Annabella Ortiz

The video series, which aims to air one new episode per month, has our reporters and videographers "riding shotgun" in the passenger seat of a Region officer's squad car each month, introducing you to the men and women who patrol our streets while taking you inside the work of their police shifts.

Anna Ortiz's Most Memorable Stories from 2020

No shots were fired and no gun was found Wednesday morning after police responded to Lake Central High School for a reported active shooter.

A man accused of killing a Lowell woman has been arrested at the Mexico border following a lengthy manhunt, police said.

Anna Ortiz
GARY — A Region priest believes evil still lingers on a property where a house that allegedly tormented a family and gained a global reputation for malevolence was knocked down more than three years ago.
Paranormal television show host Zak Bagans still owns 3860 Carolina St. in Gary after tearing down the house in February 2016, according to the Calumet Township assessor's office. Today, the spot is a now an empty, grassy lot between two houses with a large, gnarled tree standing g...

For the Region’s paranormal investigators, ghosts aren’t something to run from but to chase after. And that’s what some locals have dedicated their lives to — hunting down evidence in a realm that conventional science has not been able to explain. As they dive into various corners of historic towns to the sprawling lakeshores of ...

Content warning: This video contains content relating to suicide and extreme emotional distress. An officer implores a man, "No, no, don't do this," as she and another officer work to prevent a man from jumping off a bridge over a rail yard earlier this month, a video shows.

While the shimmering expanse of Lake Michigan draws countless people to its shores, danger can lurk in its depths and conditions can turn within minutes.

Officer Jimmy Weller, 42, has cruised the coast for the Lake County Sheriff’s Marine Unit for 10 years.

Actor Joey Lawrence donned an orange inmate uniform and spent countless hours behind bars in Porter County Jail for a in-production movie that takes place in the Region.

On a frigid winter morning, diver Jeremy Cole was the first from his fire department on scene of a vehicle that had plummeted through the ice of a Lynwood pond with two passengers trapped inside. The diver of 13 years remembers diving under the water and looking up to see the ice freezing above his head.

A group of young Region natives went from demonstrating on the streets of Crown Po

and Lowell to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. last week as thousands

gathered to remember and participate in history.

A demonstration here gathered nearly 100 protesters, a group of Invaders

and a handful of residents openly carrying guns. It ended in prayer, discussion

and peace.

Families are searching for answers after the gravestones and grassy knolls of a Gary cemetery have been overcome with water as severe flooding has hit.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders took a moment for a morning stroll through Gary in his state-to-state travels through the Midwest's “battleground states.”

Can the existence of life after death, extraterrestrials, strange creatures and other mysteries be proven by science? The “unknown” has always been a huge part of human history, from the undying search for Bigfoot to thousands of eyewitness accounts of UFO’s across the world. Not settling for calling these mysteries “unexplained,” today’s breed of investigators are putting the paranormal to the test with scientific methods and tools.