Patrick Semansky / AP

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, center, is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Meade, Md., for a pretrial hearing in May.

Pfc. Bradley Manning was young and naïve but "hoping to make the world a better place" when he leaked military secrets, his lawyer said Monday on the first day of his court-martial.

Manning selected information that he believed the public should see but that could not be used against the United States, said the lawyer, David Coombs.

“He was 22 years old,” Coombs said. “He was young. A little naïve, but good-intentioned in that he was selecting information that he thought would make a difference.”

It was one of two portraits offered as a judge heard opening statements in the trial of Manning, charged with violating the Espionage Act and helping the enemy when he carried out the largest leak of classified information in American history.

Earlier in the day, a military prosecutor said that Manning craved notoriety and put his fellow soldiers at risk when he leaked the information — some of which, he said, was later found during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The prosecutor, Army Capt. Joe Morrow, said his side would prove that Manning knew what he was doing when he put the information “in the hands of the enemy.” He described the case as what happens when “arrogance meets access to sensitive information.”

Morrow, the prosecutor, began his presentation to the military judge by quoting something he said Manning wrote in a chat room in May 2010: “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?”

Morrow displayed a log from Manning’s personal computer showing that he downloaded a database with the personal information of every service member in Iraq — more than 74,000 men and women in all.

The prosecutor said that by leaking the information, Manning was providing foreign intelligence services with a phone book.

Manning, 25, has said that he sent the information, which included diplomatic cables and battlefield reports, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks because he was disillusioned by a U.S. foreign policy bent on “killing and capturing people.”

He has pleaded guilty to 10 charges that carry up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors are pushing ahead with more serious counts, including larceny, aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. Those charges could land Manning in jail for life.

Manning has been jailed at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 2011 and was at the military prison in Quantico, Va., for nine months before that.

Coombs, the defense lawyer, spoke of a formative event in Iraq on Christmas Eve 2009, when an explosive projectile narrowly missed an American convoy but struck a car with an Iraqi family inside.

Manning could not forget about the civilians hurt and killed in the attack and “started to struggle,” Coombs said. He said Manning then decided he needed to do something to make a difference in the world.

Coombs said that Manning arrived in Iraq when he was “22 years young” and hoping to make Iraq a safer place.

“He is not the typical soldier,” the lawyer said. He said that Manning deployed to Iraq with custom dog tags that said “humanist” on the back.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 3, 2013 1:18 PM EDT

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the police practice of taking DNA samples from people who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime, ruling that it amounts to the 21st century version of fingerprinting.

The ruling was 5-4. Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative, joined three of the court’s more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — in dissenting.

The five justices in the majority ruled that DNA sampling, after an arrest “for a serious offense” and when officers “bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,” does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches.

Under those specifications, the court said, “taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

Scalia’s siding with the liberals reflects his growing concern over the past five years about privacy, said Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog, who teaches at Harvard Law School and is a Supreme Court analyst for NBC News.

“We’ve seen several decisions where he has joined more liberal justices to find greater privacy rights,” he said in an interview. “It’s not a big surprise in recent years, but it is a surprise in the sense of his general conservatism.”

While a cheek swab does constitute a search under the law, the court noted that it requires “but a light touch” and no surgical intrusion — a critical point, the court said, in determining whether it was reasonable.

At an oral argument in February, Justice Samuel Alito called the question perhaps the most important criminal procedure case the court had taken up in decades. Twenty-eight states and the federal government take DNA swabs from people under arrest before they can be tried.

The case arose from the arrest of a 26-year-old Maryland man, Alonzo King, in 2009 on a charge of second-degree assault. The police took a swab of DNA from his cheek, ran it through a database and matched it to an unsolved rape from six years earlier.

King was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for the 2009 assault. The Maryland Court of Appeals later reversed the rape conviction on the grounds that the DNA sample was an unreasonable search.

“Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes,” Scalia wrote in his dissent. “Then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane.”

In an allusion to the technique of taking a swab from the cheek, Scalia wrote: “I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”

The Maryland law restricts DNA swabbing to people arrested for certain violent crimes, but justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, worried during the oral argument that other laws might not be so restrictive. Roberts wondered why they couldn’t be applied to simple traffic stops.

Roberts voted with the majority Monday, as did Alito, who tipped his hand at the oral argument by saying that DNA sampling “involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the court’s swing vote, delivered the opinion of the court. Justices Clarence Thomas, who usually votes with the court’s conservatives, and Stephen Breyer, who generally votes with the liberals, also voted with the majority.

The court’s majority ruling also said that the government has an interesting in identifying a person under arrest so that a judge can make an informed decision about granting bail. Today, it takes as long as two and a half weeks for DNA tests to come back, but lawyers noted before the court that instant DNA testing is not far off.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 3, 2013 10:17 AM EDT

A 19-year-old California man is feared dead after he was caught in river currents and swept over a giant waterfall while swimming in Yosemite National Park over the weekend.

Aleh Kalman of Sacramento was swimming in the Merced River during a church retreat just before 3 p.m. Saturday when fast-moving waters seized him and drove him downstream over the 600-foot Nevada Fall, park officials said.

After a couple days of searching, officials did not dispatch search and rescue teams to find Kalman on Monday morning, according to park ranger Kari Cobb.

“We believe that a fall from that waterfall is not survivable,” Cobb said, adding that park authorities will conduct another round of searches in a few days or when the water recedes to the point that authorities can get a closer look at the riverbed.

More than 20 members of the park’s search and rescue team scoured the base of the river for Kalman over the weekend, according to Cobb. A California Highway Patrol helicopter scanned from the air on Saturday, she added.

Kalman is believed to have been hiking on the park’s Mist Trail before taking a dip in the river roughly 150 feet upstream from the precipice of the towering waterfall. Witnesses saw Kalman getting caught in the ferocious tides before being washed away, according to a park statement released Sunday.

“The Merced River is very strong, even in places where it appears calm,” Cobb said. “But under the surface, it can be extremely powerful.”

Kalman’s relatives told reporters they preferred not to comment to preserve their privacy, according to NBC station KCRA of Sacramento.

Members of the Second Slavic Baptist Church in North Highlands, which serves a congregation of immigrants from Russia and other former Soviet republics, grieved during Sunday services at the presumptive loss of a teenager whom they called upbeat and a “good guy.”

“I feel bad,” Oksana Naumets told KCRA on Sunday. “Everybody pray today.”

Denis Koleukhov, who also belongs to the church, said the group regularly went on trips to Yosemite, and "they didn't think anything bad would happen."

Kalman reportedly traveled to Yosemite in a group of 85, but it is unclear how many of those people were swimming with him when he was washed away, Cobb said.

NBC News' M. Alex Johnson contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Sun Jun 2, 2013 9:29 PM EDT

Patrick Semansky / AP, file

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, center, is escorted into a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., Tuesday, May 21, 2013, before a pretrial military hearing.

Pfc. Bradley Manning says he was driven by an unquenchable thirst for information and wanted to show the world the truth about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military says he helped enemies of the United States.

Now a judge will decide his fate.

Manning,  a 25-year-old former Army intelligence analyst, goes on trial Monday in a military court at Fort Meade, Md., for his release of hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website.

Here’s a rundown of the case:

WHAT WE KNOW

This much is undisputed: Manning, while serving in Iraq, stole U.S. diplomatic cables and other military documents. While on leave in Maryland in 2010, he began sending them to WikiLeaks.

At a hearing last November, he said that he had become disillusioned by behavior that did not seem worthy of the United States, including a foreign policy bent on “killing and capturing people.”

In a 35-page statement that took more than an hour to read in court, Manning in February cited the “bloodlust” of an American crew that carried out a helicopter attack in 2007 that killed Iraqi civilians and two journalists working for Reuters.

“They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life, and referred to them as, quote-unquote, dead bastards,” he said.

Manning told the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, that he nonetheless knew that releasing the documents was wrong.

Manning has been jailed at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 2011. He was at the military prison in Quantico, Va., for nine months before that. Under a court ruling earlier this year, Manning would have any sentence reduced by about four months to compensate for harsh treatment during his confinement at Quantico.

THE STAKES

In all, Manning faces 22 charges. He already pleaded guilty in February to 10 of the least serious charges, including improper handling of classified information and impeding the order and discipline of the military.

And earlier this month, military prosecutors abandoned an effort to convict Manning of violating a federal law in connection with the release of a State Department cable known as Reykjavik-13 that summarized U.S. Embassy discussions with Iceland officials about Iceland’s finances.

On the first 10 charges alone, Manning could be sentenced to 20 years in prison. He gave the guilty pleas without any deal with prosecutors — to the bewilderment of some legal analysts — and prosecutors pressed forward on the more serious charges.

Those include larceny, aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act, counts that could land him in military prison for the rest of his life. The judge alone, not a jury, will determine his guilt or innocence.

Manning’s defense team, which has generally not been talking to the media, did not return calls for comment from NBC News.

WHY IT MATTERS

The documents that Manning sent to WikiLeaks constituted the most extensive leak of information in the history of the U.S. military. They included battlefield reports, intelligence memos and State Department cables.

Manning has become nothing less than a hero to people who believe he was a noble whistleblower, and those who opposed one or both of the wars — and a traitor to those who believe he compromised the U.S. military's safety.

Patrick Semansky / AP

Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower responsible for releasing the Pentagon Papers, speaks during a rally in support of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning outside the gates of Fort Meade, Md., Saturday, June 1, 2013.

Prosecutors have signaled that they may call a Navy SEAL who participated in the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden to establish that some of the material that Manning leaked wound up in bin Laden’s compound.

Among Manning’s defenders is Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked what became known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Those papers documented the government’s systematic misleading of the public about American involvement in Vietnam.

“The future of truth-telling is at stake,” Ellsberg has written of Manning. “A young man’s selfless, heroic act of patriotism deserves our support.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called Manning a “political prisoner.”

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

To the frustration of reporters, pretrial proceedings have been conducted partly in secret. The court has withheld orders from the judge and even transcripts of hearings. The few documents that have been released have been heavily redacted.

Lexey Swall / Getty Images

FORT MEADE, MD - JUNE 1: Marchers hold signs at a mass rally in support for PFC Bradley Manning on June 1, 2013 in Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning's court martial is set to begin Monday June 3, 2013. Hundreds of supporters marched in support of Manning for giving classified documents to the anti-secrecy groups WikiLeaks. (Photo by Lexey Swall/Getty Images)

In defiance of the court, an anti-secrecy organization in March released a secretly made audio recording of Manning’s statement. The group, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, did not say how it obtained the recording.

The level of secrecy is “mind-boggling,” particularly at a time when public faith in the military has been shaken by sexual assault cases, said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.

“It’s not a credit to the military justice system,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s a system that could use all the public confidence it could get.”

Courtney Kube of NBC News contributed to this report. Reuters and The Associated Press also contributed.

Attorneys for George Zimmerman apologized Sunday for mischaracterizing evidence they said boosted their theory that Trayvon Martin was the aggressor in his fatal meeting with their client last year.

Lawyer Mark O’Mara said during a hearing last Tuesday that the defense had obtained video footage of three fights, including one in which he said two of Martin’s friends "were beating up a homeless guy."

But Zimmerman's defense team corrected that statement on  Sunday, saying O'Mara had unintentionally "misstated the nature" of the footage.

In a statement posted on Zimmerman’s website, the defense lawyers said the footage actually showed "two homeless guys fighting each other over a bike."

A Florida judged ruled Tuesday that Zimmerman’s lawyers cannot mention Martin’s suspension from school, prior marijuana use, text message exchanges or past fighting in opening statements when the trial begins on June 10.

Zimmerman faces a second-degree murder charge for shooting Martin to death after a confrontation on Feb. 26, 2012. The defense has argued that 17-year-old Martin was the aggressor and Zimmerman was just trying to protect himself.

Editor's note: George Zimmerman has sued NBCUniversal for defamation in civil court, and the company has strongly denied his allegations.

Rick Bowmer / AP

Members of the Mormons Building Bridges march during the Utah Gay Pride Parade Sunday, June 2, 2013, in Salt Lake City. Kenji Mikesell, second from right, is an 18-year-old Eagle Scout still active in his troop that is sponsored by the Mormon church. He decided to wear his uniform though an area Boy Scouts' official said Scouts and adults with the program were not permitted to do so. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Boy Scouts and adult volunteers wore their uniforms Sunday as they marched in Utah's gay pride parade — defying a leader of the youth organization who had said they couldn't do so under the organization's guidelines prohibiting advocating political or social positions.

The Utah Pride Festival Parade came a little more than a week after national delegates of the Boy Scouts of America approved allowing gay youth to join, ending controversial membership guidelines that had in recent years dogged one of the nation's most popular organizations for children and teens.

"It just feels like the right thing to do," Kenji Mikesell, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout and high school senior still active with his troop, said before leaving for the parade in Salt Lake City in his uniform.

"It's kind of a way of saying we want you here,” added Mikesell, who marched with Mormons Building Bridges and whose troop is chartered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Scouting has been a very positive influence in my life, and I'd like to see more people take advantage of it now that the ban has been lifted.”

Peter Brownstein, a Scoutmaster in Salt Lake City who helped organize the Boy Scouts participation in the march, said a few adults and youth marched at the front of the parade in uniform, including a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout and his stepdad, an Eagle Scout, who borrowed a uniform to wear, and an Asst. Scoutmaster.

But a local leader of the Boy Scouts had said Friday that they were prohibited from doing so. 

"We as a Scouting movement do not advocate any social or political position, so I reminded Mr. Brownstein that we do not wear uniforms at an event like this," said Rick Barnes, chief scout executive of the Great Salt Lake Council, which consists of more than 75,000 youth. "We do not, as Boy Scouts, show support for any social or political position. We're neutral. If he wants to attend the parade and others do that are Scouts or Scouters, they're welcome to do so as private citizens wearing whatever they want except their uniform.

“That's our official position. It always has been, there's nothing new here," he added. "We just don't want people to use the Boy Scouts to advocate their positions."

It wasn't clear what the consequences of wearing their uniforms would be. 

In a statement, Deron Smith, a spokesman for the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America, said it was up to the local council to determine any punishment.

"These individuals stated a personal opinion and do not represent Scouting," said Smith. "Scouting teaches young people that often in life one finds rules they don’t agree with, but a Scout is to be obedient. To simply disobey a rule because you disagree with it is not an example to set for youth. It is up to each council to determine how best to hold their leaders to the standards of Scouting.  We will support the Greater Salt Lake Area Council as they determine the appropriate response."

Barnes said Sunday he had nothing to add to the statement from Smith. On Friday, he said he expected the group to comply, citing the part of the Scout Oath that says a Scout is trustworthy.

Mikesell said he wasn't worried about any consequences. But Brownstein did not wear his uniform and instead opted for a T-shirt that carried the message of inclusive Scouting, with a rainbow square knot on it. His son, an Eagle Scout, and another Scout wore shirts promoting allowing gays in Scouting (LGBT adults are not allowed to join the program).

Brownstein, 53, said it was a disappointment that he couldn't wear his uniform.

"We're just trying to demonstrate that Scouts can be a part of all parts of society, all parts of life," he said before the parade. "While I am not wearing my uniform, other people will be. And this is not about me, this is about getting the message out to America" of "inclusiveness in Scouting, the need for equality."

After the march, he noted: “It felt awesome to proudly represent an organization that is making progress towards change and acceptance … and slowly making progress on opening their organization to many more people who can benefit from the wonderful program."

"And the progress forward will continue,” he added.

Scouts for Equality, a group that campaigns for the LGBT community to be welcomed in Scouting, had said that members of the Boy Scouts have previously marched in pride parades elsewhere. But they called for youth and adults in the Utah Scouting program to abide by Barnes' call and not wear their formal uniforms in the parade.

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the change in the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related stories:

• After vote allowing gay kids to become Boy Scouts, some families call it quits
• Bittersweet victory for gay adults kicked out of Scouting
• Boy Scouts vote to lift ban on gay youth

Violent storms that left at least 16 people dead in Oklahoma and Missouri were heading towards the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Sunday, as the nation’s mid-section struggled to cope with floodwaters.

At least 13 people –including nine adults, three of who were storm chasers, and four children — were killed after five tornadoes — one a half-mile wide — struck the Oklahoma City area Friday evening, terrorizing communities already battered by deadly storms this spring.

The Oklahoma City Fire Department on Sunday was also searching the Oklahoma River for four more missing people. 

Hospitals in Oklahoma City reported 115 injuries, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

One of the dead was named by the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office as James C. Talbert, 65, whose vehicle drove off a washed-out bridge in eastern Oklahoma County Saturday.

Three further deaths, in Missouri, were blamed on flooding caused by the torrential hailstorms that the weather system brought to large parts of the mid-US. 

"Authorities have confirmed three deaths from high water; those occurred in Lawrence, Miller and Reynolds counties," said a statement from Missouri governor Jay Nixon’s office.

The Weather Channel confirmed at least three tornadoes touched down around St. Louis, badly damaging homes but not causing any fatalities. 

Tens of thousands were without power, and only eight minor injuries were reported. Gov. Nixon declared a state of emergency. After touring the damage on Saturday, Nixon told The Weather Channel that "dozens of houses literally exploded" in Charles County, where an EF3 twister ripped through. 

Three "storm chasers" who had done work with The Weather Channel were killed in Friday's tornadoes. Father and son team Tim and Paul Samaras, as well as chase partner Carl Young, were killed as a result of a twister in El Reno, Okla.

"They went in the field focused on collecting data to enable meteorologists to further the science behind tornadoes which we know has and will help to save countless lives," The Weather Channel said in a statement. "Our community has suffered a terrible loss and our thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones."

The twisters came just 11 days after a monster tornado left 24 dead in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, where power outages were reported Friday.

"The last two nights, I've been having hell," Roy Stoddard, a truck driver from Depew, Okla., who was delayed by rising floodwaters at Little Rock, Ark. on Thursday told The Associated Press. On Friday evening, he had to take shelter in a store's walk-in cooler during Friday evening's rush-hour in Oklahoma City as deadly weather approached.

"I know what a tornado can do," Stoddard added.

The weather system had started lurching eastward Sunday, bringing scattered thunderstorms, some severe, to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the Weather Channel’s Michael Palmer said.

“Large hail and damaging winds are the main threat with an isolated tornado possible.  Lingering warm and humid air ahead of the cold front will produce isolated severe storms in the Carolinas on Monday.”

Washington, D.C., was being hammered by showers and thunderstorms Sunday evening, which could go on until Monday morning, according to NBC Washington.

In Anderson County in upstate South Carolina citizens told authorities of possibly tornado sightings, according to County Administrator Rusty Burns. Burns said at least one hit was struck and had its roof torn up, but there were no reported injuries Sunday evening.

"Everything is under control now," Burns said.

There is also yet more bad news for the Plains: The chance of yet more severe storms returns Monday, Palmer said.

M. Alex Johnson, Janet Shamlian and Aaron Marmelstein of NBC News, and Mike Bettes of The Weather Channel, contributed to this report.

Related:

• Storm chaser caught in twister: It felt like I was going to heaven
• More Oklahoma twisters!? Latest outbreak fits Tornado Alley's pattern
• Midwest tornadoes like a giant game of Battleship

Slideshow: Tornadoes hit central Oklahoma

KFOR-TV

Click to view scenes from Friday's violent storm.

Launch slideshow

The Powerhouse Fire grew to 19,500 acres in northern Los Angeles County after a hot and windy Saturday, burning structures and prompting evacuations in rugged areas between the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

At least five homes have burned in the blaze, said Los Angeles County Fire spokesman Keith Mora.

About 1,000 structures were threatened in the burn area, he said.

Three firefighters have been injured, and 960 firefighters, assisted by planes and helicopters, were expected to keep up the aerial and ground assault against flames on Saturday. The blaze was 20 percent contained, said John Wagner of the U.S. Forest Service.

The USFS told NBC News the fire had burned 19,500 acres as of 2:15 a.m. PT Sunday. That was up from 5,561 acres as of 1:40 a.m PT.

Temperatures reached the triple digits in some areas, including near the fire.

Also on Saturday, officials ordered evacuations for Elizabeth Lake Road and areas south of Lake Hughes, and upheld existing evacuations in the San Francisquito Canyon area.

Road closures were also ordered as far south as Castaic at Lake Hughes Road. 

The fire broke out Thursday near a hydroelectric plant known as Powerhouse No. 1 in San Francisquito Canyon, north of Santa Clarita.

Health officials urged people to avoid unnecessary outdoor activities as air quality in the Santa Clarita Valley and San Gabriel Mountains was expected to be unhealthy throughout the weekend due to the fire.

Evacuation orders were expected to remain in effect at least through Saturday night for the following areas: the Forest Service's Cottonwood Campground, L.A. County's Camp Mendenhall juvenile detention center and areas along Lake Hughes Road, Judy said. Other evacuations remained for areas north of South Portal Road and west of San Francisquito Canyon Road.

Power lines were reported threatened at one point Thursday, but there were no reports of service disruptions, Judy said.

One structure, described as an outbuilding, was destroyed in the blaze, Judy said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

A Red Cross evacuation center was set up at the Marie Kerr Park's recreation center at 2723-A Rancho Vista Boulevard in Palmdale. An evacuation center for large animals has been set up at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds at 2551 West Avenue H in Lancaster

Brian Blanco / Brian Blanco / EPA

The Publix supermarket where the sole winner of the 590.5 million US Dollar Powerball jackpot is reported to have recently purchased their winning-ticket in Zephyrhills, Florida, USA, 19 May 2013.

ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. — It's been two long weeks since the small city of Zephyrhills learned that a $590 million Powerball ticket was sold at a supermarket here.

No one expected the winner to come forward in the first days after the announcement. After all, curious residents reasoned, the person might need a few days to absorb the shock, or to consult with financial advisers.

But then a week passed, and more, and now folks are so anxious to know the winner's identity they could jump out of their skin.

"Being in a small town, everybody knows everybody and in some cases, everybody's business," said Dave Walters, a longtime reporter at the Zephyrhills News community newspaper. "It's hard to keep a secret in this town, but this is one of the biggest mysteries we've had in a long, long time."

Zephyrhills, population 13,337, is about 30 miles northeast of downtown Tampa. Like many Florida communities, it features a small, old-timey downtown strip where restaurants, gift shops and clothing stores sit under a canopy of oak trees. Around the city's perimeter, there's the suburban sprawl of big box stores. It was in that sprawl, at a Publix supermarket, where the winning ticket was sold.

Rumors were swirling about who the winner could be: Publix deli employees, single moms working at Wal-Mart — even the cousin of a friend of a guy who lived clear in another county.

"Anybody who did not show up for work on that Monday was considered to be the lottery winner," Walters said. "If you had the flu and didn't show up for work, everyone thought you were the lottery winner. If you took a personal day or a sick day, they thought you had won the lottery."

The city is known around the Tampa Bay area for a few things: as the source for bottled spring water, as an area where people like to skydive and as the home to several mobile home parks that cater to the elderly.

Joe Abed, who owns Manolo's Italian restaurant in the historic downtown, thinks the ticket was sold to a senior citizen.

"It's a conspiracy theory," he said, using his hands to make quote marks. "I believe it's a senior citizen that purchased the ticket and they just have no idea that they won the ticket."

Marsha Decena, a Zephyrhills clothing store owner, said she's anxious to find out who won.

"I've heard so many different rumors through town, from it being a 23- or 26-year-old woman to somebody might have washed it in their pocket, the ticket is just lost and they don't know that they won," she said. "It's crazy."

The winner has 60 days from the date of the May 18 drawing to claim a lump-sum payment, and until mid-November to claim annual cash payments.

Zephyrhills resident Don Lawrence thinks the winner is just lining up legal and accounting staff.

"Lost the ticket or something like that? No, I don't think so," he said. "I think somebody's taking their time, doing it the right way."

Newly elected Mayor Danny Burgess — who turned 27 on Saturday — said he hopes it's a resident.

"Just because one person won the lottery, we all feel like we won, that's the kind of community this is," Burgess said. "I absolutely hope for the lottery winner that this is a positive, life-changing event. Only in America can you go to bed with a lottery ticket and wake up a mega-millionaire. I hope that they understand, appreciate and recognize the significance of this."

Abed wonders if the ticket eventually is "just going to go back into the system" so the country can have "another huge lottery."

But that's wishful thinking. According to the Florida Lottery website, if a Powerball jackpot isn't claimed within 180 days from the draw date, "the funds to pay the unclaimed jackpot will be returned to the lottery members in their proportion of sales for the jackpot rollover series."

In other words, state coffers will claim the jackpot, and the people of Zephyrhills will be left to wonder.

One person was killed and four others were injured when the car they were in was hit by an SUV being pursued by police in East Los Angeles, officials said.

The crash was reported after 2 p.m. Saturday in the 5300 block of Poplar Boulevard, said Katherine Main, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman.

Paramedics found one person dead at the scene.

Three men and a woman were taken to a hospital.

One man was in serious condition. The others were in fair condition, Main said.

The death toll has jumped to 12 in the aftermath of a swarm of destructive twisters that tore through the Midwest, killing seven adults and two children in Oklahoma and causing three deaths in Missouri blamed on flooding.

Floodwaters also proved deadly in Oklahoma, where a 4-year-old girl died after she was swept away while taking shelter with her family in a ditch, according to police.

It is unclear whether the girl is one of the nine people who died as five tornadoes — one a half-mile wide — struck the Oklahoma City area Friday evening, terrorizing communities already battered by deadly storms this spring.

The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner told NBC News seven adults and two children are confirmed dead, including a mother and her small child. 

The medical examiner said that five of the nine dead had been positively identified and called on the public's help to identify the others. "If someone is missing a loved one from last night’s tornado, we would encourage them to contact our office at 405-239-7141," said Amy Elliott, of the medical examiner's office.

Hospitals in Oklahoma City reported 104 injuries, including five critical patients.

At least five people killed were in vehicles and may have been trying to flee as dark clouds gathered and warning sirens wailed, authorities said. 

Marcus Jolly, 32, of El Reno told The Oklahoman newspaper the scene along Interstate 40 "was a war zone. There were semis turned over and skeletons of buildings remaining.”

The twisters came just 11 days after a monster tornado left 24 dead in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, where power outages were reported Friday.

Mark Wiley, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s southern region headquarters in Fort Worth, said early Saturday that there had been five confirmed tornadoes in the Oklahoma City area on Friday and one in the Tulsa area early Saturday.

A total of 12 tornadoes hit Missouri and Illinois around St. Louis, where “numerous homes” were damaged. Wiley did not have any information about casualties there. Two twisters touched down briefly in North Dakota, but did not do any damage.

The Oklahoma City area “definitely” experienced the worst of the bad weather, Wiley said, with wind gusts of up to 90 mph, baseball-sized hail and extensive flooding.

“We have several reports of water going into homes and dozens of people having to be rescued on the streets, especially along Interstate 40,” Wiley said. “It was not a good night to be in the Oklahoma City area.”

For Saturday, Wiley said the storm was moving toward Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and East Texas, but did not “look as severe as yesterday.”

The worry now turns to flash flooding. Wiley said about 6 to 8 inches of rain had fallen in 12 hours between 7 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. CT Saturday. The Weather Channel reported that May 2013 is the wettest May on record in Oklahoma City.

Friday, the terror came from tornadoes boasting baseball-sized hail and winds so strong they tossed tractor-trailers off the interstate. Meteorologists said the storm's fury didn't match that of the tornado that struck Moore on May 20 but dumped around 8 inches of rain on the area.

An SUV used by Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes and a crew of storm trackers was thrown 200 yards by one tornado near Oklahoma City suburb El Reno. The vehicle tumbled about eight times and came to rest in a field, Bettes said. Some members of the crew suffered minor injuries, and the vehicle was destroyed.

"That was the scariest moment of my life," Bettes said. "I saw my life flash before my eyes."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph said the woman and baby were killed when the SUV they were in overturned on Interstate 40 between El Reno and Yukon.

Many of the injured were hurt in accidents along Interstates 35 and 40 west of the city, where at least three semi-trailer rigs were overturned after the biggest tornado touched down near El Reno, authorities said.

Bart Kuester, 50, a truck driver from Wisconsin, said he was driving along Interstate 35 past Moore when he realized a dangerous storm was approaching. 

"I heard the sirens going off and I could see it coming," he told The Associated Press. Kuester said the interstate was flooded and jammed with people trying to outrun the storm. 

"Everyone was leaving. ... Just because that one that hit Moore was so fresh in their memory," he said.

Authorities said some of the worst damage on Friday was from flooding around El Reno and Yukon and the danger continued into Saturday.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for parts of Oklahoma early Saturday.

There were also flash flood warnings in place for parts of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas and  Kansas.

On Friday, one tornado turned south from Oklahoma City and then toward the suburb of Moore, which was hit by a devastating twister on May 20 that killed 24 people and injured hundreds of others.

“I think we are still a little shaken by what happened in Moore. We are still burying children and victims, so our emotions are still strong," Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett told Reuters.

Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency.

"This has been a very large storm that hit a lot of communities," she told KFOR. She said she had heard from at least 30 fellow governors offering assistance.

At Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, where winds hit 71 mph, all flights were canceled and about 1,000 travelers were herded underground, where they were told to put their hands on their heads. The airport reopened Saturday morning, but all morning departures were canceled.

Tornado warnings — meaning a funnel cloud that could become a tornado had been spotted in the area — were in effect much of the day for numerous counties in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Forecasters sounded the alarm that much of the Midwest — already pummeled by a week of tornadoes and flooded with drenching rains — was facing another round of violent weather overnight and into the weekend.

Observers at Tinker Air Force Base reported a tornado on the ground near the base southwest of Oklahoma City. In Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma, a tornado touched down near Norman North High School and Norman Regional Hospital.

Buildings at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport were damaged by tornadoes with debris strewn across the runway. The airport was closed because of the damage, but re-opened just before midnight, the airport said in a statement.

Another tornado touched down Friday night 7 miles northeast of Moscow Mills, Mo., about 50 miles northwest of St. Louis. In St. Charles County, 24 houses were severely damaged or destroyed, said Mike O'Connell, communications director for the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

The National Weather Service evacuated its St. Louis office as tornado warnings were issued for north and northeastern St. Louis and surrounding counties.

Janet Shamlian and Aaron Marmelstein of NBC News, Mike Bettes of The Weather Channel, and Reuters contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

Related:

• More Oklahoma twisters!? Latest outbreak fits Tornado Alley's pattern
• Midwest tornadoes like a giant game of Battleship

Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images file

The Supreme Court is weighing whether police have the right to take a DNA sample immediately after an arrest.

The Supreme Court is about to decide what one justice says may be its most important criminal procedure case in decades — whether the police have the right to take a DNA sample after they make an arrest.

The question before the justices is whether taking DNA, often with the quick swab of a cheek, is the latter-day equivalent of fingerprinting or violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.

“This is what’s at stake,” Justice Samuel Alito said during an oral argument Feb. 26. “Lots of murders, lots of rapes that can be — that can be solved using this new technology that involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy.”

The case arises from the arrest of a 26-year-old Maryland man, Alonzo King, in 2009 on a charge of second-degree assault. The police took a swab of DNA from his cheek, ran it through a database and matched it to an unsolved rape from six years earlier.

King was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for the 2009 assault. The Maryland Court of Appeals later reversed the rape conviction on the grounds that the DNA sample was an unreasonable search.

The question before the court has vast implications: 28 states and the federal government take DNA swabs from people under arrest before they can be judged innocent or guilty. In Maryland alone, DNA samples during arrests have led to 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions since 2009, Katherine Winfree, the state’s chief deputy attorney general, told the justices.

Maryland law restricts DNA swabbing to people arrested for certain violent crimes. But Chief Justice John Roberts, worried about the reach of similar laws, wondered during the oral argument why they couldn’t be applied to simple traffic stops.

Tim Sloan / AFP - Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts indicated concern about the reach of state laws that allow DNA sampling during arrests.

“There’s no reason you couldn’t, right?” he asked Winfree. “I gather it’s not that hard. Police officers who give Breathalyzer tests, they can also take a Q-tip or whatever and get a DNA sample, right?”

Michael Dreeben, a lawyer for the federal government, which supports the Maryland law, told the justices that people under arrest “are no longer like free citizens who are wandering around on the streets” with full Fourth Amendment rights.

They can be subjected to a strip search, for example, or given a medical screening when they are thrown in jail, he said. While he conceded that law enforcement officers must get a warrant before searching a home, he said DNA was “not of that character.”

“It is far more like taking a fingerprint,” he said.

Kannon Shanmugam, a lawyer for King, argued that the two were different, partly because fingerprinting is mostly used for identification, not to solve cold cases, and is much more invasive.

“An individual’s DNA contains far more information and far more personal information than an individual’s fingerprints,” he said.

Prosecutors around the country will be watching the court’s ruling closely. If the justices decide that DNA swabbing during arrest is unconstitutional, untold numbers of cold-case convictions could be appealed.

Mindful of the implications, the court could narrowly tailor its ruling, said Jeffrey Urdangen, director of the Center for Criminal Defense at the Northwestern University School of Law.

“The repercussions of this are enormous,” he said.

For victims of violent crime, as for the justices themselves, the question presents a difficult balancing act — how to weigh the crime-solving power of forensic advances against the rights of the accused.

Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, acknowledged that the issue is tough, but she said the center supports DNA sampling at the time of arrest, partly because it could prevent future crime.

She likened it to vaccination: Patients have to grapple with side effects, she said, but that pales next to the potential for good.

Of the DNA sampling, she said: “It’s a tool that can save many, many, many lives, and we should take hold of it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t remain a good country. It’s not the end of democracy. It’s just a new tool that we need to learn how to handle.”

Justice Antonin Scalia was less welcoming. At the oral argument, he cut off Winfree, the Maryland state lawyer, immediately after she mentioned the 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions.

“Well, that’s really good,” he said. “I’ll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you’d get more convictions, too.”

Alito, the justice who called the sampling issue “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this court has heard in decades,” appeared to lean toward classifying it with fingerprinting.

He and Scalia, two of the court’s conservatives, generally come down on the same side of rulings. But they appeared to differ on DNA sampling, an indication of the trickiness of the issue.

Matching the DNA against databases now takes two to three weeks. Two years from now, it could be almost instant, the Maryland lawyer said, meaning the judges could use it to make determinations about bail.

Scalia was unmoved.

“You just can’t demonstrate that now,” he said. “Maybe you can in two years. The purpose now is — is the purpose you began your presentation with, to catch the bad guys, which is a good thing.”

“But you know,” he continued, “the Fourth Amendment sometimes stands in the way.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Sat Jun 1, 2013 5:31 PM EDT

Jim Cole / AP

Family and friends arrive for a memorial service for Nancy Lanza on Saturday in Kingston, N.H. Lanza's 20-year-old son, Adam Lanza, killed her at their home in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14 and then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed the children and six school employees before committing suicide.

KINGSTON, N.H. -- More than a hundred family and friends gathered at a church in a small New Hampshire town Saturday to remember the woman whose son massacred 20 first-graders and six educators in a Connecticut elementary school last year. 

The mourners and a few musicians filed into the white clapboarded First Congregational Church in Kingston for the memorial of Nancy Lanza, the first victim of her 20-year-old son Adam's rampage. She was shot dead in their home before he blasted his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14. He killed himself as police closed in. 

More than a dozen uniformed police officers from several agencies blocked off the street and guarded the church door, ensuring only friends and family were allowed into the service. Nancy Lanza grew up in New Hampshire and lived there before moving to Newtown in 1998. 

Lanza's brother, James Champion, is a Kingston police officer and still lives in the town. 

A lone police bagpiper played as the processional arrived and lined up outside the church to enter together. Media outlets were kept 60 yards back across the street and behind yellow tape, and mourners declined to talk to reporters. 

A few people wiped their eyes as they left the church. 

Friends have said Nancy Lanza loved the Red Sox and gardening and talked of a growing enthusiasm for target shooting. The rifle and two handguns Adam Lanza took into Sandy Hook were registered to her. 

But they also said she never talked about her home life, keeping details about her son private. She occasionally said she was concerned about the future, but she didn't complain. 

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Nancy Lanza told a divorce mediator in 2009 that she didn't like to leave her son alone. People who met him described him as shy and introverted. The mediator recalled that Nancy and Peter, who had married in June 1981 in Kingston but divorced several years ago, were respectful of each other and concerned about Adam's needs. He'd switched schools several times and Nancy had tried home schooling. 

The head of security for the district where Adam Lanza attended high school said Nancy Lanza often had to come to school to deal with him when he had episodes of anxiety or withdrawing from others. 

The motive for her son's killing spree is still unclear. Investigators have said mother and son visited shooting ranges together, and the victims killed at the school were all shot with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that Adam Lanza took from the house he and his mother shared. That gun and the handgun he used to shoot himself had been legally purchased by his mother. 

The massacre has revived the national gun control debate and led to proposals for universal background checks on gun buyers and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. 

The Newtown massacre was the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history after the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage, which left 33 people dead. 

Adam Lanza's father claimed his remains and a family spokesman said there were private arrangements, but the burial location was not made public. 

A private funeral attended by about 25 people was held for Nancy Lanza in Kingston on Dec. 20. 

Related stories:

New details emerge in private lives of Adam Lanza and his mother

Adam Lanza surrounded by weapons at home

Task force recommends building new school at site of Sandy Hook massacre

Jim R. Bounds / AP

Vollis Simpson, a builder of whirligigs, is seen in Lucama, N.C., in June 2010. Whirligigs are wind-driven creations that could stand as high as 50 feet.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Vollis Simpson, a self-taught North Carolina artist famed for his whimsical, wind-powered whirligigs, has died. He was 94. 

Beth Liles of Joyner's Funeral Home confirmed the death Saturday. Simpson's wife, Jean Simpson, was quoted by the Wilson Daily Times as saying that her husband died Friday in his sleep at his home in the town of Lucama.

Jean Simpson also was quoted by the paper as saying that her husband had received a successful heart valve replacement in February but experienced complications. 

Simpson became known for his whirligigs, wind-driven creations that stand as high as 50 feet and are constructed from recycled parts including motor fans and cotton spindles. 

Jim R. Bounds / AP

Giant whirligigs designed by Vollis Simpson are shown in Lucama, N.C. in June 2010.

He built the contraptions on land near his machine shop in Lucama, about 35 miles east of Raleigh. More than 30 of them were on display there until last year, when an effort to restore them began. The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is scheduled to open in November in Wilson, about 50 miles east of Raleigh. 

People from across the world visited Simpson at his shop, where he would happily sit and talk with them.

"What Vollis was doing mechanically, creatively and artistically is unparalleled," Folklorist Jefferson Currie, who has worked on the renovation, said Saturday. "He worked on a scale that was a lot larger than anyone else. And even in that scale, he had a lot of intricacy. ... It's hard to get your ahead around how one man could create all of this." 

Simpson's creations have also captured national attention, with buyers including a shopping center in Albuquerque, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Four of them were also put on display at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. 

Last month, the North Carolina House approved a measure making whirligigs the state's official folk art.

The whirligigs weigh as much as 3 tons and have hundreds of moving parts. They're folk art or what's also known as outsider art, works created by someone without formal arts training. 

Neither did Simpson have a formal engineering degree. But that didn't stop him from constructing a motorcycle with a bicycle and a stolen motor when he was an Air Force staff sergeant on Saipan during World War II. He also built tow trucks for moving houses. 

In an interview last summer, Simpson told The Associated Press he was conflicted about the park in his honor. He said he knew he could no longer care for his creations if they stayed at home with him, but he felt lonely without them. 

"I just hope I live to see it," he said of the park.

As the American heartland continues to be hammered by a late but lethal tornado season, the U.S. East Coast is bracing for what could be another damaging and deadly hurricane season triggered by unusual climate conditions.

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially begins Saturday, likely will be “above normal and possibly extremely active,” according to officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Meteorologists say the confluence of warm tropical waters and the slim chance of a cyclone-suppressing El Niño event may fuel three to six major hurricanes over the course of the summer, less than a year after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the mid-Atlantic region. Major hurricanes are defined as Category 3 or above.

Sandy was downgraded from hurricane status to tropical storm status just before it battered the northeast U.S. last October.

Gulf rigs stand ready as hurricane season arrives

Although meteorologists cannot say with certainty how many storms will hammer the coast – or where they will strike – there's a 96 percent chance of a hurricane hitting somewhere along the U.S. coast this summer, according to a forecast released in April.

“We really can’t say where the storms are going to go,” said Dr. Philip J. Klotzbach of the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University, who authored the forecast with his colleague Dr. William Gray. “But we know that more active seasons have more storms that make landfall.”

Above-average sea-surface temperatures create an environment that “will be very conducive for waves to develop and intensify” and potentially generate associated phenomena, such as increased moisture and lower air pressure, that foment giant storms, according to Klotzbach.

Water temperatures are expected to be 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual, according to The Associated Press.

Although an uptick of less than one degree "doesn't seem like a heck of a lot," Klotzbach said, "it makes a big difference in tropical waters."

What’s more, the unlikeliness of a significant El Niño event will make it easier for a cyclone to take shape, according to NOAA. El Niño is a vast stretch of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean that typically takes the edge off hurricanes.

“El Niño … is not expected to develop and suppress hurricane formation this hurricane season,” said Kathryn Sullivan, acting NOAA administrator.

NOAA forecasts 13 to 20 tropical storms, seven to 11 of which are projected to become hurricanes and three to six of which are projected to become major hurricanes.

Klotzbach's projection of four major hurricanes is in that range.

The last major hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. was Wilma in 2005, according to Klotzbach. Since then, five Category 1 or 2 storms – defined by winds moving as fast as 100 mph – have struck the U.S.

Atlantic hurricane season typically lasts for six months, usually peaking between late August and mid-October.

In the introduction to their forecast, Klotzbach and Gray warn coastal residents to take precautions in advance of storm season.

“Coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them, and they need to prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much or how little activity is predicted,” they wrote.

Nick Ut / AP

Firefighters watch as a helicopter makes a slurry drop onto a wildfire Friday near Castiac, Calif.

Wind-swept wildfires scorched thousands of acres and spurred evacuations in two states Friday night as firefighters worked to contain the blazes.

Crews are battling two fires in New Mexico that shut down a state highway and prompted Gov. Susana Martinez to declare a state of emergency in San Miguel County to free up state funds to fight the fire. 

Officials said the fire in New Mexico's Santa Fe National Forest more than doubled in size by Friday night and was still totally uncontained.

Meanwhile, the wind helped crews working to contain a wildfire burning Friday in rugged mountains 50 miles north of Los Angeles. 

A day earlier, gusts had driven flames toward the rural community of Green Valley and forced people from about 200 homes. 

On Friday, winds pushed the fire southward -- back into the 2.8 square miles that have already burned. 

"The fire is moving uphill and burning into the black," U.S. Forest Service spokesman Nathan Judy said. "It is a good thing because it's not going anywhere, it's not moving." 

The fire was 15 percent contained and the cause was under investigation. 

Resident Frank Disesso watched with relief as water-dropping aircraft attacked the fire Friday.

"The embers were coming down, and they were so big they were burning my arms," Disesso told NBCLA 4. "You could hear them hit all the oak leaves in the yard."

Homeowner Arlene Summers said her family used a fire hose to spray water on their house, yard and trees Thursday evening.
"No garden hose is going to get this under control," said resident Arlene Summers. "It's nerve-racking."

A day after deadly twisters tore through the Oklahoma City area for the second time in two weeks, forecasters say that a wide swath of the country – from the Ohio and Tennessee valleys to the Northeast – is under threat of heavy rainfall and fierce thunderstorms as the wild weather system moves eastward.

A cold front is expected to creep away from the Midwest and Plains states Saturday and inch toward to the east by Sunday, with heavy showers and severe thunderstorms projected to hammer a long belt of land, stretching from Maine to the Appalachians, according to The National Weather Service.

At least 40 million on the East Coast – including residents of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City – should brace for the possibility of serious thunderstorms Sunday evening as the weather system cuts a path through the region, according to The Weather Channel.

All the while, flash flooding and river flooding are likely to remain a serious threat in the Midwest, particularly in Oklahoma, where at least five people were dead Saturday after multiple tornadoes ripped through the state just 11 days after a ferocious twister left 24 dead in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

A suburban Chicago high school senior was struck and killed by lightning during Thursday's storm, officials said.

Jennie Dizon, 17, of Downers Grove, was found unconscious and not breathing in O'Brien Park, at 68th Street and Dunham Road, shortly after 5 p.m., officials said. She was pronounced dead at the scene and the DuPage County Coroner's report said the death is "consistent with a lightning strike."

Her death was just days before her graduation at Benet Academy, scheduled for Sunday.

"It was God's will," her father, Eric Dizon, said Friday.

The senior was on the color guard and was planning a trip to Europe. Her post-graduation plans were to study theater at the University of Cincinnati.

The family said Dizon had dropped off her younger brother and sister, who also attend Benet Academy, at a dentist's office. The teen journaled often, and the family said they believe Dizon went to the park to write.

Younger sister Emmeline Dizon said she kept calling her sister's cell phone for a pickup from the dentist's office but didn't get an answer. Walking home, she said she saw the ambulances at the park but didn't know anything was wrong with her sister until police came to the door.

Police said it was a witness who saw lightning and saw Dizon on the ground. The witness went to help but Dizon was unresponsive, an officer said.

“Benet Academy is mourning the loss of senior Jennie Dizon, who passed into eternal life last evening, apparently having been struck by lightning during a thunderstorm," school officials said in a statement posted online. "Throughout the day today, Benet's chaplain, campus minister, counselors, administrators, and teachers have been available in the chapel, in their offices, in classrooms, and throughout the school building to offer assistance, comfort, and consolation to our students and members of the school community. Please join the entire Benet Family in remembering Jennie and the Dizon family in prayer.”

A Mokena man died last weekend after being struck by lightning while fishing with friends in central Illinois.

Lighting kills as many as 70 people in the United States each year and injures more than 500, according to estimates from the National Weather Service.