On Sunday, a minivan carrying a family of seven flew off the Bronx River Expressway and fell 60 feet, killing four adults and three children. Critics noted that there have been many accidents at that stretch of the BRE, and the AAA said the guardrails were inadequate. Yesterday, crews started to make improvements to the dangerous road. more ›

Still grieving after the Christmas Day fire that took the lives of his three daughters, Matthew Badger has given his first interview to Good Morning America to promote a fund in their honor which raises money for art programs in public schools. Badger explained, "Out of the darkness came this [fund]." more ›

Last fall, a woman was critically injured when two 12-year-olds tossed a shopping cart from four stories above at an East Harlem shopping center. While the teens were apprehended and pleaded guilty as juveniles, one of their friends actually tried to stop them. That teen, Achilles Baskin, 14, is now telling his story. He told the Post that after the horrible incident, he told the police he knew who did it, "Some kids said, ‘You’re a snitch. I’m not a snitch. It was on camera." more ›

Yesterday evening, hours after her mother had called the police and reported her missing, a two-year-old girl was found dead in a septic tank in a nearby backyard. According to Ocean County Prosecutor Marlene Ford, "The search teams found a small approximately 3 foot wide hole in the yard, apparently to a septic tank, and called in the Lakewood Township Public Works Department to pump out the water in the tank. At approximately 7:30 PM, the water level had been dropped and police and emergency personnel unfortunately made visual observation of the body of a child in that tank." more ›

A Bronx stepdad died in an apartment fire earlier today as he tried to look for his stepdaughter, who it turned out wasn't home. Police say that Tyril Royer, 65, became trapped in the third floor apartment on East 234th Street just after 12:50 a.m. He had stayed in the apartment to save his stepdaughter: "My dad died as a hero," 22-year-old Kemara James told the News. "He thought I was inside and he died trying to save me." more ›

The grandmother of 12-year-old Dashane Santana, who was struck and killed by a car crossing Delancey Street last week, is in the midst of raising the $8,500 for Dashane's funeral while she grieves for her granddaughter. "Right now we need about $3,000 by Tuesday," Teresa Pedroza tells us. "It's coming in little by little." Pedroza has sold candy and gone door-to-door asking for donations, which yielded around $600. She hopes that two fundraisers she's organizing, one today and another tomorrow, will be enough. "All this is out of the blue. Her birthday is in February—we're supposed to be celebrating that. Now I'm planning a funeral." more ›

Italian authorities say that five more bodies have been recovered from the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground near the Island of Giglio last Friday night. The bodies were of four men and one woman, bringing the total toll to 11. Authorities, which had been saying that the number of missing was 16, now say 28 are missing. more ›

Today, the NY Times publishes a terribly sad photograph of the three little girls who died inside their Stamford, Connecticut home during a Christmas Day fire. In the picture, the girls, 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah and 9-year-old Lily, are with their father Matthew Badger, smiling and happy. According to the Times, funeral arrangements are still being made, but it's expected that they will take place next week. The Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home's vice-president, Dominic Carella, said the girls would be placed in individual coffins. more ›

Yesterday, the NYPD announced that a 20-year-old woman was charged with self-abortion, after a Washington Heights building super found the body of a fetus in a trash can. There have only been four other cases where women have been charged with self-abortion in the first or second degree since 1980: The NY Times reports, "Three of those cases, from Nassau County in 2006 and 2010 and from Monroe County in 2000, ended in dismissal. A first-degree case in Wayne County in 2006 resulted in a sentence of conditional discharge, meaning the charge would be dismissed if the woman did not get into trouble again." more ›

A man was struck and killed by a northbound 6 train this morning at 8:46 a.m. in the Bleecker Street station. The FDNY and the MTA had no other information regarding the victim, and service has been suspended on the 4/5/6 trains between Grand Central and Wall Street pending an investigation. more ›

Yesterday afternoon, a 34-year-old pregnant woman picking up one of her children from P.S. 298 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn was killed by gunfire from a rooftop. Zurana Horton apparently tried to shield the little ones near here; NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said, "Moments before, she was seen hovering over several children to protect them." [Update: The medical examiner says that Horton was not pregnant at the time of her death.] more ›

The father of the Westchester woman who was killed by her husband Sam Friedlander, who also fatally shot their two children before committing suicide himself, is fighting back at accusations that his daughter was emotionally abusive to Friedlander. Gary Perez told the Journal News that Friendlander made his daughter Amy get an abortion when she became pregnant with their third child, "He said he was too old to have more children. And when she got home, he not once did anything to help her. She was very upset, and she was having difficulty coming to terms with it. When she expressed this to her husband, he told her to 'deal with it.'" Perez also suggested that Friedlander was too interested in their 10-year-old daughter. more ›

A day after Ohio authorities killed dozens of exotic animals had been released from their cages by their owner, who was found dead at his farm, police detailed how the man died. Terry Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and sometime later, a tiger bit his head. more ›

A day after discovering a family of four dead in their Westchester County home, police say that Sam Friedlander, 50, beat his wife to death and fatally shot his two children in their beds before turning the gun on himself. Friedlander and wife Amy were in the process of divorcing, but they were still living in the same Cross River home: Amy in the master bedroom and Sam in a guest bedroom. Sam Friedlander's friends said his wife drove him to the senseless violence— one pal Michael Borg said, "I think it was just the constant berating. Everything he did she criticized. She belittled him in front of the kids," and that she treated him “like he was a piece of s--t, like he was worthless, totally emasculating him." more ›

Anderson Cooper is at the center of a tragedy this week, after Gawker reported that one of the guests scheduled for an upcoming episode of his show fell into a coma following a skateboarding accident—that one of Cooper's producers told him to film. more ›

A 14-year-old Bronx boy slipped while hanging curtains in his 5th floor apartment and fell out the window to his death yesterday. Yohan Hernandez was standing on a chair installing curtains when the tragic accident occurred on Townsend Avenue near East 172nd Street in Morris Heights around 4:30 p.m. Witness Orlando Ventura described the distressing scene after the fall: “His stomach was swollen. He was pale. They were pumping him, pumping him, pumping him." more ›

This week, the one-month-old child of a Long Island TV news host, as well as the infant's babysitter, were both found dead in an incident police are calling "a tragic accident." Authorities now believe that baby Michael, son of reporter Michael Baldwin II, died after the obese babysitter collapsed on top of him. "The woman was described as extremely heavy. She was extremely large-breasted...Because of the amount of flesh, it could have caused the baby to suffocate," said Detective Lt. Gerard Pelkofsky. more ›

Apparently grief runs its course after 10 years: The traditional reading of the names on the anniversary of 9/11 might see some changes after this year. Mayor Bloomberg announced on his radio show yesterday that after this year's ceremony, the 9/11 Memorial Foundation (which he heads) intends to discuss with 9/11 survivors, families and first responders the prospect of discontinuing the reading of every victim's name on future anniversaries. This comes on the heels of news that the Tribute in Light will be going dark after this year if there are not enough donations to support it, as well as news of the first time someone has ever tried to use the ceremony for political gain. more ›

Five people are dead and more than 40 remain hospitalized with injuries after the main stage at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis collapsed moments before the main event was scheduled to take place. more ›

A 32-year-old cabbie was fatally stabbed Thursday night during an altercation with another cab driver over a fare. 35-year-old Christopher Heron has been charged with the second degree murder of William Mena, after the pair allegedly fought about picking up a customer at Franklin Square in Nassau County. more ›

A Bronx man who leapt in front of the 2 train in the Bronx yesterday afternoon was knocked from the train back onto the platform and struck a bystander. 42-year-old Louis Schmulson, who reportedly weighed around 300 pounds, jumped in front of the train in an apparent suicide attempt. "I heard a scream and then a crunching sound," a witness told the Post, "It was gory—blood on the platform and on the street." more ›

One athlete has died, and another is in critical condition after competing in today's New York City Triathlon. A 64-year-old man died during the swimming leg of the race, and a 40-year woman was injured swimming the 1.5 kilometers in the Hudson River, and brought to Roosevelt Hospital for treatment, AP reports. more ›

An Iraq war veteran and double amputee was ejected from a roller coaster at the Darien Lake Theme Park and fell to he death. Gowanda resident Sgt. James Thomas Hackemer was on the Ride of Steel as it quickly crested a steep hill and apparently flew off because the lap bar couldn't be properly secured to his torso. "He didn't have anything holding him down," said his 19-year-old nephew who was riding next to him. "By the time I'd realized that he was pretty far out of the seat, he was too far for me to grab." According to the Post, the pair asked a member of the park's staff which rides Hackemer could safety enjoy, and were told, "They're all fine." The Ride of Steel's height requirement is 54 inches. Hackemer was 3 feet tall. more ›

Last week, hours after his graduation, Bronx high school football star Isayah Muller was fatally stabbed by a parking lot attendent who was in a dispute with Muller's father Andre over a missing bottle of $200 cologne. Afterwards, to the dismay of the Muller family, police arrested the elder Muller, and not the two attendants involved, saying that he was "the agressor" in the incident. Newly released surveillance footage certainly doesn't do much to bolster Andre Muller's case. more ›

Yesterday, a judge sentenced three men involved in a horrific rape and robbery to over 150 years in prison. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei was so troubled by the crimes, which included the rape of three women—a woman, her 17-year-old daughter and a teenage family friend—that he said to the man who was convicted of the rapes, Glendon Jackson, "Somebody wrote a book, Dante Alighieri, where he ranked the crimes and this has to be one of the worst crimes and you have to be one of the worst offenders," and sentenced him to 260 years. more ›