Category: CNN Regional

By Kennedy Cook

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    ENGLEWOOD, Colorado (KCNC) — At Brookdale Meridian Englewood, residents gathered to celebrate Valentine’s Day with music, dancing, and heartfelt moments. Among them were Syl and Margaret Walorski, a Colorado couple whose love story has spanned decades.

“We’ve been married 70 years,” Syl said proudly.

Though they now call Brookdale Meridian Englewood home, their romance began generations ago under very different circumstances.

Syl was drafted into the military and sent to Arkansas for basic training. On weekends, soldiers would gather at the local USO club for dances; a welcome break from the demands of service. It was there, on a lively dance floor, that he first met Margaret.

“I was drafted. They sent me to Arkansas, and that’s where I had my basic training,” Syl recalled. “On weekends, they had dances at the USO club (…) and that’s where I met Margaret.”

Their romance began with music and movement, even if it wasn’t always easy.

“Yeah, we danced,” Margaret laughed. “But it’s hard to dance to that music and carry oxygen!”

Decades later, they’re still swaying together, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

“We are here today celebrating Valentine’s Day, the day of love,” one organizer said. “We’re having a Valentine’s Day dance.”

The celebration featured a special performance by the James Barela Swing Quartet as the room was adorned with festive decorations, and sweet treats added to the cheerful atmosphere.

“It’s most important to make these people feel like they’re young again,” an event organizer shared. “Dancing to their music and getting to hold their loved ones that they’ve been with; that’s what it’s all about.”

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 Conor Wight

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    MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — On the same day that federal officials announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, a nightmare began for a family in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights.

Early Thursday afternoon, a security camera captured Jesus Flores leaving his home to help people on the street suffering from apparent car trouble.

Moments later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed his driveway.

“[They] tricked him into coming outside,” said Flores’ son, Miguel.

Miguel and his mother, Dionicia, are heartbroken. Dionicia said that her husband is a lifeline for their six children; two of them have autism and require special care.

She said that the family provider was whisked away to El Paso, Texas — likely in violation of a federal judge’s order — within 48 hours of his detainment.

Flores is a mechanic, Miguel explained, who often takes odd jobs for people who know how to get hold of him. Flores’ family believes that the two people caught on a neighbor’s security camera checking underneath their hood in front of the Flores household are ICE agents themselves, luring Flores outside in order to detain him.

The video shows that as he begins examining the vehicle, two other cars fly in and come to a screeching halt, blocking the street on both sides. Flores appears to try to run back inside before multiple agents apprehend him. As they leave, the original car and the people feigning mechanical difficulties leave with them.

It’s incidents like this that have left some skeptical about the true extent to which people can let their guard down. Homan said that a “footprint” of federal officers will remain as operations transition back to the typical field office structure and to provide security for ICE agents in the field. He also emphasized that immigration enforcement will continue even as he said thousands of agents would begin leaving the metro.

Flores had spent recent weeks hunkering down at home, trying to avoid being swept up. His family said that he is undocumented and was deported once before about 16 years ago, leaving them with little hope that he will return home to Minnesota this time.

“My dad’s a hard-working individual,” Miguel said. “He came here to give us a better life. He has done that.”

WCCO reached out to ICE to request information about Flores and the apparent ruse that led to his detainment. As of Sunday afternoon, the agency has not responded.

Also on Thursday, Edward Lopez Mendez said that ICE pulled him over in Savage, Minnesota. In a video he captured from the driver seat, a federal officer tells him “maybe the operation stops, immigration does not stop.”

“They said they were looking for criminals. We’re not criminals,” Mendez told WCCO.

According to Mendez, he and a friend were leaving a property in Savage when ICE stopped them. Mendez, currently waiting for the next steps in an asylum-seeking process that he began in 2019, said that the ICE agents told him they were looking for someone at a specific address. Mendez said that the address did not match the house. After looking him up in their system, the agents let him go.

Mendez said he doesn’t believe the surge has really ended.

“[Homan’s announcement] doesn’t mean anything,” Mendez said.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help support the Flores family.

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 Briseida Holguin

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    FORT WORTH, Texas (KTVT) — A group of Buddhist monks who walked from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., spreading a message of peace, returned home Saturday morning.

Thousands of people welcomed them back as they arrived at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth.

The “Walk for Peace” was led by Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, who said completing the 15‑week journey was emotional.

“In front of the gate, I was touched, and, emotions by so many people coming out,” said Pannakara.

The message behind the walk was simple: peace and mindfulness.

“It is something that people really needed at this time… The more we react, the more we suffer, so our message is to ask people slow down, slow down, look back within. Feel each and every heartbeat. See each and every breath going in and out. That is when peace begins,” said Pannakara.

The group of 19 began the trek in October.

“Every day we start at 4 a.m., we wake up and do our thing, chanting and meditation, and then, about six something, we start to walk. There are days that we walk 20 miles, there’s days that we walk 25, there’s days that we walk 32 miles,” said Pannakara.

Along the route, two monks were injured. One was struck by a car near Houston.

“He got his leg amputated, and so he cannot walk anymore, but he’s waiting to put the artificial leg in. He did join us in Washington DC,” said Pannakara.

The message continues beyond the walk.

Thousands followed the journey online, and Pannakara said the work is not finished. He believes anyone can take part in creating peace.

“Today is going to be my peaceful day. Tell the universe that. Tell the universe that today is going to be my peaceful day, so no one in is world can mess it up,” said Pannakara.

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 Barry Pintar

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    PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It’s something most people have experienced at one time or another: losing your wallet.

With so much in our wallets, IDs, credit cards, and even cash, going through the hassle of replacing all of that can be a massive headache.

Just a few days ago, in Coraopolis, a wallet was lost while the piles of snow still covered the ground, meaning the wallet truly could’ve been anywhere.

Thanks to the effort and spirit of one U.S. Postal Service worker going above and beyond, this lost wallet found its way home.

At 25, Bruce Armah is a new postal worker, and when he found a wallet buried in the snow on a frigid winter morning, he tucked it away until he could look for an ID card or anything with an identifying address.

After he finished his workday, on his own time, he got into his car and began driving to the address.

“It was my father’s good deeds,” Armah said. “If you find someone’s property, and you return it. He lost his wallet, and someone returned it to him, so I was just returning the favor. I was happy to return the wallet.”

However, the story doesn’t end with Armah pulling up to the house and returning the wallet. Once he arrived, he learned the owner of the wallet had moved away – and not just a few blocks away.

The owner of the wallet lives in McDonald, and so Armah drives there, because that’s what his father would’ve done.

Armah then finds the new address and knocks on the door. That’s when Matt Bryan came to the door, knowing his wife was sick over losing her wallet somewhere earlier that day.

“There was $100 cash in there, credit cards, ID, healthcare cards,” Matt recalled. “He wanted nothing in return; he just said it was the right thing to do.”

In all, Armah drove from Coraopolis to Clinton, to McDonald, and to Ambridge, 52 miles in total, on his own time, in his own car, making his father proud as well as his fellow postal workers.

“They’ve got 8,000, 9,000 deliveries, and they’re walking 13 miles per day, then they get put on overtime, which is another two hours, and another five miles every day, so at the end of the day, they’re pretty spent,” said Thomas Redlinger, a safety specialist at USPS. “With the weather, I know we’re getting a bad rap right now, but with the weather, I think we’re doing a tremendous job.”

Armah is a quiet mail carrier who did this all on his own and told no one about it.

Matt Bryan, however, told a postal worker friend, who told another, and another, until it ended up becoming a legend.

“I was complimenting him to some of his coworkers who mentioned it up the chain, which gets us to this point,” Bryan said. “I can’t thank him enough; it’s great to see that young people are doing the right thing.”

“He asked me why I returned the wallet, and I was like, it’s my father’s good deed,” Armah added.

In spite of the snow, in spite of the sub-zero temperatures, Armah went above and beyond to do a good deed he learned from his father.

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 Jim DeFede

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    PARKLAND, Florida (WFOR) — In the eight years since Alyssa Alhadeff and Alex Schachter were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, their parents have worked tirelessly to turn their grief into action and to try to keep the tragedy that left 17 people dead from happening again.

Lori Alhadeff took her pain and ran for the Broward School Board, where she has spent years working to make schools safer not only in Florida but across the country. She has pushed for the passage of Alyssa’s Law, which requires a silent alarm system in classrooms that teachers can activate to alert police and fire rescue if there is anything from an active shooter to a medical emergency.

So far, 10 states have passed Alyssa’s Law. Lori Alhadeff was in Washington, D.C. last week, where Alyssa’s Act was introduced, which would create standards for such systems across the country.

“We have passed Alyssa’s law in 10 states, which is panic buttons in schools directly linked to law enforcement, so they can get there faster. Time equals life,” she told CBS News Miami. “And then with Alyssa’s Act at the federal level, we will create standards around panic buttons and digital mapping and have a data Center because we want to try to reduce violence and prevent the next school shooting. Unfortunately, we know that school shootings are continuing to happen. So, this work is so vitally important to get Alyssa’s Act signed into law by President Trump as soon as possible.”

Max Schachter has spent years creating a national school safety dashboard so that parents can know if there have been dangerous or violent incidents at their local schools. He served on a statewide commission after the shooting to investigate school safety.

“And throughout our investigation, we found that schools weren’t reporting incidents, specifically Marjory Stoneman Douglas was shoving everything under the rug,” he explained. “And so they were reporting zeros across the board. And then when I went to look at my other three kids’ schools, all the data was in a massive Excel spreadsheet, which just made it impossible for me to evaluate, compare, and understand. So Safe Schools for Alex, the charity that my wife and I started after the tragedy, we created the first of its kind school safety dashboard because when I sent Alex to school we had no idea that our children were going to school with a violent individual, an individual that had accumulated over 70 disciplinary referrals and law enforcement was at his house over 40 times. And so, parents have a right to know what’s happening in their school. So, we created this user-friendly dashboard for parents to use and to empower them with the knowledge so that they can become advocates and they can make sure that the schools are doing everything they can to reduce violence on campus, so this never happens again.”

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By Riley Rourke, Matt Schooley

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    EASTHAM, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A search has been suspended on Cape Cod for a man who is still missing after falling through the ice while walking his dog with his wife on Saturday. The man’s wife was found dead and two police officers were hospitalized after they also fell into the frigid water in Eastham, Massachusetts.

Eastham Police received a call just after 9 a.m. on Saturday about a wet dog in distress at First Encounter Beach. An officer arrived and found a woman screaming for help in Bee’s River after falling through the ice.

The officer attempted to help the woman, but fell in during the rescue and was completely submerged. Another officer arrived and attempted to help the first officer, who had fallen in, but the ice broke, sending him plunging into the water up to his waist.

Both officers were able to get themselves back onto the shore, according to police. They were taken to Cape Cod Hospital to be evaluated for any injuries. There is no update on their condition.

A dive team began searching for the missing woman. During the search, they learned that the woman was on a walk with her husband and their dog at the time.

“Based on items located in their vehicle and a check of their residence, it was determined that it was possible that the husband may have fallen through the ice prior to the officer’s arrival,” Eastham Police said in a press release.

They found the woman’s body under the ice just after 11 a.m. on Saturday.

First responders searched through Saturday afternoon but did not find the man. On Sunday around 7 a.m., Eastham police and firefighters returned to Bee’s River and flew a drone for about two hours.

Crews also walked the area where ever the shoreline was accessible. After two hours, they were still unable to find the missing man.

“Additional search efforts will be conducted when changes to the ice conditions occur, allowing access for public safety personnel,” Eastham police said.

The name of the couple involved in the incident is not being released at this time.

David Norris lives in the area. He said because of the strong currents and salt water, he never walks on the ice.

“It’s just dangerous,” he said. “I have two dogs. I won’t bring them out here until summertime when it’s just sand, they can go on the beach. I would never let them go on the salt. There’s no boundaries to it. It’s just weak, you fall right in.”

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By Kaicey Baylor

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    ABINGDON, Maryland (WJZ) — An Abingdon, Maryland, couple is raising money to bring home their twin infants who died in Mexico. The family hopes an online fundraiser will help raise the $12,000 needed for funeral and transportation expenses.

Paris Singleton-Ajaero said she suffered a miscarriage while on a gospel cruise with her mother.

At the time, she said she was 21 weeks pregnant and had no prior pregnancy issues. Singleton-Ajaero said she and her mother boarded the cruise on February 1.

“Things were fine the full day,” she said.

The next night, she felt discomfort and learned she was in the process of delivering her baby boy.

“We quickly realized the feet were already out,” said Singleton-Ajaero.

She said medical staff on the cruise told her the baby wouldn’t make it. Then, they rushed her to a hospital in Cancun.

Before she could deliver her second child, a baby girl, her husband, John Ajaero, said they had to pay a “good faith payment” of $5,000. He remained stateside, making calls to their insurance company to ensure his wife had proper care.

“It was times where you couldn’t cry because you’re in survival mode,” Ajaero said.

Singleton-Ajaero hoped doctors would be able to save their baby girl. The Abingdon parents said their twin babies died a day apart.

“[It] just seemed like everything was working against us,” said Singleton-Ajaero.

“It’s really jarring to deal with all of this, and this is her first pregnancy, our first try at being parents,” Ajaero said.

Although Singleton-Ajaero and her mother are back in the U.S., the twins are still in Mexico. She said her husband still hasn’t been able to see the babies.

“It’s hard to feel like we’re at peace because we don’t have them home,” Singleton-Ajaero said. “My husband and I, we don’t know how to plan a funeral. It’s not something we ever even talked [about] for ourselves yet.”

As they plan a funeral, they’re thinking of other ways to remember their twin babies. They’re remaining hopeful that one day they will be parents.

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 Peter Katz, Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal

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    Chester, New York (westfaironline.com) — The county executive of Orange County, New York, which is about 60 miles northwest of New York City, said that as of the close of business on Friday Feb. 13 no deed had been filed with the county showing that ICE had bought a warehouse in the county for conversion to an immigrant detention center. The warehouse in question is at 29 Elizabeth Drive in the community of Chester. County Executive Steve Neuhaus was speaking in response to statements attributed to ICE that it had gone ahead and purchased the former PepBoys warehouse in Chester.

The Salt Box Project, which tracks ICE’s warehouse purchases throughout the U.S. and reports on other sites that ICE is considering for its growing network of detention centers, lists the Chester location as having been bought by ICE.

The warehouse encompasses 401,000 square feet with parking for 194 cars. ICE had tried to prevent the public and local officials from finding out about its interest in converting the warehouse into a detention facility for people its agents arrested. However, when it filed required government paperwork disclosing that its project would impact a flood area on the property, word of its plan for the warehouse got out.

In the face of ongoing opposition from the public and elected officials, ICE issued a statement saying that it had moved ahead and purchased the warehouse but did not provide details including disclosing when the purchase was closed.

Neuhaus said that he had not heard anything from federal officials from the time ICE first became interested in the warehouse. Neuhaus said that the sewage system at Chester already is at capacity and could not accommodate what ICE wants to do.

“You’re going to have a facility where you’re going to have thousands of protesters coming here at the same time they’re operating here in an industrial park,” Neuhaus said. “There are businesses all around the industrial park. There’s a commuter parking lot that is very actively used by people commuting to New York City on bus.”

Neuhaus noted that large protests have taken place outside of ICE detention facilities elsewhere in the U.S. He said that he talked with Gov. Kathy Hochul on Feb. 13 about the situation and asked her to have the New York State Police available to help local police with crowd control should ICE actually convert the warehouse into a detention facility. He also asked for the National Guard to be on standby.

“I have not had one elected official in New York state, in the Hudson Valley, in Orange County, call me and say they’re for this,” Neuhaus said.  He is a Republican and pointed out that his Republican-controlled County Legislature voted unanimously against the project.

Neuhaus emphasized he has had “zero communication” from the Trump administration regarding ICE’s plan for the Chester site, which apparently is part of a larger plan to establish numerous sites across the U.S. where 100,000 or more people would be imprisoned. Neuhaus said that the county was restrained from filing a lawsuit to try to stop the ICE project until a deed showing that ICE actually owns the warehouse has been filed. However, he also did not commit to taking legal action to try to stop the project.

While ICE has persistently said it was imprisoning “the worst of the worst” criminals, in reality only a small percentage of those detained have a criminal record and detainees include U.S. citizens, children and immigrants who have been in the country legally.

Congressman Pat Ryan whose district includes Chester is among those who has been rallying the Hudson Valley community to stop ICE’s Chester plan. Ryan has now voiced an added concern about ICE reportedly leasing office space at 843 Union Ave., in New Windsor, close to New York’s New York Stewart International Airport.

Ryan demanded answers to what ICE is doing in New Windsor from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Administrator Todd Lyons.

“Let me be clear: the Hudson Valley does not support ICE expansion in our community,” Ryan told them. “More than 20,000 people have signed my petition opposing the proposed Chester detention facility. Bipartisan local leaders have condemned your plans. Our community has spoken with one voice: ICE’s terror campaign has no place here. Now ICE is quietly expanding its footprint in Orange County without consulting the people who live here. This is not how agencies operate in a democracy. The Hudson Valley will not stand for 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.

Peter Katz
pkatz@westfairinc.com

By Janay Reece

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    BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore City Recreation and Parks plans to introduce a new program to manage the deer population by utilizing firearms.

“So in many of our parks and the forest that we have here in Baltimore City, we see these areas that are being highly damaged by deer and browsed by deer eating activities,” explained Shane Boehne, the city recreation and parks deer management program lead.

Boehne explained that the deer population is a bigger issue than most people think.

“The earliest known acknowledgement of that has been since 1999, and we have some internal management drafts that came out in 2014 and 2016 that got our program kind of initially started,” Boehne explained. “In our forestry division, we have seen evidence of increasing deer-related issues in the city.”

From parks to TV Hill, they are everywhere, causing issues for many people.

“We have seen evidence of increasing deer-related issues in the city, both damage to our forest understories, creating lots of damage to people’s homes and garden spaces, and we’ve also seen a number of deer vehicle collisions every single year happening in Baltimore City around a lot of our parks that are occupied by deer.”

What’s the plan?

Starting in March, trained firearms experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will enter three designated parks after dark to eliminate as many deer as possible before April 15.

These designated parks include:

“We are going to be conducting our deer control efforts with the USDA, who have wildlife biologists who are specifically trained at utilizing firearms to remove the deer,” said Boehne.

According to the program’s website, the partnership will be with trained wildlife biologists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS), who have firearms expertise and follow national best practices.

When management activities are happening, parks will be temporarily closed to keep residents and staff safe.

Boehne says this is not recreational hunting. Sharpshooters are experts, trained to complete the job since hunting isn’t much of an option in Baltimore City.

According to the Baltimore City’s Recreation and Parks website, residents may only hunt on private property with bows, and at least 150 yards from an occupied building.

“We’re also making sure that we are discharging the firearms in adequate areas that have a backdrop, so that’s basically just an area that minimizes [the] likelihood of ricochet. And we’re also making sure that we are staying far away from any occupied structures, like residents, homes, or businesses,” said Boehne.

Restore and protect the environment

Rec and Parks officials say their hope is that the program will help restore and protect wooded environments and help the community.

“Once all the deer are processed, we’re going to be able to donate that back to the Maryland food bank. And if we’re able to reach our harvest goal for the year, we’ll be able to provide about 40,000 servings here to Baltimore City residents in need,” Boehne said.

Other places in Maryland, such as Howard, Montgomery, and Baltimore Counties, have similar programs.

“We want to make sure that people have quality experiences in our park areas, and one of the ways that we can do that is by providing additional forest regeneration in these areas, “said Boehne.

To learn more about the deer management program, visit the Rec and Parks website.

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.