A compassionate California grandmother was left fighting for her life after authorities say a stranger she had invited inside her home repaid her kindness with a brutal metal baseball bat attack.

Therese Garcia, 71, was relaxing on the porch of her home in Crestline last month when 26-year-old Erik Eduardo Navarro walked up with a troubling story. He told her he had been robbed while camping, had lost all of his possessions, and was preparing for a job interview at a nearby hardware store, Garcia’s daughter, Abbie, told NBC Los Angeles.

Moved by his situation, Garcia opened her door to Navarro and began caring for him. She cooked him dinner each night and believed she was helping a “sweet kid” who had simply run into hard times and needed a safe place to get back on his feet.

Within days, however, the situation inside the Crestline home reportedly began to shift. Garcia’s initial sympathy faded as Navarro allegedly grew increasingly demanding and started behaving as though the home belonged to him.

“He was there a total of six days and he started kind of making demands,” Abbie recounted to CBS News. “He wasn’t really helping with any of the things that he agreed to in the beginning.”

When Garcia then asked Navarro to leave her home, he reportedly waited for her to fall asleep on the couch before he started beating her with a metal baseball bat.

He then beat her for hours, only taking breaks when she lost consciousness, and striking her again every time she woke up, Garcia’s family said.

‘He just kept beating her until he finally thought she was dead,’ Abbie lamented. 

At that point, Navarro allegedly ran off with Garcia’s phone, credit cards, keys and e-bike. 

Deputies with the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office only discovered what had happened after neighbors asked for a welfare check on the 71-year-old.

When they then arrived at her house on August 25, they found Garcia suffering from a cut on her forehead, a cut eyebrow, swollen hands and injuries near her eyes that caused swelling that made it difficult for her to see.

Garcia’s family now believes she would have bled to death if the neighbors hadn’t asked for help.

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The matriarch has been in the hospital ever since the frightening encounter, with family members describing how she was left vomiting blood for days and had multiple broken bones in her arm, hands and face.

She has been treated for a traumatic brain injury, a brain bleed and multiple deep lacerations that required extensive stitching, her family has said.

Garcia’s condition has started to stabilize over the past week, as she started taking some small steps.

Still, she remains in immense pain and is ‘extremely dizzy, exhausted and struggling with the effects of her brain injury.

‘We don’t yet know what her recovery will look like or how much care she will need once she leaves the hospital,’ Abbie wrote in an online fundraiser to help with her mother’s medical expenses.

It notes that Garcia does not have health insurance and may need facial surgery once the swelling subsides, as well as potentially extensive in-home care.

‘Our family is doing everything we can,’ Abbie said. ‘I am her daughter, currently pregnant and caring for my one-year-old. Her son lives in New York and her other daughter is working while raising two children. 

‘We are doing our best to balance our own families while being there for our mom through this nightmare,’ she continued, saying the family ‘would give anything to take this pain away from her.’

Meanwhile, authorities are continuing to search for Navarro, whom Abbie said she genuinely believes will kill somebody if he’s not caught. 

‘My mom didn’t deserve this,’ she said in the fundraiser. ‘She was simply trying to help someone she believed was in need, something she has always done throughout her life. This time, her kindness was met with unimaginable violence.

‘She survived. Now we want to help her truly recover.’

For those who cannot donate, Abbie asked for the public to ‘please keep my mom in your prayers.’

Anyone with information about Navarro’s whereabouts is also asked to call the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office Twin Peaks station at (909) 336-0660. 

An aristocrat turned underworld operator may sound like pure fiction, but it is the deliciously unlikely premise driving Guy Ritchie’s action-comedy series The Gentlemen, which returns to Netflix today for its second season.

The Netflix hit follows Edward “Eddie” Horniman, the newly minted Duke of Halstead, played by Theo James, whose inheritance comes with a shocking surprise: a sprawling cannabis operation concealed beneath his family’s financially troubled country estate.

At first, Eddie tries to disentangle himself from the criminal enterprise. But when escape proves impossible, he is pulled deeper into Britain’s organised crime scene — and soon discovers he may have a natural talent for it.

The storyline is knowingly extravagant, as viewers would expect from Ritchie’s slick gangster universe. Yet the idea of drugs hidden behind grand façades is not entirely removed from real life.

Across the UK, police have uncovered drug production sites inside some remarkable properties, including a £2.2 million Georgian mansion and a 102-room Welsh estate that once welcomed King Charles.

One cannabis operation, at a Grade II-listed country house in Cumbria, was valued at £5.2million – around £200,000 more than the annual sum the operators of the fictional farm at Halstead paid their aristocratic landlord.

These shocking discoveries speak to the financial pressures facing Britain’s country houses, many of which struggle to balance eye-watering upkeep costs with dwindling traditional sources of income.

After all, these sprawling estates are notoriously expensive to run, with annual maintenance and staffing bills potentially topping £1million – and that’s before factoring in major restoration work such as replacing a roof.

Let’s start at Moulton Grange, a sprawling manor house in Northamptonshire which hosts luxury weddings and corporate events.

Boasting 28 acres of landscaped grounds, it has been praised by guests as ‘the perfect venue’ and ‘simply magical’, while one happy couple said it ‘exceeded all our expectations’.

But it appears to have been hiding a darker secret, with investigators seizing more than 12,000 doses of illegal weight-loss injections from a suspected black-market drugs factory operating inside the house.

During a raid on May 28, officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) arrested two 29-year-old men, who were later released.

The MHRA claimed Moulton Grange was being used as a ‘large-scale facility to manufacture, assemble and distribute unlicensed weight-loss medicines, including retatrutide and tirzepatide, as well as peptide products’.

Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Mounjaro, while retatrutide is an experimental treatment still undergoing clinical trials.

The MHRA described the raid as the UK’s largest seizure of unlicensed weight-loss injections and said it was targeting an ‘organised criminal group’.

The property is owned by Faiz Hameed, 61, and Rashda Hameed, 59, who are also directors of Moulton Grange Limited, a property management company. It is unclear whether they live at the estate and they made no comment in July when news of the seizure was made public.

Moulton Grange is considered an ‘outstanding’ example of an English country house, featuring a grand Georgian façade and a sumptuous interior complete with chandeliers, period furnishings and ornate carved fireplaces.

Constructed mainly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the stately pile is Grade II-listed and was last sold for £2.2million in 2017, according to Land Registry records.

Another stately home, Plas Glynllifon near Caernarfon in North Wales, was raided by police searching for drugs a month earlier in April.

The historic mansion, once owned by Lord Newborough and host to King Charles’s investiture ball when he was Prince of Wales, was found to contain a major cannabis-growing operation.

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Officers uncovered cannabis plants across 12 rooms on the top floor of the building, North Wales Police said.

The empty mansion, which hosted the investiture ball following Charles’s ceremony at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, was put on the market for £2million in 2024 but is understood to have since been withdrawn from sale.

Superintendent Arwel Hughes said: ‘We uncovered a grow, which was on the top floor of the building.

‘We estimate around 12 rooms with grows in them and they were fairly mature plants.’

Built in 1836, the manor house previously operated as a wedding venue and was later bought with plans to transform it into a luxury hotel.

It was sold in 2020 after entering receivership following a failed attempt to turn it into a high-end hotel.

The mansion was then bought by a Manchester-based developer before being put back on the market in 2024 for £2million. It appears to no longer be for sale. 

The surrounding park remains open to visitors, with tickets costing £6 for adults and £4 for children.

On Tuesday, officers said they had arrested a 70-year-old man on suspicion of allowing the property to be used for the supply of cannabis before releasing him on bail.

A 38-year-old man, arrested on suspicion of supplying cannabis, was released but remains under investigation.

While Plas Glynllifon limped on as a visitor attraction, 23,000-square-foot The Flass in Cumbria was left derelict after falling into the hands of a new owner who acquired it as part of a divorce settlement.

Originally built by tea and opium traders Lancelot and Wilkinson Dent of Dent & Co in the mid-19th century, the mansion was rented for a bargain £5,000 a month to a London-based drugs gang, who filled its 52 rooms with a cannabis crop worth an estimated £5million.

When police raided the house in the quiet village of Maulds Meaburn, they discovered ducting, cabling and other equipment believed to have been used to cultivate more than 260kg of cannabis. 

Gang members Dean Cameron, 53, of London, and David Lawrence, 32, of Ilford, were each jailed for eight years. 

Mark Gallagher, 49, of Wolverhampton, and Philip Branigan, 32, of Banstead, Surrey, were jailed for seven years, while Charles Neophytou, 47, of Banstead, was sentenced to five years and six months. 

Each was either convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, conspiracy offences.

Tim Evans, prosecuting, told the court in 2015: ‘This was cannabis growing on a massive scale. It is not the self-amateurish cultivation of cannabis on a window ledge or in the converted loft of a house. This was growing in a stately home.

‘Flass is a beautiful house, Grade II-listed because of its historical and architectural significance. It is a secluded house, no doubt why it was chosen for this criminal enterprise.’

In 2019, the house was sold for just £500,000, to the delight of local villagers who had watched it fall into disrepair.

By contrast, Badminton House, where The Gentlemen is filmed, is a thriving country estate run by Henry ‘Harry’ Somerset, the 12th Duke of Beaufort, and his wife Georgia.

The couple cover the estate’s costs by hosting a string of prestigious events, including the Badminton Horse Trials and the Royal Horticultural Society Badminton Flower Show, alongside welcoming productions such as Netflix dramas.

If only the fictional Duke of Halstead could follow their example.

Police in Portsmouth faced off with hundreds of anti-migrant demonstrators on Sunday, after 140 asylum seekers were rescued from a dinghy in the Channel and brought safely to shore.

Videos shared widely on social media showed large crowds gathering near Eastney beach, where protesters could be heard shouting slogans including “stop the boats” and “enough is enough”.

The Portsmouth protest is believed to have been driven by Daniel Thomas, an associate of Tommy Robinson, whose Patriot Platform group also organised a large demonstration at the Port of Dover earlier in the weekend.

Tensions rose after a small boat carrying more than 100 migrants entered British waters at around lunchtime on Sunday, prompting an emergency response.

Two RNLI lifeboats, along with an HM Coastguard helicopter and aircraft, were sent to the scene to help bring the asylum seekers ashore safely.

Around 140 migrants are believed to have arrived in Portsmouth, where hordes of protestors later flocked to try and blockade the port. 

The area surrounding Eastney was eventually shut down by police as an estimated 500 demonstrators lined surrounding streets in a bid to stop the asylum seekers being transported to an immigration centre.

Videos posted earlier on Sunday showed how some protestors even entered the water at Eastney beach. In one clip, Thomas was heard urging his supporters to ‘get in your cars and get down here now’ as he stood in the sea. 

Separate footage meanwhile appeared to show a pensioner delivering supplies to protestors via canoe. 

In other videos demonstrators on land were seen crowding in front of riot police chanting ‘enough is enough’. 

And further clips showed people – many of whom donned all-black outfits and caps – shouting ‘we’ve had enough’ and ‘stop the boats’ in front of a police van. 

The dinghy which eventually arrived on British shores had originally left the Bay of the Seine and was shadowed for around 10 hours by rescue boats. 

The French coastguard deemed it unsafe to stop the boat on water during what is thought to have been one of the longest Channel crossings ever. 

The authorities in France added that it was unusual for a migrant boat to depart from the Bay of the Seine, located some 170 miles from the usual launches in Calais.

The HM Coastguard sent lifeboats, a helicopter, an aeroplane and rescue teams to ensure the asylum seekers reached the British shore safely. 

A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: ‘In response to a report on September 6 of a small boat heading towards the Hampshire coast, HM Coastguard sent lifeboats, an HM Coastguard helicopter, an HM Coastguard aeroplane and HM Coastguard Rescue Teams. 

‘Border Force, Border Security Command, Hampshire Police and South Central Ambulance Service were also sent.’

Clips posted online later showed people being ushered off lifeboats to shore, where they were met by several buses.  

Cllr George Madgwick, leader of Reform UK in Hampshire, wrote in a post on X that ‘over 100 migrant men’ had arrived on the shore in Portsmouth.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage meanwhile posted: ‘Today a boat launched from Baie de Seine, 170 miles from Calais, arrived on the beaches of Hampshire for the very first time. This is a joke. Only Reform will send the boats back.’

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The crossing comes on the same week that Prime Minister Andy Burnham and French President Emmanuel Macron met to discuss how to ‘scale up’ efforts to reduce small boat crossings. 

Only last month, a small boat carrying record numbers of migrants – believed to be more than 230 – successfully crossed the English Channel. 

Earlier this week, hundreds of protestors donning balaclavas brought the Port of Dover to a standstill as they blocked several major roads. 

Demonstrators were heard chanting ‘stop the boats’, with some claiming links to Patriot Platform, a hard-Right organisation made up of anti-migrant groups from around the country. 

Kent Police was thought to have been ‘unaware’ that the protest was taking place, leaving them ‘thin on the ground’ as hundreds marched the streets of the town.  

Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal and former Home Office minister, said: ‘I will be looking urgently on Monday to ask questions around why we didn’t know about this, because we do tend to know when protests are coming to the area, and they tend to be peaceful, and laws aren’t broken, and obviously the police have the resources to manage that.

‘But in this instance, it would appear that the police didn’t know about it, and the resources were pretty thin on the ground, to be quite honest from what I saw. We know that laws were broken because they were blocking the roads and wearing face coverings.’

In response, Kent Police told the Daily Mail it was a ‘spontaneous event and was policed accordingly’. 

Police made no arrests and escorted the protesters to Dover Priory train station at around midday.

At least 100 people were seen boarding a train to Ramsgate, with some since spotted in nearby Sandwich where ‘police are in attendance’.

Patriot Platform was founded earlier this year by Daniel Thomas, a convicted kidnapper and associate of Tommy Robinson.

Sharing clips of the protest in Dover to his social media, Thomas wrote: ‘It’s time. Protect Our Country! And more importantly our women and children! This is our warning.’

A Home Office spokesperson said following the protests in Portsmouth tonight: ‘This Government is bearing down on dangerous small boat crossings and restoring control at our border. Joint efforts have seen over 48,000 crossing attempts prevented and 1,100 boats and engines seized since the election.

‘We are making progress, with the number of small boat crossings down this year and the lowest number recorded for the month of July since 2020.

‘But we must go further, which is why we have signed a payment-by-results deal with the French to put 40% more boots on the ground on French beaches.’

Hampshire Constabulary said: ‘This evening (Sunday 6 September), we have been working alongside and assisting our partners from Border Force, Maritime & Coastguard Agency and Portsmouth City Council at Eastney Marina following the arrival of a boat crossing the channel.

‘We have officers in the area to ensure the prevention of any disorder. We ask that people please avoid the area. A dispersal order is in place until tomorrow evening (Monday 7 September). Anyone who refuses to comply with the direction to leave the area is liable for arrest.

‘We can also confirm that Border Force has advised us that Individuals will be transported outside of Hampshire for processing in the normal way after they have been safely disembarked.’

Brooklyn Beckham and his wife Nicola Peltz were in high spirits on Sunday as they quietly left the Venice Film Festival, both beaming after a celebratory weekend in the Italian city.

The actress, 31, had Brooklyn, 27, by her side on the red carpet on Saturday, where he proudly supported her as she accepted the Rising Star Award.

Nicola kept her travel look effortlessly stylish in a crisp white T-shirt and low-rise denim jeans, while Brooklyn opted for a relaxed outfit, wearing green joggers with a baseball cap turned backwards.

The couple appeared loved-up throughout their brief Venice getaway, which was centred around celebrating Nicola’s latest career milestone.

During her acceptance speech, Nicola paid tribute to Brooklyn and her family, saying they “are the reason that I can reach to the stars” as she collected the honour.

Her proud billionaire father, businessman Nelson Peltz, mother Claudia and brother Bradley were there to watch her, with Nelson fanning himself in the 30C heat and, at times during the wait, retreating inside.

She said: ‘Hi everyone. I am normally more comfortable playing a character as an actor than standing in front of an audience, so please bear with me.

‘Thank you so much for this immense honour. To receive an award at the Venice Film Festival is something I will carry with me for the rest of my career.’

She then addressed her co-star in the film Prima, Faye Dunaway, who was given a lifetime achievement by the Kineo organisation at the same ceremony. ‘Faye you have always been an inspiration to me and learning with you has been incredible.’

She went on: ‘My family are my everything. My mum, dad, (brothers) Diesel and Brad and Brooklyn thank you. You always believe in me. To have your support is the reason I can reach to the stars in the first place.’

There was some chaos before she took to the stage, with her award being announced five times, with one presenter saying: ‘Where is our beautiful star?’

Eventually they were told that she didn’t want to accept the award until Faye Dunaway, 85, was also in place.

Accepting her lifetime achievement award Ms Dunaway said that the best advice she had was the Shakespearean line: ‘To thine own self be true’ and added that she loves Venice. ‘There is no city like it.’

Nicola started in acting in Deck the Halls with Danny DeVito, in 2006, aged 11 and posted a throwback snap on her Instagram earlier this week. 

She also appeared in The Last Airbender and Transformers: The Age of Extinction.

More recently she has been writing and producing films through her label Bunny Films, which is named after her late grandmother and bankrolled partly by her billionaire father, Nelson. 

Her last movie was Lola, which did not gain wide distribution and took under $1,000 at the box office.

She has been married since April 2022 to Brooklyn, the son of David and Victoria, and is at the centre of a family feud which has seen her husband cut off his family in search of ‘peace’, having explained on Instagram in January that they had tried to split him up from his wife.

Nicola has been working on her indie drama Prima since January but the film does not yet have an official release date. 

The movie also stars Dunaway, Jack Huston, Mira Sorvino and Betty Gabriel. Luca and Alessandro Morelli, known professionally as the Morelli Brothers, directed the film as their feature debut. 

Nicola stars as Margo, a dedicated prima ballerina facing life-altering decisions as modern changes disrupt her ballet company. 

The actress and her family attended a private Los Angeles screening in May for the movie, hosted by East West Bank chief executive Dominic Ng. 

Afterwards she thanked supporters and said their backing of independent film meant ‘more than I can express’.

The film has also been in the spotlight after Nicola sparked concern with her drastic weight loss while preparing for her starring role. 

Nicola undertook four months of gruelling ballerina training for her role which saw her drop to less than 100lb (45kg). 

Her shock weight loss came in a bid to fully embody her ballerina character – for which she committed to a strict diet and intensive training regimen. 

Just this week Nicola’s husband Brooklyn jumped to her defence and warned ‘don’t ever talk about my wife’ in an online row about her weight.

The aspiring chef hit back in the comments section of his latest Instagram cookery tutorial after one follower asked: ‘Do you comment on everyone who is concerned about your wife and how sickly she looks? She puts herself out there, feed her.’ 

Brooklyn replied: ‘Don’t ever talk about my wife. She’s absolutely beautiful and you should never comment on a woman’s body. It’s disgraceful.’ 

At least five people died after a Boeing cargo plane operating for Amazon crashed in Miami, overshooting the runway and coming to rest on a busy road.

Footage and photos from the crash site shared by NBC Miami showed the Amazon-branded aircraft sitting dangerously close to a building as thick smoke poured from the plane.

The cargo jet was arriving at Miami International Airport from San Juan, Puerto Rico, when it went beyond the end of the runway at about 2 p.m. Sunday and “struck multiple vehicles” on Northwest 42nd Avenue, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue told the Daily Mail.

Firefighters reached the scene within 30 seconds of the emergency call and found several people trapped inside their vehicles, Fire Chief Raied Jadallah said during a news conference Sunday evening.

Crews also encountered heavy flames and dense smoke coming from the aircraft as they began their rescue response.

‘What we found was a very complex situation here,’ he described. 

At least five people were killed in the tragedy, while three others remain in critical condition at a local trauma center.

Two others were also transported to the hospital with unspecified injuries. Authorities have not yet identified the deceased nor the victims taken to the hospital.

The Prime Air plane ultimately came to a rest on its belly near two semitrucks and appeared to be largely intact despite the fire. 

But in distressing radio traffic obtained by the Miami Herald, a firefighter could be heard telling colleagues: ‘The plane is on fire. The plane is on fire. Put your game face on guys.’

Firefighters could also be heard on the emergency radio dispatch scrambling to get hoses close enough to the plane to spray water to suppress the flames.

Making matters worse, the aircraft’s left engine was still running when firefighters battled the blaze, making it dangerous for them to enter the plane to check for patients inside.

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The firefighters could be heard in the radio traffic saying the pilots onboard told them they could not turn the engine off because they would need to ‘energize’ the aircraft, leaving firefighters on the scene forced to flood the engine with water.

Meanwhile, Rohan Ellis, 34, a student pilot who was on the other side of the airport when the Prime Air plane crashed, described the vehicles on the road as ‘mangled’ to The New York Times. 

Following the crash, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced he issued a full ground stop at the airport. 

‘If you’re traveling through the area, please expect significant delays and potential cancellations,’ he posted on social media, adding that the Federal Aviation Administration will send inspectors to the scene.

The National Transportation Safety Board has also said it launched a team to investigate the ‘runway excursion accident.’ 

Miami International Airport has since reopened two of its four runway, but flights are still being impacted, with about 250 flights delayed at the airport late Sunday afternoon, according to FlightAware.

In the meantime, Amazon said in a statement that it is still gathering information during this ‘fast-moving situation.’ 

‘We’re working closely with local authorities and officials to understand exactly what happened,’ it said. 

‘Right now, our absolute priority is the safety, well-being, and care of everyone involved. We’re doing everything we can to support those affected.’ 

A spokesperson for the airport also told the Daily Mail that the plane ‘overran Miami International Airport’s diagonal runway and is disabled at the northwest end of the airport.’ 

The Daily Mail has reached out to Amazon and Miami police for comment. 

This is a breaking story, please check back for updates.