Utah
Utah mom with terminal cancer plans her own funeral after three month diagnosis
A Utah mother battling a rare terminal cancer planned her funeral after being diagnosed with three months to live.
In her GoFundMe campaign, Erika Diarte-Carr, 30, revealed that she’s been struggling with Stage 4 small-cell lung carcinoma for the past two years, and doctors gave her a terminal diagnosis. After an 18 September oncologist appointment, she no longer planned on pursuing treatments as she was told that they would “no longer help.” The doctors told her she had at most three months left.
“3 months to spend with my babies and loved ones. 3 months to make the best of what time I have left,” she explained. “During these next couple of months I need to make sure my kids will be ok after I am gone. I am faced now with the most difficult thing of planning my own funeral.”
Her campaign goal was to raise $5,000 to cover the cost of her future funeral service, but to her shock, more than 30,000 donors have since helped her raise $900,000.
“It happened overnight. I never expected that,” she told ABC News. “I never expected to have a big funeral service, or a lot of people reach out and help me.”
She added, “With the way it’s went, I’m just in shock … just very grateful for everybody and everything that’s been there.”
As of 29 September, the mother of two revealed that she planned on putting the majority of these donations in a trust fund for her two children: Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5. In the campaign’s description, she called her children her “whole life, light and soul … and what keeps [her] going.”
She also thanked her “amazing medical team” – including Carl Gray and Kylie Money at Ogden Hematology Oncology, Steven Brown of Tanner Clinic and Brandon Fisher – for their continued support.
Back on 7 May 2022, the single mother walked into an emergency room sporting a “normal shoulder injury,” only to find out that day that she had cancer. Since then, she noted that the doctor’s words of warning looped in her head, replaying as she wondered how she was going to survive this diagnosis. She wrote that the doctor told her, “I hope you have a good support system at home because you’re going to need it, you have a long and hard journey ahead of you.”
“The doctor than proceeded to tell me that there were multiple tumors that had metastasized to other parts of my body including my skeletal, which is how we were able to find the tumor that was causing my shoulder pain,” Erika continued. “By that point the damage had already been done. In that moment, mine and my kids’ entire lives had changed forever, as well as all of those around us.”
Things for the mother took a turn when she was diagnosed with Cushing’s syndrome on 17 January 2024, a disorder that leads the body to make “too much of the hormone cortisol over a long period of time,” according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“That’s when I started to decline and things got worse,” she explained to ABC News, with the syndrome causing rapid weight gain and swelling, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and muscle and bone deterioration, among other symptoms.
“Since my diagnosis I have managed to keep working full time, taking only 2 months off in the beginning for surgeries, biopsies, appointments, radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” she added on her GoFundMe page. All while still being a full time mama. I do have an AMAZING support system but over time it has put a major financial, emotional, mental and physical toll on us all.”
She’s chosen the time she has to spend with her two children and ensuring their future, the latter of which seems to be secured thanks to the goodwill of thousands of donors.
Utah
22-year-old arrested in Utah in connection to Las Vegas double-homicide
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Officials have identified a 22-year-old man as the suspect in a Las Vegas homicide case that killed two people in a Southern Highlands neighborhood.
Detectives say 22-year-old Ziaire Ham was the suspect in the case. According to officials, Ham was located on Tuesday, March 3, by the Ogden City Police Department and the Utah Highway Patrol.
Ham was taken into custody and booked into the Weber County Jail. Las Vegas authorities said he will be charged with open murder with the use of a deadly weapon and will be extradited back to the valley.
MORE ON FOX5: LVMPD corrections officer arrested on multiple felony charges
The shooting occurred Monday night at the 11000 block of Victoria Medici Street, near Starr Ave and Dean Martin Drive.
According to police, officers were conducting a vehicle stop in the area when they heard gunfire. After searching nearby neighborhoods they found a car with bullet impacts with a woman and a toddler inside suffering from gunshot wounds.
The pair were transported to hospital where they later died. The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified them as Danaijha Robinson, 20, and 1-year-old Nhalani Hiner.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
Utah
Utah nonprofit creates events, experiences for disadvantaged children
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — A simple moment watching a child laugh changed everything for Ivan Gonzalez.
Eight years ago, Gonzalez was working at the Ronald McDonald House when he had an idea to throw a birthday carnival for the kids staying there.
“Let’s do a carnival, birthday carnival for the kids,” he said.
MORE | Pay It Forward
What happened during that event stuck with him.
“There I was watching this kid play whack-a-mole, just having a blast, laughing,” Gonzalez said. “And then I see his mom kind of with happy tears because he’s enjoying himself.”
That moment led to something bigger.
Gonzalez realized the experience shouldn’t stop with just one event or just one group of kids.
“I said, wait, we can do this not just for kids in the hospital,” he said with excitement.
So he started a nonprofit called Best Seat in the House, which creates events and experiences for children who often face difficult circumstances.
“We provide events and experiences for disadvantaged kids,” Gonzalez said.
The organization serves children battling cancer and other medical conditions, refugee children, kids living in poverty, those in foster care and children with special needs.
“These kids grow up too fast,” Gonzalez said.
For Gonzalez, the mission is deeply personal.
“I grew up very poor,” he said.
He remembers the people who stepped in for his family when they needed it most.
“The local church, we weren’t even a part of it,” he described. “My parents couldn’t afford Christmas gifts and I still remember the gifts they gave me. They didn’t even know me.”
Today, he hopes to create that same feeling for other children through his nonprofit.
“Kids live in poverty and they don’t know where the next meal is coming from, let alone going to a play or to a game,” Gonzalez said.
But for Gonzalez, the reward isn’t the events themselves, it’s the joy they create.
“You can give me a billion dollars, all the money in the world,” he says as tears roll down his face. “I won’t trade these opportunitieskids just enjoying life.”
Because of his work giving back, KUTV and Mountain America Credit Union surprised Gonzalez with a Pay it Forward gift to help him continue creating those moments for kids across Utah.
For more information on supporting Best Seat in the House, click here.
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Utah
‘Don’t release him ever. Please.’ Family of slain Utah teen calls for justice at parole hearing
SALT LAKE CITY — Francisco Daniel Aguilar says he’s sorry for shooting and killing his girlfriend, 16-year-old Jacqueline “Jacky” Nunez-Millan, a Piute High School sophomore, in 2023.
But just as he did when he was sentenced, he didn’t have much of an explanation on Tuesday as to why he shot her not once, but twice.
“It just kinda happened. I was mad. And I stepped out (of my truck) and started shooting,” he said. “When I saw her fall, I just kind of panicked, I just went and shot her again.”
But Jacky’s friends and family members say even before she was killed, Aguilar already had a history of violence, and they now want justice to be served.
“You don’t accidentally take a gun, you don’t accidentally grab a knife … you don’t accidentally shoot someone, those are all choices,” a tearful Rosa Nunez, Jacky’s sister, said at Tuesday’s hearing. “Keep him where he needs to be.
“Don’t release him ever. Please.”
On Jan. 7, 2023, Aguilar, who was 17 at the time, got into a fight with his girlfriend, Jacky, shot her twice and left her body near a dirt road outside of Circleville, Piute County. He was convicted as an adult of aggravated murder and sentenced to a term of 25 years to up to life in prison.
Because of Aguilar’s age at the time of the offense, board member Greg Johnson explained Tuesday that the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole is required to hold a hearing much earlier than the 25-year mark, mainly to check on Aguilar and “see how things are going.” Aguilar, now 20, is currently being held in a juvenile secure care facility and will be transferred to the Utah State Prison when he turns 25 or earlier if he has discipline violations and is kicked out of the youth facility.
According to Aguilar’s sentencing guidelines, he will likely remain in custody until at least the year 2051.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Aguilar told the board that he was feeling “stressed out” during his senior year of high school. He said he and Jacky would often have little arguments. But their bigger fight happened when he failed to get her a “promise ring” around Christmastime, he said.
On the night of the killing, the two were arguing about the promise ring and other items, Aguilar recalled. At one point, he grabbed a knife and then a gun because, he said, he wanted to “irritate” and “scare” Jacky. According to evidence presented in the preliminary hearing, Aguilar and his girlfriend had been “trying to make each other angry” when Aguilar took ammunition and a 9mm gun from his father’s room and then drove to the Black Hill area in his truck with Jacky.
Jacky’s friend, McKall Taylor, went looking for her that night and found her. But after Aguilar shot Jacky in the leg, he began shooting at Taylor, who had no choice but to run to her car to get away. Her car was hit multiple times by bullets. Aguilar then shot Jacky a second time as she lay on the ground and Taylor drove away.
On Tuesday, Taylor’s mother, Lori Taylor, read a statement to the board on her daughter’s behalf.
“My innocence and freedom was taken from me,” she said.
McKall Taylor says the “horrifying events of that night will forever play in my head,” and the sounds of Jacky screaming and the gunshots as well as the sight of Jacky falling to the ground, will never go away.
“Francisco is a murderer who has zero remorse,” her letter states.
Likewise, Rosa Nunez told the board that for her and her family, “nothing in our world has felt safe since” that night as they all “continue to relive this horrific moment.”
After shooting Jacky and driving off, Aguilar says he called his father and “told him I was sorry for not being better, for not making good choices, I told him that I loved him. I was just planning on probably shooting myself, too.”
His father told him that although what he did wasn’t right, “he’d rather see me behind bars than in a casket,” and then told his son to “be a man about it. … This is where you have to change.”
Aguilar was arrested after his tires were spiked by police.
“An apology won’t fix what I did. I’ll never be able to fix what I did. But I want to say I’m sorry,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t even know how to fix what I did. I’m hoping I’m on the right track now.”
Johnson noted that Aguilar has done well during his short time being incarcerated. But that doesn’t change the fact “the crime was horrific,” he said.
The full five-member board will now take a vote. The board could decide to schedule another parole hearing for sometime in the future or could order that Aguilar serve his entire life sentence. But even if that were to happen, Johnson says Aguilar could petition every so often for a redetermination hearing.
The board’s decision is expected in several weeks.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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