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      Texas Parents Fed Smoothies to Sick Daughter Who Later Died, Police Say

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      Miranda Sipps, 12, suffered for four days before dying while her mother and stepfather failed to seek medical treatment for her, the authorities said. Both are charged with a felony.A Texas mother and stepfather failed to seek medical assistance for their sick daughter and instead fed her smoothies as she battled life-threatening injuries for four days before she died on Monday, according to the Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office.The parents, Denise Balbaneda, 36, and Gerald Gonzales, 40, of Christine, Texas, “basically confessed” by telling the authorities how their daughter, Miranda Sipps, 12, was injured and that they had failed to act, Sheriff David Soward said at a news conference Wednesday. They were both arrested and charged with causing serious injury to a child by omission, a first-degree felony, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.“They thought they could nurse her back to health,” Sheriff Soward said Wednesday. “We do not think they wanted the attention that this would draw to them if the little girl was injured — which is strangely ironic.”For four days, the injuries that Miranda suffered left her unconscious and she was able only to “flutter her eyes and move her hands a little bit,” Sheriff Soward said. Instead of seeking medical attention, Ms. Balbaneda and Mr. Gonzales had her lie “on a pallet” and tried to feed her smoothies which she could not swallow, Sheriff Soward added.Miranda did not have any broken bones but authorities would not provide details about how the girl was injured or the nature of her injuries. Sheriff Soward said that the charges could change as more information is revealed.Efforts to reach Ms. Balbaneda and Mr. Gonzales for comment on Thursday were unsuccessful and it was unclear if they had legal representation.At around 8 p.m. Monday, Ms. Balbaneda, who was in a vehicle with her daughter, called 9-1-1 and was met by dispatchers on the side of a highway in Atascosa County near their family’s home in Christine, about 45 miles south of San Antonio, according to the sheriff’s office. The child was alive but unconscious and died in the hospital two hours later, it said.Sheriff Soward, who confirmed there had been “calls for service” to the couple’s home in the past, said that he felt that the couple did not want the police coming to their home. He described the home as “untidy, unkept, sort of dirty.”Monday was the first day of school for the Jourdanton Independent School District, where Miranda attended junior high school and was a cheerleader.“The Jourdanton ISD is currently dealing with the tragic loss of one of our Jr. High students,” the district said in a statement. “In our Junior High library, we made counselors available for anyone who may need or want help or assistance.”A GoFundMe post apparently from Miranda’s aunt, Pricilla Chapa, has raised about $2,000 for her funeral.“She was taken from us far too soon in an unexpected way,” the post read, “leaving behind a legacy of love, laughter, and memories that we will cherish forever.” More

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      Federal Audit Orders M.T.A. to Improve Subway Worker Safety

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      The Federal Transit Administration released the report nine months after the death of a transit worker. If the M.T.A. does not comply, it could lose funding.Federal transportation officials said on Wednesday that the death of a transit worker who was hit by a train in November, as well as a rising number of “near-miss” incidents on train tracks last year, reflected unsafe conditions and practices that were putting transit employees at growing risk.In an audit, the Federal Transit Administration counted 38 events in which track workers were involved in close calls in 2023. That tally was up from 24 incidents in 2022 and 23 in 2021.The majority of the dangerous events were caused by the failure of transit employees to “comply with key safety rules and established procedures,” according to the F.T.A.Half of the “near-miss” incidents last year involved one or more transit workers who failed to follow proper procedures while flagging — the job of notifying trains when workers are on the tracks. Other incidents involved factors such as improper communication and radio use, inadequate protection and train operator inattention. A “near-miss” incident is defined as an event in which death or injury is narrowly avoided and typically happens when a worker is struck by a train, steps on the third rail or slips and falls on the tracks.“The volume of close calls is pretty worrying,” said Jim Mathews, chief executive of the Rail Passengers Association, an advocacy group. “If you work in and around the subway, you’ve had an awful lot of close calls, and eventually close calls catch up to you.”The F.T.A., which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, drew up a list of remedies for the unsafe working conditions that included an updated safety plan from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s transit network.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trucking Company Owner Pleads Guilty in Wreck That Killed 7 Bikers

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      Dunyadar Gasanov admitted he had lied to investigators about how long he had known the driver of the truck and altered drivers’ logs to evade federal regulations.The owner of a trucking company pleaded guilty to federal charges Tuesday for making false statements after one of the company’s trucks killed seven motorcyclists on a rural road in Randolph, N.H. in 2019, federal prosecutors said.Dunyadar Gasanov, the owner of Westfield Transport in West Springfield, Mass., falsified driving logs, conspired to make false statements to federal inspectors and admitted to lying to inspectors about how long he had known the driver involved in the fatal crash, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts said in a statement.Mr. Gasanov, 39, who lives in West Springfield, Mass., and is known as Damien, will face up to 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine for the three charges to which he pleaded guilty when he is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 21, 2024. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to recommend “incarceration at the low end” of the sentencing guidelines, according to court documents.In a statement, Joshua S. Levy, the acting U.S. attorney, said that Mr. Gasanov had “flouted those laws that are critical to public safety.”“We will not forget the lives lost in June 2019 that relate to this conviction,” he said.The crash, on June 21, 2019, killed seven members of a motorcycle club of ex-Marines: Albert (Woody) Mazza Jr., 59; Daniel Pereira, 58; Aaron Perry, 45; Desma Oakes, 42; Michael Ferazzi, 62; and Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, who were 58.The driver of the truck that killed the bikers, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, of West Springfield, Mass., was acquitted by a jury in 2022 of all charges he faced: seven counts of manslaughter, seven counts of negligent homicide and one count of reckless conduct.Mr. Gasanov lied to investigators about how many times he had interacted with Mr. Zhukovskyy, prosecutors said. He had claimed that he had first met the driver shortly before the crash, when, in fact, he had known him for years and was aware that Mr. Zhukovskyy, in 2013, had been charged with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, according to court records.Mr. Gasanov also underreported the number of hours driven by employees to evade federal regulations designed to ensure the safety of roadways, instructed at least one employee to falsify records, and lied about manipulation of driving logs, according to prosecutors.Westfield Transport ceased operation shortly after the accident, according to court records.Lawyers for Mr. Gasanov did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Dartanayan Gasanov, who, according to The Boston Globe is a brother of Dunyadar Gasanov, worked at Westfield Transport with Dunyadar, has also been accused of falsifying driving logs. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, the prosecutors’ statement said.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Heat Contributed to 47,000 Deaths in Europe Last Year, but Relief Programs Helped

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      A new study shows that behavioral and social changes can reduce heat mortality. But challenges remain as temperatures continue to rise.More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.But the number could have been much higher.Without adaptations to rising temperatures over the past two decades — including advances in health care, more widespread air-conditioning and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated during extreme temperatures — the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80 percent higher, according to the new study. For people over 80 years old, the death toll could have doubled.“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center, and the lead author of the study. “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and we have to work faster.”Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role heat played in a person’s death. The study used publicly available death records in 35 countries, representing about 543 million Europeans and provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.The researchers used an epidemiological model to analyze the deaths alongside 2023 weekly temperature records to estimate what fraction of deaths could be attributable to heat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scofflaws and Other Hazards on the Roads

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      More from our inbox:Neo-Nazis in Nashville and the Speech QuestionVance vs. the Rule of LawA Ban on Masks? Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Traffic Stops Fell in Pandemic, and Didn’t Return” (The Upshot, front page, Aug. 1):Thank you for highlighting the public health crisis that is the rise in traffic deaths across the United States. One point not made is the burden on our children. Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death of children, second to firearms. In my city, Philadelphia, five children, on average, are hit by a car every week.As a pediatric resident physician, I see the devastating outcomes of these statistics in the emergency room and intensive care unit. I advise children to wear a seatbelt, look both ways before crossing a road and wear a helmet when cycling. But people are getting killed even when they do everything right.Plastic bollards separating a designated bike lane don’t work when drivers are willing to barrel over them.We need an evidence-based approach to this public health crisis. Safe road design saves lives. We need to invest in Vision Zero programs to fund structural changes, including speed cameras and physical barriers between cyclists and drivers. Cities need to invest in public transit systems.Culture change takes time. Structural change in the meantime is evidence-based and will work to make all Americans, including our children, safer.Allison NeesonPhiladelphiaTo the Editor:The degree to which American drivers have been ignoring traffic laws over the past several years is mind-blowing. Speeding on highways and parkways is out of control and makes driving an exercise in avoiding catastrophe. It seems as if every other car is drag racing or trying to set a new speed record.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      4 Hotel Workers Charged with Murder of D’vontaye Mitchell

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      Four workers who pinned down D’vontaye Mitchell, 43, outside a Milwaukee Hyatt hotel in June were charged with murder. His family said he had been having a mental health crisis.Four hotel workers were charged Tuesday with murder in the death of D’vontaye Mitchell, a Black man who died outside a Milwaukee hotel after being subdued by staff members in a scene that was recorded on video and caused a public outcry.Mr. Mitchell’s family says he was having a mental health crisis when hotel staff members tried to subdue him after he ran through the lobby and into the women’s restroom. An autopsy showed that asphyxiation, cocaine and methamphetamine had contributed to his death.The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office announced the charge of felony murder against four people: Todd Alan Erickson, 60; Brandon Ladaniel Turner, 35; Devin W. Johnson-Carson, 23; and Herbert T. Williamson, 52. The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years and nine months.Prosecutors said arrest warrants had been issued for the men, though it was unclear if they had been arrested by late Tuesday.Mr. Erickson and Mr. Turner worked as security guards at the Hyatt Hotel in Milwaukee, prosecutors said. Mr. Williamson worked as a bell attendant, and Mr. Johnson-Carson worked at the front desk. All four were fired after Mr. Mitchell’s death.The charges filed in court Tuesday came after an autopsy report released on Friday ruled the death a homicide and found that Mr. Mitchell, 43, had died from a combination of “restraint asphyxia and toxic effects of cocaine and methamphetamine” as he was held down by hotel workers in a prone position on June 30. The report also noted that Mr. Mitchell had been obese and had hypertensive cardiovascular disease.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5-Year-Old Killed After Bounce House Goes Airborne in Maryland

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      Children were inside the play structure at a baseball game when it was carried 15 to 20 feet in the air the by the wind. One child died and another was injured.A 5-year-old boy was killed at a professional baseball game in Maryland on Friday after a bounce house was picked up by a wind gust while children were inside of it, the authorities said.Children fell from the inflatable play structure when it was launched 15 to 20 feet in the air before landing on the baseball field at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, Md., where the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs were playing Friday night, according to a statement from the government of Charles County, Md.The 5-year-old boy, who has not been identified, was airlifted to Children’s National Hospital in Washington and later pronounced dead, according to Jennifer L. Harris, the press officer for Charles County, and the county’s news release. A second child was also airlifted to the same hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.The death took place while the Blue Crabs were playing against the York Revolution in an Atlantic League of Professional Baseball game in Waldorf, about 25 miles south of Washington. The teams then halted play, and the Blue Crabs postponed their games over the weekend.“Our entire organization shares our condolences with the family mourning the loss of a child, and concern for the child who was injured,” Courtney Knichel, general manager of the Blue Crabs, said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with them all.”The bounce house was on an elevated, fenced-off surface above right field, according to a report from WRC-TV, NBC’s Washington affiliate. After being lifted off the ground, it crashed on the field near the first-base line.The bounce house is usually set up in an area for children to play in during games, Ms. Harris said in an email.A spokesman for the Blue Crabs could not be immediately reached for comment.Bounce houses have gone airborne and killed children before. This past April, a 2-year-old was killed and another child was injured in Arizona when the wind picked up the bounce house they were in and threw it into a neighboring lot. In 2021, five Australian children died after a bouncy castle was propelled 30 feet in the air during their school’s end-of-the-year celebration.Regency Furniture Stadium in 2008. On Friday, one child died and another was injured during a baseball game at the stadium.Mark Gail/The The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesA study by the University of Georgia found at least 479 injuries and 28 deaths happened in wind-related bounce house incidents around the world between 2000 to 2021.The Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent federal regulatory agency, recommends that bounce houses should not be used when maximum wind speeds exceed 15 to 25 miles per hour. The group advises that if “the tops of the trees are swaying” it may not be safe to use a bounce house. Bounce houses should be secured with at least six anchor points, according to the Amusement Devices Safety Council, Britain’s workplace health and safety regulator. More