In the news

■ Thomas Young , a church deacon in Mobile, Ala., said he and other members were preparing to celebrate their church’s 100th anniversary when they heard a gunshot as a man tried to disarm a woman in the sanctuary and her gun discharged during the struggle, wounding them both.

■ Tim Daly, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said a 120-pound bear cub that strolled the aisles of a grocery store in Los Angeles’ Porter Ranch neighborhood was tranquilized by wildlife officers and taken to a national forest.

■ Jerry Raynes, 50, who was facing auto-theft charges when he escaped from a jail near Jackson, Miss., is being sought by sheriff’s deputies and faces additional theft and burglary charges after investigators said he stole a white pickup from a bus stop in Hinds County.

■ David Lidstone, 81, a New Hampshire hermit known as “River Dave” who was released from jail after his cabin was destroyed in a fire, said he feels “about as good as I ever have in my life” after being “overwhelmed” by fundraising efforts on his behalf and offers of a place to live.

■ Graham Hetrick, coroner of Dauphin County, Pa., said a 67-year-old grandfather set fire to an apartment above a Steelton convenience store, killing himself as well as his son and two grandchildren, ages 8 and 5.

■ Yibeltal Belachew of Woodbridge, Va., said he at first thought he was dreaming after noticing that he had won something in a scratch-off lottery game called “100X The Money” before finally realizing he really had won a $7 million prize.

■ Jonathan Zicarelli of Greenwood, Mo., who pleaded guilty to child abuse for attempting to drown his infant daughter in a pond in 2018 where she was found and rescued by two police officers, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

■ Mona Lisa Saloy, an English professor and folklorist at Dillard University, a historically Black private university in New Orleans, said she wants Louisiana to tell its stories in verse as she becomes the state’s newest poet laureate on Saturday.

■ Thomas Spota, 79, a former Long Island, N.Y., prosecutor, told a judge “I hope not to die in prison alone” before he was sentenced to five years in prison for helping to cover up the 2012 police beating of a prisoner suspected of stealing sex toys, pornography and other items from a police chief’s vehicle.