2 California hikers rescued after being stranded on snowy mountain for 3 days
River County Sheriff’s Aviation Unit
(IDYLLWILD, Calif.) — Two hikers who were stranded for three days after falling down a snowy cliff were rescued on Monday near Idyllwild, California, the Riverside Sheriff Aviation Unit said in a statement Tuesday.
The climbers — one man and one woman — were traveling along the Tahquitz Mountain trail on March 1 when they suddenly plummeted approximately 800 feet down a snowy cliff, located about 8,900 feet above Idyllwild, California, according to officials.
The hikers called 911, stating they were “injured badly and needed help,” officials said. A helicopter was sent to rescue the two individuals, but due to 45 mph winds, rescuers failed in their attempt.
Helicopters from Cal Fire and the Orange County Fire Authority also attempted to hoist the victims out, but “all were unsuccessful due to low clouds and high winds.”
Authorities said volunteers from Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit were able to locate the male and female hikers on the ground that first night.
Then, on the second day, “several attempts” were again made, but helicopters were “unsuccessful due to mountain obscuration and high turbulence surface winds.” The hikers had to endure temperatures as low as 15 degrees Fahrenheit that night, accompanied by persistent snow, officials said.
Finally, on the third day, the “weather and wind calmed just enough” and the hikers were successfully hoisted out via helicopter, officials said. The man, “who was the most severely injured,” was rescued first and flown to Desert Regional Medical Center for treatment, followed by the woman, officials said.
Body camera video capturing the rescue shows the snowy conditions officials had to deal with while saving the two stranded individuals.
“Many thanks to all those ground crews that were involved as well as all the helicopter crews who were involved in the rescue,” the aviation unit said in a statement.
Along with the helicopters, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said on social media that over 20 mountain team rescuers hiked to save these injured victims, who “most definitely would have died from exposure to the elements.”
“This was a very long and coordinated effort with amazing partners and volunteers. Outstanding job by all,” Bianco said on social media.
(PHOENIX) — Lori Daybell, the mother convicted of murdering two of her children in a so-called doomsday plot, delivered her closing argument Monday during her latest trial in Arizona, where she is charged with conspiring with her brother to kill her fourth husband.
Dubbed the “doomsday mom,” Daybell has maintained that her brother shot her then-husband of 13 years, Charles Vallow, in self-defense in her home in Chandler, Arizona, in July 2019. Her brother, Alex Cox, died from natural causes months after the shooting.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said the shooting was a ploy for Daybell to get rid of her estranged husband so that she could get his $1 million life insurance policy and be with her current husband, Chad Daybell, whom she married four months after the shooting. Prosecutors further said she invoked their religious beliefs as justification for the murder and gave her brother “religious authority” to kill Vallow because they believed he was possessed by an evil spirit they referred to as “Ned.”
Lori Daybell, 51, represented herself in the Phoenix trial. She has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
During her nearly 20-minute closing argument, she told jurors the shooting was not a premeditated murder but a “tragic family event.”
“This event was not planned or expected. It was shocking,” she said.
She argued that officers neglected to conduct a thorough investigation, though she also said the Chandler Police Department “did treat this event just like it was: self-defense.”
“This is an attempt by the state to try to retrofit a crime that doesn’t exist,” she said.
Daybell also urged the jurors to watch her entire police interview conducted after the shooting, part of which was shown during the trial.
The judge sustained several objections during her closing argument after she referred to testimony that had not been entered into evidence during the trial.
During her nearly two-hour closing argument on Monday, Maricopa County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Treena Kay said the evidence at the scene shows that Vallow was not shot in self-defense, but was “executed” and the scene “staged.”
She began by recounting text messages sent from Lori Daybell to her husband, Chad, seven days after Vallow was killed, discussing her now-deceased husband’s life insurance policy. Kay said that, upon learning she was no longer the beneficiary of the plan, the defendant messaged Chad that “Ned” probably changed it “before we got rid of him.”
“Her words tell us that she was involved in this killing, her actions and her words of texting Chad Daybell tell us the motives behind this murder — Chad and money,” Kay told jurors.
The prosecutor also revisited witness testimony that she said spoke to what she called Lori Daybell and Alex Cox’s “twisted religious beliefs” and a text message the defendant sent her brother days before the deadly shooting that mentioned Nephi, a prophet in the Book of Mormon who God commanded to kill Laban.
“Lori Vallow wanted the million dollars, and she wanted Chad Daybell, and she and Alex used that twisted religious beliefs they had so that they could kill the evil, possessed Charles and ‘be like Nephi,'” Kay said.
Kay said Alex Cox showed up at his sister’s home with a loaded gun, “ready for his mission,” and shot Vallow twice. She argued that the evidence shows the second shot was fired while Vallow was lying on the ground.
“That is premeditated first-degree murder, no matter what you believe before that,” Kay said.
Daybell countered in her closing that Nephi “signifies strong faith, perseverance and courage.”
“The state’s attempt to misconstrue the positive text message about a wonderful religious figure, Nephi, and try to turn it into an order to kill someone is absurd,” she said.
Kay advised jurors that even if you don’t hear someone explicitly talk about conspiring, “a conspiracy may be inferred from circumstances showing a common criminal objective.”
In this case, the conduct inferred a “conspiracy of Alex coming over with his gun to shoot and kill Charles,” she said.
The jury is now deliberating the verdict.
Over two weeks, the state called more than a dozen witnesses, including Daybell’s other brother, Adam Cox, who testified that he had “no doubt” his two siblings conspired to kill Vallow upon learning that his brother had fatally shot him.
Daybell did not call any witnesses in the trial and did not take the stand in her own defense.
In her cross-examination, Daybell tried to question the thoroughness of the police investigation into the shooting. She asked several witnesses, including her brother Adam Cox, if they personally saw her conspire with her brother Alex Cox to murder her husband, to which they responded no.
Throughout the trial, the judge often sustained frequent objections from the prosecution over Daybell’s questions for testifying, hearsay, relevance and speculation.
After the state rested its case on April 16, Daybell presented a motion for acquittal due to insufficient evidence. The judge denied it, saying the court finds there is sufficient evidence that a reasonable juror could find her guilty.
Both Lori and Chad Daybell were found guilty of first-degree murder for the deaths of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16, who went missing months after Vallow was killed. In two separate trials in 2023 and 2024, prosecutors argued that the couple thought the children were possessed zombies and murdered them so that they could be together. The children’s remains were found on an Idaho property belonging to Daybell in June 2020 following a monthslong search.
Lori Daybell is currently serving life in prison without parole for the murders of her two children. She has denied killing them.
Chad Daybell was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering the two children, as well as his first wife, Tamara Daybell, and now awaits execution on Idaho’s death row.
(MINNETONKA, Minn.) — An individual was arrested near UnitedHealthcare’s headquarters in Minnesota on Monday after officials said they “issued threats of violence” directed at the facility, but stressed the person had no “specific grievances” with the company.
The suspect contacted the FBI Minneapolis Field Office at approximately 10:47 a.m. to issue the threats “if specific demands were not met,” the FBI and Minnetonka Police Department said in a joint statement.
Officials said a crisis negotiator then spoke with the individual by phone while a multi-agency response was deployed to the facility.
The FBI and police said the suspect voluntarily surrendered and was taken into custody without incident within around 45 minutes of the initial response.
The incident comes several months after the health insurance provider’s late CEO, Brian Thompson, was gunned down in Manhattan and as the trial surrounding his accused killer, Luigi Mangione, continues to capture the nation’s attention.
The FBI and police, however, said in the statement Monday that early investigations into the incident indicate that there’s “no indication” the suspect had “specific grievances” against UnitedHealthcare.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing, officials said.
(SPARTA, Ga.) — History tells us that the railroad helped put America on the right track, when trains started moving people and goods across the country in the 1800s. They were yesterday’s highways, making it possible to traverse the nation in four days instead of 30.
This travel revolution is one of the reasons that it made sense to give railroads, which are still privately owned in most cases, some of the same powers to claim someone else’s land as a power company, an airport or a public school system.
It’s also why 72-year-old Blaine Smith, his wife Diane, his brother Mark and his wife Janet (who live next door) are fighting centuries of history and U.S. law that say a privately-owned railroad can knock on their door in Sparta, Georgia, and tell them that they need to sell a three-quarter-mile strip of their land that’s been home to their family since the era of slavery.
Their land wouldn’t be be put into service as a park or train station that they might use as members of the community. Instead, it’s for a business interest that the rail company says will help everyone — a new 4-mile stretch of rail line that would lead to a rock quarry and other businesses on the other side of the Smith family property.
Right now, the quarry uses trucks to move materials. If the rail company gets its way, the new train line could increase profits for the quarry and railroad. The Smiths aren’t happy with the situation.
“I feel that we were targeted, and this particular community was targeted, because it is a Black community,” Janet told ABC News. “We’ve been labeled poor and Black for so long. And how are we going to fight back?”
ABC News asked them if they thought racism played a role.
“It’s racism. We didn’t want to use that word, we didn’t want to say that,” Janet said. “But that’s why we have a quarry right here in this neighborhood.”
The Smith family story is the very definition of Black history in America. One of their great grandmothers was born here a slave in 1861, on what was then the Dixon plantation near Sparta, a few hours south of Atlanta. Her father was the slave master.
She had children with white farmer David Dixon, who was able to keep his family safe from the racial violence of their time.
One of their daughters, Helen, married James Blaine Smith — they were the ones who saved all they could and started buying up some 600 acres of property in the late 1920s. Their oldest son, James Adolf Smith, told his six children they should never sell any of it.
“And I can tell you that from his dying bed, yes, he said, ‘You’ll keep the property in the family,'” Blaine Smith told ABC News.
About two years ago, the brothers and other family members — who still farm trees on the land — started getting letters from Ben Tarbutton, the president of the Sandersville Railroad Company.
Tarbutton told ABC News he moved back home to hard-pressed rural Georgia after college to run the family business, carrying on the legacy started by his great grandfather in 1916.
“I just think that, you know, rural Georgia needs opportunity,” he told ABC News.
Tarbutton said the new rail line to the quarry could create at least a dozen permanent jobs in the area, helping to revive the local economy. Pointing out the sad storefronts in town, he said they have looked that way for more than 30 years.
In terms of the line’s impact on the area, Tarbutton told ABC News they would operate during daylight hours, Monday through Friday, with one roundtrip per day. He also argued that the quarry’s resources are valuable to the country as a whole, especially given the increased need for raw materials after the passage of the 2021 infrastructure bill.
“The country is at a deficit of aggregate rock,” he said. “So the need for aggregate stone, which goes into asphalt and the concrete so that goes in the roads because of the bridges, is, you know, it was already needed prior to that bill, but now even more so.”
He told ABC News he’s still trying to get the Smith family to sell small portions of their land, but wouldn’t say how much he’s offering them.
“I’m a landowner, too. I’ve been on their side of the table really all the time, until now,” Tarbutton said. “And the thing that we always have done is we try to get as much money as we could.”
The Smiths argued that it wasn’t enough.
“Whatever he offered was not what it would have been worth if we went to sell it,” Janet told ABC News. “They tried to minimize the impact of a train, cutting directly through your property.”
The Smiths say they have not been offered an easement, which would give the railroad company the right to use or enter their property without owning it. The company offered to build railroad crossings for each of the Smith family parcels of land, which the railroad would break into two. That would allow the families to walk across and farm trees across their land.
When the Smiths were first approached, the tracks were running right behind their houses. After they expressed their outrage, Sandersville agreed to move the railroad line slightly to avoid this.
Tarbutton has a major advantage in the negotiation — the power of eminent domain. This compulsory acquisition of private property for public use is typically wielded by the government, like a state highway department, or a public utility, like a gas company.
It’s traditionally associated with building something everyone can use, like New York City’s Central Park or the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas.
This practice can feel enormously cruel to landowners. In 1997, it allowed the city of New London, Connecticut, to condemn Susette Kelo’s home. She fought her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court because her land was being taken to build a $300 million research center for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
In a decision that still shocks people today, the court narrowly ruled against Kelo in 2005. They said that economic development was a good enough reason to condemn her land and sell it to private developers. The Pfizer research center was never built.
The legal group that fought for Kelo — the Institute For Justice — is helping the Smith family for free.
“We have currently a petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case out of New York trying to overturn that Kelo decision,” Mike Greenberg, an attorney with the Institute For Justice, told ABC News. “If that case is not the one that is going to do it, this certainly could be the case that makes it up there.”
At a recent hearing, Judge Craig L. Schwall expressed sympathy for the landowners.
“And if I ruled from what I thought was morally right, I would absolutely rule in your favor,” he said.
Ultimately, the judge ruled for the railroad, pointing to the law. However, he won’t let Sandersville Railroad Company boss Tarbutton condemn the land until the families get another chance with a higher court. On Feb. 27, the Smiths filed an appeal to the Georgia state Supreme Court.
The railroad president denied accusations that the Smiths would be treated differently if they were white.
“Well, I think that’s a gross mischaracterization. You know we came up with a straight line from point A to point B,” he told ABC News. “And we didn’t know who the property owners were at that time, much less what they look like.”
Sandersville Railroad Company is a private entity, but Tarbutton said lines like the one his company is trying to extend free up the nation’s roads.
“The vast majority of railroads are privately owned. And so those costs, as infrastructure calls, owning and maintaining the right of way government track — that is borne by the railroads,” he told ABC News. “And so if railroads didn’t handle the amount of traffic that we currently do, just would push all of that traffic back on roads — more trucks — it would just completely clog up the North American road system.”
From the sky, the construction of the new rail line or spur is visible right up to the Smith family properties, on land that other neighbors have already agreed to sell. These tracks were recently connected to a much larger CSX rail line that stretches up and down the East Coast, allowing Sandersville customers to transport their goods far away more easily.
In a statement to ABC News, the owners of the quarry say that it will soon be able “to produce and transport several times its current annual volume” and that “this will also benefit the local economy with increased expenditures on fuel, electricity, supplies, food and catering.”
The Smiths are hoping a court will let them honor their father’s dying wish: to keep the land whole.
“I want people to remember that this is America, where we are always given the right to freedom,” Diane told ABC News. “And not be encumbered with other people coming in and trying to take away or steal that little piece of serenity.”
