
Terror in Palm Springs as one person dies and four are injured in car blast near fertility clinic
Firefighters are responding to a powerful 'car explosion' at a building in Palm Springs that injured four people and killed one on Saturday in an incident the FBI called an 'intentional act of terrorism'.
The blast occurred shortly before 11am at the American Reproductive Centers on North Indian Canyon Drive, and it was felt up to two miles away.
Authorities did not confirmed whether the explosion was accidental or intentional, but Lt William Hutchinson told The Desert Sun that there appeared to be at least one fatality, and 'everything is in question'.
Act of 'terrorism': The blast occurred at around 11am on North Indian Canyon Drive
Multiple witnesses reported hearing a loud boom, and dramatic videos shared on social media showed the explosion had shattered windows of a nearby liquor store.
NBC Palm Springs described the incident as a 'car explosion', although officials were yet to confirm the cause or release additional details.
California Attorney Bilal 'Bill' Essayli said on X that his office was aware of the Palm Springs explosion and confirmed the FBI's on the scene investigating whether it was an intentional act, with more details to be released once confirmed.
Governor Gavin Newsom's been briefed on the blast, according to a statement from his office: 'The state, through [California Governor's Office of Emergency Services] is coordinating with local and federal authorities to support the response.'
Dr Maher Abdallah of the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic confirmed to The Associated Press that his facility was among the properties damaged in the blast. He said all staff members were safe and accounted for.
The explosion impacted the office area used for patient consultations but did not harm the IVF laboratory or any of the stored embryos.
'I really have no clue what happened,' Abdallah said. 'Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.'
The FBI told reporters that the person killed was close to the vehicle that had been blown to pieces outside the clinic.
Graphic images from the scene seem to show charred human remains.
Palm Springs police and fire services urged residents to avoid the area so emergency crews could continue to manage the scene.
Witness videos: Multiple observers reported hearing a loud boom, and dramatic clips shared on social media showed how the blast shattered nearby windows
The explosion occurred near to but not on the grounds of Palm Springs' main hospital Desert Regional Medical Center, according to a spokesperson.
American Reproductive Centers offered fertility treatments but did not perform abortions. According to its website, the building housed the Coachella Valley's first and only full-service fertility clinic and in vitro fertilization lab.
The hospital remained fully operational, according to spokesperson Rich Ramhoff.
Nearby resident Matt Spencer told The Desert Sun that he was at home in his apartment just 200 yards away when the explosion happened.
When Spencer walked over to the center, he was stunned by the destruction and disturbed by what looked like body parts scattered at close quarters.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Sun
23 minutes ago
- The Sun
Rapper Silentó gets 30-year sentence for murdering own cousin after getting felony charge dropped despite video evidence
RAPPER Silentó will spend 30 years in prison for shooting his cousin to death in 2021. Silentó, real name Ricky Hawk, is best known for his viral 2015 song Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae). 2 2 Hawk, 27, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and concealing the death of another. The Atlanta rapper was originally indicted on a felony charge of malice murder, but took a plea deal for lesser charges. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Hawk shot his cousin, Frederick Rooks III, dead early on the morning of January 21, 2021. Rooks, 34, was found with multiple gunshot wounds to his face and leg. It is still unclear what led up to the shooting. Home security camera footage from the scene caught several cars speeding away and captured at least one gunshot, cops said. Hawk admitted to the shooting in an interview with investigators several days after it occurred, according to the DeKalb district attorney. Bullet casings found at the scene also matched a gun Hawk had when he was arrested. At the sentencing on Wednesday, Rooks' siblings said Hawk's sentencing should have been harsher. "We just want justice,' Rooks' brother told the judge, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. In 2021, Hawk's manager released a statement after his arrest asking fans for their support. "Please send my client Silentó some positive vibrations," the manager, Chanel Hudson, said at the time. "Over the past several years, Ricky has been suffering immensely from a series of mental health illnesses. "We will continue in his efforts of treatment, but we ask in the meantime the public uplift him and his family in immediate prayer and positive energy!! "Ricky is a beautiful soul, and we hope that the same people who came up whipping' & nay nay-in with him, continue to support him and lifted in prayer!! God bless." RISE TO FAME Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) was released when Hawk was just a junior in high school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, near Atlanta. The song charted globally and started a social media trend of people doing a dance associated with the song. Hawk's first full-length album came out in 2019. The next year, Hawk was arrested twice - once for driving 143 miles per hour on the highway and another time for breaking into a random home in Los Angeles with a hatchet. Hawk's sentence includes credit for the time he's served in DeKalb County Jail since February 1, 2021.


BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
'Life, amidst death, has to continue': Molly Jong-Fast on her new book and watching her mother fade away
BBC Special Correspondent Katty Kay chats with author Molly Jong-Fast about her memoir, How to Lose Your Mother, which tackles the life, legacy, and decline of her mother, Erica Jong. The death of a mother or father is one of the things we don't talk about much in modern life, maybe because it scares us. But it's a universal reality. Nearly all of us will go through it at some point. Molly Jong-Fast is a political commentator and writer for Vanity Fair who has just written a new memoir, How to Lose Your Mother. The book is Jong-Fast's account of her mother and feminist author Erica Jong's descent into dementia, which began the same year that Jong-Fast's husband, professor Matthew Adlai Greenfield, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. The book is an honest, emotional and at times funny account of how Jong-Fast got through that horrible time. Not only was she handling her mother's cognitive decline, Jong-Fast's stepfather was diagnosed with Parkinson's, the world was dealing with Covid and everyone in her orbit was under one roof, including an elderly dog with his own health problems. These are heavy topics, but we found moments of laughter, too, emblematic of Jong-Fast's style. In her memoir, the author explores lying to her children about their father's health, referring to a growth on his pancreas as a "mass", because, "a 'mass' could be anything – a group of people, a group of blood vessels, a group of cockapoos meeting in Central Park for a cockapoo meetup". I really enjoyed this conversation. Her lessons about handling loss and grief, facing the legacy of her mother's fame and the difficult decisions that come with ageing parents are things I think we can all learn from. Watch (or read) more of our discussion below. Below is an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. Katty Kay: When my mum died, I remember thinking that I've had training up the wazoo for everything in my life, but nobody's given me the guidebook for this. Nobody's said, as your parents get older, they're going to need their diapers changed or that you're going to need to think about the money – let alone anybody helping you with all of the emotions. I'm so glad you wrote this book to help people, but why is it that we've gotten to this position where something that almost everybody goes through, we're left kind of clueless when it comes to it? Molly Jong-Fast: I think there's a lot of shame about getting older. It's why I talk about being sober all the time; I want to destigmatise alcoholism and that's how I feel about this to a certain extent. People don't want to talk about it. People don't want to get older. It's really scary. It only goes one direction and you can't get off. You don't get to skip birthdays. It's just this endless march towards death and nobody knows what happens after you die. What I think was so interesting about this whole experience was that it gets you into this conversation of: Why are we here? What is the point of all of this? Why are we on this planet and what should we be trying to grab from this human experience before it's too late? KK: Having now gone through the last few years and written this book, do you feel like you have lessons to impart? MJF: Because I got sober at 19, I saw the incredible benefit of being able to look at my experience and show it to other people. I got that if you can go through something and share that experience with someone else, they can be helped by it. It's almost Jungian; there's a collective suffering that can be shared and lessened. The thing that I always try to say, especially with my kids, is to not feel bad about stuff. The rest of the world can make you feel bad, OK? But don't make yourself feel bad about things. The other thing I say to people is to just do the best you can. This is not going to look the way you want it to look. Maybe it will! And that's great, too. But just because things don't look the way you want them to doesn't mean it's not the way it's supposed to look. KK: I think some people looking at what you went through would think 'I couldn't bear that.' But you have lovely moments in the book where you write about taking the kids on spring break because it's spring break. And you have to buy groceries and you have to pick them up from college. And that life – amidst death – has to continue. MJF: There's this funny moment, I don't know if this made it into the book, but my husband and I had this thing where his father died and then, two weeks later, my stepfather's sister died – and we were at the same, very small funeral home in Connecticut. And the people who own the funeral home come up to us and they're like [makes a shocked face]. We saw that it was very dark – it was not a great year – but we saw the humour in it. I do think the wonderful thing – and I think you see this in much worse stories of people who are in camps or the stories of people who are in wars – is that your focus becomes very narrow and everything becomes a binary. You either can do this or you can do that. And there's something very clarifying about the binary, which I don't think is a bad thing. KK: You start in the book by saying you have this incredibly intense relationship with your mother and you're part of her and she's part of you. But it becomes pretty clear that the relationship is complicated and not as close as you had wanted it to be and that your mother had incredibly narcissistic tendencies when you were growing up. I think that, for so many people who go through this process, that makes what you have written even more important, because so many people don't have that loving, easy relationship with their parents, and when that moment comes they feel a terrible sense of guilt. MJF: I would guess that, on average, people have worse relationships with their parents than we think they do. Our generation is just going through this period with these parents who we're losing and there is a sense when I talk to these people that they feel guilty. They're sort of stuck and feeling bad. And I definitely felt guilty. I put this in the book, but my husband's shrink says, 'Sometimes, when you have narcissistic parents, you feel worse that it didn't work out.' KK: What did you feel guilty about when your mother started to get dementia and you made the decision to move her into a home? MJF: In my ideal world, my mother would not be an alcoholic and I would move her into my house and she'd be painting and writing poetry and maybe [be] a little dotty. But she'd live in my house. So, I felt very bad. It was not how I wanted it to go. But I also felt that my feeling bad was a useful thing for people to see. I'm not just doing this because I'm an exhibitionist. I'm doing it because I really do think that when you have a relationship that isn't what you want and then you suffer from it, you don't have to. And I'm saying, 'I did it and you don't have to,' is sort of the goal. –-


Daily Mail
24 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Missing toddler's disappearance takes horrifying new turn as mother's 'lies' are revealed
The search for a missing three-year-old girl took a tragic turn as a body believed to be hers was found after cops accused her mother of creating an elaborate hoax about her 'disappearance.' An Amber Alert for Nola Dinkins was abruptly canceled on Wednesday after officials in Maryland said they believe her mother, Darrian Randle, 31, fabricated an abduction story. The alert for the missing girl had been issued the day before after her mother claimed a white couple kidnapped her daughter from her car at gunpoint around 7pm. A description of a bald male suspect around 40 years old with a patch of peach fuzz on his head was put out to law enforcement across the state, with Randle reportedly saying the man took off with a blond, white woman in a car. The mother described a terrifying encounter where she had pulled over to the side of the road on Gender Road in Newark, Delaware, to speak with her toddler because she was upset, before the 'suspect' approached her with a handgun. But within a day of the search, which also included a vehicle description of a dark-colored SUV, officials now say they believe the entire story was false. It is not clear how the investigators in the case came to believe the story was false, although Randle has been taken into custody on Wednesday afternoon. She has been charged with filing a false police report. In a tragic update hours after the Amber Alert was canceled, officials said they found a body around 4.15pm. The body has not officially been named as the three-year-old. The FBI had joined the search for Nola on Wednesday after officials took Randle into custody. Maryland State Police spokesperson Elena Russo told 6ABC that it is her understanding that the three-year-old's mother is cooperating with police. Search teams had reportedly been seen near Gender Road near the I-95 where Nola's mother told police she was kidnapped, as well as the Liberty Pointe Apartments. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Maryland State Police at (410) 996-7800 or call 911. Amid the search for Nola earlier Wednesday, her cousin Myria Dinkins said on Facebook that 'Nola has gained her wings.'