In the news
■ Bill Melvin, manager of the Butte, Mont., Civic Center, said a female elephant was spooked by a passing vehicle backfiring and managed to break free from its handlers, briefly escaping from Jordan World Circus staffers and walking the streets.
■ Caz Craffy, 41, a former Army financial counselor of Colts Neck, N.J., faces eight to 10 years in federal prison after admitting in a deal with prosecutors to siphoning millions of dollars from deceased soldiers’ life insurance funds, the Justice Department said.
■ Mary-Ann Baldwin, mayor of Raleigh, N.C., and the first executive director of a foundation designed to provide grants to people who can’t cover their monthly expenses, announced in a video that she will not seek reelection, noting that it’s “time to devote my energies to myself and my family and to find other ways to serve.”
■ Jeremy Williams, of Phenix City, Ala., sits on death row at Holman State Prison in Atmore, Ala., after he was given four death sentences for kidnapping, raping and murdering a 5-year-old Georgia girl in December 2021.
■ Ernest Weatherspoon, a 46-year-old jailed since December 2021 on suspicion of murdering a St. Louis man in May 2016, had armed robbery and second-degree murder charges dropped, as Orleans Parish, La., prosecutors said “serious issues” with a critical witness’s availability arose.
■ Craig Ross Jr. was sentenced to 47 years to life in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl who disappeared Sept. 30, 2023, from a campground at Moreau Lake State Park in upstate New York.
■ Erika Nunes, 42, was charged with theft by fraud and abusing a corpse as police say she wheeled a 68-year-old man’s body into a Banco Itau branch location in Rio de Janeiro to secure a loan of about $3,250.
■ Adam Frisch, a former Aspen, Colo., city councilman and Democratic U.S. House candidate, raised $1.4 million — nearly six times as much as his main Republican rival, Jeff Hurd — between Jan. 1 and March 31, according to first-quarter campaign finance reports.
■ Fortunato Ortombina, 63, the general manager at Venice’s opera house La Fenice, was named the new director of Milan’s La Scala, Mayor Giuseppe Sala announced after the board of directors finalized Ortombina’s appointment.