Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Police said they know that his mother dropped him off at school Thursday morning. They know he pulled the gun from his backpack. They know there were more weapons inside his house. What they do not know is why he did it.

“We did not find any manifesto, any diary that spelled it out, any suicide note, or any writings which will clearly identify his motive behind this assault,” Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference Friday. He said that the police had conducted more than 40 interviews but that “no motive or rationale” had been uncovered.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva of Los Angeles County said the gunman was silent as he shot the five students at Saugus High School. He seemed to have planned the attack, the sheriff said, and also seemed familiar with how to use the gun, quickly fixing a malfunction and firing all but one round before shooting himself in the head. The shooting was captured on video, and the gunman appeared to have selected his victims at random.

“It doesn’t appear he had any interaction with anyone,” Villanueva said. “He was just standing by himself, at one point walked to the center of that quad area — dropped the backpack — withdrew with a firearm and just started firing.”

The coroner’s office identified the two students who died in the shooting as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, a 15-year-old girl, and Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy.

The suspect survived, but remains in critical condition. There is no indication that his mother knew he had a gun, Villanueva said. Investigators are tracing the weapon as well as six other guns they found at the suspect’s home.

Even as the police said they did not know what inspired the suspect, they said it was clear he had planned the attack.

The injured victims — a 14-year-old girl, a 15-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy — were all in stable condition by Thursday night, the authorities said.

This article originally appeared in

Motive in School Shooting Is Still a Mystery

Investigators on Friday were still struggling to understand why a 16-year-old student had pulled a handgun from his backpack at school, they say, shooting five of his classmates, killing two, in Santa Clarita, California, before turning the gun on himself.

“We did not find any manifesto, any diary that spelled it out, any suicide note, or any writings that will clearly identify his motives behind this assault,” Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference Friday.

The police also identified a 15-year-old girl, Gracie Anne Muehlberger, as one of the students who died in the Thursday morning shooting. Her father said in a brief phone interview that the family was grieving.

The gunman survived, but remains in critical condition. The police say he had walked into the quad of Saugus High School just after 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, his birthday, before firing seemingly at random for 16 seconds.

“It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act,” said Sheriff Alex Villanueva of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

When students realized the popping noises they heard were gunshots, they fled into classrooms and away from the school. Dozens took refuge in a choir classroom, which the teacher barricaded with a grand piano before tending to a student’s gunshot wounds.

The police have declined to name the suspect because he is a minor. Investigators searched his house, which is less than 2 miles from the school, and the FBI was scouring social media for clues. The police initially said they believed that the suspect had posted on Instagram shortly before the shooting, but they later said the account in question did not belong to him.

Santa Clarita is home to many police officers, firefighters and emergency workers, and the first three police officers to respond to the shooting were off-duty officers who had dropped family members off at the school.

Detective Daniel Finn had just driven away from the school when he saw children running from gunfire.

Finn, who works in the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, turned his car around, ran onto campus and provided medical aid to several victims. He was quickly joined by off-duty officers from the Inglewood Police Department and another from the Los Angeles Police Department. A flood of additional officers then arrived.

As police officers searched the campus for the suspect — they did not initially realize he had shot himself — students cowered in classrooms. Hundreds of students fled to a nearby park, where they reunited in tearful hugs with their parents, many of whom had raced to the school after getting texts from their children.

Santa Clarita Shooting: 'No Motive or Rationale' Discovered, Police Say

Investigators on Friday said they had not identified a motive for the 16-year-old student who they say pulled a handgun from his backpack at school and shot five of his classmates, killing two, in Santa Clarita, California, before turning the gun on himself.

The police said they know that his mother dropped him off at school on Thursday morning. They know there were six more weapons inside his house. What they do not know is why he did it.

“We did not find any manifesto, any diary that spelled it out, any suicide note, or any writings which will clearly identify his motive behind this assault,” Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference on Friday before the gunman’s death. He said that the police had conducted more than 40 interviews, but that “no motive or rationale” had been uncovered.

The authorities identified the gunman as Nathaniel T. Berhow. Although he shot himself in the head, he initially survived and was transported to a hospital along with the other victims.

The coroner’s office identified the two students who died in the shooting as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, a 15-year-old girl, and Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy. Gracie’s father said in a brief phone interview on Thursday afternoon that the family was grieving.

Santa Clarita Gunman Dies as Investigators Struggle to Uncover Motive

The 16-year-old student who killed two of his classmates in Santa Clarita, California, died from his self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, complicating investigators’ efforts to understand why he pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot five other people.

Police said they know that his mother dropped him off at school Thursday morning. They know there were six more weapons inside his house. What they do not know is why he did it.

“We did not find any manifesto, any diary that spelled it out, any suicide note or any writings which will clearly identify his motive behind this assault,” Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference Friday before the gunman’s death. He said that police had conducted more than 40 interviews, but that “no motive or rationale” had been uncovered.

Authorities identified the gunman as Nathaniel T. Berhow. Although he shot himself in the head, he initially survived and was transported to a hospital along with the other victims.

The coroner’s office identified the two students who died in the shooting as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, a 15-year-old girl, and Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy. Gracie’s father said in a brief phone interview Thursday afternoon that the family was grieving.

There is no indication that Berhow’s mother knew he had a gun, Villanueva said. Investigators are tracing the weapon as well as six other guns they found at the gunman’s home, some of which were not registered.

Even as police said they did not know what inspired the gunman, they said it was clear he had planned the attack.

“It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act,” Villanueva said.

When students realized the popping noises they heard were gunshots, they fled into classrooms and away from the school. Dozens took refuge in a choir classroom, which a teacher barricaded with a grand piano before tending to a student’s gunshot wounds.

The injured victims — a 14-year-old girl, a 15-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy — were all in stable condition by Thursday night, authorities said.

The FBI was scouring social media for clues, but police said Friday that an Instagram account they initially believed was the gunman’s was actually not his.

Santa Clarita is home to many police officers, firefighters and emergency workers, and the first three police officers to respond to the shooting were off-duty officers who had dropped children off at the school.

Detective Daniel Finn had just dropped his girlfriend’s son off at the school when he saw hundreds of children running from gunfire.

Finn, who works in the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, turned his car around, ran onto campus and provided medical aid to several victims, whom he found lying on the ground.

He was quickly joined by an off-duty officer from the Inglewood Police Department and another from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Deputy James Callahan, a school resource officer, was on the scene seconds later, and a flood of additional officers soon arrived.

“When you’re a school resource deputy, you take a lot of pride in keeping your campus secure,” he said Friday. “You never think a tragic thing like this is going to happen.”

Police officers saw a gun on the ground in the quad but were not sure that the gunman had shot himself until they reviewed the surveillance video and confirmed that he was one of the patients who had been transferred to a hospital.

As officers searched the campus, students cowered in classrooms. Hundreds of students fled to a nearby park, where they reunited in tearful hugs with their parents, many of whom had raced to the school after getting texts from their children.

The 16-year-old student who killed two of his classmates in Santa Clarita, California, died from his self-inflicted gunshot wound Friday, complicating investigators’ efforts to understand why he pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot five other people.

The suspect survived, but remains in critical condition. There is no indication that his mother knew he had a gun, Villanueva said. Investigators are tracing the weapon as well as six other guns they found at the suspect’s home, some of which were not registered.

Police have declined to name the suspect because he is a minor. The FBI was scouring social media for clues, but the police said Friday that an Instagram account they initially believed was the suspect’s was actually not his.

Police officers saw a gun on the ground in the quad, but were not sure that the gunman had shot himself until they reviewed the surveillance video and confirmed that he was one of the patients who had been transferred to a hospital.

The prisoner, Benjamin Schreiber, made that argument to an appeals court in Iowa, saying that when he briefly died in 2015, before being revived at a hospital, he completed his obligation to the state. He asked the three-judge panel to let him get on with his life.

The judges rejected his argument this week, ruling that a lower court had been right to dismiss his petition.

“Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot,” Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote for the court.

Schreiber, 66, was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of murder for killing a man with the handle of an ax in 1996, according to The Des Moines Register.

He has filed several unsuccessful appeals, but in 2018 he argued in court in Wapello County that he had been resuscitated against his will, and that because he had, his “sentence has expired.”

In March 2015, Schreiber, who is being held at the Iowa State Penitentiary, was taken to a hospital after having seizures and a high fever, according to his petition. The cause of his illness turned out to be large kidney stones, which led to septic poisoning.

When he lost consciousness at the University of Iowa Hospitals &amp; Clinics, a staff member called his brother, who told the hospital that although it could give Schreiber medicine to ease his pain, “otherwise you are to let him pass,” according to Schreiber’s petition.

Schreiber said he was resuscitated despite his brother’s directions and his own do-not-resuscitate order on file with the Iowa Department of Corrections. The courts have not addressed whether he was wrongfully resuscitated. Schreiber’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment Friday, and a hospital spokesman said he did not immediately have a comment.

Potterfield wrote in the ruling this week that because “life” is not defined by the state’s code, the judges had given the term “its plain meaning,” which they took to prescribe that Schreiber must spend the rest of his natural life incarcerated, regardless of whether he had been revived.

“We do not find his argument persuasive,” Potterfield wrote, adding that the judges found it unlikely the Legislature would have wanted “to set criminal defendants free whenever medical procedures during their incarceration led to their resuscitation by medical professionals.”

Schreiber’s plea was not without precedent.

Jerry Rosenberg, who was convicted of murdering two New York police detectives in 1962, petitioned a court in upstate New York to let him go in 1988, arguing that he had died when his heart stopped during surgery.

The judge ruled against Rosenberg, too, writing that he did not legally die, “as his presence in this courtroom indicates,” The Associated Press reported at the time.

Eve Brensike Primus, a professor who teaches criminal law at the University of Michigan Law School, said it was unsurprising that the theory had only been tried a handful of times.

“The stars have to align — both the medical condition and the sentence the person is facing — for a person to even make this argument,” she said.

Primus said that if people were considered legally dead before being resuscitated, it would create a web of problems, not just in criminal cases but also for insurance and inheritance claims.

She and I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies medical ethics and the law, said Schreiber’s argument was clever but never stood a chance.

“It equivocates on what life and death means for the purposes of the criminal law,” Cohen said in an email.

He added that Schreiber would still be considered alive for purposes including organ donation, making it “hard to think he should be ‘dead’ for the purpose of serving a life sentence.”

He Argued Death Meant He'd Served His Life Sentence; the Judge Didn't Buy It

What does it mean to complete a sentence of life in prison? One prisoner claims he has done it by serving time until the moment of his death — plus another four years since — and said it is well past time to set him free.

The state was not in the clear yet: The Maria fire was still burning in Ventura County, and red-flag warnings were still in effect until Saturday evening. But firefighters had contained 20% of the 9,400-acre fire by the afternoon, and many residents were allowed back to their houses.

For power companies, the heat only continues to build. Southern California Edison, one of the state’s largest electric companies, disclosed on Friday that just 13 minutes before the Maria fire began, it had begun to return electricity to a nearby circuit after a power shut-off intended to prevent wildfires.

Ron Gales, a spokesman for the company, said that it was unclear whether the return of electricity was related to the fire but that the company had alerted a state regulator and would cooperate with any investigative agencies.

Politicians and residents have increasingly expressed outrage at power companies for sparking some of the state’s deadliest wildfires. That anger grew in recent weeks when the companies turned off power to millions of people to prevent starting more.

Southern California Edison’s chief executive, Pedro J. Pizarro, told investors on a telephone conference this past week that a preliminary investigation from the Ventura County Fire Department found that the company had most likely been responsible for the Woolsey fire last year. The blaze killed three people and destroyed more than 1,600 homes and businesses.

“Absent additional evidence, SCE believes it is likely that its equipment was associated with the ignition of the Woolsey fire,” Pizarro said on the call.

During several public safety shut-offs in October, Southern California Edison cut off electricity to more than 200,000 customers and Pacific Gas and Electric’s shut-offs put nearly a million customers in the dark, mostly in Northern California.

Despite those blackouts, the companies and fire investigators are reviewing whether the utilities’ equipment was responsible for a number of recent fires.

As Smoke Clears in California, Pressure Builds on Power Companies

As firefighters worked to contain wildfires across California on Saturday, residents began returning to their homes, business owners surveyed the damage and officials shifted their attention to what had gone wrong and what could be done to prevent — or at least temper — what has become a near-constant threat.

As crews continued to battle several blazes up and down the state, the most recent, named the Maria fire, flared up in Ventura County on Thursday evening and grew to cover nearly 9,000 acres as of noon Friday. A shift in the wind late in the morning began driving the fire, which was fully uncontained, toward Santa Paula, a city of about 30,000 people.

The flames may have already been blown across the Santa Clara River and reached at least one building in the city, fire officials said. The Maria fire was just the latest blaze to swell amid dry brush, which acts as fuel, and strong Santa Ana winds that pushed several other fires through rural and suburban areas in recent weeks.

The fire was threatening 2,300 buildings by noon Friday, and residents of a mobile home park in Santa Paula were ordered to evacuate, Sheriff Bill Ayub of Ventura County said. He added that 769 people incarcerated at a local jail were just outside of the evacuation zone and were staying in place for the time being.

In addition to homes and businesses threatened by fire, avocado and citrus orchards are also at risk of being charred, officials said.

At least 500 firefighters were working to keep the flames at bay. Earlier Friday, fire officials had tried to assure residents that the fire would not spread as widely as deadly blazes that have destroyed California towns in recent years.

“It’s eventually going to run out of fuel,” John McNeil, an assistant fire chief, said Friday morning. He said the Maria fire was expected to reach 12,000 acres at the most.

It is too early for authorities to say what caused the Maria fire, but McNeil said the fire had started near “communications infrastructure” on South Mountain, a ridge that runs east-west about 15 miles northeast of Oxnard, California.

The Maria fire began only 12 miles away from the Easy fire. That fire had burned about 18,000 acres by Friday morning and was 80% contained. The state’s largest active fire, the Kincade fire in Northern California, remained at about 77,700 acres and was 68% contained.

Wind Change Pushes Maria Fire Toward a California City

Firefighters in Southern California were battling yet another fast-moving fire Friday, with the new blaze destroying at least two buildings and leading authorities to order 8,000 people to evacuate.

Most of the news about traffic safety has been good in recent decades, as vehicle manufacturers have added safety features, drunken driving deaths have fallen and seat belt use has climbed to nearly 90%. But in recent years, pedestrian and cyclist deaths have been a disturbing outlier. The number of pedestrians killed grew by 3.4% last year, to 6,283, and the number of cyclists rose by 6.3%, to 857, even as total traffic deaths decreased. On average, about 17 pedestrians and two cyclists were killed each day in crashes. Together they accounted for one-fifth of all traffic deaths.

Urban areas are where the trouble is.

Over the last decade, pedestrian deaths remained nearly the same in rural areas, but rose 69% in urban areas. Cyclist deaths have also risen significantly in urban areas, up 48% over the decade from 2009 to 2018. Those increases far outpace population growth in urban areas, which the Census Bureau estimates at 13% from 2008 to 2017, according to the report.

Though urban motorists might point to the risks created by pedestrians whose attention is glued to their cellphones, a report released in August by the New York City Department of Transportation found that walking and texting was rarely to blame for pedestrian deaths. The study said the use of portable electronic devices by pedestrians was a factor in, at most, only 0.2% of pedestrian traffic deaths nationwide.

More than one-third of traffic fatalities now happen ‘outside the vehicle.’

As cars, trucks and SUVs have been designed to keep those inside them safer, a higher proportion of traffic deaths are happening “outside the vehicle,” a category that includes motorcyclists and their passengers as well as pedestrians and bicyclists. In 1996, such deaths made up 20% of all traffic deaths; by 2018, the proportion had risen to 34%.

Especially notable are the figures for crashes involving large trucks. While overall fatalities in such crashes rose slightly — 0.9% — in 2018, compared with the year before, but the number of pedestrians and cyclists killed by large trucks shot up by 9.7%.

Traffic deaths continue to decline overall.

The number of traffic deaths in the United States has been generally declining for about 40 years. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration attributes the trend largely to two changes in public behavior that it has heavily promoted: more seat belt use and less drunken driving.

The report said that 29% of fatal traffic accidents last year involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% or higher, the smallest proportion since the agency began reporting alcohol data in 1982.

Even so, traffic accidents still take a major toll — killing 36,560 people in 2018, according to the report — and that is especially true among adolescents and young adults.

Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 are more likely to die in a traffic accident than in any other type of accident, including drug overdoses and other poisonings, according to 2017 figures from the Center for Disease Control. (Overdoses and poisonings rank first, and traffic accidents second, for the population as a whole.)

Pedestrians, Cyclists Are Dying in U.S. at Highest Rate Since 1990

More pedestrians and cyclists were killed last year in the United States than in any year since 1990, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Cummings, a Democrat who rose in prominence in recent years for his unwavering pursuit of President Donald Trump, died at 68 last week in the city he called home, the same one in which he was born and lived all his life.

Among the prominent cast of politicians, mentees and relatives expected to speak at his funeral Friday morning were two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate.

Following a psalm read by Warren and a song from one of Cummings’ favorite singers, BeBe Winans, Hillary Clinton took the stage and thanked members of Cummings’ district “for sharing him with our country and the world.”

Clinton said Cummings never backed down in the face of abuses of power or from “those who put party ahead of country or partisanship above truth.”

“But he could find common ground with anyone willing to seek it with him,” she continued. “And he liked to remind all of us that you can’t get so caught up in who you are fighting that you forget what you are fighting for.”

Pelosi asked attendees how many had been mentored by Cummings, and at least a dozen raised their hands. She recalled that he had sought to mentor as many freshman representatives as he could after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election.

“By example, he gave people hope,” she said.

Pelosi had spoken at another funeral in Baltimore on Wednesday for her own brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, a former mayor of the city.

Earlier in the morning, thousands of grieving Baltimoreans stood in looping lines as the sun rose outside of New Psalmist Baptist Church, which seats 4,000 people and filled up shortly before 10, with many still outside. It is the same church where Cummings sat in the front row most Sundays even after he began using a walker and wheelchair.

Cummings’ body lay in an open coffin at the front of the church Friday, his left hand resting on his right as mourners passed by and a choir sang gospel music. An usher stood nearby with a box of tissues in each hand.

Elonna Jones, 21, skipped her classes at the University of Maryland to attend with her mother, Waneta Ross, who nearly teared up as she contemplated Baltimore’s loss.

“He believed in the beauty of everything, especially our city,” Ross said. “It’s important we’re here to honor a civil rights activist who was still around in my generation.”

Jones, a volunteer coordinator for a City Council candidate, said Cummings had motivated her to pursue a role in improving her city.

“As a young, black woman in Baltimore who wants to be in politics, he inspired me,” she said.

Mourning residents stood in black coats, hats and heels and sang Cummings’ praises as police corralled the extended lines of people who woke up early to pay their respects. Above all, attendees noted, he always looked out for his city.

“He never forgot who we were,” said Bernadette McDonald, who lives in West Baltimore. “He was a son of Baltimore and a man of the people.”

The big names on the service’s agenda, the television cameras lined up outside and the large crowd belied the way many attendees interacted with the devoted congressman, who lived in the heart of West Baltimore and would simply give a knowing nod to those who recognized him on the street. He carried himself like anyone else when running errands or taking a walk around the block.

“If you didn’t already know him, you wouldn’t know who he was,” McDonald said.

Cummings saw his profile rise in recent years as he sparred with Trump, pursuing the president, his businesses and his associates as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Cummings became a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry and was said to still be joining strategy discussions with colleagues from his hospital bed.

Rhonda Martin, who works at a local high school, said Cummings had inspired the next generation of Baltimore’s leaders by speaking to students in schools around the city.

“He brought a message of hope and told students that he did it, and they can do it, too,” Martin said.

Cummings, whose parents were former sharecroppers in South Carolina, graduated from Howard University in Washington and earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He was first elected to Congress in 1996 and never faced a serious challenge over 11 successful reelection campaigns.

On Thursday, Cummings’ body lay in state in the U.S. Capitol, the first black lawmaker to do so, and Republicans and Democrats praised his integrity and his commitment to his constituents.

Over more than two decades in Congress, Cummings championed working people, environmental reform and civil rights. He served for two years as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and frequently spoke of his neighborhood while pushing legislation to lower drug prices, promoting labor unions and seeking more funding for affordable housing.

Even in his war of words with the president, the battle made its way to Baltimore when, in July, Trump called Cummings’ district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and appeared to make light of a break-in at Cummings’ home, during which the congressman scared an intruder away.

The president’s insults still anger Baltimore residents. “See? We’re not all trash and rats,” one congregant said as she sat down in the church on Friday.

Cummings responded to the president by saying it was his “moral duty” to fight for residents in his district. “Each morning, I wake up,” he wrote, “and I go and fight for my neighbors.”

Cummings' Funeral Brings Attention, and 2 Former Presidents, to Baltimore

BALTIMORE — Rep. Elijah E. Cummings was firmly rooted in Baltimore, but for decades his voice extended far from his brick rowhouse on the city’s west side. On Friday, the legacy of his tireless advocacy brought powerful leaders from Washington and elsewhere to his city.

Two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were among the prominent cast of politicians, mentees and relatives who spoke at his funeral Friday morning. Others included Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate.

Obama roused the congregation, extolling Cummings’ values and saying that the congressman had earned the title, “the honorable.”

“This is a title we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” Obama said. “You’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office.”

“There’s a difference,” Obama continued, his voice rising as many in the crowd stood up and clapped. “There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably — outside the limelight, on the side of the road, in a quiet moment counseling somebody you work with.”

Cummings’ success validates the concept of the American dream, Obama said, and his compassion and empathy were a lesson that kindness can be a sign of strength.

“There’s nothing weak about looking out for others,” Obama said. “There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Earlier in the service, following a psalm read by Warren and a song from one of Cummings’ favorite singers, BeBe Winans, Hillary Clinton took the stage and thanked members of Cummings’ district “for sharing him with our country and the world.”

Jennifer Cummings, one of Cummings’ two daughters, recalled early morning calls from her father on her birthdays and the ice cream they shared in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Reading from a letter to her father, Cummings said her father had taught her to “love my blackness” by insisting on buying her dolls with brown skin and telling her to appreciate her lips and nose.

While she was proud of all the titles he held over his life, “perhaps the most important title you held in your 68 years on earth was dad,” she said.

One of Cummings’ brothers, James Cummings, said that in one of their last conversations, the congressman spoke of his heartbreak over the unsolved killing of James’ 20-year-old son, Christopher Cummings, in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2011.

The killing “haunted Elijah for the rest of his life,” James said.

Adia Cummings, the congressman’s other daughter, said Cummings always challenged her and her sister to be better people. And even though he would nudge her about owing him money, he rarely turned down her requests, even recently making sure that she could attend a concert for the rapper Cardi B.

“He didn’t really know who she was, but he went out of his way, even from his sick bed, to make sure I could go see her,” she said.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Cummings’ wife and chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, gave a fiery speech that brought multiple rounds of applause and many congregants to their feet more than once. And while she did not cite Trump by name, she invoked him clearly, saying her husband’s work had become “infinitely more difficult” in the last few months of his life because of “sustained personal attacks” on him and his city. “It hurt him,” Rockeymoore Cummings said.

Looking at Obama, she recalled that Cummings had stood with the former president early and proudly. “But you didn’t have any challenges like we have going on now,” she added with a smile, as Obama nodded and responded with an appreciative chuckle.

Rockeymoore Cummings said she felt as if people were trying to tear her husband down, and that the celebrations and outpouring of love this week had assured her that he was sent off with the respect he deserved.

Two days before Cummings died, his wife said, the staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital had wheeled him up to the roof to see the sun and look over the city he never left.

“Boy, have I come a long way,” he said, according to Rockeymoore Cummings.

Cummings' Funeral Draws Presidents and Thousands of Mourners

The Dominican Republic’s economy relies in part on drawing visitors to its beach resorts, and the country became engulfed in a crisis this summer when the families of multiple American tourists said their loved ones had died under suspicious circumstances. Several had sipped alcohol before their deaths, leading to one theory that tainted drinks were to blame.

The revelation Friday seemed to lend some support to what the Dominican authorities, despite a flood of negative news coverage, had argued: that the deaths, while tragic, were not occurring at an usual rate. Tourists die on vacation every year, and the State Department has maintained that there has not been an uptick in reported deaths.

FBI investigators did not give their own assessment of the cause of the deaths. They assisted the Dominican Republic National Police by conducting toxicology tests for three cases, including what to many seemed the most suspicious deaths: a couple from Maryland, Nathaniel Holmes and Cynthia Day, who died overnight in the same hotel room in La Romana.

The FBI ruled out methanol poisoning from alcohol for the deaths, the State Department spokesperson said.

The Dominican authorities had earlier found no evidence of foul play or violence and said the cause of the deaths was respiratory failure brought on by fluid in the lungs, known as pulmonary edema.

Steven Bullock, a lawyer for the couple’s family, said in response to the FBI results that his clients’ deaths still warranted further review.

“You had a couple that died of the same ailment at the same time, and they want to say that it’s natural causes,” Bullock said with a scoff. “I think there’s something for us to continue to look into.”

A relative of Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, whose death in La Romana the FBI also assisted with investigating, referred questions to a lawyer who did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

More than 2.7 million Americans visit the Dominican Republic each year.

American Couple's Death in Dominican Republic Not From Poisoned Alcohol, FBI Says

The FBI ruled out poisoned alcohol as the cause of two American tourists’ deaths in the Dominican Republic in May, bolstering the country’s findings that a spate of tourist deaths this year were not the result of foul play, a State Department spokesperson said Friday.

But the fire precautions of officials and residents across California this week did nothing to prevent a deadly fire in Riverside County sparked by an unlikely culprit: a garbage truck.

It all began, officials said, when the driver of the truck dumped a burning load of trash on the side of a road in Calimesa, California, on Thursday. The fire quickly spread to a nearby field and shot black plumes into the sky. It ultimately became the Sandalwood Fire, killing two people and destroying 74 structures, including many mobile homes, as it grew to the size of Central Park.

That fire was one of several blazes that firefighters were battling in Southern California on Saturday. In Los Angeles, hundreds of firefighters, aided by planes and helicopters, worked overnight to contain about a fifth of the Saddleridge Fire, which was still about 7,500 acres as of Saturday afternoon.

As residents debate the merits of hugely disruptive but perhaps increasingly necessary power shutdowns, the question of how to stop vast swaths of California from going up in flames every year will likely only get harder.

Last year, humans were to blame for more than 96% of California’s 8,054 wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, whether the first embers came from abandoned firepits, discarded cigarettes or equipment malfunctions.

The deadliest of these, the Camp Fire in and around Paradise, was blamed on electrical equipment from Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which many have railed against over what they said was a bungled shut-off plan this week.

But other major fires whose names have entered the record books were tied directly to actions by people, including the Klamathon Fire (reckless burning of debris), the Carr Fire (a wheel rim scraping pavement), and the Mendocino Complex Fire (hammering a metal stake into a wasp’s nest).

Despite all of the warnings and precautions, human error, it seems, always finds a way.

“Some of these things are really quite unbelievable when you hear about them,” said William Stewart, a forestry specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. “But they just occur with a certain probability. They just do.”

Stewart has seen several fires that began when a lawn mower scraped against a rock on a hot day, sending sparks into the dry grass. The Sandalwood fire was the first time he had heard of a garbage truck’s load igniting a wildfire, but not much surprises him anymore.

“There’s just an endless series of things that people do to create sparks and fires,” Stewart said. “This time of year, when everything is bone dry, it really is just like kindling.”

Shawn Melvin was idling at an intersection in Calimesa with his son Thursday when the smoking trash truck sped by. Melvin, 36, a diesel mechanic, has lived in the area his whole life and had never seen anything like that, so he followed the truck and had his 8-year-old son record the rising smoke.

Not long after, the truck pulled to the side of the road. Melvin realized the driver was about to release the smoldering trash right next to a large, dry patch of land, and pleaded with him to drive somewhere safer.

“Go anywhere else but here,” Melvin recalled telling the driver, “because you will catch this field on fire.”

Melvin said his “Dad mode kicked in,” and he drove off to get his son out of harm’s way and to pick up his daughter from a nearby middle school. By the time school let out, about 15 minutes later, Melvin could see and smell the smoke from the school’s parking lot.

“Hurry up and get out of class,” Melvin texted his daughter. “Come straight to the car.”

Melvin said he was angry that the truck driver had not listened to him, especially given that two people had died in the fire.

“Someone made a foolish mistake that devastated a little community,” he said. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said both victims had been found at the Villa Calimesa Mobile Home Park and identified one as an 89-year-old resident.

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, on Saturday declined to comment on whether the garbage truck seen in Melvin’s video was the culprit.

But the department did confirm that the fire was caused by a trash truck dumping a load of burning garbage near vegetation, and said the fire had started about 1,000 feet from where Melvin saw the truck pull over. The company, CR&amp;R; Environmental Services, which collects trash in Calimesa and whose logo appears on the truck, did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.

The Cal Fire spokeswoman, Cathey Mattingly, said law enforcement officers were investigating the Sandalwood Fire. Melvin said they and officials from the Riverside County Fire Department had interviewed him and asked him for any photographs and videos he had of the fire and the garbage truck.

Garbage trucks’ loads can catch fire from batteries, paint, chemicals, cigarettes and other flammable items. Drivers are often told by their companies to dump “hot loads” in places like parking lots rather than let their trucks burn up.

California Is Trying to Prevent Fires. No One Expected a Smoking Garbage Truck.

A utility shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers. Municipalities prohibited people from burning debris. Fire departments called in reinforcements amid dry and windy weather.

They’re trying. But no matter how many spotted lantern flies they crush underfoot, they cannot seem to keep the hordes of the invasive insect from flapping in their faces, sucking nutrients from valuable vineyards and lurking in their nightmares. Even after death, they pester commuters when their carcasses crunch underfoot on city sidewalks.

The inch-long creatures, which look a bit like moths and hide scarlet wings beneath gray spotted ones, moved into Philadelphia in recent weeks, swarming around parks and skyscrapers and drawing a clear response from officials: “Kill it!” a state website blares by way of advice to residents who encounter the flies. “Squash it, smash it … just get rid of it.”

In response to the insect infiltration, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has quarantined 14 counties — regulating what can be taken in and out — and has set up a portal and a hotline (1-888-4BADFLY) to report sightings of the species, which is native to parts of Asia.

The lantern flies have already been spotted in eight states, from Virginia to Massachusetts, leading to quarantines and yearlong abatement efforts. Left alive, the pests could continue flying into more states, injuring trees, reducing fruit yields and hurting farmers’ bottom lines.

And then there’s the daily annoyance.

“If it would just leap away, people wouldn’t mind it as much, but it seems to always be in your mouth — or on you and trying to get in your mouth,” said George Holmes, mayor of Hamburg Borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where the flies were first found in 2014. They are believed to have arrived among a shipment of stones from Asia.

Pennsylvanians have come up with many other methods of pulverizing the lantern flies, involving baseball bats, questionable chemical solutions and even stacks of textbooks. Holmes’ dog, Josephine, has a knack for leaping into the air and snagging the bugs with her teeth before spitting them out and stomping on them. Still, no method has been more popular than the classic foot stomp, which seems to have united residents as if it were a service requirement of living in the state.

“I saw a couple stomp on them, as everyone is taking great pride in doing,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a lawyer in Philadelphia, who was quick to add that he had also done his part. “I saw one and I stepped on it, and I looked around, and there were a bunch of carcasses. And then you realize, they’re fluttering all over the place.”

The bugs can be quite clumsy, flying haphazardly into pedestrians and windshields, said Heather Leach, an entomologist who studies spotted lantern flies at Pennsylvania State University.

Much about the pests remains unknown, Leach said, adding that their foray into urban areas is worrisome, in part because they will have more opportunities there to hitch rides to other states — as one did in 2018, when it traveled in a car from Pennsylvania to a mall in Albany, New York. On Monday, a bug believed to be a spotted lantern fly arrived by boat in New York City, according to Customs and Border Protection, whose agricultural specialists were trying to “mitigate the pest threat,” a spokesman said.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Articles written by the author

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