Suffolk County, Boston | featured news

At least four people were killed yesterday when a pedestrian bridge, co-designed by the firm that helped plan Boston’s Zakim Bridge, collapsed on an eight-lane highway in Miami, crushing at least eight vehicles, and triggered a desperate search for trapped motorists, authorities said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must comply with a Massachusetts court order to allow an undocumented Guatemalan to contest a state misdemeanor charge, a federal judge ruled, in a decision that may have ramifications for immigrants caught in a Catch-22 between the state and the feds.

A member of a family-owned towing business died of his injuries after he was struck by a car late Wednesday at a crash scene on Interstate 495 in Andover, state police said.Daniel Coady of Coady’s Towing in Lawrence responded to a two-car crash on the highway’s southbound side when he was hit shortly before 11 p.m., police said.

The state’s highest court has agreed to consider the controversial texting suicide case of Michelle Carter, in a landmark move that will decide whether words alone are enough to convict someone of involuntary manslaughter.The Supreme Judicial Court notified Carter’s new high-powered defense team and Bristol prosecutors Wednesday that it will hear her appeal — a decision that will require the court to delve into the murky intersection of modern technology, constitutional rights and homicide.

Two high-ranking Boston police officers — including a superintendent on the command staff — are under internal investigation for an unspecified off-duty incident in June, police confirmed.Deputy Superintendent Beth E. Donovan and Lt. Richard J. Driscoll “were involved in an off-duty incident in June 2017, which is currently under investigation by Internal Affairs. There have been no charges filed and neither has faced discipline from the BPD,” Officer Stephen McNulty, a BPD spokesman, wrote in an email Wednesday.

A city councilor is calling for a systemwide audit of both mental health support services and building security needs of Boston’s 125 schools amid demands from School Committee members that BPS create an inventory of its psychologists.The call for more mental health services and beefed up security increased after 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Ex-ace pitcher Jim Lonborg, one of the Red Sox stars of the 1967 “Impossible Dream” season, defended former owner Tom Yawkey during a heated meeting yesterday that had others condemning the team’s legacy of being the last to integrate.Lonborg — who won 157 games in 15 big-league seasons — said dropping Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park in favor of its original Jersey Street ignores the evolution of the man.

Ousted city health director Felix G. Arroyo ordered a City Hall employee to pressure a woman into withdrawing a harassment complaint against his father, used an app to hide communications from public records and believed Mayor Martin J. Walsh had sent "spies" to infiltrate his office, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

A heated public hearing into a bid to change the name of Yawkey Way because of the Red Sox' troubled history on race drew a Sox legend passionately defending former owner Tom Yawkey, as well as the man who led a scathing 1959 investigation into the team's racial discrimination.

A tow-truck driver coming to the aid of a stranded motorist was struck and killed in a multi-vehicle pileup late last night on Route 495 in Andover,  state police said.The victim, a 41-year-old man from North Andover, was pronounced dead at Saint's Memorial Hospital in Lowell. His identity is being withheld pending notification of his family.