ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A Delta Air Lines airplane caught fire on Monday before it was supposed to take off at a central Florida airport, forcing the evacuation of passengers, airport officials said.

There were no reports of any injuries during the fire on the plane at Orlando International Airport, Delta said in a statement.

A recent spate of aviation disasters and close calls in the U.S. has stoked fears about air travel, though flying remains a safe way to travel. On-the-ground accidents included a plane that crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto and a Japan Airlines plane that clipped a parked Delta plane while it was taxiing at the Seattle airport. An American Airlines plane caught fire in Denver last month.

The engine fire broke out late Monday morning on Delta Air Lines Flight 1213 while the plane was at the ramp before a scheduled departure from Orlando to Atlanta, airport officials said on social media.

The passengers were evacuated, and the airport’s rescue and firefighting team responded, the airport’s statement said.

The Airbus A330 aircraft had 282 customers, 10 flight attendants and two pilots, according to Delta.

“Delta flight crews followed procedures to evacuate the passenger cabin when flames in the tailpipe of one of the aircraft’s two engines were observed,” Delta said in a statement.

Maintenance teams will examine the aircraft in an effort to determine the cause of the fire, Delta said.

By DÁNICA COTO

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s governor on Monday urged people to moderate their energy consumption as she warned that the island has no additional generation to fall back on days after a massive blackout hit the U.S. territory.

Gov. Jenniffer González said officials are waiting for an explanation from Luma Energy, a private company that oversees transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico, about what caused the island-wide outage on April 16. It affected 1.4 million customers and left more than 400,000 others without water.

The governor announced that two subcommittees have been created: one to help the island’s so-called energy czar to audit Luma’s contract and another to identify potential companies to replace Luma if its contract is terminated.

“There have been multiple incidents,” she said when asked whether the blackout was reason enough to cancel Luma’s contract, something she pledged to do while campaigning for governor. “The operator sold itself as an expert…That perception of expertise has proven to be false.”

Luma did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has five days to explain why a transmission line failed and provide details about whether it complied with required flyovers of transmission lines to ensure they remain free of tree branches and other obstructions.

A preliminary report from Luma released late Friday found that a transmission line apparently failed because of overgrown vegetation.

“The fact that this happened indicates either that the patrol didn’t take place or that the line inspector didn’t detect it. That tree didn’t grow there overnight,” said Josué Colón, Puerto Rico’s so-called energy czar and former executive director of the island’s Electric Power Authority.

He said protective equipment that was supposed to detect and isolate the failure also failed, which caused the transmission system to collapse.

“The system then enters a cascade event that is irreversible,” he said. “The important thing now is that this doesn’t happen again.”

González said Puerto Rico’s government has launched its own investigation into the blackout to compare it to Luma’s report and determine any discrepancies.

González stressed that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been in communication with her since the outage occurred, adding that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized the extended use of industrial generators.

On Monday, some 20,000 customers remained without power, although officials said other issues were to blame.

“Our system is fragile,” González said.

Earlier on Monday, she, Colón and other officials met behind closed doors to review Luma’s preliminary findings, recommend next steps and talk about an ongoing search for a company that can provide 800 megawatts of additional generation in the upcoming months.

April 16 marked the second massive blackout to hit Puerto Rico in less than four months. The previous one happened on New Year’s Eve.

Puerto Rico has struggled with chronic outages since September 2017, when Hurricane Maria hit the island as a powerful Category 4 storm, razing a power grid that crews are still struggling to rebuild.

The grid already had been deteriorating following decades of a lack of maintenance and investment under the state’s Electric Power Authority, which is struggling to restructure more than $9 billion in debt.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By STEPHANY MATAT

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Days after a deadly shooting, Florida State University students who also survived a deadly mass shooting in Parkland from 2018 sent a letter Monday to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, demanding he squash efforts to lower the firearm purchase age back to 18 years old.

The law that raised the minimum gun purchase age to 21 was passed as part of a gun reform package following a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018, known as one of the deadliest shootings in the country. For these former Parkland and current FSU students who sent the letter to the governor, this is their second school shooting.

One of the founders for March For Our Lives, a group formed following the shooting in Parkland, led a group of these 28 students in writing this letter, calling it “unthinkable” and “dangerous” for the Legislature to consider reverting the gun purchase age to 18. Jacklyn Corin said many of the students who demanded action in 2018 after the Parkland shooting are now FSU students who experienced this tragedy a second time.

“There is no doubt that that law has saved lives over the past seven years, and so now it’s quite ironic that this is the very law that is being threatened in the aftermath of what is many of those same students who rose their voices, their second school shooting,” Corin said.

FILE – Florida Gov. Ron De Santis speaks during a press conference on immigration enforcement, at Homestead Air Force Base, Feb. 26, 2025, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have backed the measure, saying that if they’re old enough to be in the military, they should be able to purchase a gun.

Despite having support from Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, Senate President Ben Albritton has held more hesitation for the measure. In a conference with reporters in March, Albritton was emotional recounting his visit to the Parkland high school building where 17 people were killed in 2018. He said he is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, but that he has not made a decision on the measure.

The shooting at a university minutes away from the Florida Capitol may leave an uncertain future for this measure, since it has not yet been heard in the state Senate. Legislative session is scheduled to finalize at the end of next week.

FILE – People attend a candlelight vigil for the victims of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., Feb. 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

“Rolling it back would dishonor the lives we lost in Parkland and Tallahassee, and amount to a slap in the face to survivors and to the countless lives that law has helped protect,” the letter read. “It ignores the trauma we carry. And it sends a clear message to students: the state of Florida sees our lives as expendable.”

The 2018 measure raising the age to 21 years old was in response to Parkland, where a 19-year-old shooter is currently facing life in prison for the deadly violence from that Valentines Day seven years ago.

On Thursday, a 20-year-old FSU student opened fire near the student union, using his deputy sheriff parent’s former service weapon. Two people were killed and six injured.

In a statement from Monday morning, Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare announced that three patients were discharged from the hospital, and that they anticipated two more being discharged later that day. The remaining sixth patient is in “good condition.”

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld the murder conviction of Matthew Ecker in the shooting death of his girlfriend at her St. Paul apartment.

In a unanimous decision filed Monday, a three-judge panel rejected Ecker’s argument that his conviction should be reversed because the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he shot 32-year-old Alexandra Pennig in December 2022. Ecker claimed the circumstantial evidence supported a reasonable hypothesis that Pennig died by suicide.

Alexandra Lee Pennig (Courtesy of Pennig’s family)

A Ramsey County jury in February 2024 convicted the 46-year-old emergency room practitioner of second-degree intentional murder, not premeditated. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The state alleged during trial that Ecker shot Pennig in the head during a struggle at the door to the bathroom in Pennig’s apartment. Ecker maintained that Pennig took her own life after locking herself in the bathroom.

Attorney Robert Richman, who represented Ecker in his appeal, declined to comment on Monday’s decision. A petition to the state Supreme Court is being discussed, he said, adding that “it’s too early to say.”

Ecker, who lived in Fergus Falls with his wife and four children, had been in a romantic relationship with Pennig for about two years. It was revealed during his trial that Pennig, a former nurse, struggled with addiction and mental-health issues and had previously attempted suicide by taking too many medications. Ecker had prescribed Pennig multiple medications and had given her approximately $28,000 over the course of their relationship.

Undetermined manner of death

Ecker called 911 at 2:50 a.m. Dec. 16, 2022, from the Lofts at Farmers Market apartment at 260 E. Fifth St. and reported that Pennig had shot herself with his handgun. He told dispatch that he called four minutes after she pulled the trigger. He said that he had a permit to carry a firearm.

Officers found Pennig lying on her back in the bathroom with a gunshot wound to the left side of her head. “Ecker said it was weird since (Pennig) is right-handed,” the criminal complaint said.

Matthew Phillip Ecker (Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Ecker told police they had been drinking at downtown bars. After Pennig shot herself, he said, he ran to the bathroom and broke the door down with his shoulder to get inside. Officers found Pennig’s feet straddling the door and a piece of the door’s lock underneath her, which, the prosecution argued, showed the door was open and not closed when she fell to the ground.

Ecker’s trial attorney, Bruce Rivers, told jurors the medical examiner and a forensic pathologist hired by the defense both agreed that Pennig’s manner of death “is undetermined.” Ecker, who waived his right to testify, had no motive to kill Pennig, Rivers said, adding that he cared for her and even loved her.

Prosecutors pointed out to jurors they did not have to prove motive to secure a guilty conviction. They offered one up anyway: Ecker had been financially supporting Pennig and she planned to live with her new boyfriend, who punched Ecker in the face at a bar about an hour before the killing.

‘Inference of guilt’

The appellate judges considered “whether a reasonable inference of guilt can be drawn from the circumstances proved, viewed as a whole.”

The position of Pennig’s legs in relation to the bathroom door and the door’s metal latch piece underneath Pennig’s body “are consistent with the state’s theory that Ecker slammed into the door before (Pennig) was shot and that the door was open when she died,” the decision read.

The gun, which was Ecker’s, was located in Pennig’s left hand, but she was right-handed, the decision noted.

Ecker said he washed his hands after attempting to stop the bleeding, but there was no blood on the sink handles and the sink was dry. Ecker denied cleaning the gun, yet despite his admission that he transferred the gun from the bathroom to the suitcase and back to the bathroom, his DNA was not on his gun.

“Perhaps most significantly, Ecker admitted that he moved the gun, first to his suitcase and then back to the bathroom, where he positioned it underneath (Pennig’s) left hand on her chest,” the decision read.

Although Dr. Kelly Mills, chief medical examiner for Ramsey County, could not determine a manner of death, she testified that she had never seen a suicide where the decedent’s romantic partner repositioned the gun in the way Ecker said he did, the decision said. It also noted that Mills believed the evidence was inconsistent with suicide.

Ecker’s primary contention in his appeal was that, even if the circumstances support a reasonable inference of guilt, they supported the equally reasonable inference that Pennig died by suicide. To support his argument, Ecker relied heavily on the evidence of Pennig’s prior suicide attempt and a Dec. 13 text message she sent to Ecker in which she wrote she did not feel hopeful about life.

“But in determining the reasonableness of inferences,” the decision read, “we must consider the circumstances proved not in isolation, but as a whole.”

Planning her future

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The ruling noted that Pennig was actively planning for the future: She was interviewing for jobs, arranging for ongoing payment of rent and refills of prescription medication and making plans to attend a wedding the following summer. In addition, Pennig did not like, or have familiarity with, firearms, and multiple witnesses testified about the unlikelihood that she would use a firearm to end her life.

In his appeal, Ecker also pointed to physical and forensic evidence as being inconsistent with guilt. He argued the nature of the gunshot wound, lack of obvious defensive wounds, absence of blood or gunshot residue on his hands or clothing and the presence of Pennig’s DNA on his holster support the inference that she died by suicide.

“Again, though, Ecker’s argument relies on isolated circumstances,” the decision read, adding additional circumstances proved include Pennig’s clean hands, a clean gun, dry sink, coagulating blood and officer testimony that the crime scene was inconsistent with suicide.