WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — An arrest warrant has been issued for a mental health advocate who remained missing Saturday, more than four days after police found the Massachusetts officer she had been married to dead in their home.
Karen Solomon, 58, was last spotted in a doorbell camera video, walking down a street in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops early Tuesday morning, just minutes after Worcester police officers responded to a call from the home where Kurt Solomon was found dead.
Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier said the warrant charges Karen Solomon with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Saucier said Kurt Solomon, a 31-year-veteran officer, was mortally injured with a sharp object — he wouldn't say what. Meanwhile the city of Worcester said Friday that public spaces around Coes Pond will remain closed as a search involving dive teams and police dogs continues.
“Kurt was a hell of a guy. He was an awesome police officer and an awesome person, and he’s going to be truly missed,” Saucier said. A wake will be held on Tuesday and his funeral on Wednesday, the chief said.
Karen Solomon wrote two books about the physical and psychological experiences of first responders and helped start First H.E.L.P., an organization that advocates for their mental health. The Solomons shared a home and had been married, court records indicated, but authorities declined to discuss their current relationship, citing domestic violence privacy rules.
This screen grab made from video provided by WCVB-TV shows a police officer standing guard over a home in Worcester, Mass., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (WCVB-TV via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least seven people in Ukraine, officials said Saturday, while a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Krasnodar region killed three people there.
The attacks came a day after a Russian strike on a Ukrainian shopping center killed at least 16 people and wounded some 130.
Moscow’s forces have recently intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine’s chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that one person was killed and another wounded in the latest attacks when ballistic missiles hit railway infrastructure in the capital, Kyiv, overnight.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its forces had hit a locomotive depot.
In a separate attack, local authorities said two people were killed Saturday afternoon in a Russian ballistic missile strike on the Kyiv region, which surrounds the capital.
Russian drone strikes also killed one person overnight in the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Saturday, and a daytime attack killed three others and wounded 15. Zelenskyy said that three people were also wounded in an attack on a minibus in the regional capital, also called Zaporizhzhia.
In Russia's southern Krasnodar region, authorities said that three people, including two children, were killed and two adults were wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike.
The latest attacks came a day after Russian drones struck a shopping center in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said in the early hours of Saturday that the death toll had risen to 16. Later on Saturday he said four people remain missing after the attack, which wounded a further 130.
Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Zelenskyy, who described the attack as a double-tap strike, in which an initial wave of drones hit the area followed by a second wave as rescue workers responded. The Ukrainian leader said the fire, which spread across 9,000 square meters (around 97,000 square feet), had been extinguished and rescue efforts were underway.
Kryvyi Rih has been hit multiple times during the 4½-year all-out war between Russia and Ukraine, with one of the deadliest occurring in April 2025, when 20 people were killed, including nine children.
Large-scale Russian strikes have become a regular occurrence this summer, with Friday’s attacks landing just 24 hours after Russia pounded Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones in a nighttime assault that killed 16 people. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest-hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 wounded.
At the same time, Ukraine has shifted the war onto Russian soil through long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages across Russia. It also has unsettled the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer.
The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set ablaze an oil refinery in the Samara region. Local officials said that damage was recorded at an unidentified “industrial facility” and a logistics center for Ozon, a competitor to Wildberries.
Zelenskyy said Saturday Ukrainian forces struck the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Samara, noting it is some 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the front line.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in remarks to state TV reporter Pavel Zarubin, who posted them Saturday on his Telegram channel, that strikes on civilian targets “cause economic damage to our country” and “lead to losses,” but that “no turning point” in the conflict had been reached and that Kyiv “will never gain any advantage.”
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Valentyna Svertoka, 86, leans against a doorframe as she cleans her apartment in a partially damaged residential building the day after a Russian missile and drone attack in Kyiv, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A local resident walks past destroyed vehicles and scattered debris the day after a Russian missile and drone attack in Kyiv, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters work on a fire at a shopping mall following a Russian drone attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
People embrace each other near a burning shopping mall following a Russian drone attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Military administration, firefighters work on a fire at a shopping mall following a Russian drone attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (Ukrainian Military administration via AP)
