Month: February 2026

By Marisa Sardonia

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    HENDERSON COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — A North Carolina woman indicted on murder charges after she allegedly poisoned family members with wine during a Thanksgiving dinner could face the death penalty.

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, the office of District Attorney Andrew Murray filed a motion to hold a Rule 24 pretrial conference in the case of Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel. A Rule 24 hearing in North Carolina is mandatory for cases where the defendant is charged with a crime punishable by death, as is the case for Casper-Leinenkugel.

Casper-Leinenkugel, 52, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and multiple counts of distributing a prohibited food or beverage, according to arrest warrants.

Court records allege Casper-Leinenkugel killed her daughter, Leela Jean Livis, and is responsible for the 2007 death of Michael Schmidt, both by poisoning. Investigators also allege she attempted to kill her other daughter, Mia Lacey, and Lacey’s boyfriend, Richard Pegg, during a Thanksgiving gathering in November 2025.

Sheriff’s investigators say the wine served during that meal was allegedly laced with acetonitrile, an industrial solvent that converts into cyanide once ingested. Warrants charge Casper-Leinenkugel with knowingly distributing a beverage containing the toxic chemical, which authorities say caused death or serious physical injury.

The warrants state the alleged poisoning of Schmidt occurred in October 2007, while the more recent allegations involve the 2025 Thanksgiving gathering in Henderson County.

Casper-Leinenkugel is being held without bond and is scheduled for a court hearing on Thursday, Feb. 26.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Chris Hoffman

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    SEWICKLEY, Pennsylvania (KDKA) — A Sewickley man whose daughter is battling cancer was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Family representatives said Bruno Guedes da Silva was arrested Sunday morning while on his way to work at the corner of Beaver Road and Orchard Street in Glen Osborne. They said a black SUV pulled him over and agents in green vests took him without asking for any documentation.

In a statement, ICE said Guedes da Silva was wanted on a warrant for felony charges of sale or transfer of firearms and unsworn falsification to authorities. Congressman Chris Deluzio said Guedes da Silva had a work authorization, but ICE said that employment authorization doesn’t confer any legal status.

Family representatives said he and his wife were seeking asylum from Brazil. ICE said he came to the United States in 2022.

“This is the last thing somebody in that position needs, to have their life interrupted in that way, unilaterally with very little options,” said immigration attorney Joseph Murphy, who is not working with Guedes da Silva.

This is the latest ICE arrest in the Pittsburgh region. Last month, Oakmont father Jose Flores was arrested while getting ready to take his daughter to school. He was released days later.

Murphy believes the idea is to arrest fathers and cut off income to the family.

“I believe the thinking is to send dad back and maybe they will follow him back home. It also has the convenient effect of avoiding the kids in cages problem because you don’t have to detain the family,” Murphy said.

Murphy says the administration appears to be trying to turn back the clock and detain people now when they should have been detained at the border.

“From a sociological perspective, it’s chaos,” Murphy said.

Guedes da Silva is at a detention facility in West Virginia. A family representative said he last spoke with his wife while he was still in Pittsburgh. His wife is now taking care of the couple’s children, including a daughter battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Murphy said it’s becoming hard to give clients advice on what they should be doing to prevent being detained.

“The laws seem to change every couple of weeks,” Murphy said. “Advice I gave people three months ago is no longer good. This is a big problem.”

Sewickley Borough Council has a meeting on Tuesday night, and people plan to attend to voice their concerns on the situation.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Natasha Brown, Nate Sylves

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    VOORHEES TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (KYW) — A celebration months in the making unfolded Tuesday for Baby Myla in South Jersey. After spending more than nine months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Virtua Voorhees Hospital, Myla was discharged and headed home with her mother.

“She came at 24 weeks on the dot, she was 1 pound. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever in my life been through, it’s very, very challenging,” Myla’s mother Chi Obidike said.

Obidike was also born prematurely at the same hospital more than 30 years ago and cared for by some of the same doctors who helped save her daughter’s life.

“I was born here 31 years ago by the same doctor, Dr. Goldsmith, so it was an honor for him to also take care of my baby girl as well,” Obidike said.

“I took care of mom 30 years ago, and now I’m taking care of mom’s baby, so technically that would make her my grand patient,” neonatologist Dr. Leonard Goldsmith said.

Myla was born prematurely and faced significant health challenges, including lung disease and a congenital heart defect. Her road to recovery was lengthy and required extreme care.

Myla became such a member of the Virtua NICU family that doctors say there was a line of people on any given day waiting to give her cuddles.

“Two hundred and eighty-five days, that’s nine months, and as a mom myself, you know, you think about how much happens in those first nine months, and she had to do all of that here,” NICU social worker Kasey Hewitt said.

“She is going home oxygen-free, she is going home without a feeding tube, it’s a really big day and an important day in her life, in her family’s life and in our lives in the NICU,” said Renee Smith, the hospital’s NICU nursing director.

Myla left the hospital with all the love and fanfare she deserves. She’s a happy, healthy, unforgettable baby who’s inspired and touched many.

“I appreciate it so much,” Obidike said. “I think it’s beautiful to see the amount of love everyone pours into her. Sometimes it overwhelmes me because I’m like, I hope I can give her that amount of love at home.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Ross DiMattei

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    PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — A man in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood said a snowplow driver deliberately dropped his blade and blasted him with snow and ice while he was shoveling before work Monday morning.

Jeff Hart, a longtime Fishtown resident, said he believes the act was intentional and is speaking out because he fears someone could be seriously hurt.

Hart said he woke up early to shovel a path connecting the office building where he works to York Street. As he cleared snow along the sidewalk shortly before 9 a.m., a plow truck approached.

“I got to right about here, and I just started shoveling back,” Hart said. “I turned a little bit this way, and that’s when I just heard boom! And it just plowed me with snow.”

Hart said he wasn’t hurt, but chunks of ice struck him with force.

“I guess I got lucky because I felt the chunks hit me,” he said. “It definitely felt like getting punched, because it was big blocks, chunks of ice.”

Hart reviewed footage from multiple surveillance cameras and said it shows the plow blade was raised as the truck approached, then lowered just before it reached him.

“His plow stays up in the air — no snow, no slush is moving — until he gets kind of where we’re standing, like two cars before it, and then the plow goes down,” Hart said. “And right after he passes me, the plow goes back up again.”

About a block away, Hart said he saw the same truck spray snow and ice onto an elderly man carrying bags on the opposite side of the street. That changed his reaction to the incident.

“I didn’t mind so much when it happened to me because me and my friends thought it was hilarious,” Hart said. “For me, luckily, I didn’t get hurt. But seeing what he did to that guy, it’s like, ‘That’s dangerous,’ especially because I know it was ice and snow.”

Using surveillance video, Hart isolated a freeze-frame image of the unmarked truck. He believes it may belong to a private plow driver and wants the person responsible held accountable.

“To hit someone that I’m pretty certain was a senior citizen, that’s just not right,” Hart said. “At that point, you’ve got to be held accountable for something like that. That’s not a joke anymore.”

Hart said he is considering filing a police report.

Philadelphia police said they have not received other reports of similar behavior. A spokesperson said if investigators can prove the act was intentional, it could be considered a crime.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Kim Hudson

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    BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania (KYW) — Drivers might not realize it while heading down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but local Black history and sports history are being celebrated just off the highway, with the tip of an unusual baseball hat.

In an unassuming building by the Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls in Bensalem, Bucks County, 33-year Turnpike Commission veteran Eric Paul settles in every day with that hat on display over his shoulder.

“I have to keep it close,” said Paul, the commission’s regional facilities operations manager.

Meanwhile, at the commission offices in King of Prussia, Montgomery County, retired coworker, 73-year-old Ronald Duckett, pored over memories of his late dad.

“Pictures in here that I love,” Duckett said. “It’s a legacy.”

Paul and Duckett bonded over their work for the turnpike and that same hat. The white letter G on the red cap stands for Grays, as in the Homestead Grays Negro Leagues baseball team out of Pittsburgh. Paul sees it to remember Duckett’s father, Mahlon Duckett.

Ronald Duckett said the hat speaks to the team where his dad ended his career after starting with the Philadelphia Stars in 1940.

“He played for the Stars,” Ronald Duckett said. “He actually played for 10 years in the league, and he played for nine years with the Stars. His last year was with the Grays.”

After Ronald Duckett shared memories of his father, Paul said he rushed to get the hat.

“I went instantaneously online and purchased it,” Paul said.

What did Paul learn about the player? Thanks to a documentary by the Philadelphia Phillies, fans could hear from Mahlon Duckett himself.

“My father was for it, but my mother wasn’t,” Mahlon Duckett said in an interview for the documentary titled “They Said We Couldn’t Play.” “Because at that time in 1940, we had a lot of problems in the South. She knew a lot of the games would be played there.”

But the second baseman bravely played for the Stars despite fears he would be assaulted when Negro League teams sometimes played White teams.

“They would sharpen their spikes,” Mahlon said. “You had to know how to get that ball and make the double play and get out of the way. Like I said, I have a couple scars on my knee now.”

Rob Holiday, director of amateur scouting administration for the Phillies, which held a ceremonious Negro Leagues draft in 2008, said Mahlon Duckett’s famous speed would have made the player a perfect fit in today’s major league team.

“I could see him being a good utility infielder playing all around the infield and coming in and steal a base at the end of the game and helping the Phillies win,” Holiday said.

Playing through it all is what inspired Paul to tell anyone who would listen about Mahlon Duckett, even after the player died in 2015 at 92 years old.

“Just bring notice to them that because of those men that did sacrifice, I am where I am now,” Paul said.

And to think, this story lives on with the passing on of this baseball cap.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Adi Guajardo

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — A Hunter College professor is under fire for comments caught on a hot mic during a Zoom meeting.

Some parents and students are calling the remarks racist.

We want to warn you the comments are offensive.

During a Feb. 10 New York City community education council meeting, District 3 Interim Acting Superintendent Reginald Higgins highlighted scholar Carter G. Woodson, known as the father of Black history.

“Carter G. Woodson said, ‘When you can’t control a man’s thinking, you do not have to send him to the back door. He will go without being told,'” Higgins says.

Allyson Friedman, a Hunter College associate professor, can then be heard speaking.

“They’re just, they’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school. Apparently, Martin Luther King said it like, if you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” she says.

Another individual in the meeting then jumps in to let Friedman know her mic wasn’t muted.

“Allyson Friedman, what you are saying is absolutely hearable here. You gotta stop,” the individual says.

CBS News New York reached out to Friedman for comment, and she shared a link to a Substack article titled “Lost in Translation,” where Friedman said she was trying to “explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example” and went on to say, “I take full responsibility for the impact, and I am deeply sorry.”

The New York City Board of Education released the following statement:

“NYC Public Schools does not tolerate discrimination. We take these matters very seriously and the superintendent as well as our Office of Family and Community Empowerment are providing support to the district in response to this incident. Citywide and Community Education Councils are independent bodies, and their meetings are intended to be respectful spaces for students, families, and staff, and we are dedicated to supporting them in upholding that expectation.”

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels also released a statement:

“The comments made were abhorrent and have no place in our school communities. New York City Public Schools does not tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind, period. We take these matters very seriously and the superintendent as well as our Office of Family and Community Empowerment are responding to this incident comprehensively. Citywide and Community Education Councils are independent bodies, and their meetings are expected to be respectful spaces for students, families, and staff. What happened at the meeting was a complete violation of those expectations, and we are providing support to the district to repair the harm done.

A Hunter College spokesperson released the following statement:

“Hunter College is aware of an incident during a recent virtual meeting of the New York City School District 3 Community Education Council in which abhorrent remarks were heard coming from a district parent who also is a Hunter employee. Even as these remarks were made in the individual’s role as a private citizen and we understand that the district is conducting an investigation into the matter, Hunter College is reviewing the situation under the university’s applicable conduct and nondiscrimination policies.

“In service to Hunter College, we expect our community members’ actions and words to comport with our institutional identity, values, and policies. We stand firm in our enduring commitment to sustain an inclusive educational environment that is free of discrimination of any kind, in which people of all identities will feel welcome and can thrive.”

Parents, advocates and elected leaders held a press conference Tuesday to address what they described as racist remarks.

“It’s unacceptable. She has no business being an educator,” said one person who attended the meeting.

Ayana Roman, a Hunter College student, said she learned of the incident on social media.

“I interpreted what she said as racist,” she said.

Despite Friedman’s apology, some students are calling for action.

“I just feel like racism needs to be called out and you need to be let go, but it’s up for Hunter to decide, ultimately,” Roman said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.