San Diego police confirm there was no missing person report filed for a toddler found dead inside a bag being carried by a couple trying to cross the border into Tijuana.

San Diego Police Department (SDPD) Lt. Ray Valentin told NBC 7 Wednesday that the couple was attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border on foot at the San Ysidro port of entry at around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The couple, residents of Whittier, California now identified as Johnny Lewis Hartley, 39, and Mercy Maria Becerra, 43, were stopped by Mexican authorities and sent to a secondary inspection point.

Hartley was carrying a duffle bag.

When officials scanned the bag in an X-ray machine, they made a grisly discovery: the lifeless body of a little girl was inside. According to Valentin, the child was approximately two years old.

Valentin told NBC 7 Thursday that it appears the couple was driven down to San Diego by someone and dropped off at the pedestrian border crossing.

SDPD Homicide Unit detectives are working closely with detectives of the Whittier Police Department to track down leads on the case, and have been in contact with several people in Whittier regarding the little girl.

At this point, Valentin said no other arrests have been made in this case.

When Hartley and Becerra were stopped at the border, Valentin said Becerra tried to run away, but she was quickly apprehended and taken into custody. Hartley was also arrested on the spot.

Both Hartley and Becerra were booked into jail in San Diego and are facing counts of first-degree murder and child cruelty. They are both scheduled to appear in court Friday.

After interviewing the suspects, SDPD Homicide Unit detectives have determined that whatever happened to the girl may have occurred in Whittier.

The toddler's parents live in the Whittier/Greater Los Angeles area. NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed Becerra's Instagram account; her biography on the social media page says she's a mother of nine.

The San Diego County Medical Examiner's (ME) office took custody of the toddler's body and will determine the cause and manner of the girl's death.

On Thursday, the ME's office confirmed the autopsy was completed, but the results have been sealed by law enforcement.

The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information on the case can call the SDPD Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

Whittier is located approximately 127 miles north of Tijuana.

Locals will gather Thursday evening for viewing parties to cheer on the Park View Little League (PVLL) of Chula Vista, in one of two games that could qualify the team for the Little League World Series (LLWS).

The SoCal champs will face off at 6 p.m., with PVLL playing against Hawaii. That's also when both viewing parties will kick off. One party will gather at Salucita Bar & Grill on 4110 Bonita Rd. in Bonita, and another viewing party will take place at Oggi's Pizza and Brewing on 2130 Birch Road in Chula Vista.

At both events, spirit gear will be sold and part of the proceeds from food sales will be donated to the team, according to the Facebook page of PVLL.

If the team wins Thursday night's game and one more match after that, PVLL could head off to LLWS in Williamsport, Pennsylvania later this month.

Last year, another team from San Diego's South Bay made it to Williamsport -- Sweetwater Valley Little League, setting records along the way.

Nearly 4,000 guns are held as evidence in cardboard boxes, stored at the San Diego County Sheriff Department’s Crime Lab.

In San Diego County, a stolen gun used in a crime and confiscated by law enforcement, is returned to its rightful owner, destroyed or used in training by law enforcement.

Jan Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Sheriff said, “When these guns are taken in as evidence, they're reviewed by a team of people. First of all they're rendered safe, then they're kept here throughout the full court proceedings of that case.”

Some are kept, maintained as evidence, for just a few months. Others, like those involved in homicide cases could be kept indefinitely.

“When the appeals have been completely exhausted, the weapons will be returned to their lawful owner,” said Caldwell.

If the weapon can't be returned to its rightful owner, they are sometimes destroyed.

“They are sent out to a facility north of here, they're melted down and the material from the melted guns goes into making rebar for freeway underpasses, new buildings,” said Caldwell.

Others are added to the Sheriff’s Department training room. Currently it holds 1,000 different firearms.

Caldwell says many of the training weapons were once in the hands of criminals.

“They are used by our deputies when they run across something on a scene where they need to render a weapon safe. They come over here quickly and get a lesson. An A-B-C if you will. It's a variety of weapons that span years and years. Older weapons, newer weapons, modified weapons; it's really a great cache.”

In a joint investigation with NBC TV stations in California, NBC 7 Investigates has been tracking lost and stolen guns throughout the state. To see the complete investigation, click here.

A nonprofit group working to restore a historic open-air amphitheater in Balboa Park will roll up their sleeves this weekend and begin much-needed clean-up efforts.

Save Starlight is a grassroots organization that wants to renovate and reinvent the Starlight Bowl on Pan American Plaza. The last event held at the amphitheater was more than five years ago. Since it shuttered in 2012, the venue fallen into disrepair.

Today, the venue’s façade is visibly run down – the letters at the entrance worn and surrounding plants overgrown.

On Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Save Starlight will host a “Reverse Gardening Party” to help clean the venue. The event will include live entertainment, refreshments and a raffle. San Diego City Councilman Todd Gloria is expected to attend.

The group’s goal is to get the Bowl up and running again as some type of entertainment venue for concerts, cinema, festivals, plays, community events and musical theater while preserving the site’s history.

Originally called The Ford Bowl, the amphitheater was commissioned by the Ford Motor Company for the 1935¬-36 California Pacific International Exposition.

In its early days, the Starlight Bowl featured symphony concerts that were broadcast via radio and other events. The name was changed to Starlight Bowl in the 1970s.

From the late 1950s until 2012, the venue hosted the San Diego Civic Light Opera (SDCLO) Starlight Summer Musicals. The SDCLO folded in 2012 and the Bowl hasn’t been used since then.

What makes Starlight Bowl unique is that it’s located directly under the flight path for the San Diego International Airport – making noise a factor for productions.

Save Starlight says that for decades, theatrical performances would “freeze” mid-scene or song as the planes passed overhead. As air traffic increased at Lindbergh Field, the noise created problems for the venue’s programming.

Through its campaign, Save Starlight hopes to figure out how to operate the venue despite the noise issues. The team is headed by Steve Stopper, a former audio technician for Starlight who knows the acoustics of the amphitheater well.

Save Starlight said a feasibility study was conducted in 2013 on the Starlight Bowl. The 155-page report said the costs for initial improvements to the venue are $7.8 million, and $15 million to complete the project.

The nonprofit told NBC 7 the report is good but their intentions are different because they want to utilize the venue for events that won’t be affected by the airplane noise, such as concerts and festivals.

Save Starlight said their plan does not cost $15 million. To learn more about the efforts to revitalize the Bowl, click here.

A shoplifter made it out of an Encinitas Walgreens with nearly $700 worth of vitamins last week.

The man was caught on surveillance cameras filling the pockets of his cargo shorts with cases of vitamin supplements before leaving the store without confrontation.

According to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the incident happened at around 8:30 p.m. on Friday, August 5, at the Walgreens in the 1300 block of Encinitas Boulevard.

The suspect, pictured above, is described as a man approximately 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighing about 300 pounds with brown hair. He was last seen wearing a blue shirt with grey sleeves, tan cargo shorts and black and white Converse shoes.

The Sheriff’s Department is asking anyone with more information on the crime or the suspect to contact Detective Jaime Rodriguez at the North Coastal Sheriff’s Station at (760) 966-3500.

The City of San Diego will spend more than $1 million to provide November voters with individual copies of a ballot pamphlet.

With a 2-4 vote Wednesday, the San Diego City Council rejected the idea of putting the lengthy explainers for two ballot measures online.

Several citywide propositions are on the ballot in San Diego including two downtown stadium-oriented issues. Those proposals will need 77 and 119 pages respectively.

On Wednesday, the council considered a proposal that would direct the City Clerk to make copies of the pamphlet on demand for voters who requested the information.

Councilmember Todd Gloria, who proposed putting the printed versions in libraries and online, reacted to the vote via Twitter.

"At a cost of ~$1M, it has to be the most expensive thing ever placed in most San Diegans' mailboxes," Gloria posted.

The San Diego County Tax Payers Association called the decision a "waste of tax dollars. Placing the full text online makes much more sense."

Councilmember Marti Emerald, one of those who rejected the idea, reportedly feared not providing a paper pamphlet would hurt democracy according to KPBS.

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said there’s no legal requirement to put the provisions of the stadium-centric measures into text form.

"Some people are going to read the whole thing -- that's good.” he told NBC 7 in an interview Monday. “Some people are going to be offended that it costs too much, and that it's too big. That's what the city council's for and they represent all the people, and they can make that decision."

Donald Trump claims that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “founded ISIS.” But the origin of the Islamic State terrorist group dates back to the Bush administration.

Trump points to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011, under Obama, as “the founding of ISIS,” but experts say the expansion of the Islamic State after that point can’t be pinned on the troop withdrawal alone — if at all. And there’s the fact that President George W. Bush had signed the agreement and set the date for that withdrawal.

“It’s a massively complex problem,” Clint Watts, the Robert A. Fox fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East, told us. It “goes beyond one single policy decision about keeping or moving troops.”

Furthermore, Trump himself supported withdrawing troops from Iraq as early as 2007, telling CNN in a March 16, 2007, interview that the U.S. should “declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. … [T]his is a total catastrophe and you might as well get out now, because you just are wasting time.”

But now, in the midst of a campaign to be president, Trump says the withdrawal, without leaving behind a small force, created ISIS. His comments at a rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, came after he has been linking Clinton to ISIS for weeks.

Trump, Aug. 10: We shouldn’t have ever, ever, ever got into Iraq. I said it from the beginning. I said it from the beginning. … I said you’re going to destabilize the Middle East and we did. And then, an even easier decision, we should have never gotten out the way we got out. … We had a president who decided he’d announce a date and he was going to get out by that date. The problem is the enemy, which really turned out to be ISIS, the enemy was sitting back and actually didn’t believe that this could be happening. … That they would actually say when they were getting out. So they sat back and they sat back … but instead of allowing some small forces behind to maybe, just maybe, keep it under control, and we pulled it out eventually. …

And then we decimated one of the powers and we unleashed fury all over the Middle East. It was a terrible mistake. And then Obama came in and normally you want to clean up, he made a bigger mess out of it. … And then you had Hillary with Libya. So sad.

In fact, in many respects you know they honor President Obama. ISIS is honoring President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton, co-founder.

Trump reiterated his “founder of ISIS” comments in interviews on Aug. 11. When conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked him, “You meant that [Obama] created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” Trump responded: “No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.” Trump added that “the way he got out of Iraq … was the founding of ISIS, O.K.?”

Let’s start with a quick fact-check of Trump’s position on the Iraq War: There is no evidence that Trump opposed the war in Iraq before it started on March 19, 2003, despite his frequent claims to the contrary. In fact, Trump expressed mild support in September 2002 for invading Iraq in an interview with radio host Howard Stern. The Trump campaign, in a footnoted speech, has pointed to an interview in January 2003 with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, but, as we’ve explained before, Trump took no position in that interview, saying only that President Bush should make a decision: “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he said.

That March 2003 invasion of Iraq — supported at the time by Clinton, who was in the U.S. Senate, and opposed by Obama, who was a state senator — marked the beginning of the rise of a terrorist group that has adopted several names over the years, most recently the Islamic State.

We’ll note that some of Trump’s comments can be taken as opinion — the “most valuable player” comment, for instance. But his claims that Obama and specifically the troop withdrawal “founded” ISIS don’t measure up to the well-documented history of this terrorist group.

The Roots of ISIS

If anyone can be called the “founder of ISIS,” it’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who formed al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that became ISIS, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A June 27 report by the Congressional Research Service provides a timeline of “The Roots of the Islamic State,” which begins in October 2002, when Zarqawi assassinated USAID official Laurence Foley in Jordan and then relocated to Iraq. By October 2004, Zarqawi’s group was known as al Qaeda in Iraq. He took advantage of sectarian strife in Iraq — Sunni opposition to U.S. forces and the ruling Shia party — to build his organization.

“The Islamic State has its origins in the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” Princeton University professor Bernard Haykel, who heads the university’s Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, told us in an interview. “It is tied to a man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was killed in an American attack in 2006. I don’t see that Obama has anything to do with it – at all. He wasn’t even on the scene when the founders of ISIS set it up.”

In June 2006, Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike, but Egyptian Abu Ayub al-Masri took over the organization, calling it the Islamic State of Iraq a few months later.

In an analysis, “From Paper State to Caliphate,” for the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, Cole Bunzel writes that the significance of the group’s name change to the Islamic State of Iraq “was much greater than was appreciated at the time. It signaled the start of an ambitious political project: the founding of a state in Iraq– a proto-caliphate — that would ultimately expand across the region, proclaim itself the fullfledged caliphate, and go on to conquer the rest of the world.”

In 2010, Masri, and another top Islamic State official, were killed in a joint Iraqi-U.S. raid. When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, the CRS report explains, the Islamic State of Iraq “was weakened, but not eliminated.”

CRS, “The Islamic State and U.S. Policy,” June 27: The Islamic State’s direct ideological and organizational roots lie in the forces built and led by the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq from 2002 through 2006. … Zarqawi took advantage of Sunni animosity toward U.S. forces and feelings of disenfranchisement at the hands of Iraq’s Shia and Kurds to advance a uniquely sectarian agenda that differed from Al Qaeda’s in important ways. … Following Zarqawi’s death at the hands of U.S. forces in June 2006, AQ-I leaders repackaged the group as a coalition called the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). ISI lost its two top leaders in 2010 and was weakened, but not eliminated, by the time of the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. The precise nature of ISI’s relationship to Al Qaeda leaders from 2006 onward is unclear.

Watts, with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that 2006 was when the “big governance model” of what we now see as the Islamic State was formed. There was “some divergence from the al Qaeda brand name” and disagreements between the two groups at this point. When the U.S. troops withdrew, the terrorist group had gone underground, with members in prisons or detention camps, Watts said. In 2011 and 2012, the group was “lightly functioning,” but still in existence.

By 2013, the terrorist group was again launching attacks in Iraq and had spread to Syria, taking advantage of that country’s internal strike. Syria’s civil war started in March 2011.

Critics and experts have pointed to several actions during the Bush and Obama administrations that could have contributed to the rise of ISIS:

• The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
• The decisions by the U.S.-led provisional coalition government in 2003 to disband the Iraqi army and dissolve and ban the Baath Party, which drove Sunnis into militant groups.
• The rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose Shia government further ostracized Sunnis. “By disbanding the army and making the Baath party illegal and putting in power a Shiite like Maliki, you alienated and radicalized the Sunnis, and gave rise to ISIS in the process,” Haykel told us.
• The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011 — a date set by an agreement with the Iraqi government that was signed by President Bush in 2008, and left unchanged by the Obama administration.
• The weakening of the Iraqi army, which abandoned posts in 2014 rather than fight ISIS.
• The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. “This is really all about Syria,” Watts told us. “That provided the space for ISIS to rise.” The conflict inspired foreign fighters, and if it wasn’t ISIS moving into in Syria, it would be some other jihadist group, he said.

Obama and Clinton were not in lockstep over how the U.S. should handle the situation in Syria: Both Clinton and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have said the administration should have armed rebels fighting in Syria sooner. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Watts noted, the debate was over a no-fly zone in Syria. Neither Obama nor the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, advocated a deeper military involvement in Syria.

It is, of course, unknown how any number of different decisions would have affected the creation or growth of the Islamic State, or a similar terrorist group.

Withdrawal of Troops

Since Trump has pinpointed “the way [Obama] got out of Iraq” as “the founding of ISIS,” we’ll take a closer look at that action.

As we have explained before, Republicans and Democrats differ on which president should be blamed for the withdrawal of all combat troops at the end of 2011. Trump says that “[w]e had a president who decided he’d announce the date” of withdrawal — but that president was Bush.

Bush signed the agreement, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, on Dec. 14, 2008. It said: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.” Condoleezza Rice later wrote that Bush wanted an agreement for a residual force to remain, but Maliki objected.

Obama, however, had three years to renegotiate the deal, which his administration tried to do, seeking to leave an American troop force of 5,000 to 10,000. But Maliki objected again, and negotiations broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Obama’s then defense secretary, Panetta, later wrote in his 2014 book that Obama didn’t press hard enough for a deal, although some experts say it would not have mattered because Iraq was more closely aligned at the time with Iran.

Maliki “wanted the Americans out of there — and the Iranians wanted the same thing,” Haykel said. “I don’t think there was a deal to be had — not one in which the Americans would have had immunity.”

Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state at the time, publicly supported the president. In a 2014 interview, she blamed the Iraqi government for the failure to reach an agreement to protect American troops. The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” said in an interview with the Post‘s Fact Checker that “[w]ithin the administration, Clinton was one of the loudest forces for keeping a residual force in Iraq.”

So, both presidents played a role in the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. ISIS did experience a resurgence in Iraq after that withdrawal, but Watts doesn’t see the withdrawal as a major factor. “ISIS didn’t grow because of the troop withdrawal, they grew because there was a Syrian civil war that created a vacuum to the west,” he told us. If the U.S. had left troops in Iraq, the “best outcome” would be to still have an ISIS in Syria.

And how did Trump feel about withdrawing from Iraq at the time? He said several times that the troops should be withdrawn, and quickly. BuzzFeed unearthed several quotes from Trump, including a March 16, 2007, interview Trump gave with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Trump, March 16, 2007, on CNN: You know how they get out? They get out. That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. They’re in a civil war over there, Wolf. There’s nothing that we’re going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war. …

And it’s going to go to Iran, and it’s going to go to other countries. They are in the midst of a major civil war. And there’s nothing — by the way, we’re keeping the lid on a little bit but date we leave anyway it’s all going to blow up. … So, I mean, this is a total catastrophe and you might as well get out now, because you just are wasting time.

Trump doesn’t appear to be advocating a residual force in those comments, but he’s unclear. Regardless, the withdrawal of troops, no matter when or how it happened, wasn’t the “founding of ISIS.” Nor was President Obama the “founder.” The terrorist group’s history predates Obama’s presidency.

A new law requiring all students in California to be vaccinated will be the subject of a legal challenge Friday afternoon in San Diego. It is a time sensitive hearing, as students head back to school over the next few weeks.

Senate Bill 277 went into effect July 1, repealing the state's personal belief exemption, which had allowed students to opt out of getting vaccinated.

Now, only children who have been immunized for diseases such as measles and whooping cough can be admitted to public schools, unless they have underlying medical conditions.

“It’s so punitive to take away the classroom education of a child. So it's just wrong,” said Rebecca Estepp. She blames what she calls a vaccine injury for her son's autism.

Estepp represents a group called Education4All, which is asking a federal judge to delay the new law's enforcement until all legal challenges are resolved.

“All we’re asking for is the court to go back to the law previously in effect,” said Kim Mack Rosenberg, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys.

Mack Rosenberg says the new law is affecting the fundamental right under the Constitution to get a classroom based education with peers.

“What the state is proposing is very radical. They are proposing barring thousands of children from classrooms permanently,” she said.

In its response, the State wrote: “A state's exercise of its police powers in protecting the public from communicable diseases is rationally based.”

Meanwhile, proponents of vaccines welcome the more restrictive law.

“I would say parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, they are choosing to be home schooled,” said parent Shawn Vandriver.

But vaccine opponents say that is a punitive choice because many parents cannot afford to home school their children and that the law will impact 33,000 children who are not fully vaccinated.

“This is a very small percentage, but to each child, their inability to access the classroom-based education they are guaranteed is a tremendous and lifelong burden,” said Mack Rosenberg.

In a statement, the California Department of Education wrote: “The department can't comment on ongoing litigation, but Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson strongly supports vaccination. It's the law in California, and it's the right thing to do for public health. Early reports indicate school districts are doing a great job of reminding parents that they need to submit vaccination records for students entering kindergarten and 7th grade."

In less than 24 hours, the Padres and Pirates each earned 4-0 victories at PNC Park.

Thursday it was Pittsburgh’s turn to return the favor as San Diego struggled to get any offense going.

Jameson Taillon did his best Edwin Jackson impersonation and shutout the Padres during his eight innings of work. Taillon struck out just four batters but the Friars only managed four singles the entire game.

One of those hits was collected by Poway native Nick Noonan who made his Padres debut.

It was not Noonan’s first major league contest (he played briefly with the Giants in 2013 and 2015) but he singled in his first at-bat with his hometown team and finished 1-for-3.

Noonan is expected to start at shortstop for the majority of the remaining games this season as the club continues trying out younger players in various big league roles.

This is the 13th time the Padres have been shutout this season.

Next up are the Mets on Friday. Paul Clemens will oppose New York’s Logan Verrett.

San Diego will also go with a six-man rotation starting Sunday when Clayton Richard gets the nod.

A tall Torrey Pine tree in Ocean Beach, the site of a sit-in last week, will be torn down, the City of San Diego said. 

The 73-foot tall tree, located on the 4600 block of Saratoga Avenue, will be removed Friday, starting at 7 a.m. City officials say the tree is failing and needs to be removed. 

“Public safety is of the utmost importance, and while our goal is to maximize the environmental benefits of trees, we must balance the risk of trees with the preservation of trees,” said Jeremy Barrick, a Board-Certified Master Arborist and the City’s Urban Forester Program Manager, in a statement.

Barrick said officials have monitored and reviewed the tree for several months.

The consensus, he said, was that "this tree must be removed to entirely eliminate the risk of catastrophic failure."

But when news of the removal came out last week, residents were angered. In an act of protest, Ocean Beach resident Crystal Rose Speros scaled the tree and sat in a groove for most of the day. About a half-dozen residents on the ground joined Speros in protest, claiming the city was not transparent in its plans for the doomed tree.

Residents have said they have not heard specific details of why it is dangerous and why, exactly, it needs to be torn down.

According to John Ambert, Chair of the Ocean Beach Community Planning Board, the Torrey Pines that line that street are more than 95 years old. Given what he's heard from the city, he doesn't think its enough to tear down the tree. 

The City told NBC 7 that four different arborists have looked at the Torrey Pine and determined the tree is hazardous. NBC 7 was able to obtain these reports.

The tree is adjacent to where two other similar trees were removed earlier in the year, following heavy El Nino storms, according to the City. 

In an effort to extend the tree's benefits, the City will be working with a local artist to repurpose the wood, Barrick said. They will work with the community to plant replacement trees. An artist will be given some of the wood, as will neighbors. 

Going forward, the City said it plans to consult with the community to find replacement trees and plans to start an "aggressive tree planting program." 

According to this Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve website, Torrey Pine trees are the rarest native pines in the United States, and were first seen in San Diego’s Sorrento Valley area as early as 1769.

In 1850, the tree was official discovered and named the Torrey Pine by Dr. Charles Christopher Parry – a doctor with an interest in botany – when he was in San Diego as a botanist for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey. Parry named the tree after his mentor, Dr. John Torrey, of New York, one of the leading botanists of his time.

A 91-year old woman in Allied Gardens will not have to say goodbye to a beloved memory of her late husband.

Marie Ostwald won the fight against the City of San Diego to keep a tree she planted nearly 60 years ago with her husband. The Brazilian pepper tree will be named as a Heritage Tree, protecting it from being cut down.

In early May, City crews came out to inspect a sidewalk near Ostwald’s home and after examining the area, crews learned they would have to cut down the tree to make the necessary repairs.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer visited Ostwald on Mother’s Day and announced that the City would not remove the tree.

Now, it will be protected as a heritage tree.

"The City needs to do minor pruning because it's hanging over the street, which we are fine with,” Ostwald’s attorney Cory Briggs said.

Briggs says they had sued the City but once they get “full confirmation” that the tree will not be removed, the lawsuit will go away.

A known gang member found with multiple illegal firearms and ballistic vests was critically injured after a pursuit turned into a deputy-involved shooting, San Diego County Sheriff's officials (SDSO) said. 

The pursuit began at approximately 12:35 p.m. Thursday near North Santa Fe Street when deputies on patrol saw a black Lexus driving in the area, Lt. Kenn Nelson said. 

Deputies recognized the driver as a known gang member who had a felony warrant out for his arrest, Nelson said. The warrant was for illegal firearm possession. 

When they tried to pull the 33-year-old suspect over, he refused, Nelson said. He began a short, eight minute pursuit through the City of Vista. 

However, the pursuit ended when the driver slammed into another car near Iron Drive and Copper Drive. 

The suspect fled, leading officers on a short foot chase into alley, Nelson said.

There was some sort of confrontation between the deputies and the suspect, Nelson said, and a deputy fired rounds at the suspect. 

The man, who at the time had three different knives on his person, was struck in the upper torso at least once, Nelson said. Nelson said the investigation is in its early phases and deputies are still unsure how many rounds were fired. 

The suspect, who has not yet been identified, was taken to the hospital and is undergoing surgery. He is in critical condition.

Authorities found multiple illegal firearms, holsters and ballistic vests on the suspect.

The deputies, who have not yet been identified, were not issued body worn cameras. Both deputies were driving in one patrol car; one was a deputy-in-training. 

Authorities took an 18-year-old female passenger into custody. Detectives are working to determine whether or not she was involved. 

Russ Kercher, who has lived in the area for nearly four years, said he's never seen anything like it.

"There must have been 20 cop cars that came speeding around the corner," he said. "I didn't see the car they were chasing, but they were going fast."

One patient has been taken to Palomar Hospital, officials said. 

A perimeter has been set up in the area as officials investigate. 

No other information was immediately available.

Check back for updates on this breaking news story. 

Critics of the Chargers' downtown stadium plan now have fresh ammunition for their opposition campaign -- a tourism industry study saying the project would cost far more than the tax revenue it would generate.

At Chargers Park, there's a focus not only on winning a lot of NFL games, but the hearts and minds of San Diego voters in November.

The team has nothing but contempt for the latest research that undermines their efforts.

”We've done our own study that comes to dramatically different findings,” Chargers special adviser Fred Maas told NBC 7 in an interview Thursday. “I think the best solution here would be to have an honest debate between our consultants and their consultants."

The opposition's consultants are Chicago-based HVS Global Hospitality Services, hired for $30,000 by San Diego's Tourism Marketing District.

HVS’ 62-page study concludes that the Chargers' $1.8 billion "ConVadium" plan – an all-purpose stadium in East Village, adjacent to a convention center annex -- would cost $67 million a year while bringing in $2.3 million annually in hotel room taxes.

The Chargers are dead-set against the city's offer of a new stadium deal at the current Qualcomm site in Mission Valley.

But recent public opinion polls show the Bolts’ field of dreams in East Village will be hard-pressed to get simple-majority support -- never mind the two-thirds super-majority required for tax measures.

"They may be stuck with San Diego; I hope that they are,” says April Boling, spokeswoman for the “No Downtown Stadium” campaign. “I hope that's what it turns out to be. Because (the Mission Valley) plan's a viable plan."

For his part, Maas isn’t inclined to look too far beyond the Nov. 8 citywide election.

"Clearly, if the voters overwhelmingly say they don't want the Chargers to stay here, that would be an important signal,” he conceded. “But I don't see that happening -- at least from the outpouring of support we've gotten so far."

Meantime, Charger fans groups haven't given up hope for a "Hail Mary" prayer being answered.

"I think what it's really going to take to make this work is for all of these people to get in a room and try to strike a deal, right?” says Jason Riggs, chairman of the 20,000-member San Diego Stadium Coalition. “I mean, there hasn't really been a lot of negotiation. It's 'Here's our plan, take it or leave it.' Or '’That plan won't work, but we're going to propose an alternate plan’."

There's still an 'L.A.' option in all this, and the Chargers have until next year to decide whether to exercise it under the purview of the NFL.

But the Rams are already going to the bank, big-time, in that market -- while the Chargers roll the dice on an uncertain outcome here, already having spent several million dollars on the cause.

Divers off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, discovered three 400-year-old shipwrecks that they believe may have belonged to the French.

Divers with Global Marine Exploration believe the 16th to 17th century shipwreck debris fields are from three different French ships, and the contents include canons made of bronze and iron, anchors, and symbols of the fleur-de-lis and a French Coat of Arms archaeologists call priceless, NBC affiliate WESH reported.

One of the bronze cannon has markings linking it to the reign of Henry II and was likely cast in the 1540’s, according to GME chief archaeologist Jim Sinclair.

"The historical and archaeological significance of these artifacts cannot be overstated," he suggested. 

The monument appears to be hand carved marble, Sinclair said, and could have possibly been connected to the first French attempts at new world colonization, the Protestant Huguenots and the founding of Spanish Florida at St. Augustine.

The company, along with the Florida Department of Historic Resources and the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, are working to recover the artifacts and conserve them.

Day 6 in Rio saw Simone Biles outshine everyone to take the individual gold in woman's gymnastics, while Michael Phelps defeated his longtime rival, Simone Manuel made history in the pool, golf returned with a bang and Fiji finally won a gold. The day's top moments at the Summer Games are here, in case you missed them. 

Simone Biles Takes Individual Gold

Simone Biles won the gold medal in the women's gymnastics individual all-around event, with commanding performances in her two best events, balance beam and the floor exercise. It was the U.S. gymnastics team's second gold medal at the Rio Olympics and the Americans' fourth straight victory in the event. Aly Raisman took the silver with a strong balance beam routine and floor exercise. Russia’s Aliya Mustafina took the bronze.

The 19-year-old Biles — who joins the ranks of such American winners as Mary Lou Retton and her teammate Gabby Douglas — and Raisman, the 22-year-old team captain, were expected to finish on top.

After the results were announced, Biles, who dominates the sport, invited Raisman out before the crowd to share the applause and an emotional embrace.

Biles will compete again on Sunday in the women’s beam and vault finals, while Raisman will compete in the floor finals.

The Americans, now known as the "Final Five," won the team gold on Tuesday. Their team is the last to have five members. Beginning with the Toyko Games in 2020, the gymnastics teams will have only four competitors.

"One Last Time"

U.S. swimming superstar Michael Phelps won his 22nd gold medal Thursday in the 200-meter individual medley, defeating his longtime rival and teammate, Ryan Lochte.

The two are not always rivals. They won gold together in Olympic relay events, including the men's 4x200m freestyle relay Tuesday evening in Rio.

Their 12-year rivalry has evolved into a competitive friendship, and the two are even roommates in Rio.

This was most likely the last showdown between the two, because Phelps said that he plans to retire after Rio, his fifth Olympic Games.

More Swimming History

American Simone Manuel became the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in swimming. She tied Canada's Penny Oleksiak for the gold in the 100-meter freestyle in an Olympic record time of 52.70 seconds.

Golf Returns to the Olympics

It was an ace 112 years in the making.

On Thursday, golf was part of the Olympic Games for the first time since 1904, and Great Britain's Justin Rose celebrated its return with a hole-in-one. The first ace of the 2016 Rio Olympics, it came on the par-3 fourth hole during the first round of men's golf.  

Rose, who was one of the favorites coming in to the tournament, finished the day with a four-under-par 67 and tied for fourth.

The golfers are sharing the grassy course with giant hamster-like rodents.

The capybara, which is native to South America, is the world's largest rodent. A close relative to the guinea pig, it is known to grow to more 4 feet in length but is not dangerous.

Far from being fazed, the golfers have taken to posting pictures of the furry rodents online.

In 1904, only the United States and Canada competed — and a Canadian won the individual gold. This year, despite the excitement of the sport's return, some of the world's top players gave the Games a pass, citing golf's crowded schedule of championships and other concerns. Golf will be played again in 2020 in Tokyo but its fate after that is uncertain. A vote will be held next year to decide if it will be back in 2024.

Fiji Wins First Gold

Another returning sport, rugby, gave Fiji its first ever gold medal.

The country's rugby sevens squad drubbed Great Britain to secure the win.

Rugby returned to the Olympics this year after a more than 90-year absence. The last time the sport was played at the Summer Games, in 1924, it was the 15-side version.

Olympic-Sized Crime

Even security forces aren't immune to crime in Rio.

Officers from Brazil's national security force were using a GPS to navigate unfamiliar streets when they took a wrong turn and came under fire. One officer was shot in the head, underwent a four-hour surgery and was in stable condition, according to the Justice Ministry.

The shooting was the latest in a string of robberies and attacks that have marred South America's first Olympic Games. Homicides in Brazil had declined in past years but spiked as the country experienced its worst recession in decades.

Two Australian rowing coaches were robbed at knifepoint over the weekend near Ipanema Beach. Portugal's sports minister was robbed, at the Olympic Lake, though his money was recovered.

The equestrian venue was hit twice by stray gunfire. A judo medalist from Belgium was punched in the face on Copacabana beach when he chased a thief.

Ledecky Sets Another Record

U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky broke another Olympic record Thursday.

Ledecky, 19, set the new record with the fastest time in the 800-meter freestyle preliminaries.

Her time: 8 minutes, 12.86 seconds.

Ledecky has won three gold medals in Rio. She anchored the U.S. women's swimming team in the 4 x 200-meter freestyle relay for the third Wednesday night.

She is hoping to sweep the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle events -- which last happened in 1968 at the Mexico City Games.

She swims the 800 meters on Friday.

Judo History

Kayla Harrison became the first American to defend an Olympic judo title on Thursday, beating France's Audrey Tcheumeo in the final of the 78-kg competition.

Harrison won the U.S.'s first judo gold in London in 2012, and she is only the second American to take two Olympic judo medals. The second is her coach, Jimmy Pedro, who twice won bronze medals.

Harrison was sexually abused by a previous judo coach, who was later sent to prison. She credits training under Pedro with helping her to recover.

As Donald Trump's presidential campaign continues to struggle, many top Republican donors are putting their resources into Senate and House races in the hopes of keeping control of Congress amid an increasingly difficult political environment for the party.

Andrew Weinstein, a former director of communications for Bob Dole and press aide to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, began circulating this week a draft letter signed by at least 70 Republicans urging RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to cut its losses and redirect resources to saving Republican majorities.

American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC that spent more than $130 million in the 2012 election, has not committed to spending money to help Trump get elected because donors aren't willing to get involved in that effort, a Republican with knowledge of the group's strategy told NBC News.

"We're focused on the Senate for now," Ian Prior, the spokesperson for Crossroads and two super PACs focused on House and Senate races, said.

Texas and 12 other states will ask a federal judge Friday to halt an Obama administration directive on bathroom rights for transgender students in U.S. public schools, NBC News reported.

The administration told U.S. public schools in May that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms consistent with their chosen gender identity or risk losing federal funding.

Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin immediately filed a joint lawsuit to push back against the requirement.

That announcement came days after the Justice Department sued North Carolina over a state law that requires people to use public bathrooms that correspond with the sex on their birth certificate. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement that there is "no room in our schools" for discrimination.