A Guantanamo detainee who died Saturday was a former hunger striker who had recently been placed in a disciplinary cell after splashing a guard with a "cocktail"-- typically containing urine, a U.S. military official tells NBC News. 

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the death of the detainee, whose identity and country of origin will not be released until his family is notified, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the U.S. detention facility.

But Durand provided some new details about the detainee's death -- the ninth to occur at Guantanamo since the prison opened in early 2002 and the first since an Afghan prisoner committed suicide in May of last year.

The detainee was found unconscious in his cell in Camp 5 on Saturday afternoon and was taken to the Naval hospital at Guantanamo where efforts to revive him failed. There were no cuts on his wrist or any other obvious signs of self-inflicted wounds, Durand said.

The detainee also had no serious medical problems. He had participated in a hunger strike last spring but ended it in June and was examined as recently as Aug. 22 when he was at 95 percent of his body weight, Durand said.

He had "fairly recently" thrown the "cocktail" at a prison guard, causing him to be placed in a solitary cell at Camp 5, said Durand. 

Although the death occurred on Saturday, military officials did not announce it until Monday in order to give officials time to notify the host country and family members of the detainee. That process has not yet been completed, but officials decided to release some details Monday because of concerns that some visitors to the base-- such as defense lawyers -- would learn about it anyway, Durand said. 

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com 

The Miami Herald reported that a pathology and mortuary team was brought to the base on Sunday to attend to the body. A Muslim imam was summoned in order to give the man Islamic rites.

The dead man’s remains will be returned home after an autopsy, the Navy said.

The detention camp was set up to hold non-American captives suspected of involvement with al-Qaida, the Taliban or other Islamic militant groups after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remain.

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Two of the earlier deaths were from natural causes and six were designated as suicides, most of them by hanging.

NBC News staff and Reuters also contributed to this report.

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The boy, from Sayreville, New Jersey, was on a double-decker bus with about 65 other teenagers headed to New Jersey for a sweet sixteen party, according to Port Authority spokesman Al Della Fave. 

They boarded the bus in Queens and crossed over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey shortly after 6:30 p.m. ET on Friday.

As the bus exited the upper level to head toward Interstate 95, the boy opened the top hatch of the bus and stuck his head out, Della Fave said. His head struck the underside of the Fletcher Avenue overpass, causing extreme trauma.

Read the story on NBCNewYork.com

The boy was rushed to Hackensack University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

No other physical injuries were reported, but the other teens on board the bus appeared to suffer severe emotional trauma. They were taken to a bridge administration building on a lower lot, where their parents picked them up, NBC New York reported.

Della Fave said two adults on were on board the bus at the time: the driver and an assistant. The assistant's role was not immediately clear.

Designer Transportation, which operates the bus, expressed its "deepest heartfelt sympathy" for the boy's family.

Police are continuing to investigate.

The accident caused long delays Friday night as the express lanes of the I-95 southbound from the bridge were shut down while emergency responders rushed to the scene and police investigated.

NBC New York and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- Two teenagers charged in connection with the death of a five-year-old New York girl whose body was dumped in a trash can were expected to make their first court appearance since their arrests.

Five-year-old Isabella Tennant was found dead after going missing from her home in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Authorities said 16-year-old John Freeman and 18-year-old Tyler Best were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday morning in Niagara Falls City Court.  An autopsy of the body of Isabella Tennant was also scheduled.

The arrests came after Best went to police Monday morning and led them to a garbage can containing a trash bag holding Isabella's body. Best told them he had helped the younger teen dispose of the body after Freeman killed her, police said.

'Bare hands'
Isabella's family called police Monday morning to say she was missing from her great-grandmother's Niagara Falls home, where she'd been staying overnight.

“The great grandmother, Sharon Lascelle, said she went to bed just after 11:00 p.m. and Isabella was playing with" the 16-year-old, according to a press release issued to NBC station WGRZ by the Niagara Falls Police Department.

“At this time we believe Freeman killed Isabella with his bare hands (no weapons involved) and that Best was only involved after she was deceased and assisted with moving her remains,” it said.

Freeman "was described by family members of the victim as a ‘close’ and ‘trusted’ family friend. They also said it was also not uncommon for him to be in the home and around Isabella unsupervised. Best and Freeman are described as close friends,” it added.

Read more news from NBC station WGRZ

Police charged Freeman as an adult with second-degree murder.  

Best is charged with tampering with evidence. Best and Freeman were in custody and couldn't be reached for comment. 

At a news conference Monday afternoon, Niagara Falls Chief Detective William Thompson said there were signs of injuries but no indication of sexual abuse.

"It's a terrible crime. It tears at your heart," Thompson said.

Of Best going to police, Thompson said, "I imagine it was his conscience."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Courtesy of Dina Shacknai

Dina Shacknai and her son, Max, 6. The California mom believes her son's death last summer was no accident.

The mother of 6-year-old Max Shacknai believes her son was slain inside his millionaire father's Coronado, Calif., mansion last summer and wants police to find out who did it.

"He was a victim of assault and a victim of homicide," Dina Shacknai told NBC News on Thursday. "Even though nothing will bring my only child Maxie back, I owe it to him, as his mother, to make sure the true facts of his death are known."

Dina Shacknai is at odds with the conclusion of Coronado police, who have called Max's death a tragic accident. Police say the boy fell over a railing and tumbled down the stairs at his father's historic John D. Spreckels mansion on July 11, 2011. He struck the carpeted floor face first,  fracturing his forehead, police said. He was not breathing and did not have a pulse when paramedics found him. Max died a week later at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego.

Dina Shacknai and the boy's father, Jonah Shacknai, a pharmaceutical company executive and multimillionaire, divorced in 2009, she said. She said they kept their relationship amicable, for the sake of their son.

"We believed in co-parenting and wanted the best for Maxie," Dina Shacknai said.

Timeline of events in the Spreckels mansion deaths

She said Max was visiting his father, spending time at the mansion to be with his two step-siblings, Jonah Shacknai's two children from a separate marriage. The older siblings, however, were not at the mansion at the time of Max's fall, she said.

She said the terrible set of events continue to shock and horrify her to this day.

Max Shacknai

Days after the boy's fall, his father’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, was found hanging nude from a second-story balcony in the same house. The San Diego Sheriff's Department ruled Zahau's July 14 death a suicide.

Shacknai hired two independent experts to review the Coronado police's findings.

“Things just didn’t add up to me," she said. “When I started this process all I knew is that I wanted the truth, wherever that led, like any parent would."

Forensic pathologist Dr. Judy Melinek contributed to the independent investigation, calling the classification of Max’s death "inaccurate."

“It would be more accurate to certify that manner as a homicide, where homicide is defined as death at the hands of another,” Melinek said in the statement.

Melinek said there is the possibility of a scenario in which Max was assaulted, leading to his fall from the balcony. Here's the investigator's take:

"The perpetrator injured [Max's] face and shoulder and Max then was pushed against or backed into the second-story railing, causing the pattern(ed) injuries along his back."

"He was then either lifted over the banister or escaped over the banister, falling down to the front entry way..." causing further injury to his back.

"He landed on the top of his head and collapsed with his legs following, rather than with his legs first and his face second."

Jonah Shacknai also asked California Attorney General Kama Harris to review investigators' findings that his girlfriend killed herself by tying her wrists and ankles and hanging herself.

Zahau’s family also has called for a separate investigation. According to NBC News, the family appeared on two episodes of the afternoon television show "Dr. Phil" in November to talk about the case.

For more, view NBCSanDiego.com's report on mansion death investigation

A spokeswoman for the Coronado police said the department will review information presented by Dina Shacknai's investigators.

“They provided the information, we told them we would look at it. We don’t even know what we’re looking at at this point,” Lea Corbin, spokeswoman for the Coronado Police Department, told NBC News.

Attempts to contact Jonah Shacknai were unsuccessful on Thursday. A telephone call to his lawyer's office was not returned.

'He was a gift'
A year later, Dina Shacknai said she is still filled with grief.

"He was such a beautiful, generous child and we donated his organs; his liver saved an infant and his kidneys went to two adults," she said.

"He was a gift to us and gift to all of us. I was the luckiest mom in all the universe," said Dina Shacknai as she fought back tears during a telephone interview from Arizona.

She said she misses her son's bright smile, and his voice.

"Every time I saw Maxie, I felt I had won the lottery. He was the best," she said. "It is a terrible thing to now know what happened to someone you love. He deserves justice."

NBCSanDiego.com contributed to this report.

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Authorities have ordered toxicology tests in the death of Rodney King, but the results won’t be known for several weeks, a sheriff’s spokeswoman told msnbc.com on Monday.

King, the black motorist whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 sparked some of the deadliest race riots in U.S. history, was found dead on Sunday. He was 47.

Police in Rialto, Calif., found King's body in a swimming pool after his fiancee called 911, Rialto Police Capt. Randy DeAnda told NBC News. He was transported to Arrowhead Hospital in Colton, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m. PDT, DeAnda said.

An autopsy was scheduled for Monday, but results won’t be

 released today, San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said. Authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

Rodney King: 20 years after L.A. riots, 'Can we all get along?'

King was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers on a dark street on March 3, 1991, after he was stopped for speeding. Four officers hit him more than 50 times, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. A bystander videotaped much of the incident from a distance.

A year later, a California jury acquitted three of the four officers. The jury deadlocked on one of the charges for the fourth officer, Laurence Powell. Three of the officers were white and one Hispanic.

The riots that erupted on April 29, 1992, were among the most lethal in U.S. history. By the time order was restored, more than 50 people had died, nearly 3,000 were injured and thousands of businesses were damaged or destroyed.

20 years later: Have race relations improved?

In the two decades after he became the central figure in the riots, King was arrested several times, mostly for alcohol-related crimes. He later became a record company executive and a reality TV star, appearing on shows such as "Celebrity Rehab."

Looking back on that time, King told NBCLosAngeles.com in April, “Some of me wanted to get out there and riot and loot and tear up stuff too, but it just wasn’t the way I was raised.”

When he ventured into the streets during the riots, he wore a reggae hat with dreadlocks so people wouldn’t recognize him.

“It just looked a little bit like the war zone to me, smoke everywhere,” he told the station. “It broke my heart to look at that and to know this is, it’s really all about racial tension, and it’s a man-made problem.”

When King sat down with NBCLosAngeles.com, he was promoting his just-published memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption," which came out around the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots. According to the biography that accompanied his book, King had three children and was engaged to marry Cynthia Kelley, a juror in the civil suit he brought against the city of Los Angeles.

Nearly a year after the riots, a federal jury convicted two of the police officers of a federal charge of violating King’s civil rights and sentenced them to 30 months in prison. Two other officers were acquitted. King eventually received a $3.8 million settlement from the city, and the case led to sweeping changes in LAPD.

King said he was no longer bitter about what had happened.

“I like to be able to wake up and be able to pray for myself and pray for the world, that’s the most important thing,” he told NBCLosAngeles.com.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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CODY, Wyoming -- Search teams on Friday recovered the body of an 18-year-old woman who plunged 400 feet to her death on the first day of her job at Yellowstone National Park when a rocky ledge overlooking a canyon gave way beneath her, officials said.

The woman, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of her family, arrived in the park on Thursday to begin a new job with a private concessions company in Yellowstone, park spokesman Dan Hottle said.

She and three others went hiking early that evening along the edge of a popular canyon called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, on the North Rim trail, Montana's KAJ18 station reported.

The group had ventured onto an off-trail promontory at a spot called Inspiration Point when the accident happened.

At national parks, where are all the young people?

A member of the hiking party used a cellphone to alert park authorities. Yellowstone Park rangers said they responded to the 911 call around 6 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET) on Thursday, KAJ18 reported.

A rescue team that was dispatched to the scene later reported spotting a badly mangled figure about 400 feet below the rim of the 1,500-foot-deep canyon, officials said.

Environmental woes imperil America's national parks

Rescuers concluded the woman could not have survived the fall. With nightfall advancing, search teams returned on Friday and retrieved the body in a three-hour helicopter operation.

Hottle said another member of the hiking party narrowly averted tumbling down the cliff.

"The 18-year-old was sitting on a ledge when the rock fell away. Someone was standing right behind her and, miraculously, didn't fall," he said.

According to Denver's ABC 7 News, friends of the woman said she was from Russia. This could not be immediately verified.

What's behind all the deaths at Yosemite?

Fatal falls are relatively rare at Yellowstone, accounting for fewer than a dozen deaths - among millions of visitors - over the past 30 years.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 10:00 a.m. ET: With the Connecticut Senate voting early Thursday to repeal the death penalty, the state is poised to become the fifth in five years to end the practice.

Legislative action was delayed last year amid the high-profile prosecution of a death penalty case involving a brutal home invasion that left a mother and her two daughters dead. But after a debate that stretched into the early morning hours Thursday, the Senate voted 20-16 to approve legislation that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

“Connecticut’s criminal justice system has taken a historic step forward. In a system of justice that is no(t) perfect, we must not employ a penalty that requires perfection. The punishment of life in prison without the possibility of release makes more sense,” Senate President Donald E. Williams, Jr., a Democrat, said in a statement. “These inmates will face conditions that are similar to and in some cases more severe than conditions on death row. It is a punishment and sentence that is certain and final.”

The bill will now head to the House of Representatives, where observers say it is likely to pass. Gov. Daniel Malloy has said he would sign the legislation because it is forward looking, and not retroactive to those already sitting on death row.

Senate leadership held a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday ahead of the vote, with families of murder victims joining them. Senate Republican opponents organized their own news conference, which was attended by the lone survivor of the home invasion case in Cheshire and families of other murder victims.

“For those who say that we should execute those 11 (currently on death row) but none going further, the only way to keep that promise … is to keep our death penalty law,” Republican State Sen. John McKinney said. “I also think we need to talk about the message it sends that some who murder viciously the families in Connecticut should face the death penalty but others should not. Are we … saying that those families and the lives of those victims are somehow less important? For me, that is a wrong and terrible message to send.”

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that the state's voters are against repealing the death penalty by a margin of 62 percent to 31 percent. A 2011 poll showed that 48 percent of those surveyed preferred the death penalty over life in prison with no chance of parole (43 percent) in first-degree murder cases.

"As we've seen in past Quinnipiac University polls, Connecticut voters still think abolishing the death penalty is a bad idea," said Douglas Schwartz, poll director. "No doubt the gruesome Cheshire murders still affect public opinion regarding convicts on death row."

AP Photo/Jessica Hill

Episcopal Bishops Laura Ahrens, left, and Bishop Ian Douglas rally at the state Capitol with religious leaders who oppose the death penalty in Hartford, Conn., on Tuesday.

'Clear trend'
If the legislation passes the House and is signed by the governor, Connecticut would be the fifth state in five years to repeal the death penalty, joining 16 others that have no capital punishment. California voters will decide in November whether to also do away with it.

“This was a courageous and historic vote, but it was also in line with a growing trend away from the death penalty around the country. Connecticut’s legislature has come to the same conclusion that other legislatures have recently made: the death penalty is too risky, too expensive, and too unfair to continue," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), said in a statement.

A bill to repeal Connecticut's death penalty passed in 2009, but then Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed it. Last year, the bill made it through the joint House and Senate Judiciary Committee. But it died before a full Senate vote after a few senators withdrew their support because a second man charged in the Cheshire home invasion case was about to go on trial, said Ben Jones, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.

But it is now possible to have the death penalty debate not amid the “heated nature of a capital trial," so "people are able to think about it more at a systematic level,” said Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA.

Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes were convicted in the 2007 Cheshire killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The girls were tied to their beds and doused in gasoline before the house was set ablaze; they died of smoke inhalation; their mother was strangled.

George Ruhe / AP

Authorities outside the home of Dr. William Petit, a noted specialist in diabetes, in Cheshire, Conn., on Monday July 23, 2007. Intruders broke into his home, held the family hostage and killed his wife and two daughters.

The lone survivor of the invasion, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., along with his sister, Johanna Petit-Chapman, oppose the repeal.

“We believe in the death penalty because we believe it is really the only true just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders. One thing you never hear the abolitionists talk about is the victims, almost never, the forgotten people. The people who died and can’t be heard to speak for themselves,” Petit said at a press conference. “I think prospective (not retroactive) repeal of the death penalty is false. There’ll be multiple appeals for people already on death row.”

Williams, the Senate president, said before the vote that similar legislation has withstood judicial reviews.

"We're very respectful of those who are in favor of the death penalty," he said. "Yet those folks who have already been convicted and are serving under the prior rules of conviction do not have their sentences altered."

If the legislation becomes law, it would apply to capital offenses committed on or after the effective date of the act. It creates new conditions for those convicted of “murder with special circumstances” -- previously capital crimes -- including being moved to a new cell every 90 days and only having two hours a day out of their cell.

There are 11 inmates on Connecticut's death row. The state has carried out one execution since 1976. Connecticut’s Office of Fiscal Analysis estimated that the state spends $5 million a year on the death penalty system, according to the DPIC.

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AP

Photo provided by the Jennings Police Department Mug shows Anna Brown.

RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Mo. – Officials at a St. Louis hospital on Thursday defended their actions in the case of a homeless woman who sought treatment for a sprained ankle and died in police custody after being arrested for refusing to leave the emergency room.

An autopsy determined that Anna Brown's death in a jail cell in September was caused by blood clots that formed in her legs and migrated to her lungs, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The newspaper also obtained surveillance footage of the woman's final moments. In the video, officers are seen carrying Brown into a jail cell. The cell door closes and Brown is heard moaning and crying.

Brown's family says authorities treated the 29-year-old mother of two unfairly and have hired a St. Louis-based lawyer, Keith Link. Link did not respond to telephone messages from msnbc.com on Thursday.

St. Mary's Health Center says its staff followed medical guidelines and performed appropriate tests, acknowledging the “outrage being expressed in this tragic event.”

“Unfortunately, even with appropriate testing using sophisticated technology, blood clots can still be undetected in a small number of cases,” according to a statement released by St. Mary's Health Center on Thursday. “The sad reality is that emergency departments across the country are often a place of last resort for many people in our society who suffer from complex social problems that become medical issues when they are not addressed. It is unfortunate that it takes a tragic event like this to call attention to a crisis in our midst.”

Police have said officers had no way of knowing Brown's dire condition.

Brown went to three hospitals complaining of leg pain in the days leading up to her death, including her visit to St. Mary's that led to her arrest for trespassing. She was wheeled out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.

Brown had been struggling after a series of devastating setbacks, family say.

'Starting to  make progress'
A New Year's Eve tornado in 2010 destroyed Brown's home in north St. Louis home, the Post-Dispatch reported. She and her two children moved to Berkeley, a St. Louis suburb, and she lost her job at a sandwich shop soon afterward, the Post-Dispatch said.

According to the Post-Dispatch, her utilities were shut off because she stopped paying her bills, and after a child welfare agent who visited the home in April found a feces-filled toilet, burn marks on the floor where she had lit fires to keep warm and other distressing signs, Brown was arrested for parental neglect. Police reported at the time that she seemed confused, the newspaper reported.

Her mother, Dorothy Davis, received custody of Brown's children on the condition that Brown couldn't also live with them, and Brown's home was condemned, the newspaper reported. She lived in four homeless shelters from May until September, according to the Post-Dispatch.

Brown joined the St. Louis Empowerment Center, a drop-in center for the mentally ill, the newspaper reported.

"She was just starting to make progress," Kevin Dean, a peer specialist at the center, told the Post-Dispatch.

Dean and another staff member at the drop-in center recalled hearing Anna Brown say she hurt her ankle.

Davis, who said Brown called every day to check on her children, said she wants answers about her daughter's death.

"If the police killed my daughter, I want to know. If the hospital is at fault, I want to know," Davis told the Post-Dispatch. "I want to be able to tell her children why their mother isn't here."

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.

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An 88-year-old woman was strangled to death when her clothes got tangled in the treads of an escalator she was riding at the Long Island Rail Road station in Lindenhurst Tuesday, officials say.

"A preliminary investigation and autopsy concluded that the woman fell on the escalator, her clothing became entangled and she was asphyxiated," LIRR spokesman Sam Zambuto said in a statement.

The victim was identified as Irene Bernatzky of Lindenhurst, whom neighbors described as healthy and sprightly for her age. She often walked to the train station from her house and frequently visited her daughter, who lives in Manhattan.

That's where she was headed Tuesday afternoon when she fell on the escalator, according to neighbors.

"Every day, we'd see her walking up and down the block," said neighbor Gerri Hewitt, describing Bernatzky as a "friendly" and "lovely" woman who knew all the neighborhood children's names.

Regular commuters at the Lindenhurst station told NBC New York the escalator often seemed to be out of service and mentioned issues with the handrails, but LIRR officials said Wednesday the escalator has been inspected monthly and is maintained in "good operating condition."

Read the original story on NBCNewYork.com

The last inspection of the escalator before Tuesday happened on Feb. 9, according to a service log. During a maintenance procedure that day, mechanics replaced a broken upper-left comb plate.

The escalator was installed 18 years ago, in 1994. While the service time for an escalator typically ranges from 20 to 25 years, this one was marked for an early replacement, according to Zambuto. The project fell through when budget cuts shifted the priority to even older escalators. 

The escalator remained out of service Wednesday, and MTA police were continuing to investigate.

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