Category: CNN Regional

By Ellie Nakamoto-White

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    MILWAUKEE (WDJT) — Outside of the Mitchell Street Arts building, the sounds of the city are loud and constant.

But inside, the noise fades into something softer — brushes tapping on glasses, water gently rippling, and the quiet concentration of a woman practicing a centuries-old craft.

Vesile Yilmaz and her family came to Wisconsin years ago, originally from Istanbul, Turkey.

Now she considers herself a “modern-day caravan”, teaching the ancient art of ebru to people in southeast Wisconsin every other week.

“It’s such a unique form of art, and it’s quite different than what we know as art,” Yilmaz told CBS 58’s Ellie Nakamoto-White. “You just follow your intuition.”

Ebru, or traditional Turkish water marbling, dates back thousands of years to Central Asia and, according to Yilmaz, is recognized by UNESCO as a Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Its roots run deep — and so do the meanings behind its name.

“Eb means water, ru means surface like surface of the water, you’re working on the surface of the water,” Yilmaz said. “And ebru means cloud-like because every piece you make is unique, resembles clouds in the sky.”

It starts with hand-grinding pigments that she brings back from annual trips to Turkey.

Then, Yilmaz mixes a red seaweed extract into her water bath, essentially creating a texture she describes as skim milk so that the paint can float on top.

“Marbling art is very temperamental. The air humidity, air pressure, even environmental factors, everything impacts the quality of your work,” Yilmaz said. “You cannot really give a certain formula because everything is changing. Everything is depending on external factors.”

Once everything is set to her liking, Yilmaz takes a brush made of rosewood and horse hair and dips it into the paint before lightly tapping drops of it onto the water bath’s surface.

“When you first watch the paint spread on the water, you can’t believe that it’s real; it looks so magical, so mesmerizing,” Yilmaz said. “It’s very open-ended, it’s very forgiving, it’s all about the process and not the product, and it takes out the stress of creating and just lets you work with colors and paint and water.”

From there, it’s all about the imagination.

“Usually, you just get started, and then you let the water take control of the rest of the process,” Yilmaz said. “After you do it once, you get really hooked because it’s so captivating.”

Once the paint is down, Yilmaz will use other special tools to draw designs on top of the water’s surface.

Then, she lays a piece of paper onto the water, and seconds later, the paint design is transferred.

“It’s all about the process, embracing the unknown, and letting go of controls,” Yilmaz said.

Every other week, she teaches ebru classes at Mitchell Street Arts to spread her knowledge and culture in southeast Wisconsin.

“Creating Ebru art makes me feel like I’m in my home,” Yilmaz said. “Ebru is just like our mother tongue. When we start marbling, it just connects you, and people are curious to learn about Turkish culture and history.”

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 Deanna Sipe

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    ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — The North Carolina Supreme Court is upholding the conviction of an Asheville man in a viral video case from 2021 that sparked outrage.

The video showed a truck driven by Scott Everett Ford, 45, trying to run over Alex McPherson, also known as “Cat Man” due to his constant companion, a cat named Thomas.

After trying to run over McPherson, the video continues, showing Ford hitting a carriage that contained Thomas. Luckily, Thomas was not injured, only badly shaken.

As previously reported, Ford was convicted of felony cruelty to animals, felony obstruction of justice, and assault in 2022.

Ford served seven months in prison.

According to court records, the Supreme Court upheld the obstruction conviction, which was the only part of the case that could be appealed, as the North Carolina Court of Appeals previously ruled against Ford in 2022, upholding his animal cruelty charge.

McPherson was killed in June after being struck by a car on Patton Avenue.

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 Andie Bernhardt

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    MILWAUKEE (WDJT) — Ongoing vandalism in a Milwaukee neighborhood is causing major frustration among neighbors and business owners.

“It makes me upset, we’ve got a lot of hardworking people in the area, and we don’t need our property defaced,” said Steven Price, a Milwaukee resident.

Residents say graffiti is being drawn on their garages, fences and businesses in the Forest Home Hills neighborhood.

“When I saw all the graffiti on our garages, then I came to the store and I saw this, I said oh my God that can’t be happening,” said Alberto Aguirre, a Milwaukee resident. “That is going too far.”

Sodika Lasisi has owned SISI’s Food and Beverages for four years now. He says this month is the second time his shop has been recently defaced and this time he caught it all on camera.

“I just hope this can stop,” said Lasisi. “I hope they can catch the people that were doing it, because it’s going to cost a lot of money to take them off.”

Residents say the graffiti is a problem they can’t beat, saying it’s been an ongoing issue since the summer.

“We want this to stop,” said Aaguirre.

Now months later, with no solution in sight, they say they are hesitant to even pay to cover up the markings. Homeowners say they’ve been hit several times and graffiti keeps reappearing.

“Yeah, it’s really frustrating and that’s my concern,” said Lasisi. “That’s the reason I haven’t taken them off yet, because I’m thinking when I take them off, they are going to come back and paint them again.”

Residents say they want the people responsible to be accountable.

CBS 58 reached out to the Milwaukee Police Department for more information on this case and has not heard back yet.

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 Kimberly King

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    HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — A homeless North Carolina woman charged with murder was found not guilty by reason of insanity after a judge reviewed her lengthy psychiatric history.

In July 2023, Amber Nelson was arrested and charged after the body of Patricia Moniz, an 82-year-old Henderson County woman, was discovered. Multiple sources close to the investigation confirmed shortly after Moniz’s death that Nelson is homeless and Moniz had been letting her sleep in her home.

Authorities said that at the time of her arrest, Nelson had a long record, including charges of assault with a deadly weapon and theft.

On Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, a judge found Nelson not guilty by reason of insanity, citing numerous hospitalizations, episodes of extreme hallucinations, paranoia, bipolar disorder and self-harm.

While the ruling was not a surprise, it was a huge disappointment for the family of Patricia Moniz.

“I’m very distraught,” said Rebecca White, Moniz’s adult daughter. “We didn’t have a trial.”

White said her mother was kind to a fault, and she felt her mother had been coerced by a friend to take Nelson in because she had nowhere to stay. After two years waiting for justice, White said the ending is heartbreaking for her.

“She’s not going to be incarcerated. She’s going to be put into a mental hospital, but she could be out in 50 days.” Dr. Jill Volin, a forensic psychiatrist who works at Central Regional Hospital in Raleigh, testified Friday in detail before the judge about Nelson and her severe mental illness.

Volin talked about an episode in which Nelson stabbed her stomach three times to get “acid out of her body because she believed the acid would eat her organs from the inside.”

Volin told the judge that Nelson had a lengthy history of hallucinations and paranoia, including thoughts that robots were taking over her body at different points in her life. Volin testified at the time that Nelson killed Moniz that she was having a paranoid break and thought Moniz, who invited her into her home, was going to kill her.

But Moniz’s daughter said detectives told her they had a strong case.

“They said she knew what she was doing. There was evidence, by getting the knife and pulling the shades down, and then taking off in my mother’s car to Black Mountain,” said White.

“We are angry,” said Brittany Wallers, Moniz’s granddaughter. “We feel like the ball was dropped.”

“We don’t feel like there was justice, and no one deserved it more than my grandmother,” said Heather Parker, also Moniz’s granddaughter.

“They were not aggressive in the case.”

Several months before Nelson stabbed Moniz to death, Dr. Volin testified that she was having severe hallucinations that included a belief “Satan has taken her over.”

Volin testified that over the years, Nelson had been hospitalized and taken to emergency rooms but released prematurely, ultimately ending up on the streets and also becoming heavily addicted to drugs.

Volin also testified, however, that she believed Nelson had no drugs in her system at the time she stabbed Moniz to death.

According to Volin, Nelson was prescribed a range of anti-psychotics over the years, including Lemictal, a mood stabilizer to treat bipolar disorder.

When interviewing Nelson, Volin said, she acknowledged that she knew she had done wrong and that she had killed someone. But Volin maintained to the judge that her expert professional opinion was that at the time she stabbed Patricia Moniz to death, she was insane.

Volin said Nelson did express regret for her actions and told her she knew Moniz had tried to help her when no one else would. But for Patricia Moniz’s family, it’s little consolation to lose their beloved mother and grandmother, hoping North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services will continue to keep Nelson in custody for decades to come.

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 Jeff Nguyen

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    ORANGE COUNTY, California (KPIX) — A recent study found porch pirates steal about a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of packages nationwide every day, and an Orange County police department is getting creative in fighting back.

One in four Americans, or 64 million people, has had a package stolen at some point, and 9 million adults have had a package stolen in just the last 3 months.

Karen Gordon of Irvine says she’s been the victim of porch thefts about a dozen times over the past four years.

“Whether it’s groceries or these packages, you know, we’re all suffering from one degree to another degree over these crimes,” Gordon said.

Irvine police recently arrested a woman who was caught on security video allegedly stealing one of Gordon’s packages, an online order of toilet paper. The thief was in the apartment complex mailroom, appearing to treat it like a buffet, grabbing whatever looked appealing and walking out the door with her arms full of boxes.

Irvine Police Department Officer Ziggy Azarcon is part of the department’s property theft team, which increasingly uses social media platforms like Instagram with catchy campaigns, such as “Wanted Wednesday” and “Felony Friday,” to ask for the public’s help.

It seems to be working. Azarcon says package theft is down 11 percent so far this year compared to the same time last year.

He said the social media posts led to the arrest of a thief they nicknamed “Postal Malone,” so named because he resembled the artist Post Malone with a face tattoos. After the posts went up, tips poured in, and officers got their alleged suspect.

To catch porch pirates, patrol officers look for cars without license plates and warn that suspects often dress up as package or food delivery drivers to disguise themselves.

When so many packages are being delivered during the holiday season, there are ways to prevent porch theft.

Deliver packages to a secure locker Have a friend or neighbor pick up packages Use tracking or text alerts to follow the delivery Send packages to your work address Require a signature for delivery

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.