shattered

SAVANNAH Guthrie’s sister Annie has been spotted looking somber days after their mother Nancy was abducted from her home in the middle of the night.

In The U.S. Sun’s exclusive photos, Today host Savannah‘s big sister Annie, 56, resurfaced outside her Tucson, Arizona home as friends and family members surrounded her in the aftermath of matriarch Nancy’s sinister disappearance.

On Wednesday, Annie, who wore a white button-up shirt and dark sunglasses, was seen jumping into a white Toyota Camry.

The car was driven by a man believed to be her brother Camron, who appears to have flown in from his home in Vermont.

Offering more support, a female friend held what appeared to be board games as she stepped outside the home’s gate.

According to an onlooker, at least three security guards were also seen surveilling Annie’s home, which sits just four miles away from Nancy’s Tucson-area property.

What we know about Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance…

On Tuesday, Annie was spotted for the first time since Nancy’s disappearance on a drive with her husband, Tommaso Cioni.

Despite rumors floating around, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department has declared there are currently no suspects in the case.

NANCY’S LAST MOVEMENTS

Annie and Tommaso are believed to be the last people to have seen Nancy before she vanished and was declared missing on Sunday morning.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed Tommaso dropped her off at home around 9:45 pm. on Saturday evening.

He waited to make sure that she got inside, as she suffers from physical disabilities, Nanos added.

Nancy had been spending the evening with her daughter Annie’s family for dinner.

But in the morning, Annie got a call from a church parishioner who said Nancy had never arrived for service.

At noon, the family called 911 to officially report her missing, and she has not been seen since.

Nancy’s wallet, phone and watch were all found in her home.

Cops discovered blood splattered outside the front door, and called the property a “crime scene.”

Timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her home on February 1, 2026.

Timeline:

• January 31, 9:45 pm: Family members drop off Nancy, 84, at her home in Tucson, Arizona, after having dinner with her.
• February 1, 11:00 am: A parishioner at Nancy’s church calls the mom’s children and says she failed to show up for service.
• February 1, 12:15 pm: The family calls 911 after going to Nancy’s property to check on her.
• February 1, 8:55 pm: The Pima County Sheriff’s Office gives their first press conference, and reveals some clues found at Nancy’s home caused “grave concern.” They say helicopters, drones, and infrared cameras are all being utilized in the search.
• February 2, 9:17 am: Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos says search crews have been pulled back, as Nancy’s home is considered a crime scene.
• February 2, morning: Savannah releases a statement that’s read by her co-hosts on Today, and thanks supporters for their prayers.
• February 2, evening: Nanos tells the media they fear Nancy has been abducted.
• February 3: Nanos admits they have no suspects, no leads, and no videos that could lead to Nancy’s recovery. He and the FBI beg for more tips and accounts from residents.
• February 3: A trail of blood is pictured outside Nancy’s home, where there were reportedly signs of forced entry.

‘SHOCKED’ NEIGHBORS

Police have said they consider the case to be an abduction, and claim she was taken from her home in the middle of the night.

Nancy’s neighbor, Brett McInti, spotted helicopters on Sunday morning, and immediately knew something was terribly wrong.

Brett told The U.S. Sun he was “shocked and saddened” upon hearing about Nancy’s abduction.

Savannah is currently in Arizona assisting with the search efforts, and stepped down from her duties as Today anchor and Winter Olympics correspondent. (She was replaced by former tennis pro Mary Carillo in Milan.)

President Donald Trump reached out to Savannah on Wednesday in a phone call to offer support.

The seventh in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.

Tai Babilonia’s life changed forever when she was asked to hold a boy’s hand.

At first she resisted.

“I didn’t want to,” she remembered. “He’s a yucky boy.”

But Mabel Fairbanks, Babilonia’s skating coach, wouldn’t take no for an answer, bribing the 8-year-old with stickers and a Barbie doll if she would just reach out and grab the hand of 10-year-old Randy Gardner.

It would be another 40 years before she let go.

By then Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner had become one of the most decorated pairs in U.S. figure skating history, their individual names eventually melding into one.

“My last name is ‘and Randy,’” Babilonia said. “And I embrace it.”

U.S. pairs figure skating duo of Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1979.

(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)

As a pair “Tai and Randy” won five U.S. championships, medaled in three world championships and qualified for the Olympics twice, all before Babilonia’s 21st birthday. Their success also pushed open doors that had long been closed since Babilonia, Black on her mother’s side and part Filipino and Native American on her dad’s side, was the first U.S. skater from any of those ethnic groups to compete in the Olympics or win a world title.

Among those to follow her were Debi Thomas, a two-time U.S. champion and a bronze medalist at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and Elizabeth Punsalan, a two-time Olympian and five-time national champion in ice dancing.

At about the same time Babilonia and Gardner were moving from competitive skating and the Olympics to the Ice Capades, another young girl was just starting to pursue her own Olympic dreams. Tiffany Chin would go on to win a national championship, two Skate America titles and just miss a medal in the 1984 Winter Games, retiring before she was old enough to legally drink.

In that brief but brilliant career, Chin changed U.S. figure skating forever. She was the country’s first Asian American national champion and first Chinese American Winter Olympian, paving the way for Olympic medalists Kristi Yamaguchi, Nathan Chen, Michelle Kwan and siblings Alex and Maia Shibutani.

After retiring from skating, Babilonia, now 66, dabbled in coaching and sportswear design, became a motivational speaker, an activist and, most importantly, a grandmother. But the legacy Babilonia and Chin created will be on display in Italy this month when the U.S. fields one of the most eclectic Olympic figure skating teams ever, with 12 of the 16 athletes having immigrant parents.

Five of the six singles skaters — Alysa Liu, Isabeau Levito, Ilia Malinin, Maxim Naumov and Andrew Torgashev — are first-generation Americans while the other, women’s national champion Amber Glenn, identifies as pansexual. Pairs skaters Emily Chan, Spencer Howe and Ellie Kam and ice dancers Anthony Ponomarenko, Christina Carreira, Vadym Kolesnik and Emilea Zingas are also immigrants or first-generation Americans while Madison Chock, the reigning Olympic champion in ice dancing, has Hawaiian, Chinese, German, English, Irish, French and Dutch ancestry.

At a time when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being dismantled, immigrants are being attacked and diversity is labeled a weakness, America’s Olympic figure skaters have come to mirror the country at large.

“It’s wonderful and so important,” said Babilonia. “Especially now.”

Nearly 60 years after Babilonia and Gardner skated together for the first time, the decision to pair them seems inspired, even providential.

It was neither. Fairbanks, Babilonia learned later, simply needed a couple to skate in a club show at the Culver City Ice Arena.

“We just happened to be similar in height. And I guess we were cute,” Babilonia said last month during a lengthy interview at the Colonial Revival-style mansion in the West Adams District that houses the LA84 Foundation.

Gardner was already an excellent skater, as strong and athletic as he was outgoing and friendly; Babilonia was shy and far less steady on the ice. But that wasn’t the only thing that made their pairing unusual.

Gardner was white and Babilonia was Black. And in 1968, asking them to hold hands in public was scandalous, even in Culver City. However, Fairbanks, a legendary coach who had spent much of her life pushing back against convention, didn’t see color. She focused only on talent.

Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia roller skating together in May 1979.

(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)

“Mabel was the coach who taught all races, Hispanic, Black, mixed, Jewish,” Babilonia said. “Mabel broke down that wall.”

Fairbanks, who was Black and Seminole, was born in the Deep South at a time when ice rinks were segregated. Even after moving to New York, where she bought a pair of skates for $1 at a pawn shop, then taught herself how to use them, she skated mostly in nightclub shows, where she was limited to jumps and moves that wouldn’t show up the white skaters.

She soon moved to Los Angeles, touring internationally with the Ice Capades and Ice Follies, before becoming a coach and mentoring hundreds of young skaters, including Olympic medalists Scott Hamilton, Yamaguchi and Thomas.

“If it weren’t for Mabel Fairbanks, you wouldn’t have any color in the predominantly white skating world,” said Babilonia, who is shopping a biopic of Fairbanks, who died in 2001.

“People don’t really know her. She’s like a hidden figure.”

Yet three years after Fairbanks made Tai and Randy a pair, they left her for John Nicks, who was coaching at the Paramount Iceland.

“He took our skating to a whole different level. And it happened really quick,” said Babilonia, who still calls her former coach Mr. Nicks. “That’s when we started winning and improving and just really became a great pair of skaters.”

Two years later Babilonia and Gardner won the U.S. junior nationals and three years after that they won the first of five national championships, qualifying for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Austria, where they finished fifth. Gardner wasn’t old enough to vote and Babilonia didn’t have a driver’s license. But together they were holding their own against the best pairs skaters in the world.

“Such an incredible year,” Babilonia said. “We won our first U.S. title, became Olympians, I got my learner’s permit and had a crush on Peter Frampton.”

But they were just getting started. Gardner and Babilonia wouldn’t lose in the U.S. championships for the rest of the decade. And 11 months before the next Olympics, they won their first world championship, then celebrated by skating for the queen of England at Wembley Stadium.

Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner compete at the World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo in March 1977.

(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)

With the Winter Games coming back to the U.S. at Lake Placid, the Americans were favored to keep the Soviet Union off the top step of the medal platform for the first time since 1960, the last time the Olympics were held in the U.S.

Only they never made it to the ice.

Nicks had moved his skaters from Paramount to the Ice Capades Chalet, a buff-colored concrete-block building in Santa Monica, five blocks from the Pacific Ocean. During a training session there, Gardner inflamed a groin injury that had plagued him for months.

It got worse when they got to Lake Placid and Gardner had a Xylocaine injection, but the anesthetic was too strong and it only made things worse; the pain was gone, but now Gardner couldn’t feel his leg at all. They pulled out of the competition moments before it was supposed to begin.

The next morning, with the skaters, their parents and their coach perched on the stage at a high school auditorium for a hastily arranged news conference, hundreds of reporters tried to get a shattered Babilonia to turn on her partner. She didn’t take the bait.

“She totally had my back,” Gardner said. “There was so much camaraderie and trust and love between the two of us. She understood that it was a major injury and it was devastating. It changed the path of our career.”

“I’m not going to say it ruined it,” he added. “It just changed the path.”

Two months after leaving Lake Placid in sorrow, Gardner and Babilonia, who had gone from “Tai and Randy” to the “Heartbreak Kids,” turned pro, signing a three-year contract with the Ice Capades that included endorsement deals.

They never skated in the Olympics again. And while the money was good, the pace was punishing, with eight shows a week on a 30-week tour.

“You’re performing every night, weekends two shows a day,” Babilonia said. “If you don’t pace yourself, which I didn’t, it will rock your world in a negative way.

“You can’t do all the tricks you did as a teenager every night.”

Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner skating in 1979, the same year they won the pairs world championship.

(Tony Duffy / Getty Images)

Babilonia had never truly dealt with the emotional pain of the Olympic withdrawal. Now she was also dealing with the strain and fatigue of the ice show schedule as well as an identity crisis.

“Randy figured out how to put Tai and Randy in a box and leave them there and go on with his life,” Babilonia said. “I didn’t know how to separate them from me.”

So she sought answers in amphetamines, heavy drinking and a number of brief but high-profile romances before hitting rock bottom just before her 29th birthday, when she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her recovery started seven months later with an emotional first-person account of her fall in People magazine.

“I did it because I knew I had to,” Babilonia, still fit and youthful, said of a confession in which she blamed no one but herself. “I had to stop what I was doing and this was part of my recovery process. I couldn’t say yes quick enough.

“Something inside of me said, ‘This is your moment. Get it out. It may help some people,’” she continued. “And it did.”

The magazine cover story was followed 19 months later by the prime-time NBC movie “On Thin Ice,” which went over much of the same territory, with Babilonia and Gardner playing themselves in many of the skating scenes.

“It took me a while to watch the whole thing. Some scenes were hard,” said Babilonia, who speaks in a confident, careful cadence. “It was just part of my recovery process.”

She’s been sober 17 years and her relationship with Gardner, who came out as gay in 2006 — also in People magazine — has lasted longer than her marriage. Along the way, Babilonia matured from the shy withdrawn child who refused to hold a boy’s hand into a bold, strong and confident woman.

“She’s totally mature. She is worldly. And she’s an advocate for equality in sports, people of color and all that,” said Gardner, 68, whose home in Manhattan Beach is about 10 miles from the Culver City ice rink where he and Babilonia learned to skate once stood.

The former teammates still meet at least once a month and talk on the phone frequently, although they haven’t been on the ice together since Gardner underwent surgery on his back a year ago.

Flames from a olympic torch passes in front of Tai Babilonia at LA84 Foundation in January.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

When she stopped skating Babilonia tried coaching, but that didn’t work because she didn’t know how to teach the moves she had so easily mastered. Instead, she launched a clothing line, became a motivational speaker, volunteered with various groups promoting diversity on and off the ice, co-hosted a TV interview show taped in Santa Barbara and, for the last nine years, has co-hosted a holiday skate party for kids from the Union Rescue Mission. She also continues to skate in charity events.

All that in addition to her work with Atoy Wilson, a former U.S. novice champion, on the Mabel Fairbanks biopic, tentatively titled “Black Ice: The Mabel Fairbanks Story.”

“I want to try everything,” she said. “I want to experience everything.”

But her real job, she quickly adds, is being a grandmother to Ryett, her son’s 2-year-old boy in Arizona.

“I love being a grandmother,” she said. “Absolutely love it.”

She is also a prolific presence on social media, where most of her posts are either trenchant comments on the politics of today or black-and-white photos from back in the day, when she and Gardner — Tai and Randy — were winning medals and opening doors, helping to change U.S. figure skating forever.

“I appreciate what we did more as I get older,” Babilonia said. “We were pretty good and we made our mark. We worked hard. We became two-time Olympians. We met the queen of England.

“It’s just wild.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents initially claimed Alberto Castañeda Mondragón had tried to flee while handcuffed and “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall,” according to court documents filed by a lawyer seeking his release.

But staff members at Hennepin County Medical Center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old’s brain, said three nurses familiar with the case.

“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about,” said one of the nurses, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall.”

The explanation from ICE is an example of recent run-ins between immigration officers and healthcare workers that have contributed to mounting friction at Minneapolis hospitals. Workers at the Hennepin County facility say ICE officers have restrained patients in defiance of hospital rules and stayed at their sides for days. The agents have also lingered around the campus and pressed people for proof of citizenship.

Since the start of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, ICE officers have become such a fixture at the hospital that administrators issued new protocols for how employees should engage with them. Some employees complain that they have been intimidated to the point that they avoid crossing paths with agents while at work and use encrypted communications to guard against any electronic eavesdropping.

Similar operations have been carried out by federal agents in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities, where opponents have criticized what they say are overly aggressive tactics. It’s not clear how many people have required hospital care while in detention.

Injuries appeared inconsistent with ICE account

The AP interviewed a doctor and five nurses who work at Hennepin County Medical Center who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about Castañeda Mondragón’s case and conditions inside the hospital. The AP also consulted with an outside physician who affirmed his injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall or running into a wall.

ICE’s account of how he was hurt evolved during the time that federal officers were at his bedside. At least one ICE officer told caregivers that Castañeda Mondragón “got his [expletive] rocked” after his Jan. 8 arrest near a St. Paul shopping center, the court filings and a hospital staff member said. His arrest happened a day after the killing of Renee Nicole Good, the first of two fatal shootings in Minneapolis by immigration officers.

The situation reached a head when ICE insisted on using handcuffs to shackle his ankles to the bed, prompting a heated encounter with hospital staff, according to the court records and the hospital employees familiar with the incident.

At the time, Castañeda Mondragón was so disoriented he did not know what year it was and could not recall how he was injured, one of the nurses said. ICE officers believed he was attempting to escape after he got up and took a few steps.

“We were basically trying to explain to ICE that this is how someone with a traumatic brain injury is — they’re impulsive,” the nurse said. “We didn’t think he was making a run for the door.”

Security responded to the scene, followed by the hospital’s chief executive and attorney, who huddled in a doctor’s office to discuss options for dealing with ICE, the nurse said.

“We eventually agreed with ICE that we would have a nursing assistant sit with the patient to prevent him from leaving,” the nurse said. “They agreed a little while later to take the shackles off.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries. A deportation officer skirted the issue in the court documents, saying that during the intake process at an ICE detention center, it was determined he “had a head injury that required emergency medical treatment.”

Gregorio Castañeda Mondragón said his older brother is from Veracruz, Mexico, and worked as a roofer. He has a 10-year-old daughter living in his hometown he helps support.

According to his lawyers, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón entered the U.S. in 2022 with valid immigration documents. Minnesota incorporation filings show he founded a company called Castañeda Construction the following year with an address listed in St. Paul.

He appears to have no criminal record. His lawyers told a court that Castañeda Mondragón was racially profiled during the crackdown, and that officers determined only after his arrest that he had overstayed his visa.

“He was a brown-skinned, Latino Spanish speaker at a location immigration agents arbitrarily decided to target,” his lawyers wrote in a petition seeking his release from ICE custody.

Eight skull fractures

Castañeda Mondragón was initially taken to an ICE processing center at the edge of Minneapolis. Court records include an arrest warrant signed upon his arrival by an ICE officer, not an immigration judge.

About four hours after his arrest, he was taken to a hospital emergency room in suburban Edina with swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. A CT scan revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain, according to court documents. He was then transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center.

Castañeda Mondragón was alert and speaking, telling staff he was “dragged and mistreated by federal agents,” though his condition quickly deteriorated, the documents show.

The next week, a Jan. 16 court filing described his condition as minimally responsive and communicative, disoriented and heavily sedated.

AP shared the details of Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries with Dr. Lindsey C. Thomas, a board-certified forensic pathologist who worked as a medical examiner in Minnesota for more than 30 years. She agreed with the assessment of hospital staff.

“I am pretty sure a person could not get these kinds of extensive injuries from running into a wall,” Thomas said, adding that she would need to see the CT scans to make a more definitive finding.

“I almost think one doesn’t have to be a physician to conclude that a person can’t get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall,” she said.

ICE officers stay with hospitalized detainees for days

ICE officers have entered the hospital with seriously injured detainees and stayed at their bedside day after day, staffers said. The crackdown has been unsettling to hospital employees, who said ICE agents have been seen loitering on hospital grounds and asking patients and employees for proof of citizenship.

Hospital staff members said they were uncomfortable with the presence of armed agents they did not trust and who appeared to be untrained.

The nurses interviewed by AP said they felt intimidated by ICE’s presence in the critical care unit and had even been told to avoid a certain bathroom to minimize encounters with officers. They said staff members are using an encrypted messaging app to compare notes and share information out of fear that the government might be monitoring their communications.

The hospital reminded employees that ICE officers are not permitted to access patients or protected information without a warrant or court order.

“Patients under federal custody are first and foremost patients,” hospital officials wrote in a bulletin outlining new protocols. The hospital’s written policy also states that no shackles or other restraints should be used unless medically necessary.

“We have our policies, but ICE personnel as federal officers don’t necessarily comply with those, and that introduces tension,” said a doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment for the hospital.

Hospital spokeswoman Alisa Harris said ICE agents “have not entered our facilities looking for individuals.”

On Saturday, more than two weeks after Castañeda Mondragón was arrested, a U.S. District Court judge ordered him released from ICE custody.

“We are encouraged by the court’s order, which affirms that the rule of law applies to all people, in every corner of our country, including federal officers,” said Jeanette Boerner, director of Hennepin County Adult Representation Services, which filed the lawsuit on Castañeda Mondragón’s behalf.

To the surprise of some who treated him, Castañeda Mondragón was discharged from the hospital Tuesday. A hospital spokeswoman said she had no information about him.

The Justice Department filed court documents this week affirming Castañeda Mondragón is no longer in custody. Prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment on the man’s injuries.

Castañeda Mondragón has no family in Minnesota and co-workers have taken him in, the man’s brother said. He has significant memory loss and a long recovery ahead. He won’t be able to work for the foreseeable future, and his friends and family worry about paying for his care.

“He still doesn’t remember things that happened. I think [he remembers] 20% of the 100% he had,” said Gregorio Castañeda Mondragón, who lives in Mexico. “It’s sad that instead of having good memories of the United States, you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth about that country because they’re treating them like animals.”

Brook, Mustian and Biesecker write for the Associated Press and reported from Minneapolis, New York and Washington, respectively. AP reporters Steve Karnowski and Sarah Raza in Minneapolis; Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.