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(NEW YORK) — A transgender athlete’s spot on a girls’ high school volleyball team that resulted in Florida school employees being reassigned and led to student walkouts is now at the center of an investigation to determine whether the school violated a 2021 state law that governs sports and gender.

Jessica Norton, the mom of the transgender athlete and one of the employees at Monarch High School under investigation, is speaking out.

Norton and several other school employees, including the principal and assistant principal, have been reassigned to non-school sites pending the outcome of a district investigation into allegations of improper student participation in sports, Broward County officials told ABC News.

“We will continue to follow state law and will take appropriate action based on the outcome of the investigation,” the district said in a statement. “We are committed to providing all our students with a safe and inclusive learning environment.”

A 2021 law, the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, prohibits transgender girls from playing on girl’s sports teams.

Norton said she and her family have received an “outpouring of love and support” from the community following her reassignment.

“Watching our community’s resistance and display of love has been so joyous for our family — the light leading us through this darkness. I want everyone to know that we see you, and we are so grateful for you,” Norton said in a statement via her legal representatives at the Human Rights Campaign.

However, Norton said the controversy about her daughter’s participation has ripped away her family’s “privacy, sense of our privacy, sense of safety, and right to self-determination.”

“There is a long history in this country of outing people against their will — forced outing, particularly of a child, is a direct attempt to endanger the person being outed,” Norton said.

Norton and her family are behind a lawsuit filed against the 2021 transgender sports law. Norton and her husband only use their first names in the lawsuit, and their daughter was identified by her initials.

The law states that an athletic team or sport for women and girls at a public school or college may not be open to students who were assigned male as stated on their birth certificate.

Supporters of such restrictions on trans sports participation argue that biological differences between the sexes is necessary to maintain “fairness” in women’s athletic activities. At least 23 states have implemented restrictions on trans participation in sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

“As a father of two daughters, I want my girls, and every girl in Florida, to compete on an even playing field for the opportunities available to young women in sports,” said DeSantis at the signing of the bills.

Critics of trans sports restrictions say that these laws ostracize and discriminate against transgender people and that the biology of sports performance is complicated and not easily flattened by sex.

The governing bodies of several national and international sports leagues, including the International Olympic Committee, require transgender women meet certain hormone levels to play on sports teams with cisgender women.

Norton’s daughter was playing on the girl’s soccer team in middle school at the time of the lawsuit, according to the complaint, and playing in girl’s volleyball leagues as well.

“It is a source of pride for her, and is also the major source of her social and friendship network,” the complaint read, highlighting the positive impacts that sports can have on students’ lives.

At age 11, at the recommendation of her endocrinologist, the athlete began hormone blockers that would pause the developmental impacts of testosterone and prevent her from going through male puberty.

The student later began taking estrogen for feminizing hormone therapy “and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. This will allow her to live as the girl/woman that she is,” the complaint read.

There is no clear data on whether transgender women have an advantage physiologically.

One study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that trans women had a 9% faster mean run speed after a one-year period of testosterone suppression.

A different study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found that there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender women have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition.

Experts wrote in a recent JAMA Pediatrics editorial that preventing trans youth from participating in school sports could be bad for the mental and physical health of an already at-risk population because they lose out on the developmental benefits of sports participation.

U.S. District Judge Roy Altman rejected the legal challenge from the Nortons, citing physiological differences between sexes, but the plaintiffs have the ability to file an amended complaint by mid-January.

Students walked out of their classes on Nov. 28 in support of the athlete and school employees being investigated.

A student at Monarch, who is trans and asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, told ABC News that the laws restricting transgender students are “scary.”

She said it is “affecting how other people perceive us on a day-to-day basis.”

Another student at Monarch High, who asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, told ABC News that the situation is “heartbreaking.”

“It’s been something that has just been progressively getting more intense in the last few years,” the student said, referencing legislation that impacts the LGBTQ community in the state.

She continued, “The queer and trans community here, and our city, and our county is so, like, beautiful, and so large … This situation has rocked many students here, a lot harder than it might seem on the surface.”

District officials declined to comment further.

ABC News has reached out to the other school employees who have been reassigned.

 

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(NEW YORK) — An atmospheric river will continue to impact the West Coast over the next 24 hours.

A record amount of moisture is hitting the Pacific Northwest as the powerful system continues to bring heavy rainfall to the region.

Up to a half foot of rain has already fallen in parts of Washington, with several cities reporting daily record rainfall on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

Atmospheric rivers are essentially rivers in the sky that collect moisture from tropical areas and redistribute the water to other latitudes.

The weather phenomenon occurs frequently around the globe, but they cause 80% of flood damage at an average estimated cost of $1.1 billion annually on the West Coast of the United States, according to researchers at Phys.org.

The current plume of moisture in the Pacific Northwest will continue into Washington on Tuesday morning and then will move into Oregon in the afternoon and evening, bringing an additional 4 to 6 inches of rain, forecasts show.

The National Weather Service has issued flood alerts for Washington, Oregon, Northern California and Idaho for river and stream flooding.

By Wednesday morning and afternoon, some of the rain is expected to move into northern California and the San Francisco Bay area. Major flooding is not expected in California.

More storms are expected to hit the West Coast on Thursday and then again on Saturday, with more rain at the coast and lower elevations.

With the storms later in the week, the air mass will be colder, so the snow will fall in lower elevations, possibly covering I-90 and I-80 in snow, which could make commutes dangerous.

 

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(NEW YORK) — The number of nations where paraquat, an agricultural herbicide, is allowed to be used continues to dwindle, yet paraquat continues to receive stamps of approval from federal regulators in the United States.

“Contrary to these dozens of countries, which have looked at the exact same data and have found that paraquat is too dangerous [and] too toxic to continue using, the United States Environmental Protection Agency reached the exact opposite conclusion,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law firm.

Paraquat, which is often distributed under the name Gramoxone in the U.S. by Syngenta, is a restricted use herbicide known for its effectiveness in killing weeds.

Farmers across the country are only allowed to use paraquat if they have been trained and certified, and when applying it to farmland, they are told to wear protective gear and not ingest any amount of the herbicide due to its toxicity.

Frank Garcia didn’t think twice about using paraquat on his Arizona farm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He says that he got the necessary certification to use paraquat, but does not remember whether he or his wife Maria wore respirators when using the herbicide.

“You could see the results in a few hours,” Garcia said. “In a day or two, [the weeds] would be shriveled up pretty well.”

Decades later, Maria Garcia is battling Parkinson’s disease, and she believes it’s because she was exposed to paraquat during her time on the farm. She is one of more than 4,000 people who have sued Syngenta and Chevron, alleging negligence and failure to warn of a product liability.

Syngenta rejects these concerns, telling ABC News, “In short, the hypothesis that paraquat causes Parkinson’s is not accepted in the medical community or peer-reviewed science, nor has it been accepted at any time in the past.”

‘They continue to sell it here’

The use of paraquat tripled in the U.S. between 2008 and 2018, with estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey showing that in 2018, the use of the herbicide was particularly common in areas such as California’s Central Valley, Iowa and the Mississippi River Valley.

In 2019, Thailand issued a ban on paraquat, with Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Peru and Taiwan each following with various prohibitions. China also banned the domestic use of paraquat, despite a state-owned Chinese chemical company acquiring Syngenta in a record $43 billion deal in 2017.

“The Chinese government essentially owns Syngenta, but doesn’t use [paraquat] in their own country,” Peter Flowers, co-lead counsel in the multidistrict litigation against Syngenta and Chevron involving more than 4,000 plaintiffs, told ABC News.

“They continue to sell it here,” he continued. “We as Americans should be outraged by this.”

Paraquat bans now apply to more than 50 countries, an ABC News analysis found.

To use paraquat products like Gramoxone, the EPA says that Americans must be certified pesticide applicators and complete an hour-long online safety training every three years.

“EPA’s assumption that existing regulations would be sufficient to protect people is just not grounded in reality and not supported by science,” said Kalmuss-Katz.

Syngenta says that Gramoxone does not pose a danger when used properly.

Chevron, which distributed Gramoxone in the U.S. between 1966 and 1986 before ceasing its involvement in the paraquat market, has also denied liability. They told ABC News in a statement that they quit selling paraquat for commercial reasons due to increased competition, not health concerns.

“To this day, and despite hundreds of studies being conducted in the past 20 or so years, a causal link between Paraquat and Parkinson’s disease has not been established,” Chevron’s statement said.

‘This would be really bad for them’

The EPA has insisted that its most recent thorough review of scientific studies on paraquat has found no clear link between the herbicide and Parkinson’s.

Both the agency and Syngenta have pointed to a 2020 Agricultural Health Study sponsored in part by the National Institute of Health, which found “that there was no evidence of an association between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease.”

But in their petition, Earthjustice argued that the EPA “misinterpreted the evidence” when they dismissed the connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease, and that their risk assessment was “flawed” and “one-sided,” which could leave more people “likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.”

Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta, a widely respected University of Rochester neurotoxicologist, conducted several of her own paraquat studies on mice and reached a conclusion that was different from what the EPA found.

“We saw things that were convincing to us that paraquat could indeed be a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease,” Cory-Slechta told ABC News.

Cory-Slechta’s work examining what effect paraquat has on the brains of mice is frequently cited as evidence suggesting a link between paraquat and Parkinson’s.

“The human studies … show links between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease over and over again,” she said. “The animal studies continue to show those links including the loss of dopamine neurons, so you have a correspondence between the human and the animal studies that’s very compelling.”

Cory-Slechta was being considered by the EPA as a potential candidate nearly 20 years ago for a scientific advisory panel regarding pesticides, but Carey Gillam, a contributor to The Guardian and the managing editor for The New Lede, an environmental news website supported by the Environmental Working Group, said the internal Syngenta communications she obtained showed that Syngenta did not want that to happen.

“Syngenta got wind of this and realized that this would be really bad for them,” Gillam said, pointing to a 2005 email in which Syngenta asked “what action can be taken” to keep Cory-Slechta off the EPA panel. “You can see through the emails how they develop this plan that they want to convince the EPA to kick her off or to not appoint her to any of their panels.”

Syngenta maintains that it “acted appropriately with regard to Dr. Cory-Slechta.”

In other internal communications obtained by Gillam, the company asked industry lobbying group CropLife America to, “in such a way that they cannot be attributed to Syngenta,” tell the EPA that Cory-Slechta was unwilling to “enter into objective scientific debate with industry regarding her data.”

When ABC News reached out to ask about Cory-Slechta, Syngenta said they continue to stand by this position.

“I think Syngenta’s efforts are very similar to what I’ve seen over the years from many chemical companies whose efforts are to either discredit the science or to mitigate its potential impact,” Cory-Slechta said.

Federal lobbying disclosures show CropLife America spent almost $2 million last year on lobbying efforts. Some of that money was associated with legislation like the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act, which would ban pesticides like paraquat from the U.S.

CropLife America told ABC News that it “routinely represents our members by reflecting their views in our comments on these nominees, as we do on dozens of other regulatory matters on which EPA requests public comment.”

A reconsideration by regulators

In 2021, the EPA issued an interim decision to allow for paraquat’s continued use in the U.S. for another 15 years while requiring additional safety precautions.

Since then, after being sued by Earthjustice, which is representing The Michael J. Fox Foundation and other organizations in this effort, the EPA said that they would reconsider their decision.

“Now [the] EPA has a chance to go back to fix the mistakes that it made during the prior risk evaluation, to reject Syngenta’s interference and to provide the protections law requires,” Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said. “We’re waiting to see whether [the] EPA lives up to that.”

In the meantime, more than 2,300 miles away from EPA headquarters, each day continues to be a challenge for Maria Garcia as she copes with the effects of Parkinson’s in her Arizona home.

Tricia, Maria’s daughter-in-law, is hoping that the agency will take action.

“I would urge the EPA and any other decision makers to please ban this product from being used in the United States and save the lives of the future farmers,” she said.

 

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(LONDON) — At least 63 people have died and 116 have been injured after torrential rains triggered deadly flash floods and landslides in northern Tanzania, Tanzania’s prime minister has announced.

“We have received the blessing of heavy rain in the Katesh area, Hanang district, Manyara region which unfortunately has also brought a flood disaster,” said Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hasan writing on X — formerly known as Twitter. “I have directed our disaster response agencies in this area where they have already started work to help rescue and prevent more disasters from happening.”

Zuhura Yunus, spokesperson for Tanzania’s president’s office, said that at least 1,150 households and 5,600 people have been affected and at least 750 acres of farmland destroyed.

Footage broadcast on local media showed vehicles and debris being swept down roads by currents of water, civilians wading through water and cars stuck in thick mud.

Tanzania’s Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa visited the Manyara region on Monday to assess the situation and meet victims and local officials.

On Tuesday paying a temporary camp in the Manyara Region where victims of the flooding, many of whose houses were damaged in the flood disaster, were seeking shelter.

Tanzania’s President Samia Sululu Hasan, who was in Dubai attending the COP28 climate conference, cut short her trip to attend to the crisis following the disaster.

Speaking at the climate conference, she warned that implementing a global goal on adaptation framework is a “matter of urgency, not choice.

“The decision is therefore ours to adhere to science or face the consequences,” said Saluhu.

Tanzania, which has one of the smallest carbon footprints in Africa, has suffered increasing climate-related disasters with at least 15,700 people having died so far in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023, according to Carbon Brief.

U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Michael Battle said he is “deeply saddened” by the mudslides that occurred in Tanzania’s Manyara region.

“We grieve with Tanzanians across the country at this tragic loss of life and livelihoods. The thoughts and prayers of the entire U.S. Mission to Tanzania are with all those impacted by this natural disaster,” said Battle.

Tanzania’s Prime Minister’s Office announced that search and rescue operations will continue and that Tanzania’s defence forces and rescue teams are searching for survivors and the bodies of those killed as damaged roads and bridges are complicating rescue efforts.

 

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is on trial in New York in a $250 million civil lawsuit that could alter the personal fortune and real estate empire that helped propel Trump to the White House.

Trump, his sons Eric Trump and and Donald Trump Jr., and other top Trump Organization executives are accused by New York Attorney General Letitia James of engaging in a decade-long scheme in which they used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate Trump’s net worth in order get more favorable loan terms. The trial comes after the judge in the case ruled in a partial summary judgment that Trump had submitted “fraudulent valuations” for his assets, leaving the trial to determine additional actions and what penalty, if any, the defendants should receive.

The former president has denied all wrongdoing and his attorneys have argued that Trump’s alleged inflated valuations were a product of his business skill.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Dec 05, 9:36 AM EST
Defense focusing on value of Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump’s lawyers plan to call two experts, Lawrence Moens and John Shubin, to testify on Trump’s valuation of his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida.

Moens is a well-known real estate broker in Palm Beach, and Shubin is an expert on deeds and land restrictions.

The value of the property has been bitterly contested by Trump’s lawyers since the start of the trial, after Judge Arthur Engoron, in his pretrial partial summary judgment determined that Trump overvalued the property by at least 2,300%. When Trump testified in the trial in November, he repeatedly lashed out at Engoron for what he called a “crazy” assessment of the property.

“He said in his statement that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million and it’s worth 50 times to 100 times more than that, and everybody knows it. And everybody is watching this case. He called me a fraud and he didn’t know anything about me,” Trump said on the stand.

According to evidence shown at trial, Trump agreed in a 2002 deed to “forever extinguish [his] right to develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use.” While Trump Organization executives were aware of the limited use of the property, they allegedly valued the property as a residence in Trump’s financial statements while treating it as a social club for tax purposes, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

In Trump’s statements of financial condition, he valued the property between $426 million and $612 million, despite a local tax assessor appraising the market value of the property between $18 and $27 million. Engoron, in his summary judgment ruling, wrote that James had proven that Trump was liable for a false valuation of the property.

Trump has repeatedly argued that Engoron misunderstood the purpose of a tax assessment, going as far as to call Engoron’s finding “fraud.”

“Are you paying taxes on an $18 million valuation of Mar-a-Lago or $1.5 billion?” state attorney Kevin Wallace asked Trump during his direct examination.

“You know that assessments are totally different from the valuation of property,” Trump responded.

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(ARLINGTON, Va.) — A house in Arlington, Virgina, exploded Monday night, shortly after officers were executing a search warrant at the residence for reports of a person discharging several rounds with a flare gun, officials said during a press conference.

Police responded to a residence on the 800 block of North Burlington Street at approximately 4:45 p.m. Monday afternoon with reports of possible shots fired, said Ashley Savage, public information officer with Arlington County Police Department.

“The suspect inside the residence discharged several rounds. The house subsequently exploded,” Savage said.

Police officers sustained minor injuries and were treated on scene. Before the explosion, Savage said that a barricade situation took place after attempts to make contact with the suspect were unsuccessful.

“During the early parts of it, after we had obtained a search warrant, we were attempting to make contact with the individual. Our SWAT team was on scene at that point, we would determine that the incident would be a barricade because the suspect had not exited the residence,” she said. “We were attempting to make contact with the individual when shots were discharged inside the residence.”

Police said in a statement that a preliminary investigation indicated the suspect “discharged a flare gun approximately 30 – 40 times from inside his residence into the surrounding neighborhood.”

Then, as officers investigated, they obtained a search warrant for the suspect’s residence and unsuccessfully attempted to make contact with the suspect.

“As officers were attempting to execute the search warrant, the suspect discharged several rounds, from what is believed to be a firearm, inside the home. Subsequently, at approximately 8:25 p.m., an explosion occurred at the residence. The investigation into the circumstances of the explosion are ongoing,” the statement said.

As of approximately 10:30 p.m. Monday evening, the fire was under control and The Arlington County Fire Department continued to battle small spot fires. The investigation remains ongoing.

Neighbors several blocks away described feeling the concussion from the blast in their homes.

Witnesses described seeing flares in the sky emanating from the area of the blast prior to the blast.

Officials were aware of only one individual, the suspect, who was inside the residence at the time of the explosion. No details on their identity have been released. The suspect was still in the house and had not yet been taken into custody because ACPD had not been able to enter the residence as the fire was still ongoing, Savage said.

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(LOS ANGELES) — The man accused of killing three unhoused men in Los Angeles and another victim in San Dimas, California, over a four-day span last week was formally charged with murder Monday and set to appear before a judge.

Jerrid Powell, 33, was charged with four counts of murder, one count of residential robbery and one count of being a felon with a firearm, according to LA District Attorney George Gascón.

Powell also faces special circumstances of allegedly committing multiple murders and murder in the course of a robbery, as well as suspected personal use of a firearm, the DA’s office said.

The suspect appeared before a judge Monday afternoon and through his public attorney waived his right to a speedy trial.

The request now pushes Powell’s formal arraignment and plea to a later date, which the judge has scheduled for Jan. 8.

On Saturday, Los Angeles investigators said that Powell was the suspect linked to a series of killings that took place between Nov. 26 and Nov. 29.

He allegedly shot three unhoused men who were either sleeping on the street or in an alleyway in different parts of Los Angeles, on Nov. 26, Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, according to investigators.

The unhoused victims were only identified as a 37-year-old man, a 62-year-old man and a 52-year-old man, police said.

On Nov. 28, Powell allegedly followed Nicholas Simbolon into his garage, robbed him of his belongings and shot and killed him, police said.

Simbolon, 42, was a father of two who worked for the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office as a project manager in the I.T. department, authorities said.

Powell was arrested late on Nov. 29 following a traffic stop in Beverly Hills and booked the next day, police said.

Investigators used an automatic license plate reader system for a 2024 gray BMW to flag the suspect’s whereabouts and used surveillance footage from Simbolon’s murder, according to police. Civil rights groups have raised concerns over the use of this technology by the police over privacy issues.

“The swift actions of law enforcement undoubtedly saved lives this week,” Gascón said in a statement.

Investigators are still searching for a motive and the investigation is ongoing.

If convicted, Powell faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, the DA’s office said.

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(NEW YORK) — A former Connecticut lawmaker is expected to turn himself over to authorities on Monday to begin serving a federal prison sentence for COVID fraud.

Michael DiMassa, 32, the former state representative who served West Haven — just outside of New Haven — was sentenced earlier this year to 27 months in prison after stealing $1.2 million in COVID relief and other funds from the city.

DiMassa pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud last month. He is required to pay nearly $866,000 in restitution and, following prison, will serve five years of supervised release, during which he is expected to perform 100 hours of community service, according to court documents.

He is also required to participate in programs for gambling addiction treatment and mental health treatment upon release, the documents show.

DiMassa was originally set to report to prison on July 31 but a judge postponed his surrender date twice so he could take care of his newborn baby until his wife, Lauren DiMassa, was released from prison, according to local ABC News affiliate WTNH.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut said that between July 2020 and September 2021, while serving as a state representative and city employee, Michael DiMassa was authorized to approve reimbursements of COVID costs incurred by West Haven using funds from the federal government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

During this period, he “conspired with others to steal these funds and other West Haven funds through the submission of fraudulent invoices, and subsequent payment, for COVID relief goods and services that were never provided,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Michael DiMassa and his wife billed the city for a youth violence prevention program and for “Youth Violence COVID-19 Associated Expenses” with invoices that included in-home home counseling, special needs hourly services, a fall youth clinic, Wi-Fi assistance for low- and moderate-income families, equipment rentals, licensing fees, meals and cleaning supplies. The couple received more than $147,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Lauren DiMassa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to six months in prison. She was released in October and is currently in home confinement, according to WTNH.

In another instance, Michael DiMassa and John Bernardo, a former West Haven housing specialist, formed a company and fraudulently billed the city and its “COVID-19 Grant Department” for consulting services provided to the West Haven Health Department that were never performed, according to court documents.

Between February 2021 and September 2021, the city paid the company more than $636,000. Michael DiMassa made several large cash withdrawals from the company’s bank account, some occurring around the same time he executed a cash “buy-in” of gaming chips at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, court documents show.

Michael DiMassa also conspired with West Haven businessman John Trasacco to fraudulently bill the city through two companies, both owned by Trasacco, for goods and services provided, including delivering personal protective equipment; maintenance of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units; delivering COVID supplies to the Board of Education; and cleaning school buildings, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

One of those school buildings that was allegedly cleaned had been vacant and abandoned for years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Trasacco’s companies received more than $431,000 as a result of the scheme.

Bernardo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in June 2022 and was sentenced to 13 months in prison in March 2023. Trasacco was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud in December 2022 and was sentenced to eight years in prison in April 2023.

 

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(PHILADELPHIA) — One security guard was killed, and another was injured in a stabbing attack at a Macy’s department store in Philadelphia on Monday morning, authorities said.

The incident began at about 10:45 a.m. when a man tried to steal hats from Macy’s in Center City, Philadelphia police said at a news conference. Security stopped the man, and after a “confrontation,” police said, the security officer “backs off, gets the merchandise back, allows the male to go on.”

About 15 minutes later, the man returned to the location and attacked two security guards with a knife, police said.

The two guards, both in their 20s, were hospitalized, police said. One of the security guards died at 11:19 a.m., police said, calling it a “tragic situation.”

The suspect fled from the Macy’s, took public transit and was then apprehended at about noon, police said. His name has not been released.

The security guards were not armed, police said.

The Macy’s store has been closed, police said.

This Macy’s location has filed over 250 reports of retail theft this year, police said.

 

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(DALLAS) — The search was on Monday for an assailant who killed four people, including a 1-year-old boy, inside a Dallas home and left a teenage girl hospitalized with bullet wounds, police said.

The quadruple killing unfolded Sunday afternoon in a southeast Dallas neighborhood. The Dallas Police Department said the carnage appears to stem from an isolated incident and “there is no threat to the public.”

The killings marked the 627th mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks shootings across the nation and defines a mass shooting as an event with a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter.

The child killed in the Dallas shooting was identified by the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office as 1-year-old Logan De La Cruz, who became the 272nd child 11 years old or younger killed in a shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The shooting unfolded about 4:20 p.m. on Sunday when police responded to calls of gunfire in the 9700 block of Royce Drive, according to a statement from the Dallas Police Department.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found three adults dead from gunshot wounds inside the house and two children, Logan and a 15-year-old girl, according to the police statement.

Logan was taken to a hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries, police said. The teenage girl, whose name was not released, remained hospitalized Monday in stable condition, according to police.

The others killed in the shooting were identified by the medical examiner’s office as Vanessa De La Cruz, 20; Karina Lopez, 33; and Jose Lopez, 50.

No one has been arrested in slayings and a motive remains under investigation.

The number of homicides in Dallas is up roughly 11% this year from 2022, according to Dallas Police Department crime data. As of Sunday, the city had recorded 226 homicides in 2023.

 

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