Woman killed in massive fire at Jackson County home, 2 men rushed to hospital
PENDERGRASS, Ga. - One woman is dead and two men have been rushed to the hospital after a massive fire early Wednesday morning at a home in Jackson County.
Crews are still battling the fire, which heavily damaged the home on Park Street in Pendergrass.
What we know
Officials with the West Jackson Fire Department say that they were called to the fire at around 3:45 a.m. Other units from the North Jackson Fire Department and Jackson County Correctional Fire Department also responded.
According to authorities, they received reports that at least one person was still trapped inside the home and arrived to find the single-story building covered with heavy flames.
While searching the residence, crews were able to rescue one person from inside the structure.
Officials have confirmed one person has died in the fire. Medics rushed two others to be treated for burns.
What they're saying
Family member Teresa Brock told FOX 5's Kaitlyn Pratt that eight people were in the home when the fire started. The youngest person in the home was 5 years old, she said.
Brock identified the victim as her 63-year-old aunt and said that two men in the home tried to get the woman out and were badly burned in the process.
What we don't know
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation by the Georgia State Fire Marshall's Office.
The Source
Information for this story came from a Facebook post by the West Jackson Fire Department.
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WIRED
3 hours ago
- WIRED
I Joined Every Class Action Lawsuit I Could Find, and So Can You
Jun 9, 2025 6:30 AM More Americans than ever are becoming eligible for a class action payout—but the money is going to a small, dedicated group of people who are paying attention. Photo-Illustration:In early April of this year, after more than a decade of litigation and a $90-million settlement, Mark Zuckerberg sent me forty bucks on Venmo. To be clear, it wasn't Zuck personally. That $40.67 was my cut of the payout from a class action lawsuit: the 'Facebook Internet Tracking Litigation' case (not to be confused with the 'Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation,' payment pending). Since January, I've secured other payouts of $21.65, $20.04 (twice), $14.81 and $12.60 as a result of class action settlements, and there are almost certainly more to come. If you spend enough time on the internet, odds are that you too have stumbled into the class action expanded universe. You're not alone: According to a recent defense attorney interest group report, there was $42 billion in class action settlements reached last year, 'the third highest value we have tallied in the last two decades, trailing only the settlement numbers from 2023 ($51.4 billion) and 2022 ($66 billion).' Given the proliferation of corporate monopolies, legal cases brought against tech companies will naturally include more and more claimants and bigger and bigger settlements. Ads marketing these lawsuits are popping up on social media and, while most people ignore them, there are Facebook groups, lawyers, and hunters like myself, all dedicated to chasing down these payouts. On top of that, a change in federal rules in 2018 laid the groundwork to make email the most common class-action notice delivery method—so it's entirely possible that right now, hiding in a spam folder, there's an unread message declaring that you're already part of one. Open the email, enter your class member code, maybe provide some receipts (unless it's a 'no-proof' settlement), and pick your delivery method; they have Venmo, Zelle, prepaid cards, paper checks, direct deposit, etc. After a couple of years, boom! Instant money. But while applying to get some of that money has never been more convenient, the vast majority of eligible claimants will never see a dime: A 2019 study by the Federal Trade Commission put the claims rate for class actions at an outrageously low 4 percent by weighted mean. Take cases about data breaches or privacy violations. There were more than 250 million users in the class of those affected by the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal—essentially, everyone in the US with a Facebook account. Out of the eligible class size of 250 million, only 17 million valid claims were filed. There's the spate of recent 'social media addiction' cases looking for more class members by (ironically enough) advertising on Instagram, plus the semi-recent class action that chastised the once-mighty Juul for targeting teens, and the very, very recent Lopez v. Apple Inc. settlement, which could give folks $20 per Siri-enabled device if you sign up by July 2. Many people ignore these messages—assuming they're a scam, or thinking the payout isn't worth the hassle. But other people, like April Phelps, are filing claims with gusto. 'I check daily,' says Phelps, a Memphis-based health care worker who estimates she's received almost $8,000 since 2023 by keeping up with the various postcards, emails, and online advertisements that work to bring eligible claimants into a class action. 'Out of a seven-day week, no more than about two and a half hours—probably 30 minutes or so a day—just to scroll through and see if there's been any updates or any new settlements that impact me. I'll check my junk mail too, just to make sure.' I found Phelps on a 30,000-plus-member Facebook group set up by Top Class Actions, a news site that tracks and offers updates on various ongoing class actions. People in the TCA Settlements & Payouts group help confused first-timers navigate eligibility, answer questions about when settlement payments might come in and post updates about case results. These kinds of sites are what I recommend to people who ask, because since 2021, I've become 'class action guy,' reminding family members to file claims, check their spam folders, and get that money. Technically, I was party to my first class action all the way back in 2016, with litigation related to the Aliso Canyon gas leak, which WIRED reported as the 'worst climate disaster in US history' at the time. That process was mainly via email and on the phone, and the payout took seven years to show up—but in the meantime, I kept searching for 'settlement' in my email. In 2021, that led me to Mansour v. Bumble Trading Inc. , a settlement in California based on claims that Bumble was discriminating against male users by only letting women message first. I signed up, waited for my payout, and after that was Rivera et al. v. Google LLC (Google photos storing face data without consent), plus Sosa v. Onfido (biometric privacy violation), California v. Vitol (manipulated gas prices), even Milan v. Clif Bar & Co. (misleading labels on Clif Bars), and my beloved Facebook Internet Tracking Litigation. It's not that I have a personal vendetta against these companies. I still eat the Clif Bars. But by gosh, the law says I'm owed some money, these companies probably did do something wrong (even if they don't admit it), and frankly, the payout feels a bit like winning in a legal system designed for people to lose. Why wouldn't I take it? That's close to the story I was told by Phelps, as well. She says she's been on the lookout for class actions since 2021, when she found out she was party to litigation against Blue Cross Blue Shield via a notice hidden in her junk mail. 'More people need to start paying attention, because if you miss a deadline, in some cases, for a $10,000 cheque, you're going to be upset,' she says. 'I wish I was getting $10,000, but some people are eligible to receive that, and they don't take it seriously because they don't do their research.' Phelps says that the most helpful avenue for staying informed has been the smattering of groups on Facebook, where people answer questions, offer advice, and upload pictures of payouts: Venmo, Zelle, prepaid cards, and paper checks. Phelps says the group helped her evangelize a couple of friends and her mom into class action consciousness. 'It's not like these are poor defenseless companies, right? They committed an error,' she says. 'If more people pay attention, honestly, I feel like these manufacturers or these businesses will stop being so quick to offer things to us without doing their research.' Despite how helpful these groups have been for some people, they're still a poor substitute for an official government portal, says Amanda M. Rose, a professor of law at Vanderbilt University. 'There's been a lot of enthusiasm for technology solving these problems, although we see … that it hasn't necessarily borne itself out,' she says. Rose adds that a federally run website and support system ( say) could help increase claim rates, cut down on confusion, and create a database for researchers looking to make policy suggestions on public oversight of class actions. Without that infrastructure, the void is filled by third-parties (like the absurdly named 'ClaimClam,' called out by the DC attorney general last year), who can use AI to identify potential class members in lawsuits and settlements, get them to submit claims via their platform and then take a cut of their settlements. ClaimClam also charged consumers '15%, and in some cases 40%,' of their claim, while also misleading them to think that settlements were guaranteed, and hiding that the law firm they were recommending was also co-owned by the same founder, according to a settlement between the company and the office of the DC attorney general. Even the top aggregator sites, like or the aforementioned are private companies that can earn referral fees from law firms for offering info on the class actions. The lack of a federal database also makes it difficult to track down claimants who have changed addresses, determine if the legalese has been effectively translated into plain English, or figure out if the notices are getting past the spam filter—and all of these problems are exacerbated by a glaring lack of data on record. Are the claims settlement administrators who are charged with finding eligible class members doing a thorough job? According to Rose, solving these issues has always been a problem, but no one in particular is keeping track. 'You can't even have an intelligent public policy debate about these matters without having better insight into them,' says Rose. That argument touches on one of the core pillars in American jurisprudence supporting class actions—as a type of public service in the form of a deterrent. 'At least in our legal culture, we have decided that we should make it possible for people with small value claims to bring them all together,' says Deborah Hensler, professor of dispute resolution at Stanford Law School. 'Perhaps a large number of people have claims, but the claims are worth fairly small amounts of money. Maybe they lost $25 each? A corporation could make a lot of money by collecting lots and lots of $25,' she says. 'But individually, going to court for $25? Forget it.' Thus, class actions. According to Hensler, class actions in one form or another have been part of US law for centuries. A dispute in 1820 over the estate of a deceased general, West v. Randall, is widely considered the first, though Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in 1954, is probably the most well-known example. She considers their prevalence to be a function of an American court system that has fewer barriers to entry than many others, including much lower court filing fees, the option for lawyers to advertise, and legal representation on contingency (which is widely regulated or outright disallowed in many other countries). 'When you have a system that is so law-oriented, and you have a lot of lawyers and you have a way for people to find lawyers, even if they don't have very much money, then you have a way for lawyers to make money by taking people's cases,' Hensler says. 'Then when some issue arises—like Facebook privacy—there are some lawyers who say 'That's interesting, maybe I could bring a class action.'' Because the legal precedent is so complex, Hensler says there are many laws on the books allowing class actions to be brought for everything from the aforementioned privacy violations to the spate of recent class actions with wide political implications, like J.G.G. v. 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New York Post
4 hours ago
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Wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann says he's her 'hero'
The wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann says he's her 'hero'' — and that it was like falling in love with him all over again when she first saw him behind bars. Asa Ellerup, 61, said during an explosive interview in the upcoming Peacock docu-series, 'The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets' that she is convinced cops have the wrong guy — and that her 'wonderful' husband isn't the monster who killed and mutilated seven sex workers on Long Island over nearly 30 years. 'I know what bad men are capable of doing,' she told the show, which begins airing Tuesday. 'I've seen it, and I've heard it from other men. Not my husband. You have the wrong man.' Advertisement 9 Asa Ellerup, the wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, walks outside court with the couple's daughter, Victoria, 28. Dennis A. Clark 9 Ellerup has called her accused serial killer husband Rex Heuermann her 'hero.' Peacock 'I want him to come back home to me,' Ellerup said. 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Advertisement Adopted by Icelandic immigrants, Ellerup met a 'tall, dark, handsome' Heuermann when she was an 18-year-old working at a Long Island 7-11, she said, adding that the pair formed an immediate bond. 9 Ellerup said she was 18 and working at a local 7-11 when she met a 'tall, dark and handsome' Rex Heuermann. Facebook Ellerup said she was molested at 16 by a classmate, tried to commit suicide and was forced to hide in a dumpster for hours at 19 to foil a kidnapping attempt — making the hulking Heuermann her savior. She said he has stuck with her through more recent travails, too, including a double mastectomy. Advertisement 'He's my hero,' she said. 'There were times where he was working, but I'd call him, and he would come by and pick me up.' 9 The last three victims linked to Heuermann were (from left) Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. Suffolk County Police Department 9 Heuermann was arrested July 13, 2023, outside his architecture office in Midtown Manhattan. Newsday The pair formed a years-long, platonic bond that eventually turned into a romance as their first marriages fizzled and they moved in together — which led to their wedding in Sweden in 1995. The next year, their daughter Victoria was born. These days, Ellerup said, she's brought to tears by the Buddy Holly tune, 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping.' She denied claims that the couple had 'swinger' parties in the past, calling the notion 'absurd' — and maintained Rex would never ask. She appeared to be in denial of some of the evidence Suffolk County prosecutors pulled from the couple's home, including sick porn involving videos, claiming she doesn't know if the footage is actually his. Advertisement She also claimed her husband didn't solicit hookers, although she said she believes prostitution should be legal. 9 The slain victims known as the initial 'Gilgo Four' were (clockwise from top left) Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn and Megan Waterman. Suffolk County Police Department Ellerup filed for divorce shortly after her husband's arrest, but their daughter maintained in the documentary that the move was 'to protect the assets.' Despite the divorce filing, Ellerup said she regularly speaks to her husband behind bars. Advertisement 'I haven't seen him in all this time, and when I went down there, I was excited, and like I was, I don't know, I guess on a first date. You're nervous, you're scared. You don't know how the date is gonna go,' she said. But she said she hasn't gone to see him in several months and is paranoid about their conversations being recorded behind bars — which makes her afraid to be open with him. 9 Ellerup is escorted from the Suffolk County Courthouse after a hearing for her husband. Dennis A. Clark 9 Heuermann lived in his mother's former home in Massapequa Park and had an architecture firm in Manhattan. Rex Heuermann Consultants & Associates Advertisement 'Telling him that I love him, that will hurt him,' Ellerup said. 'What I want to say to him is, 'I love you, no matter what.' But I don't even want to say 'no matter what' because I don't believe he did this. I don't see what everybody else is saying. I don't see phone calls to sex workers. 'I'm trying to keep myself sane,' she said. 'At the same time, people are saying, 'How could you not know that your husband was a serial killer?' Wait a minute, I picked him up from the train station every single day. He was home here on the weekends. 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Yahoo
4 hours ago
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Ex-prisoners welcome second chance at jobs fair
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