(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — The three men convicted of hate crimes in the death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery will be sentenced Monday.
Gregory McMichael; his son, Travis McMichael; and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan each face life sentences after being convicted by a federal jury in February. The jury decided that the three white men followed and killed Arbery because he was Black.
The U.S. District Court jury reached its decision just one day before the second anniversary of Arbery’s Feb. 23, 2020, murder near Brunswick, Georgia.
After deliberating for less than four hours, the jury convicted all three men of being motivated by racial hate in interference of Arbery’s civil rights, and attempted kidnapping. Travis McMichael, 36, and his 64-year-old father were also convicted of carrying and brandishing a weapon during the commission of a crime of violence.
Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shot, was also found guilty of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
The McMichaels chased Arbery in their pickup truck after they saw him jogging in their neighborhood, falsely believing he had been responsible for several break-ins in the Satilla Shores neighborhood. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck, blocking Arbery from escaping and recorded cellphone footage of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun after a brief struggle.
During the trial, prosecutors released text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan repeatedly used racist slurs. Witnesses also testified to hearing both McMichaels make racist comments.
All three defendants are already serving life in prison for the killing after being found guilty of murder in a Georgia state court last fall.
(NEW YORK) — Michigan state investigators said test samples taken Thursday from Hubbell Pond in Milford showed low-level presence of a toxic chemical that was released into the Huron River System by the Tribar Manufacturing company in Wixom last weekend.
Two crews from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy sampled waters upstream, downstream and within the pond on Friday to gather more information on the presence of hexavalent chromium, a known cancer-causing chemical.
According to Michigan authorities, hexavalent chromium is known carcinogen that can cause a number of adverse health effects through ingestion, skin contact or inhalation.
State officials are still investigating why the release occurred, the exact volume and product that was released and the timeline of events.
The Hubbell Pond samples were the only ones where hexavalent chromium was detected, out of the more than 30 samples that were taken from varying depths from near the point of release downstream to Barton Pond in Ann Arbor.
“Liquid containing 5% hexavalent chromium was discharged to the sanitary sewer system from Tribar Manufacturing in Wixom last weekend and routed to the Wixom wastewater treatment facility,” Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy said in a statement.
Michigan authorities advised people and pets to avoid contact with the Huron River water between North Wixom Road in Oakland County and Kensington Road in Livingston County. This includes Norton Creek downstream of the Wixom Wastewater Treatment Plant (Oakland County), Hubbell Pond (also known as Mill Pond in Oakland County) and Kent Lake (Oakland and Livingston counties).
Residents are also warned not to water their plants with river water or eat fish caught in that section of the river.
Authorities also warned this recommendation could be expanded to other areas of the river as it receives additional test results.
Properly constructed and permitted drinking water wells not influenced by surface water are unlikely to be contaminated by chromium from the river, they said.
(BUTLER TOWNSHIP, Ohio) — The FBI is involved in a multistate manhunt for a person of interest sought in the fatal shooting of four people in Ohio.
The person of interest, identified by police as 39-year-old Stephen Marlow, should be considered “armed and dangerous,” FBI Cincinnati said on Twitter. He has ties to Indianapolis, Chicago and Lexington, Kentucky, and “could be in one of these cities,” FBI Cincinnati said.
Marlow has ties to Indianapolis, Chicago and Lexington and could be in one of these cities. He should be considered armed and dangerous.https://t.co/OclLDzP0b4
Marlow is wanted in connection with the shooting deaths of four people in Butler Township, a small town north of Dayton on Friday, police said.
Police responding to reports of gunfire shortly before noon found the four victims suffering from gunshot wounds at “multiple crime scenes” in a residential area, the Butler Township Police Department said.
The four victims were pronounced dead at the scenes. They have not been identified by police.
Butler Township Police Chief John Porter said they don’t believe there is a continued threat to the neighborhood but “we will continue to have crews in the area in case Marlow would return,” he told reporters on Friday. The Dayton Police Department Bomb Squad was also contacted “out of an abundance of caution,” he said.
Neighbors were asked to review any video camera footage from that day.
Porter said police were working to determine “if there were any motive to this horrible tragedy” and did not have any further information on the investigation.
“This is the first violent crime in this neighborhood in recent memory,” Porter said.
Marlow is believed to have fled the area in a white 2007 Ford Edge SUV with the Ohio license plate JES9806, police said.
He was described by police as approximately 5’11”, 160 pounds with short brown hair and was last seen wearing shorts and a yellow T-shirt.
(NEW YORK) — Flooding is possible on Saturday for large swaths of the country — including hard-hit eastern Kentucky — as millions of Americans are also under heat advisories.
Flash flooding is possible in the Ohio River Valley, as some parts may see 2 to 4 inches of rain.
Areas from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Pittsburgh, including nearly the entire state of West Virginia, have the greatest chances for flooding on Saturday, where slow-moving heavy downpours are expected.
That also includes eastern Kentucky, which was the site of devastating floods in late July. At least 37 people have been confirmed dead in the catastrophic flooding. Parts of the region were also hit with heavy rainfall on Friday. By midday Saturday, the heaviest rain had so far stayed clear of the worst-hit areas in last week’s flooding. The flash flood threat is expected to subside in this region on Sunday.
In the Upper Mississippi Valley, areas between Minneapolis and Dubuque, Iowa, may also see flooding rains on Saturday, with 3 to 5 inches possible.
Saturday storms are expected to cause flight disruptions from New York to Florida and parts of Texas, Denver and Washington state, the Federal Aviation Administration warned. That comes after severe weather Friday night forced airlines to cancel more than 1,200 flights.
Meanwhile, more than 70 million Americans are under heat alerts this weekend, with heat alerts issued from Oklahoma to Maine.
In the Northeast, heat advisories extend from Delaware to Maine. Temperatures will feel like the mid-upper 90s for much of the Northeast coast Saturday.
Excessive heat warnings are in effect for Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, where the heat index is expected to surpass 110 degrees on Saturday.
Triple-digit temperatures are also forecast from Texas to Iowa.
The scorching temperatures are expected to persist in many of the same areas on Sunday.
(NEW YORK) — Former WNBA player Niesha Butler has opened the first Afro-Latina-owned STEM camp, S.T.E.A.M. Champs, in New York City to reduce accessibility barriers to tech educational resources for Brooklyn youth.
“If a kid could actually say that they can be LeBron James, and roll it off their tongue as easy as that, then they can literally say ‘yeah, I can also put a man on the moon,’ or ‘I can also create the next app,'” Butler told ABC News.
Butler, a New York City native, says “there’s talent in Brooklyn.” She established S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) Champs in the middle of Brooklyn to encourage inner-city youth to channel their ambition into educational opportunities. Butler also hires interns, may of whom have tried coding for the first time with the program, she says.
“People sell basketball dreams every other second in our community. I thought it was really important to, let’s sell these tech dreams,” Butler said.
Prior to opening her doors in Brooklyn, Butler partnered with organizations like Girl Scouts, BronxWorks and a local AAU basketball team to host STEM-focused workshops reaching over 300 New York City students. Monday was the first day of camp in the newly opened facility.
“There’s not a lot of people of color in tech,” Butler said. “These jobs are open for everybody and they’re empty…so obviously we need to do a better job at educating our kids and in recruiting them.”
Other tech education camps and workshops across the nation have worked to close the gap and make tech careers interesting and accessible to students of underserved communities.
Black Girls CODE is one of those resources providing workshops and public speaking opportunities for Black girls. Program alumni Kimora Oliver and Azure Butler say that the program’s first chapter in California’s Bay Area created an environment that allowed local Black female students to envision themselves in the tech industry.
“Unfortunately, STEM is a white and male dominated field,” Oliver told ABC News. “I feel like [Black Girls CODE] is giving a diverse group of Black girls the exposure that they need to decide for themselves whether they want to continue with STEM in the future.”
For almost 40 years, another program called Academically Interest Minds (AIM) at Kettering University has tailored its pre-college curriculum to expose youth of color to STEM coursework and campus life.
“49% of African American students who attend Kettering University now, are AIM graduates,” Ricky D. Brown, the university’s director of multicultural student initiatives and the AIM program, told ABC News.
For many, STEM educational resources introduce an element of choice in considering STEM and exploring pathways of academic interests.
A study released in July by the National Bureau of Economic Research says that early intervention programs like S.T.E.A.M Champs, AIM and Black Girls CODE are effective in helping students achieve academic success in higher education and STEM majors.
“Some of these kids don’t have a computer at home to study,” Butler said. “When I go to some of these centers, they don’t have good Wi-Fi…they have outdated computers.”
According to the study, underrepresentation in STEM is due to a lack of preparation and access to educational resources.
“Given that STEM preparation and college access are shaped prior to college entrance, STEM focused enrichment programs for high school students are promising vehicles to reduce disparities in STEM degree attainment,” the study’s authors wrote.
In the coming weeks, Butler plans to meet prospective students halfway with a “Code on the Court” event at local Brooklyn basketball courts offering free signups to 10 students.
As the program grows, Butler says she looks forward to partnering with large tech companies like Google and Microsoft to reduce limitations and doubts in the minds of students.
“If I could just affect one kid, we’re affecting hundreds of kids,” Butler says.
(NEW YORK) — All roads in and out of Death Valley National Park are closed after unprecedented amounts of rainfall caused substantial flooding in the area, park officials said Friday.
Approximately 500 visitors and 500 staff are currently unable to exit the park, which straddles the California-Nevada border, the officials said in a statement. No injuries to staff or visitors have been reported.
The California Department of Transportation expects it will take several hours to open a road on Highway 190 east of the park to allow an exit, park officials said.
Dozens of cars belonging to visitors and staff are buried in several feet of debris and many facilities are flooded including hotel rooms and business offices.
Additionally, the Cow Creek Water system, which provides water to the Cow Creek area for park residents and offices, has failed, according to park officials. A major break in the line due to the flooding is being repaired, officials said.
The park received at least 1.46 inches of rain in the Furnace Creek area, almost an entire year’s worth of rain in one morning, as the park’s annual average is 1.9 inches of rainwater, the park reported.
This was the second-highest amount of rainfall in a day at Furnace Creek, just behind 1.47 inches recorded on April 15, 1988.
The park is working with the California Department of Transportation, and state and county emergency services on assessing the situation and damage.
(NEW YORK) — Two people are dead and five are missing after a boat capsized near the Florida Keys, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday night.
The boat, which was determined to have been carrying migrants, had 15 people aboard before it capsized south of Sugarloaf Key, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
Local search crews and good Samaritans rescued 8 people. Six were taken for medical evaluation, the statement said.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who lost their lives off the Lower Keys,” Rear Admiral Brendan McPherson, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, said in the statement. “Our search continues for others that may have survived this tragic incident.”
U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 130 migrants had been apprehended along the island chain in the last two days, according to Miami ABC affiliate WPLG.
“This situation highlights the risks these migrants face as they attempt to enter the United States illegally by sea,” McPherson said.
(NEW YORK) — Alex Jones has been ordered to pay more than $45 million in punitive damages to Sandy Hook parents, a Texas jury found on Friday.
The development comes a day after the jury ordered Jones to pay them $4.1 million in compensatory damages.
The conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder was successfully sued by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre after he claimed that the shooting — where 20 children and six adults were killed — was a hoax, a claim he said he now thinks is “100% real.”
The parents sued Jones for $150 million.
The punitive damages total $45.2 million, with total damages awarded amounting to $49.3 million.
A lawyer representing the Sandy Hook families had said in court on Thursday that he intends to hand over two years’ worth of Jones’ text messages to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, after they were inadvertently provided to him by Jones’ lawyers.
“I’ve been asked to turn them over. I certainly intend to do that unless you tell me not to,” Mark Bankston told the judge, saying he’s been asked by the Jan. 6 committee to turn them over.
A source familiar with the matter also told ABC News that the committee and Bankston have been in touch about receiving the messages.
Bankston revealed Wednesday that Jones’ lawyers mistakenly sent him two years’ worth of text messages.
Bankston referenced “intimate messages with Roger Stone” that he said were not “confidential” or “trade secrets.” He said that “various federal agencies and law enforcement” contacted him about the information.
“There has been no protection ever asserted over these documents,” Bankston said.
Cases involving Jones will go before two different judges in Connecticut next week, as more Sandy Hook families seek to hold him accountable for the lies he told about the 2012 massacre being a hoax staged by actors.
A federal bankruptcy court judge in Bridgeport agreed to hold an expedited hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion to proceed against Jones while his company, Free Speech Systems, goes through bankruptcy.
The plaintiffs, immediate family members of children and educators killed in the 2012 massacre as well as one first responder, successfully sued Jones for defamation and are now seeking to hold him financially liable for his comments on the shooting.
The damages phase was scheduled to begin Sept. 6, when 15 plaintiffs have said they would testify about the extreme emotional distress they suffered as a result of Jones’ claims about them.
The presentation of evidence in the trial on damages is estimated to take three to four weeks. The families have not specified an amount they are seeking.
The hearing is scheduled for Aug. 10 at 2 p.m.
Earlier that same day, a Connecticut trial judge will also hold a hearing on the conduct of Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, who has been accused of violating confidentiality rules by sharing the medical and psychiatric records of the Sandy Hook families with Jones’ Texas attorney.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.
(NESCOPECK, Pa.) — Ten people are dead, including three children, after an intense fire tore through a home in central Pennsylvania on Friday, authorities said.
Crews responding to the early morning fire in Nescopeck could not initially get inside the two-story home due to the flames and heat, according to Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Derek Felsman.
Three bodies were initially recovered in the fire, which was reported shortly after 2:30 a.m., according to police.
State police confirmed Friday evening that 10 bodies have been found dead in the home. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 79, police said. They included a 7-year-old girl and two boys, ages 5 and 6. Their names were not released.
The adult victims were identified by state police as Dale Baker, 19; Star Baker, 22; David Daubert, Sr., 79; Brian Daubert, 42; Shannon Daubert, 45; Laura Daubert, 47; and Marian Slusser, 54.
Three men were able to make it out of the home safely, police said.
Nescopeck volunteer firefighter Harold Baker, one of the first on scene, said 14 people were in the home, many of them his family members. He said he had not heard from 10 of them and expected that he lost his son and daughter as well as several grandchildren and his father-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law.
“When we came, pulled up, the whole place was fully involved,” Baker told Scranton ABC affiliate WNEP. “We tried to get into them; there wasn’t no way we could get into them.”
Mike Swank, who lives across the street from the home, told WNEP that he was watching TV when he heard a “pop” outside. When he looked out the window he saw the front porch of the house “almost totally engulfed.”
“There was a gentleman out here running around in the street and he was yelling, really upset, saying that not everybody made it out,” he told the station.
The Red Cross is on scene to provide grief counseling and other support.
The investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.
ABC News’ Leo Mayorga contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — After Kansas voters decisively rejected a bid to remove abortion protections from its state constitution earlier this week, researchers and activists say state lawmakers are likely to continue efforts to restrict access to abortion.
The Kansas vote was the first state-level test after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving it up to states to regulate access to abortion. At least four other states will have abortion-related questions on the ballot this November, leaving voters to decide on access to abortion in some areas.
As of Thursday, ABC News reported that 59% of Kansas voters voted “No” to repealing the right to abortion access in the state’s constitution. Researchers told ABC News the margin by which the vote was won was surprising.
The vote came after the state’s Supreme Court decided in 2019 that the Kansas constitution establishes a fundamental right to abortion.
Not the end of the story in Kansas or elsewhere
Despite that ruling, a majority of lawmakers in the state Senate oppose abortion rights and have passed several laws that restrict access to abortion, which are being challenged in the courts, Elisabeth Smith, the director of state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News in an interview.
“We have seen lawmakers hostile to abortion rights in Kansas and other states, continuously enact unconstitutional abortion bans and restrictions,” Smith said.
She added, “It would not surprise me if anti-abortion legislators in Kansas continued to push the issue by passing unconstitutional bans that then the state has to pay to defend, by potentially continuing to attack the state Supreme Court or utilizing other tactics to try and enforce their — clearly unpopular — view.”
Elizabeth Nash, principal policy associate for state issues at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive rights, said this vote is not the end of the story.
“What we’d seen for the past decade are four other states that adopted similar measures — in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia — and all of them were approved by voters,” Nash said.
Nash said the margin with which the amendment was rejected was surprising because she said lawmakers had “stacked the deck” against the vote, putting it on a primary ballot and in somewhat confusing language. She said it is likely people started to get a better sense of the harm abortion bans can bring.
The Value Them Both coalition that supported the amendment blamed the results of the vote on “misinformation from radical left organizations.” The group vowed in their statement: “We will be back.”
Despite the vote, Kansas already has a number of restrictions in place with abortions currently banned after 22 weeks. According to Guttmacher, restrictions in place in Kansas include patients having to wait 24 hours after counseling before they can receive abortion, state Medicaid coverage of abortion care is banned except in very limited circumstances, and medication abortions must be given in person because of state bans on telehealth and mailing pills.
What does this vote mean for other states?
Voters in California and Vermont will vote on whether to add protections for abortion to their state constitutions. In Kentucky, voters will decide whether to amend their constitution to say abortion is not a constitutional right. Meanwhile, Montana voters will vote on a statute that says infants born alive at any stage of development are legal persons.
There is also an effort in Michigan to get a proactive constitutional amendment protecting abortion on the ballot. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has filed a lawsuit blocking a 1931 abortion ban already on the books, asking a court to determine whether it is constitutional. A judge granted a temporary pause on enforcement of the law after state prosecutors had said they plan to use it to to bring charges against abortion providers.
While every state is different, Smith said it is very likely that other states that put abortion to a vote could have a similar result to Kansas, but it is unlikely more states will put abortion on the ballot this year. Nash also said elections will be key on abortion issues for years to come.
Kimberly McGuire, the executive director of pro-abortion rights group Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, which was on the executive committee for the campaign to vote no on the Kansas measure, hailed the vote as a victory.
She also highlighted efforts in other conservative states to enact protections despite bans, including that legislators in San Antonio, Texas, voted to enact protections for abortion Monday, and legislators in Atlanta, Georgia, enacted legislation to provide funds for abortions.
“This is a taste of what is to come. People across the country, in particular young people, are angry about the attacks on abortion rights, they’re angry about abortion bans, and they are fired up,” McGuire said.
McGuire said the results of the Kansas vote are in line with the popularity of abortion rights among Americans.
An ABC News poll released in May showed that 57% of Americans oppose a ban on abortions after 15 weeks and 58% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Nash said a lot of political back and forth can be expected as abortion policy continues to be “in flux” across the country.
Hurdles to access in and around Kansas
An updated map from Guttmacher shows abortion is highly restricted in states surrounding Kansas.
“Most of the states touching Kansas are states that either have implemented abortion bans or are seeking to implement abortion bans. And so it’s really Colorado to the west that will maintain abortion access,” Nash said.
Nash said there is limited access to abortion in the western half of Kansas as well, so maintaining the limited access in the state is “incredibly important.”
She described abortion access in the region as “absolutely bleak.”
“Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri, have total criminal abortion bans in effect right now, and other surrounding states are moving in that direction,” Nash said. “So Kansas has always been and will continue to be an incredibly important access point for abortion care.”
