(UVALDE, Texas) — Uvalde, Texas, shooting victim Makenna Lee Elrod loved butterflies so much that they were released at her funeral in June.
Several landed on her siblings and her mother, April Elrod, who said it felt like the 10-year-old was sending them a sign.
“One landed on my shoulder, one landed on her sister’s shoe, which is silly because Makenna is three years younger than her sister but they were the same size shoe and they always fought over shoes,” said Elrod, who spoke with ABC News for her first interview since the tragedy on May 24.
“One landed on her daddy’s tie,” she added.
Elrod recently got a tattoo in Makenna’s honor, she said. Flowers grace her forearm, representing each of her children, and a butterfly sits above Makenna’s flower.
She asked Georgia woodworker Sean Peacock to make her two benches shaped like butterflies in Makenna’s honor, but she didn’t expect he’d make them for free, let alone honor all 21 victims with butterfly benches of their own using donations from GoFundMe.
Elrod has called meeting Peacock “a blessing.” He said the donation is a “love story.”
“He and I’ve been talking since and when I’m having a bad day, he just seems to be the one that messages and says you know, we’re praying for you,” Elrod said. “Her story has brought people closer together. And I mean, what more can you ask for?”
A prayer vigil was held Monday in Uvalde Town Square as the benches were unveiled. The benches were laid alongside crosses that had been put up around the square’s fountain to honor each victim, with many adorned with rosaries, teddy bears, photos and flowers.
Families of several victims joined the Elrod family at the vigil, admiring the benches as the sun went down.
Elrod said Makenna was loved by many, making friends everywhere she went. She said people continue to come up to her and tell her stories about Makenna that she hadn’t heard before.
“When she played softball, she would take an extra 30 minutes to say goodbye at the softball fields before we can leave,” Elrod said.
She was also loved by her teachers, one of whom was a close friend to the Elrods. Irma Garcia, who also died in the shooting, was shielding Makenna during the attack. Elrod herself is a teacher in Uvalde, at Dalton Elementary.
“I knew her and knew what an amazing teacher she was. And so I requested for her to be Makenna’s teacher that year, or this year, and Makenna had a wonderful year. And she was growing. And I mean, she really was having a great year and, and Miss Garcia was an amazing teacher. Amazing,” Elrod said. “And I know that she, that when she left this Earth, that she was being held by Miss Garcia, and she was trying to protect her.”
When people remember Makenna, Elrod wants them to remember her daughter’s bright smile and welcoming demeanor, as well as her faith.
They hope her spirit lives on through a butterfly garden near their home, as well as the memorials of her scattered throughout the city.
“I feel like we’re gonna keep Makenna’s memory alive because we’re gonna love big, like Makenna did,” Elrod said.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — The man accused of carrying out a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, on the Fourth of July pleaded not guilty to all charges on Wednesday.
The suspect, Robert Crimo III, is facing 117 charges for killing seven people and injuring more than 30 others.
Appearing in court Wednesday for his arraignment, Crimo sat handcuffed and masked in a Lake County Jail jumpsuit next to his three attorneys.
The 21-year-old is charged with 21 counts of first-degree murder (three counts for each victim) as well as 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm (for each person hit by a bullet, bullet fragment or shrapnel).
Speaking after the arraignment, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Reinhart told reporters if the suspect is convicted of murdering any two people, he will face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Under Illinois law, any sentence on the charge of murder is served in full.
Reinhart said the suspect’s defense did not demand a trial at the Wednesday hearing.
Refusing to comment on evidence, charging decisions or the status of the investigation, Reinhart praised law enforcement, the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office and victim specialists who provided counseling for those impacted by the shooting.
Attorneys agreed to return on Nov. 1 for a case management conference.
Five of the victims killed in the shooting died at the scene, one died at a hospital the same day and the seventh victim succumbed to his injuries at a hospital on July 5, according to police.
The suspect allegedly fired more than 70 shots from a perch on top of a building overlooking the Chicago suburb’s July 4 parade route, according to police.
The suspect planned the shooting for several weeks, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Crimo was dressed in women’s clothing, apparently to blend in with the crowds as he made his escape, according to police. A semi-automatic rifle was found at the scene after it fell out of the suspect’s bag while leaving the area, according to police.
Investigators said they found a second rifle, purchased legally, in the car the suspect was driving when he was arrested several hours later. The suspect also legally purchased three other weapons, including two pistols, which investigators seized from his father’s home.
Two troubling encounters with police did not surface when background checks were run on Crimo, a part of his application for a gun license.
Police had checked in on the suspect in April 2019 after he attempted suicide, but his parents assured police he was getting help from mental health professionals. The second encounter came when police were called to his home in September 2019 after a family member claimed Crimo was threatening to “kill everyone,” according to police records.
At the time, the Highland Park Police Department determined that the shooter posed a “clear and present danger,” according to police records.
This was just months before he passed four background checks as part of his application for a firearm owner identification card, at the age of 19.
Because he was under 21 at the time, his father sponsored his application and state police said there was an “insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application.”
State police said they had reviewed the suspect’s criminal history before approving his application and only found a January 2016 ordinance violation for being a minor in possession of tobacco.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — The man accused of carrying out a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, on the Fourth of July is set to appear in court Wednesday for his arraignment.
The suspect, Robert Crimo III, is facing 117 charges for killing seven people and injuring more than 30 others.
The 21-year-old is charged with 21 counts of first-degree murder (three counts for each victim) as well as 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm (for each person hit by a bullet, bullet fragment or shrapnel). The suspect has not entered a plea.
Five of the victims killed in the shooting died at the scene, one died at a hospital the same day and the seventh victim succumbed to his injuries at a hospital on July 5, according to police.
The suspect allegedly fired more than 70 shots from a perch on top of a building overlooking the Chicago suburb’s July 4 parade route, according to police.
The suspect planned the shooting for several weeks, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Crimo was dressed in women’s clothing, apparently to blend in with the crowds as he made his escape, according to police. A semi-automatic rifle was found at the scene after it fell out of the suspect’s bag while leaving the area, according to police.
Investigators said they found a second rifle, purchased legally, in the car the suspect was driving when he was arrested several hours later. The suspect also legally purchased three other weapons, including two pistols, which investigators seized from his father’s home.
Two troubling encounters with police did not surface when background checks were run on Crimo, a part of his application for a gun license.
Police had checked in on the suspect in April 2019 after he attempted suicide, but his parents assured police he was getting help from mental health professionals. The second encounter came when police were called to his home in September 2019 after a family member claimed Crimo was threatening to “kill everyone,” according to police records.
At the time, the Highland Park Police Department determined that the shooter posed a “clear and present danger,” according to police records.
This was just months before he passed four background checks as part of his application for a firearm owner identification card, at the age of 19.
Because he was under 21 at the time, his father sponsored his application and state police said there was an “insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application.”
State police said they had reviewed the suspect’s criminal history before approving his application and only found a January 2016 ordinance violation for being a minor in possession of tobacco.
(NEW YORK) — A repetitive meteorological event combined with the landscape in eastern Kentucky was a recipe bound for disaster, which led to dozens of deaths as a result of devastating flooding, scientists told ABC News.
A stubborn stationary front draped across the region for several days in a row, resulting in the formation of “training thunderstorms,” storms that repeatedly move over the same region in a short period of time. These types of storms typically drop very heavy rain that leads to flash flooding, with rainfall rates reaching 4 inches per hour at times across the complex terrain of the Appalachia.
This system is exactly what occurred in Kentucky last week, creating the “perfect meteorological setup” for catastrophic flooding, Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.
The front and the copious amounts of moisture that it contained allowed the storm “to really warm and move and develop in the same locations” over a short period of time, Shepherd said.
Rainfall estimates so far show that 14 to 16 inches fell during a five-day period, beginning on July 27.
Most of the rainfall fell the next day — with the excessive amounts of rain leading to major flooding along the rivers in eastern Kentucky, shattering records along the North Fork of the Kentucky River.
Preliminary stream data from the U.S. Geological Service shows that the flow at the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Jackson, Kentucky, reached a peak that was the highest observed there in 95 years, Robert Mason, extreme hydrologic events coordinator and Delaware River master for the USGS, told ABC News via email. In addition, flood flow at the North Fork of the Kentucky River at Whitesburg, Kentucky, reached the highest flow observed there in 47 years.
The topography and geology of the land in eastern Kentucky also played a significant role in exacerbating the effects of the heavy rainfall, the experts said.
The rainfall last week resulted in the biggest 24-hour event seen in the past 50 years of recording in Kentucky’s Robinson Forest, Chris Barton, a professor of water hydrology and forest management at the University of Kentucky, told ABC News.
The land is steep, rugged and “very dissected,” with the only flatland in the area located right at the floodplain, where the majority of the houses are because it is the only suitable flatline where people can build, Barton said. The onslaught of rushing water then flows quickly into those mountainous and valley communities.
The Robinson Forest, an old and established forest with no impervious surfaces, still could not handle the streams with multiple watersheds flowing onto the land as a result of the downpour of precipitation, Barton said. The geology of the area allows the water to move through the soil and into these ephemeral channels very quickly, which then results in a “really flashy” stream.
When Barton went to sleep the night the flooding began, he knew he would wake up to a disaster, he said. As of Monday, Robinson Forest was still a “complete mess,” with no electricity or solar power, he added.
Another contributing factor to the flooding is that the engineering infrastructure for stormwater removal for many cities and towns around the country was engineered for the rainstorms of the 1970s and 1960s and prior, Shepherd said. But storms are now raining “with much more vigor and intensity” than 50 years ago, he added.
Climate change is expected to increase annual flooding costs in the U.S. by 26% to $40.6 billion, a study published earlier this year in Nature found. The cost of the additional damage will be borne disproportionately by disadvantaged communities, the study found.
At least 37 people have been confirmed dead in Kentucky, the majority of whom likely lived in impoverished communities, Shepherd said, citing research conducted at the University of Georgia that found that communities of color and poor communities tend to be disproportionately living in some of the most flood-prone areas in the country, whether in cities or in mountainous terrain.
The region in eastern Kentucky where some of the worst flooding occurred has historically served as a mining community, Barton said.
While the history of mining on the land likely did not contribute to the severity of the flood, many of the people who were displaced or suffered loss of life likely worked, at some level, either at the mines or supporting the mining industry in the area, Barton said.
The number of victims killed in the flooding is expected to grow, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said on Tuesday, describing the event as the most “devastating and deadly” of his lifetime.
The flooding events are expected to increase at such a rate that what were once 1-in-100-year floods could soon be known as 1-in-30-year floods instead, Shepherd said.
“We have warned for decades now that as our climate warms, there’s more water vapor available to these storms,” Shepherd added.
(LOS ANGELES) — Jury selection in the trial of former UCLA Health physician James Heaps, who is accused of sexual abuse, began on Monday and is expected to take place the rest of the week.
Heaps faces 21 charges in an ongoing criminal case brought against him in a Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to court records. He has pleaded not guilty.
The trial is expected to last throughout September, the Los Angeles Superior Court told ABC News.
In February, the University of California announced it had reached an agreement to pay $243.6 million to 203 women, settling lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct by Heaps.
Last year, the university agreed to pay $73 million in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by seven women, on behalf of 5,500 women who were patients of the former UCLA gynecologist, court records show.
In a statement from 2019 following Heaps’ arrest, the school said it fired Heaps after sexual misconduct allegations emerged and removed him from clinical practice.
“Sexual abuse in any form is unacceptable and represents an inexcusable breach of the physician-patient relationship. We are deeply sorry that a former UCLA physician violated our policies and standards, our trust and the trust of his patients,” the school said at the time.
Heaps was an OB-GYN with ties to the school for more than three decades, the school said in its press release.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last year, two women accused Heaps of fondling and groping their breasts without gloves during what were supposed to be breast examinations.
The women also accused him of touching both of their genitals in a sexual manner during a purported vaginal examination, according to the lawsuit.
“The conduct alleged to have been committed by Heaps is reprehensible and contrary to the university’s values. We express our gratitude to the brave individuals who came forward, and hope this settlement is one step toward providing healing and closure for the plaintiffs involved,” UCLA told ABC News in a statement in February.
More than 500 lawsuits were filed against Heaps and the school, accusing UCLA of not protecting patients after it found out about the alleged abuse, according to ABC News Los Angeles station KABC-TV.
An attorney for Heaps, Leonard B. Levine, told The Washington Post in May that Heaps is “adamant” about his innocence.
“He’s looking forward to a jury trial where he believes he’ll be totally exonerated,” Levine told the newspaper.
(UVALDE, Texas) — ABC News pieced together what happened the day Salvador Ramos allegedly killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School, using maps, video evidence and information from law enforcement.
In the days immediately following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, city leaders were bombarded with requests for information from journalists covering the attack. More than a hundred submissions were sent to city hall and the police department under the state’s public information law, to request documents and video that could help make sense of a mass shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
But it wasn’t just members of the media who were seeking such records; the FBI was too, according to government emails newly obtained by ABC News.
In the wake of one of the deadliest school shootings in America’s history, the nation’s premier investigative agency used, among other means, the Texas Public Information Act to seek relevant information — the same method used by news reporters and TV producers.
The FBI would not comment on the record as to why it used a process geared toward public information requests as part of its official investigation. But state officials have noted that the aftermath of the shooting has been plagued by a lack of communication on the part of numerous agencies — much to the frustration of victims’ family members who still have unanswered questions about the attack.
Emails show the that the FBI ended up getting the information it was seeking — but not through the Public Information Act request.
The requests were made on May 26 and May 27 by personnel from the FBI’s field office in San Antonio, Texas, who submitted three separate public records requests with the city of Uvalde seeking, among other things, police reports associated with the shooter and any reports associated with the home where he was living with his grandmother, who he shot in the face before heading to Robb Elementary.
A law firm representing the city of Uvalde told the FBI that its requests should be directed to the Uvalde Police Department, rather than the city itself, and that public records requests from the FBI put the city in a “difficult legal position.”
“The state rules do not allow for an intergovernmental transfer of records with a federal agency,” a representative from the law firm Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech wrote to the FBI in an email.
“Additionally, the rules require that the requests from your agency be treated in the same manner as all other requestors,” the email said. “Unfortunately, compliance with the rules is counterproductive and does not make any sense in this situation. However, we cannot advise our client to ‘not follow the rules.'”
The law firm suggested that the Uvalde Police Department could provide the FBI with the records it requested without having to rely on the Texas Public Information Act.
“The provision of records would be under separate law that allows for cooperation with other agencies for law enforcement purposes,” the law firm said.
On June 16, the FBI emailed the law firm, saying, “We no longer need these records,” and withdrew its requests.
Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.
A spokesperson for the city of Uvalde told ABC News that “initially, the FBI’s request was treated like open records because of the sheer volume the city received,” which the spokesperson said included 244 open records requests related to the shooting.
“But the city inevitably cooperated with the FBI and made sure they had what they needed,” said the spokesperson.
The information was provided by the Uvalde Police Department, the spokesperson confirmed.
“The city has processed all open records requests in accordance with the laws that guide us,” said the spokesperson.
The emails obtained by ABC News, which themselves were obtained through a public records request, also included requests from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state’s top law-enforcement agency, that were made directly to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office for information related to the shooting and the suspect.
Similar to a request made by the City of Uvalde to the AG’s office, the Texas DPS initially asked that this information be withheld from the public. In an email to Paxton, DPS officials argued that the records needed to be kept confidential because the public “knowing the location where surveillance assets and Department employees focus during operations, knowing how many law enforcement personnel are participating and their response capabilities, will compromise law enforcement purposes by enabling criminals to anticipate weakness in law enforcement procedures.”
Meanwhile, DPS officials confirmed to ABC News that they received requests from the FBI relating to the case and shared evidence with them through intergovernmental transfers.
DPS officials also said recently that they had, themselves, shared some information with the public that had been requested though the Public Information Act.
“DPS has released some emails and text messages in response to specific public information requests,” a DPS spokesperson said, adding that the agency “is waiting for rulings” from the AG’s office on several requests.
“The first ruling should be issued sometime in the middle of August,” the spokesperson said. “The Texas Ranger investigation remains active and ongoing. We are also waiting for further instruction from the Uvalde County DA with regard to the release of additional information.”
The mystery and confusion surrounding the shooting cropped up almost immediately after the attack, as several law enforcement and elected officials shared misleading or contradictory information in the hours and days following the massacre.
“The fear of a coverup is palpable here, and while most see it as simply part of an intragovernmental ‘blame game,’ others have made wild accusations that authorities are sweeping some major scandal under the rug,” a Texas House of Representatives committee wrote in an extensive report on the shooting released two weeks ago.
“It does become harder to proclaim the truth when it is so opaque. Most fundamentally, there has been a loss of trust in government,” the report said.
In response to many media outlets’ requests for records and other information, the city of Uvalde has claimed that “any release of records” would “impede a thorough and complete investigation.” Several media outlets, including ABC News, are planning to mount a joint challenge to government agencies’ limited response to requests.
(WAYNE, N.J.) — A mother is speaking out after she claims her 2-year-old daughter was deliberately ignored by a Chuck E. Cheese employee on Saturday at the Route 23 location in Wayne, New Jersey.
The family was attending a birthday party at the Chuck E. Cheese location when the alleged incident took place.
In a video of the incident, which was posted Sunday on Twitter, a costumed Chuck E. Cheese character can be seen giving high fives to children while walking in front of a small stage.
The footage appears to show an eager Safa Powell jumping up and down and reaching out to high-five the character as well. However the employee in the footage appears to pass her without interacting, despite high-fiving three other children.
“There were a bunch of caucasian children … that were on stage that received a high-five. My Black child was the one to get ignored,” Safa’s mother Natyana Muhammad told New York City ABC affiliate WABC.
“When she turned around she just was excited to see him,” Muhammad continued. “She saw that he was giving all the other kids high-fives and she put her hand up, it was her turn, but he put his hand in and then down and then acted like he didn’t see her.”
Insistent on getting the character’s attention, Powell continued to hold her hand out waiting for the employee in the Chuck E. Cheese costume to acknowledge her, to no avail.
“That was my first time actually witnessing someone, you know, ignore her or make her feel like she’s invisible,” Muhammad said.
Chuck E. Cheese, a subsidiary of Apollo Management, shared a statement with WABC following the incident.
“Chuck E. Cheese is saddened when any family or child has a less than perfect experience,” the written statement read. “We want to thank the family who brought this to our attention at our Wayne, NJ location and for giving the onsite manager an opportunity to apologize and address their concerns in person. As home to millions of families and kids every year that celebrate the big and small milestones, including fun, our goal is to create an inclusive experience for children and parents of all ages, races, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, and learning differences.”
“Our mission is to provide a fun and a safe place Where A Kid Can Be A Kid, and all cast members are trained to ensure that we live up to this promise,” the statement added.
ABC News reached out to Chuck E. Cheese company officials for further comment.
Muhammad said she was displeased with the initial response to the incident.
“Gave the onsite manager an opportunity to apologize when she said ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,'” she said. “Was that the apology?”
The manager of the Wayne, New Jersey, Chuck E. Cheese declined to comment on the incident to ABC News.
This incident comes in the wake of a report from another family in July who said that their children, who are Black, were ignored by costumed employees at Sesame Place in Philadelphia.
The family in that incident joined other families in a class action suit against the theme park seeking $25 million and alleging racial discrimination. Sesame Place told ABC News in a statement at that time that the company was reviewing the lawsuit, “[looked] forward to addressing that claim through the established legal process” and was “committed to deliver an inclusive, equitable and entertaining experience for all our guests.”
Natyana Muhammad’s 2-year-old daughter is pictured posing with her arms crossed beside the Chuck E. Cheese character her mother says he ignored her.
After Muhammad brought Saturday’s incident to the company’s attention, she said onsite leaders offered to have the Chuck E. Cheese character pose for a picture with 2-year-old Safa. According to her mother, Safa’s “demeanor changed from … excited, happy, jumping, high-five, to — when it was time to take a picture — just standing beside him.”
In that picture, Safa can be seen standing next to Chuck E. Cheese with her arms crossed.
“I hugged her, told her that I loved her and that she never has to come beg for love because she is loved by many,” Muhammad said.
(NEW YORK) — The suspect involved in an unprovoked attack on a 59-year-old Asian woman in New York City on Sunday has been arrested and charged with a hate crime, police said.
The NYPD arrested Anthony Evans, 30, on Tuesday in Manhattan and charged him with assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon.
The woman was pulling a shopping cart behind her when a man, believed to be Evans, approached her and sliced her hand with a boxcutter on 42nd Street near Times Square before running off, police said.
The woman is so frightened by the attack that she won’t leave her home, she told ABC News New York station WABC, adding that the attack caused heavy bleeding.
Year-to-date, hate crimes in New York City are up 13.3%, according to crime data from the NYPD.
On Sunday, a 70-year-old Asian woman was attacked by four people in the lobby of a San Francisco housing complex, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
The woman said the four suspects began talking to her but did not understand her because of a language barrier, the SFPD told ABC News.
The four suspects, described by cops as juveniles, followed her into the building, attacked her, stole her belongings and left the scene, police told ABC News.
The woman exclusively told ABC News San Francisco station KGO that the alleged assailants came back, attacked her and stole her keys.
Arrests have not been made and an investigation is ongoing, SFPD said in a statement.
(BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn.) — A passenger sitting next to Duante Wright during his police-involved killing, has filed suit against the city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and ex-officer Kim Potter for the injuries and trauma she says was caused by the incident.
Alayna Albrecht-Payton, 21, is seeking at least $150,000 in damages in the April 11 confrontation that severely injured her and killed Wright immediately next to her, according to the lawsuit.
Albrecht-Payton, who had been dating Wright for a couple of weeks before the shooting, had testified in the trial against Potter in December 2021. In that trial, Potter claimed she mistook her firearm as a Taser and shot Wright, whose vehicle then accelerated and crashed into another SUV.
Since the trial, Potter has been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison and Brooklyn Center agreed to pay a $3.25 million settlement to Wright’s family.
Now, Albrecht-Payton is suing Brooklyn Center and Potter for the PTSD that she said she developed from witnessing Wright’s death and the severe injuries she sustained, including a broken jaw.
The lawsuit claims that Potter’s “negligent conduct” is the direct cause of Albrecht-Payton’s physical and emotional injuries, and that Brooklyn Center is liable for Potter’s actions as an officer of Brooklyn Center’s police department during the incident.
Albrecht-Payton’s attorney, Katie Bennett, told ABC News that her client is now seeking a lawsuit because she wants to hold the people involved accountable.
“Albrecht-Payton was a blameless witness to this horribly traumatic event,” Bennett said.
Bennett said that Albrecht-Payton required surgery after the incident for her broken jaw, had a concussion, punctured lips and was bleeding from her ears, and “not to mention the psychological and emotional injuries that have been life altering,” she added.
Jason M. Hiveley, who is representing Brooklyn Center and Potter, told ABC News that he is in the process of reviewing Albrecht-Payton’s medical records and evaluating their legal defenses.
The lawsuits states that Potter endangered Albrecht-Payton’s safety and that of a nearby fellow Brooklyn Center police officer when she shot Wright.
When Wright’s vehicle crashed into a nearby SUV after the shot, the lawsuit also alleges that Albrecht-Payton “bore the brunt” of the impact and despite her injuries “desperately” tried to save Wright as he “gasped for air.”
Instead of receiving help, responding officers held Albrecht-Payton at gunpoint and placed her in handcuffs, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that Albrecht-Payton was bleeding from the head and face when officers approached her, and she was brought to the emergency room, where she was “severely distraught” and couldn’t explain to emergency services what had happened.
After firing a shot at Wright, leading to the crash and further confrontation of Albrecht-Payton by other officers, Potter broke down on the curb and started “wailing” instead of giving aid to Wright or Albrecht-Payton, the lawsuit said.
“Potter worried only about the consequences to herself,” the lawsuit read. “She drew her fellow officers’ attention to herself and away from responding to the crisis she created. Officer [Anthony] Luckey patted her back as she lay face down on the grass, expressing her concern that she was ‘going to prison.'”
Five days after the incident, Albrecht-Payton underwent jaw surgery that left four screws in her jaw and wired her mouth shut for two weeks. She was only able to eat soft foods for another six weeks, the lawsuit said.
Her physical and emotional injuries prevented her from sleeping or eating regularly, leading her to become severely malnourished, according to the lawsuit.
She was hospitalized from April 26 – 29, with her medical records stating that “she was in an agitated delirium following her boyfriend being killed in front of her eyes,” according to the lawsuit.
In the months since, Albrecht-Payton has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder, the lawsuit said.
(NEW YORK) — Two more people have been killed by a massive fire raging through a Northern California national forest, officials said Tuesday.
The death toll from the McKinney Fire burning in the Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border now stands at four after search teams discovered two bodies Monday at separate residences on the perimeter of the blaze along Highway 96, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office.
The grim discovery comes after two people were found dead over the weekend in their car in a driveway in the town of Klamath River, according to the sheriff’s office. Officials believe they were trying to flee the fire when they were killed.
Search crews continued Tuesday going door to door searching for victims of the ferocious blaze.
Meanwhile, firefighters battling the enormous blaze in Northern California’s Klamath National Forest are simultaneously fighting another growing fire in the same drought-dry forest, officials said. The China2 Fire is burning about 60 miles away near the community of Happy Camp.
Both blazes in Siskiyou County were 0% contained Tuesday morning. The McKinney fire, near the small town of Yreka, grew by nearly 700 acres overnight to 56,165 acres, officials said.
Fanned by erratic winds, the China2 Fire ignited Friday, the same day as the McKinney Fire, and has been more of a slow burn compared the rapid pace of the larger blaze, according to Cal Fire’s latest incident reports. The China2 Fire has grown from roughly 300 acres on Saturday to nearly 2,000 acres by Tuesday.
Joel Brumm, a spokesperson for the Klamath National Forest, told ABC News that a federal team of firefighters is being moved from the McKinney Fire on Tuesday to help battle the China2 blaze.
“They’re trying to keep the fire from crossing Highway 96 at any point,” said Brumm. Highway 96 has been closed in the area since both fires started.
Brumm said the China2 Fire, started by a lightning strike, has merged with a smaller blaze called the Evans Fire. Yet another fire burning near the China2 Fire, called the Alex Fire, has charred about 140 acres.
While rainfall on Monday night and into Tuesday morning kept the McKinney Fire’s growth minimal, no rain was reported in the China2 Fire, Brumm said.
“They didn’t have that precipitation, so they were still seeing active burning last night, active flames,” he said.
Red Flag fire danger warnings have been issued for Tuesday in the area of the McKinney Fire due to possible thunderstorms, strong winds and lightning, according to Brumm, who described the McKinney Fire “as creeping and smoldering at this moment.”
“The moisture with the thunderstorms can be helpful, but you can get these winds up to 40 and 50 mph, which can catch an ember, bring it back to life and really cause this fire to move quickly,” he said.
The McKinney Fire is burning through a tinderbox of high dry grass, brush and timber and is now the largest wildland fire in the state this year, surpassing the Oak Fire in Mariposa County near Yosemite, according to Cal Fire. The Oak Fire, which started on July 22, was 76% contained on Tuesday after burning 19,244 acres and destroying 182 structures, including more than 100 homes, officials said.
About 3,000 residents, including some on the west side of Yreka, have been evacuated due to the McKinney Fire’s proximity to the town.
“Crews were able to work successfully behind the city of Yreka, bringing dozer line along the ridge to protect the structures,” Cal Fire said in its incident report released Tuesday morning.
Many of the homes and structures damaged or destroyed by the McKinney Fire were in the community of Klamath River, about 33 miles west of Yreka.
“It’s devastating,” Chief Janet Jones of the Klamath River Volunteer Fire Department, told ABC News. “We don’t have the resources that larger cities do. The people won’t be able to rebuild.”
ABC News’ Will Carr and Jenna Harrison contributed to this report.
