Woman dies on 1st day of Burning Man Festival, cause of death not known
(LOVELOCK, Nev.) — Authorities are investigating the death of a 39-year-old woman on the first day of the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
Burning Man’s emergency services personnel found the festival attendee, Kendra Frazer, unresponsive around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, according to the Burning Man Project and Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen. Deputies responded and confirmed her death, Allen said.
“Her cause and manner of death are still pending results of an autopsy and toxicology screening,” the sheriff said in a statement on Monday.
“Our thoughts and condolences go out to the family and friends affected by this loss,” festival organizers said in a statement. “The safety and well-being of our staff and community are paramount. We are cooperating fully with local authorities as they investigate.”
This year’s Burning Man festival runs from Aug. 25 to Sept. 2. About 80,000 people attend Burning Man each year, according to the festival’s website.
Last year’s festival was marred by torrential rains, with thousands mired in mud and told to stay in place and conserve food until they could safely exit the festival grounds.
(PATERSON, N.J.) — As the search continued Sunday for a relative accused of stabbing a 4-year-old girl multiple times at the child’s New Jersey home, the father of the young victim said she’s fighting for her life and the attack left him “dumbfounded.”
The child remains in stable condition at Saint Joseph’s University Medical Center, where she is being treated for puncture wounds to her lung and liver and an injured diaphragm, according to her family.
“She couldn’t respond because she had tubes and everything down her, but she opened her eyes and when she heard my voice she started making eye contact trying to see me. That brought joy to me that she was responsive,” the girl’s father, Faherem LaSane, told ABC New York station WABC outside the hospital on Saturday afternoon.
LaShane said his daughter’s name is Amber, and described her as a happy girl with a big smile and an appetite to match.
The stabbing unfolded just after 4 p.m. on Friday in Paterson, New Jersey, according to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office. Officers were called to the home for a domestic dispute and found the child stabbed multiple times, prosecutors said.
Police did not immediately identify the suspect, but Paterson council member Luis Velez told WABC that police are looking for the child’s aunt in connection with the incident.
The aunt was babysitting Amber while the girl’s mother was at the home caring for another child, relatives said.
Neighbor Keema James said she saw the mother emerge from the home holding the child, both covered in blood.
“She had a big gash on her forehead and she had her wrapped up,” James said of the victim in an interview with WABC.
LaShan said he was stunned when he received word of the stabbing and immediately rushed to the hospital to be at his daughter’s side.
“I was totally dumbfounded, and I was shocked because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it at all,” LaShan said.
A motive for the stabbing remains under investigation.
The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office asked anyone with information about the incident to contact its office.
(DETROIT) — The Detroit Police Department is seeking public help in their search for an arson suspect who burned four vehicles and damaged two others late last week.
Authorities released a video of the incident on Aug. 15, which occurred at around 1:45 p.m. in a post office parking lot on Harper Ave, near the intersection with Morang Ave. on the east side of the city.
In the footage, a hooded man can be seen breaking the window of a white 2018 Chevy Traverse in the parking lot, before pouring accelerant inside. The suspect then lit the fuel, with the subsequent explosion throwing him backwards against another vehicle. The suspect fell to the floor and then ran from the scene.
“The suspect is described as a heavy set male,” read the appeal from the Detroit Police Department published on Monday. “He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt with a white shirt underneath, and blue jeans. Six vehicles were damaged and four vehicles were burned as a result of this incident.”
Authorities are offering a $500 reward related to the case.
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — The wheels of justice turn slowly, and it’s not cheap to keep them grinding.
Still more than nine months before Bryan Kohberger’s capital murder trial is scheduled to begin — and still without a definitive answer on where in Idaho it will be held — local government leaders in the area where four students were stabbed to death in 2022 do know one thing: The trial will cost taxpayers a lot of money, so the county requires a cash infusion, officials have decided — wherever it ends up taking place.
To that end, Latah County District Court has been granted a significant increase for next year: The county’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved boosting the trial expense budget to $150,000 for fiscal year 2025 — more than 40 times their 2024 budget of $3,500.
It’s not the first time the financial impact of the case has come up. In 2023, prosecutors leading the case against Kohberger requested a $135,000 budget. Even then, they said, their part could cost more than eight times what’s typically allotted annually.
Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger, then a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed four University of Idaho students to death: Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.
After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as the suspect, arresting him in December 2022 at his family’s home in Pennsylvania. He was indicted in May 2023 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
His lawyers have said Kohberger was driving around alone and not near the crime scene on the night the killings occurred, and say they’ll have expert cellphone analysis to back that up.
The trial is currently set for June 2025.
Kohberger could face the death penalty, if convicted.
With the pretrial process creeping forward, the financial line items associated with the case continue to accrue.
Once the trial kicks off, according to the approved Latah County budget, expenses could include travel and lodging costs for jurors and bailiffs. Since jurors in the complex and high-profile case will need supplies, including meals, the court also requested a large increase in its jury supplies budget: from $3,500 to $50,000.
The approved budget to cover witness fees is also substantially higher than last year’s, primarily to pay for the travel costs of witnesses scheduled to testify in court, according to the budget.
The commissioners also approved $20,000 in contracts and labor in preparation for a trial in Latah County.
If the trial is held in Latah County, this money would be used to hire extra workers for jury management, according to Latah County Clerk Julie Fry.
But whether the trial will stay in Latah County remains to be seen, and has become a point of pretrial contention. Kohberger’s lawyers argue the “pressure to convict” their client in the area showed to be “so severe,” those jurors couldn’t possibly be impartial. In fact, they argue, the “mob mentality” of the tightknit community is the “exact reason” the trial should be moved to another area of Idaho, where it could be heard by people with less of an emotional connection to what has been nearly two years and counting of news coverage about it.
“The traumatized town of Moscow is understandably filled with deeply held prejudgment opinions of guilt,” Kohberger attorney Elisa Massoth said in a recent court filing in their push to move the trial to Ada County, and the state capital of Boise.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, contend that people in Boise have TVs and newspapers too, so moving it would be futile — and the focus instead should be on “crafting remedial measures” to ensure a fair and impartial jury can be seated right where they are.
Both sides have attempted to cite frugality to support their opposing positions.
“Any consideration related to costs of prosecution and defense make Ada County a logical choice with the largest airport in the state,” Kohberger attorney Anne Taylor said in a July filing. “There will be a number of witnesses traveling into Idaho and Ada County is a more cost-effective option,” she said, adding that keeping the trial in more far-flung Moscow “will require most witnesses to travel to Spokane, Washington and rent a car to drive to the Latah County Courthouse.”
In arguing against the change of venue, prosecutors have also pointed to court coffers.
“The transfer of trial to Ada County would come at an extraordinary cost,” prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson wrote in a filing earlier this month. “Whether out-of-state witnesses fly into Lewiston, Spokane, or even Boise, the cost of rental vehicles for a handful of out-of-state witnesses is only a fraction of the total cost picture.”
Were the trial to move to Boise, he said, the need for more witness hotel rentals would skyrocket, as would pulling police and emergency dispatch witnesses from their work “for days, rather than hours, creating a ripple effect of inconvenience.”
“While Defense counsel took this case on a contract basis and will have to travel whether the trial is had in Ada County or in Latah County, the same is not true for the Court, the court reporter, the court clerk, and the Court’s staff attorney,” Thompson said.
“The State, which has the burden of proof and must deal with the logistics of juggling witnesses and trial exhibits would have to relocate both of its lead attorneys, as well as its support and victim services staff, for weeks and likely months,” Thompson continued. “This would come at great expense for lodging, transportation, and per diem.”
A hearing on whether to change the trial’s venue is set for Thursday.