Will Smith is slamming new claims he once slept with “All of Us” actor Duane Martin.
A rep for the “Hitch” star, 55, dismissed the rumor made by Smith’s alleged former friend and assistant Brother Bilaal in an interview this week with Tasha K.
“This story is completely fabricated and the claim is unequivocally false,” the rep told TMZ, adding that the Oscar winner is now considering taking legal action against Bilaal.
During the interview, Bilaal said he once “opened the door to Duane’s dressing room and that’s when I see Duane having anal sex with Will.”
“There was a couch and Will was bent over the couch and Duane was standing up killing him, murdering him. It was murder in there,” he reportedly said.
Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, on Wednesday also broke her silence on Bilaal’s remarks.
“We suin’!” she told TMZ as she was leaving iHeartRadio in New York City.
The former “Red Table Talk” host, 52, last month said that she and Smith — whose marriage has long prompted speculation — are “working very hard” to reconcile. She also revealed last month the couple had been separated for six years when Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock at last year’s Academy Awards.
At the time of publication, Duane Martin, 58, had not responded to the claims made by Bilaal — who Tasha K described as “one of the closest people to Will, aside from Jada, to sit down and tell all about him.”
Martin had previously been married to “Little Shop of Horrors” actress Tisha Campbell since 1996. Campbell filed for divorce in 2018, which was finalized two years later.
This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
Iranian police arrested 300 people at a party in the central city of Semnan because the event allowed the mixing of men and women.
Colonel Ali Mirahmadi, deputy commander of Semnan Province’s law enforcement, announced the arrests at a “mixed-gender party” on November 14, “utilizing covert intelligence and surveillance tactics” at the gathering, which was held in a hall located on the outskirts of the county.
Accused of violating social norms, the 300 men and women were detained in a reflection of the increasing efforts by Iranian authorities to curb activities deemed inappropriate under the country’s strict Islamic codes. Mirahmadi also confirmed that the venue hosting the event was closed down for “trade violations.”
Separately, the Qom University of Medical Sciences has imposed academic suspensions on several students for organizing mixed-gender parties, accusing them of “undermining the social and educational structure and promoting permissiveness through social media activities.”
In addition to parties where both men and women are in attendance, some gatherings, called “hijab unveilings” — women in attendance do not wear the mandatory head scarf — have also seen police interventions.
The hijab became compulsory for women and girls over the age of 9 in 1981, two years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The move triggered protests that were swiftly crushed by the new authorities. Many women have flouted the rule over the years and pushed the boundaries of what officials say is acceptable clothing.
Women have also launched campaigns against the law, although many have been pressured by the state and forced to leave the country.
The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 while in police custody for an alleged hijab violation released a wave of anger that has presented the Islamic regime with its biggest challenge since the revolution.
The Women, Life, Freedom protests and civil disobedience against the compulsory hijab sparked by Amini’s death have swept the country, involving tens of thousands of Iranians, many of whom were already upset over the country’s deteriorating living standards.
The protests have also been buffeted by the participation of celebrities, sports stars, and well-known rights activists, prompting a special mention of such luminaries in the legislation.
More recently, the country has been put back on edge by the death of 17-year-old Armita Garavand in a Tehran subway in October.
Garavand was pronounced dead after slipping into a coma following an alleged confrontation with Tehran’s enforcers of strict dress-code laws.
In the face of the unrest, some religious and government figures have repeatedly advocated for a tougher stance by the government against offenders, even going as far as encouraging a “fire-at-will” approach against noncompliant women.
While protests against the crackdown and curbs on freedoms appear to be waning, resistance to the hijab is likely to remain a flashpoint, analysts say, as it is seen now as a symbol of the state’s repression of women and the deadly crackdown on society.
In a tragic turn of events, a charter bus transporting high school students was involved in a severe collision with a semi-truck on an Ohio highway on Tuesday morning. The catastrophic accident resulted in the death of six individuals and left 18 injured, according to officials.
The collision, which occurred approximately 26 miles east of Columbus on Interstate 70 in Licking County, involved five vehicles, including a Pioneer Trails charter bus from the Tuscarawas Valley Local School District in eastern Ohio, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol. The charter bus was transporting students and chaperones to a conference, according to The Associated Press.
A video recorded at the scene of the crash shows emergency crews rescuing survivors from the crash while multiple vehicles were engulfed in flames.
USA Crash on the I-70 in Licking County, Ohio, involving multiple vehicles; including a bus carrying High School students. 6 people on the bus died (11/14) pic.twitter.com/aUgQTRTkmP
Tragically, three passengers on the bus were pronounced dead at the scene, as reported by the Ohio State Highway Patrol on Tuesday night. The deceased passengers were identified as John W. Mosely, age 18, Jeffery D. Worrell, age 18, both from Mineral City, and Katelyn N. Owens, age 15, from Mineral City.
“This is our worst nightmare, when we have a bus full of children involved in a crash,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said during a press briefing at the crash site. “Prayers go out to the families, everyone who was on the bus.”
READ MORE: Pics: 8 killed in crash with suspected human smuggler
In addition to the fatalities on the bus, the highway patrol noted that all three occupants of one of the other passenger vehicles involved were also declared dead at the scene. The other three fatalities included Dave Kennat, age 56, from Navarre; Kristy Gaynor, age 39, from Zoar; and Shannon Wigfield, age 45, from Bolivar.
In the aftermath of the accident, 15 students and the bus driver were taken to local hospitals for treatment, while other students were escorted to a reunification site, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The drivers of the commercial vehicles involved received varied degrees of medical attention, with one treated at the scene and the other hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The charter bus was heading to an Ohio School Boards Association conference in Columbus, which was later canceled in light of the tragedy, according to The Associated Press.
This news article was partially created with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited and fact-checked by a human editor.
David DePape was found guilty in a San Francisco federal court on Thursday of attempting to kidnap former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulting her husband with a hammer after he broke into the couple’s San Francisco home last year.
The jury of 10 men and two women spent a day deliberating the two federal charges before reaching their verdict, concluding a high-profile and, at times, bizarre trial that lasted only four days.
DePape sat quietly beside his attorneys as the verdict was read, but did not outwardly react to the decision.
The case consumed the nation for more than a year, with former President Trump and conservative commentators using the attack to rile up their far-right base and swipe at the Democratic congresswoman, raising broader concerns over political violence and the safety of public officials and their families.
The jurors reached their decision even with the defense’s claims that DePape, 43, was motivated not by violence, but by a network of political conspiracy theories he harbored against Democrats and other public figures and elected officials.
He faces up to a combined 50 years in prison.
Despite the overwhelming and highly publicized evidence against DePape from police body-camera video and interviews — as well as his multiple confessions to the attack — it was never a straightforward assault case because the federal trial focused on his intent, not whether he committed the violent act.
Still-pending state charges accuse DePape of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary, and threats to a public official and their family. But the federal trial centered on whether DePape was motivated to assault Paul Pelosi and attempt to kidnap Nancy Pelosi because of her official duties in Congress.
Prosecutors therefore had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that DePape intended to kidnap the lawmaker “on account of or during the performance of her official duties” and that he assaulted her husband in an effort to “impede, intimidate or interfere” with her official duties or in retaliation for her work.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Laura Vartain Horn and Helen Gilbert provided a clear picture of DePape’s “violent plan” on the night he traveled from his East Bay residence to the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights home in October 2022. They reviewed his recent Amazon purchases and internet search history — including his paid subscription to a service that provided email and home addresses — to demonstrate how he spent months preparing for the attack.
The prosecutors showed jurors the graphic police body-camera video of DePape bludgeoning Paul Pelosi with the hammer, fracturing the 82-year-old man’s skull and seriously injuring his right arm and left hand.
“This is the moment where Paul Pelosi ends up attacked in the dead of night in his own home, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood,” Gilbert said in her closing argument as a still frame of the moment before the attack was displayed on courtroom screens.
Jurors heard portions of a recorded police interview in which DePape said he considered Nancy Pelosi the Democrats’ “leader of the pack,” and claimed he would “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to corruption and other unfounded claims of human trafficking and child abuse by public figures. He told the officer that the former speaker would have to wheel herself into Congress, where other lawmakers could see the “f— consequence to being the most evil f— people on the planet.”
“She was the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Gilbert said. “She was the head of the Democratic Party in the House. That was her job. And because of her job, the defendant targeted her.”
Gilbert pointed out that DePape brought zip ties, rope and duct tape as additional evidence that he intended to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage.
“This is attempted kidnapping. He attempted to seize and confine her, and he brought the tools to do it,” she said. And when he learned that Nancy Pelosi was in Washington and wouldn’t be home for days, Gilbert argued that DePape instead “inflicted the punishment he meant for Nancy Pelosi” on her husband.
“That is retaliation,” she said.
Paul Pelosi also offered chilling details of the break-in and assault, testifying that he knew he was in “serious danger” and that his only hope was calling 911.
“There are still lumps on my head. If I run my fingers, I can still feel dents and lumps,” he told the jurors. “I’ve made the best effort I possibly can to not relive this.”
DePape’s attorneys, federal public defenders Jodi Linker and Angela Chuang, never disputed that their client “did horrible things” and “committed serious crimes.” Instead, they argued that he was inspired by elaborate and baseless conspiracy theories that may have seemed “bogus” but were nonetheless his deeply held beliefs.
In a powerful closing argument, Chuang said the case was not a “who done it,” but a “why done it.”
“Mr. DePape didn’t go to that house because he had some particular fixation against only Nancy Pelosi,” she said. “He didn’t go there because of anything she did in her official duties or as speaker of the House.”
The Pelosis’ home was only the first stop in a cross-country plan to target other powerful people in America he believed were involved in QAnon-like conspiracy theories of criminal activity, Chuang said. His goal was to “root out the corruption of the ruling class, the cabal, to stop the molestation of children and expose the truth to everyone.”
“They want you to believe this was just about Nancy Pelosi, that he was singularly focused. But that’s not true,” Chuang said.
DePape rejected the argument in testimony Tuesday that he had plans to kidnap the former speaker, or that he assaulted her husband because of her role in Congress.
He detailed his descent into political extremism and far-right conspiracy theories, and claimed that the Pelosis’ home was only the first step in his broader anti-corruption plan.
“I didn’t want this to escalate into something where (Paul Pelosi) would get hurt,” he told the jury.
The defense also scrutinized Nancy Pelosi’s schedule in efforts to convince the jury that the former speaker was not always engaged in official business.
Their point was that DePape could not be guilty of the federal charges in connection with the lawmaker’s official duties, because there were many times in her schedule when she was engaging in politics, such as campaign fundraising or lunches with advocacy organizations or getting a haircut, and not executing her job as speaker of the House.
Chuang argued that DePape was inspired to break into the Pelosis’ home not because of any law Nancy Pelosi helped pass, or how she was running the House, but because of her political activities with the national Democratic Party and what he described in police interviews as political attacks against Trump.
In comparison, Chuang explained that DePape planned to also target Gov. Gavin Newsom because he had recently signed a gun-control bill, more clearly an official duty.
“(Nancy Pelosi) has a work life, a personal life and a political life,” Chuang said, adding that while she was a member of Congress and speaker of the House, “that doesn’t mean she is always performing official duties.”
The argument was strong enough, it seemed, that after closing arguments Wednesday morning the jury needed 24 hours to reach a verdict.
A hearing to set a trial on his state charges is scheduled for Nov. 29.
President Xi Jinping said China wants to be friends with the U.S. and said his nation won’t fight a war with anyone, one of his clearest remarks yet proclaiming a desire for peaceful ties between the world’s two largest economies.
In a speech to business executives in San Francisco shortly after meeting U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Xi said China “never bets against the United States” and “has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it.”
“Whatever stage of development it may reach, China will never pursue hegemony or expansion, and will never impose its will on others,” Xi said. “China does not seek spheres of influence and will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone.”
The comments came hours after the two leaders emerged from their first meeting together in a year, where they hashed out a handful of deals to try to address the fentanyl crisis, restore high-level military communications and open a dialogue over artificial intelligence. Biden had earlier hailed the talks as “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.”
In his speech, Xi sought to address broader concerns in the U.S. that China posed a threat to American dominance around the globe, both economically and militarily. Tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea have escalated in recent years, raising the risk that tensions over tariffs and export controls would lead to a direct conflict.
Xi stressed the similarities between Americans and Chinese, recalling his time in Iowa nearly four decades ago — long before he ascended to the presidency and became China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Xi also indicated that China will once again send pandas to American zoos, resuming a “panda diplomacy” program symbolic of stable relations that appeared to be ending this year.
“We’ll be glad to see a confident, open, ever-growing and prosperous U.S.,” Xi said. “Likewise, the United States should not bet against China, or interfere in China’s internal affairs. We should instead welcome a peaceful, stable and prosperous China.”
Investors Skeptical
Those in the room with Xi on Wednesday largely took his remarks to mean that the business environment may improve.
“What I think President Xi did in this speech is attempt to reach out to U.S. businesses and say we are prepared to be constructive,” said Stephen Orlins, the president of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations which co-hosted the dinner. He said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that the remarks seemed like a recognition by Chinese leadership that a drop in foreign direct investment in the country “is partly based on Chinese policies.”
“This was a signal from the top to begin to do it better and attract FDI,” Orlins added.
At the event, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk told the official Xinhua News Agency that he was “full of hope” for the development of U.S.-China relations, adding in an interview with the state media outlet that he hoped that the two nations “can work together to promote regional prosperity.”
Investors remained skeptical, with Chinese stocks sliding as traders trimmed positions after the much-anticipated meeting yielded an outcome that was largely in line with expectations. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index finished Thursday down 1.4%, among the worst performers in Asia.
The two leaders are working to normalize ties between their nations at a critical inflection point in their relationship. Tensions have run high in the last year after the Pentagon shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon, and as Washington and Beijing clash over everything from national security and technology to Taiwan.
“The number one question for us is, are we adversaries or partners?” Xi said, referring to U.S.-China ties. “If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, the most consequential geopolitical challenge and the pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policy making, misguided actions and unwanted results.”
The evening also put Xi at the table with some of the world’s most important business leaders, offering him a chance to talk up China at a time when its post-pandemic reopening has failed to spur the level of global growth many had hoped it would deliver.
Beijing has stepped up efforts to attract foreign investors this year, pledging again this week to strengthen policies to attract overseas capital. But its tightening of national security controls and state messaging that foreign actors pose spy risks — along with years of policy crackdowns — have left some skeptical.
The event hasn’t all been warm words. At the conclusion of his press conference Wednesday after the meeting, Biden said he still believed his Chinese counterpart was a dictator, casting a shadow over the talks.
An unlikely friendship has blossomed over the last five years between a group of local veterans and young Korean Americans who have taken over upkeep of the Korean War Memorial on the North Shore.
The Korean War Veterans Association of Western Pennsylvania Chapter 74 tended to the memorial until about five years ago as members of the group — which has fewer than 10 active members — became unable to clean the monument and the area around it, which was littered with syringes, cigarette butts and other trash.
good service
That’s when young members of the Korean Association of Greater Pittsburgh stepped in. Volunteers have been cleaning the memorial every Saturday for the last five years as a way to thank the veterans for their service while remaining in touch with their history.
“It’s really a piece of symbolism for the sacrifices during the Korean War and the help we got from America,” said David Uh, 17, a student at North Allegheny Senior High School and president of the Korean War Veterans Memorial maintenance team.
“We just would not be here today if it was not for these veterans,” he said. “So to me and all the other South Koreans, and I’m sure a lot of Americans, this memorial and its symbolism … it has a lot of meaning to us.”
On Nov. 11, members of the Korean Association marched in the annual Veterans Day Parade. Korean War veterans were also in the parade, waving to Downtown crowds from buses.
The young volunteers said their work on the memorial has also helped them to connect with their cultural history.
“Working with other Korean Americans who have not as much of their Korean identity put together, it was good for me to learn more about the history of my people and connect on a deeper level with the Korean community,” said Hanseung Oh, 17, a North Allegheny senior and former president of the maintenance team.
Through their volunteer work, the students have made a connection with the veterans of Chapter 74, which had 650 members at its peak.
“Their efforts have really impacted our lives because if these veterans didn’t do what they did then all of us wouldn’t be here, so that’s really the main reason why I feel compelled to help out with the memorial,” Alexander Kim, 17, said.
When he and the other young members of the Korean Association arrive to clean the memorial, the mess can be overwhelming sometimes.
“It’s quite shocking,” he said. “Whenever we go down to clean the memorial, we see a lot of shocking objects, really. I’ve seen everything from syringes to dead fishes. It’s quite dirty.
“Whenever you see that not everyone respects the memorial the same way that we do, it’s quite disheartening,” Kim said.
MiRan Surh, president of the Korean Association of Greater Pittsburgh, said that she decided to spearhead the project after she attended a lunch for the veterans and visited the memorial. She noticed it lacked any Korean representation.
“I just wanted to do something,” Surh, 62, said. “This is a Korean War veteran’s memorial and there’s no Koreans. I always say if you don’t know where you are coming from, you don’t know where you are going. Knowing your history is important.
“I do this work because it is the right thing to do,” she said. “When the veterans left their home to fight against the communists, they were in their teens. Now they are here in their 90s and our teens are standing by them, with respect and love.”
Surh said the young members of the Korean Association have learned a lot from the veterans they call their “grampas.”
Members of the Korean Veterans Association say the volunteers’ efforts have meant the world.
“We can’t express our thanks enough,” said Chuck Marwood, a 92-year-old Navy veteran in Korea and retired steelworker.
“The good thing about this program is that they’re getting instilled. At school, they don’t do too much teaching about [the Korean War],” Marwood said. “We try to tell them the importance of the Korean War and what it meant to the South Korean people.”
As thanks, Marwood said members of the Korean War Veterans Association banded together to offer an annual college scholarship to one of the volunteers who takes part in the cleaning.
“That is our way, instead of saying thank you, we thought that was something that could really help them,” Marwood said.
In a small square crypt behind frosted glass in subtropical Michoacán is incontrovertible proof of the cost of California cannabis.
The tomb just within the high cemetery gates of the Panteón Municipal de Pátzcuaro, flanked by sunflowers in twin blue vases, holds all that can be found of Ulises Anwar Ayala Andrade.
Sharing the crypt is what remains of Ulises’ teen son, a convivial boy named after his father, but whom everyone affectionately called “Chino.”
“I live because I have to live,” said Josefina Rodriguez, shown here in the untouched room of Chino. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
For two decades, “Ulises Zapatero” sold shoes in Pátzcuaro’s open air market, beckoning passersby to his racks of colorful Nikes and Pumas.
The shoe stock was bought with high-interest loans, and the Ayalas carried a mortgage on the family of five’s simple house in the outskirts above Pátzcuaro. Struggling with those debts, Ulises obtained a tourist visa for the United States in early 2020 and, intending to find work, boarded a bus north.
Joining him was 16-year-old Chino.
Their quest for U.S. dollars would take them deep into California’s Emerald Triangle at the height of a runaway cannabis market, to a crude shed on a Mendocino County farm, beside other Mexican laborers in the underground economy.
Traveling in the other direction were coffins.
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From the southern Mojave Desert to the mist-shrouded mountains in the northern ranges, the California green rush was exploiting and killing workers.
A man walks down the street in the historic center of Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, famed for its artisans and Spanish colonial architecture. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Relaxed criminal penalties and expanding markets had set off a massive boom in illegal cultivation. Even on licensed farms, California regulators failed to protect workers in the labor-intensive industry.
A Los Angeles Times investigation documented widespread exploitation, wage theft and disregard for worker safety and housing.
The newspaper found 44 farm-related deaths, surveying just a five-year period in only 10 counties. Among them was an 8-month old infant who died in Trinity County from an undetermined cause. The rest were workers.
All but five of the deceased were immigrants.
A third of them came from Mexico.
Josefina Rodriguez, 47, weeps while talking about her son and husband, who were murdered on a cannabis grow in Mendocino County. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
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The Ayala family lived outside of Pátzcuaro, a tourist arts haven of Spanish colonial plazas and red-tiled roofs. Ulises sold tennis shoes in Pátzcuaro’s lively central market, where a multitude of vendors called “pásale” — come on by — to peddle their wares of lake fish, dried hominy, home goods and woven shawls and fine embroidery.
At a folding table near Ulises’ shoe racks, his wife, Josefina, ladled out bowls of aromatic pozole.
At night, the family returned to their hillside colony of two-story houses erected like barnacles on the still-visible foundations of one-room casitas. Just a decade ago, one out of five domiciles still had dirt floors. Today, a third of the streets remain rutted clay, traversable only by foot.
The Ayalas could afford just the basics — an old car, a little furniture. The loans to restock Ulises’ racks dragged the family down. The reliable sales of Josefina’s pozole lifted it up. All night long, the stew’s garlic perfume filled the still air of the concrete house, simmering for market the next day.
“We lead a life, well, that is not so good,” Josefina told Ulises as she tried to persuade him not to leave the country to find more work, “but we are together.”
Ulises Anwar Ayala Andrade, 42, and his 17-year-old son, Ulises Anwar Ayala Rodriguez, aka Chino, are entombed together at the municipal cemetery in in Pátzcuaro, Mexico. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
For Ulises, it was not enough.
And there was the question of Chino’s direction.
“He didn’t see much for himself in studying,” said the teenager’s closest childhood friend, Guille Perez.
The boy’s bedroom was filled with name brand street wear — Adidas backpacks and Bad Bunny T-shirts, and a rack of 13 colorful tennis shoes. During long walks with Guille, the visions Chino shared of his future revolved around earning money. “He planned to work,” Guille said, “and maybe someday buy something, like a car, a house …”
In early 2020, with shoe sales slumping and debts mounting, Ulises and Chino left to find work in Dallas.
It was a bust.
Ulises had been promised a job hanging mechanical doors. But in the opening days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the work was meager. He failed to earn even $300 a week.
Josefina Rodriguez hoists her granddaughter, Sofia, at her pozole stand in Pátzcuaro’s town market. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
“I’m worse than ever,” he told Josefina by phone.
Come home, Josefina said.
But Ulises heard from an old friend from Pátzcuaro, whose family had moved to Northern California. She said her brother in Mendocino County could give Ulises a lot of work.
“Hay mucho trabajo,” she told Ulises. The pay would be enormous by his standards: $10,000 for three months.
Ulises agreed to go to California. Soon, Chino followed.
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Illegal cannabis has a controversial but largely tolerated footing in Mendocino County.
The crop is the economic lifeblood for small, stagnant towns like Willits, devastated by the closing of sawmills. The sheriff estimates the county’s redwood forests house more than 5,000 cannabis operations, the vast majority likely to never go legal and unlikely to ever be visited by the sheriff’s two-man narcotics squad.
Siblings Guille and Estefanny Perez find it difficult to understand the murder of their best friend, Chino. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Even on the most peaceful homestead farm, to convert crops into cash requires dealing with the drug trade. Guns are common, as are armed robberies, shootouts and other mayhem. The first season Ulises and Chino were in Mendocino, a pair of Las Vegas security guards donned body armor and tried to heist a money delivery to an illegal operation in nearby Covelo. The robbers failed to make a clean getaway, leading to an armed standoff with police that ended when the ringleader shot off the top of his head in a botched suicide.
The cannabis community is also deeply segregated by race and class. Growers who own their own land are predominantly white. Those who work it are predominantly people of color, such as traveling work crews of older Hmong who immigrated decades ago, young Argentinians staying only for the summer, and crews assembled by Mexican labor contractors.
The latter are frequently branded “cartel,” a label that both creates a class of outsiders and discounts the suffering of those on that side of that fence.
The purple PT Cruiser, parked askew below a cannabis greenhouse. (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
“We live in fear of the cartels,” said an older white resident and longtime grower outside Willits, speaking of the shared conviction within her rural community of cannabis farmers that if there is bloodshed, a “cartel” can somehow be blamed. Another resident contended Mexican workers come from a “second world” country so violent that they value life less than do “Caucasians.”
Mendocino County has actually had no cases, arrests or prosecutions tied to Mexican narcotics cartels.
But those dying on Mendocino County cannabis farms since California legalized weed in 2016 have all been Latino workers.
In keeping with statewide patterns found by The Times, four of the men were laborers poisoned by carbon monoxide from greenhouse generators. Four others were murdered, including 19-year-old Ramon Naranjo Casteneda, a U.S. citizen who had lived with his father in Mexico. His body was dumped on the highway outside of Covelo, a holster for trimming shears on his belt and still smelling of fresh weed.
A ninth man, a San Jose flea market vendor seeking to support his family during the COVID-19 shutdown, vanished and is presumed dead.
Chris Gamble during police questioning. (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
Though state and federal worker-protection laws cover such laborers, those deaths and dozens more identified by The Times were not investigated by labor agencies. Their absence from the record makes the cannabis industry appear safer than it is, avoiding scrutiny or protections that might prevent additional deaths.
The Department of Industrial Relations, responsible for labor safety in California, said in a press office email that it “takes all worker deaths extremely seriously.” In response to stories published in The Times, the agency said it was educating sheriffs on legal requirements to report workplace deaths and also had conferred with state cannabis regulators, though it would not release public records showing it had done so.
When presented by The Times with details of dozens of farm deaths, the agency opened a single investigation — into the October 2021 carbon monoxide poisoning of Michael Puttre.
Celebrants at a fateful baptism party include Gadiel Ortega (far left), Ulises Ayala (far right). (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
Puttre was asphyxiated by fumes from a generator. He had been working as a building contractor at a state-licensed cannabis farm in Humboldt County. The owner, contesting a $34,000 fine for failure to provide a safe sleeping space, disavowed responsibility.
“What Mr. Puttre did with his free time and sleeping arrangements was his decision,” the farmer’s lawyer wrote to a state investigator.
Only through a sheriff’s deputy did the investigator learn Puttre’s sleeping quarters was a 30-foot hoop house, the kind used to grow cannabis.
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Ulises knew the man offering him work in California.
There was a time even when he and Jose Manuel Archundia Martinez were business partners, selling shoes at the tianguis— small markets — outside Pátzcuaro, traveling from village to village.
Gadiel Ortega repeats for sheriff’s deputies Chris Gamble’s explanation for the missing cannabis workers. (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
The fortunes of the men diverged greatly after Archundia moved to the United States.
After a decade in the country, the social media pages of the Archundia family flash totems of prosperity — a dancing show horse, expensive trucks and racing cars, and gold chains adorned, in one case, with a gold AK-47, and in another, a fighting rooster.
But whereas Archundia lived on the expansive ranch of a prominent local housing developer, he sent his cannabis crew — Ulises and Chino and another man and youth — to stay beside the greenhouses they tended, in an unpainted plywood shed.
The workers had access to the bathroom of a nearby cabin but mostly showered with water from buckets hung to warm in the sun. They relaxed on a pair of couches parked outside beneath the trees. The dirt around the shed was littered with chip bags and beer bottles.
Worker tents in a state-licensed Trinity County cannabis farm, a year after county citations for housing violations and the unexplained death of an infant. State cannabis investigators also inspected the farm, before and after the death, but its license remains active. (Trinity County Health Department/TNS)
Josefina came twice briefly to visit and formed an instant dislike.
She was distressed to find Ulises eating instant ramen, and to see her husband and son deslumbraban— dazzled — by the Archundia money, the cars and trucks. Ulises even changed his Facebook profile to a big red truck like one in the Archundia drive. He asked Josefina to stay in California.
She refused.
“My son, I don’t pay attention to any of it,” Josefina at one point told Chino. “Because there are things very valuable to me: to be here, to have my mother, and have [my children], and have my job, and have peace.”
She returned to Pátzcuaro alone, holding on to the belief Ulises and Chino would follow.
Ulises Anwar Ayala Rodriguez, aka Chino, hours before his death. (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
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It rained in the night, and by early morning one Sunday in April 2021, the dirt lane that sloped down the Mendocino County ridge was slick with mud. Gadiel Ortega Hernandez told his girlfriend to drop him off at the gate, and the portly man carefully picked his way down the hill to reach work.
Through the thick woods he could barely see the poles of a grow house, but rounding a curve, Ortega was in the clearing. Before him loomed three large greenhouses terraced into the slopes, each teeming with young cannabis plants. It was April and they were still small, but being pushed toward early flowering with a double dose of artificial light at night, sun during the day.
Given the early hour and the tequila consumption at the boss’ ranch the night before, Ortega didn’t expect to see anyone moving. But a light-blocking tarp had already been pulled from one large greenhouse. And tilted at an odd angle on the slope below it was the PT Cruiser that Ortega’s coworkers had used to come home from the party, the purple car’s passenger door hanging open.
They got up with a lot of spirit to work! Ortega thought. They arrived so drunk they didn’t even park.
Yet Ulises and Chino were nowhere in sight.
The plywood shack where Ulises and Chino and two other workers bunked on Gamble’s cannabis farm, washing from a hanging bucket. (Mendocino County Superior Court/TNS)
Instead, coming down from the tiny bunkhouse Ortega shared with the other farmworkers was Chris Gamble, the tousled middle-aged man who leased this land and owned two adjacent parcels where the crew was adding greenhouses. In Gamble’s arms was what looked like a white comforter.
“Qué pasó Chris?” Ortega asked.
“Nada. No pasó nada,” Gamble replied. “I fought with Ulises.” Gamble clasped his hands together, fingers pointing like a gun, acting out for Ortega a scenario in which Gamble claimed Ulises had threatened him.
So now, Gamble said, the father and son from Mexico didn’t work there anymore.
“Se fueron lejos,” Gamble said. They went far away.
Gamble, in his mid-40s with a paunch and bowl-cut hair, could look unimposing when needed, like confronted by someone with a gun, or standing for a police mug. He provoked vastly contradictory impressions.
His mother called him “granola.” A neighbor said he was “sweet,” even if he did once intentionally lock the fire marshal onto his property. In a courtroom feud with a neighbor over his barking pitbull, Gamble produced an elaborate narrative in the dog’s defense, replete with reconstructed conversations, and 17 character witnesses who vouched not only for the dog but called its master “caring,” “warm,” “respectable,” and “kind.”(For all that, Gamble still was ordered to restrain his pitbull, Guinness.)
Yet Gamble’s ex-wife and former girlfriend lodged domestic abuse complaints against him and sought the protection of court restraining orders. Gamble was ordered into anger management class, and still remained on criminal probation, forbidden from owning the many handguns and the assault rifle stashed in his ridge-top cabin. There was an order to pay child support, and warrants and citations for failing to appear in court, resisting arrest, burning without a permit and entering a closed disaster area.
To his Mexican business partner, who typically added a vulgarity to the label, Gamble was a “marijuana hippie loco.”
Cannabis had been Gamble’s means of support for two decades, supplementing a meager disability check. He said seizures prevented him from working at the family sawmill in Potter Valley, or making use of his community college training in medical aid and firefighting.
Year after year, Gamble’s cannabis ventures suffered misfortune. After his workers walked off the job halfway through the 2019 season, he was ready to turn over control of the farm to a neighbor down the road who said he could expand the yield with light-controlled greenhouses: Manuel Archundia. In return, Gamble would receive a 30% cut in whatever crop Archundia produced, typical of the sharecropping arrangements popularized with the expansion of illegal farming.
Gamble called Archundia “the bank.” Archundia fronted the money and goods for Gamble’s cannabis operation. And Archundia recruited the work crew: Ulises and Chino, along with Ortega and the son of Ortega’s girlfriend.
It wasn’t an easy relationship. Gamble complained about the Spanish-speaking workers, saying they didn’t know what they were doing. And the workers came to regard Gamble as reclusive and odd, an impression reinforced for Ortega that Sunday morning.
Ortega peered within the PT Cruiser. Ulises’ phone and Costco card were on the seat. Water streamed from a hose and across the floorboard. The early morning wash seemed strange, but Ortega was not yet suspicious.
He turned his back on Gamble and set to work, draining rainwater sagging the greenhouse tarps. Gamble lingered for awhile, halfheartedly helping, then drifted off.
Only when Ortega was done with the greenhouses did he take the trail to the bunkhouse, an unheated shed barely large enough to accommodate a camp cot used by Ortega and the bunkbed where Ulises and Chino shared the bottom berth while another worker took the top.
Ortega saw the wet floor, the tossed clothing — and only then noticed the puddle of blood outside in the dirt.
Covertly, he charged his cell phone off a greenhouse generator, then fled.
By the time Archundia picked up his worker from the ridge road, Ortega was weeping.
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In Chris Gamble’s calculus, violence was a cost factor in the cannabis business.
Over the years, he had been shot at, hit with a bean bag bullet, tied up with zip ties, and repeatedly ripped off.
“If your guy gets shot and murdered, you get nothing and you lose another friend,” he told a judge. “It’s the black market, sir. Nothing is guaranteed.”
Archundia operated by different math. The first thing he did after collecting the weeping Ortega from the road was have one of his English-speaking sons summon the sheriff. The son made only a brief attempt at hiding the fact the missing men were workers on the family’s cannabis grow.
Deputies rousted a freshly showered Gamble from bed. They found a collection of prohibited guns, 345 pounds of dried cannabis flower, 800 cartridges of cannabis oil concentrate, and three greenhouses filled with young plants — a crop Gamble estimated was worth $1 million.
In a still-smoking fire pit down in the woods, they found burnt tires, charred chickens and two headless corpses.
That Gamble had killed the missing Ulises and Chino was evident: There was gunpowder on his hands, blood on his belt, 9 mm casings outside the bunkhouse and blood on the ground, the walls and the cot.
But “to this day,” said deputy district attorney Scott McMenomey, “I don’t know why he killed them.”
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Details of the events leading up to the deaths of Ulises and Chino come from cellphone texts, court testimony and their killer’s own retelling.
April 24, 2021 began sweetly.
“Buen día, mi amor,” Ulises texted to his wife, the last Josefina would hear from her husband.
It was to be a day of celebration.
First, the fiesta in the woods, where Gamble said Archundia staged a large cockfight on Gamble’s land, replete with taco stand and beer truck. Archundia and his workers denied the existence of the fighting roosters, but police found many betting slips and leg bands for cockfights.
Later that day the party moved to Archundia’s ranch 10 minutes away, to celebrate the baptism of a grandson. Cellphone photos show Ulises with the other workers, their arms around one another, beside a shiny red truck. In another, Chino sported a rare open grin, revealing braces, as he stood in front of a children’s bouncing house.
There was plenty of tequila, and a minor drunken fight. Gamble remarked to one of Archundia’s sons that the laborers from Pátzcuaro, now on their second season, were “worthless” — at least as far as skills in growing cannabis went.
After dark, Ulises and Chino drove back to the farm in the Cruiser, taking Gamble with them. The two other workers went off into Willits to sleep.
The rest of the story came only from Gamble, who took the stand during his double-murder trial. Over the course of four hours, Gamble provided a characteristically elaborate version of events:
The headlamps of the PT Cruiser threw light on a black bear crossing the road as they pulled up to the gate, Gamble said, so he gave Ulises his 9 mm pistol to scare off the animal. Then it started to drizzle, and Gamble ordered the workers to help him pull off the heavy tarps that normally shielded the greenhouse lights from view, so the plants could soak up the rain. Chino obeyed, but Ulises refused, saying that was not what Archundia wanted.
“If you can’t follow directions, you don’t have a job here,” Gamble threatened, speaking in his poor mix of Spanish and English.
Ulises reddened, and waved the gun about. Gamble lunged for the pistol, and it fired, shooting Ulises in the neck and dropping him dead to the ground.
Gamble stumbled out of the bunkhouse. He could not stop Chino from entering and seeing his father. Gamble said he tried to make himself look “real small” and unthreatening, but Chino took his father’s Ruger off a shelf, and he came after Gamble.
So Gamble shot the boy, another fatal wound to the neck.
The rusty revolver in Chino’s hands was special to Ulises exactly because it was so decrepit, Gamble said.
First, the revolver had no firing pin, so could not shoot a bullet unless the end of a toothpick was inserted into the hole of the missing mechanism.
Second, the cylinder would fall out unless held in place with two hands. When Chino fell, the gun hit the ground and the loose cylinder rolled out. Gamble noticed it was empty.
Chino had no bullets.
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At first, Gamble said, he sat in the rain, trying to breathe, his mind a muddle.
Then he thought of his $1 million crop.
“The police would be here … and I had a huge sum of marijuana there that is, ultimately, how I sustain my family and myself,” he told the jury. “And the thought of losing that …
“That’s a huge loss, you know, life-altering loss.”
He couldn’t move the weed — both trucks on the farm were inoperable, and Archundia’s purple Cruiser had no hitch.
Gamble believed his partner would share his interest in protecting the crop above the disappearance of two Mexican workers. He expected the two men would talk, and Archundia and his sons would help him figure out the “logistics.”
“I didn’t think that they would call the police,” Gamble said.
“I mean, I really didn’t.”
Gamble set about to “lessen the shock” of the crime scene, so that when Archundia and his men saw it, they wouldn’t just shoot him right there and then.
He dragged the bodies of Ulises and Chino from the bunkhouse down to the Cruiser, and went back to his house for a steak knife. He had decided to remove the heads.
Then Gamble drove the corpses to his burn pile in the woods.
He threw in tires. He grabbed trash. In his haste to build a hot fire, he also tossed in a burlap sack. Only too late did he realize it held living roosters from the cockfight, he said.
Then Gamble drove the Cruiser past Archundia’s ranch, until he came to a field with hogs. He threw them the heads.
He had just finished up washing out the bloody Cruiser and bunkhouse when Ortega showed up for work.
From the witness stand, Gamble indicated an area on a map where he had seen the hogs. The judge put the trial into recess and every available deputy and investigator left the courthouse to walk the fields in a futile search for skulls.
In May, Gamble was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole for the first-degree murder of Chino Ayala, second-degree murder of Ulises Ayala, and felonious abuse of animals for the burning of chickens. From Wasco State Prison, his case on appeal, Gamble declined to talk to a reporter.
“I am fighting for my life and my freedom,” he wrote to The Times.
But in a now-sealed pre-sentencing report, one that Gamble said is biased and erroneous, a probation officer quoted the convicted murderer calling his victims “drug users” and “not good for society.”
In an appeal for leniency, Gamble offered the probation officer a final justification.
He claimed his Mexican farm manager, the shoe salesman he incinerated, the boy he beheaded, all were “cartel.”
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The California murders hit hard in Pátzcuaro, which enjoys a relative reprieve from the violence that stigmatizes some other parts of Mexico.
The Ayala family had not been told about the beheadings — that was learned two years later when the murder case went to court, the horrible news gleaned secondhand because Josefina could not afford to attend the trial.
Josefina, her family, and Chino’s friends battled immobilizing grief and depression. For days Josefina couldn’t bring herself to work. She relied on sleeping pills. And the family’s financial predicament worsened. Ulises had never received all of the promised wages, though Archundia’s sister sent $900 collected through GoFundMe to help with the funerals. For two years, Josefina could not pay the mortgage.
Guille Perez, Chino’s best friend, retreated within his house, then within himself. An acquaintance from the United States warned him the deaths of Mexicans gathered little attention across the border, dispiriting Perez further. He had trouble accepting that Chino’s killing was real.
“Until now,” he said in a voice so soft it barely carried across his living room, “I did not acknowledge that he had died.”
The Ayala family slowly adjusted. Ulises and Josefina’s eldest child, Tania, reopened her father’s shoe stall. Their youngest, Aldo, quit school to help at the market. And Josefina repainted their brown house to a bright aquatic blue. On most days, she is at the market in her red and white apron, chatting with customers as she serves pozole.
But there is a hollowness in her life.
“In fact, I’m not fine,” she said in Spanish, her voice quaking.
After Mark Russell Sr. stole his grandmother’s car to go joyriding, his family hoped a stint in juvenile detention would straighten him out.
Russell was a wild Baltimore teenager in the mid-1990s, reeling from the death of his father, a disabled alcoholic he had spent his early life both caring for and fearing, he said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun this week. When he was about 13 years old, he landed at Cheltenham Youth Detention Center for the first of three stays between about 1995 and 1997.
During his confinement, a guard sexually abused him, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday. His grandmother, his caretaker, died during the same period, he said. Instead of turning his life around, juvenile detention left him with lasting scars that he said helped fuel years of drug addiction.
Mark Russell Sr. is among 22 men and three women who are plaintiffs represented by the law firms Levy Konigsberg LLP and Brown Kiely LLP in a lawsuit against the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services under the Child Victims Act. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun/TNS)
Now 41, Russell is part of a group of more than two dozen men and women who allege in the lawsuit that they were sexually abused by staff at the juvenile detention center in Prince George’s County decades ago, some when they were as young as 10. The Sun does not identify people who have been sexually abused without their consent, but Russell agreed to use his name in this story and is named in the complaint.
The 25 plaintiffs join at least 50 others who are suing the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services in a series of six lawsuits that were filed in October, when a state law lifting the statute of limitations on sexual abuse lawsuits took effect.
In one of those early October suits, 10 men and women identified in court filings as John Does and Jane Does filed a complaint alleging abuse at Cheltenham in particular. An answer from defendants in the six cases is due in January, according to a spokesperson for the four firms bringing those cases.
In the latest complaint, filed Thursday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, attorneys at New York firm Levy Konigsberg LLP and Maryland-based Brown Kiely LLP wrote that Cheltenham has been for decades a “hotbed of sexual abuse.” Most of the victims in the case are men, but three women also said they were abused at the co-ed facility. Many, like Russell, came from Baltimore.
“Despite widespread reports, federal and state investigations and multiple campaigns to close the facility, the State of Maryland has allowed Cheltenham’s culture of abuse to flourish unabated,” attorneys wrote in the complaint, which lists a series of investigations that revealed brutal conditions and abuse at the facility across several decades. The complaint said the state failed to adequately supervise staff and enact sufficient procedures for reporting and preventing abuse. It also claimed that similar abuse continues to this day.
Eric Solomon, communications director for the Department of Juvenile Services, did not immediately comment on the complaint Thursday morning.
When the six lawsuits were filed last month, Solomon wrote in an email to The Sun that the department was aware of “these allegations from decades ago.”
“DJS takes allegations of sexual abuse of children in our care very seriously and we are working hard to provide decent, humane, and rehabilitative environments for youth committed to the Department,” Solomon said in the email last month. “The Department is currently reviewing the lawsuits with the Office of the Attorney General.”
Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Thursday, said his firm is representing more than 125 individuals abused at different facilities run by the Department of Juvenile Services, including clients who say they were sexually abused within the last five years. “There’s nothing that would indicate to us that there’s been any real changes,” Block said.
Staff, including guards, counselors and nurses at the facility, sexually abused children in cells, showers and laundry rooms, according to the complaint. Some victims say multiple staff forced them to engage in sex acts, including five different adults in the case of one client. The complaint said abusers threatened children with solitary confinement and beatings if they refused and rewarded them with extra phone time or food if they complied.
“We believe that this is beyond negligent, that there’s been a culture of abuse, a culture of secrecy,” Block said. “Sexual abuse of children simply cannot take place with this frequency and at this magnitude without there being negligence, and then really a cover up of the abuse, and a culture that just does not respect the humanity of children.”
A counselor who abused a boy in a shower when he was between 10 and 12 years old gave him extra snacks the next day, according to the complaint. Several staff members raped a girl around the age of 14 or 15 at least 20 times, threatening her with a loss of privileges and offering her cigarettes and more time outside. A unit manager abused a boy when he was about 12 or 13 years old and said if he told anyone, he would be sent to an adult jail or put in solitary confinement.
Under the Child Victims Act, the state law passed by the Maryland General Assembly this year, these men and women, mostly in their 30s and 40s, now have the ability to pursue justice in the civil courts, and in many cases, try to learn for the first time the identities of the staff they say abused them as children. The complaint does not list a dollar amount for damages, but it does specify the plaintiffs will seek a minimum of $30,000 in each case. Judgments in civil cases are capped at $890,000 for public entities in Maryland.
This month, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington filed the first known constitutional challenge to the Child Victims Act. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement Tuesday that he would defend the law’s constitutionality in court.
Plaintiffs including Russell said the chance to sue the juvenile system is empowering, providing an opportunity to hold the state accountable.
Four of them met in person for the first time Tuesday in a sunny conference room in South Baltimore.
Each said it was healing to meet others abused at Cheltenham, in large part because they said staff who targeted them isolated victims from one other to keep them quiet.
“As I was sitting here watching them, I pictured the children that they were when they were getting victimized, and it made me angry,” Russell said after the meeting. He said the lawsuit is not about money, which can’t remove his pain. His hope is simple: “No child ever gets sexually abused in the justice system again.”
Russell first shared the abuse with a therapist two years ago. His secret festered inside him like a cancer, he said, for 25 years. “It kept me sick, I know it did,” he said.
In interviews with The Sun, seven of the plaintiffs described how the abuse took a toll on the rest of their lives, contributing to addiction, damaged relationships and incarceration in the adult system. One man identified as A.Y., who according to the complaint was abused in a shower, said he couldn’t bring himself to bathe his infant son for fear of making his child uncomfortable. Others said they had wrongly blamed themselves for years, questioning how they could have provoked sexual attention from staff who were supposed to keep them safe.
Russell was abused about seven times during his second stay at the detention center, according to the complaint. A male guard came into his cell and threatened him, saying if the teen refused to perform oral sex on him, he would have gang members attack him. Russell said in an interview there was no grievance process at Cheltenham and no way to report his attacker.
Plaintiffs interviewed by The Sun said Cheltenham staff didn’t wear nametags or share their names with children held there. The complaint described some staff using nicknames or physical descriptions.
The Sun was not able to confirm Russell’s juvenile offenses because those records are sealed, but he said his grandmother hoped serving time in juvenile detention would help him. “She thought there would be some kind of reform,” Russell said. Instead, he said kids at Cheltenham taught him better methods for stealing cars.
After his grandmother died he left Cheltenham. He started smoking cannabis to cope, then developed a heroin addiction in his early teens. A string of crimes, including theft and drug possession, had him in and out of prison.
“I had this gaping hole inside and it was empty and hurtful. Whether I was grieving my grandmother or my father, or it was the sexual abuse, I can’t pinpoint,” Russell said.
He loves his three children — a son, a daughter, and another daughter who died recently — but he never felt as close to his son as to his daughters, something he thinks may be linked to his abuse. “I’m not saying I don’t love my son: The way I was raised by a man is not to show love to another man. And I’m sure being sexually abused by another man didn’t help that with my son,” he said. “It’s not his fault that this happened to me.”
The abuse has left Russell with an extra dose of vigilance. In his dorm at Helping Up Mission, an organization that provides housing to homeless men recovering from addiction, he said, he gets fully dressed in a shower stall to avoid being physically exposed among other men, even ones he calls friends. He sleeps fully clothed at night and makes sure he always has a layer of blankets over him.
Now in recovery, Russell hopes to become a peer recovery coach so he can guide others through overcoming addiction. He also wants to speak out for kids who suffer poor conditions in juvenile detention, not only those who were sexually abused.
“I’m going to be a huge advocate now that I’m able to openly speak about the sexual abuse, which I hadn’t been for many, many years,” Russell said. “Now that I’ve broke that seal, I’m not going to let it shut back up.”
The third chapter of U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger’s ongoing gang crackdown in the Twin Cities produced another wave of indictments Wednesday that charged 14 new alleged members with federal racketeering conspiracy and fentanyl crimes.
The new charges, filed in a superseding indictment focused on the Highs street gang, also cover firearms violations, kidnapping, assault and carjacking. Law enforcement seized about 11.6 kilograms of fentanyl, at least 36 firearms and more than $218,000 in U.S. currency during the investigation.
Minneapolis Chief of Police Brian O’Hara speaks at a press conference at the United States District Court in Minneapolis. (Angelina Katsanis/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS)
“Selling fentanyl in our communities is as dangerous and lethal as the brazen gun violence we’ve seen in our cities,” Luger said in a statement Wednesday, adding that “addressing the nexus between narcotics trafficking and violent crime” was a key piece of his office’s violent crime strategy.
Luger’s office has now charged roughly 75 alleged members of prominent street gangs such as the Highs, Lows and Bloods since the May launch of a renewed focus on the gang activity law enforcement has blamed much of the surge in violent crime since 2020.
Wednesday’s announcement of new charges was made Wednesday in Luger’s office alongside Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara and leaders from the local divisions of multiple federal law enforcement agencies.
To date, the federal cases have run the gamut from complex criminal conspiracy charges to a heightened focus on machine gun conversion devices.
A crowd of pro-Palestinian activists staged a protest and took over a Fox News building lobby in New York City on Friday, leading to at least 16 individuals being arrested by the New York City Police Department.
According to NBC News, protesters shouted, “Fox News, Fox News, you can’t hide, your lies cover up genocide.” The New York City Police Department confirmed to NBC News that at least 16 people had been arrested in relation to Friday’s protest at Fox News’ NewsCorp lobby.
Video footage of the incident shows protesters in the lobby of the Fox News building repeatedly chanting accusations against the news organization, the United States, and Israel. Video footage also shows protesters holding Palestinian flags and a banner that read, “Fox News’ Lies Cover Up Genocide.”
RIGHT NOW: Activists staging massive disruption at the NYC HQ of the corporation that owns Fox News to protest its propaganda to justify Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.
The left-wing ANSWER Coalition tweeted that activists were “staging massive disruption at the NYC HQ of the corporation that owns Fox News to protest its propaganda to justify Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.”
READ MORE: Video: Rep. Tlaib ‘cries’ at pro-Palestine protest, blames Israel
The Party for Socialism and Liberation also tweeted a video of Friday’s protest, claiming, “FOX News is one of the most enthusiastic justifiers of genocide. It’s time we shut them down.”
According to The Hill, while the ANSWER Coalition claimed that “hundreds” of protesters had gathered inside the NewsCorp lobby to protest against Fox News and demand a cease-fire in the Middle East, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department indicated that there had been roughly 30 protesters in the lobby.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last month after the devastating attacks against Israel by Hamas terrorists, multiple pro-Palestinian protests have been held across the United States, as well as in other countries throughout the world.
According to Just the News, prior to Friday’s protest in New York City, the most recent pro-Palestinian protests in the United States had taken place Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C., outside of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters and on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Thursday morning.
