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 Nov. 2, 2025.
Her mother and Oswego County workers left her in squalor. A state trooper refused to walk away
Aaron Eastwood knows Danielle Killmore. He would often see her pushing her dolls in a baby stroller along Route 11 as cars whizzed by. Eastwood, a state police sergeant, would stop to gently remind her: Don’t play too close to the road. But when he saw Killmore July 29, she was unrecognizable, he said. Killmore, 46, was covered in dirt as she lay on a cot in a small storage shed. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. She had soiled herself. She could barely lift her head when he called her name. Flies came out of her mouth. Syracuse.com investigated how Killmore and her mother fell into such squalor. It’s an alarming tale of mental health crises, the heroic rescue by a dogged state trooper, the unlikely role of a witness in Oklahoma and the utter failure of the county social service leadership to protect a vulnerable woman in peril.
Democrats didn’t expect to win Onondaga County Legislature: ‘Now we have to govern. Holy cow!’…