An Oregon elementary school teacher who fought a teenage gunman during a deadly school shooting earlier this month has broken her silence, describing the tragedy as a loss she will carry with her forever.
Cassidy Schutz, a certified learning specialist at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, released her first public statement Friday through Bend-La Pine Schools, just over two weeks after the Oct. 15 attack left three children and a teacher dead.
"There are no words to describe the depth of sadness I am feeling following the events of October 15th. This is not a story. This is a horrific and heartbreaking tragedy, and it is our real lives," Schutz said in the statement.
"My thoughts are with those who were lost, their families, those who were hurt, and those who were there that day. My heart is with you. It all happened so fast, and I wish with everything in me that we had more time. The pain of this loss I will carry with me forever."
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz previously credited Schutz with throwing her cellphone at the shooter and wrestling him for control of his shotgun during the attack.
Schutz also asked for privacy as she continues to heal.
"There are no words for this unimaginable reality we are facing. My focus is on these families, our team, our school, and my own healing," she said. "As I continue to navigate this, I ask that you please give me the time, space, and privacy I need to heal. I will not be making any additional public statements at this time."
The shooting unfolded when a 16-year-old former student entered the school and opened fire inside a classroom serving students with special needs, according to police.
Teacher Megan Lambert, 25, and three students, including 5-year-old Rhoam Summer and two other children, ages 8 and 11, were killed.
Drury previously told Fox News Digital she tried to close her classroom door after spotting the gunman but was shot before she could stop him from entering.
She suffered severe injuries to both arms and pretended to be dead to avoid being shot again before hero dad Kaylub Giamanco, 36, shot the attacker dead.
Death row inmate Christa Pike is speaking out one month after surviving Tennessee's attempt to execute her, saying she remains in constant pain and had never contemplated a life beyond the night she expected to die.
Pike, 50, described her condition in a statement dictated to her legal team and released Friday.
"One month ago on September 30, I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men’s prison prepared to die," Pike said. "I had made my peace."
Pike said she thanked those who had supported her through the years and told those who were there to witness her execution that she was "leaving them in loving kindness."
"Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain," Pike said. "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul."
Pike said she had never considered what her life would look like if she survived the execution.
"I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position," she said. "I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured."
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow participant in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville.
Her statement comes two days after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Pike remains incarcerated under state law and signaled that her death sentence is unlikely to change.
Pike's attorneys have called on Lee to commute her death sentence to life without parole after the failed execution.
Pike said Friday that she is recovering but remains in the infirmary at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been largely isolated from other people.
"I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger," Pike said. "But healing is not the same as being okay."
"Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me," she continued. "That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition."
Pike survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her by lethal injection on Sept. 30 after receiving two doses of pentobarbital and was rushed to a hospital.
She remained unconscious for days, and her attorneys at one point believed she was brain-dead and expected her to be taken off life support. Pike later regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital before being returned to prison.
She was 18 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and 19-year-old Shadolla Peterson were charged in Slemmer's killing. All four were participating in Job Corps at the time.
The three took Slemmer to a secluded area on the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus, where her throat was cut multiple times, she was struck in the head with a large piece of asphalt and a pentagram was carved into her chest.
Pike later confessed to her role in the killing. She was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, and the Tennessee Supreme Court later affirmed her convictions and sentence.
"I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next," she said. "Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone."
A dual U.S.-Salvadoran citizen from California accused of murdering a woman in front of their toddler son before abandoning the child near her remains has been extradited to El Salvador to face charges, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.
Michael Alejandro Castillo Murga, 27, of Beaumont, California, was handed over to Salvadoran authorities Wednesday to face charges of aggravated femicide and imperfect homicide in the 2019 killing.
The extradition marks the first time the U.S. has surrendered an American citizen to face prosecution for crimes committed in El Salvador, according to the DOJ.
Castillo Murga holds dual U.S. and Salvadoran citizenship.
Salvadoran authorities allege Castillo Murga picked up Melvi Fernanda Nájera Quezada, 23, and their son from her mother's home Jan. 31, 2019, supposedly to begin living together as a family.
Investigators allege he instead killed Nájera Quezada and abandoned their child near her body, which was discovered near a highway the next day.
An autopsy determined she died from severe bleeding caused by cuts to her neck and other wounds inflicted with a plastic knife, according to the DOJ.
Farmworkers discovered the boy, who was younger than 2, several days later in a rugged area near where his mother's body was found. He was severely dehydrated and starving with cuts on his face, insect bites and signs of abuse, authorities said.
Investigators linked Castillo Murga to the killing through cellphone location data and witness accounts. Authorities also said he sent his girlfriend a photograph showing bloodstains on his face and neck.
Prosecutors also accused Castillo Murga's grandmother and a lawyer of helping conceal evidence. According to the DOJ, the pair arranged for two people to clean blood from the interior and exterior of Castillo Murga's vehicle using water, car shampoo and vinegar, but they were unable to remove all the blood.
Castillo Murga escaped to Guatemala around Feb. 2, 2019, with assistance from his grandmother and lawyer before eventually entering the U.S., according to prosecutors.
U.S. Marshals arrested him in October 2024 in response to an extradition request from El Salvador.
Castillo Murga challenged his extradition in federal court, but a judge rejected his petition in November 2025 and denied a subsequent request to halt the transfer in September 2026.
A former Tennessee police chief who investigated the murder that sent Christa Pike to death row recalled the convicted killer being "ruthless" and "almost giddy" while describing the crime to investigators, as Gov. Bill Lee signaled her death sentence is unlikely to change after she survived a failed execution.
Pike, 50, survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her by lethal injection on Sept. 30 and has since returned to prison, raising questions about whether the state could attempt to put her to death again.
Lee addressed Pike's fate Wednesday, saying she remains incarcerated under Tennessee law.
"I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts," Lee said.
The governor's comments come as Pike's attorneys have called on Lee to commute her death sentence to life without parole following the failed execution.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow participant in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville.
Former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith, who was involved in the investigation, recently recalled Pike's demeanor while she was being questioned about the killing in the New York Post documentary "No Mercy: Christa Pike Unraveled."
"I heard somebody that was ruthless, without any remorse, almost giddy," Keith said. "You know, she was describing what took place, like, almost the sense that she was bragging about it."
Keith confirmed the comments to Fox News Digital, calling them "spot on." He described Pike in two words: "Pure evil."
Keith also recalled Pike openly talking about the killing after returning to the Job Corps.
"Pike, when she got back, you know, immediately had to express her joy with killing Colleen," Keith said in the documentary. "And then the very next day in class, she bragged again, talking about how she killed Colleen. She showed her shoes that had blood on them."
Pike was 18 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and 19-year-old Shadolla Peterson were charged in Slemmer's killing. All four were participating in the Job Corps at the time, court records show.
The three took Slemmer to a secluded area on the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus, where her throat was cut multiple times, she was struck in the head with a large piece of asphalt and a pentagram was carved into her chest.
Pike later confessed to her role in the killing, according to court records.
More than three decades later, Tennessee attempted to carry out that sentence on Sept. 30 after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay issued by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The execution attempt failed after Pike received two doses of pentobarbital, and she was taken to a hospital.
She remained unconscious for days, and her attorneys at one point believed she was brain-dead and expected her to be taken off life support. Pike later regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital before being returned to prison.
In a 2021 filing with the Tennessee Supreme Court, Pike's attorneys sought a certificate of commutation, pointing to her age at the time of Slemmer's murder as well as her history of childhood trauma, mental illness and brain damage.
New court documents reveal that the jury foreperson in Lindsay Clancy's trial sent a total of six notes to the judge before he declared a mistrial.
The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office included the notes in its opposition to Clancy's motion to dismiss the murder charges, making a number of statements regarding the holdout juror, who has been identified as Michael Desronvil.
Clancy, 36, faced three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, all under age 6, who were found strangled at the family's home in January 2023.
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on Friday, Sept. 4, after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, ending in an 11-1 divide.
Aug. 28: Jurors asked to see evidence items, "specifically, pill bottles and a knife."
Sept. 1: "After many hours of deliberation, we are unable to come to a unanimous verdict."
Sept. 2: "After much deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision."
Sept. 3: "A member of the jury is unable to follow the instructions regarding reasonable doubt. How should we proceed?"
Sept. 3: "Juror # [redacted] has made statements acknowledging doubt, but refuses to apply it to the verdict as the law states. This is why we cannot come to a unanimous decision."
Sept. 4: "With a heavy heart that we report that we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to."
The holdout juror, Desronvil, told Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany after the trial that he thought Clancy was "methodical" in what he called the "execution" of her children.
"That was really big for me, you know, from watching the video and also listening in the courtroom," he said. "The thought process that goes behind… to fulfill the commitment of doing that."
Through his attorney, Desronvil said he "didn’t have any doubts."
After the mistrial was declared, Lindsay Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, kept pushing for a further investigation into Desronvil, but his efforts were blocked by Sullivan.
In opposition to Clancy's motion to dismiss, the district attorney's office wrote that Sullivan was correct in his decision to reject a proposed investigation into the holdout juror.
"The Court was rightly concerned that a juror, summoned individually for a more 'meaningful and probing' colloquy with the judge, might feel pressured to change their position, and it was entitled to prioritize the avoidance of coercion over an inquiry into the dynamic giving rise to the foreperson's grievance," prosecutors wrote.
In response, Reddington maintained that the holdout juror wasn't following reasonable doubt and said a further inquiry could have provided grounds to remove him from the jury.
"The notes either clearly communicated that a member of the jury was not applying the law as instructed as to reasonable doubt or at the very least were so consistent with that conclusion as to require further judicial inquiry as a matter of law," Reddington said.
Reddington on Wednesday also disputed claims from Patrick Clancy's counsel that she would testify in a civil case against her healthcare providers, calling them false.
During a hearing Wednesday in Norfolk County Superior Court, attorney Howard Cooper said he expects Lindsay Clancy to testify in a lawsuit filed by her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, against her healthcare providers.
Patrick and Lindsay Clancy have each sued hospitals and healthcare providers, alleging that failures in her medical care contributed to the deaths of their three children.
"We believe that Lindsay Clancy, once her Fifth Amendment issues are resolved one way or the other, will testify that she told these defendants explicitly that she had homicidal ideation, that she was worried about something awful happening to her kids," Cooper said in court.
In a statement obtained by Fox News Digital, Reddington said his client has never said she'll testify, adding that she never told her healthcare providers that she had homicidal thoughts toward her children.
"It has come to my attention that counsel for Patrick Clancy represented to the court in his civil case that my client, Lindsay Clancy, will testify about statements she made to her healthcare providers," Reddington said. "Lindsay Clancy never told any of her healthcare providers that she harbored homicidal ideation toward her children. She never indicated that she intended to testify in Mr. Clancy's lawsuit, and no one acting for her ever represented that she would."
"Mr. Clancy's counsel does not speak for Lindsay Clancy," he added.
Attorneys representing the hospitals and healthcare providers have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuits, arguing that Lindsay Clancy never disclosed having homicidal thoughts to those treating her.
On Thursday, Clancy's attorneys also filed its response to the district attorney regarding its motion to dismiss on grounds of double jeopardy, arguing that if there was further inquiry into the lone holdout juror, there would have been grounds to remove him from the jury.
A DNA breakthrough has solved the 52-year-old murder of a Utah police chief's teenage daughter, and the cold-case detective who helped crack it says notorious serial killer Ted Bundy could have other victims investigators do not even know about.
Melissa Ann Smith, 17, the daughter of then-Midvale Police Chief Louis Smith, was found dead in 1974. For decades, investigators suspected Bundy but lacked the evidence needed to definitively tie him to her murder.
That changed in July, when DNA evidence in the killing of another 17-year-old Utah girl, Laura Ann Aime, was matched to Bundy, allowing investigators to compare evidence preserved from Smith's case for more than half a century.
"There may be more victims out there that we're not even aware of, and I think there's always been that speculation," Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Detective Ben Pender told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
Pender, a 35-year law enforcement veteran assigned to the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office unsolved homicide and missing person unit, said investigators plan to preserve the evidence that helped solve Smith's murder so it can potentially be used in other cases.
"We're gonna hold on to this evidence, and we're gonna utilize it in cases that we believe may be connected to see if we can't resolve not only our case, but anybody else who may have a case with Bundy," Pender said.
Smith's body was discovered by hunters on Oct. 27, 1974, in a wooded area near the border of Summit and Salt Lake counties.
"These cases that are unsolved are unsolved, in my opinion, for a reason, and because they are extremely difficult to solve," Pender said.
Although investigators had long suspected Bundy, similarities between Smith's killing and his other crimes were not enough to definitively tie him to her death.
Investigators needed evidence establishing that Bundy was responsible rather than relying on a similar method of operation, Pender said.
"DNA is not always the answer, but it definitely is a piece that's missing a lot of times in these cases that, with everything else with the case, will maybe bring that together," Pender said.
The break investigators needed ultimately came from the Aime case.
Aime vanished after leaving a Halloween party to buy cigarettes on Oct. 31, 1974. Her body was discovered by hikers near American Fork Canyon days later, and investigators determined she had been raped, strangled and murdered.
Bundy was considered the prime suspect for decades, but authorities lacked evidence conclusively tying him to the killing.
Investigators eventually developed a DNA profile from evidence in Aime's case that was linked to Bundy. Remaining evidence from her case then gave investigators an opportunity to compare it with evidence preserved from Smith's killing.
Pender said investigators had retained reports and evidence from the original Smith investigation, including evidence collected during her postmortem examination.
Utah County investigators reached out to Summit County after the breakthrough in the Aime case to determine whether the remaining evidence could help resolve Smith's murder. Summit County then turned to Pender because Salt Lake County had maintained evidence from the 1974 investigation.
Investigators worked with the Utah Bureau of Forensic Services to compare DNA evidence from the two cases and determined the profiles matched.
The DNA findings, combined with evidence involving Bundy's pattern, motive, means and opportunity, led authorities to conclude Bundy killed Smith and formally close her case Tuesday, 52 years to the day after her body was found.
The breakthrough would not have been possible without evidence preserved by investigators for more than five decades.
"It's extremely important, in all of these cases, to preserve the evidence," Pender said. "We, in all homicide cases, we maintain that evidence forever."
"We don't ever get rid of that, even if a case is resolved or solved, and we don't get rid of it for this very reason," he added.
But Pender cautioned that solving one decades-old murder through DNA does not mean investigators can simply run every unsolved killing potentially connected to Bundy through a database.
Each case is different. Some have DNA evidence while others do not, and evidence collected decades ago may have degraded, been handled before investigators understood the importance of preserving DNA or contain genetic material from multiple people.
"Back then, DNA wasn't a thing, so nobody knew of it," Pender said.
Advances in forensic technology continue to give investigators new opportunities to examine old evidence, but the limitations of individual cases remain.
Pender said his caseload includes 34 unsolved homicides and 14 adult missing person cases in which investigators suspect foul play. He stressed that those cases are not believed to be connected to Bundy, with one notable exception.
Nancy Wilcox remains missing, and Pender said Bundy confessed to killing her. Her body has never been recovered, preventing investigators from closing the case based solely on his confession.
Smith's case, Pender said Tuesday, "does not close the book on Ted Bundy."
Investigators intend to continue working on Wilcox's disappearance and preserve the Bundy evidence for any other cases in which it could prove useful.
Other cases potentially tied to Bundy could also yield new answers through DNA, Pender said.
"I think it's definitely possible," Pender said. "It just depends on what information other agencies maybe have in their particular cases."
Pender emphasized that cooperation among law enforcement agencies was critical to solving Smith's murder, with Summit, Salt Lake and Utah counties working alongside the state crime lab.
"It's more about the victim, right? It's about the victim, the family, the community, it's about resolving the case," Pender said.
Bundy killed at least 30 women and girls across multiple states during the 1970s, though investigators have long suspected his true victim count could be higher.
He confessed to dozens of murders before his death, including crimes that had previously been unknown to police, but not every killing attributed to him has been independently confirmed.
Bundy was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering two Florida State University students in 1979 and received another death sentence the following year for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.
Nearly four decades later, Pender said it still matters that investigators prove which crimes Bundy actually committed rather than simply attributing unresolved murders to one of America's most notorious serial killers.
"It is very important that we always make sure of who we are suspecting, or have accused, or have confirmed that it's actually that person, regardless of the number of killings or murders that Ted Bundy committed," Pender said. "It's still important that we connect them the right way, and we don't just … throw everything on to Ted Bundy that we're not quite sure of."
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