Each week, syracuse.com will look back at some of our most important and valuable journalism from the previous week. Here are six stories for the week of Aug. 9, 2026.
Before he killed his parents, Justin Sislo terrorized his girlfriend: ‘I felt like I was dying’
For months before he killed his parents, Justin Sislo physically and psychologically abused his girlfriend with relentless brutality. The abuse — broken bones, burns and terror — was so bad she twice attempted suicide to escape the torture. By the end of it all, she had 32 fractures in her ribs. She thought he would kill her, she told police. Instead, Sislo murdered his parents, Steve Sislo and Donna Walker-Sislo, in their home in the rural town of Madison. He then fatally shot himself. A disturbing and violent picture of Justin Sislo emerges in court documents obtained by syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. He was charged in Madison Town Court with 24 counts related to his abuse of his girlfriend.
Every 30 seconds or so, all day long, a huge construction truck rumbles past the line of homes on Caughdenoy Road in Clay. Water trucks roll up and down the road continuously, keeping down dust but creating lakes of mud in driveways. Across the road, excavators, bulldozers and other heavy equipment operate up to 16 hours a day to move millions of cubic yards of earth and gravel for the Micron Technology chipmaking plant. The residents of about a half-dozen houses along Caughdenoy Road just north of Route 31 live next to one of the nation’s largest construction sites. They’re the first ones bearing the brunt of the constant construction and traffic that are transforming a former rural tract into one of the largest semiconductor plants in the country.
Upstate University Hospital is pushing a plan to block off East Adams Street as part of its $450 million emergency department expansion project, hospital leadership told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. The public hospital says that closing one of Syracuse’s major streets would provide the best patient flow for the new emergency department, which will be three times the size of its current one. But Upstate’s closest neighbor and competitor, Crouse Hospital, says it’s a risky idea for everyone else in the medical district. Closing East Adams would put those life-saving minutes for Upstate’s patients ahead of people getting treatment elsewhere, Crouse leaders argue…