NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Alligator attack: A woman trying to protect her dog was killed by an alligator who pulled her into a lagoon at a South Carolina resort Monday. Cassandra Cline, 45, of Hilton Head Island, was walking the dog at Sea Pines Resort when she was attacked, officials said. The 8-foot alligator was later found and euthanized. The dog was unharmed. Alligator attacks on humans are extremely rare, said David Lucas, a spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources. Since 1976, there have only been about 20 attacks on people in the state, he said. Sea Pines said it’s working with authorities to investigate the matter.
2 Plane crash: A homemade plane crashed in a Phoenix intersection Monday, killing pilot Theodore Rich, 54, and passenger Elaine Carpenter, 49, authorities said. The plane went down near the city’s small Deer Valley Airport, Phoenix Aviation Department spokeswoman Heather Lissner said. There were no reports of anyone on the ground being hurt. Images showed wreckage of the plane in the middle of traffic lanes with firefighters at the scene. Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.
3 Family killings: The Colorado man accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters told police that it was his wife who strangled the children — and that he strangled her out of rage, according to a warrant released Monday. Christopher Watts, 33, told his wife he wanted to separate. Afterward, he told the police, he looked at a baby monitor and saw his wife strangling their daughter Celeste, 3. Their other daughter, Bella, 4, was laying on her bed and appeared blue, he said. After that, he strangled his wife, he told police. But on Monday, authorities charged Watts with murder in the deaths of his wife, Shanann, 34, as well as their daughters.
4 Transgender threats: Frontier Airlines has suspended a pilot accused of threatening on Facebook to harm a 12-year-old transgender girl for using the girls bathroom at her Oklahoma school. Frontier spokesman Jonathan Freed said Monday that the pilot was suspended last week pending an investigation into the alleged threats against the student in the town of Achille. He declined to identify the pilot. Achille schools closed for two days last week after adults made threatening comments on Facebook about the student’s use of a girls bathroom. The child’s mother sought a protective order after a man confronted her in person.
5 Immigration arrest: An official of the Mexican state of Guanajuato confirms that a man detained by immigration agents in San Bernardino is wanted on an arrest warrant for homicide in Mexico. The official told the Associated Press that Mexican prosecutors had asked the U.S. government to help find and detain Joel Arrona Lara. Arrona Lara’s wife had to drive herself to the hospital and give birth without her husband after he was detained by immigration agents Wednesday. The couple came to the U.S. 12 years ago from the city of Leon, Guanajuato, without legal authorization to live in the U.S.