The Chicago Bears could be plotting a big move up in the 2021 NFL Draft to land a quarterback according to a few different reports.
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The Good Guys Talk Back Chicago White Sox podcast focuses on Carlos Rodon’s no-hitter, Yermin Mercedes hot start and are joined by Steve Paradzinski of On Tap Sports!
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A fire that broke out Saturday morning in a pedestrian tunnel at O’Hare International Airport caused a headache for many travelers.
A fire that broke out Saturday morning inside a busy pedestrian tunnel at O’Hare Airport caused headaches for many travelers — and forced them close together in the middle of a pandemic.
The fire broke out in the tunnel between concourses B and C in Terminal 1 shortly after 8 a.m., according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. The incident forced hundreds of travelers to closely congregate in one of the airport’s main walkways.
“Enjoying a super spreader event at [O’Hare] this morning,” one traveler tweeted, along with a photo of the crowd.
Enjoying a super spreader event at @fly2ohare this morning. Way to go Chicago. No Plan B for “fire” in the tunnel between Terminals B & C. ♀️ pic.twitter.com/y7P8i6I1rI
— MEA (@mannett98) April 17, 2021
In response to the tweet, the CDA emphasized that travelers were wearing masks and that airport employees were trying to maintain social distancing as possible.
The CDA also said United Airlines, which is housed in Terminal 1, provided shuttle buses to take passengers to the B and C concourses for their flights.
Jillian Mallen, of Logan Square, rode on one of those shuttles. She said it took her an hour to get to her gate in concourse C due to the incident, though United Airlines held flights for passengers.
“I just feel like there wasn’t a ton of communication regarding the transportation situation,” said Mallen, who was on her way to Virginia. “So [there were] a lot of restless travelers really squished.”
Power was restored by 9:30 a.m.
No injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire is under investigation, officials said.
The incident caused some flight delays and a checked luggage mishap for at least one major airline.
Professional wrestler Mike Bennett, who took a United Airlines flight out of O’Hare Saturday morning, tweeted that the fire prevented checked bags from making it to their destination.
Update: Apparently there was a fire at O’Hare so many bags got held up from Point A to Point B. Understandable. Nobody thought the empty luggage cargo was a red flag to maybe delay the flight? ♂️
— Mike Bennett (@RealMikeBennett) April 17, 2021
“They didn’t put [the bags] anywhere,” Bennett tweeted. “They said there was a fire so they couldn’t get the luggage to the plane. So they sent us on our way without the luggage. I don’t get it.”
Update: All is right with the world. United gave me toiletries for the inconvenience…. pic.twitter.com/Xha7rm2HRp
— Mike Bennett (@RealMikeBennett) April 17, 2021
A United Airlines spokesperson confirmed some flights were delayed due to the fire. The airline resumed regular operations around 10:30 a.m.
Prince Philip was laid to rest Saturday in a funeral ceremony that honored his lifetime of service to the U.K., the crown and his wife of 73 years, Queen Elizabeth II.
WINDSOR, England — Sitting by herself at the funeral of Prince Philip on Saturday, Queen Elizabeth cut a regal, but solitary figure: still the monarch, but now alone.
The queen sat apart from family members at the simple but somber ceremony in accordance with strict social distancing rules during the coronavirus pandemic. But if the ceremony had been for anyone else, at her side would have been her husband of 73 years, who gave a lifetime of service to the crown.
Wearing a facemask, the queen was dressed all in black, except for the diamond brooch that flashed on her left shoulder — a piece she had often worn on engagements with her husband.
The monarch’s four children and eight grandchildren sat in small groups nearby, during a stripped-back service at Windsor Castle that made their loss somehow more personal for people who often live their lives in public. The pandemic has put Britain’s royal family in the same position as many others, unable to give loved ones the sendoffs they would have wanted.
Just 30 mourners were allowed to attend the service for the prince, who died April 9 at the age of 99.
“We have been inspired by his unwavering loyalty to our queen, by his service to the nation and the Commonwealth, by his courage, fortitude and faith,” the dean of Windsor, David Conner, said in his call to prayer. “Our lives have been enriched through the challenges that he has set us; the encouragement that he has given us; his kindness, humor and humanity.”
Philip’s body was carried to St. George’s Chapel at the castle on a Land Rover that the prince himself had specially designed. It was followed by members of the Royal Family, including Princes William and Harry, who made their first public appearance together since Harry and his wife, Meghan, gave a controversial interview to U.S. television host Oprah Winfrey in which they discussed the difficulties of royal life and how the two brothers had grown apart.
The procession traversed the grounds of Windsor Castle, passing military detachments arrayed under bright blue skies.
The nation honored Philip with a minute’s silence observed across the United Kingdom at 3 p.m., its beginning and end marked by a gun fired by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery. The final shot signaled the start of a funeral service steeped in military and royal tradition, but infused with the duke’s personality.
Inside the medieval Gothic chapel, the setting for centuries of royal weddings and funerals, this service was quiet and without excessive pageantry. Philip was deeply involved in planning the ceremony. At his request, there was no sermon. There were also no eulogies or readings, in keeping with royal tradition.
Former Bishop of London Richard Chartres, who knew Philip well, said the 50-minute service reflected the preferences of the prince, who was a man of faith but liked things to be succinct.
“He was at home with broad church, high church and low church, but what he really liked was short church,” Chartres told the BBC.
The monarch offered her own touches to the day. Ahead of the funeral, Buckingham Palace released a photo of the queen and Philip, smiling and relaxing on blankets in the grass in the Scottish Highlands in 2003. The palace said the casual, unposed photo was a favorite of the queen.
Earlier in the day, a few local residents left flowers outside the castle, though most people heeded requests from the palace and police to stay away because of the pandemic.
The funeral procession and the service itself took place out of public view, within the grounds of the castle, a 950-year-old royal residence 20 miles (about 30 kilometers) west of London. It was broadcast live on television.
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The day’s events began at 11 a.m., when Philip’s coffin was moved from the royal family’s private chapel to the Inner Hall of Windsor Castle, where it rested until the procession began. The coffin was draped with Philip’s personal standard, topped with his Admiral of the Fleet Naval Cap and sword. The sword was given to him by his father-in-law, King George VI, on the occasion of his marriage to the queen in 1947.
Composing a wreath atop the coffin were flowers chosen by the queen, including white lilies, small white roses, white freesia, white wax flower, white sweet peas and jasmine. A note from the monarch was attached, but its contents were not disclosed.
The funeral reflected Philip’s military ties, both as the ceremonial commander of many units and as a veteran of the Royal Navy who served with distinction during World War II. More than 700 military personnel took part in the commemorative events, including army bands, Royal Marine buglers and an honor guard drawn from across the armed forces.
The armed forces also sent wreaths of flowers that were laid outside St. George’s chapel, some with handwritten notes. One said the Royal Marines wanted to pay their respects to a man “who stood with us and among us for 64 years.”
Lieutenant Gen. Roland Walker, regimental lieutenant colonel of the Grenadier Guards, said his unit was honored to take part because of its close relationship with the prince. Philip served as regimental colonel of the guards, its honorary leader, for 42 years.
“This is a privilege,” he told the BBC. “Because my understanding is he planned this, so we’re here because he wanted us to be here, and that, I think, down to the junior guardsmen, is a known fact.’’
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Philip and the queen’s children — Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward — walked behind the hearse along with other members of the Royal Family, all of whom wore civilian clothes at the queen’s request. The queen followed in a Bentley.
William and Harry were part of the nine-member royal contingent, although their cousin, Peter Phillips, walked between them. There was no obvious tension between the brothers, whose relationship has been strained since Harry’s decision to quit royal duties and move to California. After the service, they walked back to the castle together, seeming to chat amiably.
Their appearance at the service stirred memories of the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana, when William and Harry, then 15 and 12, walked behind their mother’s coffin accompanied by Philip.
In honor of Philip’s military service, several elements of the funeral had a maritime theme, including the hymn “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” which is associated with seafarers and seeks protection “for those in peril on the sea.”
As Philip’s coffin was lowered into the Royal Vault, Royal Marine buglers sounded “Action Stations,” an alarm that alerts sailors to prepare for battle — included in the service at Philip’s request. He will rest there, at least until the queen’s death, alongside the remains of 24 other royals, including King George III, whose reign included the years of the American Revolution. The queen and Philip are expected to be buried together in the Royal Burial Ground on the Frogmore Estate close to Windsor Castle.
For decades, Philip was a fixture of British life, renowned for his founding of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards program that encouraged youths to challenge themselves and for a blunt-spoken manner that at times included downright offensive remarks. He lived in his wife’s shadow, but his death has sparked a reflection about his role, and new appreciation from many in Britain.
“To be perfectly honest I didn’t realize the extent (of) what his life had been, what he had done for us all,” said Viv Davies, who came to pay her respects in Windsor. “He was a marvelous husband, wasn’t he, to the queen and the children? Just remarkable — and I don’t think we will see the like again.”
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___
Jill Lawless reported from London.
Indianapolis’ tight knit Sikh community mourned Saturday as members learned that four Sikhs were among the eight people killed in the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse.
INDIANAPOLIS — Amarjit Sekhon, a 48-year-old mother of two sons, was the breadwinner of her family and one of many members of Indianapolis’ tight knit Sikh community employed at a FedEx warehouse on the city’s southwest side.
Her death Thursday night in a mass shooting that claimed the lives of seven other FedEx employees — four of them Sikhs — has left that community stunned and in mourning, her brother-in-law, Kuldip Sekhon, said Saturday.
He said his sister-in-law began working at the FedEx facility in November – after previously working at a bakery – and was a dedicated worker whose husband was disabled.
“She was a workaholic, she always was working, working,” he said. “She would never sit still … the other day she had the (COVID-19) shot and she was really sick, but she still went to work.”
In addition to Sekhon, the Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead late Friday as: Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jasvinder Kaur, 50; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.
Police said Brandon Scott Hole, 19, apparently began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself. Authorities have not publicly speculated on a motive.
The killings marked the latest in a string of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis.
Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. He said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility.
About 90% of the workers at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, Indianapolis Police Chief Randal Taylor said Friday.
Kuldip Sekhon said his family lost another relative in the shooting — Kaur, who was his son’s mother-in-law. He said both Kaur and Amarjit Sekhon began working at the FedEx facility at the same time last November.
Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition that her family members, including several who work at the FedEx warehouse, are “traumatized” by the killings.
“My nani, my family, and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough — our community has been through enough trauma,” she said in the statement.
There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the coalition. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened their first house of worship, known as a gurdwara, in 1999.
The attack was another blow to the Asian American community a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
The shooting comes the week Sikhs are celebrating Vaisakhi, a major holiday festival that among other things marks the date Sikhism was born as a collective faith.
Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal of Stockton, California — who participated in a martial arts tournament in Indiana, where the local gurdwara was host — said this year’s holiday celebrations would be intensely somber.
“How do you celebrate after something like this?” he said.
Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalition’s executive director, said the entire community was traumatized by the “senseless” violence.
“While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees,” Kaur said.
The coalition says about 500,000 Sikhs live in the U.S. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguishable by their articles of faith, which include the unshorn hair and turban.
The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, with seven dying. That gunman killed himself during a firefight with police.
Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop.” He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.
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A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.
Indianapolis police said Friday that Hole opened fire with a rifle.
Samaria Blackwell, of Indianapolis, was a soccer and basketball player who last year graduated from Indy Genesis, a Christian competitive sports organization for homeschooled students. Her parents said Saturday in a statement that she was an outgoing “people person” — the youngest of four children who will be missed “immensely” by them and her dog, Jasper.
“As an intelligent, straight A student, Samaria could have done anything she chose to put her mind to, and because she loved helping people, she dreamed of becoming a police officer. Although that dream has been cut short, we believe that right now she is rejoicing in heaven with her Savior,” they said.
Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to assist with funeral expenses.
Several dozen people gathered at the Olivet Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s west side Saturday afternoon to mourn and to call for action.
“The system failed our state the other night,” said Cathy Weinmann, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action. “That young man should have never had access to a gun … we will not accept this, and we demand better than this for our community.”
___
Associated Press reporters Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington and Pat Eaton-Robb in Connecticut contributed to this report. Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
Here’s Saturday’s news on how COVID-19 is impacting Chicago and Illinois.
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Public health officials on Saturday announced 3,194 new COVID-19 cases, lowering Illinois’ testing positivity rate to 4.1% and offering a potential sign of optimism that the state is easing down from its latest surge in infections.
The positivity rate, which indicates how rapidly the virus is spreading, is still up sharply compared to the all-time low of 2.1% the state reached last month, while an average of more than 3,200 residents have tested positive each day over the past week — nearly double Illinois’ case rate in early March.
But the statewide positivity rate has now fallen or held steady for five consecutive days after a full month of troubling upticks.
Chicago’s regional positivity rate has fallen slightly over the past few days to 5.6%, and it’s dipped to 5.5% in suburban Cook County.
Despite any incremental progress, it’s still “a critical time in this pandemic,” according to Dr. Kiran Joshi, senior medical officer and co-leader of the Cook County Department of Public Health.
Mitchell Armentrout has the full story here.
Rocio Almazan, a sophomore at Curie High School, is part of a student committee that listens to classmates’ concerns and suggestions for the school, including thoughts about remote learning over the past year.
The student group advocates for its classmates, sending letters and petitions. The problem is they’re rarely heard — and that’s an issue that needs to be fixed as Chicago Public Schools officials figure out how to spend $1.8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, she said.
“CPS has excluded all stakeholders since the pandemic and continues to do so,” Rocio said.
The district has said it’ll use the money to support students through pandemic challenges moving forward, but families want a say in that process. The Chicago Teachers Union has also turned its attention to the issue now that high school reopening negotiations are complete and all district schools are clear to resume in-person learning.
Members of parent group Raise Your Hand, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and other community organizations held a virtual town hall Friday to share how they want the funds to be used. Among their top priorities are the hiring of additional special education staff to meet those students’ needs and funding housing vouchers for the 17,000 CPS children without permanent housing.
The groups also suggested closing the digital divide with working computers and internet for all students, providing additional resources for immigrants and children whose first language isn’t English, hiring restorative justice coordinators at all schools and opening school-based health centers.
Advocates were clear on what they didn’t want the money to go toward: paying off pre-pandemic debt.
Nader Issa has the full story here.
The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.
The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.
While the campaigns in the U.S. and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.
Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.
President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and a slew of celebrities including Billy Crystal, Jennifer Hudson and Lin-Manuel Miranda are part of a special aimed at boosting COVID-19 vaccination rates.
“Roll Up Your Sleeves,” airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on NBC, will feature Matthew McConaughey interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci to help separate “fact from fiction” about the vaccines, the network said.
Biden will make a direct appeal in support of the effort, while Obama will be joined by basketball greats Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to reinforce the role of vaccines in allowing Americans to get their lives back on track.
Former first lady Michelle Obama will team with Miranda, Faith Hill and Jennifer Lopez in support of shots during the hour-long special hosted by spouses Russell Wilson, the NFL quarterback, and actor-singer Ciara.
The COVID-19 pandemic has messed with people’s lives in countless ways, but I hadn’t heard anything quite like the travails of Floyd and Betsy Rogers.
It’s a complicated story, so settle in.
The Rogerses are retirees.
He’s 78 and used to work at IBM before retiring early to help his brother operate a now-defunct garden center. She’s 79 and went back to school for her Ph.D. after her daughters went away to college, then worked for a time as a consultant retraining industrial workers.
The Rogerses have lived since 1975 in a two-story frame home near Glen Ellyn where they raised two daughters.
Younger daughter Becky Ackermann is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she lives with her husband Kurt and their 11-year-old son, the Rogerses’ only grandchild. Their older daughter died of a blood clot in 2002.
Like many people their age with their only surviving child and grandchild far, far away, the suburban couple make annual visits to their daughter’s family in Cape Town, over time gradually extending their stays to months at a stretch.
That’s where they were in February 2020, scheduled to return that April, when Betsy Rogers broke her pelvis, requiring a long, difficult rehabilitation during which she could not be on an airplane.
That meant they were still in South Africa when the pandemic struck.
There were no flights back to the U.S. for a while. By the time there were, it wasn’t really safe to fly from a COVID standpoint, so they settled in for Betsy to recuperate.
That’s why the couple was still in South Africa this past Jan. 22 when they were informed a DuPage County sheriff’s deputy had spotted water running down their driveway. A cracked pipe in an upstairs bathroom had flooded the house, destroying much of the interior and furnishings: 213,000 gallons escaped, according to the water bill they later received.
All very sad, but that’s why people have homeowners’ insurance. Right?
That’s what the Rogerses were thinking. But Allstate denied their claim, citing an exception in their policy for plumbing that freezes while a building is vacant or unoccupied “unless you have used reasonable care” to maintain the heat or shut off the water supply and drain the system.
Read Mark Brown’s full column here.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22451452/merlin_97040220.jpg)
Public health officials on Saturday announced 3,194 new COVID-19 cases, lowering Illinois’ testing positivity rate to 4.1% and offering a potential sign of optimism that the state is easing down from its latest surge in infections.
The positivity rate, which indicates how rapidly the virus is spreading, is still up sharply compared to the all-time low of 2.1% the state reached last month, while an average of more than 3,200 residents have tested positive each day over the past week — nearly double Illinois’ case rate in early March.
But the statewide positivity rate has now fallen or held steady for five consecutive days after a full month of troubling upticks.
Chicago’s regional positivity rate has fallen slightly over the past few days to 5.6%, and it’s dipped to 5.5% in suburban Cook County.
Despite any incremental progress, it’s still “a critical time in this pandemic,” according to Dr. Kiran Joshi, senior medical officer and co-leader of the Cook County Department of Public Health.
Mitchell Armentrout has the full story here.
Rocio Almazan, a sophomore at Curie High School, is part of a student committee that listens to classmates’ concerns and suggestions for the school, including thoughts about remote learning over the past year.
The student group advocates for its classmates, sending letters and petitions. The problem is they’re rarely heard — and that’s an issue that needs to be fixed as Chicago Public Schools officials figure out how to spend $1.8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, she said.
“CPS has excluded all stakeholders since the pandemic and continues to do so,” Rocio said.
The district has said it’ll use the money to support students through pandemic challenges moving forward, but families want a say in that process. The Chicago Teachers Union has also turned its attention to the issue now that high school reopening negotiations are complete and all district schools are clear to resume in-person learning.
Members of parent group Raise Your Hand, the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and other community organizations held a virtual town hall Friday to share how they want the funds to be used. Among their top priorities are the hiring of additional special education staff to meet those students’ needs and funding housing vouchers for the 17,000 CPS children without permanent housing.
The groups also suggested closing the digital divide with working computers and internet for all students, providing additional resources for immigrants and children whose first language isn’t English, hiring restorative justice coordinators at all schools and opening school-based health centers.
Advocates were clear on what they didn’t want the money to go toward: paying off pre-pandemic debt.
Nader Issa has the full story here.
The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.
The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.
While the campaigns in the U.S. and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.
Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.
President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and a slew of celebrities including Billy Crystal, Jennifer Hudson and Lin-Manuel Miranda are part of a special aimed at boosting COVID-19 vaccination rates.
“Roll Up Your Sleeves,” airing at 6 p.m. Sunday on NBC, will feature Matthew McConaughey interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci to help separate “fact from fiction” about the vaccines, the network said.
Biden will make a direct appeal in support of the effort, while Obama will be joined by basketball greats Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to reinforce the role of vaccines in allowing Americans to get their lives back on track.
Former first lady Michelle Obama will team with Miranda, Faith Hill and Jennifer Lopez in support of shots during the hour-long special hosted by spouses Russell Wilson, the NFL quarterback, and actor-singer Ciara.
The COVID-19 pandemic has messed with people’s lives in countless ways, but I hadn’t heard anything quite like the travails of Floyd and Betsy Rogers.
It’s a complicated story, so settle in.
The Rogerses are retirees.
He’s 78 and used to work at IBM before retiring early to help his brother operate a now-defunct garden center. She’s 79 and went back to school for her Ph.D. after her daughters went away to college, then worked for a time as a consultant retraining industrial workers.
The Rogerses have lived since 1975 in a two-story frame home near Glen Ellyn where they raised two daughters.
Younger daughter Becky Ackermann is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she lives with her husband Kurt and their 11-year-old son, the Rogerses’ only grandchild. Their older daughter died of a blood clot in 2002.
Like many people their age with their only surviving child and grandchild far, far away, the suburban couple make annual visits to their daughter’s family in Cape Town, over time gradually extending their stays to months at a stretch.
That’s where they were in February 2020, scheduled to return that April, when Betsy Rogers broke her pelvis, requiring a long, difficult rehabilitation during which she could not be on an airplane.
That meant they were still in South Africa when the pandemic struck.
There were no flights back to the U.S. for a while. By the time there were, it wasn’t really safe to fly from a COVID standpoint, so they settled in for Betsy to recuperate.
That’s why the couple was still in South Africa this past Jan. 22 when they were informed a DuPage County sheriff’s deputy had spotted water running down their driveway. A cracked pipe in an upstairs bathroom had flooded the house, destroying much of the interior and furnishings: 213,000 gallons escaped, according to the water bill they later received.
All very sad, but that’s why people have homeowners’ insurance. Right?
That’s what the Rogerses were thinking. But Allstate denied their claim, citing an exception in their policy for plumbing that freezes while a building is vacant or unoccupied “unless you have used reasonable care” to maintain the heat or shut off the water supply and drain the system.
Read Mark Brown’s full column here.
INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis’ tight knit Sikh community mourned Saturday as members learned that four Sikhs were among the eight people killed in the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse.
The Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead late Friday as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.
Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said Brandon Scott Hole apparently began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself.
It was not clear if Sikhs were targeted.
Police Chief Randal Taylor noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility are members of the Sikh community. Some members gathered at a local hotel Friday looking for information on family and friends.
“I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized,” Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition. “My nani, my family, and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough–our community has been through enough trauma.”
There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the coalition. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened their first house of worship, known as a gurdwara, in 1999.
The attack was another blow to the Asian American community a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
Hole’s motives remained unclear Saturday.
The shooting comes the week Sikhs are celebrating Vaisakhi, a major holiday festival that among other things marks the date Sikhism was born as a collective faith.
“While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face senseless violence,” said Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalition’s executive director. “Further traumatizing is the reality that many of these community members, like Sikhs we have worked with in the past, will eventually have to return to the place where their lives were almost taken from them.”
The coalition says about 500,00 Sikhs live in the U.S. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguishable by their articles of faith, which include the unshorn hair and turban.
The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing six. A seventh died in 2020 from complications stemming from the injuries he suffered during the incident. That gunman killed himself during a firefight with police.
Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop.” He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.
A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned. Indianapolis police said Friday that Hole opened fire with a rifle.
As the names were released, family and friends of the victims began posting remembrances on social media.
Samaria Blackwell, of Indianapolis, was a soccer and basketball player who last year graduated from Indy Genesis, a Christian competitive sports organization for homeschooled students. Teammates posted on Facebook that Blackwell “was always smiling and cracking jokes. She was so loving, goofy, encouraging, and supportive.” Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to assist with funeral expenses.
Smith, the youngest of the victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. “Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.
Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple was married nearly 50 years.
McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.
The killings marked the latest in a string of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were shot and killed in the city in January, and a man was accused of killing three adults and a child before abducting his daughter during an argument at a home in March. In other states last month, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
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Associated Press reporters Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington and Pat Eaton-Robb in Connecticut contributed to this report. Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
Many questions remain unanswered by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. A spokeswoman for Kim Foxx said she couldn’t discuss the issues because they are the subject of an internal investigation.
A veteran Cook County prosecutor was placed on administrative leave Friday night because he “failed to fully present the facts” during a bond hearing last week when he didn’t specifically state that 13-year-old Adam Toledo was unarmed at the moment a Chicago police officer shot him, according to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office.
“In court last week, an attorney in our office failed to fully present the facts surrounding the death of a 13-year-old boy,” Foxx spokeswoman Sarah Sinovic said in a statement. “We have put that individual on leave and are conducting an internal investigation into the matter.”
During an April 10 bond hearing describing allegations against 21-year-old Ruben Roman — who was arrested at the scene of Adam’s shooting in Little Village — Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy told Judge Susana Ortiz that Toledo had a gun in his right hand a moment before he was shot.
“The officer tells [Adam] to drop it as [Adam] turns towards the officer. [Adam] has a gun in his right hand,” Murphy said. “The officer fires one shot at [Adam], striking him in the chest. The gun that [Adam] was holding landed against the fence a few feet away.”
Murphy’s statement matches a portion of what the video of the fatal March 29 shooting shows, but did not specifically note that Adam dropped the weapon and had his hands in the air less than a second before he was shot by the officer.
Chicago news outlets, including the Chicago Sun-Times, reported that Murphy was indicating Adam had a gun in his hand when he was shot.
Murphy will be on paid leave during investigation, Sinovic said.
The state’s attorney’s office has declined to say why it took five days for them to release a statement clarifying Murphy’s outlining of criminal charges, which is known as a proffer.
When they did — hours before footage of the shooting was released to the public by a police oversight agency Thursday — the state’s attorney’s office accused Murphy of “failing to fully inform himself before speaking in court.”
“Errors like that cannot happen and this has been addressed with the individual involved. The video speaks for itself,” Sinovic said Thursday.
In an internal letter to prosecutors Friday night discussing the office’s statement about Murphy, Foxx wrote: “It later because evident that the language of the proffer did not fully reflect all the evidence that had been given to our office.”
On Friday, Sinovic told the Sun-Times that not all of the footage released the day before was available to Murphy when he read the statement during Ruben’s bond hearing, but declined to say what footage was available to the office at that time and who in the state’s attorney’s office had seen it.
“It’s still under investigation what videos were available to [Murphy],” Sinovic said. “We’re still trying to figure out what he had access to when he made the statements in court.”
Sinovic said she could not say, nearly a week after the bond hearing, whether anyone else at the office had read Murphy’s statement before it was read in court and if it was approved by a superior. Nor would she describe the office’s policy for approving statements before they are read in court.
Two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Sun-Times that Murphy’s proffer had not been approved or read by anyone else in the state’s attorney’s office before it was presented to the judge.
Sinovic stressed that the office did not believe Murphy had lied or knowingly presented inaccurate information to a judge, but were concerned that his statement in court had been misinterpreted because Murphy had failed to “make it clear at what point [Adam] didn’t have the gun.”
In her letter Friday, Foxx appeared to acknowledge what sources in the office said is a widespread perception that Murphy “was being thrown under the bus,” as one prosecutor who asked to remain anonymous told a reporter.
“For many of you it may have been jarring to see our statement regarding this matter,” Foxx wrote. “It is indeed a rarity to see the Office make such a public statement related to the actions of an [assistant state’s attorney]. It was not done lightly.”
