West
Oregon man found guilty of murder after DNA links him to 1980 cold case
A man living in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, has been found guilty in the 1980 cold case murder of a 19-year-old college student.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Amy Baggio on Friday found Robert Plympton, 60, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Barbara Mae Tucker, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Monday.
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Plympton was not convicted of rape or sexual abuse because prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it happened while she was still alive, the judge said. A medical examiner determined Tucker had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death.
In 2021, a genealogist with Parabon Nanolabs using DNA technology identified Plympton as likely linked to the DNA in the case. Detectives with the Gresham Police Department who found Plympton living in Troutdale, began conducting surveillance and collected a piece of chewing gum he had spit onto the ground, according to prosecutors.
Police arrested Plympton after the Oregon State Police Crime Lab determined the DNA profile developed from the gum matched the DNA profile developed from swabs taken from Tucker’s body, which had been preserved.
An Oregan man has been found guilty after DNA technology linked him to a 1980s cold case murder of a college student. He is set to be sentenced in June. (Fox News)
Tucker was expected at a night class at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham on Jan. 15, 1980. Witnesses said she had been seen running out of a bushy, wooded area on campus and that a man came out of the area and led her back to campus. A student found Tucker’s body the next day near a campus parking lot.
Multnomah County Chief Deputy District Attorney Kirsten Snowden said there was no evidence that Tucker and Plympton knew each other, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
Plympton said he was innocent and that he didn’t match the description of a man seen pulling her into the bushes.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
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West
LA deputies caught on camera racing into foggy ocean to rescue disoriented paragliders
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Two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies were caught on camera rescuing two paragliders from drowning on Friday after they fell in the fog-covered ocean near Malibu.
Bodycan footage from one of the deputies showed them racing into action after responding to a call of two victims in distress, with authorities yelling to the paragliders to “Hang on!”
“Without hesitation and fully aware of the danger, LA County Sheriff’s Department Deputies Matkin and Grigoryan removed their department-issued gear and jumped in the water,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital.
The deputies swam out roughly 75 feet to a man and woman whose feet had become entangled in their heavy safety equipment that was pulling them down, which the deputies were able to cut off with their knives.
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Two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies rescued two paragliders from drowning on Friday after they fell in the ocean near Malibu, Calif. (FOX 11)
Deputy Christopher Matkin called the rescue “tense,” explaining that the frantic paragliders kept pulling them under in their panic.
“We were able to calm them down,” he added at a press conference.
Deputy Sevak Grigoryan said that they didn’t have much time to think.
LA County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Sevak Grigoryan discusses the rescue he and a fellow officer made off a beach in Malibu. (FOX 11)
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“It was just, ‘We gotta act and we gotta to act now,” he said.
The department said the paragliders’ ill-fated trip likely happened as they descended and ran into the ocean’s fog bank.
“And that’s where it appears they became disoriented and crashed into the ocean,” a third deputy said.
Deputy Christopher Matkin called the rescue “tense.” (FOX 11)
Both paragliders are expected to fully recover.
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“This rescue demonstrates the courage, quick thinking, and selfless dedication of LASD deputies, who routinely place themselves in harm’s way to protect and save lives,” the department said.
“Deputies Matkin and Grigoryan’s decisive actions under dangerous conditions exemplify the Sheriff’s Department’s commitment to public safety and service to the community.”
Read the full article from Here
San Francisco, CA
Power outage affects 20,000 households in San Francisco
A large power outage left almost 40,000 PG&E customers without electricity in San Francisco Saturday, according to the company.
The PG&E Outage Center first reported the outage was affecting 24,842 customers, but a few minutes later, PG&E told NBC Bay Area the outage was affecting 39,520 households in the areas of Richmond, Sunset, Presidio, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown.
Officials warned traffic lights in these areas might be impacted and advise that if the traffic signal has gone dark, to treat it as a four-way stop.
According to the website, the outage was first reported at 10:10 a.m. and is expected to be restored at around 3:40 p.m., but PG&E told NBC Bay Area the outage started at around 1:10 p.m. and the estimated time of restoration is unknown.
This is a developing story. Details may change as more information becomes available. Stay tuned for updates.
Denver, CO
Sacrificing Convenience for Safety Is the Right Thing to Do
Lauren Antonoff
More than halfway into his first term, Mayor Mike Johnston finally met with his own Bicycle Advisory Committee and reiterated a familiar promise: Denver can increase road safety without taking any convenience away from drivers. “We want this to be a city where it is safe and easy to get around by bike or by foot,” Johnston told Westword after the meeting. “We want to build infrastructure and a culture that makes that easier, and we think we can do that without making it more difficult for drivers.”
The mayor is wrong. If Denver is serious about making our streets safer for everyone — people driving as well as people walking, biking, rolling or taking transit — then we have to be honest about what that requires. Real safety improvements will sometimes mean slowing cars down, reallocating space or asking drivers to take a slightly longer route. In other words, we must be willing to trade a bit of convenience for a lot of safety.
We already make this trade-off all the time. Parking in front of the fire hydrant across from my house would be extremely convenient, but I don’t do it because it would put my neighbors at risk if a fire broke out. I don’t enjoy going through security screening every time I attend a Denver City Council meeting, but I accept it because it keeps a critical public forum safe. These small inconveniences are simply part of living in a community where everyone’s well-being matters.
So why is the idea of asking drivers to accept minimal inconvenience — a few extra minutes, a block or two of walking from their parking spot to their final destination — treated as politically impossible, even when it could prevent deaths and life-altering injuries?
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Denver committed to Vision Zero nearly a decade ago, pledging to eliminate traffic fatalities. Yet year after year, the death toll remains stubbornly high, topping eighty lives lost annually since the pandemic. The reason is not mysterious: City leaders have consistently prioritized driver convenience over safety, even as people continue to die on our streets.
For generations, Denver’s street designs have catered not just to driving, but to driving dangerously. The majority of streets on the city’s High Injury Network — just 5 percent of streets where half of all traffic deaths occur — are major arterials like Colfax, Federal, Colorado, Speer and Alameda. These corridors are engineered to move as many vehicles as quickly as possible. People walking and biking are left to navigate speeding traffic with minimal protection, crossing up to eight lanes just to reach the other side.
We know what works. The data is unequivocal: On streets like these, the most effective safety improvements reduce the space available for fast-moving vehicles. Road diets, narrower lanes, shorter crossings and dedicated space for sidewalks, bike lanes and bus lanes all make streets safer for everyone — including drivers — by bringing speeds down to survivable levels.
And yet, Mayor Johnston’s recent decision to abandon the planned road diet on Alameda Avenue is only the latest example of the city retreating from proven safety measures because they might inconvenience drivers. The city noted that its revised plan for Alameda would save drivers an extra sixty seconds of driving time, compared to the original road diet.
The mayor must confront a hard truth: We cannot keep people safe without changing the status quo, and the status quo is built on prioritizing speed and convenience over human life. Denver cannot have it both ways.
So the real question for Mayor Johnston is this: How many lives is Denver willing to sacrifice to preserve driver convenience?
So far in 2025, we have lost 87 people — and counting.
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