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      Ohio Mother Killed Trying to Stop a Carjacking With Her Son Inside

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      The woman, 29, was struck by her own vehicle after the suspects began driving away, the police said.Detectives in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend were searching for two men as they investigated the death of a woman who was fatally struck by her own vehicle while trying to stop a carjacking that occurred with her 6-year-old son in the car. Alexa Stakley, 29, was carjacked shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Thursday while picking up her son at the home of a babysitter after wrapping up a shift waiting tables, according to the police. After putting the sleeping 6-year-old inside her 2022 silver Honda SUV, Ms. Stakley walked back toward the babysitter’s house to retrieve an item, according to a police report. As she turned back, Ms. Stakley saw her moving. She was seen “running toward her Honda and was heard screaming for her child,” the police report said. Moments later, Ms. Stakley was struck by the vehicle, suffering a fatal wound to the head. Shortly afterward, two men were seen running away from the area, abandoning the vehicle nearby, the police said. Police officers found the child inside the car unharmed. Carjackings have been called “an important public safety threat” by the Department of Justice, which earlier this year announced it had established 11 task forces to combat the crime in areas of particular concern, like Philadelphia, Chicago and Tampa, Fla. 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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      Senator Menendez ‘Sold the Power of His Office,’ Prosecutor Says

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      In a closing statement, a prosecutor said the Menendez home was awash in cash and walked jurors through what the government has called a complicated web of corruption.When F.B.I. agents raided the New Jersey home of Senator Robert Menendez and his wife, they found envelope after envelope of cash, a federal prosecutor told a jury on Monday. Cash stuffed in bags, cash stuffed in the pockets of the senator’s jackets, cash stuffed in his boots. Gold bars worth thousands of dollars.The valuables were bribes that two businessmen paid to the couple in exchange for promises of official action by Mr. Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, said.“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Mr. Monteleoni told jurors. “It wasn’t enough for him to be entrusted by the public with the power to approve billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to foreign countries.”“No, Robert Menendez wanted all that power,” he added. “But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”“So, Menendez sold the power of his office,” he said.The prosecutor’s closing statement came as the trial of Mr. Menendez, 70, and the two businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — entered its ninth week in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes were enriched in the scheme and helped to funnel bribes to the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57.In exchange, the indictment says, Mr. Menendez steered aid and weapons to Egypt, used his political clout to help the government of Qatar, propped up Mr. Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly and sought to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer, and another ally, Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker.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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      F.B.I. Offers Reward for Information About New Mexico Wildfires

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      The agency said it was offering up to $10,000 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those “responsible for starting the fires.”The Federal Bureau of Investigation is offering an award for information about two wildfires in southern New Mexico that left two people dead, prompted the evacuation of thousands and scorched more than 24,000 acres.The agency is offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the “person or persons responsible for starting the fires” near the village of Ruidoso, N.M, the agency said in a statement.The F.B.I. asked for the public’s help in identifying what sparked the blazes.Margot Cravens, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I.’s field office in Albuquerque, declined to comment on Sunday evening but confirmed that the agency was assisting with the investigation.The South Fork and Salt fires began on June 17 amid sweltering temperatures and were still burning on Sunday evening. Extreme temperatures, low humidity and heavy rain in the area have complicated efforts to extinguish the fires, which are burning in the Mescalero Apache tribal area, on U.S. Forest Service land and in areas around Ruidoso.The South Fork fire, the larger of the two wildfires, has burned more than 17,000 acres and was only 31 percent contained on Sunday, according to New Mexico Fire Information, a website run by federal and state agencies.The Salt fire has burned more than 7,000 acres of tribal land in mostly inaccessible mountain terrain and remains only 7 percent contained, the authorities said.The two people who died were found on Tuesday in or near Ruidoso, according to the New Mexico State Police. One of them, a 60-year-old man, was found with burns on the side of a road near a motel, the police said. The other victim was found in the driver seat of a burned vehicle on a road.About 1,400 structures have been destroyed, and about 8,000 people from Ruidoso and the surrounding areas were forced to evacuate, the authorities said.Ruidoso announced it would be lifting evacuation orders for full-time residents, permitting them to return beginning 8 a.m. Monday. Some homes may be without gas, water and electricity, and air quality may be poor because of smoke and ash, according to a statement on the village’s website. Residents are being advised to bring a week’s worth of groceries and water.Some areas will remain off-limits because they are considered crime scenes and are “undergoing recovery efforts,” the statement said.Reporting was contributed by More

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      Killer of 2 Women in National Park in 1996 Has Been Identified, F.B.I. Says

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      A convicted serial rapist who died in an Ohio prison in 2018 was responsible for the murder of a couple at Shenandoah National Park in a case that initially was believed to be a hate crime.It took the authorities one week to find the bodies of Julianne Williams and Laura Winans near their campsite at a national park in Virginia in 1996 after their family reported them missing. But it would take nearly three decades for the authorities to identify the person they believe killed them.The F.B.I. office in Richmond on Thursday announced that new DNA evidence showed that Walter Leo Jackson Sr., a convicted serial rapist from Ohio who died in prison six years ago, had killed the couple in what initially was believed to have been an anti-gay hate crime and led to charges against another man that were eventually dropped by prosecutors in 2004.“After 28 years, we are now able to say who committed the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams in Shenandoah National Park,” Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia, said in a news release. “I want to again extend my condolences to the Winans and Williams families and hope today’s announcement provides some small measure of solace.”An F.B.I. investigative team revisited the case in 2021, the agency said. It re-examined previous leads and interviews and evidence recovered from the site of the killings. Investigators submitted some of the evidence for DNA testing and found a match to Mr. Jackson’s DNA, the agency said.“Even though we had this DNA match, we took additional steps and compared evidence from Lollie and Julie’s murders directly to a buccal swab containing Jackson’s DNA,” Stanley M. Meador, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Richmond, said in a news release.Mr. Jackson, who painted homes for a living, died in an Ohio prison in March 2018, officials said. He had an extensive criminal history, including convictions for rape, kidnapping and assault.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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      Trump Lawyers Assail Limited Gag Order Request in Documents Case

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      The latest battle over what the former president can say about a continuing legal case came after he falsely suggested that F.B.I. agents were authorized to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago.Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed a request by federal prosecutors to limit what he could say about a new flare-up in a case accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office.In an angry court filing, the lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution.On Friday evening, Mr. Smith’s team requested what amounted to a limited gag order on Mr. Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts the former president made last week falsely claiming that the F.B.I. had been authorized to kill him when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, in August 2022.The former president’s statements were based on a recently unsealed operational order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all searches conducted by the bureau.In their motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that Mr. Smith’s request was “an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional censorship application” that “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency.”Mr. Trump’s legal team said that Mr. Smith’s request should be stricken from the docket and that he and his prosecutors should face contempt sanctions for filing it in the first place.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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      Prosecutors Seek to Bar Trump From Attacking F.B.I. Agents in Documents Case

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      The prosecutors said the former president had made “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago that could endanger the agents involved.Federal prosecutors on Friday night asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to bar him from making any statements that might endanger law enforcement agents involved in the proceedings.Prosecutors said Mr. Trump had recently made “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, two years ago. The request came just days after the former president falsely suggested that the F.B.I. had been authorized to shoot him when agents descended on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and discovered more than 100 classified documents while executing a court-approved search warrant.In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that President Biden “authorized the FBI to use deadly (lethal) force” during the search.Mr. Trump’s post was a reaction to an F.B.I. operational plan for the Mar-a-Lago search that was unsealed on Tuesday as part of a legal motion filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The plan contained a boilerplate reference to lethal force being authorized as part of the search, which prosecutors said Mr. Trump had distorted.“As Trump is well aware, the F.B.I. took extraordinary care to execute the search warrant unobtrusively and without needless confrontation,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case.“They scheduled the search of Mar-a-Lago for a time when he and his family would be away,” the prosecutor added. “They planned to coordinate with Trump’s attorney, Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff before and during the execution of the warrant; and they planned for contingencies — which, in fact, never came to pass — about with whom to communicate if Trump were to arrive on the scene.”The request to Judge Cannon was the first time that prosecutors have sought to restrict Mr. Trump’s public statements in the case.Prosecutors did not seek to impose a gag order on Mr. Trump, but instead asked Judge Cannon to revise his conditions of release to forbid him from making any public comments “that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation.” More

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      Robert Menendez Trial Jurors See Gold Bars at Heart of Bribery Case

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      An F.B.I. agent, testifying for the government, described his search of Senator Robert Menendez’s house in New Jersey.With the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey underway on Thursday, a prosecutor handed a juror in the first row of the jury box a plastic bag containing an object at the heart of the government’s case: a gold bar that glinted under the courtroom lights.One by one, jurors held the bag, turning it over in their hands and feeling its weight before passing it to their neighbor — the jury’s first tangible exposure to evidence prosecutors say was a bribe paid to Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife.The prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, soon handed jurors another bag containing several gold bars. But before she could hand over a third, the judge, Sidney H. Stein, said the jury “has gotten a feel for the weight of gold.”Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with accepting gifts collectively worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, including gold, cash and a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible, in exchange for the senator’s dispensing of political favors to the governments of Egypt and Qatar and to three New Jersey businessmen.The senator and two of the businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — are being tried together in Manhattan federal court. Ms. Menendez, 57, was to be tried with them, but her trial was postponed after her lawyers said she had a “serious medical condition.”On Thursday, the senator revealed that Ms. Menendez was being treated for breast cancer and was preparing to undergo a mastectomy and possible radiation treatment.Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.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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      Civilian Prosecutors Rejected Evidence in 9/11 Case That Military Calls Crucial

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      The revelation sets in stark relief the decision by military prosecutors to seek to include the evidence, which has opened the door to years of litigation over confessions by the men accused of plotting the attacks.For years, a thorny question has dominated pretrial hearings in the military commissions case over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Did the men accused of plotting them voluntarily confess in 2007 after the C.I.A. had stopped torturing them, and could those statements be used as evidence at their eventual death-penalty trial?So it came as a surprise when a veteran F.B.I. analyst revealed that in 2009, when the Obama administration was planning to instead try the men in civilian court, federal prosecutors had decided against trying to offer the statements as evidence.The revelation sets in stark relief the contrary decision by military prosecutors to build their case around summoning the F.B.I. interrogators as witnesses, calling such potential testimony their “most critical” evidence. It also underlines how that decision has opened the door to years of litigation and contributed to a lengthy delay in getting the case to trial.Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo from 2011 until his retirement in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.During a closed hearing on March 6, Kimberly Waltz, a supervisory intelligence analyst at the F.B.I. who works on the Guantánamo prosecution team, disclosed that civilian prosecutors had decided the statements were unnecessary. In 2009, when she helped the civilian prosecution team evaluate the evidence, federal prosecutors rejected using the confessions at trial, according to a transcript of the hearing recently released by the government.“At that time it was my understanding,” she said, that “we were not going to be able to use them; they weren’t admissible.”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