[RogerButton33]

The story of this man's senseless death really saddens me ...

Circumstances Made Him a Hero,
and Then Cost Him His Life


John Marshall Mantel Cynthia Allen, center, whose son, Damon Allen, was killed by gunfire in the street,
was consoled outside her apartment building in Brooklyn by a friend, Cynthia Gomillion, left,
and Karen Tapper, whose daughter, Imani McCovery, Mr. Allen saved during a fire a year ago.
NY TIMES
By MARC SANTORA
September 5, 2006
A sanitation worker who caught a 4-year-old girl last year as she was thrown to safety from a burning building was shot in the head and killed early yesterday on a Brooklyn street, the police said.
The man, Damon Allen, 33, was once again trying to help others, the police and witnesses said, urging them to take cover from the crossfire of a gun battle that erupted around 2 a.m. in Crown Heights.
Damon Allen

In homes and on streets across the neighborhood, thousands of revelers, some in costume, some playing steel drums, were celebrating J’ouvert, a celebration held every year on the eve of the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade.
“Nearly one year ago, Damon Allen was the city’s hero for saving the life of a little girl,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said to reporters at the parade yesterday. “Today he lies dead, the victim of an apparent random shooting.”
Three others were shot, and two of them remained in critical condition at Kings County Hospital Center, according to the police, who did not release their names.

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
Damon Allen's Sanitation Department valor medal and work boots outside his Brooklyn apartment.
The violence may have been sparked by a dispute over a robbery nearby; by all accounts, Mr. Allen had nothing to do with the dispute.
There have been no arrests in the case, but the police said they believed that at least two people fired shots because two guns were found at the scene, one a .40-caliber automatic weapon and the other a pistol.
Mr. Allen had been attending a birthday party for a friend on Prospect Place, the street where he was shot, witnesses said.
Because of past problems during J’ouvert, which originated in a commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies in the 19th century, the police presence in the area was heavier than normal. During the parade itself, someone was shot in the leg and another person was stabbed at a different location, the police said. Both were expected to survive.
Before the violence in the morning, police officers stopped by the house on Prospect Place where the birthday party was taking place around 1:15 a.m. to warn the people there of suspicious activity nearby, including a robbery on Nostrand Avenue, according to a witness who declined to be quoted by name, expressing fear of becoming a target. Shortly after the police left, the witness said, several strangers approached the house and tried to get in.
They were told to leave and they did, but they lingered outside. The host of the party was growing anxious and tired and asked all the guests to go home.
The guests, including Mr. Allen and other neighbors and family and friends, filed into the street just before 2 a.m.
A cousin of Mr. Allen’s, Debbie Griffin, who lives a block from where the shooting happened, said that as everyone was leaving, she heard sustained bursts of gunfire.
“I ran around the corner,” she said. “They are yelling out names. ‘He’s hit! She’s hit!’ ”
Other witnesses said that Mr. Allen reacted quickly, telling several young women near him to hit the ground.
A similar account was given by Vito A. Turso, a deputy sanitation commissioner, who was briefed about the death.
“He cautioned everyone to get down,” Mr. Turso said. “And as he was doing so, he was hit in the head.”
Ms. Griffin said that almost immediately after the gunfire, more than a dozen police officers were chasing after people.
“I have never seen a sea of blue like that,” she said. Then she heard someone scream: “A man is down. A man is down.” The next thing she heard was someone else shout: “It’s Damon. It’s Damon.”
As the ambulance took Mr. Allen to the hospital, his mother, Cynthia Allen, ran after it, screaming for her son, witnesses said. Mr. Allen was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
Yesterday there were pools of blood on both sides of Prospect Place. Smashed glass littered the street and cars sat on airless tires, punctured by bullets.
Mr. Allen lived a block away with his mother. Yesterday, she was inside during the parade, wailing uncontrollably. Her daughter, Natasha Allen, 26, a student at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, tried to comfort her.
“From what I understand, he was looking out for others instead of looking out for himself,” she said, before taking a reporter up to her brother’s room.
There, hanging on the wall, he kept a blue-and-gold medal, a citation for valor he was given by the city last year after saving the 4-year-old, Imani McCovery.
Last Sept. 14, Mr. Allen and his partner, Michael Kalinowski, were returning to the sanitation garage around 4 a.m. when they noticed smoke pouring out of a nearby building and heard frantic cries for help.
They made their way to the building, where the girl’s panicked father was holding her over a third-story balcony. Mr. Allen had the father toss the girl down to him and caught her. His partner then helped the father down.
Mr. Kalinowski, in an interview yesterday, recalled that they both just reacted on instinct. “We didn’t think like we wanted to be a hero or nothing like that,” he said.
Mr. Kalinowski, who continued to work with Mr. Allen picking up trash in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn several days a week, said that Mr. Allen often talked about his two daughters, who are 5 and 13.
“He was basically just a real nice guy,” Mr. Kalinowski said. “He wouldn’t put himself around bad people, and that is why this is so devastating to so many people. We couldn’t believe it.”
Karen Tapper, 35, the mother of the young girl Mr. Allen saved from the building, said that she had kept in touch with him ever since that day. She reflected that without Mr. Allen, she might not have a daughter today.
But while he was there to save her life, she said, “Nobody was there to save his.”
Diane Cardwell and Ann Farmer contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
+++++
MARKOWITZ HONORS BROOKLYN SANITATION HEROES
Brooklyn Sanitation Workers Damon Allen and Michael Kalinowski
Receive Citations at Borough Hall

Photograph by Kathryn Kirk
In photo: Borough President Markowitz presents sanitation workers Damon Allen (left) and Michael Kalinowski (right) citations.
On Thursday, December 8, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz honored Brooklyn Department of Sanitation workers Damon Allen and Michael Kalinowski who helped 5 year-old Emani McCovery and her father Damion Whyte escape from a raging fire at 4:00 a.m. on September 14.
“Damon Allen and Michael Kalinowski embody the Brooklyn attitude of courage and caring,” said Borough President Markowitz. “They put themselves at great personal risk to rescue five-year-old Emani and her father, who were trapped in a blaze so intense that three firefighters were injured while putting it out. They didn’t have to do this but they did it because it was the right thing to do. Their actions inspire us, by displaying the best of humanity and the best of public service as well. They have earned our utmost gratitude and deepest admiration. Truly, they make every Brooklynite proud.”
The two rookies of New York’s Strongest were heading back to the Brooklyn District 17 garage when they saw flames shooting out of an apartment building on Remsen Avenue in Canarsie. They ran towards frantic cries for help from a third story apartment. As flames shot out of the window, Whyte balanced himself and dropped his daughter from the balcony into the waiting arms of Crown Heights’ resident Allen. Meanwhile, Kalinowski, a resident of Bensonhurst, helped Whyte jump to the ground. The fire was so intense that three firefighters were injured extinguishing the blaze.
+++++
Acts of Bravery Honored
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR-426-05
November 16, 2005
Gold Medals of Honor Winners
At 4 A.M. on September 14, 2005 while on their way back to the Brooklyn District 17 garage, Sanitation Workers Damon Allen and Michael Kalinowski - who were emptying litter baskets - saw flames shooting out of an apartment building and heard frantic cries for help. As they ran toward the building, a panicked father was dangling his young daughter from the third floor fire escape. The flames were shooting out of the window, as the father balanced himself and dropped his daughter from the balcony, into the waiting arms of Sanitation Worker Allen. Meanwhile, Sanitation Worker Kalinowski helped the father jump to the ground before the flames intensified. The fire was so intense that three firefighters were injured extinguishing the blaze.

+++++

Rookie Sanit Workers Rescue
Child From Burning Building


Photos by Mike Castelano
Sanitation workers Michael Kalinowski (left) and Damon Allen
stand in front of burnt out Remsen Avenue building
from which they helped rescue a child in the pre-dawn
hours on September 14.

Canarsie Courier
By Neil S. Friedman
Sept. 22, 2005

Two rookie New York City Depart-ment of Sanitation workers made a special pickup last week when they helped rescue a four-year-old girl from a burning East Flatbush building at 431 Remsen Avenue.

Damon Allen, 31, of Crown Heights, and Michael Kalinowski, 25, of Bensonhurst, who have only been on the job since July 18, were in the middle of their overnight shift collecting trash from DSNY litter baskets on September 14 when they spotted a burning building at 431 Remsen Avenue.


Sanit workers stand with
stepfather of rescued girl.

In a telephone interview with the Canarsie Courier on Tuesday, Allen said he was driving the truck when Kalinowski spotted flames shooting from the windows of the three-story building. They stopped the truck to see if they could help. Allen, the father of two children, rushed towards the building as his partner called their Brooklyn South garage at East 105th Street and Avenue D.

Allen said he saw a man and a child on a third-floor fire escape, shouting, “Somebody catch my daughter!”

The sanitation workers advised the man, Damon Whyte, the girl’s stepfather, to try to climb down the fire escape as far as he could before dropping her.
He managed to get down one flight and prepared to drop 55-pound Imani McCovery into Allen’s arms.

“I braced myself and got in position, then told him to drop her,” Allen said.
The frightened child fell safely into his arms and was crying, but Allen said he assured her everything was all right.

Whyte then climbed down the fire escape to safety as the two-alarm blaze engulfed the building near East 58th Street. Other residents also managed to escape. Firefighters reportedly got the blaze under control in less than an hour. Three firefighters and two civilians sustained minor injuries according to media reports.

“The stepfather came over and thanked us for our help,” Kalinowski explained.

The grateful stepfather later posed for photographs with the rescuers.

Despite their modest admission that they are not heroes, a DSNY spokesperson told the Courier Allen and Kalinowski are being recommended for acknowledgment of their heroic effort.

+++++



'They stole a father, a son, a good friend'

NY DAILY NEWS
BY MADISON J. GRAY, MIKE JACCARINO,
SCOTT SHIFREL and NANCY DILLON
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
September 5th, 2006

A sanitation worker who became a Daily News Hero of the Month for catching a little girl dropped from a burning building was killed yesterday in the crossfire of a Brooklyn gun battle as he tried to save others.

Even in his final moments, Strongest member Damon Allen acted like one of New York's Finest - warning fellow bystanders to "Get down!" as the barrage of bullets tore through Prospect Place in Crown Heights.

Three other men were wounded as some 50 bullets were fired from at least four guns.

"He was a beautiful, warm-hearted son," said devastated mom, Cynthia Allen, 50. "If I had known [sooner], I would have donated his heart because he was such a good person."

"I'm going to miss him like crazy," she said, shortly before a tearful embrace with the mother of the little girl her son saved last September.

"If it wasn't for him, my daughter would not be here. She would have burned up in that fire," said Karen Tapper, 35, of Brooklyn. "He was a doll. I thank God he was there at that moment. He just wanted to help people."

Damon Allen, 33, a father of two daughters, was a rookie in the city Sanitation Department when he and partner Michael Kalinowski noticed the house fire at Remsen Ave. near E. 58th St. in Canarsie last Sept. 14.

"I said, 'Let's go over there,' " Kalinowski recalled yesterday. "Damon said, 'Yeah, let's go see if we can help.' "

With Allen's arms stretched toward the fire escape and Kalinowski's arms braced underneath, stepdad Damion Whyte shimmied down a ladder to the second floor and dropped little Emani McCovery, now 5, to the courageous strangers.


Damon Allen was honored by The News
and the city for saving 4-year-old
Emani McCovery from a raging fire.

The duo caught the 30-pound girl and then helped catch the stepdad. Whyte ran to Allen and hugged him, saying, "You saved my daughter's life!"
The two became fast friends, meeting on a regular basis to share a drink and a laugh - and brag about their daughters.

"He lived for his job. And he talked about his girls. He wanted to buy a house. He wanted to support his kids," Whyte said of Allen's daughters, Imani, 5, and Vanasia, 13.

"Damon always thought of others before himself. He had a heart of gold," Kalinowski recalled. "Whoever did this, they're miserable people. They stole a father, a son and a good friend. They made the world a less happy place.

"He's a guy who was always bringing joy and happiness to people."


Allen in undated photo
with his daughter Imani

Allen was one of four men shot outside a huge house party about 1:30 a.m. One victim was hospitalized in critical condition, but the other two were expected to survive, sources said.

Cops questioned two men in connection with the shooting, which came just days after another sanitation worker was killed in a tragic accident, sources said.

Recovered at the scene were a .38-caliber revolver and a .40-caliber handgun modified for .45-caliber ammunition, a source said. Cops also found a high-speed .45-caliber magazine that appeared to fit an automatic or semiautomatic weapon, Mayor Bloomberg said.

"Unfortunately, despite the wonderful things that are taking place in this city, tragedies still befall our city," he said, calling Allen a "hero in the truest sense of the word."

One party attendee said the live deejay music and dancing came to an abrupt halt shortly after the hostess asked two party-crashers to leave and warned partygoers that a robbery had occurred on the street.

"I heard a burst of about 15 shots, a pause and then another burst," said neighbor, Val Krick, 53. "It was pandemonium, mayhem in general."

Friends quickly dialed Allen's sister, who was staying with their mom a few blocks away. Her panicked mother ran to the scene in her bare feet.

Last night, 150 people attended a solemn candlelight vigil outside Allen's St. Marks Ave. home.

"I can't describe how I feel fight now. It feels like a part of me just died," his sister Natasha Allen, 26, said. "[My brother] paid the ultimate price for someone else's stupidity."

With Lisa L. Colangelo and Ernie Naspretto
All contents © 2006 Daily News, L.P.
**********

[Seeseeskeva]

Two Suspects Arrested In Shooting Death
Of Hero Sanitation Worker

NY 1
Sept. 05, 2006

Two suspects were arrested Tuesday in the shooting death of a hero sanitation worker.

Police arrested 23-year-old Anthony Williams of Brooklyn on murder charges related to the shooting of 33-year-old Damon Allen, who was killed after leaving a party in Crown Heights.

Police say Allen was shot on the same block in prospect heights where Williams committed an armed robbery.

"After he did the robbery, he was chased by residents and people from the block," said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "He came back to retaliate, as people happened to be coming out of the party. He began shooting. He himself was shot by another individual who had a gun."

A second, undisclosed suspect was also arrested.

Police are investigating whether other shooters may have been involved.

Allen was honored late last year when he and another sanitation worker saved a four-year-old child, thrown from a fire escape at a burning building in Canarsie.

He leaves behind two children.

++++++++++

NY1's Shazia Khan filed the following report.

A visibly shaken Cynthia Allen mourned the loss of her son Damon Allen Monday. Police say he was killed in a crossfire of 50 bullets Saturday night, as he was leaving a party in his neighborhood in Crown Heights.

"When he heard the gun shots, the people that was around him he just told them to get down," said Cynthia Allen.

"He would help everybody. There was nothing that you would ask that he wouldn't do," said family friend Chamaine Lucas-Jones. "He was a person that you could rely on, and he will be missed."

Family and friends say Allen died doing what he did best, helping others.

New Yorkers were first introduced to Allen last December, when the 33-year-old rookie sanitation worker was honored along with his colleague for rescuing a family from a burning building. Allen caught a 4-year-old girl tossed from a flame engulfed window. He was on duty at the time, and awarded for his heroism by the city.

"He was an exemplary sanitation worker, and as the mayor pointed out, about a year ago he was a hero. He received a gold medal for his life saving efforts, so he will be deeply missed. And it's really tragedy to the department," said Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty.

Allen's family says another job important to him was being a father. He leaves behind two daughters ages six and 13.

"[He was] hardworking, dedicated, conscientious, helpful; he was good," said Allen.

"You know, I don't know what it is going to take what is it going to take for the community to understand that we have to stop these shootings, and we have stop killing each other and get these guns out of our community," said Allen's cousin Debra Griffin-Daza.

Police say three other men were taken to the hospital. The case is under investigation.

- Shazia Khan

[Maphpseurse]

fact is NY still has alot of disgusting individuals that care more about the " game of thuging" then there fellow citizens, its awful we have to loose good men like this!!!

[Imihooniump]

This is just sad. I'll pray for his family and friends. This is just terrible.

[Txaizdxx]

THUG BUSTED IN HERO'S SLAY


Photo: William C. Lopez
WOUNDED SUSPECT: Anthony Williams lies on stretcher
after he was wounded in the elbow and the buttocks in a
Brooklyn firefight Monday. He was charged with murdering
fire hero Damon Allen yesterday.

NY POST
By ERIKA MARTINEZ, JOHN DOYLE and DAN KADISON
September 6, 2006

A career criminal was arrested yesterday in the fatal stray-bullet shooting of a Brooklyn hero who was once awarded a medal for saving a little girl from a fire and who died selflessly pushing others to safety, cops said.

Anthony Williams, 23, who has a laundry list of drug and robbery charges on his rap sheet, was charged with firing the shot that killed sanitation worker Damon Allen, 32, in a gun battle outside a Crown Heights birthday party early Monday.

Police said the gunfire erupted after Williams committed a strong-arm robbery of someone at the party, was first held and then chased away by a group including Allen - who had urged Williams to give back what he had stolen, sources said.

Williams left, but returned with a gun and began shooting at people outside the party on Prospect Place, authorities said.

That prompted Omar Benn, 27, to also whip out a gun and fire back, striking Williams in the elbow and buttocks, the sources said.

Benn was charged yesterday with criminal possession of a weapon. Another man, who has not been identified, also fired at Williams.

Allen was pronounced dead at the scene. He had been struck in the head as he pushed two young women to the ground, witnesses said.

Two other men, both 27, were also hit - Marlon Fagon was wounded in the stomach and Kwanze Yates was shot in the foot.

Three guns - two 9mm's and one .357 - and 33 shell casings were recovered at scene, the sources said. Some of the casings are from a .40-caliber gun that cops have not recovered.

Williams' mother, Elvernes Williams, 42, insisted that her son was not involved and is "not a violent person."

"He never had a gun at all," she said. "I'm very sorry it happened."

Allen's sister Natasha, 26, said her heart was broken, but she was still willing to offer her brother's alleged killer forgiveness.

"He stole my heart. He ripped my heart right out of my chest, but forgiveness is all I have to offer," she said.

Allen's daughter, Danasia, 13, was not so willing to turn the other cheek.

"I hope he gets the worst. He took away a helpful, loving person. [My father] was the best. No matter what went down, he put everybody before his own life," she said.

Emani McCovery, 5, the girl Allen and a fellow sanitation worker helped rescue from a fire last year, said he's now helping "save other people in heaven."

"He's the one who saved me from the window," she said. "I'm sad because if there is a fire, he wouldn't be there."

Emani's mother, Karen Tapper, said Allen "was here for a purpose - a short time, but for a purpose: to help people."

A wake for Allen will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Frank R. Bell Funeral Chapel, 536 Sterling Place in Brooklyn.

Funeral services will be held Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Christian Cultural Center at 12020 Flatlands Ave., also in Brooklyn.

Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Philip Messing

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

[xochex]

Sanitation Worker Shot To Death Is Laid To Rest

ny1
September 09, 2006

Funeral services are being held today at the Christian Cultural Center in Canarsie for the sanitation worker who was shot earlier this week.

Damon Allen will be commemorated at 5 p.m. tonight. Allen was shot early Monday morning after leaving a party in Crown Heights.

A viewing will be held earlier at Frank Bell Funeral Chapel from 11 a-m to three pm.

Allen had been honored as a hero just last year after he helped save a 4-year-old child who had to be thrown from the fire escape of a burning building.

Anthony Williams is charged with Allen's murder. Another man faces weapons charges.

Copyright © 2006 NY1 News

[TXmjLW9b]

Shirts to Cry By


Josh Haner/The New York Times
“The same smile he had in life,” said Darlene Price, wearing a T-shirt made in memory
of Damon Allen, “that’s the smile he has on his shirt.”
nytimes.com
By JOSHUA YAFFA
November 5, 2006
Central Brooklyn
THE faces staring out from the T-shirts printed in Ken Gordon’s shop on Nostrand Avenue are uniformly young, black and smiling. But they also share something tragic. These are the faces of the dead, victims of the violence that, despite lowered crime rates citywide, remains stubbornly endemic in parts of central Brooklyn.
“It’s a personal, physical touch that fills a void,” Mr. Gordon, a slight, 63-year-old Jamaican, said of the shirts he prints for the grieving at his Crown Heights storefront.
In a neighborhood where drugs, guns and unemployment prove as incendiary as ever, Mr. Gordon averages a couple of orders a month. And he has competition; his printing shop is but one of a handful in the span of several blocks that supply the grim market for this particular form of posthumous tribute.
Shirts are $6 or $7 apiece if a customer orders 100. Most do, often more if the victim was an especially well-liked figure, an innocent caught in the spastic cross-fire of the ghetto.
Demand was high — several hundred and counting — for a shirt Mr. Gordon made in honor of Damon Allen, a 33-year-old sanitation worker and father of two who was killed on Sept. 4. Mr. Allen was struck in the head by a stray bullet in the street after he left a birthday party.
“The same smile he had in life, that’s the smile he has on his shirt,” said Darlene Price, a friend of Mr. Allen’s mother who arranged for the T-shirts to be made.
Between simple lines of text — “In Loving Memory of Damon Allen: 1973-2006” — is a photograph of the victim grinning proudly and wearing the gold medal he had received from the city last year for rescuing a young girl and her father from a burning building.
The photographs that families and friends choose to memorialize their loved ones vary from professional portraits to candid street-shots. But they all convey the same haunting image of a person blithely unaware of how this forgotten snapshot will ultimately resurface.
“No one is planning to die tomorrow, so you’re not going to take a picture today,” said a clerk at Island Tees, a store a few blocks from Mr. Gordon’s print shop that produces a handful of these shirts every month.
It is a no-questions-asked, often same-day service. “It’s business,” said Kenneth D’Abreau, Island Tees’ owner, suggesting that making T-shirts commemorating a murder victim was not much different from making ones to mark a birth or a wedding anniversary.
Mr. Gordon, however, said he felt “a very emotional connection” with Mr. Allen — a man he had never met or even seen — while scanning his photo into a computer. “Why did such a young life have to be destroyed?” he asked.
It is a question asked with maddening frequency in vast stretches of central Brooklyn, where murder rates have remained resistant to the much-heralded decreases in violent crime in other, more gentrified sections of the borough. Nearly twice as many murders were reported in Crown Heights in 2005 as were reported there a decade earlier, a sharp contrast to even neighboring Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the number of reported murders decreased by nearly half in the same period.
“It’s crazy out here,” said Billy Behary, the owner of Billy’s T-Shirt Center on Fulton Street, the main commercial strip that separates Bedford-Stuyvesant from Crown Heights.
In September, a family brought Mr. Behary a picture of a man whom he recognized as a frequent customer. “He used to come around to buy T-shirts,” Mr. Behary said of the victim.
T-shirts are not the only way young victims of crime are remembered in the neighborhood; most stores also offer hats, buttons and coffee mugs that can be transformed into commemorative items. Graffiti murals have long served as an avenue for emotions otherwise left unexpressed.
“It’s the same thing as lighting a candle or putting out some flowers,” said a man who identified himself only as Buckwild and who had ordered a batch of shirts at Copy King on Rockaway Avenue after Darrell Holmes, a friend of more than 20 years, was fatally shot one night in July. Buckwild had also commissioned a mural to honor his friend.
“If you care about your people, you’re going to remember them for a long time,” he said as he stood in front of the mural on the corner of Park Place and Nostrand Avenue where Mr. Holmes is but one of dozens who are memorialized on the brick wall.
Memorial T-shirts are generally worn only at the wake and funeral, then tucked away to return on birthdays or anniversaries of the victim’s death. But some people, like Mr. Allen’s friend Ms. Price, wear the shirts as a regular demonstration of solidarity and sympathy.
“If his mother sees you walking down the street wearing the shirt, she’ll come up to you and kiss the shirt,” Ms. Price said. “It makes her feel proud to know that people love her son the way she loves her son.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[liontutuxx]

Damon S. Allen Day of Unity - June 30, 2007

[simmons latex mattress]

Police said the gunfire erupted after Williams committed a strong-arm robbery of someone at the party, was first held and then chased away by a group including Allen - who had urged Williams to give back what he had stolen, sources said. Am I understanding this correctly - the robber was caught by the citizenry, urged to return the goods, and then, instead of summoning the police, released?

[autolubitelone]

There are no recent news updates in the online searches I've done.
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