Hannah Shirley

Hannah Shirley

Hannah Shirley covers crime, courts and criminal justice for the Grand Forks Herald. She is a 2018 graduate of the University of Idaho and has lived and worked in Grand Forks since 2019. Prior to moving to North Dakota, she worked as a reporter for the Berkshire Record in Great Barrington, Mass., a receptionist for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho, and a barista in a New York City coffee shop. She can be reached by phone at (701) 780-1267 or by email at hshirley@gfherald.com.

"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings ... I am not in the least bit sorry," wrote Carl Panzram.
Nineteen-year-old farmhand George Miller maintained his innocence all the way to the gallows after he was convicted of murdering an Inkster, N.D., farmer's wife and 11-year-old son in 1885.
Kaylee Acevedo, 10, was on her bicycle on the sidewalk in downtown Crookston when a semi entered the sidewalk during a turn Monday evening. Acevedo became entangled in the semi's back tires and was dragged a block and a half, according to police.
A retired Grand Forks detective said Kristi Nikle's case disturbs him because the 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman seemed to vanish into thin air.
The man's identity is being withheld pending notification of his family.
Police believe the 16-year-old girl's death is an isolated incident, and no other individuals are believed to have been involved.
"Just please don't take the pill," Grand Forks Police Lt. Derik Zimmel said. "We ask and we'll continue to ask and beg and plead, but there's a lethality to them that is evidenced repeatedly."
"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."
The rising popularity of counterfeit pharmaceutical pills, often laced with cheaper substances such as fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, represents a new evolution in residents' interaction with drugs in Grand Forks, according to Michael Dulitz, the opioid response project coordinator for Grand Forks Public Health.
"It is hard for people that haven't been through a situation like that to understand a lot of the time," said Sara Sammert, the director of victim advocacy at the Community Violence Intervention Center in Grand Forks.