New Bedford

A “violent fugitive” wanted on child rape and sexual abuse charges who fled New Bedford, Massachusetts, with his children this month has been captured in Connecticut, authorities said Friday. Leon Mejia-Vicente’s children, 17 and 5, were with him and placed into the custody of Connecticut youth services, according to the New Bedford Police Department and Bristol County District Attorney’s Office….

DNA recovered from the interior of a conch shell thought to have been used as a weapon in the 2001 killing of a Massachusetts woman has led to the indictment on a murder charge of the victim’s half-brother, prosecutors said.

Three people and nearly two dozen cats were rescued from a burning home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on Sunday, while nearly three dozen more cats died in the fire. Firefighters responded to a 2-family home on County Street around 9:30 a.m., where they found three tenants still inside and sixty cats in what appears to be a hoarding situation, according…

A relief fund has been established for more than two dozen people who were displaced after an attempt to fry a turkey on Thanksgiving Day sparked a blaze that damaged three multi-family homes in New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford Mayor Jonathan Mitchell announced Saturday that the Washburn Fire Victims Fund has been established to help the 27 people whose Washburn…

More than two dozen people were left homeless on Thanksgiving after flames tore through three multi-family homes in New Bedford, Massachusetts. “I just saw smoke and flames coming out of the building,” witness Michael Meagher of New Bedford said. The fire happened at a residence on Washburn Street just before 10 a.m. and quickly spread to two other structures, authorities…

A 10-year-old girl has died after a three-car crash in Westport, Massachusetts, early Sunday morning that sent a total of seven people to nearby hospitals, authorities said. It was the second of two serious crashes in the town on the Rhode Island border within hours. Around 2:15 a.m., Westport police received “several frantic 911 calls” about a crash at the…

A small plane crashed in a cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Monday, leaving its pilot dead and debris scattered across several graves. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the crash, now under federal investigation, at Rural Cemetery in the city.

The federal government is trying to keep the disgraced fishing magnate known as the Codfather out of the seafood business.

East Coast fishermen are turning a wary eye toward an emerging upstart: the offshore wind industry.

President Barack Obama will establish on Thursday the first national marine monument in the Atlantic, a move that’s designed to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England.