In the news
▀ Adrian Dickey, an Iowa state senator, says he’s “absolutely innocent,” and his attorney said Dickey was just participating in a bike ride when a sheriff’s deputy asked him to move and he “advised that he was not going to move” and “to arrest him,” which the deputy did.
▀ Kristin Harila of Norway and her Nepali Sherpa guide reportedly obliterated the record by scaling the world’s 14 highest peaks in just 92 days after a Pakistani mountaineering official said they had conquered K2, ranked among the most dangerous peaks.
▀ Mark Fox remained on the run several days after breaking out of Bent County jail in Colorado with three other inmates by forcing their way through drywall in the ceiling of a cell, with two recaptured and one dead of a suspected drug overdose.
▀ Martin Estrada, a U.S. attorney, said their “days of terrorizing … stop” with the arrests of six people linked to the Quiet Village street gang in California’s San Gabriel Valley on counts of conspiracy, violent crimes in aid of racketeering, and drug and gun charges.
▀ Taylor Schabusiness, 25, of Green Bay, Wis., was convicted of strangling an ex-boyfriend, dismembering his body and scattering the parts in a case the defense called “puzzling” as the district attorney countered, “This is strange, this is unnatural, but in no way is it unclear.”
▀ Eric Adams, mayor of New York, was joined by his rat czar as he celebrated a 20% decrease in complaints, saying, “Every food scrap that we keep out of the trash and every black bag that we keep off the street is a meal that we’re taking out of a hungry rodent’s stomach.”
▀ Mark Keith Smith, 26, of Burien, Wash., faces bail of $1 million in a road-rage shooting and pleaded innocent to murder as the charge was upgraded with the death of the 68-yearold victim, who allegedly wielded a bat.
▀ Ashley Miller of the Ashburn-Turner County Chamber of Commerce in Georgia hailed the Big Peanut, which “represents home,” as the Interstate 75 landmark was rededicated five years after an earlier version was felled by Hurricane Michael.
▀ Kristy Lynn Felkins of Fallon, Nev., was sentenced to five years in prison in a plea deal, admitting she hired a hitman on a bogus dark-web internet site for $5,000 in bitcoin to kill her ex-husband “and make it look like an accident,” offering an extra $4,000 to speed things up.