(NESCOPECK, Pa.) — At least three people are dead and several remain unaccounted for 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 home due to the flames and heat, according to Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Derek Felsman.
Three bodies have been found so far, with the victims ranging in age from 6 to 70, Felsman said. More fatalities are expected, he said.
Nescopeck volunteer firefighter Harold Baker, one of the first on scene, said 14 people were in the home, many of them family. He has not heard from 10 of them and expects 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.”
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.
(KALAMAZOO, Mich.) — Federal prosecutors have charged a 25-year-old man for allegedly setting a Michigan Planned Parenthood clinic on fire.
Joshua Brereton allegedly set fire to the Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo on July 31 around 4 p.m., when the clinic was closed and no patients were inside, according to authorities.
Officials said the suspect breached the fence outside the clinic then used a fuel to ignite bushes surrounding the building before lighting a fireplace starter log that he threw onto the building’s roof.
Investigators found evidence that Brereton purchased torch fuel and a Duraflame starter log from a nearby Walmart, as well as a baseball cap that he apparently wore during the arson attack.
According to investigators, Brereton posted to his personal YouTube channel before the incident, where he spoke about abortion policy in a video and called abortion “genocide.”
In the same video, officials said Brereton told viewers to “step out of your comfort zone” and lend a hand in the fight.
If convicted, Brereton faces up to 20 years in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. It is currently unclear if Brereton has an attorney.
After the fire last week, Planned Parenthood of Michigan said its alarm systems appeared to have worked properly and it thanked firefighters for their quick response.
“As always, our top priority is the health and safety of our patients and staff, and we are grateful that no one was hurt,” Paula Thornton Greear, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Michigan, said in a statement to ABC News. “We remain committed to serving our patients — no matter what.”
According to officials, the fire was extinguished in less than ten minutes and only resulted in minimal damage to the exterior of the clinic. The clinic was able to open at 1 p.m. the next day, according to the clinic’s website.
“Yesterday I saw the destruction at Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo with my own eyes. This is a heinous and reprehensible act and I am hopeful that law enforcement will bring the person responsible to justice,” Michigan state Sen. Sean McCann tweeted Aug. 1.
The fire was set just one day before a Michigan judge ruled to temporarily block the state’s 1931 abortion ban. The block came just hours after a different judge ruled to allow the state to prosecute based on the law.
“This lack of legal clarity — that took place within the span of a workday — is yet another textbook example of why the Michigan Supreme Court must take up my lawsuit against the 1931 extreme abortion ban as soon as possible,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement that day.
(WASHINGTON) — Two Wisconsin residents have died following a lightning strike near the White House on Thursday night, police confirmed to ABC News Friday.
Police said 76-year-old James Mueller and 75-year-old Donna Meuller, both from Janesville, Wisconsin, died after being injured in the strike in Lafayette Park in front of the White House.
Thursday night, D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded and was treating four patients that were found in “the vicinity of a tree.”
It said the two men and two women were transported to area hospitals with “life-threatening injuries.”
Officials said it’s still unclear what the adults were doing prior to the lightning strike, if they knew each other and why they were in the park.
Uniformed U.S. Park Police officers and members of the Secret Service were also on the scene and immediately rendered aid to the victims, an EMS official said during a news conference.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
(LAUREL, Neb.) — Foul play is suspected after four people were found dead at multiple homes in a small Nebraska town Thursday morning following reports of an explosion and fires, authorities said.
A suspect is in custody, Nebraska State Patrol announced Friday morning. More details on the suspect and arrest are forthcoming.
Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent Col. John Bolduc said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon that state and local authorities were “investigating multiple crime scenes” in Laurel, in northeastern Nebraska.
Authorities first responded to a home shortly after 3 a.m. after a 911 caller reported an explosion at the residence, Bolduc said. There was a fire at the home, he said.
Once inside, responding officers and deputies found one person dead, he said.
While at the first home, a fire was reported at a second home three blocks away, Bolduc said. Three people were found dead inside that home, he said.
Bolduc said foul play is suspected in the four deaths, and that responders at the second home worked to preserve any evidence while putting out the fire.
A Nebraska State Patrol statement after the fires were suppressed said “gunfire is suspected to have played a part” in both homes.
Authorities were searching for a silver sedan in connection with the investigation, Bolduc said Thursday. The car was initially reported leaving Laurel shortly after the second fire was reported, and the male driver may have picked up a passenger before leaving the town, he said. The later Nebraska State Patrol statement indicated the car may have left the town later than initially reported.
Fire investigators believe accelerants may have been used in both fires at the homes, said Bolduc, noting that the suspect or suspects may have burn injuries.
Authorities are working with local residents and businesses to obtain any relevant security camera footage as part of their investigation.
The identities of the victims will be released pending family notification, and a cause of death will be determined following an autopsy, Bolduc said.
It is too early in the investigation to determine any connection between the victims, or if this can be characterized as a domestic incident, Bolduc said.
Cedar County Sheriff Larry Koranda said Thursday the community of 1,000 is shaken by what happened.
“Everybody knows everybody in this small community,” he said.
(SAN ANTONIO) — Eight years before Uvalde school Police Chief Pete Arredondo led the controversial law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, he was demoted from a high-ranking position at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office, according to reporting by a local news outlet Thursday.
Arredondo “couldn’t get along with people,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar told the San Antonio Express-News, according to the report. Cuellar also said that he demoted Arredondo from assistant chief to commander in 2014.
“He just didn’t fit the qualifications or the work that I set out for him,” Cuellar said, according to the report.
Arredondo has come under immense scrutiny for his role in the police response to the May 24 massacre, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Police waited 77 minutes after arriving at the school to breach the door to the classroom containing the 18-year-old gunman.
A special committee in the Texas legislature issued a report last month that found Arredondo had “failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of incident commander.”
Arredondo previously told the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself the on-scene commander during the shooting.
According to documents first reported by the San Antonio Express-News and obtained by ABC News, Arredondo, while working for Webb County, was “reassigned from Assistant Chief to Commander” in October 2014, and that two days earlier, a Webb County employee had written “demotion” on his payroll worksheet.
Arredondo left the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in 2017 and took a role in Laredo as a school district police captain, where he stayed for three years. When he applied for the position in Laredo, Arredondo highlighted his role in a hostage negotiation during his time in Webb County.
Cuellar, the Webb County sheriff who demoted Arredondo in 2014, told the San Antonio Express-News that Arredondo “exaggerated a little bit” his role in the hostage negotiations he mentioned in his application to Laredo.
“It wasn’t him completely. I think he exaggerated a little bit,” Cuellar was quoted telling the newspaper, adding that it was a team effort.
Arredondo was announced as the new police chief of the Uvalde Independent School District in February 2020.
Neither Arredondo or Cuellar, or officials with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, immediately responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — Four people are in critical condition following an apparent lightning strike at a Washington, D.C., park, authorities said Thursday evening.
D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded to Lafayette Park, located in front of the White House, and was treating the four patients that were found in “the vicinity of a tree.”
Two men and two women were transported to area hospitals with “life-threatening injuries” after the apparent lightning strike, D.C. Fire and EMS said.
Officials said it’s still unclear what the adults were doing prior to the lightning strike, if they knew each other and why they were in the park. The identity of the victims could not be confirmed while the investigation is still ongoing, officials said.
Uniformed U.S. Park Police officers and members of the Secret Service were also on the scene and immediately rendered aid to the victims, an EMS official said during a news conference.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
Marilyn LeBlanc-Downey and her son, Skip Bailey, remember Ferris LeBlanc as a brother, uncle and father figure. – ABC News
(NEW ORLEANS) — The New Orleans City Council is reviving an effort to locate the lost remains of several victims of an arson that killed 32 people at a popular French Quarter gay bar in 1973.
The fire at the UpStairs Lounge was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ citizens in United States history until the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016.
The council passed a motion on Thursday directing the city’s property management and legal departments to “take any and all appropriate steps necessary” to “facilitate the recovery” of three unidentified fire victims and one identified victim, Ferris LeBlanc, who were buried in an unmarked graves somewhere in the city’s potter’s field.
LeBlanc, a World War II veteran, has yet to be located despite a years-long effort led by his family to find his remains and return them to California for a military burial.
“Poor record-keeping and indifference continue to hamper the efforts of surviving family members to reclaim the bodies of victims and to provide them the dignity of a proper burial,” wrote Councilmember JP Morrell, whose office is spearheading the effort, in the motion. “The Council believes the City has a moral obligation to take all steps within its power to facilitate the recovery and dignified interment of the victims of the UpStairs Lounge massacre.”
LeBlanc’s family told ABC News that they are encouraged that the city’s leaders are taking action on their behalf.
“The council has promised to get to the bottom of this issue and do everything they can to help us bring an end to this story,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We are cautiously optimistic for this renewed interest and are hopeful it will end in a positive resolution.”
In 2018, five members of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office were tasked with the search for LeBlanc’s remains shortly after the release of an ABC News documentary investigating the city’s response to the fire and highlighting pleas from LeBlanc’s family — including his sister Marilyn LeBlanc Downey — for help.
But after several months of searching, officials were unable to locate his remains, telling ABC News they “remain stymied by lost or incomplete records,” and the inquiry was quietly discontinued.
On the eve of the tragedy’s 49th anniversary, however, as the New Orleans City Council issued a formal apology to the victims, survivors and families affected by the fire, Councilmember Morrell pledged to take up the search.
“The City of New Orleans’ lack of response to the deadliest fire in our history has kept individuals from mourning their loved ones, but today we took a step in the right direction,” Morrell said in a statement on June 23. “Moving forward, my office will be working with the family of Ferris LeBlanc, a WWII veteran who died in the fire, to exhume his remains and properly memorialize him with full military honors.”
Survivors, family members, first responders, activists and journalists interviewed by ABC News agreed that the city’s response to the tragedy exposed pervasive prejudices toward the gay community in the otherwise famously tolerant city, an attitude that resulted in, among other indignities, the burial of several unidentified victims in unmarked graves in the city’s potter’s field — LeBlanc among them.
According to Robert Fieseler, author of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, shock and sympathy were quickly replaced by ignorance and apathy when people learned “what kind of bar had burned down and who the victims had been.”
“The deadliest fire in New Orleans history provoked not an outpouring of grief for the dead,” Fieseler told ABC News, “but instead, among mainstream residents, humiliation for the release of the dead’s secrets: their unconventional sexual tastes, at a time when the mere discussion of homosexuality was taboo.”
It was the failure of the city’s leaders and institutions to recognize and respond to the tragedy in 1973 that prompted a rare public statement of “historic regret” in 2022.
“The City Council deems it not only necessary but past due to formally apologize,” reads the resolution, adopted unanimously last month, “for the way that those who perished were not adequately and publicly mourned as valuable and irreplaceable members of the community.”
Local media hailed the move as a “small but significant step” in the healing process that acknowledged the city’s “indifference, if not hostility, toward the gay community” at the time, the painful legacy of which lingers to this day.
“We will continue,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We all hope for the day when this story will end as it should.”
(BLOOMINGTON, Minn.) — Shoppers were sent running for safety at the Mall of America Thursday, after police said shots were fired at the Minnesota shopping center.
Police responded to an “active incident” on the northwest side of the mall Thursday evening, the Bloomington Police Department tweeted, saying at that time that “numerous officers are on scene.”
Within an hour, the police department said officers had secured the scene. A suspect has not been apprehended, and no injuries have been reported, police said.
Bloomington Police Department Chief Booker Hodges said during a press conference that shots were fired near the Nike store, and that officers on the scene within 30 seconds.
“After looking at video, we see two groups getting into some type of altercation at the cash register of the Nike store,” Hodges said. “One of the groups left but instead of walking away, they decided to display a complete lack of respect for human life — they decided to fire multiple rounds into a store with people.”
The individuals responsible have not yet been located, the chief said.
“This is an isolated incident,” the department said on Twitter. “The suspect fled the MOA on foot and officers are in the process of interviewing witnesses.”
The Mall of America alerted via Twitter that it was on lockdown “following a confirmed isolated incident” at one of its tenant spaces.
Footage taken by shoppers showed people sheltering in place, including a large crowd in the basement of the mall.
The lockdown has since been lifted. Shoppers on the mall’s second level have been asked to wait for an escort, while all others were advised to leave.
The mall will be closed for the rest of the evening.
The shopping mall is located in Bloomington, a suburb of the Twin Cities.
(NEW YORK) — Two questions — “What is college for and who pays for it?” — form the foundation of a new book that explores a variety of systemic issues facing America’s higher education system.
Will Bunch, author of “After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics – and How to Fix It,” spoke to ABC News Live about the history of the student loan crisis and the future of the higher education system in America.
Bunch said the issues stem back to World War II. After the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill, which provided veterans with funds for college education, among other benefits.
As a result, it made higher education a public good for millions of veterans and middle-class Americans, Bunch said. “The question we’ve been trying to resolve for the last 75 years, which is two questions: What is college for and who pays for it?”
As tuition steadily rose over the course of nearly a century, soon 1 out of 5 adults couldn’t attend college without borrowing money, according to Bunch. Now, as inflation rises and a recession looms, 1 in 5 Americans are holding on to student loan debt that has accrued to a national federal debt of over $1.7 trillion, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
“The thing is, to really succeed in this economy, most job recruiters are looking for that credential, a college diploma,” said Bunch, who shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. “And so people feel they have no choice. They have to make this gamble of borrowing the money for college or the alternative could be worse.”
In his book, Bunch spoke to a variety of people, including college graduates who are struggling to manage six-figure loans and people who chose other alternatives to college.
Bunch said that people often believe what he says is an incorrect assumption that college is “available to all people,” and so it’s assumed that those who do not have a degree within the system are seen as “deficient.”
“We believe in the value that education is available to all people, but it’s up to you to make the most out of that opportunity,” said Bunch. “[Those who do not have a degree] are being told that… they have failed in life somehow by not getting this degree.”
Bunch said a viable solution would be to invest in other educational experiences, in lieu of a college degree.
“Education after age 18.. it doesn’t have to be in a university classroom. It could be a trade school, it could be an internship, it could be a gap year,” he said. “But I think these opportunities for our young people should be public good.”
(WASHINGTON) — Four people are in critical condition following an apparent lightning strike at a Washington, D.C., park, authorities said Thursday evening.
D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded to Lafayette Park, located in front of the White House, and was treating and transporting the four patients.
U.S. Park Police officers were also on the scene.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
