(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 919,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Feb 14, 8:00 am
Prince Charles’ wife Camilla tests positive
Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, has tested positive for COVID-19 less than one week after her husband tested positive for the virus.
Clarence House said she is self-isolating.
Feb 14, 7:37 am
Walmart drops mask requirement for vaccinated workers
Walmart employees in the U.S. who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be required to wear masks.
“Unvaccinated associates will be required to continue wearing masks until further notice,” company officials said in a memo obtained by ABC News.
Friday’s policy update was effective immediately for most employees, aside from those working in regions where state or local rules require retail staff to wear masks, the memo said. Associates working in clinical settings or with patients will also still be required to wear masks.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and advise of any changes,” the memo said.
The company, the largest private retail employer in the U.S., will also end its COVID-19 emergency leave policy for most employees at the end of March, the memo said.
(BROOKHAVEN, Miss.) — A white father and son are facing criminal charges after allegedly chasing and firing at D’Monterrio Gibson, a 24-year-old Black FedEx driver, who said he was targeted while delivering packages in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on the evening of Jan. 24.
According to affidavits obtained by ABC News, 35-year-old Brandon Case, the son, has been charged with purposely, knowingly and feloniously attempting to cause bodily injury to Gibson after allegedly shooting at his delivery van.
While Gregory Case, 57, is charged with purposely, knowingly and feloniously conspiring with his son to commit aggravated assault after allegedly chasing Gibson with his pickup truck and trying to block him from driving away.
Gregory Case’s attorney, Terrell Stubbs, and Brandon Case’s attorney, Dan Kitchens, did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment, but according to the Brookhaven Municipal Court, both attorneys entered not-guilty pleas on behalf of their clients.
Gibson was not injured, but his van and some packages were struck with several bullet holes, according to a police report obtained by ABC News dated Jan. 25. Gibson and his supervisor at FedEx filed the report.
Gibson described the experience as “traumatizing” in an interview with Good Morning America on Sunday.
Gibson said he was driving around trying to find the right address – and finally figured it out. He said once he left the package, Gregory Case tried to use his pickup truck to stop him from leaving the neighborhood.
“He tries to cut me off and like instantly, my instincts kicked in. I swerved by him,” he told GMA.
As he tried to drive away, Gibson said he saw Brandon Case in the middle of the road pointing a gun at his delivery van.
“When he got past him, the guy started shooting towards his vehicle. The back of his vehicle was hit several times,” Carlos Moore, Gibson’s attorney, told ABC News.
Moore said that Gibson called 911 later that night and was directed to the Brookhaven Police Department, where a dispatcher told him that there was a report of a “suspicious person” at the address where he was delivering the packages before he was allegedly chased and targeted by the Cases.
Gibson said that he was wearing his delivery uniform at the time and was driving a van rented by FedEx marked Hertz.
“In this instance, this man was working while Black, and they thought that was suspicious and they evidently, concertedly decided they would accost this man,” Moore said. “And when he would not stop, they intended to kill them.”
Police have not responded to ABC News’ requests for comment, but Brookhaven Mayor Joe C. Cox told ABC News that the Brookhaven Police Department, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and federal agencies “will continue to investigate this matter.”
Gibson said FedEx told him to return to the office that night but sent him out on the same route the very next day.
He said that he was on unpaid leave. While FedEx offered to pay for counseling, Gibson said he was not offered unpaid leave until the story became public.
“FedEx takes situations of this nature very seriously, and we are shocked by this criminal act against our team member, D’Monterrio Gibson,” FedEx said in a statement to ABC News. “The safety of our team members is our top priority, and we remain focused on his wellbeing. We continue to support Mr. Gibson, including compensation, as we cooperate with investigating authorities.”
Killings of 2 aspiring NYC rappers spark debate about a controversial rap genre
The Cases are now out on bail, but Gibson’s attorneys are calling for the charges to be “immediately upgraded” and for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.
“Black lives matter, and not only do they matter, but they matter as much as white lives,” Moore said.
Moore compared Gibson’s case to that of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old unarmed Black man who was murdered while out on a jog in Brunswick, Georgia, on Feb. 23, 2020.
Three White men — father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, who chased and murdered Arbery were sentenced to life in prison on Jan. 7.
They are awaiting trial on federal hate crime charges.
“It seems that this is another father-son duo that thought something was suspicious and took the law into their own hands,” Moore said.
ABC News’ Joanne Aran and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 919,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Feb 14, 8:00 am
Prince Charles’ wife Camilla tests positive
Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, has tested positive for COVID-19 less than one week after her husband tested positive for the virus.
Clarence House said she is self-isolating.
Feb 14, 7:37 am
Walmart drops mask requirement for vaccinated workers
Walmart employees in the U.S. who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be required to wear masks.
“Unvaccinated associates will be required to continue wearing masks until further notice,” company officials said in a memo obtained by ABC News.
Friday’s policy update was effective immediately for most employees, aside from those working in regions where state or local rules require retail staff to wear masks, the memo said. Associates working in clinical settings or with patients will also still be required to wear masks.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and advise of any changes,” the memo said.
The company, the largest private retail employer in the U.S., will also end its COVID-19 emergency leave policy for most employees at the end of March, the memo said.
(NEW YORK) — A Charlotte, North Carolina, city bus driver has died after being shot while at the wheel and on his route with passengers aboard in what police are investigating as a possible road rage incident, authorities said.
Ethan Rivera, 41, a driver for the Charlotte Area Transit System, died at a hospital Saturday night, a day after being shot while operating a bus in a busy area of uptown Charlotte, police said.
No arrests have been announced as of Sunday as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police homicide detectives combed through surveillance video and urged witnesses to come forward with information that could help identify the shooter.
Rivera was on his route about 9:30 p.m. Friday when he was shot while stopped at a red light, authorities said. Police sources told ABC affiliate WSOC-TV in Charlotte that investigators are looking into whether the shooting is linked to a road-rage altercation with a motorist.
Police officers found the bus veered off the road with the mortally wounded driver still in his seat.
Four passengers aboard the bus were not injured, police said.
Rivera’s co-workers told WSOC that the shooting has left them upset and fearful for their own lives.
“We worry every day. We worry and we pray that we make it home the same way we made it to work,” said one driver, who asked not to be identified.
Another city driver said of Rivera, “He was a good co-worker. I think he’s been in Charlotte less than two years, but every time you saw him, he was always smiling. Always smiling.”
The shooting came just two days after a school bus operator in Minneapolis was shot in the head while driving home three children. None of the children were injured and the driver is expected to survive, police said.
No arrests have been made in the Minneapolis shooting and police are investigating whether the driver was targeted or struck by a stray bullet, authorities said.
(NEW YORK) — A nonprofit organization is tackling growing attacks on the Jewish community in a splashy way – by installing bright pink billboards across the country that denounce antisemitism.
The New Jersey-based organization, JewBelong, launched the #EndJewHate campaign last June with billboards in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Las Vegas and now, Miami, after flyers blaming Jews for Covid-19 were found distributed in two South Florida cities last month.
With messages like “I promise to love being Jewish 10x more than anyone hates me for it,” “3,500 years of antisemitism doesn’t make it right,” and “Does your church need armed guards? ‘Cause our synagogue does,” the organization hopes to spread awareness of antisemitism around the country.
Archie Gottesman worked in branding and marketing for over 15 years before co-founding JewBelong. Now the self-proclaimed Co-Chief-Rebrander-of-Judaism is taking notes from her previous experience designing witty billboards to draw attention to antisemitism.
“Jews belong in the conversation. Hate is painful. Hate is scary. It’s painful. It doesn’t allow us to become who we are,” said Gottesman. “It just makes us feel less than like all of those terrible things about marginalized groups, which again, this country is trying to work on and should be working on.”
According to a 2020 Pew Research Center report, there are 5.8 million Jewish adults in the United States, accounting for 2.4% of the United States’ adult population.
“One of the reasons that JewBelong is doing the campaign is not everybody realizes this, Jews are only 2% of the population in the United States,” said Gottesman. “We’re so tiny that it’s like, we need some help in terms of being able to get the message out there.”
According to the NYPD Hate Crimes Dashboard, there were 198 confirmed hate crime incidents against Jewish people in 2021, up from a still-alarming 121 incidents in 2020. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism recorded 2,024 antisemitic incidents in their 2020 annual audit, making it the third-highest year on record since 1979.
Incidents like the recent hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, have prompted the Department of Homeland Security to address the “continuing threat of violence based upon racial or religious motivations, as well as threats against faith-based organizations.”
British national Malik Faisal Akram took a rabbi and other congregants at the Texas synagogue hostage on Jan. 15 for several hours before he was killed by police, authorities said. The incident prompted American Jewish organizations to offer solidarity and calls to action across the country.
Organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have since urged the confirmation of President Biden’s Special Envoy nominee Deborah Lipstadt, who called the rise in antisemitism “staggering” in her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Lipstadt, who is currently the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, previously served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
“Dr. Deborah Lipstadt’s confirmation as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism would send a powerful signal to governments around the world that the U.S. takes combating antisemitism seriously and calls on them to do the same,” the ADL stated on their website.
The Vice President of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, Oren Segal, told ABC News about the importance of taking this data seriously and recognizing antisemitism and hate.
“And I should note that in the fight against antisemitism, ADL’s mission recognizes that you have to stand up and combat all forms of hatred, right, that you know, where racism or misogyny and Islamophobia grow so does antisemitism, and vice versa,” Segal said.
“The other thing that is important is to, you know, have leaders, policymakers, elected officials, reject antisemitism wherever and whenever it arises,” he continued. “Right? So, one of the problems that we’re seeing today is the normalization of antisemitism. I would even argue inability to recognize it. And that’s why it’s really important that people speak out against that wherever it happens.”
Lipstadt declined ABC News’ request for comment.
JewBelong is focused on raising awareness with their campaign that has garnered appreciation from the Jewish community and allies alike.
“I think allyship is very, very important. And I think that we’re hearing a lot from that,” said Gottesman. “We’re hearing from people who are Jewish too, who feel like they are seen – people who say things like, I am so glad that I see those billboards up because it has been a really rough time right now and I’m glad to see someone is saying something.”
Gottesman told ABC News that a woman even traveled from miles away to see one of the billboards in New York.
“I’m going to come because I want to stand there and see the billboard. I saw it on social media, but I want to come and see it because it’s really important to me,” she says the woman told her. “And then she got back to us,” Gottesman added. “She said, ‘I did and I started to cry when I saw it because I really feel like it was so important to see.’”
Despite overwhelmingly positive reception, JewBelong has been on the receiving end of hateful messages, too according to screenshots of emails and social media comments that Gottesman shared with ABC News.“We’re getting people saying you know, Hitler should have finished you all off…” she said.
Nevertheless, JewBelong is determined to keep going. “The point is never to like, worry about the people who really hate you.” said Gottesman.
The group says people all over the country have reached to ask about getting a billboard in their cities and has plans to expand in the coming weeks, with one going up in downtown Toronto on February 28.
(NEW YORK) — The deaths of two young aspiring rappers last week have reinvigorated the debate about drill music, a popular subgenre of rap, and its connection to violence.
Jayquan McKenley, an 18-year-old aspiring rapper from the Bronx known as CHII WVTTZ, was shot and killed Sunday morning while leaving a recording studio in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
McKenley was shot in the chest, police said, and was transferred to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His death came days after 22-year-old Tahjay Dobson, who is known as rapper Tdott Woo, was shot and killed Tuesday in front of his home in the neighborhood of Canarsie hours after signing a record deal.
An NYPD spokesman told ABC News on Thursday that no arrests have been made in either case and the investigations are ongoing. Major crime in New York City is up 38.5% from January 2021 to January 2022, according to NYPD statistics.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who shared McKenley’s story during a press conference Thursday, addressed the problem of gun violence in the drill community and the proliferation of guns in the city while speaking to reporters Friday.
Adams said he is set to meet with “some very top known rappers” to form a coalition of hip-hop artists dedicated to tackling the problem.
“We’re going to sit down and really bring in the rappers and show how this is impacting and is causing loss of lives of young people like them,” Adams said, adding that he will share the names of the artists and details about the meeting soon.
What is drill music?
McKenley and Dobson were both part of the Brooklyn drill music scene – a hip-hop subgenre that started in Chicago and was popularized by Chicago rappers like Chief Keef, Lil Durk,·Fredo Santana, King Louie, G Herbo, Lil Bibby and Lil Reese.
Jabari Evans, a professor of race and media who studies subgenres of urban youth, at the University of South Carolina, told ABC News that the “well-defined sound” of drill music is what makes it unique, and the genre is sonically known for “chanty choruses, dark scents and kind of warring 808 [drum beats].”
But the violence described in the lyrics and the genre’s origins in Chicago gang culture are what make it controversial.
Erik Nielson, co-author of the 2019 book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America,” told ABC News that drill music’s “primary connection to violence is artistic and creative” and for drill artists, the music is “a way out of the the violent neighborhoods that they chronicle.”
According to Evans, drill rap emerged in the Southside of Chicago in the early 2010s as Chicago’s version of “gangster music” and was centered around “well-defined gang politics.”
“The meaning on the streets of Chicago was, if you were doing a ‘drill,’ that meant you were doing a crime,” he said.
But drill music “evolved” over the years, as it blew up around the world, Evans added, becoming popular in cities from NYC, to Los Angeles and countries like the United Kingdom and Uganda.
And despite the diversity of the lyrics and the artists, Evans said the genre still carries the same violent connotation in the media and for law enforcement.
‘His music was anything but hopeful’
Over the years, drill artists have been monitored and targeted by law enforcement, with some being banned from performing in their own hometowns. But artists have long argued that their music is a form of self-expression that chronicles the struggles of life on the streets.
Such was the case of McKenley, Mayor Adams said on Thursday, as he discussed problems in the city’s social services, criminal justice and school systems that leave young people vulnerable.
“There are thousands of Jayquans in our city right now,” Adams said. “Thousands of children experiencing homelessness and poverty, who need educational support, who are at high risk … we cannot let thousands of children lose their lives to violence and neglect.”
Adams said that once he learned about McKenley’s life, “a clear profile emerged of someone who needed help” because he struggled in school and at home. He was also arrested multiple times between 2018-2021, most recently for attempted murder.
Like other drill music artists, McKenley and Dobson built a following and released their music on social media.
McKenley’s Instagram account has more than 27,000 followers and Dobson has more than 94,000 followers.
“Like many young men, Jayquan was an aspiring rapper. ‘Aspiring’ is a word that means hope, but his music was anything but hopeful,” Adams said.
Asked if McKenley and Dobson’s killings could be related to gang violence, the police did not comment.
‘We can’t stereotype an entire group’
The Brooklyn drill music scene was brought into the mainstream by artists like Fivio Foreign and the late rapper Pop Smoke, who was one of the biggest stars to popularize Brooklyn drill before he was shot and killed on Feb. 19, 2020.
Hot 97’s DJ Drewski, whose legal name is Andrew Loffa, was an early supporter of Pop Smoke and the Brooklyn drill music scene. He said on Tuesday in a message posted to his Instagram Stories that while he will continue to play drill music, he will no longer play “diss/gang” music that is aimed at rival rappers.
“If ya dissing each other in the songs, don’t even send it to me!” he wrote. “We r losing too many young men and women to the streets!”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told Fox5NY earlier this week that there have been “a number of shootings in Brooklyn recently that are directly related to drill.”
“These drill rap videos are causing young people to lose their lives. It’s not that the music is the cause of the violence, but it’s fueling the desire to retaliate,” he said.
Fivio Foreign, who was friends with TDott Woo, defended the genre in an interview with TMZ Tuesday, saying, “It’s not the music that’s killing people, it’s the music that’s helping n—– from the hood get out the hood.”
But Perry Williams, McKenley’s father, criticized the impact of drill music scene in an interview with Fox5NY, saying his son faced intense competition as an aspiring rapper.
“Our hip-hop is no long hip-hop anymore, and now, if you’re not doing drill, you’re not going to get no play,” Williams said.
Evans said that while “drill has produced real violence,” artists have a right to self-expression and each artist has unique motivations.
“We can’t stereotype an entire group based on the genre of music that they’ve chosen to participate in,” he said.
There’s a longstanding tradition of artists feuding through their music in hip-hop and it’s possible that it “spills over into the streets or in real life,” Nielson said.
But he added that drill music has become “a convenient boogeyman” for law enforcement – “a lazy, misinformed narrative” that ignores the “systemic causes of violence in these neighborhoods.”
Evans echoed Nielson, saying that “it’s easy to make drill a scapegoat,” but “in reality, the situations, the spaces, places, and problems that existed in certain communities existed far before drill.”
In sharing McKenley’s story, Adams addressed those systemic problems, including homelessness and poverty that left the teenager vulnerable.
“To Jayquan’s mother and father, I want you to say I’m sorry,” a tearful Adams said.
He added, “I’m sorry that your son was passed over for so long and taken from you too soon. I’m sorry we betrayed him, and so many others like him.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The world’s biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns.
And while that “doom and gloom” is the typical discourse surrounding how climate change is affecting biodiversity, another interesting aspect of the warming temperatures is how different species have been adapting over the decades, as the warming progresses, experts say.
Species typically adapt in one of three ways, Morgan Tingley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles, told ABC News. They shift their distribution, change spaces or move from one place to another when the region gets too hot (either to a cooler region to higher altitudes). There are also shifts in phenology, or the seasonal timing of biological events, such as when deer are born or when birds return from migration. And finally, the species themselves change, either through evolution or natural selection, Tingley said.
How the species are changing is the least well-studied, but more and more research is emerging to pinpoint climate change’s role in adaption, Tingley said.
The loss of biodiversity is complex — and the most direct impact humans have on it is through habitat loss, rather than climate change, according to the experts. But as more research emerges, the role of climate change is being considered as well.
“Climate change is like this global killer,” Maria Paniw, an ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station, is a public research institute in Seville, Spain, told ABC News. “In effect, it often makes all the other risks that animals face much worse.”
Here are some unusual ways climate change is affecting nature:
Tuberculosis risks in meerkats increasing
Higher temperature extremes may increase the risk of outbreaks of tuberculosis in Kalahari meerkats by increasing physiological stress, as well as the movement of males between group, according to a study published in Nature Monday.
As the Kalahari Desert in South Africa continues to warm, the meerkats become more physically stressed and therefore cannot wake up early to forage for most of the year, Paniw said. The heat, combined with drought conditions from decreasing rainfall amounts, results in the decreasing availability of food as well.
That widespread physical stress can lead to endemic diseases such as tuberculosis to end up in outbreaks, exacerbated by the fact that meerkats are a social species that interact in groups.
“Because of the physical stress involved and less food availability, unhealthy conditions, these endemic diseases can turn more frequently into severe outbreaks in desolate miracle groups in this new get groups,” Paniw said.
Similar behavior has been seen in squirrels, which, when infected with a bacterial infection, can spread it “more widely” in warmer conditions, she added.
Rising ‘divorce’ rates among albatrosses
Albatross penguins, a monogamous species famous for mating for life, are seeing higher “divorce” rates as temperatures warm, a study published in the Royal Society Journal in November found.
The rate of Black-browed albatross pairs that split up and and found new mates rose to 8% during years of unusually warm water temperatures, researchers who studied more than 15,000 albatross pairs in the Falkland Islands over 15 years found.
The previous rate of divorce, 1% to 3%, typically involved female penguins finding a new mate as a result of an unsuccessful breeding season, scientists said. But during the years of atypical warmth, breakups rose even among couples that successfully reproduced.
The research is the “first evidence of a significant influence of the prevailing environmental conditions on the prevalence of divorce in a long-lived socially monogamous population,” the authors concluded.
The findings will also provide “critical insight” into the role of the environment on divorce in other socially monogamous avian and mammalian populations, the researchers said.
Polar bears are inbreeding due to melting sea ice
Polar bear populations were found to have up to a 10% loss in genetic diversity over a 20-year period as a result of inbreeding due to habitat fragmentation, a recent study published in Royal Society Journals in September found.
Scientists studied in Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago on the Barents Sea, and found that the inbreeding in which the inbreeding occurred correlated with a “rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice.”
Simo Maduna, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research and author of the study, described the results were “alarming” and “surprising” to ABC News.
The lack of genetic diversity could also eventually lead to the species’ inability to produce fertile offspring or withstand disease, Maduna said.
“With genetic diversity, when the population becomes so small, you’ll find that there will be a higher chance of closely related individuals mating and producing offspring,” he said. “But with that comes a risk in the sense that some of the traits … that are recessive, will now basically be unmasked in the population.”
When gray seals give birth is changing
Researchers who monitored gray seals in the U.K.’s Skomer Marine Conservation Zone for three decades found that climate change has caused older seal mothers to give birth to pups earlier. The observation that favors the hypothesis that climate affects phenology, or the timing of biological events, by altering the age profile of the population, a study published November in the Royal Society Journals found.
In 1992, when the researchers first began surveying grey seal populations, the midpoint of the pupping season was the first week of October. By 2004, the pupping season had advanced three weeks earlier, to mid-September, according to the study.
Warmer years were also associated with an older average age of mothers, the scientists found. Gray seals typically start breeding around 5 years old and can continue for several decades after. But the older the seals got, the earlier they gave birth.
The changes were not isolated to the U.K., as there have been observable changes in the timing of seal life throughout the Atlantic and the world, according to the study.
Amazonian birds are shrinking
Birds in undisturbed areas of the Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world, are experiencing physical changes to dryer, hotter climates, according to research published in Science Advances in November.
Scientists who studied four decades of data on Amazonian bird species found that 36 species have lost substantial weight, some as much as 2% of their body weight every decade since 1980. In addition, all of the species showed a decrease in average body weight.
“Faced with a changing environment, biological responses of species are limited to extinction, distribution shifts, and adaptation,” the authors said. “For birds in lowland Amazonia, population trends for a subset of the community are not encouraging.”
Birds are considered by scientists to be a sentinel species, which indicate the overall health of an ecosystem. The precipitation in the region declined as average temperature rose — all during the study period.
Tingley, who studies birds, said a general hypothesis surrounding this phenomenon is that animals must shrink as temperatures rise to become more “thermo-efficient” and regulating body heat.
“Because as things get warmer, it’s basically more sort of thermo-efficient to have a smaller body size because you can dissipate heat more effectively,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — In the five years since Utah passed the strictest legislation in the country on blood alcohol driving limits, there have been fewer traffic deaths overall in the state and lower driver alcohol involvement, a federal study found.
A law that lowered the state’s legal blood alcohol concentration limit to .05 from .08, the national standard, went into effect in 2018.
In a new study published Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compared data between 2016 — the last full year before the law was passed — and 2019 — the first year under the lower legal limit. It found that Utah had fewer traffic fatalities and fewer fatal crashes in 2019 despite drivers logging more miles.
There were 248 fatalities and 225 fatal crashes in 2019, compared to 281 fatalities and 259 fatal crashes in 2016, according to the report.
The fatality rate fell by 18.3% and the fatal crash rate decreased by 19.8% during that time, researchers found. In comparison, the rest of the United States saw a 5.9% and 5.6% decrease, respectively, during that time.
In the months following the laws’ passage and enactment, researchers also found a reduction in the rate of crashes involving alcohol at multiple BAC levels.
Additionally, the study noted survey data that found 22% of drinkers said they had changed their behaviors once the law went into effect, most commonly “ensuring transportation was available when drinking away from home.”
The passage of the law “had demonstrably positive impacts on highway safety in Utah,” the report stated. “The crash analyses highlighted reliable reductions in crash rates and alcohol involvement in crashes associated with the new law that were consistent with, or greater than, those observed or predicted by prior research.”
Utah is the first and only state to adopt the .05% BAC limit, based on recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board.
At the time, there were concerns about the law’s potential impact on the state’s economy. However, the law does not appear to have impacted tourism, researchers said, noting that alcohol sales and consumption “appeared to continue their increasing trends under the new law as did tourism and tax revenues.”
Arrests for driving under the influence also did not rise sharply after the law went into effect, researchers noted.
“Utah typically has one of the lowest rates of impaired driving fatalities in the nation, but this study shows that all states have room for improvement,” NTSB Deputy Administrator Steven Cliff said in a statement. “As our study shows, changing the law to .05% in Utah saved lives and motivated more drivers to take steps to avoid driving impaired.”
Cliff said he hopes the study will be a “useful tool” for other states considering adopting a lower BAC limit. Lawmakers in several states, including New York, California and Hawaii, have explored it, but all states except for Utah still use .08% as the legal limit. Forty-four states have increased penalties for drivers convicted at higher BACs, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.
Every day, 29 people in the U.S. die in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(NEW YORK) — The deaths of two young aspiring rappers last week have reinvigorated the debate about drill music, a popular subgenre of rap, and its connection to violence.
Jayquan McKenley, an 18-year-old aspiring rapper from the Bronx known as CHII WVTTZ, was shot and killed Sunday morning while leaving a recording studio in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
McKenley was shot in the chest, police said, and was transferred to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His death came days after 22-year-old Tahjay Dobson, who is known as rapper Tdott Woo, was shot and killed Tuesday in front of his home in the neighborhood of Canarsie hours after signing a record deal.
Rising Brooklyn rapper TDott Woo fatally shot as gun violence plagues hip-hop community
An NYPD spokesman told ABC News on Thursday that no arrests have been made in either case and the investigations are ongoing. Major crime in New York City is up 38.5% from January 2021 to January 2022, according to NYPD statistics.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who shared McKenley’s story during a press conference Thursday, addressed the problem of gun violence in the drill community and the proliferation of guns in the city while speaking to reporters Friday.
Adams said he is set to meet with “some very top known rappers” to form a coalition of hip-hop artists dedicated to tackling the problem.
“We’re going to sit down and really bring in the rappers and show how this is impacting and is causing loss of lives of young people like them,” Adams said, adding that he will share the names of the artists and details about the meeting soon.
What is drill music?
McKenley and Dobson were both part of the Brooklyn drill music scene – a hip-hop subgenre that started in Chicago and was popularized by Chicago rappers like Chief Keef, Lil Durk,·Fredo Santana, King Louie, G Herbo, Lil Bibby and Lil Reese.
Jabari Evans, a professor of race and media who studies subgenres of urban youth, at the University of South Carolina, told ABC News that the “well-defined sound” of drill music is what makes it unique, and the genre is sonically known for “chanty choruses, dark scents and kind of warring 808 [drum beats].”
But the violence described in the lyrics and the genre’s origins in Chicago gang culture are what make it controversial.
Erik Nielson, co-author of the 2019 book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America,” told ABC News that drill music’s “primary connection to violence is artistic and creative” and for drill artists, the music is “a way out of the the violent neighborhoods that they chronicle.”
According to Evans, drill rap emerged in the Southside of Chicago in the early 2010s as Chicago’s version of “gangster music” and was centered around “well-defined gang politics.”
“The meaning on the streets of Chicago was, if you were doing a ‘drill,’ that meant you were doing a crime,” he said.
But drill music “evolved” over the years, as it blew up around the world, Evans added, becoming popular in cities from NYC, to Los Angeles and countries like the United Kingdom and Uganda.
And despite the diversity of the lyrics and the artists, Evans said the genre still carries the same violent connotation in the media and for law enforcement.
‘His music was anything but hopeful’
Over the years, drill artists have been monitored and targeted by law enforcement, with some being banned from performing in their own hometowns. But artists have long argued that their music is a form of self-expression that chronicles the struggles of life on the streets.
Such was the case of McKenley, Mayor Adams said on Thursday, as he discussed problems in the city’s social services, criminal justice and school systems that leave young people vulnerable.
“There are thousands of Jayquans in our city right now,” Adams said. “Thousands of children experiencing homelessness and poverty, who need educational support, who are at high risk … we cannot let thousands of children lose their lives to violence and neglect.”
Adams said that once he learned about McKenley’s life, “a clear profile emerged of someone who needed help” because he struggled in school and at home. He was also arrested multiple times between 2018-2021, most recently for attempted murder.
Like other drill music artists, McKenley and Dobson built a following and released their music on social media.
McKenley’s Instagram account has more than 27,000 followers and Dobson has more than 94,000 followers.
“Like many young men, Jayquan was an aspiring rapper. ‘Aspiring’ is a word that means hope, but his music was anything but hopeful,” Adams said.
Asked if McKenley and Dobson’s killings could be related to gang violence, the police did not comment.
‘We can’t stereotype an entire group’
The Brooklyn drill music scene was brought into the mainstream by artists like Fivio Foreign and the late rapper Pop Smoke, who was one of the biggest stars to popularize Brooklyn drill before he was shot and killed on Feb. 19, 2020.
Hot 97’s DJ Drewski, whose legal name is Andrew Loffa, was an early supporter of Pop Smoke and the Brooklyn drill music scene. He said on Tuesday in a message posted to his Instagram Stories that while he will continue to play drill music, he will no longer play “diss/gang” music that is aimed at rival rappers.
“If ya dissing each other in the songs, don’t even send it to me!” he wrote. “We r losing too many young men and women to the streets!”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told Fox5NY earlier this week that there have been “a number of shootings in Brooklyn recently that are directly related to drill.”
“These drill rap videos are causing young people to lose their lives. It’s not that the music is the cause of the violence, but it’s fueling the desire to retaliate,” he said.
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Fivio Foreign, who was friends with TDott Woo, defended the genre in an interview with TMZ Tuesday, saying, “It’s not the music that’s killing people, it’s the music that’s helping n—– from the hood get out the hood.”
But Perry Williams, McKenley’s father, criticized the impact of drill music scene in an interview with Fox5NY, saying his son faced intense competition as an aspiring rapper.
“Our hip-hop is no long hip-hop anymore, and now, if you’re not doing drill, you’re not going to get no play,” Williams said.
Evans said that while “drill has produced real violence,” artists have a right to self-expression and each artist has unique motivations.
“We can’t stereotype an entire group based on the genre of music that they’ve chosen to participate in,” he said.
There’s a longstanding tradition of artists feuding through their music in hip-hop and it’s possible that it “spills over into the streets or in real life,” Nielson said.
But he added that drill music has become “a convenient boogeyman” for law enforcement – “a lazy, misinformed narrative” that ignores the “systemic causes of violence in these neighborhoods.”
Evans echoed Nielson, saying that “it’s easy to make drill a scapegoat,” but “in reality, the situations, the spaces, places, and problems that existed in certain communities existed far before drill.”
In sharing McKenley’s story, Adams addressed those systemic problems, including homelessness and poverty that left the teenager vulnerable.
“To Jayquan’s mother and father, I want you to say I’m sorry,” a tearful Adams said.
He added, “I’m sorry that your son was passed over for so long and taken from you too soon. I’m sorry we betrayed him, and so many others like him.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
(DETROIT) — When Bruce Miller was found fatally shot at his Michigan salvage yard in November 1999, it was Jerry Cassaday who pulled the trigger.
But the one pulling the strings on Cassaday was his online girlfriend and the self-professed woman of his dreams, the woman who had convinced him to travel 800 miles to kill a man he thought was an abusive husband: Sharee Miller.
A few months later, Cassaday would die by suicide, an event that would unravel the web of lies Miller created online. Miller said her relationships with men on the internet were like a “game” to her.
“It was like a video game and each man and each relationship was another level to me and each level was harder,” Miller told “20/20” in November 2021. “It was seeing how much I could get away with, how much I could make somebody believe.”
Sharee Miller was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection to her husband’s death in 2000. In her first television interview from prison, Miller told ABC’s Juju Chang that she’s ready to explain why she did it.
“If I could just say it was so I could get money it wouldn’t sound as bad as it really was,” said Miller. “Bruce was so close to knowing who I really was, what was really inside of me.”
Miller, who was then a mother of three in her 20s, met Bruce Miller while working at his scrapyard in Flint, Michigan. Four months later, on April 23, 1999, they eloped to a Las Vegas wedding chapel.
During her marriage to Bruce Miller, Sharee Miller said she regularly talked to men on AOL chat rooms.
“I didn’t get up from in front of that computer,” Sharee Miller said. “Bruce worked at the shop and he had his business. So he was gone a lot.”
In these chat rooms, she met Cassaday, a former homicide detective, who then worked at a casino in Reno, Nevada.
“I spent hours upon hours online. It’s sex. I wanted to be in control of everything, obsessively in control of that man,” said Miller.
At the time, Cassaday was in the midst of a divorce and was having deep financial problems, according to Detective Kevin Shanlian, who investigated the case at the time.
Miller and Cassaday’s online relationship soon turned physical and she traveled multiple times to meet him. Cassaday began to fall for Sharee Miller and he reportedly told his mother that she was the “woman of [his] dreams.”
However, Miller began to fabricate stories, and told Cassaday that her husband was involved in the mafia and was abusive. She also claimed that she was pregnant with Cassaday’s child and sent him pictures, including positive pregnancy tests and photos of her stomach.
“I just pushed my belly out. Jerry wanted to believe so bad that I believed that he’d see the pregnancy even though it wasn’t there,” said Miller. Later, she would tell Cassaday that her husband, Bruce Miller, had found out about her pregnancy and beat her, causing her to lose the baby.
“I think I wrote him in a chat. I didn’t tell him on the phone. He was devastated,” said Miller, who said she used makeup to send Cassaday a photo of her “bruised” stomach.
Not even a few months later, Miller told Cassaday that she was pregnant again, but this time with twins. Soon after the news, Cassaday received an email, purportedly from Bruce Miller, saying that he forced his wife to abort the twins.
That drove Cassaday to a breaking point.
“His babies, not only one but then two twins, had been killed by Bruce Miller. And that just enraged him — as it would any man,” said Shanlian.
Sharee Miller and Cassaday hatched a plan to kill her husband, she said. Cassaday would travel to Michigan and shoot Bruce Miller while he was at work at the salvage yard he owned.
“It was almost like a movie, that we were just playing a game,” said Miller. “But after I met [Jerry] at the truck stop … I knew this was going to happen.”
At that rest area, Sharee Miller handed Cassaday her cellphone and gave him final instructions for the murder.
On Nov. 8, 1999, Bruce Miller was shot in the neck and upper back in the office of his scrapyard.
“Afterwards … he called my landline and let it ring once and hung up. … That was his signal to tell me he was on his way back to Kansas City,” Sharee Miller said.
At the time, police believed John Hutchinson, who had worked for Bruce Miller and had recently borrowed $2,000, to be the main suspect in the case.
“I remember, like, me saying that John owed Bruce money, which he did, and that they had been arguing about it,” Sharee Miller said.
Police interrogated Hutchinson and also confronted him with their suspicion that he might be involved in a scheme to overcharge customers at Bruce Miller’s lot. Authorities suspected that this was a substantial enough motive for murder.
Hutchinson adamantly denied killing Bruce Miller and being involved in a scheme.
After the murder, Sharee Miller began to give Cassaday the cold shoulder and started to date other men. Cassaday began to question their relationship and Sharee Miller’s intentions.
Eight hundred miles away, in Odessa, Missouri, Cassaday died by suicide on Feb. 11, 2000.
Under his bed, family members discovered a black briefcase that contained a letter that explained that he had finally realized that Sharee Miller had been lying to him about Bruce Miller’s alleged behavior.
The briefcase also contained records of airline flights, hotel rooms, emails and chat messages between Cassaday and Sharee Miller that seemed to implicate her in the murder of Bruce Miller. The evidence was then turned over to the Genesee County Sheriff’s Department. There was enough evidence to implicate Sharee Miller and she was arrested.
“I felt like I could talk my way out of anything,” Sharee Miller said. “I still in my head felt like there’s no way they’re not going to believe me.”
Miller claimed that the emails found in Cassaday’s briefcase were forged, but the circumstantial evidence mounted against her. She was charged with second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Miller went on trial In 2000. Her defense used an expert witness to testify that it was possible to fake an email, but later the testimony crumbled under cross-examination because the expert could not explain how exactly Cassaday forged Sharee Miller’s emails.
“She used manipulation to get everything from a free lunch to someone to commit murder for her,” said Shanlian.
The jury deliberated for two days and delivered a guilty verdict on all charges. Miller was sentenced to life in prison. Miller said the weight of the situation hit her after the jury’s verdict.
“It’s over. People really know what I am, what I did, I’m going to prison,” said Miller.
Miller was granted an automatic appeal and nine years after her sentence an appellate judge determined that Cassaday’s suicide note shouldn’t have been used as evidence during the trial.
The judge ruled that Miller should be retried. Miller was free to post bond and leave prison.
“It was so much easier lying about it to myself,” said Miller. “It’s so much easier to look at yourself when you don’t have to look at yourself with the truth.”Prosecutors fought for three years to get Miller’s conviction reinstated. The hard work paid off when a court ruled that Cassaday’s suicide note was, in fact, admissible in court and that Miller would not be retried.
Miller was ordered back to prison.
Instead of filing another appeal, Miller said she was done lying. She sent a letter to the prosecutors confessing her guilt. She said in the letter that she didn’t want the Miller family and the Cassaday family to suffer anymore.
“There’s no way for me to change or undo what I did. It’s forever, and I can’t take it back,” said Miller. “I don’t feel that I deserve to live life and be happy when [Bruce and Jerry] don’t get that chance.”
Miller said she has chosen to publicly come forward with her story in an effort to find peace with herself.
“I still have a really hard time looking in the mirror knowing what I did,” said Miller. “I waited to tell the truth until I get nothing from it, but, hopefully, a sense of peace.”
