Ryan Beierman, 43, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he was pinned beneath the 200-pound bruin on Sept. 6 when his son, Owen, fired a shot from the boy’s hunting rifle.

“Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me,” said Beierman, who suffered bites to his forehead, arm and leg. He also needed stitches to reattach a flap of skin on his cheek that was ripped during the attack.

Earlier, he and Owen spotted the bear from a tree stand near Siren, Wisconsin, about 90 miles (144 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Owen fired a shot, wounding the bear which then ran away. The pair waited about 20 minutes before starting to look for the bear and used a neighbor’s tracking dog to try and find it.

“We were sort of hung up in a thicket when we heard the dog yelp and sprint past us in retreat,” Beierman told the newspaper. “Just then, I stepped into a semi-clearing. I said, ‘There he is, Owen.’”

The bear charged from about 6 feet (1.8 meters) away. Beierman said he fired eight shots at the animal with his pistol, but all missed.

“Before I knew it, I was flat on my back,” he recounted. “I started pistol-whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall. I tried hitting him between the ear and mouth with a blunt edge of the pistol.”

The bear then lunged at Beierman’s head.

“All I could see were his claws and teeth,” he said. “I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me.”

“The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine,’’ Beierman added. “I’m punching and kicking and flailing around. That’s when I saw a flash from the muzzle of Owen’s rifle.”

Beierman then was able to push the bear off him. He estimates that the attack lasted about 45 seconds.

A neighbor began driving Beierman and Owen to a hospital. They were met by an ambulance which took them the rest of the way. The wound on his cheek would require 23 stitches. There were seven puncture wounds and a cut on Beierman’s right arm.

A conservation officer with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said their hunt was legal.

Ryan Beierman, 43, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he was pinned beneath the 200-pound bruin on Sept. 6 when his son, Owen, fired a shot from the boy’s hunting rifle.

“Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me,” said Beierman, who suffered bites to his forehead, arm and leg. He also needed stitches to reattach a flap of skin on his cheek that was ripped during the attack.

Earlier, he and Owen spotted the bear from a tree stand near Siren, Wisconsin, about 90 miles (144 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Owen fired a shot, wounding the bear which then ran away. The pair waited about 20 minutes before starting to look for the bear and used a neighbor’s tracking dog to try and find it.

“We were sort of hung up in a thicket when we heard the dog yelp and sprint past us in retreat,” Beierman told the newspaper. “Just then, I stepped into a semi-clearing. I said, ‘There he is, Owen.’”

The bear charged from about 6 feet (1.8 meters) away. Beierman said he fired eight shots at the animal with his pistol, but all missed.

“Before I knew it, I was flat on my back,” he recounted. “I started pistol-whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall. I tried hitting him between the ear and mouth with a blunt edge of the pistol.”

The bear then lunged at Beierman’s head.

“All I could see were his claws and teeth,” he said. “I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me.”

“The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine,’’ Beierman added. “I’m punching and kicking and flailing around. That’s when I saw a flash from the muzzle of Owen’s rifle.”

Beierman then was able to push the bear off him. He estimates that the attack lasted about 45 seconds.

A neighbor began driving Beierman and Owen to a hospital. They were met by an ambulance which took them the rest of the way. The wound on his cheek would require 23 stitches. There were seven puncture wounds and a cut on Beierman’s right arm.

A conservation officer with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said their hunt was legal.

Kara Welsh, a 21-year-old student who was majoring in management in the school’s College of Business and Economics, was killed Friday night, Whitewater police said. The suspect, a 23-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and is being held at the Walworth County Jail.

In a news release posted online Saturday, police did not describe what led to the shooting, except to say that Welsh and the suspect knew each other and that there had been an altercation between the two.

Police have asked the Walworth County District Attorney’s Office to consider charging the suspect with first-degree intentional homicide, endangering safety by the use of a dangerous weapon and disorderly conduct while armed.

The investigation is ongoing and police have released no additional information.

Welsh, who was from Plainfield, Illinois, was a member of the Warhawk gymnastics team and last year she took the individual national title on vault at the NCAA Division III championships, the university said in a statement.

“We know the news of Kara’s death is heartbreaking for our close-knit university community. It is a time when we are all called upon to support one another, to process, and to grieve,” UW-Whitewater Chancellor Corey King said. The campus is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Milwaukee.

The university is offering counseling to the school’s gymnastics team and coaches. School staff planned to provide extra support and flexibility to students Tuesday ahead of the start of classes.

“Our hearts are broken with the tragic loss of one of our own,” the school’s gymnastics team said on Facebook.

Kara Welsh, 21, of Plainfield, Illinois, was found with multiple gunshot wounds when police responded to an apartment at around 11:54 p.m. in the 100 block of Whitewater Street, police said.

Police said late Saturday a 23-year-old man had been taken into custody on charges of first-degree intentional homicide, endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon and disorderly conduct while armed. An altercation occurred between Welsh and the unidentified suspect prior to the shooting, police revealed.

UW-Whitewater Chancellor Corey King announced Welsh’s death in a message to the campus community, writing she was majoring in management at the College of Business and Economics and a standout member of the Warhawk gymnastics team.

“We know the news of Kara’s death is heartbreaking for our close-knit university community,” he said, in part. “It is a time when we are all called upon to support one another, to process, and to grieve.”

UW-Whitewater Warhawk Athletics posted about Welsh’s death on Facebook, saying, “Our hearts are broken with the tragic loss of one of our own, UW-Whitewater Warhawk Gymnastics senior Kara Welsh.”

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The bodies of Sean Tommervik, 37, of Philadelphia, and James G. Sullivan, 32, of Brooklyn, were found Monday in the wreckage in a farm field, the Winnebago County sheriff’s office said Wednesday in a release.

“Official medical examiner confirmation will take additional time,” the sheriff’s office said. “However, after the initial investigation, there is no reason to believe the occupants were anyone other than Mr. Tommervik and Mr. Sullivan.”

They were the only people aboard the Lancair Super ES which was owned by Tommervik. First responders found the plane fully engulfed in flames in the field in the town of Nekimi. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

The plane crashed about 2 miles south of the site of the EAA AirVenture air show at Oshkosh’s Wittman Regional Airport.

Monday was the first day of the 71st AirVenture, a weeklong event scheduled to include military aircraft demonstrations and forums with combat pilots, aircraft designers and NASA astronauts, the Oshkosh Northwestern reported.

The afternoon shooting happened near King Park, according to information provided by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner.

The agency responded to a death report at an intersection on the edge of the park, it said in a statement. Officials did not provide the identity and age of the man killed. An autopsy was expected Wednesday, the examiner’s office said.

The incident took place about 1 mile from the convention.

Both the Columbus Division of Police and the Columbus Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents city rank-and-file officers, said in separate statements that it was made aware of an officer-involved shooting involving Columbus officers in Milwaukee to help with security during the convention.

Columbus police said the incident happened in the “outer perimeter of the RNC, within the operational zone to which our officers were assigned.”

It said the shooting appeared unrelated to the convention.

No officers were injured, the Fraternal Order of Police said.

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Some city activists who opposed Milwaukee hosting the convention were incensed by the shooting, saying at a news conference that it took place in the park named for civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in a community already struggling for survival.

“We’re not even two days in to the RNC and we already have a casualty,” said Alan Chavoya, a member of the group Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

He continued, “How is that possible?”

The area is also the location of a homeless encampment, the activists said during the news conference.

Two witnesses told reporters that the victim is a homeless man who was trying to get away from police when he was struck by gunfire.

The witnesses, Christina Kugler and Mark Walker, said they didn’t see what happened before the confrontation. They said multiple officers opened fire.

Security video of the confrontation verified by NBC News shows a man go down in a a street as multiple officers approached. But it wasn’t clear what happened before the police and the man entered the camera’s frame.

Milwaukee police have not responded to a request. The department is expected to hold a news conference on the incident Tuesday evening.

Organizers planned an evening vigil for the victim.

On Monday, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made an appearance at the convention, which was being held at multiple adjacent venues downtown, including Fiserv Forum and Wisconsin Center District.

His appearance followed an attempted assassination on his life during a political rally on Saturday in Pennsylvania in which he said he was shot in the ear.

Columbus was among a number of other cities that sent law enforcement resources to assist during the convention.

Alicia Victoria Lozano reported from Milwaukee and Dennis Romero from San Diego.

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Nine people were injured by gunfire and another was injured by broken glass at the party at a high-rise apartment in downtown Madison.

All of the injured were taken to local hospitals. None had injuries considered to be life-threatening, according to authorities. Madison police said in a Sunday afternoon update that at least one of the injured remained in a hospital.

The victims ranged in age from 14 to 23.

“It is truly a miracle that no one is dead,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a news conference. “As a community, our hearts are hurting.”

Police were called to the apartment complex around 12:45 a.m.

“These students should have been celebrating summer vacation and not receiving medical treatment,” Barnes said.

The shooting happened near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, but university officials said no students were known to be among those injured or involved.

No one was in custody Sunday in connection with the shooting.

NBC News affiliate WTMJ-TV caught the footage of the hit-and-run crash. In the video, a sedan swerves away from an oncoming vehicle and slams head-on into the van.

Footage then shows both the driver and passenger exit the sedan almost simultaneously. While the driver manages to run away — and appears to attempt to cover his face with his hooded sweatshirt — the injured passenger rolls out of the car and lays on the ground.

The crash involved a “fresh stolen auto” and occurred about 7 p.m. at the intersection of S. 14th Street and W. Halsey Avenue, Milwaukee police said in a statement.

The impact of the collision caused the minivan to strike an unoccupied and unmarked police vehicle, police said.

A 57-year-old in the van was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said. The passenger in the stolen car, a 16-year-old boy, was also hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said, adding that the teen was arrested and criminal charges will be referred to the county district attorney’s office.

Police said they were still searching for the driver of the stolen car.

The news crew was at the site of the crash because it was reporting on a shooting at the same intersection that left two teenagers dead Saturday night, the news outlet reported.

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The plants sprouted in a tulip garden outside the Capitol, WMTV-TV reported Thursday.

Tatyana Warrick, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, told The Associated Press in an email Friday that workers had removed the plants, but that her agency couldn’t determine if they were marijuana or hemp. Both are forms of cannabis, but only marijuana has the compound that gets people high.

Warrick didn’t respond to questions about how the plants might have made it into the garden.

University of Wisconsin-Madison botanist Shelby Ellison, who examined the plants for WMTV before they were removed, told the station that they were cannabis plants. But she told The Associated Press on Friday that she couldn’t say for certain whether they were marijuana or hemp.

She said there were dozens of the plants in the garden, suggesting someone planted them intentionally.

“It was just a large number of plants for it to be anything accidental,” Ellison said.

Marijuana remains illegal in all forms in Wisconsin. Assembly Republicans introduced a bill last session that would have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, but they couldn’t muster support among their state Senate counterparts and the measure never got a hearing.

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A large green sign was posted Saturday morning on the front door of the store in Mineral Point, around 54 miles west of Madison, with the following message:

“The store is CLOSED. The whole team has walked away due to a lack of appreciation, being overworked and being underpaid.”

An accompanying sign read:

“We QUIT! Thank you to our amazing customers. We love you and will miss you.”

The signs left outside the store were posted in the “Iowa County Confessions” Facebook group.

A letter on notebook paper was also found near the entrance of the store, elaborating more on the staff’s decision to walk away from the store.

“Take this as a notice that we the team at store 20610 located in Mineral Point, WI all quit! We can not and will not work for a company that does not stand behind in true honest form of what they want the world to see them as. Although we love and adore our customers, we must take a stand for the community and not allow corporate greed to continue preventing people in need of the help they need and could receive. Policies, processes and procedures need to change! Don’t make claims about supporting and helping communities when the reality is that it’s all about the bottom line and not about support or help!”

According to NBC affiliate KSDK, a statement from Dollar General confirmed that the store was closed for around three hours Saturday morning before reopening.

The Economy Policy Institute’s Wage Tracker reports that 92% of Dollar General’s 119,904 employees make less than $15 an hour. That’s nearly double the number of employees making under $15 at Walmart (51%).

The EPI notes that companies like Dollar General are “notorious for poor working conditions” along with low wages while generating millions in revenue annually and often rewarding their CEOs “with hefty compensation packages.”

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According to the university, a white supremacist group carrying flags emblazoned with swastikas and “other Nazi symbols” marched from the State Street Mall to the state Capitol around noon.

The Madison Police Department said there were around 20 people marching with the group and that no weapons had been displayed during the march.

The University of Wisconsin Police Department said it hasn’t heard of any reports of incidents or arrests by the MPD stemming from the march.

Campus officials were not notified of the march ahead of time, the university said. Law enforcement is currently monitoring the situation.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

Jessy Kurczewski, 39, of Franklin, told investigators she gave Lynn Hernan a water bottle filled with six bottles of Visine in 2018, according to a criminal complaint. A Waukesha County jury found her guilty Tuesday of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of theft in connection with Hernan’s death, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Kurczewski’s attorneys did not speak with reporters following the verdict.

Hernan was found dead in her Pewaukee condo in October 2018 with crushed medication on her chest. According to a criminal complaint, Kurczewski called police and said her friend wasn’t conscious or breathing. Kurczewski said she was a family friend and had been checking on Hernan daily. She had said there was a possibility Hernan was suicidal.

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The Waukesha County medical examiner ruled Hernan’s death a homicide after discovering tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in Visine, in Hernan’s system.

When investigators told Kurczewski that Hernan was poisoned and the scene was staged to look like a suicide, she said it was what Hernan wanted and she must have staged her own suicide, according to the complaint. Kurczewski later told investigators she brought Hernan a water bottle loaded with six bottles’ worth of Visine, according to the complaint.

Detectives also eventually concluded Kurczewski stole $290,000 from Hernan.

Kurczewski is set to be sentenced Dec. 7. The homicide charge carries a mandatory life sentence. The theft charges each carry a maximum five years in prison.

No, not Marty McFly and Doc Brown — although there are many parallels to the scene in “Back to the Future III” where the two remove the time machine from a cave in hopes of restoring it to full working condition.

“This does remind you of that scene,” said Michael McElhattan, who recently unearthed a dirt-and-dust covered 1981 DeLorean with just 977 miles on it from the darkened corner of a Wisconsin barn where it had long sat.

This car doesn’t run on plutonium, it doesn’t have a flux capacitor, it doesn’t travel to various decades. But it most certainly took McElhattan back in time.

“The car is just as it was in 1981,” he said. “Nothing has been updated or changed, it’s an extremely original example. It was an absolute time capsule.”

‘It changed the trajectory of my life’

The phone rang on the afternoon of September 27 at DeLorean Midwest – a shop owned by McElhattan in Crystal Lake, Illinois that specializes entirely in the repair and restoration of DeLoreans.

McElhattan had first began working at the shop when it opened in 2007 after applying for a job listing he saw in the newspaper that was seeking a DeLorean technician. McElhattan, who had shop experience and an associate’s degree in automotive technology, had gained a familiarity with the DeLorean a decade earlier after his parents were convinced to buy one for his brother while the family attended an auction.  

McElhattan got the job and went on to spend nine years as the shop’s lead technician. He was then promoted to shop manager and in 2016 became the business’ owner with his wife Suzanne. He estimates that around 1,250 DeLoreans have been serviced at his shop in the 17 years he’s been there, including a dozen or so time machines.

“Looking back, the only reason my brother owned that car was to put me where I’m at,” said the 46-year-old McElhattan. “He loved the car, but he did very little with it, drove it I’m guessing under 1,000 miles in the 15-plus years he owned it.

“Had he not purchased that car, I probably never would have replied to that ad in the newspaper. My connection to a DeLorean and being familiar with the car was the reason I had enough confidence to even respond to that ad. It changed the trajectory of my life.”

It was his destiny. Or as George McFly would say, his “density.”

Now let’s go back to the future to answer that September phone call at his shop.  

It was from a DeLorean owner in Albuquerque, New Mexico who was looking to sell his car. For McElhattan, who was surrounded by about 30 of his customer’s DeLoreans in his shop, the thought of traveling to see the car or purchasing it sight unseen and trailering it 1,300 miles seemed an unwarranted logistical challenge.

“Then he said the car is at his uncle’s barn in Dousman, Wisconsin,” McElhattan said, referring to a town just over 60 miles north of his shop. “And he mentioned it only had 977 miles.”

Great Scott!

Only about 9,000 DeLoreans were produced between 1981 and 1982 amid eager anticipation for its debut, making the car itself a rare classic. Finding one that’s been driven fewer than 1,000 miles? Almost nonexistent.

“When he mentioned the mileage,” McElhattan said, “I was pretty motivated to go take a look at it.”

‘The barn find of all barn finds’

McElhattan and one of his technicians, Kevin Thomas, went to see the car the following week, becoming a modern-day 1885-version of Doc and Marty. They even documented it, not with photographs like Marty, but on their YouTube channel DeLorean Nation.

The DeLorean – for years, if not decades – had been inside a barn on a secluded 60-acre residential property, as if waiting to be discovered by time travelers…or car enthusiasts hoping to restore an original to its 1980s showroom glory.

Surrounded by a lawnmower, an ATV and a Dodge pick-up truck, the DeLorean was nestled in the corner of the barn, covered in dust and debris. All four of the car’s tires were flat, its rims sunken into the gravel.

The tires were dry-rotted and cracked but had no treadwear, and the stamping on the Goodyear NCTs proved they were factory originals.  

“These are the tires that went around the test track in Ireland where they were built,” McElhattan said.

The muffler had minimal browning, the body had no sun damage, the front bumper, which typically warps slightly by the headlights when driven regularly, was perfectly flat. The original parts and cosmetic details helped confirm that the car traveled no more than the 977 miles listed on its odometer.  

“This was the barn find of barn finds,” said Thomas, a Wisconsin resident who owns two DeLoreans, one of which he built into a replica time machine. “People are always looking for barn finds like these, and you hardly ever actually find one. This was the quintessential barn find that any classic car enthusiast dreams of.”

Except for the mice living inside the car.

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‘We can make an excellent car out of it’

When McElhattan and Thomas opened the DeLorean’s gullwing door, they noticed its original interior was fully intact but covered in mouse droppings, the rancid smell of which overpowered any musty odor a long-unused car might produce.     

“We opened the door and the first thing I saw was a mouse running across the center console,” Thomas said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! What is going on in here?’ We’ve never come across a car that had living rodents in it. There were mice crawling all over it.”

But they were crawling on what was a very structurally sound and entirely original DeLorean in need of professional detailing and McElhattan’s shop’s expert restoration.

“We can make an excellent car out of it,” McElhattan said.

So, he negotiated a price on site, received the title to the car and began the process of removing it from the barn.

“We had to unearth the thing,” McElhattan said.

Like Doc and Marty, they had keys to the DeLorean, but that were of no use for a car that would not start.

McElhattan and Thomas used a portable air compressor to fill the tires. After two failed attempts using the ATV to tow it, they used the Dodge pick-up truck to remove the DeLorean from the barn, the sun reflecting off its stainless-steel body for the first time in years.    

They then placed the car onto an open trailer, just like Doc and Marty after they removed the DeLorean from the cave where Doc said it had been for 70 years, two months and 13 days.

“Obviously this one hadn’t been there quite that long, but it sure looked like it had been,” Thomas said. “It was definitely reminiscent of that. As a fan of ‘Back to the Future,’ you look at the car and see it sitting there, your mind just automatically goes straight into that scene.”

‘Connecting with your past’

If the Barn DeLorean was a customer’s car, getting it back on the road would be a roughly six-month project for McElhattan. Being that it’s his own car, he expects it will take a year.  

“It’s a bit of a case of the shoemaker’s children go without shoes because with 30 cars in the shop, the customer cars come first,” he said. “But we do have a plan for this car.”

The first part of that plan has already been completed by letting it air out and ensuring that all mice have vacated.

“The mice are gone now and they’re not using this poor car as their toilet anymore,” McElhattan said. “The eviction has been done.”

Next is making sure the engine has not seized. The plugs will be pulled, the cylinders will be lubricated, the battery will be replaced and the engine will  – probably, hopefully – run for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve done enough of these that there’s a good chance of it coming back to life,” McElhattan said.

Then comes a thorough wash at a professional detailing facility, with the entire interior being taken apart to be cleaned and, if the odor is fully eliminated, reinstalled. Finally comes whatever mechanical repairs are needed to get the car up and running.  

“I’m going to, of course, try to keep this car as original as possible,” McElhattan said.  

With the story of the DeLorean Barn Find having gone viral and garnered public interest, McElhattan and Thomas plan to document each step of the car’s restoration on YouTube so viewers can travel back to 1981 with them.

“That’s what old cars are about for everyone, they bring you back to a certain time,” McElhattan said. “It’s so much about connecting with your past.”

And your future.  

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The man, who was shirtless and had a holstered handgun, approached the governor’s office on the first floor of the Capitol around 2 p.m. Wednesday, state Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said. The 43-year-old man said “he would not leave until he saw Governor Evers” so he could talk about “domestic abuse towards men,” Capitol police said in a bulletin sent to lawmakers and their staffs.

Evers was not in the building at the time, Warrick said.

A Capitol police officer sits at a desk outside of a suite of rooms that includes the governor’s office, conference room and offices for the attorney general.

The man was taken into custody for openly carrying a firearm in the Capitol, which is against the law, Warrick said. Weapons can be brought into the Capitol if they are concealed and the person has a valid permit. The man arrested did not have a concealed carry permit, Warrick said.

The man was booked into the Dane County Jail but later posted bail.

He returned to the outside of the Capitol shortly before 9 p.m., three hours after the building closed, with a loaded assault-style rifle and a collapsible police baton in his backpack, Warrick said. He again demanded to see the governor and was taken into custody.

The man said “he did not own a vehicle and it is likely he has access to a large amount of weapons and is comfortable using them,” police said in the bulletin sent to Capitol workers.

Capitol police named the suspect, but court records show that no charges have been filed as of midday Thursday. The Associated Press normally does not name suspects until they are charged and efforts are made to get comments from them, their lawyer or other representative.

Madison police reported Thursday that the man was taken into protective custody and taken to the hospital. A spokesperson for the police department did not return an email seeking additional details.

“Capitol Police took control of the situation and so it’s over,” Evers told reporters Thursday.

He declined to comment on what security changes may be enacted for him or the Capitol building.

“I never, ever talk about what my security detail does or what they’re planning on doing,” Evers said. “But anytime something like this happens, obviously they reevaluate.”

The incident is just the latest in a series of violent threats against public officials.

Evers, a Democrat, was on a hit list of a gunman suspected of fatally shooting a retired county judge at his Wisconsin home in 2022. Others on that list included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Whitmer was the target of a kidnapping plot in 2020.

Warrick said no immediate changes to security in the Capitol or for the governor were planned. The public has free access to the Capitol daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There are no metal detectors.

A Brown County judge sentenced Taylor Schabusiness, 25, for the February 2022 killing of Shad Thyrion, 24. A jury had convicted her in July of first-degree intentional homicide, third-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse.

Schabusiness had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but jury also found that she wasn’t mentally ill when she killed Thyrion.

Prosecutors said Thyrion and Schabusiness had smoked methamphetamine in the basement of Thyrion’s mother’s Green Bay home before Schabusiness strangled, decapitated and dismembered him. She then left parts of his body throughout the house and in a vehicle, authorities said.

Schabusiness was arrested on Feb. 23, 2022, after Thyrion’s mother called police to her house after she discovered her son’s head in a bucket in the basement.

Brown County Circuit Judge Thomas Walsh said Tuesday before announcing her sentence that “the offense in this case can’t be overstated,” the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.

“You seem to run out of superlatives. Where the victim’s remains are cut up? These actions are foreign. They shock the community; there aren’t really words for it,” he said.

Schabusiness’ defense attorney, Christopher Froelich, told the court she would speak on her own behalf before Walsh sentenced her. But when the judge asked Schabusiness if there was anything she’d like to say, she replied simply, “No, there isn’t.”

“She’s not a monster,” Froelich told the court, adding that at age 25 there’s still time for his client to be rehabilitated, WBAY-TV reported.

In February, Schabusiness attacked her previous attorney during a hearing before a deputy wrestled her to the courtroom floor.

The American flamingos spotted Friday in Port Washington, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, marked the first sighting of the species in Wisconsin state history, said Mark Korducki, a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The birds stood quietly 25 feet (7.6 meters) off Lake Michigan’s western shoreline as waves lapped against their thin legs. Three were adults, identifiable by their pink plumage, and two were juveniles clad in gray.

Jim Edelhuber of Waukesha was among a crowd of about 75 bird enthusiasts drawn to the city’s South Beach after word spread on social media about the flamingos’ appearance there.

“This is huge. This is unbelievable,” said Edelhuber, an avid bird watcher and photographer.

The sighting was unexpected but not a total shock because of recent reports of flamingos in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said Ryan Brady, conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Wildlife biologists hypothesized that the flamingos were pushed north in late August by the strong winds of Hurricane Idalia, the Journal Sentinel reported.

The typical range of the American flamingo is Florida and other Gulf Coast states as well as the Caribbean and northern South America.

Debbie Gasper of Port Washington made the short trip to the lakefront with her husband, Mark. She said that before Friday the only flamingos she has seen have been on the couple’s trips to Aruba.

Gasper said she was going to send photos of the birds to relatives in Georgia who “aren’t going to believe it.”

Multiple flamingos were spotted at a beach along Lake Michigan on Friday, something that has never happened in Wisconsin, according to a report from WTMJ, the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee. The long-legged birds were seen at South Beach in Port Washington, about 27 miles north of Milwaukee.

So many people had to see the feathered friends for themselves that parking near the beach became an issue, prompting police to post a message on Facebook.

“Our guests at south beach have caused a large migration of photographers, wildlife enthusiasts, and onlookers to the area,” the Port Washington Police Department said in a Facebook post, in part. “This has overwhelmed the parking at south beach…”

It’s believed that the flamingoes ended up in Wisconsin after escaping Florida when Hurricane Idalia formed in late August.

Anyone who wants to catch a glimpse of the flamingos doesn’t have long.

They’ll likely return to their habitats after temperatures drop, experts said.

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Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP.

But it’s the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes over Democrats’ objections and this week could vote to wrest power from the governor over how the state’s elections are run.

In both cases, Republicans are expected to override the governor’s veto thanks to their legislative supermajorities.

Those major changes will come on the heels of similar power plays by the Republican legislative majority in Wisconsin, another battleground state where the GOP has lost a series of statewide races.

Republican lawmakers there are trying to fire the state’s nonpartisan elections director and are considering impeaching a newly elected justice on the state Supreme Court. Her victory earlier this year gave the court a liberal majority that could strike down the Republican gerrymander that has given the party its outsized statehouse clout. Wisconsin voters have elected Democrats to all but one of the statewide executive offices that are decided on a partisan basis.

While both parties engage in gerrymandering, the dynamics in North Carolina and Wisconsin go beyond mere redistricting fights and offer a vivid illustration of how Republicans are attempting to maintain power regardless of their level of support among voters. The moves could give the GOP disproportionate influence over everything from partisan redistricting to the certification of next year’s presidential election.

“The fact that these are both purple states is ironically what leads to the brass knuckles politics we see in Wisconsin and North Carolina,” said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. In both states, he said, Republican politicians feel “they need to act because they could legitimately lose power.”

Republicans in Wisconsin and North Carolina are aided by their parties’ geographic distribution during statehouse elections. Democrats are clustered in two metro areas of each state — Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin, and Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. That makes it more likely that even fairly drawn legislative districts covering urban areas will be overloaded with Democrats, leaving fewer of the party’s voters to compete elsewhere and giving the GOP an edge in the remaining seats.

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In North Carolina, even with the congressional delegation splitting evenly last year, Republicans won close to a supermajority of seats in the state legislature. They achieved that status this year when a Democratic House member switched her party.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, said less than 15% of the precincts were competitive statewide in 2022.

“It doesn’t take much creativity to tilt districts one way or another,” he said.

The GOP-controlled North Carolina General Assembly had tried to tilt districts more aggressively, drawing maps that favored them even more. Their plan was struck down by the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court as an illegal gerrymander.

But Republicans are now in the majority on the court, which has signaled that the legislature is clear to draw the districts to more aggressively favor the party next year. That could lock in their supermajority status for several more election cycles.

That’s occurring as the legislature muscles through two election bills that are propelled partly by Republican voters’ lingering beliefs of Trump’s lies that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election. One bill would end the state’s three-day grace period for mailed ballots arriving after Election Day and loosen poll-watching rules in a way that critics worry could lead to intimidation of voters.

The other is potentially more consequential. It would strip the governor of the power to appoint members of the state election board and give that authority to the legislature.

Bill proponents say having leaders of both major parties picking equal numbers of board members would promote bipartisanship and consensus election policies.

But critics say having a board split evenly between the two parties would lead to gridlock, creating a situation where the stalemates would be settled by the Republican-controlled legislature or the Republican-dominated courts — a possibility that could include next year’s presidential contest.

The legislation also could lead to the possible ouster of the state’s respected elections director just months before the presidential election. There have been no widespread problems or concerns with voting in North Carolina under her watch.

“I’ve spoken out against these moves that are not about election security,” Cooper told reporters this past week. “They are only about keeping and gaining power for Republicans.”

Republicans contend the legislature should have more supervision of voting and other key regulatory functions. A bill already vetoed by Cooper would erode his appointment powers to boards that set electricity rates, make environmental policies and build roads.

“The legislature is the elected body closest to the people of North Carolina and has the ability to recruit a qualified, diverse roster of appointees,” Republican state Sen. Warren Daniel, a sponsor of the broader appointments bill, said recently.

That’s been a theme of North Carolina governance for centuries. The state has stood out for having an unusually strong legislature and weak governor, who was the last in the nation to be able to veto legislation, only gaining that power in 1997.

“Our state was founded with the notion that the legislative branch would be the branch with the most authority,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in June. “Our state’s not set up with three separate co-equal branches. It was clearly contemplated and spelled out in the (state) Constitution that the legislative branch was to have the most authority because it’s the closest to people.”

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That stands in sharp contrast with Wisconsin, where until recently the Legislature acted like a fairly typical law-making body. But since Republicans won the statehouse in 2010 and drew heavily gerrymandered maps that guaranteed their party’s control of both chambers, the Legislature has become increasingly confrontational with the states’ Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Republican lawmakers blocked Evers from installing many appointees on state boards. Last week, the state Senate voted to fire the state’s nonpartisan election director, drawing an immediate legal challenge. After voters overwhelmingly elected a Democratic-backed justice to the state Supreme Court earlier this year, flipping the majority from conservative to liberal for the first time in 15 years, the Legislature threatened to impeach her — even before she had heard a case.

Last week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos offered to drop the impeachment if Democrats agreed to a new redistricting process he cast as nonpartisan, something Evers rejected as a sham proposal. To Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator, the sharpness of Evers’ rejection symbolized the depths to which Wisconsin politics have plunged.

“Nobody wants half a loaf; they’d rather starve,” Schultz said. He reserved most of his scorn, however, for the Legislature’s maneuvers.

“We see increasingly desperate measures to hang onto power,” he said.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Harm Venhuizen in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

Wisconsin maritime historians Brendon Baillod and Robert Jaeck found the 156-year-old Trinidad in July off Algoma at a depth of about 270 feet (82 meters). They used side-scan sonar to hone in on its location based on survivor accounts in historical records.

“The wreck is among the best-preserved shipwrecks in Wisconsin waters with her deck-house still intact, containing the crew’s possessions and her anchors and deck gear still present,” states a Thursday news release announcing the Trinidad’s discovery.

The 140-foot-long (43-meter-long) schooner was built at Grand Island, New York, in 1867 by shipwright William Keefe, and was used primarily in the grain trade between Milwaukee, Chicago and Oswego, New York.

But it was carrying a load of coal bound for Milwaukee when early on May 13, 1881, it developed a catastrophic leak after passing through the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal. It sank about 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) off the coast of Algoma, “taking all the crew’s possessions and the captain’s pet Newfoundland dog with her,” the news release states.

Captain John Higgins and his crew of eight survived and reached Algoma, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) north of Milwaukee, after rowing for eight hours in the ship’s yawl boat. Higgins believed the Trinidad’s hull was damaged a few days before the sinking as it passed through ice fields in the Straits of Mackinac.

After discovering the Trinidad in July, Baillod and Jaeck reported their finding to an underwater archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society who arranged for the site to be surveyed with an underwater vehicle that verified the vessel’s identity and documented historic artifacts, according to the news release.

A three-dimensional model of the ship has been created to allow people to explore the site virtually. Baillod and Jaeck plan to work with the Wisconsin Historical Society to nominate the site to the National Register of Historic Places.

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Leo Burt was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list immediately after the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall and remains the last fugitive sought by the FBI in connection with radical anti-Vietnam War activities.

The bombers parked a stolen van packed with fertilizer and fuel outside the university’s Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall and lit the fuse in the early morning hours of Aug. 24, 1970. The bomb attack, which was the nation’s most powerful until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, killed 33-year-old graduate student Robert Fassnacht, who was doing research in the middle of the night. It also injured other people and caused millions of dollars in damage. The bombers fled to Canada.

Three of the four wanted men were captured in the 1970s after trying to live underground. They were convicted, served short prison terms and resumed their lives.

Burt, who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, came to Wisconsin on an ROTC scholarship and joined the rowing team, vanished. One former prosecutor called him “Wisconsin’s state ghost.”

The FBI received tips and alleged sightings from all over the world for decades, often spiking around anniversaries of the bombing. Some theorize that Burt is dead, while others compare him to D.B. Cooper, the hijacker who disappeared after parachuting out of an airliner with $200,000. There was even a theory in the 1990s, proven untrue with Theodore Kaczynski’s arrest, that he may have been the Unabomber.

The FBI continues to offer $150,000 for information leading to Burt’s arrest.

The FBI’s Milwaukee field office on Thursday released the photos that envision Burt as a 75-year-old man. The photo was done in conjunction with the 53rd anniversary of the bombing, which was last week, said FBI spokesperson Leonard Peace.

In his photo from 1970, Burt is wearing glasses and has a full head of dark, curly hair. In the new age-processed depiction, he is mostly bald and shown with and without glasses.

Madison attorney Lester Pines, 73, was a UW student at the time of the bombing. As a young attorney in 1975 he was part of a team that defended one of the bombers.

“If the FBI is correct, Leo Burt’s visage has changed much worse than mine has,” Pines said in reaction to the updated photo simulation. “I guess that Leo has not taken good care of himself, if he’s even still alive.”

His oldest son, Joey Wurzelbacher, said his father died Sunday in Wisconsin after a long illness. His family announced this year on an online fundraising site that he had pancreatic cancer.

“The only thing I have to say is that he was a true patriot,” Joey Wurzelbacher — whose father had the middle name Joseph and went by Joe — said in a telephone interview. “His big thing is that everyone come to God. That’s what he taught me, and that’s a message I hope is heard by a lot of people.”

He went from toiling as a plumber in suburban Toledo, Ohio, to life as a media sensation when he asked Obama about his tax plan during a campaign stop.

Their exchange and Obama’s response that he wanted to “spread the wealth around” aired often on cable news. Days later, Obama’s Republican opponent, U.S. Sen. John McCain, repeatedly cited “Joe the Plumber” in a presidential debate.

Wurzelbacher soon faced intense media scrutiny and acknowledged that he didn’t have a plumber’s license, saying at the time he didn’t need one because he worked for a small plumbing company owned by someone else.

Wurzelbacher went on to campaign with McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, but he later criticized McCain in his book and said he did not want him as the GOP presidential nominee.

His sudden fame turned him into a sought-after voice for many anti-establishment conservatives, and he traveled the country speaking at tea party rallies and conservative gatherings.

He also wrote a book and worked with a veterans organization that provided outdoor programs for wounded soldiers.

In 2012, he made a bid for a U.S. House seat in Ohio, but he lost in a landslide to Democrat Marcy Kaptur in a district heavily tilted toward Democrats.

Republicans had recruited him to run and thought his fame would help bring in enough money to mount a serious challenge. But he drew criticism during the campaign for suggesting that the United States should build a fence at the Mexico border and “start shooting” at immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally.

Wurzelbacher returned to working as a plumber after he gave up on politics, his family said.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Survivors include his wife, Katie, and four children.

Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

Republicans chose Milwaukee for the first debate and for the national convention in just 11 months largely because of Wisconsin’s well-earned status as a swing state. Four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point here, with Donald Trump winning narrowly in 2016 before losing by a similar margin in 2020.

“Everybody needs to be prepared for all-out war as usual,” said longtime Republican strategist Stephan Thompson.

To participate in Wednesday’s debate, the Republican National Committee required candidates to meet donor and polling thresholds and sign a pledge to support the GOP candidate in the general election. Trump, the frontrunner who faces criminal charges in four separate cases, says he will not attend.

Those expected to be on the stage include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, ex-Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson also say they have met the requirements to make the stage. The official lineup is still coming together because candidates have until Monday evening to provide evidence to the RNC that they have qualified.

The first GOP primary voters will weigh in on the nomination in less than five months, when Iowa holds its Jan. 15 caucus, followed by other early states in February. The eventual nominee is expected to face President Joe Biden in November.

Wisconsin will be one of the biggest toss-ups in the general election. It’s a distinction held by a shrinking but often-shifting number of places, as former swing states like Ohio and Florida become more reliably Republican and Virginia and Colorado more Democratic. That leaves Wisconsin along with Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada as among the most competitive states that could decide the presidency.

In a sign of Wisconsin’s importance, Biden traveled to Milwaukee last week to talk up his work to create manufacturing jobs. On Sunday, his campaign announced it is spending $25 million to run ads in seven states, including Wisconsin, to counter Republicans as they debate. The ad buy includes the campaign’s first investments in Hispanic and Black media, the campaign said.

Wisconsin’s status as a top electoral target dates back more than 20 years.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore carried Wisconsin by a scant 5,700 votes, or just .22% of the total votes cast. That makes Biden’s win in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes, or a .56% margin, look like a blow out. Two other races — John Kerry’s .38% margin of victory in 2004 and Trump’s .77% win in 2016 — were also razor close.

And there’s no sign of Wisconsin becoming any less evenly divided.

Democrats have been able to chip into the once-reliably conservative Milwaukee suburbs that saw GOP support drop in the Trump era. Democrats also capitalized on population gains in Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison and the University of Wisconsin.

The Democratic moves have been able to help offset Republican gains made in rural areas during the Trump era.

“Wisconsin has almost the exact mix of urban, suburban and rural populations that are needed to maintain a competitive status,” said Anthony Chergosky, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor. “It all adds up to a state that is highly contested politically but a state that does not look like it did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, whose district includes Madison, noted Republicans chose Wisconsin to be the first state to launch its early voting effort, embracing a tactic long used by Democrats but that Trump and others in the GOP shunned and falsely asserted was rife with fraud. Trump also now is encouraging early voting.

Democrats in Wisconsin are headed into the 2024 presidential season feeling emboldened.

They have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections, including Biden in 2020, Gov. Tony Evers in 2022 and Janet Protasiewicz in April. Her victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race took majority control of the court away from conservatives for the first time in 15 years, with major decisions looming on abortion access, redistricting and voting rules.

Republicans have had wins, including reelecting U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson last year, picking up a congressional seat and increasing majorities in the state Senate and Assembly. But those gains were overshadowed by the losses in the presidential, governor and Supreme Court races, Thompson said.

In addition to the presidential race, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection to a third term next year. And both sides are preparing for the possibility that the new liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court orders new legislative maps and forces every current lawmaker to stand for election.

On the presidential race, DeSantis was showing strength this summer while he struggled nationally.

Trump was favored by 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed, while DeSantis was at 30% in a Marquette University Law School poll released June 29. But in a head-to-head matchup, DeSantis was favored by 57% and Trump by 41%.

Since that poll was done, Trump was indicted for a third and fourth time and DeSantis shook up his campaign as he struggles to chip into Trump’s support nationally.

Wisconsin Republicans are more divided on Trump than the past two times he ran. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020, and his repeated lies about the outcome in Wisconsin and calls to decertify the results, alienated him from many top Republicans.

“He’s kind of like a warm beer,” the Democrat Pocan said of Trump. “He’s not exactly what we strive for here in the state. I just don’t think there’s a lot of growth potential for him should he be the Republican nominee.”

DeSantis, during a July fundraising swing to Wisconsin, attracted more than a dozen Republican state lawmakers to an event, including former Gov. Tommy Thompson, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and Tim Michels, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor. The hosts included Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who donated to efforts to get Trump elected in 2016 and 2020.

“Wisconsin Republicans are going to think about one, is this somebody who can beat Trump in a primary and two, can they beat Biden?” Thompson said. “At the end of the day, people here just want to win. Plain and simple.”

___

Associated Press writer Sara Burnett in Chicago contributed to this report.

The incident is another blemish for the southeastern Wisconsin city, which endured days of protests three years ago after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance. A white Illinois teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people during a night of unrest, killing two of them, an incident that became a flashpoint in the national debate over guns, vigilantism and racial injustice.

The hit-and-run crash happened on July 20, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week. Police said that witnesses told them they saw two Black men and a Black woman flee toward an Applebee’s restaurant. One witness said the woman was carrying a child, according to police.

An Applebee’s employee told officers that some “suspicious people” who may have been involved in the crash were in the restaurant and directed officers to two people, including a Black man holding a baby.

The officers tried to take the baby from the man and arrest him. The man yelled that he hadn’t done anything wrong and officers should let him go. The video shows that after the officers removed the baby from his arms, they threw him to the ground and an officer began punching him as he ordered the man to put his hands behind his back.

Officers then discovered the people responsible for the crash in the restaurant’s bathroom.

Police said the man who was punched wasn’t responsible for the crash but tried to leave in defiance of officers’ orders and resisted them.

Lt. Joseph Nosalik, a spokesperson for the Kenosha Police Department, didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press inquiring about the race of the officer who appeared to punch the man.

Kenosha found itself embroiled in a days-long protest in August 2020 after Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, fatally shot two men and wounded another, saying he had been attacked and fired in self-defense. A jury acquitted him of homicide and endangerment charges in November 2021.

Leaders of Kenosha, a nonprofit that describes itself online as advocating for transformative and restorative justice, held a news conference Wednesday to call for charging the officers involved in the Applebee’s incident.

“It just doesn’t seem that anyone was a voice of reason that had a uniform on,” said Tanya McLean, executive director of Leaders of Kenosha.

She said officers acted out of fear, just as Sheskey did.

“We don’t want to stand here and have these conversations about people being harmed when they’re simply having a meal with their family,” she said.

A Rotorway 162F helicopter and an ELA Eclipse 10 gyrocopter collided shortly after noon local time at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, authorities said. The aircraft belonged to individuals attending the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual fly-in convention in Oshkosh but were not involved in the air show, a statement from the organization said.

The association, citing the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office, said two people were killed and two injured. The injured were taken to a local hospital and were in stable condition.

The association said further information would be released as additional details are confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

Separately, a plane earlier Saturday crashed into Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, killing two people, according to the sheriff’s office. The NTSB is also investigating that case, which involved a single-engine North American T-6 aircraft.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.

Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.

“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Jay O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”

Van Orden said he was protecting the integrity of the Capitol Rotunda because it served as a field hospital during the Civil War and it’s where presidents have lain in state upon their deaths. He said the young people he confronted were “goofing off” and that Democrats were making it an issue.

“Would this be an issue if those young people did not have political connections?” Van Orden said on “The Jay Weber Show.” “Why do you think this is an issue, pal?”

A former Navy SEAL who was outside of the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, Van Orden also appeared to embrace the presence of alcohol in his office the same evening he encountered the pages. Images were posted on social media showing bottles of liquor and beer cans on a desk in his office. Van Orden said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the alcohol was from constituents.

And his spokeswoman Anna Kelly posted: “As the Congressman says, once you cross the threshold to our office, you are in Wisconsin!” She followed that with a beer mug emoji.

Van Orden represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, a GOP-leaning jurisdiction that comprises parts of central, southwestern and western Wisconsin, including moderate exurbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

On Thursday evening, just before the Senate left for its August recess, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rebuked Van Orden’s behavior and thanked the pages, high school-age students who serve as helpers and messengers around the Senate. Several of the pages were sitting on the Senate floor at the time, smiling and nodding as dozens of senators stood and gave them a standing ovation.

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Without mentioning Van Orden by name, Schumer said he was “shocked” to hear about the behavior of a member of the House Republican majority and “further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people.” He noted that Thursday was the final day for this class of pages.

“They’re here when we need them,” Schumer said. “And they have served this institution with grace.”

McConnell said he associated himself with Schumer’s words. “Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” he said.

When asked about McConnell’s rebuke, Van Orden said Friday “I don’t know what it was because I honestly have not tracked any of this stuff.”

Van Orden was elected to Congress in 2022 after a losing bid in 2020. He has insisted that he did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and on Friday again condemned those who did, calling them “buffoons.” That didn’t stop fellow Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, from invoking the Jan. 6 attack in criticizing Van Orden.

“Wonder if he told that to his fellow insurrectionists, who were beating police officers on the same ground?” Pocan said on X.

Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat who is running to challenge Van Orden in 2024, called him an embarrassment and a hypocrite. She called Van Orden a “serial harasser” and referenced an incident in June 2021 when Van Orden was upset about a display of LGBTQ+ books at a southwestern Wisconsin library and yelled at a teenager who was working there.

“For someone to perhaps drunkenly, and definitely belligerently, yell at these kids for enjoying our nation’s Capitol is just stupid,” Pocan said Friday. “He would be best to say it was stupid and just move on.”

“I’m devastated that the board decided to terminate my contract and remove me from my classroom, but I am a teacher at my core and no school board can take that away from me,” the 44-year-old educator tells TODAY.com.

“Tonight I have an achey breaky heart but tomorrow I’m gonna get up and keep fighting for what is right,” she added in a tweet. “Thanks for all the love!”

TODAY.com reached out to the Waukesha School District Board of Education for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.

The Waukesha School District Board of Education voted on July 12 to terminate Tempel, NBC affiliate WTMJ of Milwaukee reported.

Tempel spoke to TODAY.com in March, after she voiced her opposition to the Waukesha School District’s decision to ban her elementary school students from performing the Miley Cyrus-Dolly Parton duet.

“It’s just a really good song about peace, love, appreciating diversity and getting along, and my students liked it so much,” Tempel told TODAY.com at the time.

“When I told them, they were just so sad,” she added. “They kept asking: ‘Why? Why?’ It was really hard — I had to say I didn’t know.”

A statement from the Waukesha School District’s public relations and communications office in March confirmed that the song was reviewed by a central office administrator.

“They determined that the song could be deemed controversial in accordance with the policy,” the statement said, adding that the decision was “fully supported by the Superintendent” but that “at no time was the Board of Education involved.”

After Tempel publicly disagreed with the decision, Superintendent James Sebert asked for an investigation into the educator, citing the “hundreds” of phone messages and emails he received as a result of her social media posts, as reported by NBC affiliate WTMJ of Milwaukee.

During the July 12 meeting, WTMJ reported, Sebert said the way Tempel publicly disagreed with the decision “was in direct violation of multiple board policies.”

After the vote, Tempel’s attorney told WTMJ they were disappointed with the outcome but added that they “have everything we need in terms of a factual basis to file a First Amendment claim.”

“I’m a citizen teacher with First Amendment Rights,” Tempel tells TODAY.

“Now every student that I’ve been privileged to teach knows that when I taught them that in this country every person has a voice and the right to be heard, I meant it,” she adds. “Last night I slept so well because I know I have done nothing wrong.”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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Ryan Beierman, 43, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he was pinned beneath the 200-pound bruin on Sept. 6 when his son, Owen, fired a shot from the boy’s hunting rifle.

“Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me,” said Beierman, who suffered bites to his forehead, arm and leg. He also needed stitches to reattach a flap of skin on his cheek that was ripped during the attack.

Earlier, he and Owen spotted the bear from a tree stand near Siren, Wisconsin, about 90 miles (144 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Owen fired a shot, wounding the bear which then ran away. The pair waited about 20 minutes before starting to look for the bear and used a neighbor’s tracking dog to try and find it.

“We were sort of hung up in a thicket when we heard the dog yelp and sprint past us in retreat,” Beierman told the newspaper. “Just then, I stepped into a semi-clearing. I said, ‘There he is, Owen.’”

The bear charged from about 6 feet (1.8 meters) away. Beierman said he fired eight shots at the animal with his pistol, but all missed.

“Before I knew it, I was flat on my back,” he recounted. “I started pistol-whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall. I tried hitting him between the ear and mouth with a blunt edge of the pistol.”

The bear then lunged at Beierman’s head.

“All I could see were his claws and teeth,” he said. “I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me.”

“The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine,’’ Beierman added. “I’m punching and kicking and flailing around. That’s when I saw a flash from the muzzle of Owen’s rifle.”

Beierman then was able to push the bear off him. He estimates that the attack lasted about 45 seconds.

A neighbor began driving Beierman and Owen to a hospital. They were met by an ambulance which took them the rest of the way. The wound on his cheek would require 23 stitches. There were seven puncture wounds and a cut on Beierman’s right arm.

A conservation officer with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said their hunt was legal.

The court’s conservative majority ruled 4-3 that Marshfield police had grounds to search the driver of a vehicle that smelled like marijuana, overturning lower court rulings that said officers couldn’t be sure that what they smelled was not CBD, a legal, marijuana-derived substance. The scents of CBD and marijuana are indistinguishable.

Two officers searched Quaheem Moore in 2019, who was alone in a vehicle that smelled like marijuana when he was pulled over for speeding. Moore told police that a vaping device he had contained CBD and that the car was a rental belonging to his brother. Police did not smell marijuana on Moore.

Moore argued in court that police had no reason to believe he was responsible for the smell.

To justify searching someone, police need enough evidence to believe that person has likely committed a crime. When they obtain more evidence through an illegal search, it’s not allowed to be used in court.

Moore was never charged with possessing marijuana, but officers charged him with possessing narcotics when they discovered small bags of cocaine and fentanyl in his pocket during their search.

A circuit court judge and an appeals court had previously moved to disqualify the drugs that police found, saying the search wasn’t legal.

Justice Brian Hagedorn, who issued Tuesday’s opinion on behalf of the court’s conservative majority, wrote that because Moore was the only person in the car, police could reasonably assume he “was probably connected with the illegal substance the officers identified.”

Tuesday’s ruling referenced a 1999 Supreme Court decision that said officers were justified in arresting a driver because they linked the smell of marijuana from his vehicle to him. That opinion said that the “unmistakable” smell of a controlled substance was evidence that a crime had been committed.

But the court’s three liberal justices called that ruling into question, saying it was outdated and did not account for the subsequent legalization of substances that smell like marijuana. They also said officers did not have strong evidence that Moore had caused the odor in the car he was driving.

“Officers who believe they smell marijuana coming from a vehicle may just as likely be smelling raw or smoked hemp, which is not criminal activity,” Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Moore’s attorney, Joshua Hargrove, warned that the ruling could allow police to base searches on unreliable conclusions and never be held accountable in court. “This opinion could subject more citizens engaged in lawful behavior to arrest,” he said.

The ruling comes as Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin continue to fight over legalizing marijuana.

Republicans who control the Legislature have rejected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ attempts to legalize recreational and medical marijuana. But GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in April he was working on legislation to legalize medical marijuana as soon as this fall.

Marijuana has been legal in neighboring Michigan and Illinois for years and will become legal in Minnesota in August under legislation passed last month.

When the 911 call came in on June 9, she could hear children screaming “Mom” and wondered if their mother was suffering an emergency. 

But then she looked up the call’s coordinates and realized that it was her 17-year-old daughter Emma on the other end of the line shouting their address, Anderson told NBC affiliate WGBA in Wisconsin. Those were her kids, telling her that her house was on fire.

“Hold on, Mom will be there soon,” she told them.

Anderson’s 12-year-old son Landon heard glass breaking and was able to escape and wake his sister and her friend who were asleep in a camper. 

“I’m unbelievably proud of them,” Anderson told WGBA. “They did exactly, my son especially, he did exactly what he was taught… and that’s a lot to put on a 12-year-old.”

The family is safe but their pets died in the fire.

“My son is taking it very, very difficult,” Anderson said. “He wishes he would have gotten the pets out in time. I’m just reminding him every day how lucky I am that he’s here today.”

The fire in Forestville, which investigators believe was started by an electrical cord, destroyed all of their belongings, according to the family’s GoFundMe. 

“It’s probably just tragic irony that the person who helps us help others, that day needed help,” Southern Door County Fire Chief Rich Olson said. 

Under current law, only workers age 18 and above can serve alcohol to customers in Wisconsin. The bill would broaden that to workers ages 14 to 17. They could only serve to seated customers, not drinkers who are at the bar itself.

The current age limit on serving alcohol “causes workforce issues due to an establishment’s underage employees only being able to do part of their job,” the bill sponsors Sen. Rob Stafsholt, of New Richmond, and Rep. Chanz Green, of Grandview, said in a memo circulated Monday seeking cosponsors.

They said their idea “creates a simple solution” to the state’s workforce shortage problems in the food and beverage industry. The bill requires the licensed operator of the bar or restaurant be on the premises and supervising.

Although no one under the age of 21 can legally drink alcohol, those under 21 — including minors of any age — in Wisconsin can drink in bars and restaurants if they are with their parents.

If the proposal passes, Wisconsin would have the lowest age limit for workers allowed to serve alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The measure is a long way from becoming law. It must pass the Senate and Assembly, both controlled by Republicans, and be signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback mocked the proposal Monday, listing numerous initiatives Evers has proposed to address the state’s workforce shortage issue including building more housing and funding schools, before forwarding a message detailing the Republican bill.

The train derailed in Crawford County at about 12:15 p.m. Two of the train’s three locomotives and an unknown number of cars carrying “freight of all kinds” derailed on the eastern edge of the river, BNSF Railway spokesperson Lena Kent said.

All crew members were accounted for, with one receiving a medical evaluation, she said.

Crawford County Emergency Management Specialist Marc Myhre told WKBT-TV that about 20 BNSF Railway cars were involved.

Two cars went into the Mississippi River, but neither contained hazardous materials, Kent said. Some of the containers that derailed on shore contained paint and lithium ion batteries, and a boom was being placed in the impacted area, she said.

“The volumes involved don’t pose a risk to the river or the communities,” Kent said.

BNSF will work with local and state agencies as appropriate, she said.

The main track is blocked in both directions and an estimated time for reopening the track was not available, Kent said. BNSF had personnel at the scene and the cause of the incident was under investigation.

The Crawford County Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page that there was no need to evacuate.

The Federal Railroad Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates safety across the nation’s railroads, tweeted that it was sending a team to the site to gather information and help local emergency workers.

Gov. Tony Evers tweeted that he was briefed on the derailment and is getting regular updates from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the Department of Natural Resources and state emergency management officials. His spokesperson, Britt Cudaback, said in a short telephone interview that it wasn’t clear if any environmental contamination has happened.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Katie Grant did not immediately respond to an email asking if the derailment has resulted in any environmental contamination.

The derailment comes almost three months after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Officials there decided to release and burn toxic vinyl chloride from five tanker cars to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

Hundreds of people had to evacuate in Raymond, Minnesota, last month after a BNSF train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and caught fire.

Six-year-old Jaxon McDonald was sleeping in the same room as his mother April, and he awoke in the night to a strange sound. The sound – which Jaxon described as sounding “like a zombie” – was actually the sound of his mother having a seizure.

“It sounded like she was going to throw up,” Jaxon said.

He immediately jumped out of bed and alerted his three sisters.

“He was like, ‘something is wrong with Mommy,'” sister Morgan McDonald said.

Another sister, Kendra, then ran out of the house and down to her grandparents’ to get help while the others called 9-1-1 and stayed by their mom’s side.

“I told [my grandmother] it’s an emergency, something is wrong with my mom,” Kendra said.

“I come over here and I look in the bedroom — and [April] was having a seizure,” said April’s mother, Charlene Thomas.

Doctors who examined April after the event ended up finding a large mass — the size of a tomato — on her brain. Her family said she had been suffering from intense headaches for months. The 35-year-old was actually supposed to see a neurologist in just a week.

After discovering the tumor, doctors put April into a medically induced coma and were able to surgically remove most of the mass from her brain. Now awake and able to walk and talk on her own, April is on her road to recovery — with thanks to the team effort by her quick-thinking children.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a statement late Saturday that it was investigating the shooting in Cameron, Wisconsin.

An officer from the Chetek Police Department conducted a traffic stop around 3:38 p.m. and at some point gunfire was exchanged with the motorist, the state justice department said.

The Chetek officer and another officer from Cameron were pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect in the shooting was taken to a hospital and later died, the justice department said.

The names of the officers and the suspect were not immediately released.

“I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss today of two officers. I am thinking of their families and the Chetek and Cameron Police Departments at this incredibly difficult time,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a tweet late Saturday.

The Division of Criminal Investigation within the Wisconsin Department of Justice is leading the investigation and will submit a report to the Barron County district attorney when the investigation concludes, the statement said.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking additional information.

The village of Cameron in Barron County is 227 miles (365 kilometers) west of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and 96 miles (154 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Chetek, Wisconsin, is about 9 miles (14 kilometers) southeast of Cameron.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Cameron and Chetek Police Departments,” the Barron County Sheriff’s Department said on Facebook.

The Marinette County Deputy Sheriff’s Association said in a Facebook post: “Tonight our hearts are heavy as we send our thoughts and prayers to the Village of Cameron Police Department, the City of Chetek Police Department, the Barron County community, and the families (both blood and blue) of two officers lost in the line of duty today.”

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups. It’s his second loss in a race for Supreme Court in three years.

The new court controlled 4-3 by liberals is expected to decide a pending lawsuit challenging the state’s 1849 law banning abortion. Protasiewicz made the issue a focus of her campaign and won the support of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups.

The court is also expected to hear a new challenge to Republican-drawn legislative maps. Protasiewicz ran as a critic of the current maps, calling them “rigged.”

The court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in the state in 2020, and both major parties are preparing for another close race in 2024.

With so much at stake, the race became the most expensive contest for a state Supreme Court seat in U.S. history. Protasiewicz will begin her 10-year term in August. She replaces retiring conservative Justice Pat Roggensack.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin voters were deciding the outcome of the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history on Tuesday in a heated contest that will likely determine the fate of abortion access, the future of Republican-drawn legislative maps, voting rights and years of other GOP policies.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been under conservative control for 15 years, serving as the final word on a wide array of Republican policies enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature. The court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s narrow win in 2020.

Democratic-backed candidate Janet Protasiewicz, 60, faces Republican-backed Dan Kelly, 58, in a contest that has nearly tripled the $15 million cost of a 2004 Illinois tilt that had been the most expensive court race in U.S. history.

After polls closed Tuesday, all eyes were on the outcome of a race that will determine whether Democratic-backed justices take control of the high court for at least the next two years, including the run-up and aftermath of the 2024 presidential election. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point and Trump turned to the courts in 2020 in his unsuccessful push to overturn his roughly 21,000-vote loss in the state.

Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, largely focused her campaign around abortion, saying she supports abortion rights but stopping short of saying how she would rule on a pending lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s 174-year-old ban that was enacted a year after statehood. She called Kelly an “extreme partisan” and claimed that if he wins, Kelly would uphold the ban. Kelly has not said how he would rule.

Kelly has expressed opposition to abortion in the past, including in a 2012 blog post in which he said the Democratic Party and the National Organization for Women were committed to normalizing the taking of human life. He also has done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life.

Kelly is a former justice who has also performed work for Republicans and advised them on a plan to have fake GOP electors cast their ballots for Trump following the 2020 election even though Trump had lost. He is endorsed by the state’s top three anti-abortion groups, while Protasiewicz is backed by Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates.

Protasiewicz called Kelly “a true threat to our democracy” because of his advising on the fake elector scheme..

Kelly was appointed to the state Supreme Court by then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, in 2016. He served four years before being defeated in 2020 on the same ballot as the Democratic presidential primary. Kelly was endorsed by Trump that year.

Trump did not endorse this year. Protasiewicz’s endorsements include Hillary Clinton.

Kelly tried to distance himself from his work for Republicans, saying it was “irrelevant” to how he would work as a justice. He tried to make the campaign about Protasiewicz’s record as a judge, arguing that she was soft on crime and accusing her of being “bought and paid for” by Democrats.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party gave Protasiewicz’s campaign more than $8 million, leading her to promise to recuse herself from any case brought by the party. Kelly refused to promise to step down from any case brought by his supporters, which include the state chamber of commerce.

In addition to abortion, Protasiewicz was outspoken on Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps, calling them “rigged.” Kelly accused her of prejudging that case, abortion and others that could come before the court.

The state Supreme Court upheld Republican-drawn maps in 2022. Those maps, widely regarded as among the most gerrymandered in the country, have helped Republicans increase their hold on the state Legislature to near supermajority levels, even as Democrats have won statewide elections, including Tony Evers as governor in both 2018 and 2022 and Biden in 2020.

The winner will serve a 10-year term starting in August replacing retiring conservative Justice Pat Roggensack. She is part of the current 4-3 conservative majority.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Madison announced that police arrested 29-year-old Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Tuesday. He was charged via the complaint with one count of attempting to cause damage by means of fire or an explosive.

He made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston on Tuesday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell set a detention hearing for Thursday. Roychowdhury’s attorney, Brendan O. Kelley, who is listed in online court records as a federal public defender, declined comment when reached by phone after Tuesday’s hearing.

Federal agents have been searching for almost a year for whoever tossed a pair of Molotov cocktails into the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison on May 6. One of the firebombs failed to ignite; the other set a bookcase on fire. The message “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either” was spray-painted on the building’s exterior. No one was in the office at the time.

The attack came about a week after a draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, leaked. The release sparked abortion rights supporters to mount protests across the country. Two Catholic churches in Colorado were vandalized in the days leading up to the Madison firebombing. And someone threw Molotov cocktails into an anti-abortion organization’s office in a suburb of Salem, Oregon, several days later.

The court officially overturned Roe v. Wade in June, putting Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on abortion back into play.

According to the criminal complaint against Roychowdury, investigators pulled DNA samples from three individuals from evidence at the scene of the Wisconsin attack. But the samples didn’t match any profiles in the U.S. Department of Justice’s DNA database.

As time went on, Wisconsin Family Action President Julaine Appling offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest. She accused Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes of being more interested in empathizing with abortion rights activists than bringing any suspects to justice.

This past January, police assigned to protecting the state Capitol building in Madison reviewed surveillance video of a protest against police brutality. The footage showed several people spray-painting graffiti on Capitol grounds. The graffiti resembled the graffiti at the Wisconsin Family Action office.

The footage showed two people leaving the area in a white pickup truck, which investigators tracked to Roychowdhury’s residence in Madison, according to the complaint. Police began following him.

On March 1, he pulled into a Madison park-and-ride and threw away a bag of fast food. After he left, police retrieved the bag from the trash can. DNA on a burrito in the bag matched DNA taken from the Wisconsin Family Action office, according to the complaint.

The U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that Roychowdhury traveled to Madison this month to Portland, Maine. He had a one-way ticket for a flight from Boston to Guatemala City, Guatemala, that was scheduled to depart Tuesday morning when he was arrested, the office said.

Investigators have been unable to match the other two DNA profiles from the scene to anyone, the complaint said.

Appling had no comment Tuesday on Roychowdhury’s arrest.

“I’m very proud of the tireless and determined efforts the combined federal, state and local team put in to identify and arrest this individual,” said William McCrary, the special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives’ St. Paul Field Division, which handles crimes in Wisconsin. “It is very satisfying to me to see that this alleged perpetrator has been placed in custody.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Madison announced that police arrested 29-year-old Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Tuesday. He was charged via the complaint with one count of attempting to cause damage by means of fire or an explosive.

He made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston on Tuesday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell set a detention hearing for Thursday. Roychowdhury’s attorney, Brendan O. Kelley, who is listed in online court records as a federal public defender, declined comment when reached by phone after Tuesday’s hearing.

Federal agents have been searching for almost a year for whoever tossed a pair of Molotov cocktails into the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison on May 6. One of the firebombs failed to ignite; the other set a bookcase on fire. The message “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either” was spray-painted on the building’s exterior. No one was in the office at the time.

The attack came about a week after a draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, leaked. The release sparked abortion rights supporters to mount protests across the country. Two Catholic churches in Colorado were vandalized in the days leading up to the Madison firebombing. And someone threw Molotov cocktails into an anti-abortion organization’s office in a suburb of Salem, Oregon, several days later.

The court officially overturned Roe v. Wade in June, putting Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on abortion back into play.

According to the criminal complaint against Roychowdury, investigators pulled DNA samples from three individuals from evidence at the scene of the Wisconsin attack. But the samples didn’t match any profiles in the U.S. Department of Justice’s DNA database.

As time went on, Wisconsin Family Action President Julaine Appling offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest. She accused Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes of being more interested in empathizing with abortion rights activists than bringing any suspects to justice.

This past January, police assigned to protecting the state Capitol building in Madison reviewed surveillance video of a protest against police brutality. The footage showed several people spray-painting graffiti on Capitol grounds. The graffiti resembled the graffiti at the Wisconsin Family Action office.

The footage showed two people leaving the area in a white pickup truck, which investigators tracked to Roychowdhury’s residence in Madison, according to the complaint. Police began following him.

On March 1, he pulled into a Madison park-and-ride and threw away a bag of fast food. After he left, police retrieved the bag from the trash can. DNA on a burrito in the bag matched DNA taken from the Wisconsin Family Action office, according to the complaint.

The U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that Roychowdhury traveled to Madison this month to Portland, Maine. He had a one-way ticket for a flight from Boston to Guatemala City, Guatemala, that was scheduled to depart Tuesday morning when he was arrested, the office said.

Investigators have been unable to match the other two DNA profiles from the scene to anyone, the complaint said.

Appling had no comment Tuesday on Roychowdhury’s arrest.

“I’m very proud of the tireless and determined efforts the combined federal, state and local team put in to identify and arrest this individual,” said William McCrary, the special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives’ St. Paul Field Division, which handles crimes in Wisconsin. “It is very satisfying to me to see that this alleged perpetrator has been placed in custody.”