Category: CNN Regional

By Madeleine Wright

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    LAWNSIDE, New Jersey (KYW) — A South Jersey summer camp is bringing Black history to life through hands-on learning centered on the Underground Railroad.

The Lawnside Historical Society kicked off its Underground Railroad summer camp Monday, giving middle school students the opportunity to visit sites tied to the fight for freedom and learn beyond the classroom.

“I was excited,” 10-year-old summer camper Harlan Jenifer III from Lawnside said. “I was happy to learn about my heritage and history.”

On Day 1, the Lawnside Historical Society brought students to the home of Peter Mott, a free Black man who opened his house as a place of refuge for freedom seekers escaping enslavement.

“The most interesting thing I learned so far was that this house was in Lawnside,” 13-year-old summer camper Stacey Johnson from Somerdale said. “I didn’t realize that the Underground Railroad was connected to New Jersey at all at one point.”

The weeklong camp includes scavenger hunts, tours and writing activities designed to deepen students’ understanding of what they learn in school.

“You will not find Peter Mott’s name most likely in the history books, but I want students to know that Lawnside, alongside Free Haven and Snow Hill, had a big part in the Underground Railroad,” Joyce Fowler, vice president of the Lawnside Historical Society, said.

Camp leaders said the program goes beyond traditional classroom lessons, highlighting details such as coded communication and the ways enslaved people navigated their journey to freedom.

“A lot of times the teachers don’t go into the study of the communication that enhanced and actually had to do with the struggle for freedom,” camp director Jacqueline Miller Bentley said.

Throughout the week, students will visit additional Underground Railroad sites across South Jersey, including Mt. Zion AME Church in Woolwich, Gloucester County, and museums.

Harlan said the camp has already changed his perspective.

“I just thought it was a history of something that was back in the past that I didn’t need to care about,” Harland said. “But right now, it’s making me want to learn more about it.”

The camp runs through Friday, when students will present paintings, poems and other creative projects inspired by what they’ve learned.

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 Christina Fan, Nick Caloway, Jesse Zanger

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    OCEAN TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (WCBS) — The roof of a BJ’s Wholeale Club partially collapsed Monday morning amid heavy flooding in Ocean Township, N.J.

It happened at around 11:30 a.m. at the store on NJ-35 in the Oakhurst neighborhood, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office said.

Surveillance video captures the moment of the partial ceiling collapse and torrential flooding that followed, which left about a foot of water inside the store. A large chunk of the roof gave way under the weight of the water.

The video shows shoppers inside BJ’s in the bakery section. The colllapsed roof unleashed a torrent of water that shoved several displays in the area across the floor. One table filled with products can be seen striking and pushing a person trying to get away.

Some 27 people were in the store at the time of the collapse. Fortunately, there were no injuries, authorities said.

“Several reports of several people trapped inside the building, so we activated the mass casualty protocol, Ocean Township Police Chief Michael Sorrentino said.

The store was evacuated. Urban search and rescue crews moved in with dogs and drones to make sure everyone got out. Incredibly, no one was injured.

Two people were partially trapped, but freed themselves and safely left the store with everyone else, Sorrentino and Ocean Township Sheriff Shaun Golden said in a statement.

“This incident is another reminder of how quickly severe weather can create dangerous and unpredictable conditions,” Golden said.

The Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office posted an image from Route 35 that showed several vehicles deep in floodwater.

“Please stay clear of the area and allow emergency personnel to safely respond,” the MCSO wrote on social media.

Flash flooding caused havoc on the roads.

“It just got bad. Like, all of a sudden, within minutes, it was low, then it just got high,” motorist Duval Moore said.

Alexandros Gavakis got a call from his girlfriend, so he raced over to help her get out of her flooded car.

“I was trying to push her car. It wasn’t working. So I just opened the door, picked her up, and I walked her out of there,” he said.

“We already had vehicles that have stalled and are in the way of traffic, particularly first responders that need to get to actual emergencies,” Golden said.

In Paramus, the cleanup was still going strong Monday as crews cleared trees off homes and power lines.

The ongoing severe weather conditions has families in the area feeling on edge.

Block by block, wood chippers have been grinding their way through Saturday’s storm debris.

“From first look, it doesn’t look too bad. But I am curious to see what we are supposed to do next,” Paramus homeowner Kevin Kim said.

Kim just bought his house a month ago. He’s waiting to find out if his roof is still in one piece.

“All of the wind started to just pick up, and we saw this first tree fall, and then it landed right in front of our doorstep. And while we were looking at that, we saw this one start to slowly fall and then it – when it hit the roof – the whole house shook,” Kim said.

Trees toppled on cars, power lines, roads, fences and homes in Paramus. Many families in the area are now relying on generators.

“The timeline, earliest, would be sometime today. The latest estimate would be Friday this week,” Mary Ferrazzano said.

Paramus Mayor Chris DiPiazza said his office has received 250 calls since Saturday night, and crews have been responding ever since the storm hit.

“We are asking our residents to just be patient. Our departments are all hard at work,” DiPiazza 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.

By Daniel Wilkerson

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    ATLANTA (WUPA) — A metro Atlanta man is helping his fellow food and beverage workers struggling with addiction and alcoholism by holding weekly meetings that foster support.

“I’ve been cooking for 11 years. I started when I was a teenager. I’ve been with the company ever since,” said Jonah Jacobson, a sous chef at Pricci in Buckhead.

Jacobson said he began to experience repercussions while in active addiction five years ago.

“Things got bad enough to the point where I was fired from my first job,” he said.

Jacobson said once he started using alcohol and drugs, he could not stop.

“Where everybody else would call it a night after 1, 2 and go home like a normal person, I realized I did not have that luxury. I was not like everybody else,” said Jacobson.’

He helps lead the local chapter of Ben’s Friends, a national organization that organizes meetings for people struggling with addiction and alcoholism.

“We would always talk about another restaurant person who was either destroying their lives or, unfortunately, had just taken their lives due to alcohol and drugs. At one point, we just said enough is enough,” said Ben’s Friends co-founder Mickey Bakst.

Bakst has been sober for 43 years. He said the food and beverage industry fosters an environment in which alcohol and drugs are common and makes it easy for workers to fall into active addiction.

Adam Mauk with Edge Treatment Center in Roswell said programs like Ben’s Friends are often more successful after a person completes an initial inpatient or outpatient treatment plan. But he said people often reason they cannot afford to take the time off from work to complete initial treatment.

“It’s been proven time and time again that if you put anything ahead of your sobriety or ahead of trying to get clean or sober, then you’re going to lose that too,” said Mauk.

Jacobson has now been sober for five years.

“It (recovery) gave me a new outlook on life and gave me a sense of belonging that I was looking for, partially in a kitchen, partially outside of my life,” said Jacobson.

Ben’s Friends has more than 40 chapters across the country, offering free peer support to people working in the food and beverage industry.

Jacobson encourages anyone to attend a meeting on Mondays at 11 a.m. at Pricci, located on Pharr Road.

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 Jamal Goss

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    ATLANTA (WUPA) — For one Atlanta family, Argentina’s World Cup match is about more than soccer. It’s about carrying a family tradition from one generation to the next.

As Argentina takes the field in Atlanta, four generations of the Benitez family: grandmother Marielena Frances-Benitez, daughter Marcela Benitez, Marcela’s wife Rachel Benitez, and 1-year-old Luisa Benitez are celebrating a love for their home country, Lionel Messi, and the memories that have connected their family for decades.

“Even though I don’t maybe remember the details,” Marcela Benitez said, “I remember the feeling.”

Marcela spent childhood summers in Buenos Aires before moving to Atlanta a decade ago. Now, she and Rachel are raising Luisa to embrace the same Argentine traditions that shaped her childhood.

That tradition began with Marcela’s mother, Marielena, a lifelong Messi supporter who has followed his career since his earliest days as a professional.

“To marry into the Argentina soccer culture is a whole thing,” Rachel Benitez said. “I’ve learned a lot.”

Inside their Atlanta home, Messi represents more than championships.

He represents family.

At the center of that story is Marcela’s late father, Rubén Benitez, a poet and professor of Spanish literature.

In 2012, before Messi won a World Cup with Argentina, Rubén wrote a poem celebrating the soccer star and the pride they shared in their hometown of Rosario.

“Rubén wrote a poem for Messi and gave it to me as a present,” Marielena Frances-Benitez said. “I just felt that was the greatest present.”

Rubén died three years ago, but his poem remains one of the family’s most treasured possessions.

“My dad passed away three years ago,” Marcela Benitez said. “He was a poet, he was a professor of Spanish literature.”

Before each World Cup, the family reads the poem together and has carried it to matches over the years, hoping Messi will one day see it.

“I wish Messi could ever read this poem,” Marielena Frances-Benitez said. “Because he wrote it before Messi had won anything with Argentina.”

For Rachel, the poem has become a way to keep Rubén’s legacy alive while introducing Luisa to the family’s history.

“His art lives on in our lives,” Rachel Benitez said. “His mannerisms, his face lives on in the next generation.”

Whether they watch inside the stadium or alongside fellow Argentina supporters at a local watch party, the Benitez family says this World Cup is about more than the outcome of a match.

It is a celebration of a husband, a father and a grandfather whose words continue bringing his family together one World Cup, and one generation, at a time.

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 Juli McDonald

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    QUINCY, Massachusetts (WBZ) — Renze Daley had been enjoying an ice cream along Wollaston Beach in Quincy, Massachusetts Sunday, when she and her friend noticed a woman bobbing in an out of the water. Daley called out to her, but the response was faint. Then someone from the nearby yacht club called out that the woman needed help.

“I didn’t think too much about it. I took off my shoes and I just went into the water,” she recalled.

The 22-year-old Daley is a strong swimmer who grew up on the swim team and now works as an instructor at her local Y. Even with her experience and training, the conditions were challenging.

“It’s one thing to perform a rescue in a pool. It’s another to swim against currents and tides and the wind in regular clothes with no tube,” she said.

Daley, only 5’2″, was smaller than the woman, who was exhausted.

“She’s not able to kick or anything like that. I’m holding her and trying my best not to go under the water. I put my arm around her, I had my left arm around her, and I tell her to lean her body weight onto me,” she said.

Thanks to her calm and quick thinking, Daley safely helped the woman back to the beach and called 911. The outcome was extremely rewarding, and a reminder of the priceless importance of the work she loves.

“Moms and dads bringing their babies who can’t even walk, and I teach the elderly too. I was teaching water yoga too. It really is for everybody,” she said of swim instruction.

And she feels everyone has some responsibility to be ready and able to help.

“The water, as much as it’s fun, it’s so dangerous. I feel like everyone should know a little CPR and at least how to swim,” Daley said. “Knowing how to at least keep your ahead afloat is very, very important.”

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 Steven Yablonski, Morgan Rynor

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    MIAMI (WFOR) — First responders from South Florida who raced to Venezuela in the aftermath of the devastating and deadly earthquakes in Venezuela at the end of June have returned home after a weeklong deployment.

Members of Florida’s Task Force 1 and Task Force 2 (FL-TF1 and FL-TF2) spent the week helping with the search-and-rescue operations, working alongside Venezuela’s Urban Search and Rescue teams and other international partners.

The mission held a special significance in their hearts as South Florida hold one of the largest Venezuelan populations in the U.S., making this mission even more personal.

One of the task force members said he was searching through the rubble of the neighborhood where he grew up.

Cameras captured the emotional moment when FL-TF1 and FL-TF2 arrived at Miami International Airport with people in the terminal clapping and cheering for those who raced into the disaster zone to help the victims of the deadly back-to-back earthquakes.

Friends and family were there to welcome them all home, with many carrying signs and American flags.

And for many first responders, the mission was personal.

“It was very hard, because I grew up in that area, Caraballeda,” FL-TF1 Captain German Leal said. “Which was the area that I grew up as a kid. We used to ride bikes with my cousins, go to McDonald’s, listen to music, have hamburgers. So, being there and seeing all that area destroyed was very hard to absorb. You know, the builds were down and people were there. It was very difficult.”

He added that while they were there to help the local Venezuelans, the locals couldn’t have been nicer to the task force members.

They offered them whatever food and water they had left.

Now that the members of FL-TF1 and FL-TF2 are back in Miami, they will be given some much-needed time off before returning to work.

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 Cherish Walters , Leigh Searcy

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    PULASKI COUNTY, Kentucky (WLEX) — A 4-year-old boy died Saturday evening after being struck by fireworks during a July Fourth celebration at a home on Jacksboro Street, according to the Pulaski County Coroner’s Office.

Rhett Luttrell was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital after a tube of active fireworks fell over and hit him around 10:16 p.m., Deputy Coroner Matt Johnson said. The family was setting off a “cake-style fireworks box” when the accident occurred.

Emergency responders received the 911 call at 10:16 p.m., with a caller reporting a “fire emergency fireworks accident” involving the child. People at the gathering rushed Rhett to the hospital, Johnson said.

The boy’s grandmother, Kim Lynn, described Rhett as her “pride and joy” and “an absolute angel.” His father, Mikey Luttrell said that he and Rhett’s mother ‘loved the child more than anything.’

Family members said the vivacious boy enjoyed playing dinosaurs with his father and visiting the local donut and coffee shop with his mom. He was celebrating the holiday with relatives when the tragedy occurred.

The accident has left the family in shock and disbelief over the loss of their “fun-loving little boy,” relatives said.

Rominger Funeral Home in Manchester is handling funeral arrangements.

Original Story:

The Pulaski County Coroner’s Office confirmed to LEX News that a 4-year-old was killed after a tube of fireworks fell over and hit the child in the torso on Saturday night.

The coroner’s office has identified the child as Rhett Luttrell.

Luttrell’s grandmother spoke to LEX News and stated, “He loved to go to the donut and coffee shop with his mommy, and loved to play dinosaurs with his daddy.”

Further, LEX News learned that Rhett was a Kentucky basketball fan who called the team “The blue team, Wildcats.”

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 Cyera Williams

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    BOWIE, Maryland (WMAR) — After severe storms moved through the area overnight, Freddie Couch was already answering calls before the sun came up.

Couch, a retired Army First Sergeant and owner of Veteran Tree Services, said his phone started ringing as storm damage left trees and branches down across the area.

“I didn’t receive 14 calls,” Couch said. “I responded to all of them.”

By the time WMAR-2 News caught up with him, Couch said he had already visited eight of those calls and planned to continue working through the rest.

For Couch, the response felt familiar.

“When you get your marching orders, you go,” he said. “You jump to it and move on it. I’m ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Couch served 20 years in the Army before starting his veteran-owned tree service business. His military career included time in Korea and four years with the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. He said he also served with the presidential escort, the presidential bomb unit and worked on inauguration committees.

After reaching 20 years of service, Couch was given orders to Germany. But around that same time, his father became sick and was given about 18 months to live. Couch said he made the decision to retire so he could be there for him.

“I put in my paperwork,” Couch said. “I was around till he took his last breath. I was beside his bed.”

Years later, Couch found his next mission after trees fell in his own yard. He said he paid $10,000 to have them removed and noticed the job was finished in about seven hours.

“The numbers added up,” Couch said. “So I switched over to that.”

Now, Veteran Tree Services is in its 14th year.

Couch said the same values that guided him in uniform still guide the way he runs his business.

“Very disciplined, people oriented, listening to everyone,” Couch said. “I’m going to be on time. I’m going to be honest and integrity. I bring all of that to it.”

That approach starts as soon as his crew arrives on a storm damage call. Couch said the first step is always assessing the area for safety.

“The first thing when we step on scene, I assess the situation,” he said. “Make sure there’s anything dangerous around like wires, check the house, everything.”

He said crews look for anything that could hurt them, damage a home or make the situation worse before they begin cutting and removing trees.

Storm season is often one of the busiest times for the business. Couch said he “slept light” the night after the storms, taking calls before bed and waking up to more.

The work is not easy.

“This is not, it’s hard labor and everybody can’t do it,” Couch said. “You’ve got to have the right equipment.”

Couch credits his crew for helping him answer the calls. He said most of his workers have been with him for about 10 years.

“Once they get their marching orders, they know what to do,” Couch said. “I just sit back. I’m the owner, but I tell them what needs to be done and I get out of their way.”

Couch said customer loyalty has also helped keep the business going. He said about half of his business comes from referrals, and he rarely has to advertise.

“They know they can count on me,” he said. “They call me as a previous customer, I’m going to be there.”

He said being early and reliable is part of the standard. For one customer, Couch said they scheduled a 7 a.m. job and he arrived at 6:05.

“I bring a lot to the table,” he said. “But at the same time, my customers give back to me their loyalty.”

Couch said supporting veteran-owned businesses matters because of the values many veterans bring to their work.

“You’re getting the best business,” he said. “I’m going to be on time. I’m going to give you an honest and fair price.”

He said Veteran Tree Services offers special pricing for veterans, as well as better pricing for civilians, teachers and first responders. For Couch, that is part of how he gives back.

“I served my country, so I want to serve the community,” Couch said.

He said there are times when veterans cannot afford tree work, which can be expensive. In those cases, Couch said he tries to work with them by offering payment plans or sometimes doing the work for free.

“I’m versatile because I’m the owner,” he said.

Even when he is out of town, Couch said he still answers the phone and sends crews where they are needed.

“They call me no matter where,” he said. “Even when I’m on vacation overseas, I answer the call.”

For Freddie Couch, the uniform may be retired — but the call to serve never stopped.

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.