Truck driver in crash that killed 7 farmworkers in Oregon sentenced to 48 years
CNN
A truck driver who killed seven farmworkers when he crashed into a parked van on Interstate 5 in Oregon was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 50 years in prison.
A truck driver who killed seven farmworkers when he crashed into a parked van on Interstate 5 in Oregon was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 50 years in prison. Marion County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Wren sentenced Lincoln Smith to 48 years and 3 months, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. He was convicted in February on seven counts of second-degree manslaughter and three counts of assault, as well as reckless driving. Jurors acquitted the 54-year-old Californian of driving under the influence of intoxicants. Testifying at trial, Smith said the effects of drugs he took the night before the crash had worn off and he nodded off at the wheel. Traces of methamphetamine, fentanyl and morphine were found in his blood after the crash. The crash, one of the state’s deadliest, happened in May 2023. Smith’s semitruck ran into a van carrying 11 farmworkers that was parked on the side of I-5 near Albany, in an agricultural area of the Willamette Valley. The victims were identified as Juan Carlos Leyva-Carrillo, 37; Gabriel Juarez-Tovilla, 58; Alejandra Espinoza-Carpio, 39; Eduardo Lopez-Lopez, 31; Luis Enrique Gomez-Reyes, 30; Alejandro Jimenez-Hernandez, 36; and Josue Garcia-Garcia, 30.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.