Month: October 2026

By Olivia Young

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    EVERGREEN, Colorado (KCNC) — Homecoming in Evergreen, Colorado, has gone to the dogs. Meet Evergreen High School’s first-ever canine homecoming king and queen: Polenta and Norene. The school is honoring the two therapy dogs for supporting students and staff in the year since a student opened fire inside the school.

Canine companions Polenta and Norene have earned their crowns.

“Their duty is to lie [there] and just be pet and hang out,” said Amy Wells, lead counselor at Evergreen High School.

With pristine attendance records, the pups arrive early and leave after the last bell.

“I stand in the front of the building every single morning with my principal, and we let the kids come up and pet them or just talk to them,” said Wells.

“I just love seeing both their personalities. And they definitely reflect on me when I get to see them. I definitely am so much happier in a day,” said Evergreen senior Quinn McEvers.

That happiness is exactly what Evergreen needed, after a tragic school shooting rocked the community one year ago. “Just felt very vulnerable, you know. And being able to just see these dogs just made people want to pet them,” said Evergreen senior Jackson Thomas. “Just like kind of release their anxiety.”

Norene joined the school in January, and Polenta came in August. Evergreen’s principal and lead counselor both trained to become handlers after seeing the impact other Canine Companions had on students in the wake of last year’s tragedy.

“It just normalizes life in general,” said Wells. “Research says that cortisol levels will calm down a little bit with a dog. I just notice, a lot of students that I’ve never actually talked to, and in my job here, they come up to me all the time now.” The dogs can be found in the counselor’s office, walking the halls, or even giving moral support during tests.

“You don’t need to talk about what’s going on in your life or how something is affecting you. You can just get the love from the dogs, and it really helps,” said McEvers. “I light up whenever I see them because they’re just so cute. I love dogs so much,” said Thomas.

Norene and Polenta have made such an impact; a “puppy homecoming court” was created just for them.

“They brought so much joy to this school. Just to be able to have people come in with a welcoming smile and be able to pet them,” said Thomas.

They ran uncontested and won in a landslide. And under the Friday night lights of the homecoming game, they assumed their rightful positions as king and queen. “They make a difference in our community, and I think that it’s really great that they’re getting honored for that because they are a lot bigger than just dogs. They’re really a part of our community,” said McEvers. “For us, after last year, when we would have all the dogs in the school, it felt really good to us as staff. And then, now being able to provide that for our students on a daily basis, it’s definitely impactful,” said Wells.

Two students from each class were also crowned as homecoming king and queen, and Evergreen won their homecoming game against Standley Lake High School.

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 Allen Devlin

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    ITHACA, New York (WCBS) — Cornell University President Michael I. Kotlikoff said Saturday his school’s administration “must do better” amid the criticism and fallout of its investigation into allegations made by a former student that she was gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.

“I believe we as an administration and we as a community must do better,” Kotlikoff said in a video message posted online Saturday. “We must do everything we can to prevent what happened to Jane Doe and everyone before her and anyone after her from ever happening again.”

The former student, identified only as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit last month against the university and seven men, alleging she was drugged and raped in October 2024 at the university’s Chi Phi fraternity chapter when she was 20 years old.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history, and I know many of you are angry, saddened and struggling,” Kotlikoff said.

Back in 2024, the Tompkins County district attorney found that “there was insufficient evidence to support criminal charges.” No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

However, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said this week that he was never given the full transcript of Jane Doe’s two-day interview with campus police that occurred in November 2024, about three weeks after the incident, but was only presented a six-page sworn statement based on that interview.

Cornell University initially said its police department provided the results of the school’s Title IX investigation to the DA. However, in an FAQ published on its website regarding the allegations, the university said in an Oct. 1 update that it “shared the victim’s sworn statement and the Snapchat screenshot with the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office, which is the established protocol if the department believes it is possible a crime has occurred.”

The Snapchat screenshot refers to a Snapchat group chat that involved members of the Chi Phi fraternity on the night of the alleged rape.

Van Houten said this week he is reopening the investigation, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has been publicly critical of Van Houten’s approach to the case, said she had appointed State Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to lead the investigation.

Kotlikoff revealed that the school would be hiring an outside law firm to conduct an “independent review” of “all aspects of Cornell’s handling of the 2024 matter.” The school has said that it supports the state’s criminal probe, which Kotlikoff reiterated Saturday.

The school president admitted the situation “raises questions around the investigations conducted after the allegations were reported.”

Kotlikoff earlier this week disclosed that the school’s Title IX investigation resulted in two of the accused being expelled and two being suspended for at least two semesters. One had already graduated before any punishment could be handed down, Kotlikoff said, and two were found not to be responsible for sexual misconduct.

“I also hear the frustration that Cornell has not communicated enough about what the university did after the assault was reported, which has led to distrust,” Kotlikoff said in his video. “There are real legal and privacy limits on what we can say, but we will make greater effort to explain what we can, to provide context about the actions Cornell has taken, and to be more transparent.”

He noted that in 2025, in the wake of the initial investigation into Jane Doe’s allegations, the university established the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault and endorsed the task force’s recommendations.

Kotlikoff said in the coming weeks, the university will create opportunities for community members, including parents of current students, to question and talk to school leadership.

“This is a defining moment in Cornell’s history,” Kotlikoff said. “We must lead the way. We owe it to Jane Doe and to survivors of assault to get this right. And we must keep each other safe.”

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 CBS Baltimore Staff

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    BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Attorney General’s office released body cam footage of a deadly police-involved shooting involving a 21-year-old woman in Middle River last month.

The shooting took place at the 1000 block of Carroll Island Road on Sept. 3 after police were called to locate an armed woman.

When officers arrived, they approached a woman, later identified as 21-year-old Sadie Holman of Odenton, inside a vehicle at the end of the road.

Body camera footage showed one of the officers speaking with Holman, who was crying at the time.

The officer says to the woman, “If you come out and talk to us and we make sure you don’t have any weapons, we’ll get you everything you need.”

The woman appears in distress as she speaks with the officer.

Moments later, the woman reaches for a firearm before another officer yells to others that she has a gun. The officer who had been speaking to the woman fires a single shot at the woman.

Witness officer bodycam footage showed a clearer angle of the woman reaching for and cocking the weapon.

Following the shooting, emergency medical services (EMS) transported Holman to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead after initially being in critical condition.

No responding officers were injured during the incident. Officers recovered a firearm inside the vehicle near Holman after the shooting.

The Independent Investigations Division is continuing to investigate the circumstances of the shooting. They ask anyone with information to contact the IID at (410) 576-7070 or by email at IID@oag.maryland.gov.

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.