Free Republic

Her death triggered fears for New Yorkers and visitors alike, and now it's been revealed just how the woman who fell into an open manhole in midtown Manhattan died. Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Donike Gocaj parked her SUV on the side of 52nd Street near Fifth Avenue, out front of the Cartier store. The 56-year-old got out of her vehicle, closed the door -- and fell into an uncovered 10-foot-deep manhole. Gocaj died from her injuries in what Con Edison said was a freak accident. The utility company said surveillance footage suggests a large truck dislodged a manhole cover...

STATESBORO, Georgia; ANDERSON, South Carolina––The 2026 record pace of fatal dog attacks, especially pit bull attacks, remains ahead of the 2025 pace, when dogs killed 84 Americans, 64 of whom were killed by pit bulls. Pit bulls in the two weeks of May 2026 killed two babies in reported incidents. Other dogs are unknown to have killed anyone. The deaths of the two infants brought the total number of U.S. fatal dog attacks for the year to 32, 23 by pit bull. " . . .The first May 2026 pit bull victim, Lillian Drue Bradford Harris, of Statesville, Georgia, “was...

More than 1,700 people are trapped aboard a cruise ship docked in France after a 90-year-old passenger died from suspected norovirus — just days after a separate virus killed three and sickened multiple others on a different cruise. Passengers and crew traveling on the Ambassador Cruise Line are being forced to remain on the vessel after arriving in Bordeaux on Tuesday, French authorities said. The quarantine comes after an elderly passenger died after roughly 50 people started showing symptoms of norovirus — a highly contagious stomach virus that causes diarrhea and vomiting. The ship, which is carrying mostly British and...

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner will take up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury this week. Horner will rot away at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state’s death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison Tuesday within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a...

A few days ago, I wrote about hate being the lifeblood of the democrat party. Things have gone downhill quickly since then. Let's get right to it. Almost six years ago, the late and great Scott Adams said Republicans will be hunted. That was prescient. Then the other day I saw a post from Elon Musk on X. In it he said"If they’re willing to die to assassinate, imagine what they will do if they gain political power"Indeed. We are in war. A declared war. A not-so-civil war. On April 22 Hakeem Jeffries declared war on Republicans: “We are in...

In December I listened to an interview with Ben Sasse that stopped me in my tracks. And another in February. And another recently. That last one in particular not only challenged me, but ultimately has shifted something deep in me. It’s not hyperbole to say that I think Ben Sasse is currently the most interesting person in the world. Ben Sasse, the former senator from Nebraska, former president of the University of Florida, a man who by any measure had built the kind of life most people spend their whole careers chasing, sat in the most recent interview across from...

How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? I sat down with the former Republican senator Ben Sasse to hear how he is facing his own mortality after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. For Sasse, cancer brings pain, but also clarity, sharpening his focus on the state of our politics, his wife and three children, and the God he expects to shortly meet.

Google Engineer Jumps to His Death from 14th Floor of Company-s NYC HQ A Google engineer has jumped to his death from the 14th floor of the company headquarters in New York City in what appears to be an apparent suicide. The man, who has not yet been named, was found on the ground on Thursday’s 15th Street side of the building. Police found the man unconscious after receiving multiple phone calls about the incident. The Google engineer was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he later died. The officer discovered handprints on the 14th-floor ledge, according to one source speaking...

Prediction market Kalshi has drawn outrage for refusing to pay out winnings on a $54 million trade related to the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many bettors assumed they had won big on wagers that Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader” by Saturday after he was killed in joint US-Israeli air strikes over the weekend. But Kalshi – an American prediction market that allows users to bet on politics, sports, foreign affairs and pop culture – announced it would not be paying out any winnings on those wagers, since its guidelines prohibit markets “directly tied to...

Several conservative House Republicans are demanding the immediate resignation of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) following the release of damning leaked text messages. The scandal centers on a series of leaked communications between Gonzales and Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old regional district director for his office. She died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire at her home; her death was ruled a suicide by the Bexar County medical examiner’s office. As The Gateway Pundit reported last year, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a married father of six, is accused of carrying on an extramarital affair with his senior aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, who...

A forensic pathologist who was present at Jeffrey Epstein’s post-mortem has called for a reinvestigation into the disgraced financier’s death, arguing that it was more consistent with strangulation than suicide by hanging.

Child sex charges continue to pile up against an illegal alien soccer coach accused of sexually attacking and murdering one of his players. Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 44, an illegal immigrant "gotaway" from El Salvador, faces more child sex charges after he was charged with raping and murdering a teen boy he coached. He was also charged with sodomy and oral copulation with a minor under 16. Garcia-Aquino, after entering the United States, established himself in the San Fernando Valley as a soccer coach. His work managing these teams made him a visitor of Whitsett Fields Park in North Hollywood, where...

A Texas fugitive wore an ominous sweatshirt threatening to abduct people as he was arrested in connection with the “suspicious” death of a 37-year-old woman. Kruz Dean Wanser was charged with felony tampering/fabricate physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and parole violation, officials announced Thursday. Wanser was wanted by the Azle Police, the Texas Rangers and the US Marshals after Margaret Pennington was found dead in her Azle home last Sunday. Officials had offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to Wanser’s arrest on...

Cleveland, OH — Preterm Cleveland, the infamous abortion operation that killed Lakisha Wilson in 2014 and has continued harming women, first announced its search for a new medical director last September on social media. Just one month before Preterm admitted the vacancy, Operation Rescue reported shocking new details regarding a woman described by Preterm staff as “not breathing after a surgical procedure” when they called 911 to request emergency transport. The incident took place in November 2024, but it took months to gather intel, request records, and finally obtain the 911 audio records and computer-aided-dispatch report. Complaints have also been...

As RedState reported, there was a leftist blockade attempt earlier in a Minnesota neighborhood that turned violent after an anti-ICE agitator appeared to hit an agent conducting immigration enforcement operations with her SUV, resulting in shots being fired that left the woman dead. The woman has been identified as 37-year-old Renee Good. In the aftermath of the incident, Democrats in the state went nuts in fanning the flames, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz both blaming ICE for what happened without bothering to wait for (nor actually caring about) the actual facts. Walz even announced he'll call...

[Catholic Caucus] Memento mori: the Kim family and Micah’s witness to the worldI, like many other Catholics, follow the social media accounts of priests, writers and lay people for clarity, humour, and the quiet reassurance that I am not alone in how I see the world.Paul J. Kim is one such account. His content is light yet profound, catechetical without being heavy, and funny without being flippant. With shared East Asian roots, his family Korean American and my father Hong Kong Chinese, I found in the Kims a comfortable familiarity and an aspirational faith lived with joy, orthodoxy and warmth....

Lord Falconer, the sponsor of the assisted suicide Bill in the House of Lords, has said that “pregnancy should not be a bar” to receiving state assisted suicide under his assisted suicide Bill. Lord Falconer made the comment during the third Committee stage sitting of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the House of Lords, which would legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for those with a prognosis of six months or less. Lord Falconer made the comment in response to Lord Mackinlay’s question concerning whether or not pregnant women should be eligible for assisted suicide...

All three defendants charged in a triple homicide in Coon Rapids have now been convicted by juries, following the Dec. 12 conviction of Omari Malik Shumpert on multiple murder charges. According to court records, Shumpert was convicted on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder under an aiding and abetting theory, three counts of first-degree murder with intent while committing a felony, and three counts of second-degree murder with intent. He was acquitted on one additional count of first-degree premeditated murder. All charges stem from a Jan. 26, 2024, home-invasion shooting at a residence on 94th Avenue Northwest in Coon Rapids...

"MACON COUNTY, Ga. (WGXA) — On Saturday, December 6, 2025, the Oglethorpe Police Department received a report from the Macon County Sheriff’s Office regarding a possible dog bite incident involving a victim being transported for medical care. DID YOU HEAR? | Peach County sheriff investigates video showing heated exchange between student and SRO Investigators determined that Raphael Woolfork was attacked by three pit bull dogs while walking on Chatham Street in Oglethorpe. A nearby citizen intervened and transported Woolfork to a location where Emergency Medical Services could assist him. While receiving medical treatment, Woolfork appeared to go into cardiac arrest...

The death of a Royal Caribbean passenger has been ruled a homicide after crew members allegedly served him nearly three-dozen drinks at the ship’s bar before he died, according to a new lawsuit. Michael Virgil, 35, was served 33 drinks at one of the ship’s bars on the day he died in custody in December 2024, according to a wrongful death lawsuit recently filed by his fiancé and obtained by TMZ. Virgil was detained during a drunken rage, in which he allegedly attacked and threatened to kill crew members and passengers. But he died within hours after being restrained and...