The father of a young woman, recently graduated from college, has spoken out about several warning signs in his daughter’s relationship before she was allegedly shot by her ex-boyfriend, a former staffer for President Biden. The tragic incident unfolded in their shared California apartment.

The accused, 25-year-old Nation Wood, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter for the death of 22-year-old Samantha Emge in San Francisco on March 24. Wood insists the shooting was an accident, with investigations indicating he purportedly discharged his firearm through their apartment wall just as Emge emerged from the shower, as reported by the California Post.

Bill Phipps, Emge’s father, has described the relationship between his daughter and Wood as fraught with conflict and, at times, abusive. He has expressed skepticism over the claim that the shooting was unintentional.

Nation Wood, 25, is charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting death of Samantha Emge, 22, in San Francisco, Calif., on March 24, 2026. (Samantha Emge/Instagram)

Emge’s father, Bill Phipps, told the Post the couple’s relationship was tumultuous and occasionally abusive, while questioning if the alleged shooting was truly accidental. 

“Their relationship was not good, and he was an abusive boyfriend. Samantha had been trying to break up with him for a while,” Phipps said, the outlet reported. “She was unable to break up with him, and she was looking forward to him going away.”

Wood was just two weeks away from joining the National Guard when the shooting occurred, and Emge had only recently moved back in with the San Francisco State graduate, the Post reported.

Emge reportedly staged an intervention with Wood regarding his alleged drinking problem after her father said he became physically and emotionally abusive. She also moved out of the home the pair shared for a period of time, her father said. 

Samantha Emge, 22, was fatally shot inside her apartment in San Francisco, Calif., on March 24, 2026. (Samantha Emge/Instagram)

“All of her friends were constantly trying to tell her she should break up with him,” Phipps told the Post.

Wood’s LinkedIn page indicated he worked as a part-time security staffer for President Joe Biden’s Secret Service team in 2023, according to the Post. He was also reportedly photographed next to former Vice President Kamala Harris as the pair posed in front of a presidential jet. 

Samantha Emge poses for an undated photograph. (Samantha Emge/Instagram)

According to his LinkedIn profile, Wood reportedly worked at the White House through July 2025 and described his current job as an “independent pre-event site security advisor.”

He told police he was “dry-firing” his gun and did not realize it was loaded when the weapon fired through a medicine cabinet and struck Emge in the face, according to the Post.

Defense attorney Paula Canny said Wood had been sober for 16 months at the time of the alleged shooting, and had initially asked the court that her client be allowed to travel to a Tucson clinic for treatment before dropping the request after Emge’s parents fought back, according to the outlet.

“Samantha told Nation’s family how much she loved Nation and how much she loved being a part of their family,” Canny said, the Post reported. “Nation’s family is devastated by this tragedy and their hearts go out to Samantha’s family and loved ones.”

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins reportedly said in a statement that the investigation remains ongoing as prosecutors could potentially weigh additional charges against Wood.

“As the investigation unfolds, if any new evidence comes to light, that is admissible in court and sufficient to meet our burden of proof, we may seek to file an amended complaint to reflect more or different charges from what was initially charged,” Jenkins said.

Wood pleaded not guilty in San Francisco Superior Court and was released to a psychiatric hospital on $300,000 bail, according to the Post.

Wood’s defense attorney and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The husband who has been taken into custody following his wife’s mysterious disappearance in the Bahamas recounted the night’s events as a “series of mishaps,” confessing that he “struggles to explain” the incident during a candid phone conversation with a friend.

Brian Hooker, aged 59, is currently under questioning by Caribbean authorities after reporting that his wife, Lynette, 55, went overboard from a small dinghy while they were heading back to their yacht on April 4.

“It was a series of mishaps, and it’s something I will never be able to forgive myself for,” Hooker revealed during a call to a friend on April 7, which CBS News has confirmed.

“We lingered too long, departed when it was too dark, just a lot of things,” Hooker said in a composed tone.

Brian also acknowledged his oversight in not securing the dinghy properly.

“I f–king threw the anchor out last, instead of first,” he told his pal.

“Can’t really explain it, you know. I just know that I hate this boat and if she doesn’t come back, I’m never getting on this f–king boat and I’m gonna sell this f–ker,” he said.

He also admitted that the pair, from Michigan, did not bring their life jackets.

In Jackson, Mississippi, the solemn presence of the Lynching Victims Monolith stands as a poignant reminder of the state’s tumultuous past. These unadorned glass panels bear the names of over 600 individuals who fell victim to racially motivated killings in Mississippi, with the motives behind these heinous acts clearly etched alongside.

Among the tragic stories is that of Malcolm Wright, who was brutally beaten to death in front of his family in 1949. His alleged crime was “hogging the road,” as his mule-drawn wagon moved too slowly for his attackers’ liking. This incident is just one of the many documented within the monolith’s somber records.

The monolith is part of a larger collection of exhibits and artifacts housed within the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the adjacent Museum of Mississippi History. Together, these institutions, known as the Two Mississippi Museums, form a significant landmark in the shadow of the state Capitol, playing a pivotal role in Mississippi’s America 250 celebration.

As visitors reflect on the displays, the emotional weight is palpable. Kiama Johnson, a visitor from Monroe, Louisiana, sat quietly, overwhelmed by the names inscribed on the panels. “That’s just the people that we know about,” she remarked, tears welling in her eyes. “Imagine the ones we don’t know, the stories that will never find their place in history books.”

This unflinching portrayal of Mississippi’s history is a part of the state’s official effort to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary. It stands in stark contrast to the national narrative that has evolved since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, where such candid reflections are often absent.

Easing the discomfort of a sometimes brutal American history has been a central theme of Trump’s administration. He signed an executive order his first day back in office eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the federal government. That, along with a March 2025 executive order, ” Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” have led to signs being changed at federal parks, exhibits being altered or in some cases removed, and military bases being renamed.

Part of the Republican administration’s preparations to celebrate the 250th anniversary have included putting pressure on federal institutions, including the Smithsonian, to tell a version of history that is less focused on discrimination and episodes of racial violence.

In Mississippi, a temporary exhibit created specifically for the commemoration — Mississippi Made — fills a space that is routinely changed to entice visitors to return. But it is housed in a space where achievement is intertwined with the state’s dark past involving Native Americans, enslaved people and the Civil Rights era.

Nan Prince, director of collections for the Mississippi Department of Archives & History, said the instructions were simple from scholars, politicians, staff members, and civic and civil rights groups when the museums were being conceived and built.

“Don’t brush over anything, don’t whitewash anything,” she said. “Just tell the absolute truth.”

‘We weren’t going to hide anything’

Jackson Mayor John Horhn was a state senator when he began pushing for the Civil Rights Museum in 1999. His efforts finally got a boost when Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, became governor.

Plans for the museum eventually were combined with a parallel effort to move the state history museum from the Capitol grounds, with the complex opening in 2017.

The approach to creating a state history museum was the same — tell the full story, beginning with how Native Americans were removed from the land.

“We said at the beginning we weren’t going to hide anything,” Barbour said in an interview, noting that he grew up in an era of segregation. “We weren’t gonna try to justify what was done. That’s what the people wanted — to say, ‘Look, we’re not proud of this, but we’re not going to deny it.’”

Other states have made sure to highlight their diversity in their presentations for the 250th anniversary. The America 250 description for neighboring Alabama includes milestones in the Civil Rights Movement.

Mississippi takes its history head-on. Its “America 250 MS” platform says the state’s history mirrors the American story, with the removal of Native Americans making way for slavery and slavery leading to the Civil War, followed by Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

Horhn praised the willingness of Mississippi leaders to use the museums to tell the state’s full story.

“We still have issues, we still have a lot of challenges,” he said. “But it’s a demonstration that progress has been made.”

‘It just made me want to weep’

The History Museum opens into a gallery that explores Mississippi’s first people, the Native Americans. The entrance is dominated by a 500-year-old canoe, a vivid reminder that Native Americans were here thousands of years before settlers arrived and forced them out, taking the land to begin growing cotton, which was tended by enslaved people.

Across the lobby sits the Civil Rights Museum. The first audio exhibit is abrupt: “We don’t serve your kind,” a menacing voice tells visitors, triggered when they cross the museum threshold.

It is one of several phrases once commonplace in the nation’s segregated past that bombard visitors at the opening to the gallery.

The museum also does not shy away from presenting one of the state’s most infamous racial killings, that of Emmett Till. The 14-year-old was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in a rural Mississippi grocery store.

Till’s murder was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Thousands came to his funeral in Chicago, and his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open casket so the country could see the gruesome state of her son’s body.

At the end of the narrative, by Oprah Winfrey, visitors can see the .45-caliber pistol used to kill the teenager.

Lindsay Ward, 49, cried in the lobby after touring the Civil Rights Museum. Raised in what she described as a sheltered world in Salt Lake City, she said she had not had any exposure to the topics she encountered during her visit — “this heaviness,” as she put it.

Ward, now living in Denver, said she was troubled by how recent some events were.

“We’re not talking about hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We’re talking 60 years. It just made me want to weep,” she said. “It doesn’t feel great, but it’s important we understand what happened in the past.”

Connor Lynch, a history teacher and social justice advocate from Chicago, said deciding how history will be told has always been a struggle.

“All we have is human narrative” and that comes with bias, he said. “I do believe that no matter what sort of erasure the country might be doing, we know the stories. We know the truth.”

‘A very difficult history,’ on full display

For the America 250 celebration, the museums created ”Mississippi Made,” which highlights the state’s products and achievements.

There is the common household cleaner Pine-Sol, a Nissan Frontier and a Toyota Corolla, a section citing the state’s involvement in the U.S. space program and medical advances such as the first human lung transplant.

There is something else — a display by renowned Mississippi quilter Hystercine Rankin. It is a quilt telling the story of her father being killed in 1939.

Jessica Walzer, the exhibit curator, said she included it because it is one of the few story quilts in the museums’ collection and because it tells part of Mississippi’s history.

“I think it’s important to have something kind of striking like that to kind of remind us that Mississippi also has this very difficult history that a lot of people have been through,” she said.

Prince, the state director of collections, said such truth had long been denied. Visitors to antebellum homes, for instance, heard about the families who lived there, but “they would never once tell you about the people that lived behind the house or the people that built the house or the people that worked the fields,” she said.

“For so long,” she said, “we just tried to gloss over that because it was uncomfortable.”

In a shocking revelation from eastern France, a 9-year-old boy has been freed after spending years confined to his father’s utility van. Local authorities have confirmed that the child has been taken to a hospital, while his father is now in police custody.

Residents in the village of Hagenbach, located near the Swiss and German borders, raised the alarm after hearing “sounds of a child” emanating from a van earlier this week. This prompted a swift response from the police, as detailed in a statement released on Saturday by prosecutor Nicolas Heitz.

Upon investigating, officers forced entry into the vehicle, uncovering a distressing scene. The boy was found curled up in a fetal position, unclothed, and covered only by a blanket amidst piles of trash and human waste. Heitz noted that the child was severely malnourished and had lost the ability to walk, having been confined to a seated position for an extended period.

During questioning, the boy’s father claimed he locked his son in the van back in November 2024. He alleged that his actions were meant to “protect him,” as his partner had intended to admit the child to a psychiatric facility when he was just 7 years old.

However, prosecutor Heitz stated that there is no medical evidence to support any psychiatric issues in the boy’s history. Furthermore, the child was reportedly performing well academically prior to his disappearance.

The boy told investigators that he had “big difficulties” with his father’s partner and thought his father “had no choice” but to lock him up, according to the prosecutor. He said he hadn’t showered since 2024.

The father was handed preliminary kidnapping and other charges and kept in custody. His partner denied knowledge that the boy was in the van, according to the prosecutor. She was handed preliminary charges, including for failure to help a minor in danger, and released under judicial supervision.

The boy’s 12-year-old sister and the 10-year-old daughter of his father’s partner were placed in the care of social services.

The prosecutor’s office is investigating whether others were aware of the boy’s detention.

Friends and family told investigators they thought the boy was in a psychiatric institution. His teachers were told he had transferred to a different school, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The authorities have not released the names of the victim or his relatives.

Hagenbach residents contacted by The Associated Press expressed shock on Saturday over the cases and said they were unaware of the boy’s whereabouts, but didn’t want to discuss details.

The prosecutor declined to comment further to AP pending further investigation.

Dear Jane,

My living situation has become quite uncomfortable due to my roommate’s persistent questions about my sex life. Her inquiries have crossed a line, making it difficult to coexist peacefully.

What complicates matters further is that she’s a virgin. While I respect everyone’s personal choices regarding their sexual experiences, her intense curiosity, stemming from her own abstinence, is beginning to feel intrusive.

Personally, I maintain what many would describe as a healthy sex life. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget just how thin the walls of our apartment are, which seems to fuel her curiosity even more.

You see, I have what one might consider a healthy sex life and, on some occasions, I forget just how thin our walls are.

Right on cue, my roommate will bound into my room the next morning (once my boyfriend leaves) and make comments about how much ‘fun’ it seems we had and ask for all the ‘juicy details.’

I can’t blame her for being interested in what she hasn’t experienced.

But it is starting to feel intrusive, and has got to the point that my boyfriend no longer feels comfortable staying the night if she’s also in the apartment.

She’s a bit shy and doesn’t have many friends, so I’m afraid that if I say something to her, I’ll hurt her feelings and make her shut down. 

I just don’t know if I can keep living with someone who doesn’t understand that their behavior has become inappropriate.

Sincerely,

Freaky Friend

Dear Freaky Friend,

It always both astonishes and saddens me that we are given no road maps for how to talk to friends when they behave in ways that make us uncomfortable. 

It’s easy to tell our partners and often members of our family, that their behavior has upset us in some way, but when it comes to friends – and in this case a roommate -we have no idea what to say, so we say nothing at all, and resentment builds until one of us has to go.

As hard as this may be to hear, it’s not up to her to magically read your mind and figure out how mortifying this all is for you. She likely has no idea how her curiosity is affecting you. It’s up to you to set the boundary.

You’re worried it will shut her down. But, in the meantime, you are being shut down and you have the right to some privacy.

And for the record, this has little to do with her virginity, but more to do with her crossing a boundary, with no one telling her how inappropriate it is.

Happily, the fix is an easy one. Difficult conversations should always be framed as: I felt X when you did Y. In your case, I feel uncomfortable when you let me know you’ve been listening to what my boyfriend and I do, and then ask for the “juicy details.” You are also allowed to request that she no longer does it.

Failing all that, perhaps a white noise machine would make an excellent gift for her birthday.

International best-selling author Jane Green offers sage advice on readers’ most burning issues in her agony aunt column

Dear Jane,

I love my fiancé but I can’t stand his children.

But most of all, I can’t stand how he’s raising them.

They don’t have any manners, and they treat me horribly.

When they’re rude to me, or him, he just says nothing.

I’ve tried really hard to make them happy: I make all their favorite food, and am constantly thinking of activities they’ll love.

They never say thank you and most of the time they refuse to eat my food, just because I’m the one who’s cooked it.

So, my fiancé just gets up from the table and makes them chicken nuggets.

He wants us to be this big happy family, but he won’t intervene and talk to them. I’m getting really tired of trying to do the right thing and getting treated like I’m the interloper.

I love my future husband but I just don’t know if I can keep doing this.

Sincerely,

Struggling Stepmom

Dear Struggling Stepmom,

So many of us find the men we love and look forward to step-parenting with open hearts, dreaming of somehow creating the perfect new family unit. We think that all the children need is unconditional love and they will come to accept and love us, even if they don’t at the beginning.

But that is often not the case.

I have seen women, myself included, twist themselves into pretzels in order to make stepchildren happy. The truth is, it really doesn’t matter what we do – we are fighting something bigger than us.

Plus, making their favourite food and doing everything for them seems like it might make them accept you, but in fact, it is giving them all the power.

Healthier is for you to step away. Rather than your fiancé leaving the table at every mealtime, perhaps you make them chicken nuggets. Or, stop cooking for them. Have your husband make them the food he wants.

Focus on your marriage and your peace. You will never be their mother and trying to act like one usually doesn’t bring us the results we want.

Nor can you expect your fiancé to defend you, (which would be the right thing to do). Often men caught between a new wife and their children, feel torn. So they do as your fiancé is doing and say nothing, leaving you feeling abandoned and lonely.

What you can do, is set your own boundary. If the children are rude, tell them, kindly, that you won’t be spoken to like that, and that you are going to remove yourself until they can be polite.

Then, remove yourself. Go and run yourself a hot bath, or go for a walk with a girlfriend.

This may not ever change. A huge percentage of second marriages fail because of issues with stepchildren, and ex’s. If this is the man for you, you need to forge your own relationship with him and stop bending over backwards to try and make his kids like you. 

Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but you do not have to take it. You cannot presume that this will get better over time, but you can protect your peace.