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A murder, a manhunt and the grandmother who wouldn’t stop the search for her daughter’s killer

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A murder, a manhunt and the grandmother who wouldn’t stop the search for her daughter’s killer

She’d waited years for the news.

But when the message arrived Aug. 26, 2022, Josephine Wentzel suddenly had to confront an agonizing possibility. She’d spent six years tracking the man authorities believed was responsible for killing her daughter, a search that spanned thousands of miles, international borders and dozens of possible sightings that, in the end, had produced little.

Wentzel declined to identify the message’s sender, but she said it supposedly contained a recent picture of Raymond McLeod, who at the time was one of the U.S. Marshals Service’s most wanted fugitives. Had he actually been found — or would this be another jolt of false hope?

She focused in on the image, she said, and “just freaked out like, oh, my gosh, it’s him. I didn’t even want to think it because someone might hear my thoughts and warn him to flee.”

McLeod, a 42-year-old former U.S. Marine, was apprehended in El Salvador days later and is awaiting trial in San Diego on a charge of first-degree murder in the June 2016 strangulation of Krystal Mitchell. He pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in March. His attorneys either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. In court filings, they said McLeod accidentally killed Mitchell during “rough, consensual sex gone wrong.”

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Wentzel, a 67-year-old grandmother and former police detective had been preparing for life as an RV’ing snowbird when her daughter was killed. She has used the improbable platform she developed pursuing McLeod to write two books — “The Chase” and “The Capture” — and to help other grieving parents navigate the mix of frustration, despair and confusion left by an unsolved homicide.

Wentzel has assisted a nonprofit that helps law enforcement agencies with a series of cases in recent years, including the disappearance and alleged murder of Maya Millete, according to the Cold Case Foundation’s co-executive director. Through a nonprofit Wentzel established, Angels of Justice, she launched a campaign urging the White House to treat the country’s massive backlog of unsolved murders as a national emergency.

In a statement, a White House spokeswoman blamed former President Joe Biden for failing to enable law enforcement agencies to “truly fight crime” and said that President Donald Trump is “restoring integrity to our justice system.”

A spokesperson for the Marshals Service, which apprehended McLeod, declined to comment on questions about Wentzel’s role in finding him, but in a statement after McLeod’s capture the agency’s director said Wentzel had worked “diligently with law enforcement these past years to see this day of justice arrive.”

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office has said she was “instrumental” in the search for McLeod.

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“She goes for it,” said Pat Kuiper, who credits Wentzel with helping push investigators in Washington state to take another look at the nearly two-decade-old unsolved murder of her son. “She goes for it in such a way that people can’t really refuse her, because she’s so genuine and kind, but persistent, assertive.”

For Rachel Glass, whose daughter was found strangled along with her pregnant roommate in Arizona 15 years ago, Wentzel provided an empathetic ear and insight into an investigative process that Glass — a longtime nurse — knew nothing about.

“If there are things that go on and you think, what the hell is this, I’d call her and say, you won’t believe what’s happened now,” Glass recalled. “And she might tell me x, y and z about why it has to play out like that.”

Wentzel’s husband of nearly three decades, a retired post office maintenance engineer, attributes her latest chapter to the tenacity she’s always shown.

“That’s something I lack,” he said. “I can get easily discouraged and say, forget it. But my wife, she’s not gonna forget it.”

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A deadly date in San Diego

For Wentzel, that chapter began soon after the death of her daughter. According to a statement of facts filed by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, McLeod had gotten into a fight at a San Diego bar June 9, 2016, after he grabbed Mitchell by the throat and a man intervened, telling him to stop.

Krystal Mitchell.Courtesy Josephine Wentzel

Mitchell was found dead the next day at the apartment where they were staying. According to the statement, a deputy medical examiner determined she had been strangled and later compared the severity of the injury to someone who’d been struck with a baseball bat or had their neck stomped on.

Mitchell, 30, had been visiting the city with McLeod from Phoenix, where the divorced mother of two worked as a property manager, Wentzel said. To her mother, Mitchell was the life of the party — and someone who turned heads whenever she walked into a room.

Mitchell met McLeod through work a few weeks before — he’d gone to her office to rent an apartment, her mother said — and they’d traveled to San Diego. Mitchell was impressed by how much McLeod seemed to care for his young son, Wentzel said, and she didn’t appear to know about his previous allegations of domestic violence.

One of those alleged incidents occurred not long before their trip, court records in California show. In Riverside County, he was charged that April with inflicting corporal injury on a spouse — an alleged crime that involved accusations that he strangled his wife, according to the statement of facts.

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McLeod pleaded not guilty, the Riverside County records show, and in a filing his lawyers in Mitchell’s case have said that he has a “history of consensual sexual practices that included elements of the BDSM community such as bondage, whipping, slapping, choking and erotic asphyxiation, sometimes to unconsciousness.”

That earlier case was not adjudicated, however, and McLeod disappeared after Mitchell’s death. According to prosecutors, on June 10, he allegedly drove Mitchell’s car to San Diego International Airport, where he rented another car and headed to Mexico.

An international search

The San Diego Police Department identified McLeod as a person of interest in Mitchell’s death almost immediately. A warrant seeking his arrest in her murder was filed June 13.

But McLeod was nowhere to be found. Eventually, Wentzel recalled, the Marshals Service got involved and offered a reward. But she became frustrated with the government’s inability to quickly investigate leads in foreign countries, she said. U.S. embassies seemed less than enthusiastic about helping, she said, and she recalled a deputy marshal telling her that they couldn’t just “run in and get the guy.”

“It’s another country,” she recalled him saying. “We got to get approval.”

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The Marshals Service declined to comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

So Wentzel began searching herself. Although she’d worked for several years as a police officer and detective in her native Guam decades ago, she said that experience didn’t begin to prepare her for the years of social media sleuthing that she was about to embark on.

One of her first steps was to pull together a “wanted” poster with pictures of McLeod, along with a brief description of the slaying and the reward amount — at the time $5,000, she said. She focused on Belize, a place she’d heard he might be, and circulated information among dozens of Facebook accounts — gyms and resorts, restaurants and a university, screenshots of the messages show.

Raymond McLeod.
Raymond McLeod.San Diego County Crime Stoppers

After posting the information to a buy/sell group, Wentzel recalled, the responses started rolling in. Some were by phone. Others came via WhatsApp or Facebook.

“Madam I saw this man I am sure of it from his tattoos and his face,” one message read, according to a screenshot.

“If he is here he will b caught,” read another.

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But then, he wasn’t. And the messages continued. There were tips that he was in Honduras, that he was in Guatemala. Some tipsters seemed to legitimately want to help, she said. Others seemed like scammers.

“One guy contacted me and said, OK, he’s here,” she recalled. “I know where he’s working at. I’ve got pictures. I’ve got all this. So, you know, I need you to send me $1,000.”

There were so many tips, said Mike Wentzel, that fielding them became a 24/7 job for his wife. At times, he considered asking her to dial things back, but never could.

“This is her child,” he said. “How can I tell her to stop?”

But there were times when the thought crossed her mind. Keeping hope alive during the pandemic, when that steady flow of tips dried up, was especially difficult, she said.

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The final tip

As this slump in information dragged on, Wentzel said, local and federal officials announced that McLeod had been added to the Marshals’ list of its 15 most wanted fugitives. In the spring 2021 announcement, they also announced that the reward for information leading to McLeod’s arrest had grown to $50,000.

His last known location was in Guatemala in 2017, the officials said.

Wentzel said she believes it was a tip linked to that Central American country that ultimately led to McLeod’s capture. Five years after he was spotted in Guatemala, she said, a couple of tipsters told her they’d seen McLeod at a hotel just north of the country’s border with El Salvador.

Wentzel surveyed YouTube videos from the hotel to see if she could spot his face, she recalled, and she posted a “wanted” ad on Facebook that targeted accounts in the area. Wentzel said she set a 100-mile radius for the ad, meaning that everyone in that zone would see McLeod’s face.

Eventually, Wentzel said, she learned from the Marshals Service that someone saw one of her ads and shared a brochure with authorities that appeared to show McLeod. The brochure was from a Salvadoran English school not far from the Guatemalan hotel, she said.

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It was this image that prompted Wentzel to conclude: “It’s him.”

Four days later, on Aug. 30, 2022, authorities announced that McLeod had been taken into custody in Sonsonate, El Salvador, where he’d been teaching English. He landed in San Diego the next day.

Wentzel wrestled with a tangle of emotion as McLeod’s arraignment approached. She thought about her daughter’s final moments and ticked through a litany of revenge fantasies, she recalled. But she didn’t want to stew in hatred and bitterness. So she tried to focus on her daughter’s children, whom she and her husband have raised, and on the other victims she’s sought to help.

“Murder does this to you — it makes you somebody you’re not, if you allow it,” she said. “I didn’t picture living my life out like this. I wanted to be a grandma and I just wanted to travel and have fun and live the rest of my life out with my family. But it made me something else.”

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For those who help the poor, 2025 goes down as a year of chaos

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For those who help the poor, 2025 goes down as a year of chaos

Paul B. Miller shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio on Dec. 9. Food aid was just one of many services offered here that faced disruption in 2025.

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LOGAN, Ohio – Before dawn, in a cold, blustery drizzle, a line forms outside a small, squat building on an open stretch of road on the outskirts of town.

“My heater quit working in my car,” Scott Skinner says good-naturedly to the next man in line. “Man, what kinda luck am I having.”

The building is called “The Market” because it has a food pantry, but Skinner and the others are here to sign up for heating assistance. He’s been calling for a month to get an appointment with no luck, so he showed up an hour ago to snag a walk-in slot.

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The demand for help is more acute than usual because heating aid was suspended during the recent government shutdown. At the same time, SNAP food benefits were suspended for weeks, and some food pantry shoppers are still playing catch up.

One of those people is Lisa Murphy. She’s 61, disabled and relies on Social Security, and says it’s important to have “places like this that really help us.” 

“I still owe my gas bill. I owe $298,” Murphy says. “It’s hard to buy food and pay my bills, too.”

Lisa Murphy of Junction City, Ohio grocery shops at The Market at Hocking Drive on Dec. 9.

Lisa Murphy grocery shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio. She’s still behind on bills after SNAP food benefits were paused for two weeks during the recent federal shutdown.

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A detail from Miller's grocery cart; signs tell clients of the number of items that can be taken.

A detail from Miller’s grocery cart; signs tell clients the number of items that can be taken.

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But even as need grows with rising costs and unemployment, local anti-poverty groups like the one that runs The Market say their work has been threatened as never before amid the Trump administration’s funding cuts, pauses and reversals targeting a long list of safety-net programs. The shutdown was only the latest disruption that forced them to scramble to keep operating.

And, they say, the year of chaos has left deep uncertainty over which programs may be hit next.

‘Emergency response mode’

The Market in Logan, Ohio, is part of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action – HAPCAP for short – one of a thousand such agencies across the country that have been around since the 1960s. They connect some 15 million people with housing, health care, food aid and much more.

At HAPCAP, services include Meals on Wheels, Head Start, a public bus system, employment help, and a food bank that serves 10 counties across southeast Appalachian Ohio.

It’s an impressive range, but this year that’s also made it a big target for federal funding cuts. 

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“Eighty percent of our funding comes from federal grants,” says executive director Kelly Hatas. The “worst day” of her career was back in January, when the Trump administration ordered a federal funding freeze, saying it wanted to shift priorities and promote efficiency.

“When we got that news we were in immediate emergency response mode, like, what are we going to do?” she says.

Kelly Hatas, executive director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action, talks with Amyrose McManaway, 3, of Haydenville, Ohio, while her parents grocery shop at The Market at Hocking Drive on Dec. 9.

Kelly Hatas, executive director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP), talks with the child of a couple who are shopping at the food pantry. Hatas says the nonprofit has had to scramble all year as various safety-net programs were hit with federal funding cuts or pauses.

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The most urgent threat was to six Head Start centers.

“Our Head Start director was on a call with all of her center coordinators telling them we’re laying everyone off tomorrow,” Hatas recalls. “And then there was some secondary information that was like, ‘Just kidding … Head Start is excluded.’”

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That whiplash shook people’s trust. And the hits kept coming.

In March, the administration canceled or paused a billion dollars that helped food banks. In May, President Trump’s budget called for zeroing out Head Start and heating assistance, along with major cuts to other safety-net programs like rental aid. He also proposed eliminating the $770 million dollar Community Services Block Grant that directly supports these anti-poverty groups, including it in a list of “woke programs.”

Congress eventually funded many of those programs, but the Office of Management and Budget took months to get out the block grant money. 

“OMB just decided not to spend it, totally usurping congressional authority,” says David Bradley, who advocates for these local groups with the National Community Action Foundation.

He says they’ve long had strong bipartisan support.

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“So we’ve had two major fights with the administration,” he says. “We won them because Republicans helped.”

An overview of East Main Street in Logan, Ohio on Dec. 9.

East Main Street in Logan, a small town in southeast Appalachian Ohio.

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In a statement, an OMB spokesperson said these anti-poverty programs fund “radically partisan activities, like teaching toddlers to be antiracist and ‘LGBTQIA+ welcoming.’” It also criticized a program that combined affordable housing with clean energy “in the pursuit of both economic and environmental justice.”

“President Trump ran on fiscal responsibility and ending wasteful DEI spending in government,” the statement says.“The American taxpayer should not be made to fund critical race theory.”

Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency “administers CSBG consistent with the funding levels Congress provides to support services for low-income families.”

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Funding chaos and uncertainty

In Ohio, Hatas says the state has shifted money to help address federal funding crises as they’ve popped up to keep programs going. But the biggest challenge remains uncertainty.

“The panic and the just day-to-day not knowing what’s going to happen, is just really difficult,” she says.

Because of that, HAPCAP has scaled back some plans, including for a new Head Start facility and a much-needed homeless shelter. It’s also had to pull out of food distribution at schools because of a lack of staff. Some employees are leaving, worried about losing their jobs. Others have been laid off or had their hours trimmed.

“It cut my paychecks completely in half,” says Kelsey Sexton, who manages the front desk but was shifted to part-time in the fall. “We have a mortgage, a car payment. With Christmas coming, my husband was like, what are we going to do?”

She was bumped back up to full-time – but so far only temporarily – after the shutdown pause in SNAP payments brought a surge of people to the food pantry.

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Losing a job can be extra tough in rural communities.

“We don’t really have jobs growing on trees … and so there’s nowhere for these folks to go,” says Megan Riddlebarger, who heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD) half an hour away in Athens.

Hocking Athens Perry Community Action Administrative Clerk Kelsey Sexton; Executive Director of Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development Megan Riddlebarger.

Kelsey Sexton (left) had her hours as a desk clerk at HAPCAP cut in half. Megan Riddlebarger (right) heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development and says anti-poverty agencies are important for local economies in this rural region.

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She oversees federal funding for 17 antipoverty groups across the eastern part of the state, and says they’re important for rural economies.

“These aren’t just, like, people volunteering for fun,” she says. “These are some of the biggest businesses in town, buying most of the products that are bought and sold in the town.”

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Helping people stay warm and at home 

Down a flight of stairs from Riddlebarger’s office, five burly men at long desks take notes as Dave Freeman goes over how to properly install a water heater vent. It’s a refresher training class for inspectors, part of a weatherization assistance program the White House also wanted to end.

Freeman says many older homes in the area are full of cracks and crevices with almost no insulation.

“That house that you walk in (that) has the blanket at the stairway, so ‘Oh, honey, I haven’t been upstairs, it’s so cold up there,’” he says.

Weatherizing homes not only lets people live comfortably, it also saves them money.

“Say their electric bill goes down or gas bill goes down, they might be able to buy a pizza on a Saturday night,” Freeman says. “And that’s a big thing.”

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Adam Murdock, left, attends attends a training class for weatherization inspectors at Corporation Ohio Appalachian Development's Weatherization Training Center as training coordinator Dave Freeman, right, gives instruction, on Dec. 9, in Athens, Ohio. COAD is a non-profit that provides essential services like weatherization, energy assistance, childcare resources, senior programs and workforce development.

Adam Murdock (left) attends attends a training class for weatherization inspectors at the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development.

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But COAD’s funding for weatherization was delayed months, which jeopardized staffing. “You can get paid to do similar work in the private sector, and so retaining that staff is already a challenge,” says Riddlebarger.

Most of the agencies she oversees were able to cover the gap until money finally came through in November. But she says it means squeezing what’s supposed to be a year-long program into about half that time “with the same expectations for performance reporting.”

Diana Eads’ volunteer job with COAD – which includes a small stipend – was also at risk earlier this year, when the Trump administration gutted AmeriCorps grants with little explanation. As part of the AmeriCorps Seniors companion program Eads visits and helps out low-income people.

“My companions have been elderly, they’re not able to get out,” she says. “They’re just one-step away from nursing home care.”

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Diana Eads, 74, a volunteer for Corporation Ohio Appalachian Development, sits for her portrait at the COAD office on Dec. 9.

Diana Eads, 74, visits with elderly people as part of the AmeriCorps seniors program. When a funding cut threatened her small stipend for gas money, she told an 88-year-old woman who lives far away that she would keep visiting no matter what.

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If they were to land in a nursing home or assisted living, that could cost thousands of dollars a month in Medicaid spending. But Eads helps keep them at home for just $4 dollars an hour, to help cover gas or other small bills.

“Being rural, my one companion, it’s 56 miles roundtrip,” she says.

Riddlebarger managed to secure local philanthropic funding to keep operating, and after a legal challenge AmeriCorps federal funding was restored.

Through it all Eads reassured her companion, an 88-year old woman she’d been visiting for five years.

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“I told her no matter what happened, I would not stop visiting,” Eads says. “That was important.”

A grim 2026 outlook

After a year struggling to keep serving those most in need, advocates say they don’t see much relief in site. Republicans in Congress passed major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid and those will start to take hold.

The Trump administration also is considering dramatic limits to rental assistance and has laid out major cuts to long-term housing for people leaving homelessness, a move that faces a legal challenge.

On top of that, the administration’s mass firings and buyouts hit hard in offices that administer various safety-net programs.

Anthony Waddell of Haydenville, Ohio enters the The Market at Hocking Drive on Dec. 9.

The Market runs a food pantry and helps connect people with other services. In December, people seeking an appointment for heating assistance often line up outside before dawn.

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Riddlebarger says most anti-poverty funding already falls far short of the need, and making it even harder to help people is exhausting.

“Not knowing which of our many services we are going to be able to keep operating makes us waste valuable capacity trying to plug holes that shouldn’t be holes,” she says. “We’re just breaking the wheel and reinventing it at a great cost to all parties.”

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‘Bomb cyclone’ forecasted to bring heavy snow, blizzard conditions and dangerous travel

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‘Bomb cyclone’ forecasted to bring heavy snow, blizzard conditions and dangerous travel

People walk through the snow in Brooklyn after an overnight storm on Saturday in New York City.

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An intense cyclone system is fueling a mix of severe weather, including a winter storm that will impact upper parts of the United States.

Heavy snow, blizzards, extreme cold and damaging winds are likely to create hazardous conditions stretching from Montana east to Maine, and Texas north to Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

More than eight million people were under winter storm warnings from the NWS on Sunday afternoon. Nearly two million people were under blizzard warnings. Meteorologists warn that after winter weather Friday and Saturday, an arctic front clashing with warm air could rapidly intensify into a ‘bomb cyclone’ over the Midwest and Great Lakes through Monday. A ‘bomb cyclone’ or bombogenesis is a rapidly deepening area of low pressure that creates harsh weather conditions.

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“We are anticipating some pretty big snows over the next 24 hours, especially across east central Minnesota to northern Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A lot of those places will have 6-12 inches,” NWS Lead Forecaster Bob Oravec told NPR on Sunday.

Blizzard conditions will cause near zero visibility and possible power outages Sunday night though Monday evening in some locations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, according to the NWS Marquette. A foot of snow or more is possible in areas along Lake Superior with 40 to 65 mile per hour winds, according to forecasts.

Marquette Mayor Paul Schloegel told NPR on Sunday the Marquette Board of Light & Power is prepared to handle any loss of electricity. He said in an email the main priority is keeping people safe.

“We tend to heed the advice of our weather forecasters and prepare to hunker down as needed,” Schloegel wrote. “As far as taking care of the snow, our extremely dedicated public works and MDOT crews do a great job taking care of our residents, they are true professionals. Roads are usually back to normal within 24 [hours].”

Schloegel said Marquette residents appreciate a good blizzard while taking precautions.

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“We choose to live here for our love of [four] full seasons and appreciate the effect the greatest lake, Lake Superior, has on our climate,” he said.

Minnesota is also bracing for major impacts. Blizzard and winter storm warnings and advisories are in place for most of the state. As much as 10 inches of snow could fall in the Twin Cities and potentially life-threatening travel conditions are likely through early Monday morning, according to the NWS.

The ‘bomb cyclone’ is also sending cold temperatures below freezing.

Residents of Havre, Mont., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, could feel wind chill values as low as 15 degrees below zero late Sunday. The actual temperature is forecast to fall to 2 degrees below zero.

Farther south in Dallas, Texas, temperatures are expected to drop dramatically from the 80s on Sunday to highs in the 40s on Monday, according to the NWS.

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In the Northeast, freezing rain could cause travel problems, including icing in northern New England and northern New York state, late Sunday into Monday, according to Oravec.

When colder air moves into New York City early this week, remaining snow on the ground from the weekend storm will freeze and create further hazardous travel conditions, Oravec said.

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Disability rights advocate Bob Kafka dead at 79

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Disability rights advocate Bob Kafka dead at 79

Bob Kafka, a disabled Vietnam veteran, talks with an Austin Police Officer as he and others try to enter a hotel property.

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Bob Kafka, a renowned disability rights advocate, died at his Austin, Texas, home on Friday. He was 79 years old.

Kafka was an organizer with ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), a group which advocates for policy change to support people with disabilities.

Mark Johnson, co-founder of ADAPT and a longtime friend of Kafka who confirmed his death, told NPR Kafka’s advocacy was as much about changing laws as it was changing lives.

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“Maybe it was helping somebody tie their shoes and the next moment, maybe it was helping feed them, or maybe it was raising money through the fun run, or maybe it was negotiating with federal officials,” said Johnson.

Kafka was born in New York City, but spent most of his life in Texas. He was an Army veteran and fought in the Vietnam War.

Since being paralyzed from a 1973 car accident, Kafka, alongside his wife, Stephanie Thomas, prioritized seeking dignity for those with disabilities and helping others adjust to their new lives. Kafka could be seen at disability rights protests sporting a halo of white curls and an unruly beard.

“Very, very rarely do you find people that can, can do what needs to be done and not go around boasting about it,” said Johnson.

He also recalled the selfless nature of the community Kafka fostered, including how Thomas’ first instinct was to ask how he was feeling about losing a friend.

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“I’m going, ‘Wait a minute, I’m calling you to ask you how you are,’” Johnson said.

Johnson remembered Kafka as a policy wonk who was as interested in the mechanics of federal bureaucracy as grassroots organizing. He said he hopes his friend will be honored for his work to influence change at all levels.

“If you mention disability to an average crowd, it’s gonna, think of something negative. Bob and others may help people make that shift,” Johnson said.

“They say claiming your identity – your full identity – can be very powerful, very liberating. And I think Bob was one of those people that’s been doing that for 50 years.”

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