Gwen Ifill, the trailblazing former moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour, has died after a cancer battle NBC News has confirmed. Ifill was 61.

In October 1999, Ifill became the moderator of the PBS program "Washington Week in Review." She was also senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. Ifill has appeared on various news shows, including "Meet the Press." 

A former newspaper reporter, Ifill switched to television and worked for NBC News and PBS. She moderated two vice presidential debates.

She took a leave from her nightly show for health reasons earlier this year, never making public her illness. A week ago, she went out on leave again, taking her away from election night coverage. 

President Obama remarked on Ifill's passing at a press conference Monday. "Gwen was a friend of ours and extraordinary journalist. She always asked tough questions, holding people in power accountable. I always appreciated her reporting, even when I was on the receiving end of one of her tough interviews," he said.

"She not only informed today’s citizens, but she also inspired today’s journalists Gwen did her country a great service and Michelle and I join her family and everyone who loved her in remembering her fondly today," he continued.

Sara Just, PBS "NewsHour" executive producer, called Ifill "a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change."

Ifill moderated the 2004 vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards and the 2008 vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

Ifill was in hospice care in Washington at the time of her death on Monday. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Weight Watchers has issued a recall for one of its frozen food products over concerns of a possible listeria contamination.

The company that supplies cookie dough for the brand's Smart Ones Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Sundae tested positive for listeria, according to the company's recall notice.

There haven't been any reports of illness, but about 100,000 cases could be contaminated.

Click here for a list of affected products and infomation on obtaining a refund.  

Former President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush have a new addition to the family after a recent trip to a Dallas animal shelter.

Freddy Bush, as they named him, is a rescue dog from the SPCA facility in West Dallas.

Mrs. Bush told NBC 5's Meredith Land that she and her husband fell in love with the puppy as soon as they saw him.

"Election Day, George and I went to our SPCA in town, and the little puppy called our name. So we have a new little puppy at our house," she said. "Of course, Barney and Beasley and Spot got old and went on to doggy heaven, so we have a new little puppy named Freddy."

In a statement released Monday, the former president said:

"Laura and I are thrilled to introduce the newest member of our family, Freddy Bush. We visited the SPCA of Texas' Jan Rees-Jones Animal Care Center last Tuesday to thank them for their great work – and came home with a puppy. We already love him, and even our cats Bob and Bernadette are finding Freddy's charm futile to resist. If you could use a little extra joy in your life, consider adopting a pet from an animal shelter or rescue group."

The Department of Justice's pilot program to collect data on how many people are shot or killed by police officers each year relies on voluntary participation by state and law enforcement departments, NBC News reported.

Historically, states have typically been reluctant on sharing such information, according to criminal justice experts. And without that data, federal officials don't know how many officers cause injuries through excessive "use-of-force."

Americans "actually have no idea if the number of black people or brown people or white people being shot by police is up, down or sideways over the last three years, five years, 10 years," FBI Director James Comey said recently.

Until recently, it wasn't required that this information be reported to the federal government, and there was no legislation requiring the 18,000 police departments across the nation to keep those statistics. Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act two years ago, but the law still isn't in full effect.

A Manhattan woman is suing Spanish fashion retailer Zara after she says she found a rat sewn into a dress she bought at one of their stores.

In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week, 24-year-old Cailey Fiesel says that she not only suffered emotional distress but was diagnosed with a rodent-born disease after wearing the dress.

Court documents say that Fiesel bought two dresses “off-the-rack” at Zara’s Greenwich, Connecticut, store back in July and hung them in her closet. In mid-August, she wore the black dress in question for the first time.

While at work, Fiesel says she started to notice a “disturbingly pungent odor” but couldn’t figure out where the offending smell was coming from. “She was unable to escape this odor,” according to court papers.

Throughout the day, Fiesel says she noticed something that felt like a loose string from her dress rubbing against her leg. She didn’t give much thought to it and reached down to try to find the string. That’s when she says she made the grisly discovery.

“To her utter shock and disbelief, as she ran her hand over the hem of the dress she felt an unusual bulge and suddenly realized that it was not a string that was rubbing against her leg but was instead a leg rubbing against her leg. The leg of a dead rodent that is,” court documents say.

“Paralyzed with fear,” Fiesel jumped out of her chair as coworkers gathered around her desk. Court documents claim that when she took off the dress she found a dead rodent sewn into its hem, the bulge of its body hidden beneath the fabric.

Photos of the dress included with the court papers “conspicuously [depict] the dead rodent with at least one of its appendages protruding.”

The lawsuit claims that Fiesel “has sustained significant personal injuries and emotional distress” and “a large rash that was diagnosed as a rodent born disease” as a result of Zara’s negligence.

It was Zara’s duty “to prevent its products from being manufactured and sold with disease causing rodents sewn into them,” the suit says.

Fiesel is seeking unspecified damages.

A spokesperson for Zara USA told NBC 4 New York the company is aware of the allegation and is investigating the matter.

"The brand has stringent quality controls and health and safety standards worldwide that are followed and met in manufacturing, including stitching and pressing," the spokesperson said. "We are committed to ensuring that all of our products meet these rigorous requirements."

One of the two bald eagles rescued from a storm drain in central Florida last week has died.

The injured eagle, which was receiving treatment at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, died Monday night, the center said in a statement.

The eagles became trapped in a drain in Orange County near Orlando Thursday. One was able to fly away but the other was taken to the Audubon Center and later placed in intensive care.

"Our team, along with Dr. Robert Hess and the staff at the Winter Park Veterinary Hospital made every attempt to save this beautiful bird," Katie Warner, Director of the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, said in the statement. "We’re going to continue educating the community on why we must conserve Florida’s environment to help prevent the loss of our nation’s symbol of freedom. We’d like to thank the community for the outpouring of support."

The bird was one of 65 injured or sickly bald eagles to be treated at the center in Maitland this year.

An air horn that sounds like a train has been terrorizing the residents of El Segundo for weeks, but police in the Southern California city have just arrested a man in connection with the noise — with air horn equipment inside his car, they say.

The bust came early Sunday at 4 a.m. — around the time many of the alarmingly loud incidents would occur.

"The sound is like a train coming through the neighborhood," said El Segundo Police Lt. Ray Garcia.

The noise has been plaguing residents on the west side of the city for weeks. Police have received numerous reports of an extremely loud air horn going off before residents spot a getaway car, a blue four-door sedan driven by a man.

Oftentimes, officers couldn't catch the air horn blower because the person would blare the horn and then "beat feet," police said. At times, officers on the east side of town could hear the noise and would hurry over, only to find that the perpetrator had taken off.

Sunday morning, officers once again heard the noise, then made a traffic stop at Grand Avenue and Main Street directly after. In a blue 2006 Chevrolet Aveo, they spotted air horn equipment inside the car, police said.

The commotion drew several residents from their homes, claiming they were victims of the air horn aggravator. They initiated a citizen's arrest, according to El Segundo police.

John W. Nuggent was then taken into custody by police, police said. He was booked at El Segundo jail on a misdemeanor charge of suspicion of disturbing the peace and his car, with horn inside, was impounded. 

Garcia said the air horn aggravator has been sounding his horn almost every single night.

"He's been doing this for weeks, and we've been chasing him for weeks — but we got him," Garcia said.

Garcia said they aren't exactly sure why the man allegedly has an "ax to grind," but believe that he thinks someone in the area has wronged him in some way, and this is his way of getting back at them.

Twitter says it's giving users more tools to combat abuse that's becoming more common on the social media platform.

Users are getting more options for muting tweets they don't want to see, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. Reporting hateful conduct is becoming direct as well, and Twitter's support teams have been retrained on contextualizing hateful conduct so the company can take action faster and more transparently.

"We don't expect these announcements to suddenly remove abusive conduct from Twitter. No single action by us would do that. Instead we commit to rapidly improving Twitter based on everything we observe and learn," the blog post said.

The expanded muting function being rolled out in the coming days allows users to mute phrases, keywords and conversations. Twitter said in the blog post that it's been a commonly requested feature.

Cyberbullying, harassment and abuse are on the rise on Twitter, the company said, and many on the platform have sought more action from Twitter to put an end to it.

Among the many people who have decried cyberbullying is Melania Trump, wife of President-elect Donald Trump. She's said she will make reigning in cyberbullying her priority as first lady.

As the Trump family transitions to its new role as the U.S.’s first family, potential conflicts of interest relating to the family's myriad businesses have started to come into focus.

As NBC News reports, President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka has her own fashion and jewelry lines, and in a “60 Minutes” interview about the presidency on Sunday, Ivanka Trump wore a $10,000 bracelet from her company’s collection. Wearing the bracelet is not the issue, but the “fashion alert” distributed by the company afterward promoting the bracelet as seen on the news program did call into question whether the Trumps would commit to avoid using their new positions of power to promote their various business interests. 

The company has responded, saying that the sender of the alert was following usual pre-election protocol and that they are still making company-wide adjustments to their business practices. But in a family with so many business interests, there is the potential for more conflicts to come.

About 70,000 roughly decade-old Mazdas are being recalled due to issues with their fuel pump sealing rings that pose a fire risk, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The affected RX-8 models are from 2004-2008, and heat exposure from the engine or exhaust pipe can cause the sealing rings to deteriorate, which raises the risk of a fire being ignite from leaking fuel.

Mazda is remedying the situation by contacting owners of affected vehicles so the sealing ring set can be replaced fo free, and an insulation pad adding to the fuel tank.

Anyone with questions can contact Mazda at 800-222-5500; the recall number is 0516J.

Russia has always placed a top priority on gathering as much intelligence as it can about American government officials, and the team now gathering around the new president-elect is no exception. In the overnight hours after Tuesday’s election, hackers linked to Russian intelligence launched a sweeping cyber-espionage campaign to find out what a Donald Trump victory could mean for Vladimir Putin’s government.

Sean Kanuck, the U.S. National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues from 2011 to 2016, told NBC News that Russia would likely be after any information on Trump and his advisors that would help Russia gain strategic advantage over the U.S. 

The Nov. 9 attack targeted “people who are or will be associated with the incoming administration,” said Steven Adair of the cyber security firm Volexity.

The attack came from the hacking crew known as Cozy Bear, which is linked to previous attacks on the Democratic National Committee, the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Three suspected gang members were charged Tuesday in the shooting death of a 19-year-old Marine who was found dead in his car while on leave.

Lance Cpl. Carlos Segovia, remembered by his colleagues as an unselfish "true warrior," was shot Sept. 16 in Los Angeles' Jefferson Park area while on leave from Camp Pendleton. He died three days later at a hospital.

Oscar Aguilar, 26, and Esau Rios, 28, were both charged with one count of murder. Aguilar also faces one count each of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and dissuading a witness by force or threat.

He used the firearm in the slaying, according to prosecutors.

Ricky Valente, 18, was charged with a count of accessory after the fact, having knowledge of the murder, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. 

The suspects are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon.

Investigators had little to go on in the days after the shooting, except for a cellphone call that provided a look into Segovia's final moments. He had just left the home of his girlfriend's family and was having a cellphone conversation when it appeared he became aware of something suspicious, investigators said. The line then went silent, according to Capt. Peter Whittingham, commander of the LAPD Criminal Gang Homicide section.

A vehicle pulled up beside the Marine's car, and at least one person opened fire, striking him once in the head, police said. He was found slumped over the car's steering wheel.

A $50,000 reward was announced for information in the case and Segovia's mother issued heart-wrenching pleas for help. Details about what led to the arrests were not immediately available. 

The young Marine was honored during a funeral mass at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles, where rows of uniformed service members filled rows to hear about their colleague's legacy of helping others. The service included eulogies by Lopez's mother, friends, relatives and Lt. Col. Cory Quinn.

"To join the Marines at a time of war, to join as an infantryman, is an extraordinary emotional and intellectual decision," said Lt. Colonel Quinn. "You can see how important it was to him. You learn what it is to defend, what it is to stick up for others. And, that's why he joined."

Segovia worked with the homeless through the LA on Cloud 9 organization. After graduating from Foshay Learning Center last year, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, but during leave time continued to volunteer.

He was born in El Salvador and came to the U.S. with his mother.

Trump Place, a high-rise condominium complex near Lincoln Square in Manhattan, is about to get a name change.

The three buildings will drop the name of the president-elect in favor of their street addresses, 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard, according to a spokesman for complex manager and owner Equity Residential.

"We are assuming a more neutral building identity that will appeal to all current and future residents," said company spokesman Marty McKenna.

A spokeswoman for The Trump Organization, the company that manages President-elect Donald Trump's business interests, said in a statement that the change is "simply the enforcement of a pre-existing agreement which has been in place for years."

"It was mutually agreed upon," the spokeswoman said. 

The name change comes after nearly 600 people signed a Change.org petition created by three residents to have the building drop the moniker and get rid of the gold-emblazoned name on the structure's facade. 

"Our home is our most personal private space, a building we should feel proud of and happy to walk into every day... so... THE TIME HAS COME TO DUMP TRUMP," said Linda Gottlieb, Robert Tessler and Brian Dumont. 

The petition cites President-elect Donald Trump's "appalling treatment of women, his history of racism, his attacks on immigrants, his mockery of the disabled, his tax avoidance (and) his outright lies" in calling for the change.

The petition also noted that while Trump's name is on the building, he doesn't actually own the property.

Trump Place is one of several buildings that bear the president-elect's name in Manhattan. Despite the exposure, Trump only garnered 10 percent of the popular vote in the borough. 

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is slated to introduce legislation Tuesday that would eliminate the Electoral College, so that presidential elections would be decided by the popular vote.

Boxer is expected to introduce the bill when the Senate comes into session Tuesday.

The move is in response to Donald Trump's presidential victory last week. The president-elect won through the Electoral College, although Hillary Clinton is leading the popular vote by nearly a million votes, a statement from Boxer's office read.

Trump won the presidency by securing at least 290 electoral votes while Hillary Clinton recieved 228, with two states still left to call, according to NBC News. Boxer was a Clinton supporter.

"When all the ballots are counted, Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by a margin that could exceed two million votes, and she is on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama," Boxer said.

Trump will be the fifth president in U.S. history to win the election despite losing the popular vote. George W. Bush won the most recent such election, in 2000.

"This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency," Boxer said in a statement. "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts."

Four years ago, Trump called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy," in a tweet sent on Nov. 6, 2012.

But Tuesday morning, a week after the election, the president-elect sent two tweets conveying his support for the Electoral College, which he now calls "genius."

"If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily," he said.

In a follow-up tweet he said: "The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!"

If Boxer's amendment were to pass, it would amend the U.S. Constitution, and "would take effect when ratified by three-fourths of states within seven years after its passage in the U.S. Congress," the statement from Boxer's office read.

The LA Times reports that Boxer has previously sponsored legislation to repeal the Electoral College, but that those bills weren't considered.

A family in Michigan awoke Saturday to find a wall of boxes scrawled with "Trump," "Take Back America" and "Mexicans suck" blocking their driveway. A doll made of balloons was also found hanging nearby and a vulgar message was spray-painted on the driveway, police said. 

In Maryland, parishioners arriving for Sunday services discovered the words "Trump Nation, Whites Only" scrawled on the walls of the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour in Silver Spring. The church offers weekly Spanish-language services.

In Brooklyn, a suspect spray-painted a swastika in front of a 78-year-old man's home. And three students were disciplined after a Confederate flag was brought to Coral Reef Senior High School in South Florida on Monday, officials said. 

Nearly a week after the election of Donald Trump, reports of hateful intimidation or harassment continue. The Southern Poverty Law Center said it had received 437 reports of such incidents between Wednesday, Nov. 9 and Monday, Nov. 14.

Most of the cases appear to involve graffiti or intimidation directed at racial or ethnic minorities and in some reports the perpetrators indicated support for Trump. 

Ryan Lenz, a spokesman for the anti-intolerance watchdog said acts of hate and intimidation occurred in the U.S. during the campaign season with SPLC tracking the high-profile cases. But those incidents have increased sharply since Election Day on Nov. 8. 

"After the election these reports have become ever present, coming at us and everyone else at a level that was demanding our attention. And so what we did — we started to tally them," Lenz said. He added that the reports "are not completely confirmed."

The apparent uptick in reports of bias crimes and discrimination in the Empire State prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to launch a hotline Tuesday.

"We will continue to work with our local partners to investigate all incidents of reported bias, and ensure that New Yorkers feel safe and protected," Cuomo said. "Any acts of discrimination or intimidation will be met with the full force of the law." 

After calls for Trump to address the hateful incidents, the president-elect said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," that he did not hear about the violence and harassment in his name or in some cases directed at his supporters, other than "one or two instances."

"I would say don’t do it, that’s terrible, ‘cause I’m gonna bring this country together," Trump said in addressing his supporters.

He added: "I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, “Stop it.” If it-- if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it."

During the campaign for president, Trump was criticized for being slow to condemn former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke after he gave the candidate his backing. The Republican has also repeatedly retweeted messages from white supremacist sympathizers. 

Lenz said the SPLC commends Trump for addressing his supporters in the Sunday interview. But he said that Trump's actions contradict his words. 

"This is an energized and angry movement that has been given legitimacy because of the election and suddenly to switch gears on them and tell them the hate we’ve been jamming down your throat and legitimizing and targeting Muslims and immigrants, 'oh by the way slow down on that,' I mean it doesn't seem to be an appropriate effort at this hour," Lenz said. 

Trump's directive to his supporters came on the same day he named Steven Bannon his White House chief strategist and senior counselor. Bannon, the Trump campaign CEO, came from Breitbart News, the site that under his leadership has pushed a nationalist, anti-establishment agenda and become one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right — a movement often associated with far-right efforts to preserve "white identity," oppose multiculturalism and defend "Western values."

Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called on Trump Tuesday afternoon to rescind his appointment of Bannon. Reid cited quotes from the appointee, recorded in legal documents, in which Bannon had bluntly declared that he "doesn't like Jews," among other anti-Semitic comments.

"I say, 'Take responsibility,'" Reid said, addressing the president-elect. "Rise to the dignity of the office, instead of hiding behind your Twitter account." The senator also discouraged Americans from normalizing the racism and misogyny espoused by newly appointed and elected leaders.

Reid read a letter, addressed to Trump, written by a 7th grade female student who said she's "extremely scared."

"What message does Trump send to the young girl who woke up Wednesday in Rhode Island afraid to be a woman of color in America?" Reid asked.

On Monday, Breitbart.com published a story by a senior editor that cited a few cases of the reported hate crimes that turned out to be untrue or unverified, using the headline "Wave of Fake 'Hate Crimes' Sweeps Anti-Trump Social Media."

The story dismissed cases of intimidating behavior by students as "boorish" and argued "real crimes" are being committed by protesters at some anti-Trump protests. The media "narrative" of a wave of hate crimes is meant to tarnish the president-elect, the story argued. 

Lenz said Trump's appointment of Bannon, "someone whose website has trafficked in anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic memes for the better part of 18 months, seems to put a big red stamp of illegitimacy" on anything the president-elect says. 

Trump's transition team has not responded to NBC's request for comment on the new reports of hateful incidents and on Reid's and Lenz's comments about Bannon. 

Bannon's pick was met with backlash from, in some cases, both sides of the political aisle.

John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America."

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that including Bannon in the new administration "is an alarming signal that President-elect Trump remains committed to the hateful and divisive vision that defined his campaign. There must be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist for the Trump Administration."

The day after Bannon's appointment, The American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, two of the nation’s largest Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups, announced they've joined forces to fight bigotry.

“We have to show the administration that as American Muslims and Jews — people of the faiths of Abraham — we are uniting to help the administration navigate in the proper constitutional manner, to uphold freedom of religion and constitutional rights for all American citizens," said Eftakhar Alam, senior coordinator at ISNA’s Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances.

The concept to form the council originated months before the election, Alam said, and would've been implemented even if Democrat Hillary Clinton won.

Meanwhile on Monday, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting division released its annual "Hate Crimes Statistics" report, on the number of bias-motivated incidents in 2015.

More than 5,800 incidents of hate crimes were reported to authorities, involving 7,121 victims, the report said.

The number of hate crimes rose 6 percent in 2015. The number of reported anti-Muslim hate crimes jumped 66 percent that year, according to the report.

Lenz said the FBI's report is not surprising. 

"The year in question saw extreme growth in Anti-Muslim movement as a result of terror attacks in the U.S. and Europe," Lenz said. "It came at a time when there was tremendous fear of refugees coming from Syria as a result of conflict there and also came at a time when President-elect Donald Trump was traveling the country making promises about putting a complete ban on the immigration of Muslims to the United States a ban that’s arguably completely unconstitutional of the ground of prohibiting someone based on their race or religion."

Donald Trump has taken the unprecedented step of requesting that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, receive top-secret clearance to join him for his Presidential Daily Briefings, which began Tuesday.

Multiple sources tell NBC News Trump received his first briefing on Tuesday and designated both Kushner and Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn as his staff-level companions for the briefings going forward.

Flynn has the necessary security clearance, Kushner does not, and it could take weeks — or even longer — for him to receive it. The legality of such a move is murky as well, as it raises questions about whether Trump is contravening the anti-nepotism law that bars presidents from appointing family members to cabinet positions or formal government jobs.

Patrons at the Guggenheim are standing in line for up to two hours to use the bathroom at the Fifth Avenue museum, but they don't seem to mind the wait. 

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan replaced the toilet in the museum's fourth-floor restroom with a fully functional replica cast in 18-karat gold as part of his "America" exhibit, which opened in September. 

According to Vulture, which first reported the long wait, the golden throne has become quiet the attraction. 

The exhibit is currently on open-ended display. The toilet is the first piece Cattelan has exhibited since his 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim. 

The museum says on its website that the exhibit "offers a wink to the excesses of the art market but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all."

Police continued to collect evidence from a luxury apartment building in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, three days after a 26-year-old Stamford, Connecticut, man went missing while visiting the location. 

Police say there are signs of foul play in the disappearance of Joey Comunale, who was last seen on surveillance video entering the Grand Sutton building near the corner of East 59th Street and First Avenue on Sunday morning, police said. He has not been seen since.

Search dogs were brought in to try and locate the missing man Tuesday evening. Crime scene investigators were seen carrying out bags of evidence from the apartment, and law enforcement sources said they found bloody clothing and bloody sheets, along with a luggage cart that had evidence of blood on it, too.

Video captured exclusively by NBC 4 New York shows a man being arrested at the scene and placed into the back of a police vehicle. It's believed to be connected to Comunale's disappearance. 

Comunale's family declined to comment, but friends told NBC 4 he graduated from Hofstra University, was an athlete and wasn't the type to get into trouble. 

One friend said, "Joey is an amazing hockey player and teammate from an incredibly close and loving family. We are hopeful that he will be returned home to those that love him the most." 

Public Justice, an advocacy group that battles secrecy in the courts, just assembled a searchable online database with more than 13,000 files on internal company documents that have led critics to conclude Remington's Model 700 rife is unsafe, CNBC reported.

The group won the rights to make the documents public domain last year. Gun owners can now see the millions of pages of court documents. 

Lawsuits alleged that Remington knowingly covered up a design flaw that allowed the guns to fire without the trigger being pulled. The company has denied this allegation.

The design first went on the market in the 1940s. The documents show that as early as 1947, before the Model 700 even went on sale, the company’s engineers found themselves in a “very dangerous” situation when the company decided altering the design was not worth the added cost.

Remington attorneys did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment about the new database.