Today is Thursday, January sixteenth, the sixteenth day of 2025. There are 349 days left within the 12 months.

Today in history:

On January 16, 1989, three days of unrest began in Miami when a police officer fatally shot Clement Lloyd, a black motorcyclist, leading to a crash that also killed Lloyd's passenger, Allan Blanchard. (The officer, William Lozano, was convicted of manslaughter but acquitted at a retrial.)

Also on this date:

In 1865, Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered that 400,000 acres of land within the South be divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves. (The order, later revoked by President Andrew Johnson, inspired the phrase “40 acres and a mule.”)

In 1970, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood filed a $1 million antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball and MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, arguing for the proper to free agency.

In 1991, US President George HW Bush announced the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, an allied combat operation to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in a televised address to the nation.

In 1996, Wayne Newton performed his 25,000th show in Las Vegas. Newton had headlined more shows in Las Vegas than every other entertainer.

In 2001, Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was fatally shot by considered one of his own bodyguards.

In 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the primary elected female head of state in Africa when she was sworn in as President of Liberia.

In 2018, authorities in Denmark accused inventor Peter Madsen of killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his private submarine. (Madsen can be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.)

Today's birthdays:

• Author William Kennedy is 97.
• Opera singer Marilyn Horne is 91.
• Hall of Fame auto racer AJ Foyt turns 90.
• Country musician Ronnie Milsap is 82.
• Filmmaker John Carpenter is 77.
• Actress, dancer and choreographer Debbie Allen is 75.
• Singer Sade (shah-DAY') is 66.
• Boxing Hall of Famer Roy Jones Jr. is 56.
• Model Kate Moss is 51.
• Actor, producer and songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda is 45.
• Baseball star Albert Pujols is 45.

FREMONT — A one that got out of his automobile early Sunday and started throwing objects at vehicles on State Route 84 was killed when he was struck by a automobile, the California Highway Patrol said.

The deceased man's name was not immediately released pending notification of his family.

The driver of the automobile that hit the person didn't notice the incident until he drove home and checked out footage on his dashboard camera, authorities said. After seeing the footage, the motive force contacted the CHP.

The fatal collision occurred around 5:41 a.m. Sunday on westbound State Route 84, east of Paseo Padre Parkway.

According to the CHP, the person killed had stopped his Tesla within the lane closest to the middle divider and walked to the world of ​​the middle divider before reentering lane number three. According to a passing motorist, he threw objects at vehicles before being struck and killed by a Dodge Challenger, the CHP said.

The Challenger continued driving, but debris from the vehicle was recovered from the scene, CHP Officer Kylie Musselman said. Some of the debris had part numbers and the CHP was in a position to trace it to the owner.

Musselman said CHP officers also viewed video that showed the person on the road holding something in his hand before he was hit.

The CHP remains to be trying to find out why the person who was killed stopped his vehicle and was throwing objects on the roadway.

Anyone with information is asked to call the CHP Hayward office at 510-489-1500.

At the tip of a six-year-old case, a 30-year-old Vacaville man who was found guilty in 2023 of shooting his on-again, off-again girlfriend in a Vacaville garage told the court in an announcement that sounded familiar from other murder cases: “There is nothing I can say that will bring Samantha back.”

Gage Harold Pontarelli, shackled on the waist and legs and sitting on the defense table in Department 11 of Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield, added: “I wish I could go back in time and change my ways.”

Judge William J. Pendergast initially cited changes within the state's criminal code, but then said, “I cannot issue a sentence that will ease the pain” of oldsters and relatives still mourning the death of Samantha Jack, 22, of Elk Grove, who died within the early morning hours of July 22.

Pontarelli then announced the decision: 25 years to life imprisonment and suspended a further sentence of 25 years to life imprisonment, saying: “I do not excuse the use of a weapon.”

Looking directly at Pontarelli and his defense attorney, Matthew Siroka, the judge noted that the law requires Pontarelli to at some point be granted a parole hearing and that he will be released on parole if he “accepts responsibility for his crime. But he can also remain in prison for the rest of his life.”

Pontarelli was given 2,146 days – or nearly six years – credit for time served at Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield, and he’ll return to the Justice Center in Fairfield in the subsequent few days for a restitution hearing.

In addition to a motion for a retrial, which Pendergast denied after an hour of pleadings and rebuttals from Siroka and Assistant District Attorney Bill Ainsworth, the sentencing hearing included a dozen victim impact statements.

With tears in his eyes and gasping for breath as he sat next to Ainsworth, Brent Jack, Samantha's father, began his remarks by acknowledging the previous 11 statements, saying they “brought back memories of my daughter.”

He said testimony throughout the three-week trial, which begins in December 2022, “portrayed her as some kind of psychotic devil.”

Jack also acknowledged his own deep-seated emotions which were bubbling up inside him over the past six years, adding that he has realised “how hopelessly powerless I am – I can't stop the pain” that he and his family still feel.

He questioned a few of Siroka's statements about his daughter made during several days of hearings for a brand new trial. Jack also said he and his family are “not out for revenge,” but added, “We all desperately want to know what really happened that night.”

Jack recalled a number of the audio recordings heard throughout the trial and said his daughter's last words were “No! No!”

“I have a picture of what my daughter looked like at that moment,” he said.

Witnesses' statements indicated that after the shooting, Pontarelli didn’t administer first aid and left the garage, but he did call the Vacaville Police Department dispatch center.

Pontarelli, he said, “left her alone, like a dog on the side of the road. It's hard to forgive someone who doesn't seem to want to be forgiven.”

Jack wondered why Pontarelli ended up shooting his daughter when his parents were a great, honest role model based on “hard work and success.”

“I don't want to see him sitting here,” he said of Pontarelli, who sat expressionless throughout a lot of the hearing, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit.

The trial, Jack added, had taken its toll, but cited a metaphor: “Dragons can be slain” and hoped that a just verdict would “restore faith in the legal system.”

“You are the only one who can wield the sword of justice,” he said, looking directly at Pendergast.

Samantha Jack's mother Yvonne Zerbe gave the primary victim impact statement and her first memories were of a spiritual and “creative” daughter.

When she received the news of the fatal shooting, she said through tears and in a choked voice, “I wanted to die.”

She called the trial a “horror show” and attacked the Pontarell family.

“There was no excuse for the murder of my daughter,” Zerbe said.

During the trial, then-prosecutor and Assistant District Attorney Julie Underwood said that Samantha Jack's killing was “absolutely not an accident,” as then-defense attorney Jessica Agnich asserted.

Underwood told jurors that in the event that they listened back to audio from a neighbor's security camera – a key piece of evidence within the trial – they’d agree on 4 things: There was an argument and Pontarelli hit her; he “pointed a gun at her”; he heard a semi-automatic pistol “pull through,” meaning a bullet entered the chamber with a rattling sound; and that “he shot and killed her.”

She noted that Pontarelli “did not shed a single tear” as he checked out the autopsy photos or other visual evidence of the young woman he “supposedly loved.”

Underwood insisted that the case was “about murder” and never the lesser crimes of manslaughter or killing, citing statements Pendergast made during his initial instructions to the jury toward the tip of the trial.

Court records show that Vacaville police investigators imagine Pontarelli shot Jack within the early morning hours of July 22.

When police arrived, they found Jack lying unconscious on the bottom. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. She was pronounced dead on the scene with a suspected gunshot wound to the upper chest.

Pontarelli, who reportedly lived within the garage, was also on the scene. Officers said he said he had been arguing with Jack.

He was taken to the police station, questioned again, arrested, after which booked into the Solano County Jail on suspicion of murder.

Court records also showed he had no history of violence. However, he was arrested in 2016 in reference to a automotive break-in and automotive theft in downtown Vacaville.

Pontarelli, who stays in custody at Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield awaiting transfer to state prison, is scheduled to face a restitution hearing at 8:30 a.m. June 20 in Department 11 of the Justice Center in Fairfield.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho sheriff's deputy died after being shot by a driver during a traffic stop, and a person believed to be the shooting suspect was later fatally shot by police, the authorities said on Sunday.

Deputy Tobin Bolter, 27, was shot in Boise about 9 p.m. Saturday as he approached the motive force's window and the suspect fled, Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford said Sunday. Clifford said Bolter was the primary sheriff's deputy within the county to be killed within the line of duty.

Boise police found the suspect's vehicle unoccupied a few half hour after the shooting and located a person believed to be the suspect outside a house, Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said.

The police tactical unit responded and spent a while attempting to get the person to give up, Winegar said. Some nearby residents were asked to evacuate, but others in the world were warned to remain indoors, he said.

Shortly after midnight, the person shot at officers, and certainly one of the officers returned fire and shot him, Winegar said. Officers rendered him aid, but he was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital, he said.

The man's name was not released, but authorities said he was 65 years old and was being arrested on a misdemeanor charge.

At an emotional news conference shortly after Bolter's death on the hospital, Clifford thanked paramedics and the citizen who stopped to assist the deputy.

“I think it shows what kind of community we live in, where there are bad people doing bad things, but also good people who help us and come to our aid,” he said.

Bolter had worked in law enforcement for seven years but only joined the sheriff's office in January, Clifford said. He previously worked for the Meridian Police Department and the California Pleasant Hill Police Department.

Idaho Governor Brad Little ordered the United States and Idaho flags lowered to half-staff in Bolter's honor.

“Our hearts break for Deputy Tobin Bolter’s family, loved ones and fellow police officers,” Little said in a press release. “Every day, our brave men and women in blue put themselves in harm’s way to protect us and keep our communities safe. Idaho mourns this devastating loss.”