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Homicide Detectives are investigating after a double shooting left one man dead and another injured.

The post UPDATE: Man Shot, Another Dies Following Mark Twain Neighborhood Shooting appeared first on St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

Five days after a powerful tornado tore through St. Louis, signs of devastation remain widespread, but so do early signs of recovery and resilience.

GRANITE CITY — Officials from Granite City and the Illinois Department of Transportation gathered Wednesday at Wilson Park to announce a $1.9 million grant aimed at closing a gap in the regional path and trail system. The grant will fund a multipurpose path stretching 5,150 feet and measuring 10 feet wide, running alongside 27th Street to Central Street. This project is one of 66 approved statewide through the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program (ITEP). The approved projects include bike and pedestrian paths and trails, streetscape beautification, and other initiatives intended to promote safe travel across various modes of transportation at the local level. According to IDOT, the department received 233 applications for projects totaling an estimated $383 million in this funding cycle. Granite City’s project was among those selected for funding.

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CARLINVILLE - Marquette Catholic’s girls soccer team captured its fifth consecutive Regional Championship and 17th overall with a 6-0 victory over Carlinville on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Carlinville. The No. 7-ranked Explorers will face No. 9 Quincy Notre Dame on Friday, May 23, 2025, in the Greenville Sectional. The Explorers are honored as Tucker’s Automotive Repair & Tire Female Athletes of the Month, recording their 13th shutout of the season behind the strong goalkeeping of junior Jessica Eales. Rylie Jacobs opened the scoring with a goal assisted by Maya Stephan. Jacobs added a second goal, assisted by sophomore Izzi Hough. Maddie Waters made it 3-0 off a corner from Lilly Covert. Alex Stephan scored goals four and five, both assisted by Izzi Hough, who had three for the game. Lulu Lonero made it 6-0 for the Explorers. The team’s performance against Carlinville continues to build momentum as they prepare for their upcoming sectional matchup. The full roster

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4th District Detectives are seeking the suspect in the photos below who is wanted for burglary. A preliminary investigation revealed that at approximately 7:40 p.m. on April 20, 2025, the suspect entered the Dorsa Lofts located in the 1000 block of Washington Ave. Once inside, the suspect stole over $5,600 worth of property, including firearms, […]

The post PHOTOS: Suspect Sought for Burglary at Downtown Loft appeared first on St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

Today on TAP: He followed bad official advice when he failed to get PSA tests.

GRAFTON - Raging Rivers WaterPark is excited to announce that it will be open daily beginning Saturday, May 24, 2025. As the school year comes to a close, the park is honoring educators with special Educator Appreciation Days from May 24 to May 26. Throughout this weekend, all school and district staff are invited to enjoy free admission by presenting a valid school or district ID or badge at the ticket booth - a thank you for their dedication and hard work. Located near the Mississippi River, Raging Rivers WaterPark is a top summer destination, featuring adrenaline-pumping slides like the Mississippi Monster, Runaway Rafts, Cascade Body Flume, Swirl Pools, and Shark Attack. For those seeking relaxation, the 700-foot Endless River offers a gentle float, while the 18,000-square-foot Breaker Beach Wave Pool delivers big waves and big fun. Families with young children will love Itty Bitty Surf City, a dedicated area with pint-sized slides, splash pools, rain trees, and the TreeHouse Harbo

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CASEYVILLE — St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. confirmed Wednesday, May 21, 2025, that Kent P. Recklein, 67, of Caseyville, was pronounced dead at 2:14 p.m. Tuesday, May 20, 2025, following an incident involving a pit bull dog attack. St. Clair County Coroner Dye responded to a police call and determined Recklein’s death. The Caseyville Police Department was first called to the scene and is actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack. Details about the exact location of the incident have not been released. Kent Recklein is survived by his wife, Marilyn, his parents, and his children and grandchildren. Visitation for Kent will be from 4 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at the Kassly-Meridith Funeral Home in Collinsville. The funeral service will be at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at the Kassley-Meredith Funeral Home in Collinsville.

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by Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon, with additional reporting by Cassandra Garibay

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Hurricane Helene plowed over the Southeast last September, it caused more inland deaths than any hurricane in recorded history. The highest per capita death toll occurred in Yancey County, a rural expanse in the rugged Black Mountains of North Carolina devastated by flash flooding and landslides.

On Monday, we published a story recounting what happened in Yancey. Our intent was to show, through those horrific events, how highly accurate weather warnings did not reach many of those most in harm’s way — and that inland communities are not nearly as prepared for catastrophic storms as coastal ones. No one in Yancey received evacuation orders — and many, including those living in high-risk areas and caring for young children and frail older people, didn’t flee because they didn’t see clearer signs of urgency from the county.

Much has been written about Helene, but very little focused on evacuation orders. During four months of reporting, we found that the responses of local officials across western North Carolina’s mountain counties differed a great deal. We also found that the state lags behind others in terms of what it requires of its county-level emergency managers and that legislators paused for almost a decade an effort to map landslide hazards in the counties that were hardest hit by Helene.

Here are five key discoveries from our reporting:

1. Some counties in harm’s way issued evacuation orders. Others did not.

To determine which cities and counties communicated evacuation orders, we reviewed more than 500 social media posts and other types of messaging that more than three dozen North Carolina jurisdictions shared with their residents in the lead-up to the storm. We compared that with a letter Gov. Roy Cooper sent to then-President Joe Biden seeking expedited disaster relief.

We found that by nightfall on Sept. 26, the day before Helene hit, three counties near Yancey issued mandatory evacuations, targeted toward people living close to specific dams and rivers, and at least five counties issued voluntary evacuation orders.

McDowell County, just southeast of Yancey, took particularly robust actions to warn residents about the storm, including issuing both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders in enough time for people to leave. Henderson County, southwest of Yancey, targeted a voluntary evacuation order at residents living in floodplains that have a 1 in 500 chance of flooding annually, and its directions were clear: “The time is now for residents to self-evacuate.”

Get in Touch

We are continuing to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, and we want to know: Is there one thing the storm destroyed that you would have saved had you evacuated? To share, leave us a voicemail at 828-201-2738.

Yancey and at least four other nearby counties also did not issue evacuation orders. Yancey’s emergency manager, Jeff Howell, told us he doubted the county commissioners would support issuing orders or that local residents would heed them given the area’s culture of self-reliance and disdain for government mandates, especially regarding property rights. But some Yancey residents said they would have left or at least prepared better.

Although local officials received repeated warnings — including one that said the storm would be among the worst weather events “in the modern era” — some argued that they couldn’t have done more to prepare because the storm’s ferocity was so unprecedented.

We found that inland mountain communities too often lack the infrastructure or planning to use evacuations to get residents out of harm’s way in advance of a destructive storm like Helene. Some officials in Yancey, for instance, said that they weren’t sure where they would have directed people to go in the face of such an unprecedented onslaught of rain and wind.

In recent years, far more people died in the continental U.S. from hurricanes’ freshwater flooding than from their coastal storm surges — a dramatic reversal from a decade earlier. That’s largely due to improved evacuations along the coasts.

Several Eastern states — including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — have adopted plans called Know Your Zone to execute targeted evacuations when storms approach. But these plans don’t often extend very far inland, even though warming ocean temperatures create stronger storms. Powerful storms that are not hurricanes can also turn deadly. In February, storms killed at least 24 people in Kentucky. More have died since in other storms.

2. Disaster messaging varied considerably by county.

To understand how local officials communicated disaster warnings to their residents, we compiled a timeline of alerts and warnings sent out by the National Weather Service and then scoured contemporaneous social media posts that more than three dozen jurisdictions were sharing with their residents. We found big disparities.

For instance, in addition to issuing evacuation orders, McDowell County put out flyers in English and Spanish that warned of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” Many did.

And about 36 hours before Helene hit, Haywood County’s sheriff warned in a brief video message that a “catastrophic, life-threatening event is about to befall” the county, which has one of the larger populations in western North Carolina. The emergency services director, standing beside him, emphasized: “This message is urgent.” The sheriff then asked residents, starting that night, to “make plans or preparations to leave low-lying areas or areas that are threatened by flooding.” He ended with: “Please, seek safety — and do so now.”

Almost an entire day later, with Helene closing in, officials in rural Yancey were among those who used less-direct wording. In Facebook posts, they asked residents to “please prepare to move to higher ground as soon as you are able” and advised “now is the time to make plans” to go elsewhere as the final hours to leave before nightfall wound down. In one post, they softened the message, adding, “This information is not to frighten anyone.”

ProPublica interviewed dozens of survivors in Yancey, including many who told us that in retrospect they were looking for clearer directives from their leaders.

3. Unlike several nearby states, North Carolina does not require training for local emergency managers.

At the heart of evacuations are emergency managers, the often little-known public officials tasked with preparing their areas for potential disasters. Yet, education and training requirements for these posts vary considerably by state and community.

Get in Touch

We plan to continue reporting on Helene’s aftermath to understand what lessons could better prepare communities and local emergency managers for future storms, as well as how the rebuilding effort is unfolding. If you are a Helene survivor or a North Carolina emergency responder and would like to share tips with us, please email helenetips@propublica.org.

Yancey’s emergency manager had taken the job seven years before Helene hit after a long and robust Army career. He had no emergency management experience, however. In the years before Helene, he had been asking the county for more help — but by the time the storm arrived, it was still only him and a part-time employee.

Florida recently enacted a law mandating minimum training, experience and education for its counties’ emergency managers starting in 2026. Georgia requires its emergency managers to get the state’s emergency management certification within six months. But North Carolina doesn’t require any specific training for its local emergency managers.

4. North Carolina began examining landslide risks by county, but powerful interests stood in the way.

More than 20 years ago, North Carolina legislators passed a law requiring that landslide hazards be mapped across 19 mountain counties. They did so after two hurricanes drenched the mountains, dumping more than 27 inches of rain that caused at least 85 landslides and multiple deaths.

But a few years later, after only four of those counties were mapped, a majority of largely Republican lawmakers gave in to real estate agents and developers who said the work could harm property values and curb growth. They halted the program, cutting the funding and laying off the six geologists at work on it.

Almost a decade later, in 2018, lawmakers jump-started the program after still more landslide deaths. But it takes at least a year to map one county, so by the time Helene hit, Yancey and four others in the storm’s path of destruction weren’t yet mapped.

Without this detailed hazard mapping, emergency managers and residents in those areas lacked the detailed assessment of risk to specific areas to make plans before landslides clawed down the mountains, killing far more people. The U.S. Geological Survey has so far identified 2,015 Helene-induced landslides across western North Carolina.

The geologists back at work on the project are almost done mapping McDowell County. They would have finished it last year, but Helene derailed their work for a time.

5. We could find no comprehensive effort (yet) to examine lessons learned from Helene to determine how counties can prevent deaths from future inland storms.

Helene left many lessons to be learned among inland communities in the paths of increasingly virulent storms. But as North Carolina figures out how to direct millions of dollars in rebuilding aid, there has so far been no state inquiry into the preparedness of local areas — or what could better equip them for the next unprecedented storm.

Yancey County’s board chair said that he expects the county will do so later, but for now its officials are focused on rebuilding efforts.

A review commissioned by North Carolina Emergency Management examined its own actions and how its staff interacted with local officials. It found the agency severely understaffed. But it didn’t examine such preparedness issues as planning for evacuations or the training requirements for local emergency managers.

A new Judas Priest documentary has been announced.The film is called The Ballad of Judas Priest and will be co-directed by Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, marking his directorial debut. "While some may…

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GODFREY – The Village of Godfrey has a new Village Board member and Village Clerk after they and returning elected officials were sworn in on Tuesday night, May 20, 2025. Village officials took their oaths of office at this week’s Village Board meeting, which was held at the Trimpe Building on the Lewis and Clark Community College campus to accommodate the large crowd of family members and supporters in attendance. New Village Clerk Jacki Clayton was sworn in at the meeting, as was Gerard Fischer, the newest member of the Godfrey Village Board of Trustees. Returning Trustees Sarah Woodman and Rick Lauschke also took their Oaths of Office. Madison County Circuit Judge Amy Sholar administered the oaths for each elected official. Former Village Clerk Susan Robbins announced Mayor Mike McCormick was ill and therefore not present at the meeting. Judge Sholar administered his Oath of Office at his home on Tuesday afternoon. Longtime Trustee Steps Down With Farewell T

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Missouri U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, urging swift approval of an emergency declaration request following last week's deadly tornado in St. Louis.

Missouri’s Democratic members of Congress decried the proposed GOP cuts to Medicaid in a press briefing Wednesday, calling the move a handout to the rich that would harm the state’s most vulnerable. 

Ask the experts from the Missouri Department of Transportation, St. Louis and St. Charles counties and St. Louis City your questions about highways and roads. The live chat starts at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

The rushed adoption of half-cooked automation in America’s already broadly broken media and journalism industry continues to go smashingly, thanks for asking. U.S. media companies have long been at the forefront of managerial dysfunction. More recently, that mismanagement has taken the form of wave after wave of “AI” scandals, ranging from getting busted for using […]

The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to speed on Amazon Web Services. The courses cover AWS, DevOPs, Kubernetes Mesosphere DC/OS, AWS Redshift, and more. It’s on sale for $39. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]