Several construction workers were injured when an MRI machine they were disassembling in a New Jersey animal hospital exploded Friday morning, authorities say.

None of the 60 or so animals in the Oradell Animal Hospital in Paramus at the time of the explosion were hurt.

The workers were dismantling the machine to put in a new one, officials said. One of the workers was taken to the hospital in critical condition with lacerations and crushing-related injuries to his body; the two others had respiratory complaints and other, mostly minor injuries, police said.

It's not clear why the machine exploded. There was no fire after the initial explosion, but there was a small leak of helium, which is used as a cooling agent inside of the MRI machine. Hazardous materials crews responded to the scene as a precaution and assisted firefighters in stopping the leak.

Dr. Tony Palminteri, owner of the hospital, said that his workers got all of the animals out safely, but several were in critical condition because of earlier medical concerns and were going to be taken to other area animal hospitals for continued treatment as soon as possible.

The animals were taken to a store across the street, where more than two dozen animal hospital employees were working to give them shelter and treat any explosion-related or pre-existing injuries.

The part of the hospital had extensive damage but was deemed structurally safe, authorities said. It will remain closed, though, for an as yet undetermined length of time, authorities said.

In a statement posted to its Facebook page, Oradell Animal Hospital thanked its employees and partners.

"Each and every one of our employees worked together during the situation and they all get a great big thank you," the statement said "A huge thank you goes out to our partners: Bergen police and emergency units, Animal Control, HoHoKus Animal Hospital, Park Ridge Animal Hospital, Franklin Lakes Animal Hospital, Ashley Pochick from Merial and Mangiamo's Pizza on Route 17. We thank every one very, very much."
 

A mountain lion that wandered near a shopping center in Southern California Friday morning died shortly after it was tranquilized by officials from California's Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The 2-year-old male cat was seen prowling near a Macy's at the Promenade Mall in Temecula at about 6 a.m., according to a witness who recorded video of the animal being taken away by officials.

"They tried to do the right thing, they have the training and equipment to do the right thing... and it doesn't always work out," said Capt. Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 

Video of the incident showed the mountain lion breathing in the back of a pickup truck after officers picked it up off the ground.

"It was a big enough cat that you would certainly see it coming from a long ways away," said Joe Fanaselle, a witness who saw the cat before it died.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating if the mountain lion had pre-existing health conditions, said spokesman Kyle Orr, who noted mountain lions very rarely die after being darted.

When they do, it's because the dart damaged a sensitive area of the animal, like the spine, or if the lion has an allergic reaction to the tranquilizer used in the dart, he said.

A special forensic unit was examining the mountain lion in San Bernardino to learn more about its death, he added.

Wardens believe the lion may have found its way to the mall by using a nearby wash off Margarita Road.

The TSA found an unlikely stowaway while checking baggage at LaGuardia Airport this week -- a passenger’s pet Chihuahua.

Security agents were screening luggage in the baggage check Tuesday when a hard black suitcase triggered an alarm, the agency said. When they opened the bag, agents were surprised to find the small brown and beige pup staring up at them.

After finding the dog, the TSA was able to track down the dog’s owner, who said the pup must have climbed in the suitcase while packing for a trip.

The woman later called her husband, who came to pick up the dog.

Up to $15,000 of equipment stolen from a Pasadena high school band has been recovered.

The gear. which includes trumpets, flutes, saxophone, a guitar and a sound system, were stolen from Marshall Fundamental High School at around midnight Feb. 28.

Deputies found the items after spotting a suspicious man rummaging through a 2001 Mercedes Benz station wagon on the 2800 block of East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena at 9:10 p.m Tuesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.

When the lawmen tried to speak to the man he ran away and escaped, and when they looked inside the vehicle they found several musical cases and electronic equipment marked "Property of Pasadena School District." They impounded the car and contacted Pasadena Police Department so the items could be identified. 

Detectives are investigating the case, and the suspect is described as being 5’10 tall and weighed around 170 pounds.

The band is set to perform at Disneyland Saturday, band director Joel Lopez had previously said, with the community had stepped up and donated equipment for the band to use for its performance.

The school had been appealing for funds to replace the equipment.

The Marshall Music Booster club set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the band, Lopez said.

The booster club is a group of parents who "provide support to the music program here at Marshall," according to the school's website.

The three patients who underwent a rare six-way kidney transplant were resting comfortably on Friday morning, hospital officials said, as three more were undergoing surgery to finish the 12-person operation.

California Pacific Medical Center spokesman Dean Fryer said “everything went well” and there were no complications to report stemming from Thursday’s surgery. Doctors on Friday will complete the two-day transplant among six donors and six recipients. Most are from the Bay Area, and two are from the Central Valley. The donors and recipients include three parent-and-child pairs, one sibling pair, and one brother- and sister-in-law pair.

The six-way transplant is the “largest single center kidney paired donation chain conducted on the West Coast” and the largest conducted in the 44-year history of the CPMC Transplant Center, the hospital said. CPMC was the first California hospital to perform a five-way kidney swap in 2011. Hospital administrators took full advantage of the good news to share, tweeting out photos and video of the surgery in progress.

Zully Broussard, 55, of Sacramento was the first donor to kick off this unusual chain of events. She came to the hospital to say she wanted to donate a kidney, but didn’t have a donor in mind. Through the work of a softward program called Matchgrid 11 other donors and recipients were found.

Before the surgery, Broussard said she felt like “a higher power” was “behind all this making it happen. I didn't realize it was so huge. I'm just a small part of the chain."

Fryer said Broussard, the only patient whose identity has been revealed, came out of her 90-minute surgery with no problems. Recovery times vary but the donor typically needs two to three days and the recipient will need about three to five days, Fryer said.

A reception for the donors, recipients and their families is being planned for March 25.

NBC Bay Area's Kent Wilhoite contributed to this report.
 

A youth group in Selma, Alabama, is pushing to rename the iconic bridge where white police officers attacked hundreds of black civil rights activists demonstrating for voting rights 50 years ago, saying the bridge's namesake Edmund Pettus was a Ku Klux Klan leader.

Students UNITE, a racially diverse group of high school and college students that provides mentorship and non-violence training to at-risk youth, has launched a petition to change the bridge's name, charging that its current one represents oppression.

“The name of the bridge should be representative of the city,” the group’s executive director John Gainey, 25, told NBC. “We’re very hopeful that it will be renamed. We don’t need a KKK leader’s name on the gateway to the city.”

The name “sends the wrong message," Gainey added.

"The legacy that Edmund Pettus had, including the things he represented — we don't want to honor that," he said.

According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, an online database maintained by the University of Alabama, Auburn University and the Alabama Department of Education, Pettus was grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in 1877.

Pettus' KKK leadership is disputed, however, by Selma historian Alston Fitts, who told the Associated Press this week that he doubts Pettus was involved. "He was a pretty lousy Klan leader, if that's what he was," Fitts said.

As of Friday, the online petition to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge, launched two weeks ago, needed 41,000 more signatures for it to reach its 200,000 goal.

Gainey called that “incredible” response from supporters somewhat surprising. "We didn't really expect it to take off in the way it had,” he said. "I hope this petition will help to create a conversation.”

Any possible renaming depends in large part on support from the governor and other state lawmakers, who have yet to introduce a bill.

The petition is addressed to the Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Selma Mayor George Patrick Evans and the U.S. National Park Services.

A spokesman for Mayor Evans told NBC that she didn't know whether Student UNITE had spoken with the mayor. The governor's office did not immediately return a call for comment.

The historic Edmund Pettus Bridge was built in 1940 and is named to honor Pettus, a Confederate general and former U.S. senator who lived in Selma, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

On March 7, 1965, hundreds of black civil rights advocates made a first attempt to march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, to protest the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South.

As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama state troopers beat the peaceful protesters with bullwhips and billy clubs and threw tear gas at them. Dozens were injured, including U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), who led the march and whose skull was fractured in the attack. 

While the momentum to rename the bridge is high, some residents in Selma oppose that move, like the city’s first black mayor, James Perkins, who was elected to his first term in 2000.

"I understand and appreciate what the movement and the young people are, but changing the name is a bad idea," Perkins said in an interview. "I don't agree with it."

"The name of the bridge helps explain the contradiction that exists in America. Sometimes it's good to keep these images in our face," he said. "If you remove it, you have a tendency to forget where you're trying to go. It's the most valuable asset we have in Selma."

A Westchester man was arraigned on manslaughter and murder charges Friday in what prosecutors are calling a vigilante shooting death of a rape suspect two years ago.

David Carlson, 43, is accused of shooting Norris Acosta-Sanchez in the driveway of his town of Deerpark home in October 2013. 

Prosecutors say the two men knew each other: Carlson encountered Acosta-Sanchez near his home in August of 2013 and they became friendly. Carlson hired Acosta-Sanchez to do odd jobs on his property and paid him with food, and he and his wife even took Acosta-Sanchez shopping. Over time, Acosta-Sanchez gave Spanish lessons to Carlson's children. 

Then on Oct. 5, 2013, Carlson learned Acosta-Sanchez was wanted by police in Rockland County on a second-degree rape warrant involving a 14-year-old girl, according to prosecutors. Carlson contacted police. 

Four days later, state police pulled over Acosta-Sanchez in a traffic stop near Carlson's home, and Acosta-Sanchez ran out of the vehicle and ran into the woods, escaping police.

On the morning of Oct. 11, Acosta-Sanchez knocked on Carlson's front door. Carlson grabbed a loaded pump-action shotgun and confronted Acosta-Sanchez, prosecutors said, and marched him from the driveway in hopes of alerting a neighbor to the situation.

He then alerted a second neighbor.

At some point in their interaction, Carlson shot Acosta-Sanchez in the arm and then shot him a second time in the head, according to prosecutors.

Carlson was arrested on a second-degree murder charge at the time.

His next court date in April 20. He was in jail on $100,000 bail and not available for comment. Attorney information wasn't immediately available. 

When a man was turned away from a grocery store for trying to pay with a fake $100 bill, police say he found more unsuspecting victims: Girl Scouts.

Police are searching for a man who bought three boxes of Girl Scout cookies with the counterfeit bill outside a South Pasadena supermarket on Friday.

He had tried to buy detergent in the Vons in the 1100 block of Fair Oaks Avenue at about 5:30 p.m. but an employee recognized that the money was fake, according to a South Pasadena Police Department press release.

The man, believed to be 18 and wearing a white hooded sweatshirt, then left the store, where scouts had set up a table to sell cookies.

He bought three boxes and received change from the girls. Their Girl Scout leader later discovered the bill wasn't real, police said.

Police are asking anyone with information about the theft to call 626-403-7280.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on Alabama this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches.

On Saturday, President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush are among those expected to commemorate Bloody Sunday, when sheriff's deputies attacked with tear gas, batons and whips non-violent marchers who were trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.

A record 95 members of Congress are also expected to be in Selma for the events, according to USA Today.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had made Selma the center of their voter registration campaign for blacks. The marches, which continued after Bloody Sunday, are credited with leading the way to passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Here's a look at historic marches and their impact:

3: The number of marches for black voting rights that took place in 1965 to complete the 54-mile journey from Selma to Alabama's capital Montgomery. 

2: Fewer than this percentage of Selma’s eligible black voters were allowed to register to vote at the time of the Selma march, according to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. 

600-Plus: The number of people who attempted to march the 54 miles on Sunday, March 7, 1965, from Selma to Montgomery. While crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama state troopers and vigilantes beat the peaceful protesters with bullwhips and billy clubs and threw tear gas at them. Dozens were injured. Civil rights activist John Lewis, who led the march and is now a long-time congressman from Georgia, suffered a skull fracture, according to a transcript of his testimony during a federal hearing days after the march.

March 9: The date when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the second march, but turned the marchers around because state troopers again blocked the road. That night, a group of segregationists beat one white minister to his death because he supported the Selma march. President Lyndon Johnson supported the marchers, and under the protection of Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents, Dr. King and about 300 people set off again on March 21 and marched 54 miles to Montgomery, according to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. They covered 7 to 17 miles per day, camped at night in supporters’ yards and were entertained by celebrities such as Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne.

March 15: President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on this day in 1965, urging lawmakers to pass the Voting Rights Act to protect black Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting.

March 25: The day when marchers arrived in Montgomery. Around 25,000 people stood before the state Capitol buliding, where Dr. King delivered the "How Long, Not Long" speech, according to the Library of Congress.

15: The age of Lynda Blackman Lowery, the youngest person to join King for the historic march. In a recent report, The Associated Press, the now 64-year old recalled that she got 28 stitches to close a wound on the back of her head and seven for a cut above her right eye.

1,500: The number of people who marched in Harlem in solidarity with the Selma voting rights struggle, according to the Library of Congress.

6 months: The number of months after Bloody Sunday before President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. The law tackled discriminatory election practices that had prevented black Americans from voting, and it required states with histories of discrimination to get federal approval before changing how they conducted elections. In the first four years after the law was enacted, the number of blacks deemed eligible to vote rose from 23 to 61 percent, according to the Library of Congress.

Jan. 9, 2015: The date when the Oscar nominated best picture movie "Selma" was widely released in the U.S. The film, directed by Ava Marie DuVernay, chronicles Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders’ effort to secure equal voting rights and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

March 7, 2015: The date when the country will celebrate the 50th anniversary and reenactment of the historic march.

Actor and comedian Dan Aykroyd says he'll make a donation to a fund set up for the children of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Robert Wilson III.

The "Saturday Night Live" and "Ghostbusters" star made the announcement during an appearance at the Philadelphia Flower Show on Friday. He was at the show promoting his vodka, Crystal Head.

Wilson died Thursday after being gunned down during an attempted robbery at a North Philadelphia GameStop store. The 8-year veteran assigned to the 22nd District was in the store doing a security check and was in the process of buying a game for his 8-year-old son when the gunmen entered.

Police called Wilson a hero who drew away fire from store employees and continued to shoot at both suspects, even after being hit. Two brothers, 30-year-old Carlton Hipps and 26-year-old Ramone Williams, have been charged with the officer's murder.

A trust fund was set up Friday for the 30-year-old officer's two sons, the 8-year-old and a 1-year-old. The fund is being managed by the Police and Fire Federal Credit Union. Donations can be made in person at the following branches:

• 901 Arch Street
• 7604 City Avenue
• 8500 Henry Avenue
• Leo Mall, Byberry and Bustleton Avenue
• 7500 Castor Avenue
• 3300 Grant Avenue

Checks can be mailed and made payable to:

The Robert Wilson III Family Memorial Trust Fund
Police and Fire Federal Credit Union
901 Arch Street
Philadelphia PA, 19107

MT: @dan_aykroyd & @crystal_head making a donation to @PhillyPolice Ofc. Wilson's Family! pic.twitter.com/fSsu67OjPs” — via @PhilaFlowerShow

— Mike Cermignano (@PPDMikeCerm) March 6, 2015

A "thin" pit bull who went missing during an ongoing animal cruelty investigation in Riverside County has been found, according to the Riverside County Department of Animal Services.

The dog was taken to a veterinary hospital and examined, a statement from the agency said.

It was found in the San Bernardino County’s Morongo Valley area, spokesman John Welsh said. He said the person who had the dog is not believed to be the person who stole the dog.

The dog is in good health and she has gained about 10 pounds since she was found, Welsh said.

Animal services believes the dog had been neglected and investigators will continue the animal cruelty probe into its original owner, Welsh said. The dog will remain in the custody of the department.

The investigation began after the owner’s neighbor posted photos of the dog on Facebook saying the dog looked underweight.

Animal service gave the owner 48 hours to take the dog to get a vet examination. However, when they returned after the 48 hours, the owner said the dog had been stolen.

They've been in communication with the owner of the dog, Welsh said.

A Bronx High School of Science teacher who has earned national acclaim for his work with the school's debate team has been arrested by the FBI on child porn charges, accused of using apps like KIK and Instagram to solicit nude selfies of boys in exchange for money.

Jon Cruz appeared in federal court Friday on charges of producing, distributing and receiving child pornography. According to his bio on the Bronx High School of Science's website, Cruz teaches an advanced placement government and politics class with economics at the school.

Federal prosecutors allege Cruz used the chat app KIK to contact boys both in New York and out of state beginning last July, asking them at first to send him photos of their face and feet, as well as a "thumbs-up selfies," in exchange for hundreds of dollars in gift cards.

Cruz allegedly posed as a 15-year-old or 16-year-old boy who made money building robotics, and he told one of the victims he was a nerd "who had a thing for jocks."

Eventually, Cruz was able to convince one victim in New Mexico to send nude photographs of himself for a $500 gift card. That boy's parents found the gift receipts on their home computer when the boy accidentally left his email open, and they confronted him, prosecutors said.

The boy said he'd gotten $1,600 in gift cards from Cruz, and his parents contacted police.

Cruz initiated contact with another boy in New Mexico after finding him on Instagram, according to the criminal complaint. 

In a KIK conversation with another victim from upstate New York, Cruz allegedly wrote: "Can I keep asking things and asking for specific pix requests? I just want to make sure, the pics are between us, right?"

The 14-year-old boy sent a photo in response and wrote, "Sure but I still know why u need all these pics?"

Cruz said, "Can I be honest. That shirt sums up why you get to take my money. You know?"

The boy replied, "O yah lol"

Cruz wrote: "Pictures just have a huge impact on me. Seeing your feet and face and muscles and room and awards and stuff reinforce what a big deal you are." 

Cruz allegedly told that boy he went to the Dalton School in Manhattan and that he would be moving to the boy's town because his parents "do venture capital and want to invest in upstate New York." 

In another conversation, according to the criminal complaint, Cruz persuaded the boy to send a photo in exchange for $400 to $500, saying, "Redo the point pic please and let me see your bed more close as stuff in your room that shows you're a preppy, popular jock." 

Prosecutors said Cruz used three different IP addresses to access his two KIK accounts. One of the IP addresses was associated with the New York City school system, and used 154 times to access one of the KIK aaccounts. 

Cruz also allegedly used a photo of a former student who graduated in the spring of 2014 in his KIK profile and even set up a fake Facebook profile using the student's photos. That student was a member of the debate team under Cruz, and the two were friends on Facebook, according to the criminal complaint. 

The FBI executed a warrant at Cruz's home Friday morning and found a computer containing photographs of boys posing nude and two cellphones of boys giving "thumbs-up selfies." 

The FBI has identified four victims: two in New Mexico, one of whom sent nude photos; another in upstate New York; and a fourth victim, about 12 or 13 years old, who sent nude photos. 

Cruz has directed the Bronx Science Speech & Debate Team for 10 years, according to the school's website. He has been named the National Speech & Debate Association Coach of the Year, and was awarded the association's Distinguished Service Award four times.

Cruz was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the National Speech & Debate Association and is serving his second term as the president of the New York State Debate Coaches Association.

Cruz is also the faculty adviser to the Bronx Science Gay-Straight Alliance, the school's site says.

Cruz is being held on $1 million bail and has been suspended pending the outcome of the federal investigation.

Cruz's attorney had no comment Friday night. The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

Two men wearing ski masks and gloves robbed a Pasadena bank Friday, according to authorities.

"This is almost an archaic crime here in Pasadena. We haven't had one in a long time," said Pasadena Police Lt. John Mercado.

The men robbed a OneUnited Bank on North Lake Avenue, police said. One of them was armed with a  gun.

A couple of customers were in the bank during the robbery but no one was hurt, police said.

An unknown amount of money was stolen, police said. The men got into a vehicle driven by a third person.

Federal investigators have downloaded the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the plane that skidded off the runway in a snowstorm at LaGuardia Airport.

The recorders from Delta Air Lines flight 1086 were brought to the National Transportation Safety Board's lab in Washington, D.C. after Thursday's accident.

The accident caused only minor injuries to six passengers, but the plane came perilously close to landing in Flushing Bay.

The NTSB says it plans to begin interviewing the flight's crew Saturday. 

Meanwhile, both runways have reopened at the airport after the passenger jet skidded off a runway and hit a berm, forcing evacuations, injuring people and grinding traffic at one of the nation's busiest airports to a halt for hours. 

The second runway at LaGuardia reopened shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, hours after crews used cranes to remove the plane from its final resting place, wedged on an embankment a few feet from the icy waters of Flushing Bay. Crews had to make repairs to the runway and other parts of the airport that had been damaged during the landing before the strip could reopen. 

The plane was removed to a hangar. Photos obtained exclusively by NBC 4 New York show heavy damage to one of the plane's wings, and the front of the fuselage appears to be crumpled from the impact.

The plane, Delta flight 1086, was inbound from Atlanta when it slid off the runway at about 11 a.m. Thursday and careened into the fence during a blinding wintry mix. The crash sparked a minor fuel leak in one of the vessel's wings, and 127 passengers -- including Giants tight end Larry Donnell and star of the Bravo reality show "Jersey Belle" Jaime Primak Sullivan -- were pulled off the plane. Five crew members were also on the plane. 

About six reported minor injuries, officials say, and three were taken to the hospital. All are expected to survive.

Delta said all the passengers have gotten full refunds and that crews worked through the night to begin returning belongings to passengers. 

Passengers described feeling turbulence as they landed, like a rocking motion. One said the jet hit the runway and didn't slow down until it smashed into the fence, inches from the water.

After the skid, photos on social media showed the tail of the plane dipping into the snow; the nose was pointed slightly upward and appeared to be damaged. Other photos showed the front of the plane smashed through the fence as passengers climbed out onto a wing and trudged through snow to safety. 

LaGuardia's two runways were shut down for hours after the skid. One later reopened, but nearly 900 flights out of the airport were canceled.

The NTSB and FAA's investigation comes as some raise questions about when airports should close runways due to wintry weather. 

About 3 inches of snow had fallen in New York at the time of the accident, but wind, sleet and snowflakes combined to hamper visibility and make paved surfaces slippery. NBC 4 New York meteorologists say freezing fog was observed near LaGuardia around 11 a.m., which likely coated the already snow-topped runways with an icy glaze and may have contributed to the accident.

There's no rule about how much snow or ice leads to a runway closing. Instead, the Federal Aviation Administration requires airports to measure runways during winter storms to assure planes can safely brake: A specially equipped vehicle races down the runway with a computer checking braking action, and if the runway fails the test it must be closed.

The runway had been plowed minutes before, and two other pilots had reported good braking conditions, said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport. It appeared the pilot did everything he could to slow the aircraft, he said

In October, a Delta MD-88 flight from Atlanta with about 63 people on board struck the concrete pier supporting the same runway involved in Thursday's accident, and had its landing gear ripped off. The 75-ton plane skidded, 2,700 feet on its nose wheel and belly; the fuselage cleared the pier by only 16 inches, according to NTSB data. Three minor injuries were reported. 

Turn off, tune out and drop in to life Friday for the National Day of Unplugging, the sixth annual effort to encourage people to take the power out of technology.

For many people, it's almost inconceivable to go for a full 24 hours without using a smartphone, computer or tablet, but that's exactly what organizing nonprofit Reboot is going for on March 6-7, from sundown to sundown.

“I think it’s really important that people take control of their technology so that it doesn't control them,” Reboot's communications director Tanya Schevitz previously told NBC Bay Area. “This is an age of wonder and amazement with technology. But many people have lost the balance in their use of technology — so they no longer are able to sit alone and be comfortable with their thoughts."

More than 2,000 people signed up for the digital detox in San Francisco last year of an estimated 13,000 people nationwide who officially pledged online to unplug.

Former Facebook exec Randi Zuckerberg joined forces with Reboot at South by Southwest in 2014, handing out "cell phone sleeping bags," a cute message to tell people to put their phones to sleep.

There will be events around the Bay Area to mark the occasion, including all activities held in that time frame by San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. An Unplug SF party at Broadway Studios in San Francisco on March 6 features two stages of live music, arts and crafts, typewriters, board games and more analog activities. Admission is $30.

Three men who held 14 Nordstrom Rack employees hostage during a brutal and terrifying standoff that captivated Southern California were found guilty Friday on 14 counts of second degree robbery with a handgun.

Two of the men were found guilty on separate additional charges which included two counts of sexual assault and one count of assault with a deadly weapon.

The incident occurred in January 2013. Raymond Sherman Jr., Troy Marsay Hammock and Everett Oneal Allen were charged in connection with the violent robbery in Westchester.

Sherman, who was found not guilty of one count of rape, but guilty of another rape count and one count of forcible oral copulation, sexually assaulted a female employee while the other men held the 14 people hostage for several hours in the store at the Promenade in the Howard Hughes Center, prosecutors said.

"It's surprising to me they split on the two rape charges, one was guilty, one was not guilty," Sherman's attorney Arthur Lindars said. "It seemed to me it would be a package deal."

A female employee who hid in a locker and called her husband, who then called police, was stabbed in the neck by one of the men.

Allen was convicted in her attack.

During opening statements of the trial, Lindars said the robbery was part of a plan that was hatched with the help of a victim Sherman is accused of raping.

"They planned to do the robbery at Nordstrom, and there would be a sexual assault claim during the robbery," he said. The victim "would file a lawsuit against Nordstrom and the mall for millions of dollars and then split the proceeds with Sherman," he added.

Prosecutors kept the focus on surveillance video that showed the hours of terror hostages endured to make their claim against the trio.

"What makes this case so terrifying is the manner in which they carried out the crime," prosecutor Cynthia Barnes told jurors Feb. 20.

A security camera, used as evidence in the case, showed three men storming into an employee exit as workers tried to leave for the night.

"They yelled at them, they pointed a gun at them, terrified them, threw them to the ground," she said. "But they weren't done yet. They made each victim strip down to their underwear, and bras if they were women."

The 14 hostages were forced into the employee bathroom during the four-hour ordeal where they were told to face the wall and if they turned around to look at their attackers they would die, Barnes said.

"I'm very grateful for the justice system," Carla Zuniga said, a Los Angeles Police Department detective who was in charge of the case. "I'm elated with the verdicts."

Before leaving the courtroom the judge thanked the jurors for their service.

"You have the hardest job in democracy, but are the backbone of our freedom,"Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen said.

Their sentencing is scheduled for April 8. Sherman, whose lawyer said plans to appeal the verdict, faces a maximum sentence of more than 120 years to life in state prison. Hammock and Allen face up to 45 years and 39 years in prison.

Kelly Goff contributed to this report.