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. 16, 2026.
Just minutes before Jazmine Vann crashed into a tree and killed a 3-year-old, Syracuse police officers took away her keys to keep her from getting behind the wheel drunk, prosecutors said. Cops left the keys with Ren’Tasia Broome, Vann’s sister, who promised she wouldn’t let Vann drive away. But moments after police left, prosecutors say, Broome gave the keys back to Vann and helped her into the driver’s seat. Vann crashed less than a mile from where officers left her, killing 3-year-old Yasmeen Shaaf, and badly injuring another child and Yasmeen’s mother.
New York state will not require contractors on a $2.1 billion Interstate 81 contract to hire union workers for the first time on the largest ever transportation project in the state. The DOT has dropped the project labor agreement it used for the first half of the I-81 project as a preemptive measure to get approval from President Donald Trump’s administration, state and federal officials said. Project labor agreements on earlier I-81 contracts required companies to hire 75% of their labor from union halls, documents show. The agreement also set guidelines for wages, benefits and work hours, documents show.
Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood said he warned authorities they were making a mistake after Justin Sislo was released from jail on $10,000 cash bail. Sislo had been charged with 24 counts related to the abuse of his girlfriend in Madison County and about a month earlier had been charged with strangling her in Cayuga County. Hood said Sislo was a “dangerous person” who needed to be kept behind bars. “It was time for this person to go to jail,” Hood told syracuse.com in an interview. “That’s where he should have been.” About a week after being bailed out, Sislo fatally shot his parents, Steve Sislo and Donna Walker-Sislo, and killed himself in his parents’ home in the town of Madison. Deputies discovered three bodies on Aug. 7…