On the day a woman was killed in her rural Dakota County home, it was her 26th birthday and Christmas Eve.

The county attorney’s office charged Demarco Marquie Jones, 29, on Monday with murder. The criminal complaint said he was the boyfriend of Tatianna “Tayah” Ehnes-Giles and the father of her two young children.

Tatianna “Tayah” Ehnes-Giles (Courtesy of the family)

Dakota County sheriff’s deputies responded Wednesday about 2:20 p.m. to a double shooting in Castle Rock Township, south of Farmington. They found Ehnes-Giles dead from a gunshot wound, and Jones wounded with a gunshot to the head.

Jones was transported to a hospital alive, and Sheriff Joe Leko said last week they are investigating the case as a homicide and attempted suicide.

Ehnes-Giles’ sister remembered her Monday as having “the most beautiful soul.”

“Amazing mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend,” said Leah Walde. “She would have never willingly left her kids behind. She lived for those children.”

Shot at family home

Ehnes-Giles lived in a triplex with Jones and their children, and other family members lived in other parts of the residence. The home is on 250th Street West near Chippendale Avenue.

Ehnes-Giles’ mother called 911 Wednesday and reported Jones shot her daughter in the head, according to the criminal complaint.

Deputies found Jones inside the residence with blood on his hands and back of his head; he was able to verbally respond to deputies and tell them the gun was “in the room.” Ehnes-Giles was lying on the bed in her bedroom, where she was pronounced dead.

Always with family

Ehnes-Giles’ family wrote in her obituary: “You could always find Tayah doing something with her family. She especially loved the 4th of July event she hosted every year. Tayah loved the fall and spending time outside having bonfires.”

She’d started working at the Buckboard Restaurant in Lakeville as a teenager, where she “was a well-loved waitress for eight years,” her obituary said.

A GoFundMe (gofund.me/fdcd93341) has been set up for Ehnes-Giles’ funeral expenses and to help care for her children. A fundraiser is being planned for Jan. 25, 3-6 p.m., at Celts Pub in Farmington.

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By MATTHEW BROWN

A Utah judge on Monday ordered the release of transcripts from a closed-door hearing in October over whether the man charged with killing Charlie Kirk must be shackled during court proceedings.

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State District Judge Tony Graf said the transcript must be posted on the court docket by the end of the day. Attorneys for media outlets including The Associated Press had argued for details of the closed hearing to be made public.

Prosecutors have charged Tyler Robinson with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 shooting of the conservative activist on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, just a few miles north of the Provo courthouse. They plan to seek the death penalty.

Defense attorneys for Robinson in early October requested that he be allowed to appear in court in civilian clothes and without restraints, to prevent any bias against him among potential jurors.

Days after an Oct. 24 closed door hearing on the matter, Graf ruled that Robinson could appear in civilian clothes but must wear restraints. Utah court rules require defendants who are in custody to be restrained unless otherwise ordered.

Graf wrote in an Oct. 27 order that restraints for Robinson would protect the safety of court staff and the defendant, by allowing him to be quickly secured if court proceedings were disrupted.

But the judge said Monday that public transparency was “foundational” to the judicial system before ordering details of the closed hearing to be released. The judge ordered limited redactions to remove discussions of security protocols in the closely watched case.

Graf also ordered the release of an audio recording of the hearing, again with redactions.

Lawyers for the media wrote in recent filings that an open court “safeguards the integrity of the fact-finding process” while fostering public confidence in judicial proceedings. Criminal cases in the U.S. have long been open to the public, which the attorneys argued is proof that trials can be conducted fairly without restricting reporters.

Graf has said in a separate order that Robinson’s restraints could not be shown by media outlets that publish photographs of court proceedings or broadcast them.

Graf briefly stopped a media livestream of a hearing earlier this month and ordered the camera be moved after Robinson’s attorneys said the stream showed the defendant’s shackles.

Robinson was not present in court Monday but appeared via audio link from the Utah County Jail.

A preliminary hearing, where prosecutors will lay out their case against him, is scheduled for the week of May 18.

By The Associated Press

A historic theater in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol has opened its doors more than three years after it was pummeled in a Russian airstrike that killed hundreds of civilians sheltering inside.

Moscow-installed authorities marked the rebuilding of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater with a gala concert on the building’s new main stage Sunday night. Images shared by Russian state media outlets showed the building’s marbled pillars and staircases, and dancers wearing traditional Russian headdresses known as kokoshniks performing.

The original theater was destroyed when it was targeted by a Russian airstrike on March 16, 2022, as Moscow’s forces besieged the city in the weeks after their invasion.

An Associated Press investigation later found evidence that the attack killed about 600 people inside and outside the building — almost double an early estimate from the government.

At the time of the strike, hundreds of civilians had sought refuge in the building after weeks of relentless shelling. The word “children” had been written with paint on the street outside the building, large enough to be seen by both pilots and satellites.

FILE – A view inside the Mariupol theatre damaged during fighting in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, eastern Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo, File)

Moscow said that Ukrainian forces demolished the theater, a claim that the AP’s investigation refuted.

Russian forces took control of Mariupol’s city center shortly after the strike. The ruins were bulldozed and any remains were taken to the ever-growing mass graves in and around Mariupol.

Mariupol’s Ukrainian city council, which left the city when it was occupied for Ukrainian-controlled territory, called the rebuilding and the opening of the theater “singing and dancing on bones.”

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“The ‘restoration’ of the theater is a cynical attempt to conceal the traces of a war crime and part of an aggressive policy of Russification of the city. The repertoire consists largely of works by Russian writers and playwrights,” the council said in a statement on Telegram.

Guests of honor at Sunday’s opening included Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of the partially occupied Donetsk region, and St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Beglov. Workers from St. Petersburg, which was twinned with Mariupol after Russia took full control of the city in May 2022, aided in the building’s reconstruction.

The Donetsk region, where Mariupol is located, has remained a key battleground throughout the war. Russia illegally annexed it in 2022, though Moscow still doesn’t control all of it. The region’s fate is one of the major sticking points in negotiations to end the war.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By ISABELLA O’MALLEY

When turbulent weather with whipping winds and heavy snow is in the forecast, meteorologists sometimes warn that a storm could “bomb out” or become a bomb cyclone. But what exactly does this mean?

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According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, certain storms undergo bombogenesis, which happens when a storm’s central pressure drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. These storms are sometimes called bomb cyclones. Storm intensity is measured by central pressure, so the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.

Such rapidly strengthening storms are capable of producing heavy rain, blizzard conditions and intense winds that can create dangerous conditions such as downed trees and power outages.

“If you’re watching TV at night and the weather report comes on and you’re hearing ‘bomb cyclone’ being used, that usually means there’s quite a bit of active weather going on,” said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

Bomb cyclones can happen in any season, but mainly occur during fall and winter when frigid air from the Arctic can creep south and clash with warmer air masses.

“It’s really the clash of those air masses that really kind of helps to generate the areas of low pressure in the first place,” said Orrison.

Regions in North America that are prone to seeing bomb cyclones include Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region.

“It’s not common to get bomb cyclones at lower latitudes. So generally speaking, you wouldn’t see a bomb cyclone across, let’s say, the southern United States,” said Orrison.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.