(PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.) — A person was attacked by a shark at a California beach Wednesday, sustaining “significant” injuries from the bite, Pacific Grove police said.
Following the shark attack at Lovers Point Beach, the swimmer was transported to Natividad Hospital, the Pacific Grove Police Department said. The man’s condition is unknown at this time.
Police said people at the beach reported that a shark was in the water around the time of the attack. Several people went into the water to help the person who was attacked, police said.
“We want to express our gratitude and appreciation to the Good Samaritans that took immediate action and personal risk to assist the swimmer,” Pacfic Grove police said. “We thank our partners at the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Fish and Wildlife. In addition, we thank our CERT [Community Emergency Response Team] members who responded to help with the beach closures to keep the community safe.”
“We send our prayers and thoughts to the swimmer and their family,” the department added.
Authorities launched a drone to find the shark but did not report additional sightings, police said.
The beach at Lovers Point and Sea Palm turnout has been closed and will reopen on Saturday, police said.
Located about 120 miles south of San Francisco, Pacific Grove is near Monterey and served as one of the filming locations for the hit HBO series “Big Little Lies.”
(NEW YORK) — Dramatic police body-camera video released by the New York Police Department captured two officers teaming up on a rush-hour rescue of a woman this week who collapsed on a subway platform and fell onto the tracks.
The duo sprang into action around 8:30 a.m. Monday at a subway station in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, according to the NYPD.
The officers, whose names have not been released, were on their daily transit inspection when a 25-year-old woman walking ahead of them on a subway platform “suffered a medical episode and fell onto the tracks minutes before a train rolled into the station,” the NYPD said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Officials released body-camera video Tuesday night showing the woman walking on the platform and then suddenly collapsing and falling onto the tracks.
Watch as strategically deployed @nypd68pct officers who were on their daily transit inspection came to the rescue when a passenger suffered a medical episode and fell onto the tracks minutes before a train rolled into the station. pic.twitter.com/qdGwnCFWgM
The footage shows one of the officers jumping onto the tracks and lifting the apparently unconscious woman up to his partner who pulled her out of harm’s way. The officer climbed back onto the platform several minutes before a subway pulled into the station, according to the video.
The officers were not injured in the episode. The woman, whose name was not released, was taken to New York University Langone Hospital, where she was treated for a head injury.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A woman who feared for her life as she was allegedly being held hostage in a New York City apartment found an alternative way to call for help without alerting her captor.
The 24-year-old woman was being held against her will in an apartment in the Eastchester section of the Bronx on Sunday after a man she met online allegedly sexually assaulted her, police told ABC New York station WABC.
The woman and the suspect had met in person for the first time months after they connected online, police said. The encounter soon turned violent, according to police, and the suspect would not let the woman have her phone — except to order food, the station reported.
Employees at the Chipper Truck Café in Yonkers, just north of Manhattan, received an order placed on Grubhub for a breakfast sandwich and a burger around 5 a.m. on Sunday, the restaurant’s owner Alice Bermejo told WABC. While the order itself was not unusual, employees noticed a hastily written note in the section for additional instructions, which said to call police and have them come with the food — cautioning them to not make the response obvious.
“She was basically saying to bring the police with the delivery,” Bermejo said.
Bermejo said her husband received a call from one of the employees who saw the order come up on the screen, asking what to do.
Bermejo’s husband instructed the employee to follow the instructions.
“He was like, ‘Call the police. Can’t take any risks. Better safe than sorry,'” Bermejo said.
Police responded and the suspect, 32-year-old Kemoy Royal, was arrested, the New York City Police Department told ABC News in a statement. Royal was charged with rape, unlawful imprisonment, strangulation, criminal possession of a weapon and sexual abuse, among other counts, police said.
Royal was also charged that day with the attempted sexual assault of a 26-year-old woman on June 15, the NYPD said. Police did not immediately say why Royal was not charged earlier for that incident.
Grubhub Chief Operating Officer Eric Ferguson reached out to Bermejo Wednesday morning and offered her $5,000 to invest in her business to recognize the quick-thinking of the owner and employee, Lisa Belot, director of public relations for the food delivery company, told ABC News over email.
“Every time we see a simple but extraordinary act like this, we are amazed by how our partners positively impact their communities,” Belot said. “From drivers delivering in difficult weather to our corporate employees volunteering at food banks to these restaurant employees in Yonkers who recognized a serious situation and acted quickly, we’re grateful and humbled that Grubhub can be a part of such incredible stories of kindness and heroism.”
Bermejo said she later received a phone call from the victim’s friend, thanking the restaurant for helping her.
“We really had no idea of the gravity of the situation until after everything had happened,” Bermejo
ABC News could not immediately reach an attorney for Royal.
(UVALDE, Texas) — A state senator who represents Uvalde, Texas, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Texas Department of Public Safety, seeking access to the agency’s records of its sweeping investigation into the police response to last month’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) is accusing the DPS, the state’s top law-enforcement agency, of unlawfully denying his records requests.
“From the very start, the response to this awful gun tragedy has been full of misinformation and outright lies from out government,” Gutierrez said in the eight-page complaint, filed in Travis County state court in the state’s capital of Austin.
DPS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
On Tuesday, DPS Director Steven McCraw testified for more than three hours before a state Senate panel investigating the police response the massacre that left 19 children and two teachers dead. He said the investigation has determined that the law-enforcement response led by the local school district’s police chief was an “abject failure.”
Enough officers and equipment had arrived on the scene within three minutes to “neutralize” the shooter, McCraw testified, but instead officers did not breach the door to the classroom containing the shooter for one hour and 14 minutes.
McCraw’s testimony marked the first time in nearly four weeks that anyone in law enforcement publicly laid out details of the various investigations into the mass shooting, probes that are examining everything from the killer’s motives and planning to police actions that directly contradicted first-response protocols that mandate officers rush in to protect civilians from an active shooter.
For weeks, all official information has been laid out only behind closed doors, and law enforcement officials have not responded to requests for information from families of the victims and news media.
According to the lawsuit, Gutierrez filed his public records request on May 31 but has yet to receive a response. Texas state law requires a response to records requests within 10 days, or the seeking out of an attorney general decision, according to the complaint.
During Tuesday’s state Senate hearing, Gutierrez delivered an impassioned plea for “common sense gun solutions” and for the ongoing investigation to be conducted in the open.
“We live in a democracy. In a democracy, things need to be transparent,” he said. “As to the laws and the things, that we need to change.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A search was underway Wednesday for a gunman who shot two people, one fatally, on a packed Muni commuter train in San Francisco, police said.
The shooting occurred around 10 a.m. as the light-rail train was moving between stations, according to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Kathryn Winters.
Winters said police were initially called to the city’s Forest Hill Muni station for a report of a shooting, but the train had already pulled away, Winters said. Offices caught up to the train at the busy Castro Street Station, where they discovered the two victims, Winters said.
She said the gunman and commuters aboard the train ran off as soon as it stopped and the doors opened at the station.
Winters said one victim, a man, was pronounced dead at the scene. A second individual was taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooting happened ahead of this Sunday’s Pride Parade in San Francisco and in the heart of the city’s popular Castro District, which is expected to be filled with revelers celebrating LGBTQ pride this weekend. Winters said preliminary evidence showed that the shooting has no connection to this coming weekend’s activities or directed at the city’s LGBTQ community.
San Francisco Supervisor Myrna Melgar told ABC station KGO-TV in San Francisco that police informed her that the shooting occurred during a confrontation the gunman had with the victim who died.
“We do know the shooting happened after a heated verbal argument,” Melgar said.
It was not immediately clear whether the gunman and the deceased victim knew each other. She said the second victim who was wounded was an innocent bystander.
Winters said homicide detectives are securing surveillance video from the train and the Forest Hill and Castro stations in hopes there is footage of the shooting that can help them identify the assailant.
Police only released a vague description of the perpetrator as a man wearing dark clothes and a hooded sweatshirt.
Melgar asked any commuters who were on the train and witnessed the shooting to contact police immediately.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — The suburban Minneapolis city of Brooklyn Center has tentatively agreed to pay $3.25 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Daunte Wright, the unarmed Black man who was fatally shot during a 2021 traffic stop when a white police officer says she mistook her handgun for a stun gun.
The development was announced Tuesday by attorneys for Wright’s family, who said the pending agreement includes reforms in Brooklyn Center police policies and training involving traffic stops like the one that led to the death of the 20-year-old Wright.
Antonio Romanucci, one of the family’s attorneys, said in a statement that Wright’s loved ones hope the changes in police policy prevent similar incidents from occurring.
“Nothing can explain or fill the emptiness in our lives without Daunte or our continued grief at the senseless way he died,” Wright’s parents, Katie and Arbuey Wright, said in a joint statement to ABC affiliate KSTP. “But in his name, we will move forward, and it was important to us that his loss be used for positive change in the community, not just for a financial settlement for our family.”
The parents added, “We hope Black families, people of color, and all residents feel safer now in Brooklyn Center because of the changes the city must make to resolve our claims.”
Romanucci and Jeff Storms, another Wright family lawyer, said the settlement will be the third largest ever awarded in Minnesota history. The city of Minneapolis reached a $27-million settlement with the family of George Floyd, the 46-year-old man who died at the hands of police in May 2020, and agreed to a $20-million settlement with the family of Justine Ruszcyk Damond, who was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer in 2017 after she called 911 to report an assault in progress near her home.
Wright was killed on April 11, 2021, after then-Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter and an officer she was training pulled him over for driving a car with expired registration tags and for having an air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror, which is illegal in the state of Minnesota.
After stopping Wright, who was with his girlfriend, police learned of a warrant for him for an outstanding weapons violation. Wright was ordered out of his vehicle and struggled with police when they attempted to handcuff him.
During the confrontation, which was captured on police body-camera video, Potter, a 26-year police veteran, yelled “Taser! Taser! Taser!” But instead of deploying a stun gun, she drew her handgun and shot Wright in the chest as his vehicle sped away and crashed.
A Hennepin County jury found Potter guilty in December 2021 of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. She was sentenced to 24 months in prison and fined $1,000.
The final terms of the settlement with Wright’s family are pending an agreement on “substantial and meaningful non-monetary relief,” the Wright family attorneys said in a statement.
In addition to more extensive training for Brooklyn Center police officers on “officer intervention, implicit bias, weapons confusion, de-escalation, and mental health crises” and changes in policies, the family is seeking the establishment of a permanent memorial for their son in the city about 10 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
The city of Brooklyn Center has not responded to a request for comment from ABC News.
(SAN ANTONIO, Texas) — Lina Sardar Khil disappeared from a park near her family’s home in San Antonio in December and six months later, police appear no closer to finding the 4-year-old.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus spoke out about the case in an interview with KSAT, an ABC affiliate in San Antonio, and said that leads regarding Lina’s case have slowed.
“Nobody disappears into thin air. Something happened to her. We just haven’t been able to discover what it was,” McManus said in an interview published on Tuesday.
McManus said that initially the missing person’s unit of the San Antonio Police Department was investigating Lina’s disappearance, but now the special victim’s unit is handling the investigation. He added that police are using resources that they would usually utilize in an abduction case, but Lina’s case is still classified as a missing persons case.
“We still don’t have any evidence or proof that it was an abduction,” McManus said. “So we still we’re doing it. It’s kind of a hybrid missing person and abduction,” he said.
“If there were video, if there were any kind of evidence of an abduction, we would have classified as an abduction. But since we don’t have that, we can’t classify it as an abduction,” McManus said.
The San Antonio Police Department did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for further comment.
Lina, who turned 4 years-old on Feb. 20, was last seen on Dec. 20 at a park on the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road in San Antonio between 4:30 p.m. and 5:10 p.m., according to police. The park is near the family’s home at the Villa Del Cabo apartment complex.
Lina has brown eyes and straight, brown hair, and was last seen wearing a black jacket, red dress and black shoes, according to police.
She was out of sight from her mother for an unknown amount of time before she realized Lina was nowhere to be found, according to the San Antonio Police Department. The FBI field office in San Antonio has also been working with police on this case.
Her family had held out hope that she would be found to celebrate her 4th birthday at home, but her family had no answers months after she went missing.
“Her light is missing from her family and community. Our continuous prayer is that she will be back in the arms of those that love her,” Pamela Allen, who is representing the Khil family, told ABC News in February.
FBI dive team ends search for 3-year-old Lina Sardar Khil ‘without conclusive findings’
Asked if the hope of finding Lina alive has diminished as time passes, McManus said, “Unfortunately it does, to be candid.”
“We are still devoting the resources necessary to locate her based on the tips we get,” he said.
Lina’s family is part of an Afghan refugee community in San Antonio. They arrived in the United States in 2019 and speak Pashto.
Lina’s mother, Zarmeena Sardar Khil, is pregnant with her second child. She spoke with FOX 29 in San Antonio through a translator in February.
“I am missing my child, I cannot forget her and it is affecting me a lot and my other child who is coming to this world,” she said.
“We all have the same pain, it doesn’t matter that I am from Afghanistan, I have a different culture, different religion. What we have in common is the pain of motherhood as a human, is the same as all people,” she added.
The Afghan community in the city, along with a group of nonprofits and organizations have rallied behind the family, joining search crews, fundraising and raising awareness about Lina’s case.
The Islamic Center of San Antonio announced in February that it increased a $120,000 reward for any information on Lina to $200,000. Meanwhile, Crime Stoppers of San Antonio has offered $50,000 for information resulting in the arrest or indictment of a suspect accused of involvement in Lina’s disappearance, bringing the latest total to $250,000.
The Eagles Flight Advocacy & Outreach organization, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, joined the search in early January, with about 150 people from the Afghan community showing up to help.
Allen, the CEO of the group, became the family’s spokesperson after meeting the Khils through her organization’s work. She told ABC News last month that the family believes Lina was abducted.
“We believe someone has her,” she said. “And so that this is what the family believes — that someone has their daughter and hopefully keeping her alive.”
An FBI dive team ended a search for Lina in January without finding any trace of the girl, authorities said.
In January, Allen’s organization shared a newly surfaced photo taken by a family member of Lina the day she disappeared in hopes that details about Lina’s jewelry could assist the public in identifying her.
In the photo, which was obtained by ABC News, Lina appears to be wearing blue bangle bracelets on one wrist and gold-toned bangles on the other. She is also wearing small gold earrings and an article around her neck that Allen said is known as the Taweez, which is etched with verses from the Quran and is usually worn for protection.
Police are urging anyone with information regarding Lina or her whereabouts to come forward and contact the missing persons unit in San Antonio at 210-207-7660.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Dangerously high temperatures are slamming the U.S., with the West, South and North feeling the heat.
In the South, the heat index — what temperature it feels like — is forecast to skyrocket Wednesday to: 104 degrees in New Orleans; 103 in Little Rock; 106 in Memphis; 101 in Tallahassee; 100 in Atlanta; 104 in Louisville; 99 in Knoxville; and 98 in Raleigh.
The North is also in the danger zone, with the heat index set to reach 94 degrees in Pittsburgh and 97 in Columbus, Ohio.
The West won’t be escaping the heat.
From Wednesday to Friday, temperatures in Dallas are forecast to climb from 97 to 101 to 103.
Sacramento is forecast to reach 100 degrees this week and Phoenix could reach a scorching 107 degrees.
This comes after the Midwest saw record highs on Tuesday.
Lansing, Michigan, and Detroit tied record highs at 98 degrees and 96 degrees respectively. Chicago hit a scorching 99 degrees, which was the Windy City’s hottest temperature in 10 years.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde City Council unanimously denied council member Pete Arredondo’s request for a leave of absence from future meetings, in an effort to be more transparent following criticisms of law enforcement’s handling of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting.
Arredondo, who serves as the chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and was sworn in as a city council member at the end of May, wanted to be exempt from attending future city council meetings.
A motion was unanimously denied to grant a leave of absence to the newly elected council member, who was not present Tuesday night. Per city council rules, there is a $2 fine for missing council meetings, and after three missed meetings, the other council members can vote to have a member removed from their post.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said he would vote “yes” to replace Arredondo on the city council if he misses three consecutive meetings without a leave of absence. The council pointed out that it can’t take an opinion or make any official vote because Arredondo hasn’t actually missed three meetings.
Those attending the meeting Tuesday erupted in cheers when the council denied his leave.
The vote came after a day of testimony during which Arredondo testified for five hours in front of state legislators about the May 24 shooting, which left 19 children and two adults dead.
At a school board meeting on Monday, parents of the victims and members of the Uvalde community called for Arredondo’s resignation.
“Having Pete still employed, knowing he is incapable of decision-making that saves lives is terrifying,” Brett Cross, the uncle of student Uziyah Garcia, who died in the shooting, said. “Innocence doesn’t hide, innocence doesn’t change its story, but innocence did die on May 24.”
Uvalde police have faced public scrutiny for failing to act swiftly after the alleged gunman entered the elementary school with an AR-15 through an unlocked school door.
Surveillance footage showed officers waiting 77 minutes to enter the classroom that the gunman was in before fatally shooting him. Arredondo has claimed he wasn’t aware of the 911 calls coming through while officers waited.
Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, blasted law enforcement’s response to the shooting during a state Senate hearing earlier Tuesday, saying it was an “abject failure.”
“I don’t care if you have on flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, you go in,” he said.
ABC News’ Jenna Harrison Esseling, Matthew Fuhrman and Izzy Alvarez contributed to this report.
(VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.) — The United States Coast Guard is urgently searching for a couple from Virginia Beach, Virginia, who were last heard from hundreds of miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean while they were on a sailing trip to the Azores, Portugal.
Yanni Nikopoulos and Dale Jones, both 65, departed from Hampton, Virginia, en route to the Azores on June 8. However, Nikopoulos and Jones reported to Jones’ daughter five days later on June 13 that they had encountered inclement weather approximately 460 miles east of Virginia Beach and that they had made the decision to turn around after their vessel sustained damage during the storm, according to a statement released by the United States Coast Guard (USCG).
The couple have not been heard from since.
Four days later on June 17, the United States Coast Guard Fifth District command center watchstanders received a report from Jones’ daughter informing them that she still hadn’t heard anything from Nikopoulos and Jones and that she was extremely concerned about their whereabouts and wellbeing.
“While no date had been established for their return, an anticipated return date of June 20 was communicated by the daughter,” the USCG said in their statement.
Subsequently, Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City conducted two overflights by HC-130 Hercules crews in the approximate region where the missing boaters were last reported and an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast was also issued by the Fifth Coast Guard District which notified boaters in the region about the wayward couple. No evidence of Nikopoloulos, Jones or their vessel — named Kyklades — has turned up yet.
“In situations like this, where there are so many unknowns, our coordination efforts need to cast a wide and intentional net,” said Chief Brian Gainey, command duty officer. “We’re tracking cell phone and radio pings as we work with our counterparts in Bermuda to accurately determine the most intelligent search area for our air crews. It’s a lot of detective work, but it’s all in service to finding these two individuals and bringing them home to their families.”
