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A jury found Chad Isaak guilty in the April 2019 stabbing and shooting deaths of four people at a property management firm in the city of Mandan. A man convicted of stabbing and shooting four people at a North Dakota property management firm was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A jury in August found Chad Isaak guilty in the grisly deaths of RJR Maintenance and Management co-owner Robert Fakler, 52; and employees Adam Fuehrer, 42; Bill Cobb, 50; and his wife, Lois Cobb, 45. The four were shot and stabbed April 1, 2019, in the RJR building in Mandan, a city of about 20,000 people across the Missouri River from Bismarck. Investigators said the victims suffered more than 100 stab wounds. Isaak was also found guilty of burglary, unlawful entry into a vehicle, and a misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of a vehicle. Prosecutors recommended four consecutive life sentences without parole for each murder, along with nearly 16 years in prison for the oth...

A woman charged with trafficking heroin and methamphetamine was sentenced to probation earlier this month. Jocelyn A. Lovato, 30, of Las Vegas, was charged with six felony charges in April 2019 after she sold narcotics to an undercover officer with the Region IV Drug Task Force. Lovato accepted a plea agreement in February 2021, pleading guilty to two counts of trafficking a controlled substance, and one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance; however, sentencing was delayed due to court-ordered evaluations, a change in judges and delays related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A final sentencing hearing took place Dec. 1 in District Court where Lovato faced a maximum of 6 years of imprisonment. Prosecutors from the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s office asked Judge Michael Aragon to sentence Lovato to prison, citing the danger posed to San Miguel County by illegal drug trafficking. “The state further argued that too many citizens of our community are dying from ...

When an armed teen pointed his gun at a man’s children in a Texas Popeyes, the protective father defended his kids, shooting the criminal dead. Now, the deceased teen’s mother has one simple question for the man who killed her son. Andrew Thomas Herrera, 19, walked into a Popeyes Lousiana Kitchen restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, with the intention of robbing the business. Determined to show everyone that he was a serious threat, Herrera demanded money from a male customer before ultimately pointing his gun at the man’s children. The gunman’s mother, Cynthia Ruiz, is upset with the outcome. After her son was shot dead while trying to rob a local Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, a mother has a burning question for the armed hero. What the armed criminal didn’t realize was that the young victims’ father was a licensed concealed carrier. Before Herrera could make his next move, the protective father pulled out his firearm and shot the robber 5 times, killing him. A month after the teen’s death,...

When a woman accused an Army colonel of rape, it destroyed his life and career. A judge has since decided the fate of the case. When it was read aloud in court, jaws hit the floor as people gasped over the controversial ruling. Susan Shannon, a 52-year-old blogger living in Everett, Washington, posted an article with serious accusations against a US Army colonel. According to the allegations published in Shannon’s blog, she was sexually assaulted by Army Colonel David “Wil” Riggins in 1986 while they were both cadets at West Point, the United States Military Academy in New York. Susan Shannon. Shannon alleged that Riggins raped her while driving her home after she got drunk at a party in 1986. Riggins offered her a lift, and when she passed out in the vehicle, he had sex with her unconscious body, according to her claims. She dropped out of West Point soon after as Riggins went on to have an illustrious career in the Army, rising to the rank of colonel. Wil Riggins and Susan Shannon du...

It’s almost a mantra in climate science: The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. But that figure, found in scientific studies , advocacy reports , the popular press , and even the 2021 U.N. climate assessment , is incorrect, obscuring the true toll of global warming on the north, a team of climate scientists reports this week. In fact, the researchers say, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average. “Everybody knows [the Arctic] is a canary when it comes to climate change,” says Peter Jacobs, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who presented the work on 13 December at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “Yet we’re misreporting it by a factor of two. Which is just bananas.” Researchers have long known the world warms faster in the far north, because of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. The drivers of amplification include increased solar heating, as dark ocean water replaces reflective sea ice, along w...

Matthew Hawn checked his phone to see if the wait was finally over. It had been five months since he was fired for teaching about White privilege at a high school in rural Tennessee. Two months since he had fought to regain his job at an emotional three-day hearing, becoming a symbol of the acrimonious debate over the way race, racism and history should be taught in America’s schools. Now — nothing. No announcements from the school district about his appeal effort. No messages from his lawyer. No texts from the friends and former colleagues who had sustained him through a lonely half-year of jobless limbo. Could he return to teaching in his hometown? Apparently no one knew, although an independent hearing officer was supposed to deliver a verdict by the end of the week. It was now Friday, inching past 4:26 p.m. on an October afternoon. Hawn, 43, White and balding, sighed. Marloh, his German shepherd, started to whine. Hawn grabbed the leash, because no matter what, he still had to walk...