According to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, Mack, 72, spent more than seven years in jail after a jury convicted him guilty of raping a high school student in Greenburgh in 1975 and a related weapons conviction.

The district attorney’s office opened an investigation into Mack’s claim of innocence last year and conducted DNA testing that “conclusively excluded” Mack as the rapist. The office also discovered that the initial investigation and prosecution relied on eyewitness identifications that were “tainted by problematic and suggestive procedures used by the police,” according to a release.

Mack, whose exoneration occurred on his 72nd birthday, stated that he never gave up faith that his innocence would be established.

“Today has been a long time in the making. “I spent seven and a half years of my life in prison for a crime I did not commit, and I’ve lived with this injustice hanging over my head for nearly 50 years,” Mack said in a statement provided by the Innocence Project, an organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and brought Mack’s case to the DA.

“Now that the truth has been revealed, I can finally breathe.” “I am finally free,” he declared.

According to the Innocence Project, Mack is a Vietnam War veteran who has lived in South Carolina with his wife for over 21 years. He stated that the erroneous conviction had an irreversible impact on his life.

“It changed the course of my life—everything from where I lived to my relationship with my family,” Mack explained.

According to the Innocence Project, Mack’s wrongful conviction is the longest to be overturned based on fresh DNA evidence, based on its knowledge of similar cases.

According to the district attorney’s office, investigators were able to connect the fresh DNA test results to a Westchester man who had been convicted of a separate rape in 1975 and another sex crime in 2004. According to the release, when probed by an investigator, the man confessed to the 1975 Greenburgh rape.

According to the district attorney’s office, the new suspect cannot be prosecuted for the 1975 offense due to New York’s statute of limitations, but he is now in custody and being prosecuted for failing to register as a sex offender in relation to the 2004 sex crime.

Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah attributed Mack’s innocence to his “unwavering strength fighting to clear his name for almost 50 years.”

“This exoneration confirms that wrongful convictions are not only harmful to the wrongly convicted but also make us all less safe,” Rocah said in a statement last week.

After reading about flamingos at Ceasar Creek State Park, close to Dayton, on Facebook, Jacob Roalef decided to go check them out for himself last week. Roalef, who organizes birding trips, told, “I quickly grabbed my gear and told my wife and was out the door.”

Two birds, an adult, and a youngster, were swimming in the lake when he arrived. “The flamingos were just chilling and sleeping in about a foot of water near the shore,” Roalef added. If a gull flew overhead, it would cause them to open their eyes and take a drink of water.

He estimated that the birds lasted until 6 o’clock in the evening when a dog chased them away. Since Hurricane Idalia passed, reports of flamingo sightings have come in from all across the United States, including Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Texas, Kentucky, and many other areas, according to Jerry Lorenz, the state director of research for Audubon Florida.

He thinks the birds were on their way from Cuba to the Yucatan until the storm rerouted them.

It’s “really surprising” that “if you follow the path of Idalia, it (the sightings) really does kind of fall out to the north and south of that central track,” he said.

Lorenz stated that they are currently reviewing the data and he does not yet have an estimate for the number of birds that migrated north due to the storm.

“We have never seen anything like this,” Lorenz remarked. Some flamingos may arrive after storms, but this is truly unprecedented.

On Treasure Island, close to St. Petersburg, Florida, boat skipper Vinnie Fugett saw a flock of seventeen flamingos enjoying the sand and waves. It was dusk by the time the birds had finished their meal and taken flight.

Even though Fugett has spent his entire life in Florida, he has never seen a flamingo.

Lorenz pleaded with onlookers to give the flamingos plenty of room because they have endured so much.

This is a really stressful time for these birds. No matter how you slice it, they just endured a terrible tragedy,” he added. “So, don’t get close enough to startle them to frighten them or anything else, but enjoy their presence.”

Although flamingos are native to Florida, they were nearly wiped off by the fashion industry’s demand for their striking feathers around the turn of the 20th century.

Flamingo numbers are on the rise globally, but it was long thought that many of the birds in Florida originated in zoos and other escaped exhibits.

Flamingos have been spotted recently by experts who have tracked their migration from Cuba, Yucatan, and the Bahamas.

Flamingos, according to Lorenz, can travel thousands of miles across open sea, so the Ohio birds shouldn’t have any trouble getting back to warmer climes when winter comes.

Together with a team of specialists, he has been trying to improve flamingo habitat in the Everglades and the Florida Keys.

Maybe then they’ll feel safer, and then we’ll have a population again, and tourists will be able to visit South Florida and the Florida Keys to see flamingos in their natural habitats, as he put it.

The driving ban, which was put in place because of the rain, was made public. The ban on leaving Black Rock City on Friday had been lifted by Monday afternoon, so people could leave safely. Black Rock City is a fake city that is built every year for the event.

The area was still muddy and hard to get around, the leaders said, and it took about seven hours to get out of the city on Monday night. A Burning Man website says that in the past, it has taken between six and nine hours during peak journey times.

Tuesday morning, things had changed a lot for the better:

“There is an estimated 2-3 hour wait to leave Black Rock City,” event organizers wrote on X, which used to be called Twitter. “Everyone should get a lot of sleep before getting on the road. Expect to be late and watch out for trash from faster-moving cars on the highway. Safe travels.”

Getting stuck in the desert and missing flights and other obligations was stressful and upsetting for many of the people who went. However, some people said that the weather problems brought camp communities closer together because people shared food and resources, gave protection to those who needed it, and got together.

Kaz Qamruddin, who was at the event, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Monday, “As soon as the tents became too wet or unsafe to live in, people in RVs started taking in some of the tenters, so everyone was warm.”

“We are a community that comes together in hard times,” he said. “It’s all about coming together and working as a team.”

Diplo, Cindy Crawford, and other celebrities try to get through the wet desert

By the time the travel ban was lifted, thousands of people had already left, some on foot and some in cars to try their luck.

DJ Diplo was one of the first people to leave. He told CNN that he and other celebrities, like Chris Rock, Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, and Austin Butler, walked several miles in the wet desert early Saturday morning. When they got to a concrete road, a fan offered to take them in the back of his truck.

About 64,000 people were still there at noon on Monday, out of the 72,000 who were still there as of Sunday night.

Many people stayed because officials told them to and because they wanted to see the highlight of the event, which was the burning of the Man.

The Man, a huge wooden figure, was burned on Monday night, one day later than planned.

Why did the rain make Burning Man so different?

Friday, after the first rains soaked the tents, event organizers told people that they could no longer drive in the city. They stopped people from going in and out of the area and told them to “shelter in place” and save food and water.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, it rained up to 0.8 inches in a rural part of northwest Nevada. That’s about twice as much as it usually rains in September. On Sunday, it rained again.

Diplo got a ride from a stranger after walking miles “through the mud” to get away from the rainy Burning Man and make it to his DC show.

The National Weather Service in Reno wrote on X, “September has started off pretty wet for most of eastern California and western Nevada.” “Nearly 2.5″ of rain fell in the far eastern parts of Churchill and Pershing counties, where it rained the most.”