waging zero-sum political battles against other Americans viewed as immoral enemies.

As for Kirk’s style of argument, owning inarticulate liberal kids in mass audience settings for the sake of producing viral videos isn’t real engagement, much less education. Did Kirk ever lose an argument, at least in his own mind?

Still, Kirk was out there, making arguments, inviting discussion and taking brave risks. Like few others in his generation, he offered a sharp and defiant voice against the tut-tutting illiberalism of today’s campus progressives. Young men thrilled to his message, in part because they were tired of being told that their masculinity was toxic or that their race was guilty or that their civilization was evil. Without the excesses of the left, Kirk would never have become the phenomenon he was.

It’s too bad that Kirk, raised in a Chicago suburb, didn’t attend the University of Chicago. It wouldn’t have hurt getting thrashed in a political debate by smarter peers. Or learning to appreciate the power and moral weight of views he didn’t share. Or recognizing that the true Western tradition lies more in its skepticism than in its certitude.

But the larger tragedy by far is that it’s America itself that’s losing sight of all that. In the vacuum that follows, the gunshots ring out.

Bret Stephens writes a column for the New York Times.