Bust of Wright brother stolen from site
KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. -- The National Park Service said a copper bust of aviation pioneer Orville Wright has been stolen from the Wright Brothers National Memorial in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The National Park Service and local law enforcement officials are investigating the case and are asking the public for any information.
The parks agency in a statement said the monument was damaged either Saturday evening or Sunday morning. The granite base that the bust was mounted to was toppled and damaged.
The National Park Service said Sunday that a portion of the park may be temporarily closed to visitors while the investigation continues.
Fallen hotel's instability slows rescuers
NEW ORLEANS -- Rescue crews in New Orleans on Sunday were trying to find a worker missing in the rubble of a hotel that collapsed while under construction, but work in the unstable structure must be done delicately, officials said.
New Orleans Fire Chief Tim McConnell said officials are going to treat their work as a rescue mission until they have evidence the missing person is dead. Two other people were killed in the Saturday collapse at the Hard Rock Hotel project near the city's historic French Quarter.
"Safety is the No. 1 thing. The last thing you want to do when you are trying to rescue somebody is lose someone else," McConnell said at a Sunday news conference.
The bodies of the two people killed have not been recovered. Thirty people were injured, but only one remains in the hospital. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell visited the man, who had surgery for a leg injury.
"He told me it could have been worse. He wanted to make sure his co-workers were safe. He was envisioning the two who were on the floor with him," Cantrell said.
Crews on Sunday morning were assembling a 220,000-pound crane driven into the city overnight to begin the delicate process of removing the debris, McConnell said.
The project's contractor, Citadel Builders LLC, was flying in engineers from Europe to help crews remove debris without risking the life of the missing person or damaging nearby buildings and to aid in the investigation, officials said.
Neither Citadel Builders nor emergency officials have commented on any potential cause of the building collapse.
Gambling-club deaths probed in NYC
NEW YORK -- Police on Sunday were investigating whether a gambling dispute, robbery or something else led to the shooting deaths of four people at an illegal gambling club in Brooklyn that was just blocks from a police precinct.
The New York Police Department identified the dead as Terence Bishop, 36; Dominick Wimbush, 47; Chester Goode, 37; and John Thomas, 32 -- all of Brooklyn. Three people were wounded but were expected to survive.
Police said more than a dozen people had been gambling with dice and cards at the small club when the violence broke out just before 7 a.m. Saturday.
The unlicensed club was on the first floor of an older wood-frame townhouse on a block with some empty storefronts and boarded-up buildings.
Police recovered two handguns from the scene, but investigators were still working Sunday to determine what happened. There was no immediate sign that the shootings had any connection to gangs, which have been a problem in that part of Brooklyn.
The local police precinct headquarters is two blocks away, and authorities said officers had not previously received any complaints about the location.
Isaac Mickens, a community organizer, described the club to The New York Times as a "hole-in-the-wall gambling den" that was "real tight, real small, casual, low-key." Samuel Revells told the Times that he was the building owner and had leased out the event space, but he didn't say to whom.
Girl dies in fall from N.J. festival ride
BRIDGETON, N.J. -- A 10-year-old girl died after falling from an amusement park ride at a harvest festival in southern New Jersey over the weekend, authorities said.
Troopers were called to the Deerfield Township Harvest Festival in Cumberland County after the girl was "ejected" from a Wisdom Super Sizzler "Extreme" ride Saturday evening, state police said. The girl was airlifted to Cooper University hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to police.
The girl's name wasn't immediately released. The cause and circumstances of her death remain under investigation, police said.
The festival said on its website that rides were provided by Skelly's Amusements of Williamstown, N.J., which said on its Facebook page that it was "absolutely heartbroken" by the death.
Skelly's, which was founded in 1956 and provides rides, games and food concessions for fairs, carnivals and festivals, said it is "fully cooperating" with investigations by state police and by the carnival and amusement ride unit in the state Department of Community Affairs.
Festival organizers canceled Sunday's parade and said amusement rides and games were temporarily closed pending completion of a state inspection of the rides. All other scheduled festival events were to continue.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 10/14/2019