Santa Barbara County News and Events

Rob Reiner and his wife are dead, and their son Nick is booked on suspicion of murder

Kraig Pakulski 0 216 Article rating: No rating
Rob Reiner


CNN

By Karina Tsui, Cheri Mossburg, Holly Yan, Sandra Gonzalez, TuAnh Dam, and Danya Gainor

Nick Reiner, a son of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, producer Michele Singer Reiner, is being held on suspicion of murder following their deaths, according to Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell.

“We have our robbery/homicide division handling the investigation. They worked throughout the night on this case and were able to take into custody Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case,” said LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.

“He was subsequently booked for murder and is being held on $4 million bail,” McDonnell added.

McDonnell declined to give more details about the investigation.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has not yet determined any criminal charges in the deaths of the Reiners.

“A case has not been presented to our office for filing consideration. Once a case has been presented, we will carefully review the evidence to determine what charges are appropriate,” the office said in a statement.”

The district attorney’s office also said, “We owe it to their memory to pursue justice and accountability for the lives that were tragically taken.”

Rob Reiner was born in 1947 in The Bronx, New York, to Estelle and Carl Reiner, the writer, actor, director and producer whose many decades’ worth of credits included “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The 2000 Year Old Man.”

Rob came to stardom playing the son-in-law of Archie and Edith Bunker on the 1970s hit show “All in the Family” before going on to create a truly diverse body of incredibly successful work, including classics like “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” and “The Princess Bride.”

He cemented his status as a leading director with “When Harry Met Sally…”, “Misery,” and “A Few Good Men,” which earned four Oscar nominations.

Nick Reiner, 32, co-wrote the 2015 film “Being Charlie,” a movie inspired by his own experiences with drug addiction, including homelessness and stays in rehab. It was directed by his father.

“That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff,” Nick Reiner told People magazine in 2016. “I met crazy great people (while homeless), so out of my element. Now, I’ve been home for a really long time, and I’ve sort of gotten acclimated back to being in LA and being around my family. But there was a lot of dark years there.”

Rob Reiner appeared with Nick on the AOL program “Build” in 2015 to discuss “Being Charlie.”

“You don’t set out to have a cathartic experience or be therapeutic in some way,” the elder Reiner said. “The fact that we were dealing with things that Nick had gone through and how I had related to it and how his mother had related to it … it forced me to have to see more clearly and understand more deeply what Nick had gone through, and I think it forced him to see things that I had experienced during this process.”

“I mean, we did get into fights over things, but ultimately it forced us to make the film better,” Rob Reiner said. “The whole process for me – I can just speak for myself – it did make me understand him a lot more, and it did make me a better father. Hopefully it did.”

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US identifies two soldiers killed in ambush in Syria

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The US army has identified the two US soldiers killed in Syria on Saturday.

By Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — The two US Army soldiers killed in Syria on Saturday were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, Iowa, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, Iowa, according to the Army. They were both members of the Iowa National Guard.

The Army said in a statement on Monday that the soldiers “died December 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria, of injuries sustained while engaged with hostile forces.”

An American civilian interpreter was also killed in the attack, which was carried out by a single ISIS gunman, the Department of Defense said Saturday. Three other Iowa National Guard members were wounded.

President Donald Trump vowed to retaliate, declaring “there will be a lot of damage done to the people that did it” in front of a crowd at a White House Christmas reception Sunday.

“We had three great patriots terminated by bad people, and not the Syrian government, it was ISIS,” he said, adding that the new president of Syria has “fought by our side.”

The deadly attack comes as Damascus has sought to strengthen ties with the US after the Assad dictatorship was overthrown last year.

US troops have operated for years across multiple locations in Syria as they’ve trained Syrian partner forces as part of the wider fight against ISIS. American personnel have previously come under attack, and Saturday’s incident is the deadliest since a 2019 blast that struck a patrol, killing two US service members and two US civilians.

Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said Saturday on X that the soldiers’ “mission was in support of on-going counter-ISIS / counter-terrorism operations in the region.”

Roughly 1,800 Iowa Army National Guard soldiers began deploying to the Middle East in late May to support Operation Inherent Resolve, the US mission to defeat ISIS, according to a Saturday statement from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office.

Nathaniel Howard’s father, Meskwaki Nation Police Chief Jeffrey Bunn, had shared in a statement posted to Facebook on Saturday that his son was one of the individuals that had been killed.

“Our son Nate was one of the Soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer,” Bunn said. “He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind. Please pray for our Soldiers all around this cruel world.”

Syrian forces arrested five suspects in connection with the ambush on Sunday, according to Syria’s Interior Ministry. The suspects were “immediately placed under investigation,” the ministry said in a statement.

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Trump offers ‘platinum’ security guarantees for Ukraine, but US officials caution offer won’t last forever

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Apartment buildings damaged by a Russian military strike in the frontline town of Dobropillia

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — American officials on Monday described significant progress in talks to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end, suggesting beefed-up security guarantees for Kyiv had advanced the peace talks — but that the US offer would not be on the table forever.

The assessment came after two days of discussions in Berlin between officials from Europe, Ukraine and the United States. President Donald Trump was represented at the talks by his foreign envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The president plans to phone into a dinner of European leaders later Monday, one US official said, to discuss the developing agreement. He spoke twice with Witkoff and Kushner over the course of Monday’s discussions.

“I would assess that he’s really pleased with where we are today,” one of the officials said.

Roughly 90% of the issues between Russia and Ukraine have been solved, one of the officials said, describing the issue of territorial concessions as a remaining sticking point. The US side offered “thought-provoking” ideas on how to resolve the impasse, the official said, including the development of an “economic free zone.”

A set of “Article 5”-like security guarantees was hammered out in more precise detail during the talks, the officials said, and would allow for deterrence from further Russian aggression, deconfliction mechanisms and monitoring of an eventual peace deal. But officials declined to delve into specifics, including the US role, beyond saying it would not include US boots on the ground.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Kyiv compromised on security guarantees instead of NATO membership. (NATO’s Article 5 calls on allies to assist any member that comes under attack.)

The package of guarantees would also spell out the consequences for Russia if it violates the agreement.

“This is the most robust set of security protocols they have ever seen. It is a very, very strong package,” the first official said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said that “what the US has offered here in terms of material and legal guarantees is really significant.”

Trump is willing to bring the US-backed security guarantees before Congress, the second official said, describing the package as the “platinum standard” for what Washington can offer Ukraine.

Trump believes he can get Moscow to accept the guarantees, and the US officials said Russia had indicated openness to Ukraine joining the European Union as part of any peace agreement.

But the officials said Trump’s offers would not last forever.

“The Europeans expressed a lot of appreciation for President Trump’s willingness to lean into this issue and to offer such guarantees,” one of the officials said. “Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now.”

Also discussed this week were plans for Ukraine’s reconstruction, with a team at investment company Blackrock holding discussions with Ukrainian officials about financial support; and about the fate of the Zaporizhzhia power plant, which remains unresolved.

The US officials did not describe imminent plans to present the latest version of the deal to Russian President Vladimir Putin but said resolving the final issues — including questions of territory — would have to be done by Moscow and Kyiv.

“It will really be up to the parties to wor

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