Small pump for kids awaiting heart transplant shows promise in Stanford Medicine-led trial

Pump for kids’ failing hearts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STANFORD MEDICINE

A small, implantable cardiac pump that could help children await heart transplants at home, not in the hospital, has performed well in the first stage of human testing.

The pump, a new type of ventricular assist device, or VAD, is surgically attached to the heart to augment its blood-pumping action in individuals with heart failure, allowing time to find a donor heart. The new pump could close an important gap in heart transplant care for children.

In a feasibility trial of seven children who received the new pump to support their failing hearts, six ultimately underwent heart transplants and one child’s heart recovered, rendering a transplant unnecessary. The results will be published May 7 in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. The study was led by the Stanford School of Medicine and included several medical centers in the United States.

If the early results are confirmed in a larger trial of the device, waiting for a heart transplant could become easier for small children and their families. The new pump, called the Jarvik 2015 ventricular assist device, is slightly larger than an AA battery and can be implanted in children weighing as little as 18 pounds. With the pump implanted, kids can take part in many normal activities while they wait for a heart transplant.

By contrast, the only ventricular assist device available to support small children whose hearts are failing, a pump called the Berlin Heart, is not implantable; it is as big as a large suitcase. It weighs between 60 and 200 pounds depending on the model, and is attached to the child with two cannulas almost as large as garden hoses.

The Berlin Heart also carries a fairly high stroke risk and requires hospitalization in most instances, meaning kids often endure monthslong hospital stays while they wait for a donor heart. As a result, the burden on children awaiting heart transplant is much higher than it is for adults implanted with heart pumps, who are routinely discharged from the hospital with similar diagnoses.

“While we are extremely grateful to have the Berlin Heart, a life-saving device, ventricular assist devices for adults have been improving every decade, but in pediatrics we’re using technology from the 1960s,” said the study’s lead author, pediatric cardiologist Christopher Almond, MD, professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine.

Implantable ventricular assist devices have been available to adults for more than 40 years, Almond noted. Not only do these devices fit inside patients’ chests but they tend to be safer and easier to use than external devices like the Berlin Heart. Patients can live at home, go to work or school, take walks and ride bicycles.

The lag in pediatric technology is a problem for other devices designed to help children with heart conditions, and in pediatrics in general, Almond noted. “There’s a huge difference in the medical technology available to kids and adults, which is an important public health problem that that markets have struggled to fix because conditions like heart failure are rare in children,” he said.

The study’s senior author is William Mahle, MD, chief of cardiology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Far fewer children than adults need heart transplants, leaving little incentive for medical device companies to develop a miniaturized pump for children. But the lack of a small ventricular assist device for children strains the medical system, as children attached to the Berlin Heart accrue large medical bills and can occupy hospital beds in specialized cardiovascular care units for several months, potentially reducing the availability of these beds for other patients.

Promising early findings

The feasibility trial of the Jarvik 2015 ventricular assist device included seven children with systolic heart failure. The condition affects the heart’s largest pumping chamber, the left ventricle, which pumps blood from the heart throughout the body. Six children had systolic heart failure caused by a disease called dilated cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes enlarged and weakened and does not pump correctly. One child’s heart was failing because of complete heart block (electrical failure of the heart) stemming from lupus, an autoimmune disease. All children in the trial were on a heart transplant list.

Each child had a Jarvik 2015 device surgically implanted at the left ventricle, the heart’s largest pumping chamber. At the same time, each was started on medication to prevent blood clots and lower the risk of stroke. When they received their pumps, the children were 8 months to 7 years old and weighed 18 to 46 pounds. The pump can be used for children who weigh up to 66 pounds.

If the new pump is approved by medical regulators, physicians estimate that about 200 to 400 children worldwide would be candidates for its use each year.

The trial assessed whether the pump could support patients for at least 30 days without ceasing to function or causing severe stroke. The researchers also collected preliminary safety and performance data to help them design a larger pivotal trial for possible Food and Drug Administration approval.

Although the pump is ideally intended to allow children to await heart transplants at home, because they were part of a clinical trial, the participants stayed in the hospital for monitoring until they received a heart transplant or recovered. The researchers tracked participants’ blood pressure, a marker for blood clot and stroke risk; measured hemoglobin levels to check whether the pumps were breaking red blood cells; and monitored patients for other complications.

The median time the children used the pump was 149 days. Six children received heart transplants, and one child’s heart recovered.

A few children experienced complications on the new pump. The child whose heart recovered had an ischemic stroke (from a blood clot) when the heart became strong enough to compete with the pump. The pump was removed, and the child continued to recover and was alive a year later. Another patient experienced failure of the right side of the heart and was transferred to a Berlin Heart pump to await transplant.

For most patients, complications were manageable and generally comparable to what physicians expect when a child is attached to a Berlin Heart.

Questionnaires about quality of life showed that most children were not bothered by the device, did not feel pain from it and could participate in most play activities. One family reported that their toddler was able to maintain much more mobility with the pump than his older sibling who had previously been supported with the Berlin Heart.

Larger trial planned

The National Institutes of Health has awarded funding for an expanded trial that will enable researchers to further test the utility of the new pump and generate data to submit to the FDA for approval. The next phase of research is launching now; investigators aim to enroll the first patient by the end of 2024. The research team plans to enroll 22 participants at 14 medical centers in the United States and two sites in Europe.

“We’re excited to launch the next phase of the research,” Almond said. “We’ve overcome a number of challenges to get the work this far, and it’s very exciting that there may be better options on the horizon for children with end-stage heart failure who require a pump that can act as a bridge to transplant.”

Researchers contributed to the study from the University of Texas Southwestern; Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston; Columbia University; Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta; Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida; Vanderbilt University Medical Center; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; Carelon Research; Stollery Children’s Hospital; the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; Boston Children’s Hospital; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; and the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. 

The study was funded by a contract from the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institution (grant number HHS N268201200001I).

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About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collabora

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JOURNAL

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-May-2024

Companies aim to release more treated oilfield wastewater into rivers and streams

Texas Tribune

Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News

Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News
April 29, 2024 

Oil Wells (Shuttershock)

"Companies aim to release more treated oilfield wastewater into rivers and streams" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

These days the Pecos River barely fills its dry, sandy bed where it crosses West Texas, but the river could be poised to flow again — with treated oilfield wastewater.

Companies are racing to figure out what to do with the tremendous volume of noxious water that comes up from underground during oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin, but a growing cohort of companies say they’ve developed a means to purify that fluid and release it in the Pecos and other watersheds.

“This is new ground for all of us and we know it's got to be done the right way,” said Robert Crain, executive vice president of Texas Pacific Water Resources, a company seeking to discharge treated water. “We’re not the only folks that are chasing this.”

For decades, oil drillers have injected their wastewater, known as “produced water,” back underground for disposal. But an intensifying spate of earthquakes tied to produced water injection wells in recent years has prompted the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates drilling and injection, to tighten restrictions on injection disposal, spurring a search for alternatives.

After two years of studies, the company is applying for a state permit to discharge up 840,000 gallons per day of treated oilfield wastewater into a tributary of Salt Creek, which feeds into the Pecos River. That volume won’t turn the Pecos into a roaring river but it could open doors for larger projects that could transform the river.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a permit for a company to discharge produced water in Atascosa County, southeast of San Antonio in the Eagle Ford Shale basin, earlier this year and is reviewing another application near Eagle Pass. A second company has also applied to discharge into the Pecos River watershed.

But scientists and environmental advocates have raised questions about the impacts of introducing this new waste stream into rivers. Federal regulations for these discharges are limited, delegating individual states to oversee their environmental and health impacts. Now responsibility lies with TCEQ to set requirements for these new discharges and the myriad pollutants found in produced water.

Everything from naturally occurring radioactive material, to dozens of toxic drilling lubricants, to “forever chemicals” known as PFAS have been detected in produced water. Existing water quality standards do not cover many of these constituents, leaving regulators to evaluate the risk of these discharges with limited toxicity data.

Texas joins states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming that are among the few that have permitted produced water discharges. Pollution problems related to produced water discharges have been documented in both states. In neighboring New Mexico, regulators have decided to wait for more scientific study before issuing permits for discharges.

When it comes to produced water reuse, some companies are putting in serious effort to do it safely, said Ira Yates, founder of Friends of the Pecos and heir to a West Texas oil fortune. But he worries that if the gates are opened on discharges, other startups won’t be as thoughtful.

“All people are really trying to do is get rid of their water so they can pump more oil,” said Yates. “Let’s make sure that, as they develop their plans, they keep the best interest of the river in mind and not just some nebulous idea that it's a place to dump water anytime you want to.”

A TCEQ spokesperson, Richard Richter, said the agency’s water quality standards “comply with state and federal water quality rules” and are “protective of surface water quality, human health, and the environment.” He said the agency will set limits on specific pollutants in produced water and that these limits could include both pollutants that are currently regulated and those that are not.

Texas ramps up discharge permit program

Produced water is typically injected underground through thousands of disposal wells around the state. But restrictions have been tightened on disposal wells since they have been linked to earthquakes in West Texas. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said last year that disposal capacity in the Permian Basin “is becoming an issue.” The company had to reduce deep injection by 75 percent in one of the seismic areas, according to the Permian Basin Petroleum Association magazine.

Oil and gas producers recycle a small portion of produced water. Treating the water, which can be ten times saltier than seawater and is often laced with leftover fracking chemicals, has been uneconomical so far, especially compared with the low cost of injection disposal.



An oil drilling operation on the banks of the Red Bluff Reservoir on May 27, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News


West of the 98th Meridian, a north-south line that roughly divides the arid West from the water-rich East, the Environmental Protection Agency delegates authority to states to permit discharges of produced water into bodies of water. EPA numerical standards for produced water discharges only cover oil and grease, leaving states to determine what other constituents to regulate.

These discharges must be beneficial to wildlife or agriculture, according to EPA regulations. Among Western states, Wyoming has authorized such discharges for over two decades. Colorado’s Water Quality Control Division has issued 14 permits to discharge produced water into surface water. California does not permit discharges into rivers but has permitted select discharges into waterways that only flow part of the year, according to the State Water Board’s Division of Water Quality. New Mexico is yet to approve discharges of produced water.

In the East, Pennsylvania authorized discharges of treated produced water from central wastewater treatment plants into rivers. However, Pennsylvania State University researchers later found elevated levels of salt and radioactive chemicals likely linked to the Marcellus Shale formation in sediments downstream of the discharges.




TCEQ’s Richter said the agency received four permit applications to discharge produced water during 2023 and 2024. Texas Pacific Water Resources and NGL Water Solutions Permian both applied for permits in the Pecos River watershed of the Permian Basin.

Another two applications are in the Eagle Ford Shale. In Atascosa County, TCEQ granted Dorchester Operating Company a permit to discharge treated oil and gas wastewater into three unnamed tributaries that feed into the Lower Atascosa River. TCEQ is currently reviewing a permit application from CMR Energy to discharge up to 653,000 gallons per day of treated oil and gas wastewater east of Eagle Pass into Comanche Creek and its tributaries, which flow into the Nueces River. The discharge is expected to contain chloride, petroleum hydrocarbons and naturally occurring radioactive materials, according to TCEQ records.


For discharges east of the 98th Meridian, TCEQ first had to obtain authorization from the EPA to create a permit program, as previously reported in Inside Climate News. TCEQ issued the first of these permits to Baywater Operating in Harris County, according to Richter. Baywater’s permit was terminated in March 2024 because the company was no longer discharging.

Texas has site-specific water quality standards for segments of different waterways, including the Pecos, Richter said. This means TCEQ permits different levels of pollutants depending on the conditions of that specific river.




Amy Hardberger, a professor of water law and policy at Texas Tech University, said more research and review is needed to determine appropriate uses of produced water. “The Clean Water Act never contemplated this water going into rivers and streams,” she said.

In a forthcoming paper, Hardberger points out that many of the constituents in produced water are difficult or costly to test for and do not have established EPA toxicity standards. These are numerical values measuring the risk presented by exposure to a chemical or contaminant. She compares the EPA’s list of standards for public water supplies, which includes exposure guidelines for approximately 90 contaminants, with the over 1,100 chemicals that have been found in produced water.

And she warned that the science on public safety shouldn’t be rushed to find a quick fix for produced water disposal.

“What's driving the train on this is not water shortage and the potential of an additional water supply,” she said. “What is really driving the change is they are running out of disposal opportunities.”

The EPA did not respond to questions for this story.
Two permits pending in the Pecos watershed

The Pecos River runs from the mountains of Northern New Mexico into the arid scrubland of West Texas and eventually joins the Rio Grande. The river passes through areas of intensive oil and gas drilling and has also been plagued by salinity problems.

Texas Pacific Water Resources’ permit application states that discharges will be beneficial for aquatic species downstream of the discharges into Salt Creek. The creek is home to the Pecos pupfish, a threatened species in Texas that only lives in a few locations in the watershed.

Crain said Texas Pacific Water Resources has developed a process to treat the wastewater up to discharge standards cost-effectively. The technology remains undisclosed while patents are pending, he said, but is already used in the nuclear and commercial food products sectors.

He said the company collaborated with research groups in several states to identify contaminants in produced water and develop means to test for their presence. The company ran a greenhouse study growing various grasses with its treated water and has sent them to a lab to check for accumulation of toxins.

Crain said the company has “gone beyond what's currently regulated” to test samples for compounds that have been identified in produced water. Those results were included in the company’s application to TCEQ. The testing found constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228, types of naturally occurring radioactive material, and benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, which are elements found in crude oil and gas production. There were also detectable amounts of some PFAS chemicals in the samples.



A methane gas flare burns four miles from Red Bluff Reservoir on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for Inside Climate News

Adrianne Lopez, the company’s research and development manager, said that the company will reduce constituents including Radium-226 and Radium-228 to the TCEQ-recommended level. They are also working with researchers at New Mexico State University to conduct human health risk assessments and whole effluent toxicity testing to determine safe levels.

Now it is TCEQ’s turn, based on this data, to set standards for the quality of the water to be discharged.

NGL Water Solutions Permian applied to discharge up to 16.9 million gallons per day of treated produced water near the Red Bluff Reservoir on the Pecos River in Reeves County. The company is a subsidiary of Tulsa-based NGL Energy Partners.

Discharged water will include trace amounts of organics, ammonia, volatile organic compounds and total dissolved solids, according to a TCEQ public notice. An NGL representative declined to comment for this story, saying that permitting details were still being determined with TCEQ. The agency administratively approved the permit and is now completing technical review.

NGL has an existing discharge program in Wyoming’s Anticline Basin. According to the company website, NGL discharges nearly 11,000 barrels per day or four million barrels per year in Wyoming.

Produced water discharges in Wyoming have recently come under scrutiny. The state environmental regulator reported that several sections of streams where produced water is discharged are polluted to the point they no longer support aquatic life. Last year regulators issued a violation to Dallas-based Aethon Energy Operating for exceeding permitted levels of sulfide, barium and radium in its discharges, according to the news outlet WyoFile.

Texas Backs Produced Water ReuseOfficials in Texas have identified produced water reuse as a core strategy to address forecasted regional water shortages. A billion-dollar water fund passed last year provides money for projects that bring new water supplies to the state.

According to state Sen. Charles Perry, eligible strategies include seawater desalination, groundwater desalination, inter-state agreements and produced water reuse.

Money from the new water fund should “be used solely to finance the development and acquisition of new water supply,” Perry wrote in a letter to the Texas Water Development Board. “This means water supply that is truly a new input into the state water cycle.”

Texas lawmakers also passed a bill in 2021 creating the Texas Produced Water Consortium, which brings together academic, industry and non-profit representatives to research the issue. A 2023 bill provided additional funding for the consortium to start pilot projects for produced water reuse.

The consortium, based at Texas Tech University, is preparing a report for the state legislature in the fall with updates on research into produced water and pilot projects. A representative of the consortium said its Standards Committee is compiling a database of water quality guidelines from multiple states, which includes hundreds of constituents that could be in produced water.

While there is still a long way to go, Ira Yates, of Friends of the Pecos, said he’s “very optimistic” that discharges could be beneficial for the Pecos River in the future.

“But I’m also very concerned,” he said, “that the people talking about putting the water back in the Pecos do not understand the hydrology and the river issues.”

Disclosure: The Permian Basin Petroleum Association and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/texas-treated-produced-water-disposal-discharge-rivers/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Floods Aren’t Going Away, But There’s a Better Way to Handle Them

BY TIM PALMER

APRIL 5, 2024
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Willamette River in flood stage, Canby, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

As the water rose during the most damaging flood in American history up to that time, I happened to be living at ground-zero of the storm. My house was narrowly spared, but neighbors suffered deeply. Stranded in an Appalachian valley of northcentral Pennsylvania, I helped in the emergency response. As soon as the water subsided enough for local roads to open, I returned to my job as county planner. I faced the challenging task of figuring out what should be done differently to not just recover from the current disaster but also to avoid the next one. In the aftermath I saw how dams had failed to contain the flood crest, how levees had ruptured when we needed them the most, and how post-flood relief was costly, inadequate, and useless in coping with the floods of the future. There had to be a better way.

After fifty years of engagement in flooding, and after writing many books about rivers and river conservation, I found that the floods of the future are going to be higher, more intense, and longer lasting. Our flood control efforts are failing and we need solutions that can truly curb the damage and also benefit rivers and the vital life they contain. My new book, Seek Higher Groundis a story of how we develop our landscape, of river health and well-being, and of the warming climate that poses ominous forecasts for increased flooding.

High-water problems have periodically floated to the top of public agendas ever since the Flood Control Act of 1936, which unleashed a fifty-year frenzy of dam building on virtually every major river in America. Seeing the futility of relying solely on dams and levees, Congress in 1973 bolstered a latent national flood insurance program with incentives for local governments to qualify their residents for subsidized flood insurance provided the communities also zone lowlands to limit new development in hazardous areas. Yet, by having taxpayers shoulder the risks of flooding, the insurance subsidy ironically provides the incentive to build and linger in the danger zone. The entire program has become a vivid illustration of the law of unintended consequences.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent building dams to stop floods from occurring, constructing levees to keep floods away from homes, and insuring and subsidizing people to rebuild in the aftermath. But relatively little has been spent to protect floodplains as open space, and comparatively little has been invested to help people relocate away from deadly hazards. Analyzing the numbers, the Natural Resources Defense Council found that every $1.70 our government spends helping people move away from flood hazards has been matched with $100 helping people stay in the danger zone by paying for relief, rebuilding, and subsidized insurance. The Council’s Rob Moore succinctly summed this up: “A lot more is spent helping people stay in harm’s way than is being spent to help them move out of harm’s way.” For many who await the next rise of high water, getting out of the way is the only path to a better future.

The challenge to public policy here goes beyond pragmatic issues of spending, and into the realm of river conservation with goals of healthy streams in mind. Floods are necessary phenomena that shape streams with essential pools and riffles. Floods recharge groundwater that half our population depends upon for drinking supplies, that nourish riparian corridors as the most important habitats to wildlife, and that create conditions needed for fish to survive and spawn. Rivers need floods and nature needs floodplains.

Our approaches to flood damages have not worked, and now the floods are getting worse. High water is becoming more intense, frequent, and widespread. The US Global Change Research Program forecast that precipitation will increase up to 40 percent across much of the country. Virtually all reliable sources report that flooding will grow as the planet’s climate warms. It has to—every 1 degree rise in atmospheric temperature allows the sky to hold 4 percent more water, and it all comes back down as rain or snow.

But there is hope, and a long list of sensible approaches have succeeded in denting the armor of this problem. The metro government of Nashville has sustained a floodplain management and relocation program for decades and succeeded in halting development on high hazard floodplains while helping 400 home owners move to safer terrain. Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, sponsor similar initiatives. Lycoming County, Pennsylvania succeeded in getting all fifty-two of its local municipalities to enact floodplain zoning, and then launched a buy-out program that helps people move to drier ground. Napa, California transformed a conventional proposal for higher levees to a plan that expanded acreage dedicated to flooding and that sequestered new parklands along the river. The Susquehanna Greenway Partnership strives to protect recreational greenways along hundreds of miles of the East Coast’s largest waterway.

Rivers make the news when they flood people’s homes, but that’s the bad news. The good news is that floodplains can be protected and restored. The rise of water can be beautiful provided we’re not living in the path of the greater floods to come.

Tim Palmer is the author of Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, published by the University of California Press, 2024, and other books about river conservation, including Field Guide to California Rivers and Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement. See www.timpalmer.org.

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Man guilty in Black transgender woman's killing in 1st federal hate crime trial over gender identity

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man was found guilty Friday of killing a Black transgender woman in the nation’s first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity.

James Pollard, The Associated Press

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In this image undated selfie provided courtesy of the Dime Doe family, shows Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman. Doe's August 2019 death is now the subject of a first-of-its-kind federal hate crimes trial that began this week in Columbia, S.C. (Courtesy Dime Doe Family via AP)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man was found guilty Friday of killing a Black transgender woman in the nation’s first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity.

Jurors decided that Daqua Lameek Ritter fatally shot Dime Doe three times Aug. 4, 2019, because of her gender identity. Ritter was also convicted of using a firearm in connection with the crime and obstructing justice.

The four-day trial centered on the secret sexual relationship between Doe and Ritter, who had grown agitated in the weeks preceding the killing by the exposure of their affair in the small town of Allendale, South Carolina, according to witness testimony and text messages obtained by the FBI.

There have been hate crime prosecutions based on gender identity in the past, but none of them reached trial. A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in 2017 as part of a plea deal after he admitted to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A Black transgender woman and the guy she was secretly dating had just been pulled over in rural South Carolina. Dime Doe, the driver, was worried. She already had points against her license and didn't want another ticket to stop her from getting behind the wheel. Daqua Lameek Ritter, whom she affectionately called “my man," frequently relied on her for rides.

Everything seemed to turn out OK: Doe sent a text message to her mother that afternoon saying she got a $72 ticket but was “alright.”

Hours later, police found her slumped over in the driver's seat of her car, parked in a driveway off a secluded road. Her death on Aug. 4, 2019, is now the subject of the nation’s first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity, which started Tuesday.

Much of what transpired in the roughly two-and-a-half hours between the last time Doe was seen and the discovery of her body remains unclear. But as prosecutors wrap up their case this week, more details are emerging about the furtive connection between the 24-year-old Doe — remembered by friends as an outspoken party lover — and Ritter, a man whose distinctive left wrist tattoo is captured in body camera footage from the traffic stop.

Ritter has been charged with a “hate crime for the murder of a transgender woman because of her gender identity,” using a firearm in connection with the hate crime and obstructing justice.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that he killed Doe to prevent further exposure of their affair in a small country town where the rumor mill was already churning. Text exchanges between the pair show Ritter tried to dispel gossip of the relationship in the weeks preceding Doe's death. He also tracked the investigation of her killing while coyly answering his main girlfriend's questions in the following days, according to trial testimony.

It was no secret in Allendale, South Carolina — population 8,000 — that Doe had begun her social transition as a woman shortly after graduating high school, her close friends testified. Doe started dressing in skirts, getting her nails done and wearing extensions. She and her friends went out drinking. They discussed boys they were seeing.

One of those boys was Ritter, who traveled from New York to visit family during summertime. Doe and Ritter grew close over the course of those stays, leaving Delasia Green — Ritter's primary girlfriend in the summer of 2019 — with a “gut feeling" that something was up.

Ritter initially told Green that he and Doe were cousins, the girlfriend testified this week. But then she found messages on his phone from an unsaved number that spoke of “getting a room.” She assumed they were from Doe.

When Green confronted Ritter, he became upset and told her that she shouldn't question his sexuality, she said.

Yanna Albany, Doe's cousin, testified that she too had a relationship with Ritter that summer but ended it after about three weeks when Doe told her she was also seeing him. Albany said when she broke up with Ritter, he turned red, threatened to beat Doe for “lying on him" and used a homophobic slur.

Nonetheless, Doe's relationship with Ritter seemed to grow stronger after the entanglement, Albany said. Other friends said Doe never mentioned any drama between the two.

Still, texts obtained by the FBI suggest that Ritter sought to keep their connection under wraps as much as possible. He would remind Doe to delete their communications from her phone, and the majority of the hundreds of texts sent in the month before her death were removed

Shortly before Doe's death, the text messages started getting tense. In a July 29, 2019, message, she complained that Ritter did not reciprocate her generosity. He replied that he thought they had an understanding that she didn't need the “extra stuff.” He also told her that Green had recently insulted him with a homophobic slur. In a July 31 text, Doe said she felt used and that Ritter should never have let his girlfriend find out about them.

Ritter's defense attorneys said the sampling of messages introduced by the prosecution represented only a “snapshot” of their exchanges. They pointed to a July 18 text in which Doe encouraged Ritter, and another exchange where Ritter thanked Doe for one of her many kindnesses.

But witnesses delivered other potentially damning testimony against Ritter.

On the day Doe died, a group of friends saw the defendant ride away in a silver car with tinted windows — a vehicle that Ritter's acquaintance Kordell Jenkins testified he had seen Doe drive previously. When Ritter returned to play cards several hours later, Jenkins said he wore a new outfit and appeared “on edge.” It was a buggy summer day, and the group of four began building a fire in a barrel to smoke out the mosquitoes.

Ritter emptied his book bag into the barrel, Jenkins testified. He said he couldn't see the contents, but assumed they were items Ritter no longer wanted, possibly the clothes he'd worn earlier that day.

Jenkins said that when the two ran into each other the following day, he could see the silver handle of a small firearm sticking out from the waistline of Ritter's pants. He said Ritter asked him to “get it gone.”

Defense attorneys argued it was preposterous to think that Ritter would ask someone he barely knew to dispose of an alleged murder weapon.

But soon after Doe died, Allendale was abuzz with rumors that Ritter had killed her.

Green testified that when he showed up later that week at her cousin's house in Columbia, he was dirty, smelly and couldn't stop pacing. Her cousin’s boyfriend gave Ritter a ride to the bus stop, presumably so he could return to New York. Before he left, Green asked him if he had killed Doe.

“He dropped his head and gave me a little smirk,” Green said.

Ritter monitored the fallout from Doe's death from New York, according to FBI Special Agent Clay Trippi, citing Facebook messages between Ritter and a friend from Allendale, Xavier Pinckney. On Aug. 11, Pinckney told Ritter nobody was “really talking,” which Trippi said he took as a reference to scant cooperation with police.

But by Aug. 14, Pinckney was warning Ritter to stay away from Allendale because he'd been visited by state police. He later said that somebody was “snitching.”

Trippi testified that his sources never again saw Ritter in Allendale for the summers following Doe’s death.

Federal officials charged Pinckney with obstructing justice, saying he provided false and misleading statements.

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Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

James Pollard, The Associated Press

Video shows Oklahoma nonbinary teen after attack in school bathroom, the day before their death

KEN MILLER, PHILIP MARCELO and JAMIE STENGLE
Updated Fri, February 23, 2024 




In this image provided Malia Pila, Nex Benedict poses outside the family's home in Owasso, Okla., in December 2023. A recently released police search warrant reveals more details in the case of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary Oklahoma student who died a day after a high school bathroom fight that may have been prompted by bullying over gender identity. (Sue Benedict via AP)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A 16-year-old Oklahoma student who died the day after a fight in a high school bathroom was conscious and alert when telling police about the attack by three girls that occurred after the teen squirted them with water, according to police video released Friday.

Nex Benedict's mother called police to come to the hospital on Feb. 7 after the teen was attacked at school in the Tulsa suburb of Owasso. Nex, who identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns, died the next day after their mother called emergency responders to their home, saying Nex's breathing was shallow, their eyes were rolling back and their hands were curled, according to audio also released by Owasso police.

In the video from the hospital the day of the altercation, Nex explains to an officer that the girls had been picking on them and their friends because of the way they dressed. Nex claims that in the bathroom the girls said “something like: why do they laugh like that," referring to Nex and their friends.

"And so I went up there and I poured water on them, and then all three of them came at me,” Nex tells the officer while reclining in a hospital bed.

“They came at me. They grabbed on my hair. I grabbed onto them. I threw one of them into a paper towel dispenser and then they got my legs out from under me and got me on the ground," Nex says in the video, adding that the girls then started beating Nex and they blacked out.

In the 911 call on Feb. 8, Nex's mother, Sue Benedict, expressed concern about a head injury as she described Nex's symptoms.

“I hope this ain't from her head. They were supposed to have checked her out good,” said Benedict, who remained calm during the call and said she had been to nursing school. Benedict said in a statement on a GoFundMe page set up to help cover funeral expenses that the family was still learning to use the teen’s preferred name and pronouns.

Paramedics responding to the family’s house performed CPR and rushed Nex to the hospital, where they later died.

In audio of the call Benedict made to police on Feb. 7, Benedict said she wanted an officer to come so she could file charges. The officer who responded can be heard in the hospital video explaining that Nex started the altercation by throwing the water and the court would view it as a mutual fight.

According to a police search warrant, Benedict indicated to police on Feb. 7 that she didn’t want to file charges at that time. Benedict instead asked police to speak to school officials about issues on campus among students.

The Feb. 9 search warrant, which was filed with the court on Feb. 21, also shows investigators took 137 photographs at the school, including inside the girl’s bathroom where the fight occurred. They additionally collected two swabs of stains from the bathroom and retrieved records and documents of the students involved in the altercation.

While the two-week-old warrant states that police were seeking evidence in a felony murder, the department has since said Benedict’s death was not a result of injuries suffered in the fight, based on the preliminary results of the autopsy.

The police department, which didn’t respond to multiple messages sent Friday, has said it won’t comment further on the teen’s cause of death until toxicology and other autopsy results are completed.

Video released by police from the high school on Feb. 7 shows students walking into and then out of a bathroom after stacking chairs on top of tables in a cafeteria. Six students are seen entering the bathroom before Nex, who stops at a water fountain and then enters the bathroom along with two other students. A faculty member is then seen going into the bathroom, and the students walk out.

There is no indication from the footage, which only shows the bathroom door and part of the cafeteria, of what occurred in the bathroom.

The school district has said the students were in the restroom for less than two minutes before the fight was broken up by other students and a staff member. Police and school officials have not said what provoked the fight.

The family, through their lawyer, declined to comment Friday on the search warrant. The attorney did not immediately offer any comment Friday on behalf of the family on the video and audio released. Earlier this week, they said they have launched their own independent investigation into what happened.

Vigils are planned over the weekend in Oklahoma for the teen.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that she was “absolutely heartbroken” over Nex’s death.

“Every young person deserves to feel safe and supported at school,” Jean-Pierre said.

___

Marcelo reported from New York and Stengle reported from Dallas.

FRACKQUAKE

Oklahoma rattled by shallow 5.1 magnitude earthquake

 

FEBRUARY 3, 2024 

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A 5.1 magnitude earthquake shook an area near Oklahoma City late Friday, followed by smaller quakes during the next several hours, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

No injuries were reported and damage appeared to be minimal, mostly items overturned or shaken from shelves inside homes, according to Lincoln County Deputy Emergency Management Director Charlotte Brown.

"Nothing significant ... nothing other than lots of scared people," Brown said.

The earthquake struck at 11:24 p.m. and was centered 8 kilometers (5 miles) northwest of Prague, Oklahoma, about 57 miles (92 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City, the agency said.

Residents across the state from Lawton to Enid to Tulsa reported feeling the shaking to the U.S.G.S.

The initial earthquake was followed by at least eight smaller temblors through Saturday morning, ranging in strength from magnitude 2.5 to 3.4, according to the geological survey.

The earthquake was shallow—just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep, according to the USGS—and temblors that hit close to the surface can make the shaking more intense.

At least six earthquakes, including two greater than magnitude 4, were recorded near another Oklahoma City suburb in January. In April, a magnitude 4 earthquake was among a series of six that struck the central Oklahoma town of Carney, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Oklahoma City.

A 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck Prague in 2011, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of the state's strongest recorded earthquake site in Pawnee, which registered a magnitude 5.8 in 2016.

Thousands of earthquakes have been recorded in Oklahoma in recent years, many linked to the underground injection of wastewater from oil and natural gas extraction, particularly in what is known as the Arbuckle formation that includes the area around Prague.

The epicenter of the Saturday earthquake was nearly the exact spot of the epicenter of the 2011 quake, according to Matt Skinner, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the state.

"That was one of the early areas where action was taken" to limit the injection of wastewater, said Skinner.

"Disposal wells within 10 miles of the quake" must stop operating temporarily, Skinner said.

The corporation commission has directed several producers to close some injection wells and reduce the volumes in others as a result of the quakes.

© 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Magnitude 6.4 earthquake shakes parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan but no damage is reported

Ancient rocks improve understanding of tectonic activity between earthquakes

by Matthew Carroll, Pennsylvania State University

Block model of a subduction zone with a section of the forearc removed, exposing the top

 of the downgoing plate. Dashed red lines are isotherms. Pink patches represent locations

 of accelerated footwall deformation by diffusive mass transfer (DMT). Strain rate in 

footwall increases on average from the top to the bottom of the seismogenic zone, where 

steady strain occurs that accommodates the plate rate. 

Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi7279

Rocks once buried deep in ancient subduction zones—where tectonic plates collide—could help scientists make better predictions of how these zones behave during the years between major earthquakes, according to a research team from Penn State and Brown University.

Clues from rock formations in Alaska and Japan allowed the scientists to develop a new model to predict the pressure solution activity in subduction zones, the researchers reported in the journal Science Advances.

Sedimentary rocks comprise grains surrounded by water-containing pores. When rocks are squeezed together under great pressure, the grains dissolve at their boundaries into the water present in pores, forming pressure solution. This allows the rocks to deform, or change shape, influencing how the tectonic plates slide past each other.

"It's like when you go ice skating—the blade on the surface ends up melting the ice, which allows you to glide along," said corresponding author Donald Fisher, professor of geosciences at Penn State. "In rocks, what happens is quartz grains dissolve at stressed contacts and the dissolved material moves to cracks where it precipitates."

The world's most powerful earthquakes happen in subduction zones, where one tectonic plate slides beneath the other. When these plates become stuck together, stress builds in the crust of the Earth—like a rubber band being stretched. When enough stress builds up to overcome the friction holding the plates together—like a rubber band snapping—an earthquake occurs.

"We've shown that pressure solution is a fundamental process during the interseismic period in subduction zones," Fisher said. "The occurrence of this pressure solution can really affect the amount of elastic strain that accumulates in different parts of the seismogenic zone."

Pressure solution is difficult to explore in the laboratory because it typically occurs very slowly over thousands to millions of years, Fisher said. Speeding up the process in the lab requires higher temperatures, which produces other changes in rocks that impact the experiments.

The scientists instead turned to rocks that once experienced these tectonic pressures and were later brought to the surface by geological processes. The rocks show microscopic shears—or breaks caused by strain—that contain textures that provide evidence for pressure solution, the scientists said.

"This work allows us to test a flow law, or model, that describes the rate of pressure solution in ancient rocks that were once down at the plate boundary and have been exhumed to the surface," Fisher said. "And we can apply this to active margins that are moving today."

A previous study by another team of scientists linked stress the rocks experienced and strain rate—or how much they deformed. In the new work, Fisher and his colleague, Greg Hirth, professor at Brown University, created a more detailed model that considers factors like the rocks' grain size and solubility, or how much of the rock material can dissolve into liquid.

"We were able to parameterize the solubility as a function of temperature and pressure, in a practical way that hadn't been done before," Fisher said. "So now we can plug in numbers—different grain sizes, different temperatures, different pressures and get the strain rate out of that."

The results can help reveal where in the seismogenic layer—the range of depths at which most earthquakes occur—that strain is occurring.

The researchers applied their model to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an active fault that runs from northern California to Canada and by major cities such as Portland, Oregon, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The temperature along the plate boundary and the amount of strain built up is well studied there, and the results of their model match crustal movements based on satellite observations, the scientists said.

"Cascadia is a great example because it's late in the interseismic period—it's been 300 years since the last major earthquake," Fisher said. "We may experience one in our lifetime, which would be the biggest natural disaster that North America can anticipate in terms of the potential for shaking and resulting tsunami."

More information: Donald M. Fisher et al, A pressure solution flow law for the seismogenic zone: Application to Cascadia, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi7279

Provided by Pennsylvania State University Long-dead marine organisms may influence next major earthquake