Couple In 70s Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide: Patch PM

TEWKSBURY, MA — It's Friday, February 12. Here's what you should know this afternoon:

• Police and the Middlesex District Attorney's office are investigating what they are calling an "apparent murder-suicide" in Lowell.
• The parents of a disabled high school student sued the Dennis-Yarmouth Public School District after the girl’s 2018 sexual assault.
• The recognition of Christopher Columbus takes another hit as officials get ready to discuss a new name for a Medford school.

Scroll down for those and other stories Patch has been covering in Massachusetts today.

Monday’s Top Story

Police and the Middlesex District Attorney's office are investigating what they are calling an "apparent murder-suicide" in Lowell.

Someone called 911 around 5 p.m. Thursday to report a death at a home on Featherston Avenue. When police got there, they found a couple in their 70s dead together in their bedroom.

Police said it appeared a 79-year-old woman shot her 76-year-old husband dead and then turned the gun on herself.

Nearby News

• 'A Big Loss': Longtime Tewksbury Town Counsel Charles Zaroulis Remembered
• Mayor Galvin Names Replacements For Two Woburn Library Trustees
• Tewksbury: Still No Vaccines From The State

Today’s Other Top Stories In Massachusetts

Parents sue school after daughter’s sexual assault: The parents of a disabled high school student sued the Dennis-Yarmouth Public School District after their daughter was sexually assaulted in a high school bathroom by another student. According to the lawsuit, the sexual assault happened in February 2018 at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School. The girl was 16, but had the mental capacity of a 6-year-old child because she was born with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes significant cognitive impairments. As part of her learning plan, she required around-the-clock supervision while she was in school.

Andrea Bocelli Elementary?: Official talks over a new name for the Columbus Elementary School won't begin until next month, but the School Committee briefly touched on some ideas for the renaming process at its meeting Monday. Some members said the new name should reflect Medford's Italian-American population. "I would hope if the name is going to be changed, we would think about other Italian-Americans or Italians that we would be able to recognize and honor the culture," Superintendent Marice Edouard-Vincent said. An example: Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, whose music the superintendent said she "loves."

Central Mass. Cupid: When you buy a Valentine's Day card for your sweetheart this weekend, you can thank Worcester's Esther Howland for the Feb. 14 tradition. Or maybe you should credit Grafton's Jotham Taft. Although people around the world were exchanging valentines long before the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established, the commercialization of the holiday in the U.S. was born in the Worcester area. But there's a bit of a dispute over whether it was Howland or Taft who invented the mass-market Valentine's Day card.

‘We Did It!’: One of the first people to get the vaccine in Westford was Hartwig "Dr. Hart" Achenbach – at age 99 last month. Now, the facility where he's staying is hoping to help him celebrate his 100th birthday surrounded by the well wishes of the community.

By The Numbers

106: That’s how old S. Prestley Blake, the co-founder of Friendly’s, was when he died Thursday. The businessman and philanthropist, born in 1914, co-founded the ice cream shop in 1935.

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