“She’s amazing, that’s all I can say. She’s amazing,” Matt Hunsaker said. “Who she taught me to be was great.” He said he has a lot of memories of her and that she “fought a lot to support her family.”

Maurine Hunsaker was 26 years old and working at a Kearns gas station when Ralph Menzies kidnapped and murdered her. Menzies was sentenced to death in 1988 and has now exhausted all his appeals. The state is seeking a death warrant. The court has ordered a competency hearing before the execution is to proceed. His lawyers claim he has vascular dementia. 

Matt Hunsaker was 10 years old when his mother was brutally murdered in 1986. Those 10 years were “a short time to have memories with my mother,” he said, but he noted the family makes efforts to keep her legacy alive.

‘My personality changed,’ Utah teen says about social media usage in emotional bill hearings

Liddy Johnson, a high school sophomore, remembers getting her first cellphone and downloading social media. Her parents took precautions like setting limited screen time, but quickly, Johnson said, she found her way around those restrictions.

Gaining a following, Johnson posted videos and she said she started to crave validation from strangers as she continued to post.

“I thought that social media would make me happy, but it didn’t,” Johnson said in front of a Utah house committee on Wednesday. “The continuation of the use of social media eventually led to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. My personality changed.”

It was the start of an emotional hearing for Rep. Jordan Teuscher’s bill HB464, the Social Media Act Amendments. Just one floor above, a Utah senate committee discussed Sen. Mike McKell’s companion bill SB194. Together these bills are the amendments to Utah’s first of its kind social media law.

Read more about these social media bills.

More in Politics:

• Lawmakers tackle housing shortage via regulatory reform, not new funding (Deseret News)
• Will lawmakers come up with enough money to pay for Utah’s Super Tuesday presidential primary? (Deseret News)
• Utah’s congressional delegation voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. Here’s why (Deseret News)
• Holly Richardson: ‘Without this bill, I will die’ (Deseret News)

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Health

• Drug treatment shows promise for preventing rheumatoid arthritis (Deseret News)
• Why your dog’s poop could be spreading disease (Deseret News)

Faith

• Almost half of U.S. Jews have altered their habits to avoid antisemitism, survey says (Deseret News)
• Salt Lake Temple renovation reaches new heights as last of tower-spire structures is placed (Church News)

Family

• Love languages have been used by couples for years. But are they actually helpful? (Deseret News)
• Don’t believe Hulu. These are the really-real house lives of Latter-day Saint wives (Deseret News)

Education

• State school board urges member Natalie Cline to resign immediately, levels other sanctions (Deseret News)
• Deneece Huftalin: SLCC is unapologetically affordable, open-access and welcoming to all (Deseret News)

Environment

• Flurry of water bills advance at Utah Legislature (Deseret News)
• Deseret News Editorial Board: Don't allow a rock quarry up Parleys Canyon (Deseret News)

Utah

• Advisory issued as rain and snow return to Utah (KSL)
  
• 'Numerous and multiple violations' from Cache County election officials, report says (KSL)
  
• In Salt Lake City, more than 200 protest Israel's attack on small town of Rafah in Gaza (KSL)
• Southern Utah legislator sees sales tax as solution to fund increasing costs of emergency services (St. George News)

The West

• Rachel Dolezal fired from Tucson teaching job due to OnlyFans account (Arizona Republic)
• Colorado butterfly is “likely in danger of extinction” because of climate change, habitat loss, feds say (Denver Post)

The Nation

• Shooting at Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade leaves one dead, multiple people injured (Deseret News)
  
• Top Republican warns of 'serious' national security threat (BBC)

The World

• British archeologists found an intact bird egg from 1,700 years ago (Deseret News)
  
• Japan unexpectedly slips into recession, Germany now world's third-biggest economy (Reuters)

Sports

• Where’s the joy gone? With college football in disarray, coaches are heading for the exit (Deseret News)
• Kedon Slovis talks about his year at BYU — and his shot at fulfilling NFL dream (Deseret News)
• The Jazz played the Lakers Wednesday night: Inside the numbers (Deseret News)
• Where do BYU, Utah and Utah State land in bracketology projections midway through February? (Deseret News)

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