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(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.

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(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.

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(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.

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(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.”

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(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.

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(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.”

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(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.

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(NEW YORK) — Alex Jones has been ordered to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to Sandy Hook parents, a jury ordered Thursday.

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. A verdict on punitive damages is expected Friday.

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.

A jury made the determination in Jones’ defamation trial Thursday.

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.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Scientists are emphasizing the need for proper disaster planning now that they have confirmed another busy hurricane season ahead in the Atlantic.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a revised hurricane outlook for the rest of the 2022 Atlantic season on Thursday, stating that between 14 and 20 named storms are expected, with up to 10 hurricanes and up to five major hurricanes.

The average number of named storms per year is 14, with the average number of hurricanes clocking in at seven, and an average of three major hurricanes per year, according to NOAA, which continues to point to another above-average hurricane season.

NOAA had predicted up to 21 named storms in its original forecast in May. There have been three so far this season.

Although hurricane season officially starts on June 1, most tropical cyclones occur from August to October.

The U.S. is currently on the 27th year of a “high activity era,” meaning that the chance of a hurricane making landfall on the East Coast is double that of a “low activity era,” Matthew Rosencrans, climate test bed director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, told ABC News.

The intensity of hurricanes is expected to increase as climate change continues to warm ocean waters, leaving ample breeding ground for strong systems to develop.

The agency is urging Americans to be prepared for not only strong winds and storm surge, but inland flooding well away from the storm’s center.

The speed at which hurricanes are intensifying just before they make landfall is making it difficult for coastal communities to prepare, Rosencrans said.

Of the last several Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S., the majority of them were tropical storms just 48 hours prior to strengthening to the most severe category, he said.

“So the way I look at that is, it’s not that you have 48 hours to prepare,” Rosencrans said, adding that both disaster management officials and residents need to start preparing now in the event of a hurricane later this season.

ABC News’ Melissa Griffin, Dan Manzo and Samantha Wnek contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Nearly one year after the death of Gabby Petito, her family announced a major donation to help victims of domestic violence.

The Gabby Petito Foundation, formed by Petito’s family after her death, has donated $100,000 to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which offers free resources and support for people suffering from domestic violence.

“No family should feel the pain that we’ve felt every day since we lost Gabby,” Petito’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, said in a statement. “Survivors who are able to reach out should connect with an advocate quickly.”

The hotline said it will use the donated money to hire and train more full-time advocates and will use it to “advance its technology infrastructure” to be able to answer more calls and online messages.

Katie Ray-Jones, the hotline’s CEO, said the donation comes at a much-needed time due to the increase in rates of domestic violence throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The donation was made to the hotline’s “Hope Can’t Wait” emergency fundraising campaign, which is trying to raise $2 million.

“The Hotline’s contact volume has almost doubled over last year; on average we’re receiving nearly 80,000 incoming calls, chats and texts each month,” Ray-Jones said in a statement. “More than ever, survivors need validation, support and safety planning, and connection to resources such as shelter, legal aid, economic assistance and healthcare.”

She continued, “The Gabby Petito Foundation’s generous donation, and all gifts to our campaign, will help to ensure our critical 24/7 work continues and we can connect with more people impacted by domestic violence.”

Petito, 22, went missing in late August while on a trip through Colorado and Utah with her then-boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, who later went missing after returning to Florida without Petito.

On Sept. 19, 2021, search crews discovered a body in Bridger-Teton National Park in Wyoming that was later determined to be Petito’s. An autopsy found she died from strangulation, officials said.

Search crews combed the Florida wetlands where Laundrie was last seen and found his remains in Carlton Reserve, near North Port, on Oct. 20, 2021.

In January, the FBI released new details in the investigation of Petito’s death, saying that Laundrie wrote that he killed her in his notebook.

Petito’s parents have worked since her death to raise awareness around domestic violence and provide support for people in need.

In his eulogy at his daughter’s funeral, Joseph Petito told mourners, “If there is a relationship that you’re in that might not be the best thing for you, leave it now. Take care of yourself first.”

The Gabby Petito Foundation’s mission is to “address the needs of organizations that support locating missing persons and to provide aid to organizations that assist victims of domestic violence situations, through education, awareness, and prevention strategies,” according to its website.

Experts note that when cases like Petito’s are in the news, though extremely tragic, they can raise awareness about domestic violence and the many forms it may take.

On average, more than one in three women and one in four men will experience rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 24 experience the highest rates of domestic violence, according to Kiersten Stewart, director of public policy and advocacy of Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit organization focused on ending violence against women and children.

“Domestic violence is still a very serious issue,” Stewart told ABC News last year. “As a country, we have made great progress in the last 25 years, but we haven’t actually reduced homicides nearly as dramatically, and that still needs to be a real focus.”

If you need help or need help supporting someone else, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788 or chat online at TheHotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7.

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