By ANDREW DeMILLO and SAFIYAH RIDDLE

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A 28-year-old teacher who authorities say admitted to fatally stabbing two hikers he didn’t know in an Arkansas state park bounced between four school districts in three states in recent years.

Andrew James McGann was placed on administrative leave at an elementary school in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, Texas, in spring 2023 after concerns were raised about his classroom management. But he passed background checks in two different Oklahoma school districts and had been expected to start a new job in northwest Arkansas on Aug. 11.

McGann has been charged with two counts of capital murder in the killing Saturday of Clinton David Brink, 43, and Cristen Amanda Brink, 41. He made his first appearance on Friday before an Arkansas judge, who ordered McGann to be held without bond at the Washington County Detention Center, assigned him a public defender and scheduled his arraignment for Aug. 25.

This image provided by Washington County, Ark., Sheriff’s Office shows Andrew McGann. (Washington County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Police say motive unknown

Arkansas State Police Col. Mike Hagar said Thursday that authorities are trying to determine a motive for the attack at Devil’s Den, a 2,500-acre state park about 140 miles northwest of Little Rock. Its trails have been closed to the public since Saturday.

State Police arrested McGann on Wednesday at a barbershop in Springdale, about 30 miles north of the park, said Maj. Stacie Rhoads, commander of the department’s criminal investigation division.

The Associated Press left messages at numbers listed for McGann, who has no criminal record.

Officials said the husband was stabbed first, about half a mile into the park, then the mother ushered her daughters to safety before returning to help her husband. She was also stabbed to death.

Authorities have not said if the girls — ages 7 and 9 — witnessed both their parents being killed. They were not hurt and are being cared for by family members, authorities said. A third daughter was not hiking with her family when the Brinks were killed.

McGann was cooperative during his arrest and admitted to killing the couple soon after, Rhoads said. Police also matched his DNA to blood found at the crime scene. Rhoads described the killings as random.

Arkansas State Police Director Col. Mike Hagar speaks at a news conference at the State Police headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Andrew DeMillo/AP Photo)

Suspect’s teaching history

McGann has active teaching licenses in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, according to each respective government certification website. No infractions or suspensions are noted on his public state licensures in any of those states. The Associated Press has reached out to all three state education agencies.

McGann was placed on administrative leave in spring 2023 while he was employed at Donald Elementary School in Flower Mound, Texas, “following concerns related to classroom management, professional judgment, and student favoritism,” according to a spokesperson for the Lewisville Independent School District.

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Sierra Marcum, whose son was in McGann’s fourth grade class, said the teacher came across as “pretty cold” and “disinterested in his students.” Marcum said her son came home from school upset about some of McGann’s behavior, which she reported to the school’s principal.

McGann resigned from the Lewisville posting in May 2023, the district said in a statement.

The following school year he taught fifth grade at an elementary school in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow before leaving to take another job at a separate Tulsa-area district, Sand Springs, from the summer of 2024 until May of this year. Officials with both Oklahoma districts said McGann passed all background checks.

“There were no disciplinary actions taken against him during his time at Broken Arrow Public Schools, and nothing in his background or reference checks gave cause for concern during the interview process,” Broken Arrow Public Schools spokesperson Tara Thompson wrote in an email to the AP.

Spokespeople from both Oklahoma districts said police have not reached out regarding the investigation.

McGann had not yet started his new job in Arkansas at Springdale Public Schools, said Jared Cleveland, the district superintendent. He said the district could not provide more information, citing the investigation.

This undated image provided by the Arkansas State Police on July 29, 2025 shows a man whom investigators are asking the public to help identify in connection with a double homicide at Devil’s Den State Park. (Arkansas State Police via AP)

Police flooded with tips

McGann was arrested after a five-day search and hundreds of tips.

The State Police collected photos and videos from other hikers who had been on the trails but didn’t witness the attack. Police also released a composite sketch and a photo that showed a person of interest from behind.

The police then narrowed down the suspect’s vehicle, which had tape over the license plate, using surveillance footage from homes and businesses near Devil’s Den.

Within an hour of identifying McGann as a suspect, police captured him at the barber shop.

Washington County prosecutor Brandon Carter indicated the jury would have the option to sentence McGann to the death penalty.

The victims had just arrived in Arkansas

The Brinks and their three daughters had recently moved from South Dakota to the small city of Prairie Grove in northwest Arkansas.

Clinton Brink was supposed to start working as a milk delivery driver on Monday, according to Hiland Dairy, his employer. Cristen Brink had been licensed as a nurse in Montana and South Dakota before moving to Arkansas.

The Brink family has said the couple died “heroes protecting their little girls.”

Riddle reported from Montgomery, Alabama. Associated Press reporters Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Hallie Golden in Seattle; and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — British writer Allan Ahlberg, author of more than 150 children’s books including classics like “Each Peach Pear Plum” and “The Jolly Postman,” has died, his publisher said Friday. He was 87.

Penguin Random House said Ahlberg died on Tuesday. It did not give a cause of death.

Ahlberg’s books introduced generations of young children to reading through simple rhymes, sharp observation and gentle humor. Many were co-created with his illustrator wife Janet Ahlberg, who died in 1994.

“Peepo!” (1981) gave a baby’s-eye-view of the world and was interactive in a delightfully analogue way, with peep-holes in the pages to spy the next scenes.

“The Jolly Postman” (1986) was even more inventive, incorporating postcards and letters in envelopes for children to engage with while they followed a letter-carrier delivering mail to fairy tale characters. Penguin Random House said it “pushed at the boundaries of what it is possible for a book to be.”

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Ahlberg also wrote books of jokes, including “The Ha Ha Bonk Book,” and poetry for primary school-age children, including “Please Mrs. Butler” and “Heard it in the Playground.”

Born in 1938 and raised by adoptive parents in a working-class home in OIdbury, central England, Ahlberg worked as a “postman, plumber’s mate and grave digger,” according to his publisher, before becoming a teacher. He met Janet at teacher training college and the couple’s first book, “Here are the Brick Street Boys,” was published in 1975.

Then came ”’Burglar Bill” in 1977, about a burglar who steals a baby, and “Each Peach Pear Plum” in 1978, with its pages of intricately drawn nursery-rhyme characters. It won Janet the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, one of the most prestigious awards in children’s publishing. “The Jolly Christmas Postman” won the same prize in 1991.

“Just because a book is tiny and its readers are little doesn’t mean it can’t be perfect,” Ahlberg told The Guardian in 2006. “On its own scale, it can be as good as Tolstoy or Jane Austen.”

The couple’s work brought huge commercial success. “The Jolly Postman” has sold more than 6 million copies. The “Funnybones” series about a playful skeleton household was adapted for television.

After Janet died of cancer aged just 50, Ahlberg worked with illustrators including Raymond Briggs and his daughter, Jessica Ahlberg.

For adults, he wrote a tribute to his wife, “Janet’s Last Book,” and autobiographical volumes “The Boyhood of Burglar Bill” and “The Bucket.”

In 2014, he turned down a lifetime achievement award from the BookTrust charity because it was sponsored by Amazon, which was facing criticism over its tax arrangements.

Francesca Dow, head of children’s literature at Penguin Random House, said Ahlberg’s books have been described as “mini masterpieces.”

“He knew that making it perfect for children matters, and above all that the very best stories for children last forever,” Dow said. “Allan’s are some of the very best – true classics, which will be loved by children and families for years to come.”

Ahlberg is survived by his second wife, Vanessa Clarke, his daughter and two stepdaughters.

By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

Seventeen Democratic officials accused President Donald Trump’s administration of unlawfully intimidating health care providers into stopping gender-affirming care for transgender youth in a lawsuit filed Friday.

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The complaint comes after a month in which at least eight major hospitals and hospital systems — all in states where the care is allowed under state law — announced they were stopping or restricting the care. The latest announcement came Thursday from UI Health in Chicago.

Trump’s administration announced in July that it was sending subpoenas to providers and focusing on investigating them for fraud. It later boasted in a news release that hospitals are halting treatments.

The Democratic officials say Trump’s policies are an attempt to impose a nationwide ban on the treatment for people under 19 — and that’s unlawful because there’s no federal statute that bans providing the care to minors. The suit was filed by attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia, plus the governor of Pennsylvania, in U.S. District Court in Boston.

“The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

Trump and others who oppose the care say that it makes permanent changes that people who receive it could come to regret — and maintain that it’s being driven by questionable science.

Since 2021, 28 states with Republican-controlled legislatures have adopted policies to ban or restrict gender-affirming care for minors. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states have a right to enforce those laws.

For families with transgender children, the state laws and medical center policy changes have sparked urgent scrambles for treatment.

FILE – Liv Y., center, holds a transgender pride flag as people gather to protest against the Trump administration and Project 2025 near the Washington State Capitol building, in in Olympia, Wash., Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

The medical centers are responding to political and legal pressure

The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the biggest public provider of gender-affirming care for children in teens in the U.S., closed in July.

At least seven other major hospitals and health systems have made similar announcements, including Children’s National in Washington D.C., UChicago Medicine and Yale New Haven Health.

Kaiser Permanente, which operates in California and several other states, said it would pause gender-affirming surgeries for those under 19 as of the end of August, but would continue hormone therapy.

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center cited “an increasingly complex and evolving landscape” for winding down care.

Other hospitals, including Penn State, had already made similar decisions since Trump returned to office in January.

Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, an organization that advocates for health care equity for LGBTQ+ people, said the health systems have pulled back the services for legal reasons, not medical ones.

“Not once has a hospital said they are ending care because it is not medically sound,” Sheldon said.

FILE – President Donald Trump signs an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women’s or girls’ sporting events, in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Trump’s administration has targeted the care in multiple ways

Trump devoted a lot of attention to transgender people in his campaign last year as part of a growing pushback from conservatives as transgender people have gained visibility and acceptance on some fronts. Trump criticized gender-affirming care, transgender women in women’s sports, and transgender women’s use of women’s facilities such as restrooms.

On his inauguration day in January, Trump signed an executive order defining the sexes as only male and female for government purposes, setting the tone for a cascade of actions that affect transgender people. About a week later, Trump called to stop using federal money, including from Medicaid, for gender-affirming care for those under 19.

About half of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of transgender issues, an AP-NORC poll found. But the American Medical Association says that gender is on a spectrum, and the group opposes policies that restrict access to gender-affirming health care.

Gender-affirming care includes a range of medical and mental health services to support a person’s gender identity, including when it’s different from the sex they were assigned at birth. It includes counseling and treatment with medications that block puberty, and hormone therapy to produce physical changes, as well as surgery, which is rare for minors.

In March, a judge paused enforcement of the ban on government spending for care.

The court ruling didn’t stop other federal government action

In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed government investigators to focus on providers who continue to offer gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “Under my leadership, the Department of Justice will bring these practices to an end,” she wrote.

In May, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report discouraging medical interventions for transgender youth and instead focusing solely on talk therapy. The report questions adolescents’ capacity to consent to life-changing treatments that could result in future infertility. The administration has not said who wrote the report, which has been deeply criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates.

In June, a Justice Department memo called for prioritizing civil investigations of those who provide the treatment.

In July, Justice Department announced it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in gender-affirming care for youth, saying they were part of investigations of health care fraud, false statements and other possible wrongdoing.

And in a statement last week, the White House celebrated decisions to end gender-affirming care, which it called a “barbaric, pseudoscientific practice”

Families worry about accessing care

Kristen Salvatore’s 15-year-old child started hormone therapy late last year at Penn State Health. Salvatore said in an interview with The Associated Press before the lawsuit was announced that it was a major factor in reduced signs of anxiety and depression. Last month, the family received official notice from the health system that it would no longer offer the hormones for patients under 19 after July 31, though talk therapy can continue.

Salvatore has been struggling to find a place that’s not hours away from their Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, home that would provide the hormones and accept Medicaid coverage.

“I’m walking around blind with no guidance, and whatever breadcrumbs I was given are to a dead-end alleyway,” she said.

The family has enough testosterone stockpiled to last until January. But if they can’t find a new provider by then, Salvatore’s child could risk detransitioning, she said.

By TOM MURPHY and NICKY FORSTER, Associated Press

Delayed treatments, canceled doctor visits, skipped prescriptions. Losing insurance is bad for your health.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the U.S. uninsured population will grow by 10 million in 2034, due to the tax and spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump.

And, thanks to a natural experiment nearly two decades ago, researchers can forecast what that will mean for patient care. Among the problems they predict will develop as a direct result of these people losing coverage:

— About 2.5 million people may no longer have a personal doctor.

— About 1.6 million patients will take on medical debt.

— The lack of care may cause nearly 22,000 deaths annually.

“There’s really no questioning the basic reality that you can’t take health care away from 10 million people without causing many preventable deaths,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, lead researcher on a team that explored the new law’s impact.

Here’s a deeper look at the research and challenges that could develop.

How the law may affect coverage

It will become harder for many people to enroll in Medicaid or individual insurance plans and then stay covered. Medicaid is a state and federally funded program that covers care for people with low incomes.

States will have to verify every six months whether someone remains eligible for Medicaid. That could cause coverage lapses for people with incomes that fluctuate or for those who move and miss renewal paperwork.

Many also are expected to lose coverage as states require Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or go to school unless exempted.

Enrollment in Medicaid has swelled in recent years. Republicans are cutting back in part to help fund tax breaks and pay for other priorities like border security. They also say they are trying to root out waste and fraud by rightsizing Medicaid for the population it was initially designed to serve — mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children.

People covered through the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance marketplaces also will see shorter enrollment windows and no more automatic renewals.

About the research

Gaffney, of Harvard Medical School, and other researchers looked to past studies to measure how many people would experience detrimental effects, like going without prescriptions, from the upcoming changes. Gaffney updated the published analysis, which was originally based on the House version of the bill, at the AP’s request.

One study in particular was critical for their work: In 2008, Oregon offered a rare opportunity to compare groups of people enrolled in Medicaid with those who were not.

After a four-year period of frozen enrollment due to budget limitations, the state determined it could enroll 10,000 more people in Medicaid. It used a lottery system to make the selection amid high demand.

That gave researchers a chance to follow people who got coverage and those who did not, similar to how scientists testing a new drug might compare patients taking it to those given a placebo.

“This is a gold standard research design because it replicates a randomized-controlled trial,” said Christine Eibner, a senior economist at RAND Corp. who was not involved in the study.

Applying results from that study and other research to the recent CBO estimate allowed Gaffney and other researchers to estimate specific effects of losing coverage.

“By taking coverage away, we are putting patients in a terrible position,” said Gaffney, a former president of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Care could grow complicated

Amanda Schlesier went four days without her cancer treatment Calquence this spring and wound up in a local emergency room, delirious with pain.

The leukemia patient worries about what might happen if she stops treatment again for a longer stretch because she’s lost Medicaid.

“God forbid I forget to fill out a page of documentation, and suddenly I lose access to my medication or my doctors or any of the treatment that I’ve been going through,” the 33-year-old Farmington Hills, Michigan, resident said.

People can still receive care when they don’t have coverage, but important steps often are delayed, said Dr. Gwen Nichols, chief medical officer of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Patients may be able to visit a doctor, but they would have to line up coverage or help before they can receive expensive chemotherapy. Diagnosis also may be delayed. Meanwhile, the patient’s cancer continues to grow.

“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Nichols said.

Preventive care may lapse

The first thing patients often ditch when they lose coverage are screenings designed to catch health problems before they become serious, said Dr. Jen Brull, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

That could mean patients skip tests for high cholesterol, which can contribute to heart disease, or colonoscopies that detect cancer. Researchers forecast that a half million fewer women will have gotten a mammogram within the past year by 2034.

When patients struggle financially and lose coverage, they focus on things like keeping a place to live and food on their table, said Brull, a Fort Collins, Colorado, physician.

“Seeing a doctor because you don’t want to get sick feels like a much lower priority,” Brull said.

Financial pressure can build

Patients start taking financial hits at all ends of care when they lose coverage.

They may have to pay up front or start a payment plan before they receive care, said Erin Bradshaw, an executive vice president with the nonprofit Patient Advocate Foundation, which helps people with medical bills.

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Anyone with an outstanding balance will have to pay it before the next appointment.

Financial assistance may be available, but patients don’t always know about it. Getting help also may take time and require the submission of tax returns, pay stubs or some validation that the patient no longer has coverage.

Bradshaw said letters stating that a patient has lost Medicaid sometimes arrive a couple months after the fact. That can contribute to treatment delays or missed medication doses.

Some patients also try to avoid financial stress by skipping care. Schlesier said she delayed seeing a doctor when she first felt symptoms of her cancer returning because she had no coverage at the time.

Staying on medications

If prescriptions are too expensive, patients may simply not get them or split the doses to stretch the medicine.

For Thomas Harper, it’s a question of priorities.

“Sometimes you have to make a choice, how well do you want to eat this week versus taking your medicine,” he said.

The West Monroe, Louisiana, truck driver has around $300 a month in prescriptions as he deals with diabetes and recovers from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

Harper, 57, recently returned to work. That meant he lost Medicaid, which covered more of his prescription costs. He’s balancing buying his meds with shopping for healthy food that keeps his blood sugar in check and builds his immune system.

“I’ll survive, but I know there’s people out there that cannot survive without Medicaid,” he said.

AP video journalist Laura Bargfeld contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.