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The Independent
7 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Exonerated US death row inmate turned campaigner dies in Irish house fire
Sadness has been expressed after former US death row inmate turned campaigner Sunny Jacobs died following a fire in Ireland. The 77-year-old yoga teacher who was originally from New York was found dead following the blaze at the Sunny Healing Centre in rural Co Galway. She spent 17 years in prison in the US, a number of them on death row, following a conviction for murder. Ms Jacobs was released in 1992 after her sentence and imprisonment were quashed. Irish police said emergency services were alerted to the incident at Gleann Mhic Mhuireann in Casla at around 6.20am on Tuesday. Gardai said the bodies of a woman aged in her 70s and a man in his 30s were recovered from inside the home after the blaze was brought under control by firefighters. They have also appealed for any witnesses to come forward. 'Both bodies were taken to the mortuary at University Hospital Galway for post-mortem examinations, while the scene was preserved for a technical probe,' they said. 'The results of the post-mortem examinations will inform the direction of garda inquiries.' A statement on Ms Jacobs' campaign website confirmed she had died in the incident, along with her caretaker. 'We don't have many details at this time, but investigation is ongoing and our contacts in Galway are providing us with information as it comes in,' they said. 'Sunny was a fierce advocate for justice and a guiding light for many. 'As someone who survived wrongful conviction – including five years in solitary confinement under a sentence of death, and 17 years of imprisonment total – she knew the difficulties of incarceration and the struggle to regain one's footing after being exonerated and released.' They said that Ms Jacobs, along with her late husband Peter Pringle, established The Sunny Centre to help other exonerees through the difficult process of building new lives after being released from prison. 'Together, they brought many exonerees to the centre in Ireland to help them process their trauma and move forward to the next steps of their healing,' they said. 'During and after the pandemic, they continued to support and counsel exonerees remotely by video and phone. 'After Peter's passing in 2022, Sunny continued the work of The Sunny Centre. She hosted exonerees and started a training programme for those who wanted to carry forward her vision to establish similar centres for exonerees within their communities.' The statement concluded: 'Fair winds and full sails on your crossing, Sunny. Your memory is a blessing to us.'
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Taking the spotlight
Sir, – Tánaiste Simon Harris, on Morning Ireland, commended Cara Darmody, a 14-year-old disability campaigner currently holding a protest outside the Dáil 'for shining a spotlight' on disability issues. Does this mean the young girl is doing the work of a Minister, and an entire government department? Perhaps the Minister should take the spotlight from Cara, and use it to do what the State is supposed to do. – Yours, etc, PETER DECLAN O'HALLORAN, Belturbet, READ MORE Co Cavan.
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- The Guardian
Experience: I fought off a polar bear with a saucepan
I've had 35 close encounters with polar bears during my time as an explorer and campaigner for the Arctic Ocean. There's always that surge of adrenaline when you see one – that sense of: 'Oh God, it's happening.' I've learned how to deal with bears over the years. Although I take a shotgun and special cartridges – they're to scare them off – I've never hit a bear with a bullet. But there was one occasion when the closest thing to hand turned out to be my mother's saucepan. It was back in 1990 – I was 28, and early in my career. I was on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago. Svalbard has a high concentration of polar bears in the spring, gathering for the mating season. When a bear is hungry, it essentially becomes a meat-seeking missile – it can smell you from many miles away. If you're unwashed in a dark tent out on the floating sea ice, you can look (and smell) not unlike an oversized walrus. I'm the world's heaviest sleeper, but when I'm exploring, my amygdala – the part of the brain that controls fear – goes into overdrive and I sleep very lightly. For three or four nights I'd been waking up repeatedly because I thought I'd heard the dreaded crunch of bear paws in the snow. Getting up to check was an ordeal. Condensation from my breathing and cooking would freeze into a thick coating of ice crystals on the inside of my tent, which would shower down when I brushed against them. If I touched the outside of my sleeping bag with bare fingers for too long I would get frostnip – an early stage of frostbite. The least arduous way to check for a bear was to get up on to my knees while still inside my sleeping bag, unzip the tent and poke my head out of the top to get a 360-degree view. It was cold, awkward and miserable, and, often, there was nothing there. On the day it finally happened, I was finishing breakfast inside the tent. I'd made porridge in my mother's saucepan, which was one of those heavy old-fashioned ones with a plastic handle. The camping stove was still on, to melt snow for my Thermos flasks – the roaring noise was loud enough to drown out a jumbo jet. When I turned it off, there was initially silence. Then, I heard crunching in the snow. Because of the previous false alarms, I felt quite nonchalant as I unzipped the tent's entrance. It was a tremendous shock to see a huge, fully grown polar bear facing me, only an arm's length away. I had a loaded gun in the tent to scare it off, but the gun was behind me and I knew that if I swivelled to get it, my salivating visitor could attack. So my hand instinctively reached for the nearest combat-ready thing I could see – the porridge-encrusted saucepan. Holding the tent flap back, I hit the bear as hard as I could on its head. I clearly remember it wrinkling up its face and tilting its head almost quizzically to one side. I think the noise of the pan startled it as much as the impact – we could both still hear the reverberations. As I wondered whether to hit it again, it wheeled round and cantered off and out of sight. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Surprising polar bears is crucial. I've been in situations where I've heard the bear pump-priming itself with oxygen as it prepares to launch itself for the kill – the heavy breathing sounds like a London tube train. That's when you've got to use your firearm to maximum effect – holding your nerve and firing immediately above its head. Most crucially, you need to remember they have more of a right to be there than you. Polar bears are the charismatic megafauna of the Arctic Ocean – and I have now dedicated my life to campaigning for the protection of them and their habitat. As a young adventurer I used to feel it was me against my surroundings, but then I realised I could work with nature. Many years later, I would become the first person to complete a solo trek from the tip of Canada to the north pole while pulling all my supplies – a feat that still hasn't been repeated. There have been times, alone in the Arctic, when I have felt more in tune with the world than anywhere else. It breaks my heart that, because of the rapidly melting sea ice, I have witnessed a wilderness habitat that others may never see. As told to Rachel Halliburton Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@
