Living in mobile home makes you more likely to die in tornado

Many were not just killed at home. They were killed by their homes.

Angela Eason had visited Brenda Odoms' tidy mobile home before. It was a place where Odoms, who had many tragedies in her life, felt safe.

In March, a tornado ripped through this small Mississippi town and people in mobile or manufactured homes were hit the hardest. Inside a mobile morgue, Eason, the county coroner, examined Odoms' gaping fatal head wound.

“The one place she felt safe she was not,” Eason said. Fourteen people died in that Rolling Fork tornado, nine of them, including Odoms, were in uprooted manufactured or mobile homes.

Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South, often victimizing some of the most socially and economically vulnerable residents.

Worker warned organizer that concert could turn deadly

HOUSTON ❯❯ Just moments before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival, a contract worker had been so worried about what might happen after seeing people getting crushed that he texted an event organizer saying, “Someone's going to end up dead,” according to a police report released Friday.

The texts by security contract worker Reece Wheeler were some of many examples in the nearly 1,300page report in which festival workers highlighted problems and warned of possible deadly consequences. The report includes transcripts of concertgoers' 911 calls and summaries of police interviews, including one with Scott conducted just days after the event. The crowd surge at the Nov. 5, 2021, outdoor festival in Houston killed 10 attendees who ranged in age from 9 to 27. The official cause of death was compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being crushed by a car.

Extreme heat moves east as hottest days of year forecast

Carlos Reyes sought shade under a tree in the Bronx on a day that felt like it was over 100 degrees because of the heat and humidity.

“It's not like when you were younger, you were playing around,” said the 56-year-old, who runs a day care center. “Now it's like you got the humidity. It makes you kind of not breathe the same way. So when you walk, you get a little more tired, a little more exhausted.”

Reyes was one of nearly 200 million people in the United States, or 60% of the U.S. population, who are under a heat advisory or flood warning or watch and have been since Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

Dangerous heat was forecast to engulf much of the eastern half of the U.S. on Friday as extreme temperatures spread from the Midwest into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, where some residents will see their hottest temperatures of the year.

Officer who put suspect in car hit by train found guilty in case

DENVER ❯❯ A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train was found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault but was acquitted of a third charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter during a trial Friday.

Jordan Steinke was the first of two officers to go to trial over the Sept. 16, 2022, crash that left Yareni RiosGonzalez seriously injured.

Steinke testified that she did not know that the patrol car of another officer she was helping was parked on the tracks even though they can be seen on her body camera footage along with two railroad crossing signs. Steinke said she was focused on the threat that could come from Rios-Gonzalez and her pickup truck, not the ground. Steinke said she put Rios-Gonzalez in the other officer's vehicle because it was the nearest spot to temporarily hold her. She said she didn't know the train was coming until just before it hit.