Cause of death determined for 3 young American women who died at Belize resort
The trio were found dead on Feb. 22 in a room at the Royal Kahal Beach Resort after housekeepers reported to management that there had been no answer to knocks at the door for a second consecutive day.
Mexican Mafia associates found guilty of murdering federal inmate
Investigators in Belize reported finding the bodies of the women, identified as 26-year-old Wafae El Arar, 24-year-old Imane Mallah and 23-year-old Kaoutar Naqqad, in the room with alcohol, vomit and 'gummies' present.
Autopsy reports later found that none of the women had any illicit substances in their systems.
On Feb. 26, Belize Fire Chief Colin Gillet told a Belizean television outlet that carbon monoxide poisoning had not been an issue in the deaths. However, the resort was temporarily shuttered, and a second round of testing was ordered, according to NBC News.
On March 27, the executive director of Belize's National Forensic Science Services reported to local news outlets that all three women died from lethal levels of carbon monoxide in their systems.
The resort, meanwhile, had already reopened on March 19, saying in a statement that 'all possible steps' had been taken to ensure the safety of its guests and that there was 'no further indication of dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in any of the units,' NBC reported.
Patrick M. Keefe Jr., mayor of Revere, Massachusetts, where the young women are from, described the trio as 'daughters, friends and contributors to our city,' NBC noted in earlier reporting on the incident.
Family members of the women have reportedly been concerned with the integrity of the investigation. The Massachusetts chief medical examiner's office plans to run its own tests to determine the manner and cause of death.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
How an LAPD internal affairs detective became known as ‘The Grim Reaper'
In a police department with a long tradition of colorful nicknames — from 'Jigsaw John' to 'Captain Hollywood' — LAPD Sgt. Joseph Lloyd stands out. 'The Grim Reaper.' At least that's what some on the force have taken to calling the veteran Internal Affairs detective, usually out of earshot. According to officers who have found themselves under investigation by Lloyd, he seems to relish the moniker and takes pleasure in ending careers, even if it means twisting facts and ignoring evidence. But Lloyd's backers maintain his dogged pursuit of the truth is why he has been entrusted with some of the department's most politically sensitive and potentially embarrassing cases. Lloyd, 52, declined to comment. But The Times spoke to more than half a dozen current or former police officials who either worked alongside him or fell under his scrutiny. During the near decade that he's been in Internal Affairs, Lloyd has investigated cops of all ranks. When a since-retired LAPD officer was suspected of running guns across the Mexican border, the department turned to Lloyd to bust him. In 2020, when it came out that members of the elite Metropolitan Division were falsely labeling civilians as gang members in a police database, Lloyd was tapped to help unravel the mess. And when a San Fernando Valley anti-gang squad was accused in 2023 of covering up shakedowns of motorists, in swooped the Reaper again. Recently he was assigned to a department task force looking into allegations of excessive force by police against activists who oppose the government's immigration crackdown. At the LAPD, as in most big-city police departments across the country, Internal Affairs investigators tend to be viewed with suspicion and contempt by their colleagues. They usually try to operate in relative anonymity. Not Lloyd. The 24-year LAPD veteran has inadvertently become the face of a pitched debate over the LAPD's long-maligned disciplinary system. The union that represents most officers has long complained that well-connected senior leaders get favorable treatment. Others counter that rank-and-file cops who commit misconduct are routinely let off the hook. A recent study commissioned by Chief Jim McDonnell found that perceived unfairness in internal investigations is a 'serious point of contention' among officers that has contributed to low morale. McDonnell has said he wants to speed up investigations and better screen complaints, but efforts by past chiefs and the City Council to overhaul the system have repeatedly stalled. Sarah Dunster, 40, was a sergeant working in the LAPD's Hollywood division in 2021 when she learned she was under investigation for allegedly mishandling a complaint against one of her officers, who was accused of groping a woman he arrested. Dunster said she remembers being interviewed by Lloyd, whose questions seemed designed to trip her up and catch her in a lie, rather than aimed at hearing her account of what happened, she said. Some of her responses never made it into Lloyd's report, she said. 'He wanted to fire me,' she said. Dunster was terminated over the incident, but she appealed and last week a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted a reprieve that allows her to potentially get her job back. Others who have worked with Lloyd say he is regarded as a savvy investigator who is unfairly being vilified for discipline decisions that are ultimately made by the chief of police. A supervisor who oversaw Lloyd at Internal Affairs — and requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media — described him as smart, meticulous and 'a bulldog.' 'Joe just goes where the facts lead him and he doesn't have an issue asking the hard questions,' the supervisor said. On more than one occasion, the supervisor added, Internal Affairs received complaints from senior department officials who thought that Lloyd didn't show them enough deference during interrogations. Other supporters point to his willingness to take on controversial cases to hold officers accountable, even while facing character attacks from his colleagues, their attorneys and the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League. Officers have sniped about his burly build, tendency to smile during interviews and other eccentricities. He wears two watches — one on each wrist, a habit he has been heard saying he picked up moonlighting as a high school lacrosse referee. But he has also been criticized as rigid and uncompromising, seeming to fixate only on details that point to an officer's guilt. People he has grilled say that when he doesn't get the answer he's looking for, he has a Columbo-esque tendency to ask the same question in different ways in an attempt to elicit something incriminating. And instead of asking officers to clarify any discrepancies in their statements, Lloyd automatically assumes they are lying, some critics said. Mario Munoz, a former LAPD Internal Affairs lieutenant who opened a boutique firm that assists officers fighting employment and disciplinary cases, recently released a scathing 60-page report questioning what he called a series of troubling lapses in the LAPD's 2023 investigation of the Mission gang unit. The report name-drops Lloyd several times. The department accused several Mission officers of stealing brass knuckles and other items from motorists in the San Fernando Valley, and attempting to hide their actions from their supervisors by switching off their body-worn cameras. Munoz said he received calls from officers who said Lloyd had violated their due process rights, which potentially opens the city up to liability. Several have since lodged complaints against Lloyd with the department. He alleged Lloyd ultimately singled out several 'scapegoats to shield higher-level leadership from scrutiny.' Until he retired from the LAPD in 2014, Munoz worked as both an investigator and an auditor who reviewed landmark internal investigations into the beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the Rampart gang scandal in which officers were accused of robbing people and planting evidence, among other crimes. Munoz now echoes a complaint from current officers that Internal Affairs in general, and Lloyd in particular, operate to protect the department's image at all costs. 'He's the guy that they choose because he doesn't question management,' Munoz said of Lloyd. In the Mission case, Munoz pointed to inconsistent outcomes for two captains who oversaw the police division accused of wrongdoing: One was transferred and later promoted, while another is fighting for his job amid accusations that he failed to rein in his officers. Two other supervisors — Lt. Mark Garza and Sgt. Jorge 'George' Gonzalez — were accused by the department of creating a 'working environment that resulted in the creation of a police gang,' according to an internal LAPD report. Both Garza and Gonzalez have sued the city, alleging that even though they reported the wrongdoing as soon as they became aware of it, they were instead punished by the LAPD after the scandal became public. According to Munoz's report and interviews with department sources, Lloyd was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the Mission case open. It began with a complaint in late December 2022 made by a motorist who said he was pulled over and searched without reason in a neighboring patrol area. Lloyd learned that the officers involved had a pattern of not documenting traffic stops — exploiting loopholes in the department's auditing system for dashboard and body cameras. The more Lloyd dug, the more instances he uncovered of these so-called 'ghost stops.' A few months later, undercover Internal Affairs detectives began tailing the two involved officers — something that Garza and Gonzalez both claimed they were kept in the dark about. As of last month, four officers involved had been fired and another four had pending disciplinary hearings where their jobs hung in the balance. Three others resigned before the department could take action. The alleged ringleader, Officer Alan Carrillo, faces charges of theft and 'altering, planting or concealing evidence.' Court records show he was recently offered pretrial diversion by L.A. County prosecutors, which could spare him jail but require him to stop working in law enforcement. Carrillo has pleaded not guilty to the charges. In an interview with The Times, Gonzalez — the sergeant who is facing termination — recalled a moment during a recorded interrogation that he found so troubling he contacted the police union director Jamie McBride, to express concern. McBride, he said, went to Lloyd's boss, then-deputy chief Michael Rimkunas, seeking Lloyd's removal from Internal Affairs. The move failed. Lloyd kept his job. Rimkunas confirmed the exchange with the police union leader in an interview with The Times. He said that while he couldn't discuss Lloyd specifically due to state personnel privacy laws, in general the department assigns higher-profile Internal Affairs cases to detectives with a proven track record. Gonzalez, though, can't shake the feeling that Lloyd crossed the line in trying to crack him during an interrogation. He said that at one point while Lloyd was asking questions, the detective casually flipped over his phone, which had been sitting on the table. On the back of the protective case, Gonzalez said, was a grim reaper sticker. 'And then as he turned it he looked at me as if to get a reaction from me,' Gonzalez said. 'It was definitely a way of trying to intimidate me for sure.'
USA Today
7 hours ago
- USA Today
Deported from US, these social media influencers are now monetizing their misfortune
More than 70,000 Mexicans were deported from the US in the first six months of the year. Now, they're (re)building lives south of the border. Deported and alone, Annie Garcia landed in Mexico with $40 in her pocket, a criminal record in the United States behind her and an unknown future ahead in a country she barely remembered. Fast forward to the present, to a video shared with her more than half-a-million social media followers in August. Her hair blows in the wind as she speeds on a boat through an emerald sea. She tagged the clip: #LifeAfterDeportation. Expelled from the United States, young Mexican immigrants like Garcia, 35, are documenting the aftermath of their deportation online. Their videos – raw grief over what they lost in America, surprise and gratitude for what they've found in Mexico – are rapidly gaining them tens of thousands of followers. At least a dozen of these deportees-turned-influencers, Garcia included, have started over in Mexico's west coast beach gem, Puerto Vallarta. 'If there's one thing I wish my content could embody it's how much life there is on this side of the border," Garcia wrote June 15 on Instagram. "Our countries aren't what they were 20 or 30 years ago when our parents left." Returning to an unfamiliar 'home' More than 70,000 Mexican nationals were deported from the United States to Mexico in the first six months of 2025, according to Mexico's Interior Ministry. That's down from the more than 102,000 deported during the same six-month period in 2024, when people were being deported after crossing the border. Now, the people being deported are more likely to have built lives and families in the United States. With President Donald Trump's aggressive mass deportation campaign underway, Francisco Hernández-Corona feared being detained. So he self-deported to Mexico, accompanied by his husband. He started vlogging. The 30-something Harvard graduate and former Dreamer had been taken to the United States illegally as a boy, he explained on TikTok. Multiple attempts to legalize his status in the United States failed. In June, he posted his migration – and self-deportation – stories online. Between photos of golden sunsets and mouthwatering tacos, he posted in July: "Self-deporting isn't always freedom and joy and new adventures. Sometimes it's pain and nostalgia and anger and sadness. Sometimes you just miss the home that was." 'Life in the pueblo is not easy' Mexico remains a country of extremes, where stunning vistas and limitless wealth can be found in big cities and beach resorts, while hardship and poverty often overwhelm smaller communities. Olga Mijangos was deported from Las Vegas in on Christmas Eve 2024, two years after being charged with a DUI. She returned to the Oaxaca state pueblo she had left when she was 5. Mijangos, 33, has tattoos on her neck, stylized brows and long lashes – all part of her Vegas style. Back in her hometown, she began posting videos of goats being herded through the streets; the community rodeo; the traditional foods she began cooking. She posted videos from her first job: harvesting and cleaning cucumbers, earning 300 pesos a day, or $15. "I clearly understand why my mother decided to take us when we were little. Life in the pueblo is not easy," she said in a video of the cucumber harvest. "There is hard-living. There is poverty." Struggling to make ends meet for her family, including two children with her in Mexico and one in the United States, she moved to Puerto Vallarta where she met Garcia and Hernández-Corona. They began forming an in-real-life community of deportees-turned-influencers and others who left the U.S. They meet up for dinner at least once a month, and they create content. In their videos, they're having fun, drinks, laughs. But they're also celebrating what binds them to each other and to their parents' migration stories before them: their capacity for reinvention, and their resilience. "I'm very proud to be Mexican, and I'm learning to love a country I didn't get to grow up in, but I shouldn't have had to leave the home I knew to find peace and freedom," said Hernández-Corona, a clinical psychologist, in a July post on TikTok. "This isn't a blessing. It's resilience." Spanish skills, savings and support all matter A lot of their content has the draw of a classic American up-by-their-bootstraps success story, with a modern social media twist: from hardship to sponsorship. But the reality is that deportees' experience of building a life in Mexico can vary dramatically, depending on their earning capacity, language and cultural skills, and other factors, said Israel Ibarra González, a professor of migration studies at Mexico's Colegio de la Frontera Norte university. Deportees with savings in U.S. dollars and a college degree, those who speak Spanish and have supportive relatives in Mexico, may have an easier time than those who don't, he said. Others may face life-threatening risks upon their return, from the violence of organized crime to political persecution or death threats. "However much violence they've lived with in the United States, it's not the same as going back to a war zone," Ibarra González said, referring to certain Mexican states where drug cartels are actively battling for territorial control. Wherever they land – with the exception of some cosmopolitan cities – deported Mexicans have faced local prejudices, too. They've often been viewed as criminals, or their deportations as a failure. "Did I feel a lot of judgment? Absolutely," Mijangos said of her return to Oaxaca. "Even though it's my roots, I basically came from a different world. I have tattoos. I lived my life a certain way that they don't. I could feel people talking." But friends back home in Vegas, and new friends in Mexico, started encouraging her to share her deportation journey. It took her a few weeks to work up the courage. She posted a video of sending her U.S. citizen son to a Mexican school. It racked up nearly 14 million views and 2 million "likes" on TikTok, she said. Suddenly, TikTok was asking if she wanted to join the app's content creators rewards program. 'Your criminal record doesn't follow you' By taking their stories online, deported content creators say they are dismantling longstanding taboos around deportation in Mexico, shining a light on their experiences as Mexicans who didn't grow up in Mexico, and on their past mistakes. Garcia speaks openly on her social media about the financial crimes she committed in her 20s, for which she was charged and convicted, and that ultimately led to her deportation. She migrated to the United States when she was 4 years old, "out of necessity," she said. Her mother married an American citizen in Salt Lake City, Utah, and she and her mother both became legal permanent residents. But when Garcia began acting out as a child, the state intervened. "I was taken from my mother at the age of 12 because I had behavioral issues," she told USA TODAY. "I was separated from my family, and I grew up with other juveniles with behavior (problems)." As a young single mother, she would steal from her employers when she couldn't pay the bills, she said. In Mexico she found a clean slate. "Your criminal record doesn't follow you," once you've paid your debt to society in the United States, Garcia tells her followers. "You can pursue higher education. Any debts you had in the U.S. do not follow you here." As Trump's immigration crackdown widens, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has been publicly offering moral support to Mexicans facing deportation. She has called them "heroes and heroines" who "have contributed to the United States their entire lives." "We're going to keep defending our brothers and sisters there," she said in a June 25 news conference. 'Maybe … things will change' Garcia's social media accounts have grown so popular that she's earning a living, in part, from content creation. She is doing research on reintegration after deportation for an American university. And she has "tunnel vision," she said, on completing a law degree in Mexico. The pain of her deportation, and the losses it brought with it, are mostly in the past. Except when she catches news of the immigration raids in the United States. The memories of her detention, and her separation from her five children, including an infant, remain fresh. It took Garcia more than a year after her 2017 deportation to win custody of her children, to bring them to Mexico. "It's very, very triggering to me to see what's going on up there," she said. "It's a bittersweet feeling. I feel safe. I feel relief. We're here. It doesn't affect us any more. But it feels heartbreaking to see other families living through it. "When I first started sharing my story my idea was, 'Maybe if I talk about this, things will change'" in the United States, she said. She kept at it, despite facing hate and trolls online. She kept posting, even after losing two jobs in Mexico for openly discussing her deportation and criminal past on social media. She kept sharing, thinking, she said: "This is what is going to change things one day: us putting our stories out there."
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Doctor raises red flag amid surge in one type of ER visit: 'Recognition is important'
Doctor raises red flag amid surge in one type of ER visit: 'Recognition is important' Doctors across the United States are reporting a rise in tick bites and medical care associated with them this summer. The trend has prompted health officials to remind people about tick prevention and removal. Higher numbers indicate the extent to which environmental changes affect public health. What's happening? Dr. Matt Harris at Northwell Medicine noticed an increase in tick removals while working at a summer youth camp in New York, according to NBC News. But it's not just in New York where tick bites are on the rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shared troubling data. The numbers in May (the typical peak month for hospital visits due to tick bites) reached 134 tick-related ER visits per 100,000 overall visits, according to the CDC, the highest since 2019. Public awareness may be contributing to early care, Harris said in the NBC report. Patients are more likely to seek treatment for ticks when they're smaller or less engorged. Why are more tick bites concerning? A rise in tick-related incidents may also be due in part to a migration of ticks into more populated areas, as another expert cited by NBC noted. Warmer temperatures and increased humidity also create favorable conditions for ticks to thrive, according to the report, and this may lead to longer tick seasons and put more people at risk. An overheating planet could broaden the geographic range of ticks as well. This expansion of tick habitats increases the chances of human encounters. Ticks can carry a variety of diseases, with Lyme disease being the most commonly diagnosed, per the Mayo Clinic. About half a million people are diagnosed with or treated for the disease every year, per the CDC. Do you worry about air pollution in your town? All the time Often Only sometimes Never Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Not all tick bites result in infection, but the longer a tick remains attached, the higher the risk. The potential transmission of diseases from tick bites is a public health concern that has resulted in more ER visits, tests, and treatments for tick-borne illnesses. What can I do to help prevent tick bites? Protecting yourself, your family, and your friends from tick bites is crucial. When outdoors, especially in grassy or wooded areas, use insect repellent. Consider wearing long pants and long sleeves as well. After returning indoors, perform a thorough self-check for any ticks on your skin. If you find a tick, proper removal is key to reducing the risk of infection. Use tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin's surface as possible. Then, pull away from the skin with steady, even pressure. Avoid squeezing the tick's body, as this can increase the risk of infection. Harris emphasized that "recognition is important," as is quick removal. It's not a typical 911 emergency unless severe symptoms develop, but you should call your doctor or visit an urgent care clinic for more moderate bites. Following these simple precautions can help individuals reduce their risk of tick bites. Awareness, prevention, and attention will ensure healthier outdoor experiences for everyone. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet. Solve the daily Crossword
