Category: CNN Regional

By Chierstin Roth

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    DENVER (KCNC) — It’s hard to cap a 100-plus-loss season on a positive note. But the Colorado Rockies found a way to manifest a silver lining at the end of a losing season. It’s thanks to a pair of Hunter Goodman home runs, and a group of Cleveland Guardians fans with a stake in the team’s success in their final series against the Chicago White Sox.

Goodman’s bombs propelled Colorado to win, helping the Cleveland Guardians clinch the AL Central. That prompted fans from more than 1,000 miles away to rally behind the Rockies catcher.

“This is such a positive exchange of memory between two baseball clubs that you know had no reason to connect on a Saturday night in October, but a reason came up, and the fans loved it,” said Jim Kellogg, the team’s vice president of community and retail.

Through their excitement, fans decided to donate to a nonprofit of Goodman’s choosing. He landed on Clothes to Kids of Denver, and the donations started piling in.

“It was like a scene from a movie,” said Kathleen Phillips, the organization’s executive director. “It truly was, and now we’re up to more than 700 Guardians fans have donated so far, and more than $20,000.”

Clothes to Kids allows students to visit and shop every few months for a week’s worth of clothing — for free. “Clothe a child, change a life,” is the nonprofit’s motto.

The organization is on pace to serve more than 16,000 kids this year alone. The more than $20,000 in donations will be an enormous help.

“Knowing that we’ll have the funds to be able to keep our shelves filled, we’re just so incredibly grateful,” Phillips said.

And the donations keep rolling in. Clothes to Kids’ donation center is always accepting donations and is open every Tuesday to Saturday.

“It would say, ‘Guardians fans in gratitude to Hunter Goodman,'” Phillips explained.

Nobody could have expected the support that was received from Cleveland’s fan base, but it shows the beauty of baseball and the power of sports.

“It’s creating great memories, and it’ll be stories told in the future,” Kellogg said.

“I just can’t even express, of course, our excitement, but our sincere gratitude to be the beneficiary of their generosity and their excitement for their team,” Phillips added.

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 Rina Nakano

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    LONG BEACH, California (KCAL, KCBS) — Tito Rodriguez, also known as “Hood Santa,” isn’t just giving gifts; he’s dropping knowledge.

College may not be the path for everyone, and new statistics are proving that. Many Gen Z and Millennial workers who joined the trades are experiencing the lowest unemployment in decades.

The founder of the Local Hearts Foundation grew up poor in Long Beach after his father died when he was just six years old. His older brother, Raul, helped support the family as a plumber.

“He taught me to be mechanical, to work hard. He told me, ‘bro, if you learn to work with your hands, you’ll never be broke.’ Those were his exact words,” Rodriguez said of his brother Raul.

He followed in his footsteps and worked as a plumber for 10 years. “Around that same time, I produced some platinum music for Snoop Dogg,” Rodriguez said.

Once music started paying the bills, he created the non-profit to give back to his community. But last year, his brother Raul died from cancer. In his honor, he launched Rodco Plumbing Academy, a free plumbing class for teens, taught and paid for by Rodriguez.

“You don’t really see girls plumbing … so I thought I’d try it,” student Mya Castillo said.

This comes just as a new analysis from the think tank Burning Glass Institute shows workers between the ages of 22 and 34 with no college degrees have the lowest unemployment rate in 20 years. They are choosing AI-proof trades

“Plumbing is the past, present, and the future. It ain’t never going to go out,” Rodriguez said.

“The streets are rough, tough, and dangerous. And it’s to give them something to think about. They don’t have to sell drugs. They don’t have to join a gang. They don’t have to follow a cousin that’s into nonsense. You can become a blue-collar worker, make money… and save your cousin, too.”

The Rodco Plumbing Academy always welcomes volunteers and donors to be part of the program. For more information, search “Local Hearts Foundation.”

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 John Ramos, Carlos E. Castañeda

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    OAKLAND, California (KPIX) — A federal judge on Tuesday ended a 23-year court monitoring of the Oakland Police Department, the longest federal oversight of a police department in the nation’s history.

At a hearing on Tuesday at U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, Judge William Orrick ended the monitorship, saying that the decision brings oversight of the department “back where it belongs.” For many in the community, the actual dispute with the federal monitor has been a little confusing.

“The oversight never showed us what the police department is lacking on it,” said Ali Alvasiery, an Oakland resident and business owner. “Everything is just paperwork between him (federal monitor Robert Warshaw) and the police department. But there’s nothing that’s affecting the residents of Oakland.”

Alvasiery founded a community group called Oakland Safe. They gathered for lunch on Tuesday after petitioning the judge to end the longest police oversight case in the nation’s history.

“For 23 years, there’s probably half the police department that’s already retired,” said Alvasiery. “Those bad officers are already gone. So that doesn’t mean that the police department is bad. We cannot look at just the city of Oakland’s police department as bad. There’s bad officers all over the United States.”

But another group, the Coalition for Police Accountability, also sent the judge a letter urging that the oversight monitor stay in place. Millie Cleveland, who chairs the coalition, said recent events show that it is still needed.

“There are some questionable police scandals that are current that need to be investigated,” she said. “The police department cannot investigate themselves. They cannot oversee themselves. Either it’s a federal monitor, or it’s effective civilian oversight.”

Cleveland said that would require the city fully funding the operation of the city’s Inspector General, tasked with monitoring OPD’s ongoing compliance. And despite what she called ‘scandals’ happening while the oversight was in place, Cleveland said they could not afford to let it go.

“We have a situation where even today they are not in compliance,” she said. “So, if they’re not in compliance at this pivotal time, where they’re under scrutiny of the judge and the monitor, what would the behavior be if they feel nobody’s overseeing them?”

But back at Safe Oakland, local NAACP President Cynthia Adams said OPD has shown a lot of improvement under the mandate, and should get a chance to prove itself.

“Let us work together, work with the mayor, Barbara Lee, and show you what we can do as a community. And show how we have grown from 20 years under this,” Adams said. “If the community sees you out there and sees you doing what you’re supposed to do, you’re building a relationship with the community.”

But Cat Brooks wasn’t buying it.

“We get calls every single week about people that have negative encounters with the Oakland Police Department,” she said.

Brooks founded the Anti-Police Terror Project after the killing of Oscar Grant and said not much has changed–even with the monitor–for Black residents in East and West Oakland.

“The problem is we’re tinkering around the edges. We need to be adjusting from the inside. The whole thing needs to change,” said Brooks. “The culture is a problem. The people, individually, as they walk into that, are not the problem. But they get impacted by the culture. The culture is one of ‘subdue, suppress, force them to compliance.’ And it looks at the people in the flatlands as the enemy.”

The federal court monitoring began following the notorious 2000 “Riders” case involving officers who allegedly planted evidence, falsified police reports, and beat suspects. Although no officers were convicted after two lengthy trials, the scandal led to civil and financial settlements, along with a 2003 “Negotiated Settlement Agreement” requiring the OPD to carry out dozens of reforms having to do with use of force, racial profiling, officer discipline and department transparency, among other reforms.

Repeated high-profile police misconduct incidents continued to deepen mistrust between the department and the community, including the aftermath of the deadly BART police shooting of Oscar Grant, and a sex abuse scandal involving the underage daughter of a police dispatcher connected to law enforcement officers in Oakland and across the East Bay.

In June of 2016, Oakland went through four police chiefs in nine days. That November, voters established more oversight with a civilian police commission looking over the department. Over the years, the department made progress on its reforms, even as there was frequent backtracking.

At Tuesday’s hearing, John Burris, one of the original plaintiff attorneys in the Rider case, likened the work of obtaining federal compliance to the Greek mythological figure Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back and force him to start over.

“We have been involved in pushing that rock up the hill for 23 years and each time it got close it would fall back down,” Burris said. “We’ve pushed the rock as far as we can, but now it’s up to the city to take hold of this rock and see if they can not only push it to the top of the hill but to maintain it.”

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 Kristina Rex

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    BOSTON (WBZ) — In a surprising turn in Lindsay Clancy’s first hearing since her mistrial in early September, her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argued that there was no evidence she killed her kids.

Reddington was arguing a renewed motion for a required finding of not guilty, asking the judge to find that the evidence presented at trial was legally insufficient for a rational jury to find Clancy guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Legal experts have told WBZ that the motion itself is a long-shot attempt to avoid a second trial. Prosecutors have not explicitly stated plans to retry Clancy.

On Tuesday, Reddington argued that prosecutors hadn’t met their burden – that Clancy killed her children beyond a reasonable doubt – at trial.

“Where is the evidence that she did this? Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington said. “This entire case is based on speculation. Where is the admission? Where does she say that she did this?”

Reddington launched into a list of evidence he said didn’t pass muster, including Clancy’s body temperature and testimony from her ex-husband, Patrick.

“There’s no evidence that she admitted she did this,” Reddington said.

Reddington’s argument Tuesday appeared to conflict with arguments he made repeatedly before and during the trial. In his opening statement in July, Reddington said Clancy “knows what happened to those kids.”

In a pretrial hearing back in June, Reddington said, “She takes responsibility. She, as the kids say, she owns it. She’s not running away from anything here. This whole case is an extreme tragedy.”

Reddington also offered to stipulate – in writing – that Clancy admits to killing her kids, in an April 2026 motion. In that motion, he had asked the judge to bifurcate the trial or split it in two: one trial for Clancy’s guilt and another for her mental state. That request was denied.

Reddington told the judge Tuesday that he was making his required-finding argument in two parts, consistent with his earlier request to bifurcate the trial. First, he argued prosecutors failed to prove that Clancy committed the killings beyond a reasonable doubt. He then argued they also failed to prove that she was criminally responsible for them. “You’re put in a conundrum when you have to admit culpability in order to raise a lack of criminal responsibility,” he explained to the judge.

Still, Reddington’s comments surprised prosecutors, too. “Now for the first time the defendant is arguing that there’s no evidence that she did this,” prosecutor Shanan Buckingham said in response. “I would suggest to you that the entire record is voluminous as to information supporting the fact that she did this.”

When asked outside of court to clarify whether he’s claiming Lindsay Clancy did not kill her kids, Reddington told WBZ-TV’s Kristina Rex, “Look, I argued that in the trial, I argued it on a motion for a required finding, it’s not new rocket science by any means. It’s the fact that [prosecutors] cannot prove a probable cause.”

WBZ-TV legal analyst Jennifer Roman said the strategy shift is very unusual. “It’s really bizarre to me that he’s completely changed his entire strategy and approach to this case, after the fact, on something as substantive as whether or not she actually killed the children,” Roman said.

Analysts say the move could be to pressure prosecutors not to retry the case.

“We’re doing a very thorough review right now,” Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz said outside court. “And we’re going to continue to do our job to make sure that we do what’s best for the interest of justice and the interest of the three children.”

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 2.

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 Kayla Davis

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    WALKER COUNTY, Alabama (WVTM) — A bloody crime scene, a hidden handgun and an alleged confession detailing how he tracked his ex-girlfriend were among the new details revealed Tuesday in the Cordova capital murder case against Billy Wayne Reid.

Reid is charged with capital murder and accused of killing his ex-girlfriend Sandra Moore on Aug. 19. It happened just days after he was released on bond for charges of kidnapping, domestic violence and stalking.

The victim in that case was also Moore. Agent Daniel Haynes, a veteran law enforcement officer with over 20 years of experience, testified that Reid was under a court order to stay away from Moore and had previously been trespassed from her apartment.

Haynes says on Aug. 19, Cordova police discovered Moore’s body during a welfare check requested by her mother. Alabama State Bureau investigators found blood on the front porch, door, and door handle, along with signs of a struggle inside the apartment. The living room contained large amounts of blood on the floor, furniture, walls and ceiling, broken glass from a sliding door, bullet casings, and a bullet hole in the wall.

A drag pattern led from the living room to the bedroom, where Moore’s body was discovered under covers on the bed, surrounded by 12 photographs of her and Reid, with a cross placed on her body in a ritualistic manner.

Reid told investigators he lay in bed with Moore’s body for several hours after the murder and said he was, “not a cold-blooded killer.”

Haynes described Moore’s injuries, including disfigurement of her skull and face, blunt force trauma, puncture wounds, defensive wounds, broken fingers on her right hand, and cuts from glass.

Two notes were found in the apartment, one signed by Reid stating, “My wife’s truck is parked down by the school. Her blood is on Cordova police’s hand, they made me do this, I was good to her.” The second note listed Brandy Reid’s name and phone number and said, “Tell her I love her.”

Brandy Reid, Billy Reid’s niece, told police Reid confessed to killing Moore just hours after the murder. They met at the Jack’s in Trussville and sat in the car for hours while Reid detailed the murder. She said Reid described placing a GPS tracker on Moore’s car and following her Aug. 18, when he saw her with another man at a Taziki’s.

Reid’s phone, which investigators say he tossed in an abandoned Midfield building after the murder, pinged at Moore’s apartment at 1:56 a.m. on Aug. 19. Later that day, Reid snuck into Moore’s apartment through a sliding door and waited for her return. According to Brandy, Reid said Moore was scared when she found Reid in her home, got her handgun and shot nine times during the confrontation. Following the shots, Reid said to Moore, “You tried to kill me.”

That murder weapon, a pink 9-millimeter handgun purchased by Moore, was recovered after Reid revealed its location inside an AC return behind drywall. The gun, covered in blood and filled with blood in the magazine, was determined to have been used to inflict Moore’s blunt force trauma injuries. The doctor confirmed in the preliminary autopsy it was clear Moore was “pistol-whipped.”

Reid confessed to leaving Moore’s Jeep Liberty in a nearby school parking lot after Reid was located in Moody, Alabama, wearing a dark blue shirt and jeans at the time of his arrest.

A search warrant revealed Reid withdrew $9,500 from Wells Fargo on Aug. 18, with surveillance footage showing him wearing a gray t-shirt that matches the bloody gray T-shirt taken from Moore’s residence. Brandy confirmed Reid confessed to changing clothes and even wished he had changed his shoes as well.

Investigators found footprints matching Reid’s tennis shoe tread pattern throughout the scene. The tennis shoes were covered in blood when they were confiscated.

Investigators in the case interviewed two of Moore’s neighbors. They reported hearing loud banging noises the night of Aug. 18 and arguing the morning of Aug. 19.

The Walker County judge found probable cause in the case. Reid was ordered to remain in custody without bond.

The family and district attorney refused to talk Tuesday.

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 John Perik

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    PALM BEACH SHORES, Florida (WPBF) — A surfer and two local fishermen worked together Saturday to rescue two people and a dog after their boat capsized in rough waters off Palm Beach Shores.

AJ Castronovo, a surfer, witnessed the incident while riding waves.

“The second wave came; it was bigger, already breaking, and unfortunately, I noticed there was a boat,” Castronovo said. “It was right in front of the wave. That wave came and just absolutely rolled the boat over on its side. Both people were ejected from the boat.”

Castronovo quickly swam toward the capsized boat to help but found himself in danger as another wave approached.

“This boat is now coming at me. I figured this is about it for me; the boat is coming at me sideways, another wave behind it, nowhere for me to go,” he said.

Miraculously, Castronovo managed to swim underneath the overturned boat, where he found the two people in distress.

“They seemed like they were breathing in water, weren’t doing too well,” he said.

Castronovo pulled the pair onto his surfboard and began swimming them to safety. Soon, a local fisherman, Chad Smith, and his son arrived on a boat to assist.

“Chad Smith came up like he’s done it 100 times,” Castronovo said.

Together, they hoisted the man and woman onto the fishermen’s boat.

As the rescue concluded, Castronovo recalled a surprising moment.

“He starts pulling away, and we hear another surfer saying, ‘Hey, hey, what’s going on?’ He lifts his hand up in the air and says, ‘I got the dog,'” Castronovo said.

Authorities said the two people were taken to the hospital and are okay.

“If the people are out there, I hope you’re safe and get a new boat,” Castronovo said.

Riviera Beach Fire Rescue and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office responded to the incident, too.

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.