Dozens of crows shot and killed in Westchester neighborhood, raising concerns of residents
A Westchester neighborhood is on edge as residents say that someone has been shooting and killing crows, a problem that has persisted for several years. They're concerned that these instances could eventually turn into something even more troubling.
"It usually starts by hearing pop, pop, pop," said Brenna Lenoir, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly a decade. "Some sort of a pellet or bullet noise, and then you hear the crows just go wild and then you'll see them all fly away. And then you'll see them fall out of the sky."
She says that the issue began at around the same time that the COVID-19 pandemic began, and that in that time there have been about 100 crows that have been shot. On top of that, neighbors have found hawks, songbirds and other birds.
The most recent instance came last Saturday.
"I heard that first pop and the crows went crazy and first thing I saw when I looked out my window was an injured crow," Lenoir said.
She took the crow to the California Wildlife Center in Calabasas for treatment.
Los Angeles Police Department investigators were called to the area but said they were unable to locate any evidence of a shot being fired.
It's just this, the lack of evidence and information over such a long span of time, that has neighbors so concerned.
"I think things do escalate over time," Lenoir said. "My first worry, is it a pet next? How long before it hits children or one of us?"
Last Eater the neighborhood had to all but cancel the holiday after between five and 10 birds were found dead in the neighborhood.
"It was awful," said Julia Holowaty, who also lives in the neighborhood. "We had all the Easter eggs out here ready for a hunt. We couldn't let the kids go outside."
Neighbors have one message to the shooter.
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Chicago Tribune
5 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Violent crime drops to levels not seen in a decade in Chicago during first half of 2025
Major cities across the country, including New York and Los Angeles, have seen significant dips in violent crime since the unrest of 2020, when protests, riots and looting followed the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold. Now Chicago finds itself firmly in that group. The city is poised to close the first half of the year with its steepest statistical drop in recent memory, with fewer than 200 homicides in the first six months of a calendar year for the first time in more than a decade, according to city and county figures. And 2025 would be the fourth year in a row that Chicago violence totals have decreased, despite President Donald Trump and others holding the city out as a national punching bag on violent crime. Police and experts have not singled out one particular cause of the improvement. Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said his department's strategy has been to intensify efforts to tamp down hot spots. 'We've broken down certain locations where we know, number one, there's historic violence that occurs in those areas,' Snelling told the Tribune on Thursday, 'But we also look at current trends of violence in particular areas, and we focus by making sure that we're allocating resources for those locations.' 'If we're going to be serious about saving people's lives, then we need to look where people's lives are being taken,' he added. State and local governments have sent waves of funding toward community-level violence intervention groups, including the Government Alliance for Safe Communities pledging $100 million in public funding for 2025. The city recorded 188 homicides as of June 25, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office — a 34% decline in killings from the first six months of 2024. Through mid-month, Chicago had seen a nearly 40% decline in overall shootings, according to the Chicago Police Department. 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'It's been kind of hectic,' Perry said. 'But prior to that, it was pretty quiet.' The burst of activity was one of the first this year in Englewood, a neighborhood and police district with long histories of gun violence. Violent crime is down sharply in the Englewood District (7th) so far this year, with murders dropping 45% from 2024. Andre Thomas, the CEO of Integrity and Fidelity, had been congratulating his outreach team on the statistics hours before the shooting in Ogden Park. He described listening on the phone as outreach workers talked people out of retaliating against earlier acts of violence while Perry ticked off a list of hot spots that outreach workers make sure to give special attention to in the wake of a shooting. The district has seen 11 murders so far this year, police data shows, and Thomas said he was gratified to see lower numbers. But Thomas said people in his line of work were always 'going to be in competition with ourselves.' 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Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Garien Gatewood said there are a variety of reasons for the sustained drop in crime, but highlighted a deeper collaborative effort by CPD officers and leadership, city residents, community violence intervention groups and the city's business community, as well as state and county offices. 'I genuinely think it is everybody being on the same page (and) actually working together and being focused on the ultimate goal of driving safety in the city,' Gatewood said. 'There's a lot of lives that are being impacted. There's a lot of trauma there. There's a lot of communities that are grieving, and we need to be able to support them there.' Neighborhoods that have historically felt the brunt of the city's problem with gun violence such as Englewood, North Lawndale and South Shore have seen some of the sharpest annual declines in shootings, CPD figures show. Not all parts of the city have felt progress, though. The Harrison District (11th), which covers much of the city's West Side where the narcotics trade is most acute, has seen five more killings so far in 2025 — 17 — than it did in the first half of last year. And despite the numbers, violence is still puncturing many families' sense of safety. Ciara Allen, 35, lives with her mom and her six children in the Ogden District (10th), south of Harrison. Their block has seen 12 reported crimes this year, city data shows. Last year, there were 18 in the same time period. Last Saturday, Allen's 11-year-old son Izayah asked to go outside to Franklin Park while Allen did one of her daughters' hair. He'd taken a shower and left for the park, across the street in the family's North Lawndale neighborhood. A few moments later, they heard gunshots. According to a police report, a man had fired into a crowd at the park while Izayah was walking across the basketball court, heading toward the pool. Izayah was struck in the back, police said. Allen sighed and looked at the ceiling. 'It could have been worse,' she said. Not quite a week after the shooting, she said Izayah was up and around, back to his video games and talking on the phone. He'd wanted to take a spin on a hoverboard, but his dad and aunt had told him not yet. He won't need physical therapy or surgery, Allen said. But he had been set to start a summer school program Monday, to get him ready for sixth grade, and now that will have to wait, Allen said. He needed to go back to the hospital for an X-ray on the first day of the program. He can't be in water until his wound closes, so he won't be able to jump in the pool. Allen doesn't want her kids back in Franklin Park anyway. She was worried for her kids' safety before this, she said — sitting out on the porch whenever they were outside, tracking their locations on her phone and calling when she doesn't know where they are. Now, like many others who endure violence near their homes, she is looking to move as soon as she can. 'I'm not going to sit there on that block and raise my kids,' she said. 'It's sad and it's ridiculous. He is a child.' Ashley Perez, a victim advocate through the North Lawndale-based social service organization UCAN, was helping Allen get started on the process of moving, getting access to state funds for victims of crime and the barrage of logistics that families can face when a loved one is shot. Still, she said that while the past few weeks have brought the typical spike in violence that comes with the summer, the level of violence has been 'nothing compared to last year' for her. 'When you're doing the work, you can tell,' she said. 'There was a time when it was nonstop shootings back to back.' The dip in crime is not limited to gun violence. CPD figures show double-digit percentage decreases so far this year in robberies, aggravated batteries, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts. CPD officers and detectives are busier so far this year, too. Department records show officers have effected about 17,500 arrests through mid-June — a 9% increase over 2024. Meanwhile, officers have recovered nearly 5,400 guns in 2025, keeping with long-standing monthly averages, and the department's murder clearance rate is 81% as of late June, according to a department spokesperson. Figures provided by county officials show the population of Cook County Jail has nearly returned to levels it saw before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 5,500 people. County data, however, shows that a greater share of inmates now face weapons and violent crime charges, while fewer detainees are held for nonviolent narcotics offenses. That shift has also helped to stanch Chicago shootings, Snelling said, adding that the working relationship between CPD and the Cook County state's attorney's office is 'excellent.' 'Am I under the belief that we should lock everyone up and throw away the key? Absolutely not,' Snelling said. 'I do believe, however, that those who go out every single day with the intent of doing harm to other human beings have to be held, especially when we know that they're more likely to commit another violent crime.' 'I believe that these crime numbers should tell you that when we are arresting these violent offenders and holding these violent offenders (in jail pending trial), it's less likely that they get the opportunity to re-offend,' he said.
New York Post
10 hours ago
- New York Post
Colorado funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 decaying bodies sentenced to 20 years in prison
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Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Boston Globe
In ‘Kill the Lax Bro,' Charlotte Lillie Balogh asks whodunit — and who let it happen
The aftershock of this betrayal was one of several personal heartbreaks that fueled Balogh's debut YA novel, is actor Chris Evans — Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Almost everything in this book really happened in some way,' Balogh tells the Globe. 'There were quite a few Easter eggs of my exes sprinkled throughout.' Advertisement The murder, she assures, is strictly fictional. The mystery is set in the fictional Massachusetts town of Hancock during the 1990s, where star lacrosse player Troy Richards is the target of four students' attempts to ruin his reputation. But when Troy winds up dead during Hancock High's Lock-In Night, Andrew, his former teammate/best friend; Stassi, his straight A ex-girlfriend; Naomi, the shy but observant freshman; and Tatum, the burnout with a secret grudge, must unravel the whodunit before the crime is pinned on them. Advertisement With and commentary on toxic sports culture, status quos, and self-discovery. While Troy is the doomed, titular 'lax bro,' the sometimes-negative impact of student athlete culture and toxic masculinity are Balogh's real targets. She had been a member of her high school's rowing team and later rowed for Syracuse University as an undergrad. As a student athlete, Balogh observed the different coaching approaches for girls vs. boys team sports firsthand. 'I know a coach who told me it's easier to coach boys because they're very competitive,' says Balogh, who coaches a youth team in Los Angeles, where she now resides. '[While], girls are not encouraged to be as ferocious so quickly in life.' She was especially inspired by 'New England life'; in particular, her high school alma mater's boy's lacrosse team — Troy and Andrew are amalgamations of the memories of her classmates and her own. While Balogh describes Andrew as 'the boy next door,' his increasingly volatile actions reveal his more vengeful underbelly. Troy, though (dead and) the antagonist, becomes more sympathetic as his backstory is uncovered. The intention was to 'flip archetypes. 'They both have their own ways in which they're perfect and idolized by their classmates. And it's like, which of them is better?' she says. 'Are either of them better?' Balogh also drew from 'cinematic perfection' that is 'John Tucker Must Die,' the early-2000s teen dramedy about a group of girls who, upon finding out they're dating the same guy, team up for revenge. Advertisement Spoiler: John Tucker does not die — it's more social sabotage than murder — but Balogh, a TV writer by trade, had wondered: But what if they actually killed him? 'Kill the Lax Bro' started as a 50-page TV pilot script in 2020, but eventually caught the eye of Balogh's literary agent, with whom she had previously worked on another manuscript. (That story — about a Boston high school rowing team, ahead of the Head of the Charles Regatta — will be the basis for her second novel, slated for fall 2026.) When the manuscript was put out on submission, an editor at Penguin found a video of a table read of 'She watched this video and was like, 'I want to buy that as a book instead,'" says Balogh. Charlotte Lillie Balogh will celebrate the release of 'Kill the Lax Bro' at the Natick Barnes & Noble, July 12, 6 p.m. 1324 Worcester St., Natick. Marianna Orozco can be reached at
