Brock Purdy will miss Sunday's game for the 49ers with a shoulder injury

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Brock Purdy will miss Sunday's game for the 49ers with a shoulder injury

2024-11-23 07:28 Last Updated At：07:30

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy will miss Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers with a sore throwing shoulder, dealing another blow to the 49ers' playoff hopes.

Purdy injured his right shoulder in last Sunday's loss to the Seattle Seahawks. He underwent an MRI on Monday that showed no structural damage and the team initially thought he could play this week.

But when Purdy's shoulder didn't feel right when he made a few warmup throws at practice Thursday, those plans changed.

“We thought he just needed some rest and we really weren’t concerned about him not being good this week,” coach Kyle Shanahan said Friday. “But when he started up Thursday, it just surprised him, surprised us how it felt. So we had to shut him down.”

Shanahan said the team doesn't believe the injury is a long-term concern but he is uncertain whether Purdy will need to miss any additional time.

“The MRI doesn’t look like that, so it should be all right,” Shanahan said. “But the way it responded this week, it’s really up in the air for next week. We’ll have to see on Monday.”

The 49ers also will be missing star defensive end Nick Bosa, who is out after leaving last week's game in the second half with injuries to his left hip and oblique. Left tackle Trent Williams is questionable with an ankle injury and will be a game-time decision.

San Francisco struggled on defense without Bosa last week and now will go the entire game this week without two of the team's most important players.

The Niners (5-5) are currently in a three-way tie for second in the NFC West, a game behind first-place Arizona, and have little margin for error if they want to get back to the playoffs after making it to the Super Bowl last season.

“I know it’s disappointing,” Shanahan said. “We knew there was a chance for Nick. I think the guys were a little surprised with Brock yesterday, but we addressed all that today. We’re going to have 48 guys in uniform. I know our guys believe in themselves. I believe in them. We’re missing two good players, definitely. But we got a lot of good players out there. So by no means do we not have a chance to win.”

This will be the first time Purdy has missed a start because of an injury since taking over as the 49ers’ quarterback in December 2022. Brandon Allen will start in his place.

Purdy has completed 66% of his passes this season for 2,613 yards, 13 TDs, eight interceptions and a 95.9 passer rating that is down significantly from his league-leading mark of 113 in 2023.

Allen has been mostly a backup since being drafted by Jacksonville in 2016. Allen last started a game in Week 18 of the 2021 season for Cincinnati and has thrown just three passes the last three seasons — including none since joining San Francisco in 2023.

Allen said he preparation hasn't changed this week with the exception of getting to work with the first-team receivers instead of running the scout team.

“It’s an opportunity.” he said. “The circumstances are what they are. But I think our team all year long we’ve been kind of dealing with injuries here and there. It’s been a big next-man-up mentality. It’s definitely an opportunity for me to go out and play well and put our guys in a good position to win the game. Obviously, we want Brock back and healthy and all that. But for the time being, it is an opportunity for me.”

Joshua Dobbs will be the backup Sunday.

San Francisco also will be without starting cornerback Charvarius Ward, who returned to the team this week following the death of his 1-year-old daughter on Oct. 28 but needs more time to get back up to speed. Punt returner Jacob Cowing (concussion), linebacker Tatum Bethune (knee) and defensive lineman Kevin Givens (groin) are also out.

The Packers will also be without two key defensive players with cornerback Jaire Alexander ruled out after leaving last week's game with a knee injury and linebacker Edgerrin Cooper out with an injured hamstring.

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2 convicted in human smuggling case after Indian family froze to death on US-Canada border

2024-11-23 07:28 Last Updated At：07:30

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) — A jury convicted two men on Friday of charges related to human smuggling for their roles in an international operation that led to the deaths of a family of Indian migrants who froze while trying to cross the Canada-U.S. border during a 2022 blizzard.

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, an Indian national who prosecutors say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Steve Shand, 50, an American from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that has brought increasing numbers of Indians into the U.S., prosecutors said.

They were each convicted on four counts related to human smuggling, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally.

“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said.

“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of an entire family. Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border,” Luger added.

The most serious counts carry maximum sentences of up to 20 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office told The Associated Press before the trial. But federal sentencing guidelines rely on complicated formulas. Luger said Friday that various factors will be considered in determining what sentences prosecutors will recommend.

Federal prosecutors said 39-year-old Jagdish Patel; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death Jan. 19, 2022, while trying to cross the border into Minnesota in a scheme Patel and Shand organized. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to Harshkumar Patel.

The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said. The family was fairly well off by local standards, living in a well-kept, two-story house with a front patio and a wide veranda.

Experts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional American immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to navigate legally. Much is rooted in economics and how even low-wage jobs in the West can ignite hopes for a better life.

Before the jury’s conviction on Friday, the federal trial in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, saw testimony from an alleged participant in the smuggling ring, a survivor of the treacherous journey across the northern border, border patrol agents and forensic experts.

Defense attorneys were pitted against each other, with Shand’s team arguing that he was unwittingly roped into the scheme by Patel.

Patel’s lawyers, The Canadian Press reported, said their client had been misidentified. They said “Dirty Hary,” the alleged nickname for Patel found in Shand’s phone, is a different person. Bank records and witness testimony from those who encountered Shand near the border didn’t tie him to the crime, they added.

Prosecutors said Patel coordinated the operation while Shand was a driver. Shand was to pick up 11 Indian migrants on the Minnesota side of the border, prosecutors said. Only seven survived the foot crossing. Canadian authorities found the Patel family later that morning, dead from the cold.

The trial included an inside account of how the international smuggling ring allegedly works and who it targets.

Rajinder Singh, 51, testified that he made over $400,000 smuggling over 500 people through the same network that included Patel and Shand. Singh said most of the people he smuggled came from Gujarat state. He said the migrants would often pay smugglers about $100,000 to get them from India to the U.S., where they would work to pay off their debts at low-wage jobs in cities around the country. Singh said the smugglers would run their finances through “hawala,” an informal money transfer system that relies on trust.

The pipeline of illegal immigration from India has long existed but has increased sharply along the U.S.-Canada border. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians on the Canadian border in the year ending Sept. 30, which amounted to 60% of all arrests along that border and more than 10 times the number two years ago.

By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates more than 725,000 Indians were living illegally in the U.S., behind only Mexicans and El Salvadorans.

Jamie Holt, a Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations, said the case is a stark reminder of the realities victims of human smuggling face.

“Human smuggling is a vile crime that preys on the most vulnerable, exploiting their desperation and dreams for a better life,” Holt said. “The suffering endured by this family is unimaginable and it is our duty to ensure that such atrocities are met with the full force of the law.”

One juror Kevin Paul, of Clearwater, Minnesota, told reporters afterward that it was hard for the jurors to see the pictures of the family’s bodies. He said he grew up in North Dakota and is familiar with the kind of conditions that led to their deaths.

“It’s pretty brutal,” Paul said. “I couldn’t imagine having to do what they had to do out there in the middle of nowhere.”

Goldberg reported from Minneapolis.