18 Sep 2024

Wagon overturns during pre-K trip to Wisconsin orchard, injuring more than 17

by | posted in: Society | 0

A pre-kindergarten school field trip to an apple orchard near Chippewa Falls, Wis. turned tragic on Wednesday when a tractor-pulled hay wagon overturned while rolling downhill, leaving three victims with life-threatening injuries.

In all, at least 17 people — both children and adults — were rushed from the scene by ambulance, and one patient was taken by emergency helicopter. Others were transported to the hospital by personal vehicle. There were no fatalities reported.

WQOW-TV in Wisconsin identified the pre-K as St. Mark Lutheran Church in Eau Claire. Principal Peter J. Micheel issued a brief statement to the television station indicating, “At this time, we are trusting the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Department as their members were at the scene. At this point, we are focusing on reuniting the children with their caregivers. Whenever we face a challenging time, we commit everything to the Lord’s care and trust his guiding hand.”

During a recorded press conference carried online by KSTP News, Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes said the wagon ride took place Wednesday morning at an orchard in Lafayette, Wis. and the incident did not occur on a public street. Two wagons were being pulled by a tractor when one lost control on a downhill slope. KSTP identified the site as the Bushel and a Peck Apple Orchard.

“It’s a parent’s greatest fear that something like that happens to their children, especially when they’re young like that,” Hakes said. “The children were extremely brave, very resilient. … The chaperones and the parents that were at the scene had plans, they had a list of children and contact information that was instrumental in reuniting the parents with the children.”

The incident drew emergency response from at least 10 agencies, including Mayo Clinic Health Systems, the Chippewa Falls Fire Department and others activated through Chippewa County Emergency Management and the Hospital Readiness Coalition.

In addition to three patients with life-threatening injuries, five people suffered serious injuries, another nine were transported by ambulance and one was taken by helicopter, Hakes said.

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18 Sep 2024

Jury convicts man of murdering housemate at West St. Paul mental-health group home

by | posted in: News | 0

A jury on Wednesday convicted a man of murder in the brutal stabbing of a housemate at a mental-health group home in West St. Paul more than four years ago.

Dakota County jurors deliberated for less than an hour before finding John C. Adams, 43, guilty of second-degree intentional murder in the Feb. 17, 2020, death of 68-year-old David Eugene Rahn, who was found with stab wounds to his face, neck, back and upper extremities.

The guilty verdict followed a four-day trial before Dakota County District Court Judge Michael Mayer. He scheduled Adams’ sentencing for Dec. 20.

Adams’ attorney, Alex Rogosheske, declined to comment on the verdict.

Court records show that Adams was first committed as mentally ill and dangerous out of Hennepin County in October 2000. At the time of the murder, he was on a provisional discharge from the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter since November 2018, when he moved into the group home.

Court proceedings on the murder charge were suspended in May 2000, when a medical evaluation found Adams was incompetent to stand trial. Proceedings resumed last October when he was deemed competent following years of treatment at the state hospital.

According to the criminal complaint, a staff member heard a disturbance in Rahn’s bedroom and then Rahn screaming for help. The staff member tried to get inside, but Adams blocked the door and said it was “okay.”

While on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, the staff member said that it had become quiet in Rahn’s room and that “something isn’t right.”

When the first responding officer arrived at the state-run group home at 1546 Christensen Ave. shortly after 4 a.m., he saw a shirtless man — later identified as Adams — running from the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses building across the street and into the home.

The parking lot of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall across the street from 1546 Christensen Ave. in West St. Paul, where a man was fatally stabbed early Monday, Feb. 17, 2020. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Officers and medics gave CPR to Rahn, but he was pronounced dead. His injuries also included at least 20 knife wounds to one of his hands, which were consistent with defensive wounds, and blunt force trauma to his head.

Adams, who was in his bedroom, told officers that Rahn had “busted into his room” and attacked him. They wrestled, Adams said, before he ran and grabbed a knife to defend himself.

Adams said he threw the knife into a garbage can near the Jehovah’s Witnesses building. Officers found a bloody, badly bent serrated knife in a white plastic bag that had electrical tape around the top of it. Bloody gloves were also found.

John C. Adams II (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

During an interview at police headquarters, Adams’ story changed. He said he had gone to bed sometime between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. Around 1:30 a.m., when he got up to use the bathroom, Adams said, he saw Rahn standing in Rahn’s doorway holding a knife.

According to Adams, Rahn told him to come inside, which he did. Adams told investigators that Rahn said he had nothing to live for and began stabbing himself. Adams said he tried to get the knife from Rahn but could not and that he believed Rahn was going to attack him.

Adams said he waited in a corner of the bedroom while Rahn kept stabbing himself before running out of strength. Adams said he then grabbed the knife, went across the street and cried before returning back to the group home.

Prior calls to the home

West St. Paul police records showed that officers responded to seven previous calls to the group home beginning in early 2014, when it first became licensed by the Department of Human Services. Calls included disturbing the peace, damage to a vehicle and two missing person reports.

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Adams was reported missing on June 23, 2019. That led to DHS filing a request that day in Hennepin County mental health court to revoke Adams’ provisional discharge. The request, however, was rescinded the next day by DHS after Adams was located and returned to the group home.

In the court filing, Soniya Hirachan, who at the time was the DHS medical director of forensic services, direct care and treatment, wrote that her team would follow up with Adams.

“It is my expectation that (Forensic Community Support Services) and additional supports will ensure Mr. Adams returns to compliance with his provisional discharge plan so he can continue to be successful in his community reintegration,” she wrote.

18 Sep 2024

Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says

by | posted in: Politics | 0

By ERIC TUCKER and DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.

There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.

The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a U.S. government statement.

The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.

The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’s campaign, said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said.

18 Sep 2024

Trump and Harris are taking a brief break from campaigning in battleground states

by | posted in: Politics | 0

By MEG KINNARD Associated Press

Presidential candidates typically focus much of their travel on battleground states, but Donald Trump on Wednesday is taking his message to a somewhat unlikely place: suburban New York.

The Republican presidential nominee and former president is heading to Uniondale, on Long Island, an area that could be key to his party maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.

Long Island in particular features one of the most closely watched races, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boarding Air Force Two, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris Vice is interviewed by National Association of Black Journalists members Tonya Mosley, and Gerren Keith Gaynor, with moderator Eugene Daniels, at the WHYY studio in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boarding Air Force Two, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

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Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades.” In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

On the Democratic side of the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference in Washington on Wednesday, and has trips planned later in the week to Michigan and Wisconsin.

Latino voters form a critical bloc in swing states such as Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Speaking on the Nueva Network this week with the personality known as “Chiquibaby,” Harris promoted her proposed tax deductions for new small businesses, her experience prosecuting border cases as California attorney general and her support for offering a “pathway to citizenship for those who have earned it.”

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On Tuesday, the vice president sat for an interview in Philadelphia with members of the National Association of Black Journalists. She decried Trump’s rhetoric and said voters should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.”

Trump is attempting to return to his campaign cadence after Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed in Florida. On Tuesday, he traveled to Flint, Michigan, and has not appeared to alter plans for upcoming trips to the nation’s capital and North Carolina later in the week.

His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is scheduled to hold an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday.