(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Attorney General Merrick Garland is in Buffalo, New York, on Wednesday to meet with the families of the 10 victims killed in last month’s mass shooting.
Garland will meet privately with families and survivors, visit the site of the massacre and hold a press conference.
Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of storming a Tops grocery store on May 14 and gunning down 10 people, all of whom were Black, in an alleged hate crime.
Charges against Gendron include 10 counts of first-degree murder and 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime. The teen is the first person in state history to be charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate. Gendron’s lawyers entered a plea of not guilty to all of the charges on his behalf.
Days after the massacre, Garland promised that the Justice Department would be “relentlessly investigating this as a hate crime and as a matter of racially-motivated violence extremism.”
“Confronting hate and preventing hate crimes is a moral obligation of every American if we want to continue to live in a Democracy,” he said.
The Buffalo massacre could inspire more racially motivated attacks in the coming months, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a new report released this week.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke have joined Garland for Wednesday’s trip.
(WASHINGTON) — In 2012, the Obama administration introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, protecting all eligible immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation.
“DACA gave me hope,” program recipient Eddie Ramirez told ABC News. “And the biggest thing [DACA] gave me was a Social Security number with employment authorization, which allowed me to work to make money to pay for my schooling.”
Ramirez was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and arrived in the U.S. in 1994 at just 1 and a half years old. Ten years ago, in 2012, he received DACA status, ultimately enabling him to pursue his aspirations of becoming a dentist.
DACA students such as Ramirez are ineligible for federal aid, certain scholarships and internships. Limitations placed on DACA recipients drive various corporations and institutions to deny qualified individuals educational and employment opportunities due to their status.
“Not all institutions are friendly toward DACA,” Ramirez said.
During his last year of dental school, the 2017 rescission of DACA went into effect, threatening Ramirez’s citizenship status.
“It was this anxiety of am I going to be able to be a dentist,” Ramirez said. “Am I going to be able to continue practicing dentistry, everything that I went to school for?”
Ramirez is now a practicing dentist in Hillsboro, Oregon, but the future of his reality, and the life he built for himself, hangs in the balance as legislators delay policy reform that impacts his stability.
As of this year, DACA has promised security to a total of 3,467,749 applicants, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Over the past 10 years, DACA has faced many legislative challenges. Congress’ latest response to the demands of DACA recipients was U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling last July outlawing the DACA program and closing the door on all new applicants. The Department of Justice’s appeal to that decision now makes its way to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, immigration reform is stalled in the Senate.
Hundreds of DACA recipients and supporters plan to rally as the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, calling on Congress to guarantee equal opportunity under DACA and the creation of a substantial pathway to citizenship.
One of those recipients is Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of immigrants’ rights advocacy organization United We Dream.
“What we’re seeking is permanent protection for us to be able to live without fear in our homes,” Rosas told ABC News. “To be able to drive to work without the fear of being separated from our families and be able to make plans for the future.”
Rosas met with Vice President Kamala Harris in January to stress the demands for permanent protection. She says that while “we felt heard and understood,” no action was taken to fortify a certain future for recipients.
Thousands of qualified students are vulnerable to deportation. Caught in the crossfire of the remnants of the previous administration, which Rosas described as “vehemently anti-immigrant,” and the efforts of the current administration, the realities of undocumented people remain in limbo.
Although DACA does not provide a pathway to citizenship, the last line of defense in the fight for protection is the anticipated American Dream and Promise Act. If signed into law, the bill is set to provide an official pathway to citizenship by granting permanent resident status for 10 years to qualifying undocumented immigrants.
Uncertainty for the future persists for thousands of families as they remain on standby for the outcome of oral arguments in Congress on July 6.
(EL MONTE, Calif.) — Two police officers have died after being shot in El Monte, California, Tuesday while responding to a possible stabbing at a motel, authorities said.
The El Monte Police Department said two officers “immediately took gunfire upon arrival” at the Siesta Inn.
The officers were taken to LAC-USC Medical Center, where they died of their injuries, ABC News Los Angeles station KABC-TV reported.
The suspect was also shot and died at the scene, according to KABC.
Neither the police officers nor the suspect have been identified, and additional details about the incident were not immediately available.
“There are no words to describe our grief and devastation by this senseless act as we learned about the passing of two of our police officers,” the city, police department and El Monte Police Officers Association said in a statement. “It weighs heavy on our hearts and we are sending our support to their families. We would also like to thank the El Monte community and our surrounding government agencies for the outpouring support we have received in the last few hours.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has taken over the investigation, the El Monte Police Department said.
(ATLANTA) — An armed man is in custody after officials say he threatened people inside a HomeGoods store in the Atlanta area.
The HomeGoods in Alpharetta, about 25 miles from Atlanta, was evacuated as were the neighboring businesses, authorities told reporters.
There were no reports of shots fired, the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety said.
“The manager came out of the office and she just told all of us to run,” one HomeGoods employee told ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB-TV.
Authorities said the suspect, who has not been identified, was located in the store and contained at 12:20 p.m. Police said negotiators tried to speak with him.
At 1:28 p.m., authorities announced that the suspect had been taken into custody.
(FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.) — Two wildfires are threatening communities near Flagstaff, Arizona, as the fire danger remains high due to dry, hot conditions.
The largest, the Pipeline Fire, has quickly swelled to over 20,100 acres since first reported on Sunday and is 0% contained. It is burning about 6 miles north of Flagstaff, with “critical” weather concerns due to warm and windy conditions, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
The Haywire Fire is also burning nearby, about 17 miles northeast of Flagstaff. It has grown to over 4,000 acres since first reported on Monday and merged with the smaller Double Fire and is also 0% contained.
On Monday, the Coconino County Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency due to the Pipeline and Haywire fires.
Several communities are under evacuation and parts of the Coconino National Forest are temporarily closed due to the fires.
High winds and remote terrain have challenged the fire response, though aerial operations were seen on Tuesday. Some 500 fire personnel are working on both fires, with aerial resources including six helicopters and one fixed-wing aircraft, state officials said Tuesday.
“We are priority for all our aircraft, at least in the region if not the nation,” Aaron Graeser, incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service, told reporters Monday.
The causes of both fires are under investigation. Fire officials suspect a lightning strike caused the Haywire Fire. A 57-year-old man was arrested by U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers for “federal natural resource violations” in connection with the Pipeline Fire, according to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office.
Federal court records show Matthew Riser was charged with building a prohibited fire, residing on national forest lands and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana).
Riser allegedly lit toilet paper on fire in the Coconino National Forest around noon on Saturday. The Pipeline Fire was reported the following day at around 10:30 a.m. in the area, according to a statement of probable cause. Riser reportedly told a law enforcement officer that he did not see the “no campfire” signs, but saw them when he drove out of the area, the probable cause stated.
His attorney told Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV there is no evidence that Riser started the fire. A detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
(RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif.) — The manager of a Northern California gas station was fired after he accidentally set the gas price to 69 cents a gallon.
John Szczecina, who served as the manager for a Shell gas station in Rancho Cordova, said he mistakenly placed the decimal in the wrong spot and that the price was supposed to be $6.99 a gallon.
“I put all three prices on there, except the diesel. The last one kind of didn’t go. So, I just took responsibility for it and said yeah, it’s my fault,” Szczecina told ABC News Fresno station KFSN.
The pricing error reportedly cost the gas station $16,000, as hundreds of drivers capitalized on the mistake and filled their tanks.
Szczecina told KFSN he’s worried the station owners will sue him for lost revenue, revealing that his family created a GoFundMe to help repay them.
According to auto club AAA, nationwide gas prices recently reached $5 a gallon for the first time.
Drivers in California are paying much higher prices for gas — an average of $6.43 per gallon — than the national average.
Gas prices have skyrocketed in the last few months, pinching the pockets of millions of Americans who are struggling to fill their tanks amid inflation costs.
More motorists are also poised to hit the road as the busy summer season gets
(WASHINGTON) — Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, can now be seen on U.S. quarters available for purchase.
Mankiller, an activist for Native American and women’s rights, is the third woman to have her face adorned upon a quarter as part of the American Women Quarters Program.
“Chief Mankiller was a true champion for tribal sovereignty, women’s rights, health care, education and building strong communities for the Cherokee people. Every Chief that has followed her looks to her as the standard by which their work should be measured,” Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told ABC News Tuesday.
The new coin design shows Mankiller with a “resolute gaze to the future,” the U.S. Mint said in announcing the design.
Mankiller looks to be wearing a traditional shawl, and to her left is the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation. The coin is inscribed with several phrases, including, “E Pluribus Unum,” “Wilma Mankiller,” “Principal Chief,” and “Cherokee Nation,” which is written in the Cherokee syllabary.
“Even years after her passing, Chief Mankiller is making an impact,” Hoskin said at a coin release event held by the Cherokee Nation and U.S. Mint last week.
“She’s not changing the world on this day simply because her likeness is being struck on the quarter. Her likeness is being struck on the quarter because she keeps changing the world for the better,” Hoskin added.
Mankiller served as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995. During her leadership, the nation’s population sprung from 68,000 to 170,000, according to a biography on her website.
The first woman to hold this title, Mankiller advocated throughout her tenure for improved healthcare, education and housing services. While she was principal chief, infant mortality declined and educational achievement rose across the nation, Cherokee Nation officials say.
“She was very driven on behalf of other people she was nurturing, she wanted to make people feel better. She was very approachable,” Ross Swimmer, the Cherokee Nation’s former principal chief, said at the release event.
Mankiller worked with the federal government while chief, working to pilot a self-government agreement for the Cherokee Nation through the Environmental Protection Agency. She guarded centuries of Cherokee traditions, customs and legal codes while managing a budget that reached $150 million by 1995, her website says.
“Wilma suffered from several serious illnesses and was almost killed in an auto accident, but she never complained. She would never say, ‘well, I just can’t do that today, I just don’t feel like it,’ or ‘no, I’m in pain,’ you would never hear that from her. She would go right on and get done what needed to be done,” Swimmer said at the event.
“I want to leave you with my mom’s last words. In 1995, the last time she took the podium as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, she said, ‘I did what I could,’” Felicia Olaya, her daughter, said in a speech at the release event.
In 1993, Mankiller was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
After Mankiller finished her term as principal chief, President Bill Clinton honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. In 2018, Mankiller was inducted into the National Native American Hall of Fame as one of the first female inductees.
“Chief Mankiller’s efforts to inspire our Cherokee people to work together at the grass roots level to build strong communities in the spirit of “Gaudgi” is alive and well. Our Cherokee people remain organized to this day working on their own solutions and for every challenge they are confronted with, not simply content to wait for any government to come to the rescue,’ Hoskin told ABC News.
Mankiller began her activism in 1969, when she began serving as director of Oakland’s Native American Youth Center, working to restore pride in Native heritage and reduce the downward spiral of Native youth who grew up in the streets.
In the late 1970s, Mankiller founded the Community Development Department for the Cherokee Nation, which focused on improving access to water and housing. A feature film was created around this work, entitled “The Cherokee Word for Water.”
“Chief Mankiller is still making an impact today, because now every time a little girl sees Wilma’s face on a quarter, and reads her story, she realizes she can do it too,” Hoskin said Tuesday.
Mankiller died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer.
The first coin of the American Women Quarters Program was released in January, with a quarter featuring poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
“These inspiring coin designs tell the stories of five extraordinary women whose contributions are indelibly etched in American culture,” Alison L. Doone, the Mint’s acting director, said in a statement last year. “Generations to come will look at coins bearing these designs and be reminded of what can be accomplished with vision, determination and a desire to improve opportunities for all.”
In March, Sally Ride, the first woman to travel to outer space, appeared on U.S. quarters.
Nine Otero-Warren, a leader in Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools, and Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood who left a legacy for women in the film industry, are both set to appear on U.S. quarters in the coming months.
(NEW YORK) — A Great Smoky Mountains bear has been euthanized after officials said it attacked a mother and her daughter while they were camping in the national park on Sunday.
A family of five was sleeping in their tent at the Elkmont Campground when the bear ripped into it at approximately 5:20 a.m.
The park said after an investigation and on site monitoring, wildlife biologists successfully captured the bear.
The black bear, was euthanized due to risk to human safety on Monday, the park said.
“The bear weighed approximately 350 pounds, which is not standard for this time of year, suggesting the bear had previous and likely consistent access to non-natural food sources,” Lisa McInnis, chief of resource management, said in the park’s statement. “In this incident, the bear was likely attracted to food smells throughout the area, including dog food at the involved campsite. It is very difficult to deter this learned behavior and, as in this case, the result can lead to an unacceptable risk to people.”
The park reports the family was inside the tent, with their dog, sleeping when the bear ripped through and entered the tent. Once inside, the bear scratched a three-year-old girl and her mother.
After several attempts, the father was able to scare the bear from the tent and campsite. The family left a note at the campground’s office before leaving the site to seek medical attention.
Both the three-year-old and her mother sustained superficial lacerations to their heads.
Once alerted to the incident at approximately 8:50 a.m., park staff monitored the site for bear activity and set traps in the area.
Park rangers closed the immediate area, interviewed the father and other campers and collected site information such as bear tracks and other identifying markers.
Reportedly, a male bear who matched the father’s description entered the area of the incident and exhibited “extreme food-conditioned behavior and lack of fear of humans, boldly entering the trap without weariness.”
Park officials said the bear’s behavior did not appear consistent with predatory behavior, but rather that of a food conditioned bear.
This is the second bear from the park to be euthanized because of its condition due to being fed human food this month.
According to park officials, human-bear conflicts peak in late May and June when natural foods such as berries are not yet available. As a result, bears are attracted to the smell of food in the park’s developed areas, including campgrounds and picnic areas.
The park encourages campers to take necessary precautions to properly store food while in bear country.
The park stated its staff would continue to track reports of bear activity in campgrounds and other more populated areas to notify the public regarding any site warnings or closures.
(WASHINGTON) — The first federal prison to experience a COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020 is now severely short-staffed, the Louisiana congressional delegation and members of the Bureau of Prison union say.
FCI Oakdale in Louisiana experienced a severe COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020, so bad the Justice Department inspector general was critical of the BOP for how it failed to separate inmates at the facility during the first weeks of the pandemic.
The Louisiana congressional delegation, led by Republican Sen. John Kennedy, wrote to the Bureau of Prisons to make sure it takes care of the staffing issues at the facility.
“FCC Oakdale faces unsustainably low staffing levels that is nearing crisis,” the congressional delegation writes. “These vacancies force FCC Oakdale to rely on mandatory overtime in order to meet the basic safety needs of the mission.”
They say they are concerned about the staffing levels and want to know what the Bureau is doing to address it.
“Staffing conditions at FCC Oakdale have understandably forced many veteran staff members to actively seek opportunities for promotion or transfer to other federal prison facilities and agencies or even retire.”
The Bureau of Prisons told ABC News it received and is reviewing the congressional letter. “We have no additional information to provide at this time,” the BOP said.
Federal prisons that are short-staffed are not a new problem, which is something the national BOP union has pointed out.
The local union president at FCC Oakdale tells ABC News FCC Oakdale was the first to experience a major outbreak of COVID-19 and staff worked overtime to provide coverage for the prison.
“During that time, as your aware, the staff worked an extreme amount of overtime to provide security coverage to the inmates at outside hospitals while receiving treatment for COVID,” Ronald Morris, AFGE Local 1007 President told ABC News. “This was a very hard mission staffing wise due to having inmates in the outside hospital, attempting to cover the post at the institution through augmentation and dealing with staff out due to COVID. Fast forward two years and it seems that the staff have not been able to recover. We are still short-staffed,” he said.
(PHILADELPHIA) — In an effort to curb shootings and make going to and from school less dangerous for students, Philadelphia officials announced they will spend $1.8 million on installing security cameras near city high schools and middle schools in high crime neighborhoods.
Standing outside the John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia, where a 17-year-old student was fatally shot in January after leaving campus, Mayor Jim Kenney and other city leaders said at a news conference Monday they hope the cameras will make criminals think twice about committing shootings around a school.
“We need to create a culture of if you’re going do something, somebody might be watching you,” city councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said.
Cameras that can be remotely monitored will be placed along routes students frequently take to and from Bartram and 18 other schools, officials said.
Craig Johnson, the deputy chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia, said the schools were chosen for the program based on information regarding shootings around those campuses. The cameras will be linked to the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, where Philadelphia police monitor crime from real-time feeds.
“We hate to think that we have to have this environment where we have to have this coverage, but it’s a simple reality that people in the neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia, they want us to do something,” Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke said at the press conference.
The move comes as shootings and murders in the City of Brotherly Love have climbed to record levels. Last year, Philadelphia set an all-time annual homicide record with 562 killings. As of Monday, the city has recorded 227 homicides this year, 18 fewer than this time in 2021, according to police department crime statistics.
More than 800 non-fatal shootings have occurred in the city this year as of Sunday, according to gun violence crisis data tracked by the city’s Office of the Controller. At least 95 young people 18 or younger have been shot in the city this year, according to the data.
Johnson said the need for the new security cameras is being prompted by the shootings of teenagers, many near their schools.
On May 17, a 16-year-old boy was shot seven times while sitting outside KIPP Philadelphia Charter School in the city’s Parkside neighborhood. Just seven days later, three students, ages 15 to 17, were shot and wounded after leaving the Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter in the city’s Tioga-Nicetown section.
In April, a 15-year-old boy was shot to death about a block from Tanner Duckrey School in North Central Philadelphia when a gunman fired at least 20 shots.
“Youth being shot or being murdered almost on a daily basis doesn’t even garner that much attention,” Johnson said. “It’s almost like it’s expected or normalized and that’s a really sad place to be.”
The announcement of the program comes less than a month after a teenager armed with an AR-15 rifle allegedly killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Clarke said he hopes the new cameras will also “create an environment where people feel a little more safe.”
“We need every child to be safe as they go to school, and come home later in the day,” Clarke said. “These cameras are a good start, and they’ll lend eyes to law enforcement officials working very hard to keep our kids safe from harm.”
