By BERNARD CONDON

The parents of two college students killed in a Tesla crash say they were trapped in the car as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that made it nearly impossible for them to open the doors, according to lawsuits filed Thursday.

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The parents of Krysta Tsukahara and her friend, Jack Nelson, allege that the company that helped Elon Musk become the world’s richest man knew about the flaw for years and could have moved faster to fix the problem but did not, leaving the two trapped amid flames and smoke that eventually killed them.

Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.

The new legal threats to Tesla filed in Alameda County Superior Court come just weeks after federal regulators opened an investigation into complaints by Tesla drivers of problems with stuck doors. The probe and suit come at a delicate time for the company as it seeks to convince Americans that its cars will soon be safe enough to ride in without anyone in the driver’s seat.

Tsukahara, 19, and Nelson, 20, were in the back of a Cybertruck in November 2024 when the driver, drunk and on drugs, smashed into a tree in the San Francisco suburb of Piedmont, California, according to the suits. The driver also died. A fourth passenger was pulled from the car after a rescuer broke a window and reached in.

The Tsukahara lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.

Tesla doors have been at the center of several crash cases because the battery powering the unlocking mechanism can be destroyed in a fire and the manual releases that override that system are difficult to find.

The lawsuit follows several others that have claimed various safety problems with Tesla cars. In August, a Florida jury decided that the family of another dead college student, this one killed by a runaway Tesla years ago, should be awarded more than $240 million in damages.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which opened its stuck-door investigation last month, is looking into complaints by drivers that after exiting their cars, they couldn’t open back doors to get their children out and, in some cases, had to break the window to reach them.

A reward has been offered to help find Doogie, a 33-year-old horse who went missing last week and requires a special diet because he has no teeth.

Doogie, a 33-year-old Farmington horse, went missing on Sept. 24, 2025. A reward has been offered to help find the horse, who requires a special diet since he has no teeth. (Courtesy of Terra Schuster)

A $2,000 reward has been offered for his safe return “no questions asked,” his owner, Terra Schuster, said. Time is critical, she said, as Doogie requires a specialized and costly diet.

“This horse means the world to me,” she said in a communication shared with local media. “He’s not just a pet — he’s family. Horses don’t just vanish into thin air.”

Called a “beloved member of the Farmington community,” the 33-year-old Paint horse is known for his gentle spirit and being a “lifelong companion.”

He was last seen near his home on Sept. 24. Despite flyers being posted, social media and word of mouth, the horse is still missing.

In addition, neighbors, friends, and volunteers have scoured trails, fields and wooded areas on foot with no luck. Drones and K9 scenting dogs have also not found any trace of the horse.

Schuster described Doogie as “a sweet old soul who’s been with me through every chapter of life.”

He is in good health and is “easily recognizable by his distinctive white and brown Overo markings,” she said.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Terra Schuster directly at 612-327-1054 or notify local authorities.

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By MARGERY A. BECK

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The police chief of Nebraska’s largest city acknowledged Friday that police nationwide are more likely to pull Black people out of their cars at gunpoint than other racial groups as Omaha grapples with growing outrage over champion boxer Terence “Bud” Crawford being ordered out of his car at gunpoint only hours after the city held a downtown celebration in his honor.

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“Quite frankly, that is generally a true statement. The number of stops are disproportionate. That is nationwide,” Police Chief Tobb Schmaderer said at a news conference to address an internal investigation into Crawford’s traffic stop.

The police confrontation with Crawford, who is Black, has reignited long-simmering tensions between Omaha’s Black community and its police force. Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinney, one of three Black state lawmakers in the Nebraska Legislature and a vocal critic of Omaha police and the state’s justice system, said he was disappointed — but not surprised — by the police stop.

“I urge the people to keep speaking out and demanding real change boldly and unapologetically,” McKinney said in a Facebook post earlier this week. “Our lives are at risk, and we have endured oppression for far too long.”

According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ special report released in 2022, Black and Hispanic people were more likely than white people to experience the threat or use of force by police in 2020. Black people were also more likely to be shouted at by police than white people.

Police chief long an advocate for community policing

Schmaderer has long been an advocate of community policing that aims to build trust between officers and the public they patrol. He said Friday that he understands there is a lot of anger in the community over the treatment of Crawford — a favorite son of Omaha after making history by becoming the first male boxer to capture three unified division titles.

From left, Omaha, Neb., Police Chief Todd Schmaderer, Mayor John Ewing and Ewing’s chief of staff, Tom Warren, hold a news conference Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, to address the traffic stop of champion boxer Terence Crawford, who was pulled from his car by police at gunpoint just hours after the city held a parade and celebration in this honor. (AP Photo/Margery Beck)

“We understand the importance of this traffic stop to our community, and the implications and the impression it has given out,” he said.

But he said a nearly completed internal investigation into the traffic stop shows the officers involved did not violate department policy.

According to their reports, the officers spotted a high-performance sedan without license plates pull out of a downtown parking garage around 1:30 a.m. Sunday and quickly accelerate to more than twice the 25 mph speed limit. The officers did not know Crawford was driving the car, Schmaderer said, before they pulled it over. Two officers approached it — one on the passenger side and another on the driver’s side.

Schmaderer said the initial interaction was cordial, which he assessed through body camera footage. Crawford, who was driving, told the officer at his window that the car was new and “had gotten away from him.”

At that point, a member of Crawford’s security team who was in the passenger seat told the officer at his window that he was carrying a legal handgun, Schmaderer said. Crawford, who was leaning over the car’s console, told that officer he also had a legal firearm, but the officer at the driver’s side window didn’t hear that exchange, Schmaderer said.

That is when the officer on the driver’s side spotted Crawford’s gun on the floorboard by his feet, pulled his service weapon and ordered Crawford and three other people out. Schmaderer said Crawford and the others were handcuffed for about 10 minutes. Police confirmed all occupants of the vehicle were legally permitted to carry firearms and let them go after about 30 minutes, ticketing Crawford on suspicion of reckless driving.

Crawford’s spokesperson said Friday that the boxer had no comment.

Video of incident won’t be released, chief says

Schmaderer said he will not be sharing police video of the stop unless Crawford agrees to it.

“We don’t have a fatality here. We don’t have an officer-involved shooting, and it’s generally not our protocol to release that footage under those circumstances,” he said.

Crawford’s stop by police came after the city held a parade through downtown streets in Crawford’s honor, followed by a party to celebrate his 38th birthday at a live music venue near where the stop occurred.

The celebration came after Crawford earned the unified super middleweight championship with his unanimous decision victory over Canelo Alvarez on Sept. 13 in Las Vegas. Crawford is 42-0 with 31 knockouts.

Associated Press Race And Ethnicity News Editor Aaron Morrison contributed to this report from New York.

It’s the alienation that matters

In America the idea of the hired professional political assassin makes for action movies and hate speech. Russia uses professional assassins. So does Israel. In the U.S. the involvement of shadowy entities that hire assassins has been near impossible to prove.

Modern perpetrators of political and mass violence have been individual white males, mostly young, whose minds get messed up — increasingly via the internet.  Almost always these young men experience alienation from family, friends and institutions that otherwise could provide a guardrail against their sinking into an alternative dark reality. These men become obsessed with overcoming their alienation through the power of violence. Whether their life-views have been warped to the extreme right or left is actually secondary to the overall alienation-revenge drive in them. As we sadly know, the focus of violence for these individuals might be innocent crowds as well as political targets. These perpetrators are not professionally trained and hired hitmen — no matter what conspiratorial thinkers say.

It is time to counter the public health crisis of too many messed over, violence-prone individuals by actions like these, at the least. 1. Massive, modern mental health services for the young need warp-speed introduction.  2. Individuals cannot drink or smoke until they are 21; they should not own guns either.  3. Bump-stocks, large magazines, and ghost guns should be prohibited. 4. Background checks for all gun transactions and stronger red-flag laws are needed.  5. For adults to own assault-style weapons, special permits should be required.  6. Political rabble-rousers need to chill, and political intrusiveness needs to stop.

Dan Gartrell, St. Paul

 

Addressing shooting problems isn’t an either/or

It has been four weeks since the Annunciation Church and School shootings and over three months since the murder of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. Stories by victims, parents, families, physicians involved in the care of the victims as well as major medical groups have been shared widely. Tears have been shed. Children and the Hortmans have been buried.

Elected officials have talked – but nothing has happened, and according to the article in the Sept. 25 Pioneer Press (“Gov. Walz: GOP won’t budge on gun control; House speaker calls it ‘mischaracterization’“), it is unlikely anything will happen in the near future. This has been the pattern in our country for over two decades. Think about Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland. Let us also not forget all those who die by firearm suicide each year and the children who die by accidentally firing a gun they got access to in their home or at a friend’s home.

Our legislators seem to be caught in an “either/or” situation when it comes to what to do next. One side is pushing to ban assault style weapons and high capacity magazines in addition to stronger safe storage laws (all of which have been shown to decrease mass shooting deaths as well as unintentional shootings and suicides in states with these laws) while the other side is pushing for more mental health services and school safety officers (SSOs).

Let’s be clear – we can do what BOTH sides are pushing for, it doesn’t have to be a partisan issue. The time to talk is over. It is time to act and pass some laws to prevent further events like the ones that have already happened.

Sheldon Berkowitz, St. Paul

 

New leadership to rebuild trust

As a Minnesota resident, parent of two young boys in public school, and someone who works in local government, I believe deeply in the role government can and should play in building strong, equitable communities. That’s why it’s so disheartening to see repeated failures of oversight under Governor Tim Walz’s administration — and why I believe he should not seek a third term.

Minnesota has seen a troubling pattern of large-scale fraud in recent years: the Feeding Our Future scandal, misuse of housing stabilization funds, and now widespread fraud in autism therapy billing. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a breakdown in accountability that has allowed public dollars — meant to serve vulnerable Minnesotans — to be stolen.

This isn’t just about mismanagement. It’s about broken trust. And for those of us who believe in the power of government to do good, that broken trust is devastating.

I live in Minneapolis, where the consequences of these failures are visible every day — in the lack of affordable childcare, in public safety concerns near transit and downtown, and in the struggle to build vibrant neighborhoods supported by small businesses.

Governor Walz has led through historic challenges, and he deserves credit for that. But leadership also means knowing when to step aside. If he runs again, I fear he will not only lose, but damage the credibility of pragmatic progressives working to restore faith in public institutions.

Minnesota needs new leadership — leadership that can rebuild trust, enforce accountability, and deliver results. For the sake of our state’s future, I respectfully urge Governor Walz to step aside.

Katie Henly, Minneapolis

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Some causes for farmers’ stress

A letter in Thursday’s Pioneer Press compliments the recent Farm Aid concert. I agree that farmers are under a lot of stress, however, I can’t offer much sympathy. Farmers face challenges because of severe weather. The Republican Party says that climate change is a hoax. Four of the congressional districts in Minnesota are represented by Republicans. these are largely rural/farm communities. Because of one man, tariffs and reciprocal tariffs are impacting the markets for the farmer’s produce. Thousands of traditional farm workers have been deported without any due process. If you are a farmer in your 50s or 60s, how do the DOGE cuts to Medicare affect you?

Republican legislatures around the country are scrambling to illegally gerrymander congressional districts to carve up Democratic cities and suburbs to add more rural/farm voters. If farmers continue to vote against their own interests, I will have little interest in their complaints.

Tom Leary, Mendota Heights