Mourners pack funeral for 8 of 20 killed in NY limo crash
AMSTERDAM, N.Y. — Mourners at a funeral for four sisters and their family members killed in a New York limousine crash were assured Saturday that their loved ones can still see their tears and feel their heartache.
On a damp, chilly day, hundreds of people packed the pews of an old brick church in Amsterdam at the service for eight of the 20 people killed last Saturday when the limousine they hired for a 30th birthday celebration crashed. The stretch limo barreled down a hill past a stop sign into another vehicle in the parking lot. All 17 passengers and the driver were killed, as well as two pedestrians standing in the parking lot.
“The question that is in the hearts of so many is: Why?” The Rev. O. Robert DeMaritnis told hundreds of mourners. “Why did these 20 individuals have to be taken from us so quickly and so unexpectedly?”
DeMaritnis spoke on an altar flanked by pictures of Allison King, sister Abigail Jackson and her husband Adam Jackson, sister Mary Dyson and her husband Robert Dyson, sister Amy Steenburg and her husband Axel Steenburg and his older brother, Richard Steenburg.
Urns containing their remains were placed beneath the pictures, with each of the three married couples sharing urns. Five teddy bears lay by the urns, one for each young child who lost a parent.
IS militants abduct scores of civilians in eastern Syria
BEIRUT — The Islamic State group stormed a settlement for displaced people in eastern Syria and abducted scores of civilians in the latest attack by the extremists on civilians, a U.S.-backed Syrian force and a war monitor said on Saturday.
The area in Syria’s eastern Deir el-Zour province has been witnessing days of intense clashes between IS and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces amid bad weather and low visibility.
The SDF said in a statement that the fighting on Friday in the Hajin camp for the displaced left 20 IS gunmen and “several” SDF fighters dead. It added that IS gunmen seized civilians by force and took them to areas in the last pocket of territory they control in the region.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s war, said as many as 130 families were abducted by the extremists. The Observatory warned that IS might kill them.
The Observatory said the families are mostly made up of foreign women, including widows of IS members who had been killed earlier in the Syrian war.
Since IS lost most of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq over the past two years, the extremists have been resorting to attacks on civilians to show that they are still effective.
Bloomberg’s New Hampshire event fuels White House bid talk
NASHUA, N.H. — A quick stop by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Saturday in the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House is sparking more speculation about a possible White House bid by the billionaire media company founder and gun safety advocate.
Bloomberg was the main attraction at the get-out-the-vote rally for six candidates running for New Hampshire’s state House of Representatives. The event was organized by Moms Demand Action, an arm of Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety organization set up after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.
Bloomberg’s trip came just days after he re-registered as a Democrat after years as a Republican and an independent. Asked by The Associated Press if he has any timetable for deciding on a presidential bid, he said “right now I’m focused on November 6, plain and simple.”
But he added that after the midterm elections, “we’ll see what happens down the road.”
Speaking in front of dozens of Moms Demand Action activists, many of them wearing the group’s red T-shirts, Bloomberg told the crowd “together, Moms Demand and Everytown have landed some big punches against the NRA. We haven’t knocked them out yet, not by a longshot, but we’ve got them on the ropes. And while we’re getting stronger and stronger every day, they’re getting weaker.”