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Each week, syracuse.com will look back at some of our most important and valuable journalism from the previous week. Here are six stories for the week of Nov. 2, 2025. Subscribe to get the Syracuse.com Exclusives newsletter delivered to your email inbox every Sunday. Her mother and Oswego County workers left her in squalor. A state trooper refused to walk away Aaron Eastwood knows Danielle Killmore. He would often see her pushing her dolls in a baby stroller along Route 11 as cars whizzed by. Eastwood, a state police sergeant, would stop to gently remind her: Don’t play too close to the road. But when he saw Killmore July 29, she was unrecognizable, he said. Killmore, 46, was covered in dirt as she lay on a cot in a small storage shed. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. She had soiled herself. She could barely lift her head when he called her name. Flies came out of her mouth. Syracuse.com investigated how Killmore and her mother fell into such squalor. It’s an alarming tale of mental health crises, the heroic rescue by a dogged state trooper, the unlikely role of a witness in Oklahoma and the utter failure of the county social service leadership to protect a vulnerable woman in peril. Democrats didn’t expect to win Onondaga County Legislature: ‘Now we have to govern. Holy cow!’ Democratic Onondaga County legislators gathered in their caucus room Thursday, two days after an Election Day surprise doubled their membership, from 5 to 10. For the first time in nearly 50 years, Democrats will be in the majority on the 17-member board. In January, they will have new powers to lead committees, fight for spending on their priorities and to push back on Republican County Executive Ryan McMahon. Onondaga County GOP seeks answers after stunning losses. The consensus: Trump is a problem Tim Burtis, the Onondaga County Legislature chair, said he had a sense that Election Day would be tough for Republicans when he knocked on doors last month to ask reliable GOP voters for their support. Burtis, a fifth-term Republican, ran unopposed in a district that President Donald Trump carried by the widest margin out of the 17 districts in the legislature. But when he walked door-to-door in the town of Cicero to listen to GOP voters, he was surprised that many didn’t want to talk about local issues. They were concerned about Trump and what he was doing in Washington. And they didn’t want to vote for a Republican. Sharon Owens, Syracuse’s next mayor, looks ahead to staff changes and her first 100 days One of the first things Syracuse’s newly elected mayor plans to do is advertise for someone to fill her previous position as deputy mayor. Mayor-elect Sharon Owens, who won her first bid for public office Tuesday, said she will need a deputy mayor who is steeped in economic development to complement her background in nonprofit housing and community service. By finding that person, she hopes to re-establish the yin and yang that has characterized City Hall leadership for the past eight years, when Mayor Ben Walsh drew on Owens’ experience at nonprofit groups to round out his familiarity with the world of private investment. What can Syracuse learn from Rochester about rebuilding a neighborhood split by a highway? 7 tips Over the next decade, Syracuse city planners will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invent something new as the state tears down the Interstate 81 overpass. Rochester, a Thruway neighbor with the same history, has already started. The state has filled in part of a sunken four-lane highway that split neighborhoods in that city for half a century. Now, there are 500 brand new apartment units, new streets built with pedestrians and bicyclists in mind and three big chain hotels under construction. Micron’s mammoth property tax break examined: Is it a good deal for schools?
