2016 Year in Review: July through September

Summer storms, the Tall Ships festival, and Jacob Wetterling's remains being found were some of the top headlines of July through September 2016.

FOX 21 is taking a look at some of the top headlines of 2016 from July through September:

The $30 million Pier B Resort opened in the Duluth harbor with the Silos restaurant. However, it wasn’t all summer fun as the region saw storm damage all over the Northland from flooding and washed out roads near Ashland to high winds that knocked over trees and took out power for thousands in Duluth and beyond.

In August, hundreds of thousands of visitors sailed the high seas as the Tall Ships festival returned to the Duluth harbor. The event brought long lines for attendees and millions of dollars into the local economy.

In a story felt all around the state, the remains of eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling were found nearly 27 years after his abduction. Daniel Heinrich, the person of interest in Jacob’s disappearance, told police where to find the preteen’s body. Jacob was reportedly abducted at gunpoint by a masked man near his home in St. Joseph, MN in 1989. Heinrich became a person of interest in the case after his arrest in 2015 ib federal child pornography charges. Authorities named his a suspect after his DNA matched those found on a boy sexually assaulted in Cold Springs around the same time as Wetterling’s abduction.Heinrich was sentenced for twenty years for Wetterling’s kidnapping as part of a plea deal. Heinrich was also sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release. Twenty years is the maximum sentence the plea deal allows. It does allow the state to seek Heinrich’s civil commitment as a sexual predator at the end of his term which would prevent him from ever being released.