Texas investigators seek evidence of manslaughter, other crimes in 27 flood deaths at Camp Mystic

• September 23, 2026

By REBECCA BOONE and GENE JOHNSON

Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid devastating flooding in Texas last year, court documents show.

In applications for search warrants executed last week, investigators sought to obtain the electronic communications of the camp’s owners, saying they could provide evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment or other crimes. No charges have been brought, and a representative of the camp did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Brant Johnston, with the Texas Rangers, wrote in an affidavit that Camp Mystic had inadequate emergency plans, failed to conduct emergency drills or training, and in some cabins did not have enough adult counselors. Its owners neglected to take precautions by relocating children from low-lying cabins despite having monitored late-night flood warnings, Johnston wrote.

“Young campers cannot reasonably be expected to independently recognize a rapidly developing, life-threatening hazard or to organize and execute an evacuation absent direction from an adequate number of adult supervisors,” Johnston wrote.

He concluded: “Camp Mystic, LLC was aware of and consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death to the campers in their care.”

Twenty-five campers and two teenage counselors at the Christian all-girls camp were killed as the raging Guadalupe River surged beyond its banks before dawn on July 4, 2025. Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland also died in the flood.

For decades, Camp Mystic was a summer staple and an institution for generations of families, who dropped off their girls at the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and attend Bible studies. The camp did not reopen this year, and it has filed for bankruptcy reorganization.

All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.

Attorneys for some of the victims’ families welcomed the search warrants but said they should not have been necessary.

“For more than a year, families of the 27 angels killed at Camp Mystic have fought, begged, and pleaded with the Eastland family for accountability and answers,” Christina Yarnell and Brad Beckworth, attorneys for the family of victim Cile Steward, said in a written statement. “Instead, the Eastlands have held hostage the information and answers owed to parents who deserve, more than anyone, to know the details surrounding their daughters’ final moments.”

Steward’s body still has not been found.

Johnston wrote in the warrant that he made several visits to Camp Mystic and that he and other investigators have conducted interviews with witnesses, flood victims and people associated with the camp. But several people, including members of the Eastland family and other top camp officials, refused interviews, Johnston wrote.

The Eastland family and other camp leaders have testified in courtrooms and in front of the state Legislature in the months since the flood, however, with camp director Edward Eastland offering a tearful apology.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge orders Texas to have air conditioning at all prisons by end of 2029

• September 23, 2026

By JAMIE STENGLE

DALLAS (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Texas to install air conditioning in all of its prisons by the end of 2029, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights.

The ruling was hailed as a major victory by advocates who have fought for years for air conditioning in prisons across Texas, where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must immediately begin developing a plan for the installations. He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right to not be given “cruel and unusual punishments.”

“Witnesses in this case who had been incarcerated in un-air-conditioned Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons described themselves and their fellow inmates getting sick, passing out, and reaching a level of desperation to cool off that made it ‘common’ to splash toilet water on themselves,” Pitman wrote in the ruling. “These are not humane conditions.”

The ruling said that the state prison agency has estimated that systemwide air conditioning would cost about $1.5 billion.

The state prison agency said Tuesday that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that it has “robust heat mitigation efforts in place” and is already committed to installing air conditioning in units. The agency said its number of air-conditioned beds has increased from 35,000 in 2018 to an expected 60,000 by the end of this year, and that the number will reach 90,000 in 2028.

Texas has about 143,000 people in prisons across the state.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, the former mortician serving a life sentence whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie.” Several prisoners’ rights groups then asked to join his legal fight and expand it.

In 2025, Pitman found that the extreme heat in Texas’ prisons was “plainly unconstitutional,” but declined at that time to order the state to immediately start installing air conditioning. The case then went to trial earlier this year.

The ruling said the agency has acknowledged that 23 people died in its facilities from heat-related causes between 1998 and 2012, and that the agency acknowledged three additional heat-related deaths in 2023. The judge wrote in the order that plaintiffs also presented “credible evidence” of additional deaths from 2023 to 2025 that were at least in part caused by heat.

Amite Dominick, founder and president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the ruling “made clear that the state cannot keep treating human lives as a budget line.”

“We will be watching every deadline in this order,” Dominick said.

​ Orange County Register 

Wife of detained Chinese American scientist hopes Trump brings up his case in Xi summit

• September 22, 2026

By DIDI TANG

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ahead of a high-stakes summit between the U.S. and Chinese leaders, the wife of a detained Chinese American seismologist expressed hope that an intervention by President Donald Trump could bring home her husband, Youlin Chen, nearly two years after he was detained in China.

Along with issues ranging from artificial intelligence security to Iran, Trump is expected to raise with Chinese leader Xi Jinping the cases of Chen, 54, and Min Zin, 53, the only two American citizens considered by the U.S. government to be wrongfully detained in China.

“When he’s personally involved in such cases, Americans come back home. That’s what I’ve learned,” Yufang Rong told The Associated Press in an interview in Washington on Tuesday, a day before Xi’s arrival.

Trump spoke with Xi about Chen when the U.S. president was in Beijing in May, Rong said, and if Trump mentions the case again this week, “I’m sure … this case would be solved soon.”

The White House has said Trump wants every American detained abroad to return home. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a question about the cases of both men, whose families have traveled to Washington to meet senior U.S. officials ahead of Xi’s visit.

Wife of detained American says seismologist has ‘done nothing wrong’

Chen, who was born in China and moved to the U.S. in 1998 for academic pursuits, was detained in November 2024 by China’s state security agents when he was wrapping up a personal trip to visit his parents in Beijing, Rong said.

Chen, who studies the Earth and earthquakes and is based in Boston, was stopped at an airport and was later charged with espionage, a charge the family denies. “He has done nothing wrong,” Rong said.

Chen’s work is open and transparent, and he has collaborated with scientists around the world, including those in China, Rong said. She said his detention came as an utter shock.

“No one had expected such a thing would happen to him. He is a seismologist. He has been doing his research during his entire career,” Rong said.

Chen also studies nuclear tests, including those in North Korea, his wife said.

“He can use data to detect if something (that happens) underground is a natural earthquake or is a nuclear explosion. And he can, using his methodologies, he can estimate the size of the nuclear explosion,” Rong said, speculating that Beijing might have targeted Chen for his expertise.

Chen works for the Florida-based consulting firm EMR Solutions & Technology, through which he’s done contract work for the U.S. government, much of it involving collaborating with Chinese colleagues to analyze seismological data, said Eric Lebson of Global Reach, a Washington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing home Americans wrongly detained abroad.

Chen only works on open research and has no security clearance, said Lebson, whose group is advising the family.

Since his detention, Rong said she has never had direct contact with Chen but learned about his condition through U.S. consular officials who periodically visit the scientist.

Through notes dictated to those consular officials, Chen has told his wife not to worry about him and even still conveys how to handle mundane household chores such as changing air conditioning filters.

“But I know he is going through such unthinkable difficulties,” Rong said. “It’s very hard to read his message each time.”

“I really worry about his health — mental health and physical health,” she said. “He has a lot of medical conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol level. I don’t think he has access to the medication that he used to have in the U.S.”

US lawmakers call for the release of Chen and others who have been detained

The other wrongfully detained U.S. citizen in China is Min Zin, a scholar of Myanmar politics who was detained in June when traveling to the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming for an academic workshop.

He’s held on suspicion of endangering national security, according to his wife, Sylvia Zin.

A group of American lawmakers introduced a bipartisan resolution last week condemning China’s wrongful detention of the U.S. scholars and urging the U.S. government to prioritize their safe return.

“It is my hope that this bipartisan resolution from the United States Congress will bring increased attention to the unjust detention of Dr. Youlin Chen and Min Zin and force the Chinese government to do the right thing and release them immediately,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D.-Mass., who represents Chen’s home state.

Some lawmakers also expressed hope that Trump could bring up with Xi other detentions in China, including those of activists, Christians and members of ethnic minorities.

​ Orange County Register 

Killer Dana film premiere party will highlight O.C.’s long-lost big wave break

• September 22, 2026

A premiere party this week will give the public a first look at a documentary featuring the extinct big-wave break Killer Dana.

“Point Taken: The Legend of Killer Dana” will be shown from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, at Killer Dana Surf Shop, where many of the interviews and filming took place during the production of the documentary. 

The filming kicked off in summer 2025, bringing a buzz to the surfing community, especially old-timers who once rode the surf break, considered the region’s best big-wave before Dana Point Harbor was built in the 1960s, which destroyed the wave.

The documentary is the brainchild of Dan Krolczyk, a Rancho Mission Viejo waterman who grew up windsurfing and stand-up paddleboarding in the Midwest.

He was in the Killer Dana Surf Shop buying surf gear for his sons when he asked owner Mike Foster where the name came from.

Foster, though too young to ever ride the wave, said he has been obsessed with the iconic surf spot’s history for years, so much so that when the retail store was in danger of shutting down in 2016, he scrambled to find investors and bought the shop to keep it alive.

Foster told Krolczyk about the big-wave spot that once ruled Southern California’s early-era surf scene of the ’50s and into the early ’60s.

“It clicked with me that there’s so much history here in Dana Point that’s not told,” Foster said in an interview last year. “I just always appreciated it and looked up to the guys who surfed it.”

Killer Dana got its name because of the big rocks on the inside that would demolish surfboards when wave riders lost control. Leashes were not yet invented.

Krolczyk started researching stories about Killer Dana, but found little out there except a few old videos and articles.

He linked up with Tommy Anderson, a 30-year-old surfer who has a film production company, Charthouse Films, out of San Diego.

Anderson grew up surfing an hour south of where the surf break once was, but had never heard about Killer Dana, taken aback by the stories.

Anderson hopes the film will open up a conversation about how to strike a balance between protecting a surf spot and development, he said in an interview last year.

“We wanted to help tell in film format the epic story as the next generation bears witness to South Orange County seeing more development, change, progress and the eventual Olympics,” said Anderson.

Killer Dana’s demise came with the build-out of the Dana Point Harbor in 1966, a county project that put boat moorings where waves once rolled to shore, the rock jetty blocking the swell energy.

The screening will be held in the surf shop’s parking lot on Del Prado Avenue, a free community event that will feature an evening of music, shopping, refreshments and live commentary from the director and producer.

At 7 p.m., the producer and director from Charthouse will give opening remarks before the 40-minute screening begins, with the film concluding by 8 p.m.

The film features guest segments from several surf legends including Mike “Happy” Cruickshank, Dick Metz, Corky Carroll, the late Jean-Pierre “The Fly” Van Swae and more.

“What a better place than yards away from the original Dana Point Cove surf break, outside just after dusk,” said Krolczyk, producer and director for the film.  “We’re a surf family and stand-up paddle family, spending countless weekends in the harbor and Doheny State Beach. When I learned the epic story about this mythological break that helped write Southern California surf history, I was compelled to help share the story for future generations.”

The film is scheduled for public streaming release later this fall. Killer Dana Surf Shop is at 24829 Del Prado Ave., Dana Point.

For more information, go to charthousefilms.com/work/point-taken.

​ Orange County Register 

Suspect in Yom Kippur shooting outside Ontario synagogue dies from his injuries

• September 22, 2026

BELLEVILLE, Ontario (AP) — A 29-year-old man suspected of opening fire on a police officer stationed outside an Ontario synagogue during Yom Kippur has died from his injuries, the province’s police watchdog said Tuesday.

Belleville police identified the man as Sean Ward of Quinte West. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, an independent civilian agency that investigates police shootings, said Ward died Monday night.

The Department of National Defense said Ward joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2017 and served as an infantry soldier before leaving in 2022 at the rank of corporal. He did not deploy during his service.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, declined to comment on questions about the suspect’s former military service, but praised the wounded police officer, Jeff Smith, for his “heroic actions” and said “no effort will be spared” in the investigation.

The Special Investigations Unit has said a man armed with a shotgun opened fire on a police officer stationed outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue on Sunday night, triggering a shootout that left him and the officer seriously injured.

About two dozen people were inside the synagogue to mark the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, but none were injured.

Synagogue President Norman Weddum said he shouted for everyone to get down after hearing gunfire. Moments later, bullets pierced a window facing the street and struck the opposite wall.

“If he hadn’t been there … you probably wouldn’t be talking to me right now,” Weddum said of Smith, praising the officer’s response.

Police have not established a motive or said whether the Sons of Jacob Synagogue or the Jewish community was targeted. The SIU is investigating the actions of the officers, while Belleville police are conducting a parallel criminal investigation that will examine the man’s actions and possible motive.

The shooting comes months after Carney warned that Canada was failing its Jewish community amid a surge in antisemitism.

​ Orange County Register 

Steve Hilton takes on California’s status quo — and a media-shy opponent

• September 22, 2026

The editorial board’s recent interview with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton underscores why California in some way, somehow, needs to return to a two-party system. So does the refusal of his opponent, Democrat Xavier Becerra, to talk to us. 

With so many festering problems, the state does not need a governor who avoids the press like a shy California pocket mouse.

After the June 2 primary, Hilton said, he’s been invited to many debates. He accepted them all. Becerra “only accepted one.” Why is Becerra so hesitant to defend his platform in public debates?

“He really is behaving very arrogantly in this election,” commented Hilton.

That debate is Sept. 30 on CNN, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. That’s exasperating. The moderators should be California journalists steeped in the quixotic politics of this state and such intractable problems as low school test scores and high rates of poverty. Oh well.

Hilton’s obstacle is breaking through the recent 41% ceiling of votes for Republican gubernatorial candidates: 41% in 2010, 40% in 2014, 38% in 2018 and 41% in 2022. Even the 2021 recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom garnered only 38% yes votes.

Alas for Hilton, that ceiling is reflected in the PPIC poll of likely voters conducted Sept. 4-10. Becerra leads Hilton 60% to 38%. Across all races, PPIC found, “Overwhelming majorities of partisans support their party’s candidates while independents favor the Democratic candidates.”

Unfazed by the PPIC numbers, Hilton argued “we will get a higher turnout, partly because of the vigorous campaign I’m fighting, partly because voter ID is on the ballot.” 

“I just want to be clear,” Hilton conceded. “It’s an uphill battle, but we think we’ve closed the gap.” 

Hilton has sought to reach across the political aisle to speak to issues faced by all Californians regardless of their political registration. Becerra, by contrast, has stuck to vague statements and making the race about Trump.

“He only messages Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump all the time,” said Hilton. “My message is, look, you can be anti-Trump and still vote for me.”

I hope he makes a race of it, but the numbers just don’t add up in Hilton’s favor. It’s a shame because he has some great ideas. He wants to exempt from the state income tax all incomes up to $150,000. He pointed out that would free the middle class from the confiscatory 9.3% marginal tax rate that begins at just $72,724 of income, higher than the top rate millionaires pay in most states.

Last year the California Department of Housing and Community Development reported, in the Los Angeles Times summary, “In Orange, Santa Barbara and San Diego counties, the threshold for a low-income single-person household will soon surpass $100,000 if current trends continue.” 

Hilton would pay for the tax cut by eliminating 40,000 state bureaucrats, requiring a 5% efficiency reduction across all departments and finally crashing the high-speed rail boondoggle. 

On housing, he would encourage sprawl so more people can buy single-family homes. And he would eliminate such roadblocks to construction as Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions (more like Obstruction) Act of 2006. 

On education, he backs school choice, especially because it would help Black and Latino kids currently stuck in low-performing, union-controlled public schools.

Since 1990, I’ve covered 12 gubernatorial elections, including the successful 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, who was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 2021 failed Newsom recall. 

More than any recent Republican candidate for governor, I think Hilton has the right message. If he reaches 45% of the vote, even a loss would point toward future victories. Hope has to begin somewhere.

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board

​ Orange County Register 

LAPD to test license plate reading surveillance cameras on some city street lights

• September 22, 2026

The Los Angeles Police Department may be closing in on a new 10-year, $235 million contract with Axon Enterprise for updated equipment, including new patrol car cameras with license plate reader capabilities and the possibility of using artificial intelligence to create the first draft of officer reports based on audio from their body worn cameras, after the Board of Police Commissioners voted Tuesday, Sept. 22 to approve the contract and send it to the City Council.

In a separate vote, the commission also approved a three-month pilot program with Axon Enterprise that will outfit some city-owned street lights with license plate reading surveillance cameras at no cost to the city.

The latter vote comes at a time when license plate reader cameras are being heavily scrutinized by members of the public for a number of reasons, including data-sharing with federal authorities and privacy concerns.

Both items were approved with 3-0 votes, with Board President Sasha Gerges Shields recusing herself for a possible conflict of interest and Commissioner Fabian Garcia absent.

The LAPD in July chose not to renew a contract with Flock cameras over concerns regarding privacy, data ownership and security, officials said, adding that the department wanted stronger contractual protections regarding ownership and control of data collected by the cameras.

Dean Gialamas, the department’s chief information officer, told the commission on Tuesday that though talks have continued with Flock, no agreement has been reached. The department has not had access to the Flock system since the previous contract ended in mid-July, he said.

Gialamas said he understood public concerns regarding automated license plate reader cameras and likened them to concerns felt by the public when DNA technology was first introduced in the 1990s.

“My goal today was really to demonstrate that, like the now-trusted DNA testing, we can preserve this incredible investigative and public safety tool while placing deliberate audible limits around access, retention, sharing, advanced capability and protected activity,” Gialamas said.

Some of those safeguards would include “role-based access controls, multi-factor authentication, continuous audit logging and an annual independent security testing of all systems that store or process LAPD data.”

The city and LAPD “would retain sole and exclusive ownership of all data, images, video, plate reads, metadata and derived or algorithmic outputs” generated by the cameras.

Of the Axon cameras, Gialamas stressed that the test cameras would focus solely on license plate and vehicle type and while they may capture the driver of the vehicle or a person on the sidewalk, the cameras do not have facial recognition technology, or any other technology that would lead to a person’s identity.

“It does not have the ability to recognize or identify individuals,” Gialamas told the commission.

While it wasn’t known where specifically the cameras would be mounted, Gialamas said they would solely go on city-owned street lights and would face the direction of general traffic. They would not be used on private residences.

The camera locations would be decided among several factors “centered around where crime tends to occur,” Gialamas said.

It wasn’t known when the cameras would be installed or exactly when the pilot program would begin.

In a separate vote, the commission also agreed to send a contract proposal with Axon Enterprise to the City Council.

Among the technologies available under the new contract were upgraded in-car camera systems, upgraded body-worn video cameras, Tasers and more digital storage. New technology would also include a system called Draft One, which would give officers an “AI-assisted report-writing capability,” according to the contract.

That technology would essentially produce a first-draft narrative for officer review based on the audio content on an officer’s body-worn camera. The officer would then review, check and approve the report before it goes to a supervisor, Gialamas said.

The department has contracted with Axon Enterprise since 2016 for body-worn cameras and secure digital evidence storage and added in-car video systems through Axon in 2022.

If approved, the contract would run through July 2036, according to a staff report.

​ Orange County Register 

Man killed trying to run across 91 Freeway in Corona

• September 22, 2026

An autopsy was pending Tuesday on a 48-year-old man who was fatally struck when he tried to run across the 91 Freeway in Corona after his pickup broke down.

Eddie Chavarria of Riverside was hit at 10:30 p.m. Friday on the eastbound 91 near South Promenade Avenue, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Officer Javier Navarro said that Chavarria was driving his Dodge Ram 1500 in the toll lanes near the freeway median when the pickup stopped running, forcing him to park it in the No. 2 toll lane

“The driver exited the Dodge and ran into the fast lane of the mainline freeway, where he was struck by a Honda HRV,” Navarro said. “A Honda Civic subsequently ran over him, too.”

The drivers of both vehicles immediately stopped.

Corona Fire Department paramedics pronounced Chavarria dead at the scene minutes later.

The motorists who hit him were not hurt.

“No intoxication was suspected of the drivers,” Navarro said. “The victim’s sobriety is currently undetermined pending (autopsy).”

Anyone with information relevant to the investigation was asked to contact the CHP Riverside office at 951-324-7210.

​ Orange County Register