More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Colorado judge on Thursday granted a defence request to delay the criminal case against two Colorado funeral home operators accused of letting nearly 200 corpses decay, in some cases for years, angering some families of the deceased who are eager for the case to be resolved.
Jon and Carie Hallford are now scheduled to enter pleas to the numerous felony charges they face in June, with a tentative trial date in October. That would be a year after the corpses were discovered in a decrepit, bug-infested building.
Prosecutors did not object to the defense request for a delay, which attorneys for the couple said was necessary to prepare their case.
“Every single time this is postponed or this is dragged out, it just reopens that whole wound all over again,” said Heather DeWolf after the hearing. She wore a shirt with a photo of her son, Zach DeWolf, who died aged 33 in 2020. His remains were handled by the Hallford's funeral home but haven't yet been identified among the bodies that were found.
Before a previous hearing, DeWolf confronted Jon Hallford outside the court room, demanding: “What have you done with my son? Where is my son?”
DeWolf said Thursday that she’s living through “the deepest sorrow that I have ever experienced in my life.”
The Hallfords were arrested in Oklahoma in November and accused of corpse abuse, falsifying death certificates and sending fake ashes to families.
They operated Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and a storage facility in the small Rocky Mountain town of Penrose where the bodies were found. They also face charges of money laundering, and prosecutors say they spent payments received from families of the deceased on cryptocurrency, a $1,500 dinner in Las Vegas and two vehicles with a combined worth over $120,000.
The disturbing details of the case left families grasping for answers, their grieving processes shattered after the deaths of sons, grandmothers and parents. Some have said they can't shake thoughts of what their decaying relatives' bodies must have looked like.
It's one of several criminal cases to rock Colorado's funeral industry. One funeral home was accused of selling body parts between 2010 and 2018, and last month, the owner of another funeral business in Denver was arrested after authorities say he left a woman's body in the back of a hearse for over a year and hoarded cremated remains at his home.
The horror stories follow years of inaction by state lawmakers to bring Colorado's lax funeral home regulations up to par with the rest of the country. The state does not conduct routine inspections of funeral homes and has no educational requirements for funeral home directors — they don't need a high school degree, let alone a degree in mortuary science, or to pass an exam.
Colorado lawmakers have proposed bills to overhaul funeral home oversight. They would require routine inspections and hefty licensing requirements for funeral home directors and other industry roles.
Concerns over the mishandling of bodies at the Hallfords' funeral home were raised by a county coroner more than three years before the 190 bodies were discovered.
Prosecutors previously said Jon Hallford expressed concerns about getting caught as far back as 2020 and suggested getting rid of the bodies by dumping them in a big hole, then treating them with lye or setting them on fire.
The Hallfords each face about 190 counts of abuse of a corpse, along with charges of theft, money laundering and forgery.
Carie Hallford's attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment on the case. Jon Hallford is being represented by an attorney from the public defenders' office, which does not comment on cases.
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”