• Brother, sister drown in neighbor's uncovered pool

    By The Associated Press

    Two young siblings reported missing on New York's Long Island died Sunday after their fully clothed bodies were pulled from the black waters of a neighbor's pool in 50-degree temperatures, police said.

    Police received a 911 call at about 3:30 p.m. from a mother reporting that her 5-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter disappeared from their home in Central Islip, said Detective Sgt. Edward Fandrey of the Suffolk County police homicide squad. While searching the neighborhood, an officer spotted a shoe floating in a next-door neighbor's aboveground pool, which was uncovered and contained blackish water, Fandrey said.


    Officers jumped into the 4-foot-deep pool and discovered the unconscious bodies of Ralph Knowles and Sharon Knowles. The brother and sister were taken to Southside Hospital, where efforts to resuscitate them failed, Fandrey said.

    The pool is surrounded by a deck. Both are sunken into the ground and surrounded by a low, wooden fence.

    Fandrey said the pool's owner had been cited by the town for improper fencing.

    "The exposed side of the stockade fence was facing out, instead of the smooth side," he said, adding that the slats made it easier to climb over the shared fence.

    Telephone calls to numbers listed for the addresses of the victims and the pool's owner went unanswered Sunday night.

    The home where the children lived is owned by a nonprofit that provides housing to homeless families, Newsday reported.

    The children's uncle, Henry Valentine, 32, of Jamaica, Queens, told the newspaper that the childrens' mother, whom he identified as Tia Knowles, was "devastated."

    "She's not doing good at all," he said.

    This story was originally published on Sun Apr 14, 2013 8:41 PM EDT

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Two brothers reunite after 80 years apart

    By Isolde Raftery, NBC News

    When Ed Muir stepped off the plane in North Dakota, his brother Kenneth Corcoran spotted him immediately.


    "Hell, I recognized him as soon as he came off,” Corcoran said, according to WDAY6 News. “I looked and said, there he is."

    Muir, 84, and Corcoran, 81, hadn’t seen each other since 1932. That’s when their mother died and their father, unable to care for his five children, sent Corcoran and two other siblings to an orphanage. Muir and a brother stayed with their father, who raised them in Chicago.

    The brothers reunited thanks to nine years of online sleuth work by Corcoran’s daughter, Pam Gregerson. But Gregerson came up short, unable to find her father’s siblings, according to the Naples (Fla.) Daily News.

    Then Gregerson’s teenage son took to the search in July. He found Muir, of Naples, in 15 minutes.

    During a reunion weekend last weekend, the brothers hit it off and discovered they share the same favorite song — "Wabash Cannonball." (Corcoran wants the song played at his funeral.)

    "Those two old guys are totally twins. They're identical,” Gregerson told WDAY. “They look alike, they act alike, how they raised us. Everything is the same."

    With one exception: Muir is a Republican; Corcoran is a Democrat. But no matter.

    "It's the best weekend I've ever had in my 81 years," Corcoran said, according to the Naples Daily News. "I want to see him every day."

    Muir told the Naples newspaper that he had worried about his three siblings who were sent to an orphanage.

    "I often thought about the rest of my family, how they ever turned out, but I had no idea,” Muir said.

    Corcoran was eventually adopted and grew up in North Dakota. He joined the Navy, married and had six children. He retired as a railroad lineman. The two siblings who were sent away with him have since died.

    Muir took his mother’s maiden name — which made finding him trickier — and worked as an electrician. He raised four children.

    "Eighty years is a long time being separated," said Muir, according to the Daily News. "It's sad to think of all those lost years. I don't know how to make up for it. I just told him I'm glad we were able to get in touch with one another."

     

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  • 'My hero': 12-year-old Florida boy saves 4 siblings from burning house

    "If he wasn't here, we would not be alive," Emilio Jackson said of his big brother, Justin, 12. WPMI-TV's Christian Jennings reports.

    By Sevil Omer, NBC News

    A 12-year-old boy risked his life to rescue his four younger siblings from a burning home near Pensacola, Fla.


    Justin Jackson says he was watching over his three brothers and one sister when a fire broke out inside their home in Milton, Fla., on Sunday evening, NBC station WPMI-TV in Mobile, Ala., reported. His mom was working the night shift at a nursing home and his father had been away on business, according to local media reports.

    “If he wasn’t here, we would not be alive,” Justin's 9-year-old brother, Emilio Jackson, told WPMI-TV. "I love him all the way to the universe and back."

    A storm knocked out power to the neighborhood and the children had used a few candles to light up the house, according to WPMI-TV.

    Justin said he was awakened by thunder and lightning, and then saw smoke. He leaped into action, grabbing his three brothers, including Diego, 6, and William, 5, WPMI-TV reported.

    "I just picked them up and took them outside and I was knocking on neighbor's doors but none of them came out," Jackson told WPMI-TV.

    Jackson said he ran back into the fire and kicked down the door to get his 3-year-old sister, Brooklynn.

    "I was worried that I was not going to get my little sister out of there," Justin told WPMI-TV. "I had to pick her up and she was real stiff, I was just real scared at that point." 

    After saving his sister, Justin said he dashed back into the burning home a third time to call 911.

    "Smoke was in my eye. I couldn't see anything," WPMI-TV quoted Justin as saying.  

    Jackson's mother, Tiffanie Jackson, said she was working when she received a telephone call concerning her children.

    "When I saw the flames I was, like my house is on fire, I didn't know what to do. My life is burning up. My babies were in that,"  the children's mother, Tiffanie Jackson, told WPMI-TV. "There aren't enough words to describe how proud I am of Justin. He's my hero."

    Said Justin: "I was just helping my family."

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