For over a year and a half Marlene and Fernando Torres spent a combined 500 hours helping to build their new home – and it may have come just in time. The couple found out they’re expecting a baby – due next week.

“Yeah, we're growing and we start growing here,” Marlene Torres told NBC 7, unable not to smile. “We have three bedrooms, so the little one and the new one…I guess it was meant for us.”

After that year and a half of hard work the Torreses and five other families are living in new homes in Imperial Beach thanks to Habitat for Humanity

The organization dedicated the homes Sunday praising the hard work of the owners and volunteers.

“It’s been a long process,” Marlene said from inside their new house. “We did a lot of things on our house and our neighbors: painting, caulking, tiling, everything.”

Mr. and Mrs. Torres agreed it wouldn’t have been possible to buy a home without the help of Habitat for Humanity.

“Your down payment is actually working on your own house,” Fernando Torres explained.

Lori Pfeiler, CEO of San Diego Habitat for Humanity, said Habitat for Humanity partners with a variety of cities within the county where land is available to build homes.

“We were really celebrating that six families now are home,” Pfeiler said. “They have an affordable mortgage and they’re low income families, they’re hard working families, they’ve helped build these homes and today we had a home dedication.

Pfeiler said the Imperial Beach had 10,000 square feet of land available where they were able to fit six town houses.

“When you’re dealing with housing in San Diego land is very expensive,” Pfeiler explained. “San Diego county is a very unaffordable housing market. So we’re dealing with families that are earning between 50 to 80% of the area median income.”

For Fernando and Marlene it’s more than a house. It’s where their kids will grow up.

“It's a beautiful day. We were waiting for this day. The day we finally have our house,” Fernando added.
 

One person died Sunday in a traffic collision on northbound Interstate 15 at Gopher Canyon Road. 

A car struck an SUV, sending it into the center divider along the northbound lanes of I-15, according to California Highway Patrol officers.

This caused the SUV to roll several times.

According to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office an 11-year-old boy from Crestline was in the backseat of the SUV.

The ME’s office said the boy was thrown from the vehicle and died. Several other people were injured.

CHP is investigating.

No further information was immediately available.

There’s a new soccer club in San Diego. The North County Battalion begins their inaugural season in the National Premier Soccer League this year.

The NC Battalion’s mission is “to showcase an elevated expression of soccer while giving back to the local community at the same time” according to their website. The team will be joining forces with local youth clubs to help with fundraising for underprivileged kids in the area.

If you want to get to know the NC Battalion, they have a meet and greet at Del Norte High School on March 19th and their first home match will take place there against the FC Hasental on April 9th.

For more information on the NC Battalion you can go to their website: www.NCBATTALION.COM.
 

A man and a woman were fatally shot by police during a confrontation in Inglewood, California early Sunday morning, officials said.

Officers responded to the intersection of Manchester Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue where a vehicle with two occupants was stopped in the middle of the road shortly after 3 a.m., according to the Inglewood Police Department.

Police said a woman inside the vehicle was armed with a gun and both occupants were ordered to exit the car. Officers took cover and "an officer-involved shooting then occurred," Inglewood police said.

The man and woman were both struck by gunfire. The man was unarmed, according to police. It is unknown if the suspects fired at police during the confrontation.

Witnesses said they heard police activity in the area around 3 a.m. About an hour later, multiple shots were fired.

"It was back to back," said Michiko Perez, a witness who lives nearby. "The helicopters were hovering over for a while and then it suddenly stopped. And then you hear the sirens coming and you hear the police."

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene and the man was transported to a hospital where he later died. Their identities were being withheld until family members were notified.

A firearm was recovered at the scene and police were investigating what led up to the shooting. No officers were injured.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Inglewood Police Homicide Section at 310-412-5246.

Oleevia Woo contributed to this report.

 Jeb Bush's decision to end his bid for presidency created an emotional scene at the Columbia, South Carolina where he and close associates were staying.

Sergio Pino, an old family friend from Miami, couldn't believe the news. Why did he drop out? Surely there was some way Bush could have pressed on with the campaign?

"I feel like the Republican Party as I know it suspended its campaign tonight," said Lee Spieckerman, a Texas commentator who had knocked on doors for Bush in New Hampshire and in South Carolina.

Bush ran for all the right reasons, according to NBC News. He told voters he had a "servant's heart" and, in private and public, his campaign always appeared motivated by duty rather than personal ambition right up to his final speech.

There's still much to be had from the carcass of Jeb Bush's failed bid for presidency.

The former Florida governor dropped out of the race recently and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's team dashes to pick up the leftover supporters.

While Rubio is expected to be the biggest benefactor of Bush's exit, some donors are expressing reservations about quickly investing in another candidate with no guarantee of victory in a year where money has not dictated success.

Rubio's campaign, hoping to portray a flood of finances, confirms that he has gained the financial support of former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas John Rood, who donated at least $135,000 to pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise

A mother standing outside her apartment. A father and son checking out cars at a Kia dealership. A group of women and a teenage girl heading home after seeing a play.

They were the eight people gunned down by an Uber driver in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Saturday on what otherwise seemed to be an ordinary weekend evening.

They ended up in the path of Jason Brian Dalton, who, according to authorities, was driving around the city in a Chevrolet HHR sport utility vehicle, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, shooting people at random.

Authorities said there is no obvious motive, nothing to tie the three sets of victims together. 
 

A Maryland woman who was found pushing her 3-year-old son's body in a playground swing has been found not criminally responsible by a judge Monday.

Romechia Simms' son, Ji'Aire Donnell Lee, died last May of dehydration and hypothermia after being left in a swing for two days.

Over the weekend, a court-appointed psychologist found Simms was not criminally responsible in the toddler's death. According to the report, Simms suffers from schizophrenia.

On Monday, Simms appeared in Charles County Circuit Court, where she could have faced trial, and entered an Alford plea to involuntary manslaughter. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges there was enough evidence to convict.

Judge H. James West then ruled Simms was not criminally responsible, similar to a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.

According to the Charles County Sheriff's Office, Simms placed Ji'Aire on a swing in Wills Memorial Park in LaPlata, Maryland, on the morning of May 20, 2015.

About 40 hours later, Simms was still pushing the child -- who was wearing no jacket or shoes -- and he was dead, prosecutors said.

A medical examiner later ruled the boy's death was ruled a homicide.

Simms was charged with first-degree child abuse, manslaughter and child neglect, and had faced as much as 45 years in prison if convicted.

The judge based his decision on expert opinion of three doctors, including one appointed by the court, who all concluded that Simms suffered from a mental disorder at the time of Ji'Aire's death.

The judge also sided with a conclusion by the same team of doctors that, at this time, Simms is not a danger to herself or others, Charles County officials said.

Simms has been conditionally released and was ordered to maintain her mental health treatments.

If she fails to comply, she will be put into a hospital facility and could end up in a mental health institute, the state's attorney said.

Tony Covington, the state's attorney for Charles County, agreed with the experts and said the ruling was appropriate, but said in a statement that he was frustrated by the tragedy.

"Ji'Aire Lee should still be alive today. He is not here with us because his mother, who knew she had a mental illness, did not remain vigilant in her own mental health treatment," Covington said in the statement. "As a direct result of that she slipped back into the illness that eventually caused her to be unable to care for her child. And Ji'Aire died because of that neglect."

Covington's statement continued: "While we can search for others that may have failed Ji'Aire, ultimately it boils down to Romechia's failure to maintain her mental health regimen. My heart goes out to this family, but I have to be honest about it: Ji'Aire Lee's death was preventable." 

Ji'Aire's father has said he'd tried to get custody of the boy before his death.

A Connecticut couple who lost their baby boy to cancer marked his second birthday by buying dinner for a family of strangers celebrating the birthday of their own young son.

Shane and MaryJo Dunn said their son Luke lost his battle with cancer when he was just 17 months old. MaryJo Dunn told managers at First and Last Restaurant in Glastonbury that Saturday would have been Luke's second birthday.

Dunn and her husband, Shane, said the last few months have been the toughest of their lives. The couple told NBC Connecticut they wanted to celebrate Luke's birthday by performing an act of kindness to keep his spirit alive. They called it "Love 4 Luke."

"He was nothing but pure joy and love and we wanted to pass that feeling along," said MaryJo Dunn.

The Dunns gave a $50 gift card to family dining at First and Last Restaurant with a little boy who looked to be around Luke's age.

They left before the family could thank them for their generosity and read the card they left behind, which described Luke's journey and asked the family to pay it forward in his memory.

The recipients — out that night to celebrate their own son's third birthday — were nearly in tears.

"It makes you think that there truly is a connection that none of us can comprehend," Shane Dunn said.

The family at First and Last purchased a gift card of their own to buy dinner for another family, according to restaurant manager Max Rickis.

"I just kind of hope that more people take a chapter out of her book and look at things in a bigger light and just want to do better for people that they don’t even know," Rickis said.

MaryJo and Shane Dunn said that while they will always miss Luke’s big blue eyes and loving personality, inspiring others to perform small gestures for strangers really does make a difference.

"We always will for the rest of our lives do things to honor Luke," MaryJo Dunn said.
 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas hasn't asked a question from the bench since 2006. 

And this streak is a record. No other justice in modern history has gone more than a term without asking questions during oral arguments. For the legal community, it 's a source of angst and curiosity. 

The last time Thomas asked a question was Feb. 22, 2006, during arguments on a death penalty case.

No one knows quite why Thomas chooses to abstain as he does. Some have pointed to his prior remarks about growing up self-conscious about his rural Georgia accent. But the more likely explanation is that Thomas believes he learns more if he keeps quiet.

"I just think that it's more in my nature to listen rather than to ask a bunch of questions," he told high school students in 2000. "And they get asked anyway."

The third hiker in a month has died after hiking Mt. Baldy trails Saturday, the coroner's office confirmed.

A 45-year-old San Diego man was killed after slipping while on the Devil's Backbone trail.

He fell 1,000 feet down the mountainside, the San Bernardino County Coroner's office said.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said a 911 call came in from a fellow hiker who saw the fall.

The sheriff's department launched a helicopter to search for the man, and transported him to Arrowhead Medical Center where he was later pronounced dead.

The coroner's office would release his name once his next of kin was notified.  

Mt. Baldy is located in the San Gabriel Mountains in San Bernardino County.

The trails were closed Feb. 8 after two hikers died within a week. The trails were later reopened.

"When you get on the backside of those mountains, those trails are only about a foot and a half wide," Mike Ells of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said. "They take one bad step, there's nothing to stop them."

FBI Director James Comey on Sunday said forcing Apple to help unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters is no big deal.

"We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land," Comey said in a statement Sunday night, insisting that vital decisions involving safety from terrorists shouldn't be left in the hands of "corporations that sell stuff for a living."

Last week a federal judge ordered Apple to help authorities access the locked iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California with the help of his wife, Tashfeen Malik.

But the company said it cannot unlock the phone because Farook, like many Apple customers, protected his device with a unique code. The company concluded that helping the government would sabotage the entire point of encryption and endanger the privacy of millions of its customers.

A pedestrian was struck Monday by a trolley in the Mission Valley area, police said.

The incident occurred on Fashion Valley Road west of the shopping center just before 1 p.m.

San Diego Fire-Rescue and San Diego police were called to help a pedestrian who was trapped under the front of the trolley.

Firefighters were able to remove the person. The extent of the injuries is unknown.

A 25-foot humpback whale entangled in fishing line was saved by Seaworld’s rescue team.

The one-year-old whale was seen Sunday afternoon off the La Jolla coast with fishing line running through its mouth, pinning down its left pectoral flipper and entangled around its tail fluke area. The whale was also dragging fishing gear from its tail.

The team made several cuts to the fishing line and after approximately two hours the whale was freed.

The team followed the whale for several minutes to make sure there wasn’t any more fishing line attached to its body.

The whale would have died had it not been freed Seaworld explained.

The whale continued to swim north in the direction of its normal migration pattern.
 

A woman excitedly dubbed the birth of a baby seal on a beach in San Diego as a "miracle of life."

The video, submitted to NBC 7 by Angie McCall, was taken Sunday afternoon at La Jolla Cove.

"It's a beautiful miracle of life," McCall can be heard on the video. "That's so beautiful."

McCall said she was just enjoying a sunny day with her family when she noticed the pregnant seal about to give birth and grabbed her phone.

This is the time of year to see pups on our beaches as female Harbor seals return to the San Diego coastline to give birth in February and March.

Because the beach at the Children's Pool area is closed to the public during this time of year, it's recommended that you stay above the beach on the sea wall or the sidewalk.

An 11-year-old girl died in a fiery crash after a vehicle slammed into a line of cars at the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Pine Valley, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Two adults and two children were rushed to area hospitals just after 9 p.m. Sunday.

A 2013 Toyota Camry traveling approximately 70 mph did not appear to brake as it approached a line of cars waiting just east of the checkpoint at Buckman Springs, CHP officers said.

The Camry struck a Lexus being driven by a woman from Long Beach and pushed it into a Honda Pilot being driven by an El Cajon man. At the point of impact, the Lexus burst into flames, witnesses told the CHP.

The 11-year-old girl was trapped in the back seat of the Lexus and died in the fire, officials said. 

An uncle tried to pull her from the vehicle, according to CHP spokesperson Brian Pennings.

“They were trying to get her out and unfortunately was unable to do so as the vehicle was engulfed in flames,” said Pennings. “He has major burns as a result of his efforts to try and get her out."

From the Lexus, the 18-year-old driver was taken to UCSD Medical Center with moderate injuries, CHP said.

The Camry driver was taken to Sharp Memorial Hospital and two children inside that vehicle were taken to Rady Children's Hospital. All suffered major injuries, CHP officers said.

Five people inside the Honda were not hospitalized.

The Camry driver, identified as a 29-year-old woman from San Diego, will face manslaughter charges, CHP officials said.

While alcohol and drugs do not appear to be factors in this crash, Pennings said it appears it may have been inattention that led to the collision.

Refresh this page for updates on this breaking news story.

San Diego Police Officers shot and killed a dog while investigating the report of a robbery in City Heights early Monday.

Officers were looking into the report of a stolen car and robbery on Thorn Street just after midnight. The victim lived in a granny flat in the rear of the address.

An officer entered the gated area in front of the home to conduct a witness check when a dog charged at him, police said.

"Unfortunately when the gate locked behind the officer and it was a very small area by the porch. The officer had nowhere to go when the dog charged him," Lt. Christian Sharp said.

Police say the dog was shot three times. The dog was taken to a nearby veterinarian’s office where it later died.

Alfredo Fuentes is the son of the dog owner. He said there was no reason for the officer to be inside the gate, especially with three "Beware of Dog" signs.

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Fuentes said his father is heartbroken over the loss of Grizzly.

“He meant the world to my dad. He was a great dog, a lovable dog,” Fuentes said.

When the officer knocked on the door of the home, Fuentes said his father came out to speak with the officer. That's when Grizzly walked over, according to Fuentes.

“The officer had no idea there was a dog in the yard,” Sharp said. “The officers had been walking back and forth by this yard for a good 15- 20 minutes while they were investigating.”

The officer was not hurt.

Police say they are still investigating the original crime of robbery and car theft.

Officials with Scripps Health are notifying more than 500 patients about a former surgical technician who was arrested in Colorado and faces charges of switching patient medication.

Rocky Allen, 28, is in custody facing a charge of tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by deceit.

Prosecutors claim Allen took syringes filled with painkillers at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colorado and replaced them with some other substance, according to KOAA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Colorado Springs.

Swedish fired Allen in late January, KUSA-TV in Denver reports. He had started work in mid-August of 2015.

Allen was employed as a surgical technician trainee at Scripps Green Hospital for less than a month in 2013.

“He was immediately placed on investigatory leave and then terminated when Scripps determined he was trying to switch a syringe of fentanyl citrate – a pain medication – with a syringe of saline,” the hospital said in a written release Monday.

Allen was terminated and the hospital reported the incident to the Drug Enforcement Agency, according to the news release.

Hospital officials plan a 10:30 a.m. briefing to discuss notifications they are sending to 518 patients who had surgical procedures at Scripps Green Hospital between May 9 and June 7, 2013, during the shifts that Allen worked.

While hospital officials say their investigation found no evidence any Scripps patients were harmed, they are offering free, confidential testing as safety precaution.

“Patient safety is our highest priority and of paramount concern. We believe the right thing for our patients is to offer testing in order to allay any anxiety,” Dr. Maida Soghikian, chief of staff for Scripps Green Hospital.

Two other hospitals – one in Englewood, Colorado and another in Phoenix, Arizona – associated with Allen are asking patients to undergo testing for hepatitis and HIV.

A Denver judge ordered that Allen enter a drug treatment program and be held on $25,000 bail.

A defense attorney said Friday Allen is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Patients of Scripps Green with questions about the testing process can call 1-800-SCRIPPS or speak to their physician.

A key trolley line has been halted in San Diego after a gas line ruptured Monday afternoon.

MTS said the Orange Line has been stopped between the 25th & Commercial Station and 47th Street Station through Monday's commute until at least 9 p.m.

Instead of the trolley, passengers will have to take one of eight buses between the stations.

If you are at the 25th & Commercial Station, you can walk to bus stops for Routes 3 and 4, depending on where you want to go.

For those who want to go downtown from Grossmont or El Cajon trolley stations, or vice versa, MTS recommends going on the Green Line.

SDG&E has been called out to repair the gas line.

Get the latest updates on MTS's Twitter account by clicking here.