(NEW YORK) — Police have identified a person in connection with the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City on Sunday, according to police sources.
The person, who is still at large, is a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said. His name has not been released.
Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.
It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.
The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.
The motive for the shooting is still unknown.
Witnesses say the suspect was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.
Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.
(NEW YORK) — When the war in Ukraine broke out in February, Trevor Reed said he believed it meant he likely would never come home.
The American former Marine by that time had been imprisoned in Russia for nearly three years, held hostage after being convicted on trumped up charges. For 985 days, Reed was held in a series of Russian prisons, thrown in isolation cells as small as a closet for 23 hours a day, placed in a psychiatric ward and sent to a forced labor camp he described as looking and feeling like something “out of medieval times.”
But within two months, Reed was home in the United States, freed on April 27 as part of a prisoner swap agreed between the Biden administration and the Kremlin. Reed was freed in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot from Russia who was sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
Now back in America and with his family for the first time, Reed is trying to adjust to normal life.
“I’ve been hanging out with the family a lot, been trying to get used to being free again,” the former U.S. Marine told ABC News in one of his first interviews since being released. “That takes a little bit of time, that process. But I feel better every day.”
For more of the ABC News interview with Trevor Reed, watch the full interview on ABC News Live at 8:30 p.m. ET.
He said that when he was arrested in Moscow in the summer of 2019, he was a healthy 175-pound student majoring in international security studies. When he was released, he said his weight had dropped to 131 pounds, he was ill, coughing up blood and feared he had contracted tuberculosis.
“He looked terrible. He looked really thin and he had dark circles under his eyes, and he just didn’t look like the Trevor that left for Russia,” Reed’s mother, Paula Reed, told ABC News. “So, that was hard to see him looking that way.”
Long ordeal began with 2019 arrest
The 30-year-old Texas native’s ordeal started in 2019 when he was visiting his Russian girlfriend, a recent law graduate, in Moscow. Reed, who had been studying Russian, was coming to the end of his time in the country and attended a party with his girlfriend’s friends, where plied with vodka shots he became drunk.
On the drive home, Reed became unmanageable, according to his girlfriend, Alina Tsybulnik, and jumped out of the car. Unable to get him back in and fearing for his safety, Tsybulnik and her friends said they called the police to ask them to take Reed to a drunk tank to sober up.
Two police officers agreed and after taking Reed to the station told his girlfriend to come pick him up in the morning. Reed, who says the last thing he remembers was being in the park, said when he woke up in the lobby of the police station the next morning initially he was free to leave.
But as he waited for his girlfriend to arrive to pick him up, a shift change occurred and the police brass on the next shift decided to hold him. Then, he said, agents from Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service or FSB, arrived and interrogated him.
“I pretty much knew as soon as I saw FSB agents where this case was was headed,” said Reed.
“The main thing that they wanted to know was about my military service,” Reed added. “They didn’t ask me at all, not one question about if I had committed a crime, if I had done something wrong. They did not ask me anything related to that at all. They wanted to know about my military service primarily.”
After the agents’ arrival, the police abruptly accused Reed of assaulting the police officers who had taken him the night before, charging him with endangering their lives.
He was arrested on the spot.
‘Kangaroo court’
Reed was put on trial, in what he described as a “kangaroo court” and which the U.S. embassy denounced as absurd. At a hearing attended by ABC News, the two police officers Reed was alleged to have assaulted struggled to remember the incident and repeatedly contradicted themselves, at one point becoming so confused that the judge laughed at them.
Reed told ABC News that during an interrogation with the two officers, they admitted to him they had been ordered to make the false allegations against him.
“I asked, you know, one of those officers, I said, ‘Why are you guys doing this? Why did you write this, like, false, you know, accusation against me?’ And he looked around at the door to make sure that there was no one there, and he looked at the other police officer, and he said, “We didn’t want to write this. They told us to write this.'” Reed said.
Despite believing the trial was predetermined, Reed battled to prove his innocence, repeatedly appealing rulings. He accused Russian authorities of trying to pressure him into dropping his resistance, including, at one point, sending him to a psychiatric treatment facility to “scare me.”
“That was pretty terrible. You know, blood on the walls. There’s a hole in the floor for the toilet,” said Reed, adding that human feces were all over the floor of a cramped cell he shared with four other prisoners, who suffered from serious psychological conditions.
“I thought maybe they had sent me there to chemically disable me, to give me sedatives or whatever and make me unable to fight,” Reed said.
After over a year in a pre-trial detention center that he described as “extremely dirty” and infested with rats, in mid-2020 Reed was convicted and sentenced to nine years in a prison camp. He was transported to a prison in Mordovia, around 300 miles of Moscow, a former Gulag camp built just after World War II.
But there, Reed said he refused to work or kowtow to prison rules.
“Ethically, I thought that would be wrong to work for a government who was kidnapping Americans and using them as political hostages,” Reed said. “I couldn’t justify that with myself.”
As punishment, he said he was placed in solitary confinement for 15-day stretches at a time, sleeping in the cold cell at night on the floor, trying to stay warm by huddling next to a hot-water pipe.
“I mean, it was difficult, but I wasn’t going to let that change my actions,” Reed said.
Won prisoners’ respect
Reed said that even as the guards in the camp “hated him” for not complying with their orders to work, his resistance attracted the admiration of fellow prisoners.
“I was consistently fighting and resisting the government there,” he said. “The prisoners inside of the Russian prison, the criminal element there, they respected that.”
He said he survived by maintaining his battle for justice while at the same time refusing to allow himself to hope he would ever go home.
Watch the ABC News Live special “985 Days: The Trevor Reed Interview” on Monday, May 23, at 8:30 pm ET/9:30 pm PT
Meanwhile, Reed’s parents continued to battle for his freedom. His father, Joey Reed, flew to Russia, spending over a year alone there to be at his son’s court hearings and lobby U.S. diplomats in Moscow. Stateside, he and his wife and daughter mounted an intensive campaign of government leaders on both sides of the political aisle to take up his cause.
Joey and Paula Reed took their fight all the way to the White House, eventually obtaining a meeting with President Biden which they credit as being decisive in persuading his administration to finally make the trade.
“My parents and my girlfriend, Alina, did everything,” Trevor Reed said. “They gave up their whole lives to help me.”
Prisoner trade
Reed said on the day he was traded, he was loaded onto a plane by 20 FSB agents but told nothing of the destination. But as the plane headed south and he saw he was flying over water, Reed said he realized it must be the Black Sea and he must be headed for Turkey. The aging Russian government plane was so dilapidated though, Reed said, that he feared they might crash before they made it to any swap.
On the tarmac in Turkey, he walked past Yaroshenko, he said.
“I remember looking at him and he looked over at me. I think both of us probably had that same feeling, that same thought of like, ‘that’s what that guy looks like,'” Reed said.
Treated by doctors on the plane back, Reed said he struggled to shake a new found anxiety around flying.
“Mostly I was hoping that the plane did not crash at that moment before I saw my family,” he said.
Wages fight for other hostages
Reed said that when he initially landed in the United States, his parents were there to meet him, but he said he couldn’t hug or touch them until he underwent a full medical examination to ensure he did not have tuberculosis or any other communicable diseases.
Since being medically cleared, he said he has tried to adjust to normal life, even having to remember some English, after speaking Russian for the past three years.
But Reed said he cannot stop thinking about the other former Marine held hostage in Russia, Paul Whelan, who was left behind. Whelan, who was seized in 2018 while attending a wedding in Moscow, is held on espionage charges that the U.S. government says were also fabricated to take him as a bargaining chip. Whelan is in a prison camp also in Mordovia, sentenced to 16 years.
Russia had previously floated trading Whelan for Yaroshenko and other Russians held in the United States and at one time it had been thought Reed and Whelan might be traded as a pair.
“I had a really strong feeling of guilt that I was free and that Paul Whelan was still in prison. I thought when I found out that it was an exchange that was happening, that they had probably exchanged Paul Whelan, as well. And I expected him to be coming home with me. And he — he didn’t,” Reed said.
“I thought that that was wrong, that they got me out and not Paul,” Reed said, choking up. “I knew that as soon as I was able to, that I would fight for him to get out and that I would do everything I could to get him outta there.”
Reed said he also feared for the WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was seized on drugs smuggling charges in February after Russian authorities alleged they had found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The State Department has designated Griner as wrongfully detained.
Russia has also floated the idea of trading the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout for Whelan and Griner. Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States, convicted on narco-terrorism charges.
Reed said the United States should trade Bout without hesitation to free Whelan and Griner.
“I think that they need to do that. If that’s for Viktor Bout, I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s 100 Victor Bouts. They have to get our guys out,” Reed said.
“You’re getting two Americans who are going to have, you know, a huge amount of time left on their sentences for a guy who is getting out soon — who has already been in prison for 15 years,” he said.
He said if the freedom of the other American hostages means more prisoner exchanges, then the U.S. government shouldn’t balk at taking that path again.
When told that some have countered that prisoner exchanges only encourage countries to take more hostages, Reed scoffed at that notion.
“I would like to say that that’s completely inaccurate,” Reed said. “That’s not a concern at all because countries like Russia, China, Venezuela, Rwanda, Iran, Syria and places like that need absolutely no incentive to kidnap Americans.”
The U.S. Marshals Service shared this image of homicide suspect Kaitlin Armstrong. – U.S. Marshals Service
(AUSTIN, Texas) — A manhunt is underway for a Texas woman wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a professional cyclist who authorities say was once romantically linked to the suspect’s boyfriend.
Austin police issued a homicide warrant on Tuesday for Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, 35, in the killing of 25-year-old Anna Moriah Wilson, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Wilson was in Austin last week for a race when she was found bleeding and unconscious with multiple gunshot wounds at a friend’s home the night of May 11, police said. First responders performed life-saving measures, but she was pronounced dead. An autopsy determined the manner of death to be a homicide. Austin police said at the time that they had a person of interest in the incident and that the “shooting does not appear to be a random act.”
U.S. Marshals said they are currently seeking Armstrong, of Austin, who they said is a suspect in the fatal shooting.
“Members of the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force are actively conducting a fugitive investigation and pursuing leads on the whereabouts of Armstrong,” the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement Friday.
According to the affidavit in the warrant for Armstrong’s arrest on a first-degree murder charge, Wilson was visiting Austin from San Francisco for a cycling race when her friend came home and found Wilson alone lying on the bathroom floor covered in blood. Armstrong’s 2012 Jeep Cherokee was captured on surveillance footage from a neighboring residence stopping outside the residence the night of the homicide, according to the affidavit.
Earlier that evening, Wilson had met with Colin Strickland, an Austin professional cyclist, to go swimming, the friend told police, the affidavit stated.
When interviewed by police on May 12, Strickland, 35, confirmed that he had gone swimming with Wilson, according to the affidavit. Strickland told police that he and Armstrong live together and have been dating for about three years, the affidavit stated. During a brief break in their relationship in October 2021, he had a “romantic relationship” with Wilson, before resuming dating Armstrong, according to the affidavit.
Since then, Strickland told police he has had to change Wilson’s name in his phone and delete text messages “to prevent Armstrong from finding them,” the affidavit stated. Text messages from the night Wilson was killed showed that Strickland lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts “to hide he was with Wilson throughout the evening,” the affidavit stated.
A friend of Wilson’s who wanted to remain anonymous told police that Wilson and Strickland had an “on-again, off-again” relationship, according to the affidavit. Another anonymous caller said Armstrong had discovered in January that Strickland and Wilson were having a romantic relationship, at which point Armstrong “became furious and was shaking in anger,” the affidavit stated. “Armstrong told the caller Armstrong was so angry Armstrong wanted to kill Wilson,” the affidavit stated.
When police interviewed Armstrong on May 12, she was “confronted with video evidence of her vehicle” but “she had no explanation as to why it was in the area and did not make any denials surrounding the statements,” the affidavit stated. After further questioning Armstrong requested to leave, according to the affidavit.
Armstrong has since deleted her social media accounts and “has not been seen or heard from since this time,” according to the affidavit. Strickland told police he last saw her on May 13, the affidavit stated.
Two firearms that Strickland told police he had bought for himself and Armstrong were recovered at his and Armstrong’s home in the wake of the shooting, according to the affidavit. Based on the shell casings found at the scene, the potential that one of the guns was involved in the homicide “is significant,” the affidavit stated.
In a statement to ABC News Austin affiliate KVUE, Strickland said he has “cooperated fully with investigators” and expressed “torture about my proximity to this horrible crime.”
He said he had a “brief romantic relationship” with Wilson from late October-early November 2021, and that shortly after he “reconciled and resumed” his relationship with Armstrong while keeping a “platonic and professional” relationship with Wilson.
Wilson’s death shocked the cycling community. The athlete had won several gravel and mountain bike races in the past two seasons and had recently quit her job to focus on racing, according to VeloNews, who interviewed Wilson days before she was set to compete in the 157-mile Gravel Locos in Hico, Texas on May 14.
Wilson, known as “Mo” to friends and family, is survived by her parents and brother. Her family said in a statement to ABC News that they are “devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter and sister.”
“There are no words that can express the pain and suffering we are experiencing due to this senseless, tragic loss. Moriah was a talented, kind, and caring young woman,” her family said. “Her life was taken from her before she had the opportunity to achieve everything she dreamed of. Our family, and all those who loved her, will forever miss her.”
Her family also wished to clarify that at the time of her death, Wilson was not involved with anyone romantically.
Wilson’s family hopes to establish a foundation in her memory to “share Moriah’s life story and legacy to inspire and enrich the lives of others.”
“With her visibility and presence in the cycling world, she wanted to empower young women athletes, encourage people of all walks of life to find joy and meaning through sport and community, and inspire all to chase their dreams,” they said.
ABC News’ Lisa Sivertsen contributed to this report.
(GOSHEN, Ind.) — Two people are dead and three injured after what appears to have been a targeted shooting at a home in northern Indiana, police said.
The incident occurred Saturday around 3:20 p.m., when an emergency call reported that five people had been “severely injured” in a shooting, the Goshen Police Department said on Facebook.
One man was pronounced dead at the scene, while a second man died after transported to a hospital in Goshen, police said.
Three additional shooting victims have been transported to area hospitals. Two women were airlifted to a trauma hospital in Fort Wayne, while a third woman was taken to a trauma hospital in South Bend, police said.
“Although the investigation is on-going, preliminary information indicates that the shooting was targeted, not gang related, and there does not appear to be any further threat of danger to the community at this time,” the Goshen Police Department said.
The Elkhart County Homicide Unit is leading the investigation into the shooting, police said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — New York City Police officers are searching for a gunman after a subway passenger was shot and killed in what investigators describe as an unprovoked attack.
The suspect was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound Q train as it crossed over the Manhattan Bridge around 11:45 a.m. Sunday when he pulled out a gun and “without provocation” fired it at a 48-year-old passenger at close range, striking him in the chest, witnesses told investigators, NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey announced at a press conference.
When the train pulled into the Canal Street station — the first Manhattan stop on the Q line — the suspect fled, Corey said, describing him as dark-skinned with a beard and “heavy-set” and last seen wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt, gray sweatpants and white sneakers. He is still at large.
Emergency responders attended to the victim at the scene, Corey said. He was transported to Bellevue Hospital, where he later died. His identity has not yet been released.
No others were injured in the shooting, Corey said.
Preliminary information suggests there was no prior contact between the victim and suspect, Corey said.
Witnesses who may have photos or video of that altercation are asked to share them with investigators.
Sunday marks the second New York City subway shooting in recent months.
On April 12, 10 people on board the N train were shot as it approached the 36th Street station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. The alleged gunman, Frank James, is being held without bail on charges of carrying out a terror attack against a mass transit system and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.
Corey said Sunday that the NYPD is committed to protecting the city’s mass transit system and will continue to place officers at stations and aboard trains on patrol.
“We put a lot of additional officers down into the subway system,” he said. “We continue to do that to patrol this very extensive transit system that we have.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Matt Foster contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Stop AAPI Hate has become a leading force in tracking and addressing the rise in anti-Asian attacks in communities across the country.
The leaders behind this group are taking to the California legislature to turn this community-driven effort into legislation with its No Place for Hate policy initiative.
Unlike other legislative proposals, the group and legislators they’re working with are not focusing on new criminal laws, but rather public health and research initiatives. The idea is to work on community building and other initiatives rather than putting more people in jail.
“Anti-Asian racism exists — it’s systemic, and it’s pervasive, and it’s sinister,” said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate. “Members of our communities don’t feel free to walk on the sidewalks, to take public transit, to go grocery shopping.”
Between March 2020 and December 31, 2021, Stop AAPI Hate has recorded more than 10,000 reports of hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) persons across the U.S. This is markedly higher than the number of reported hate crimes, which advocates say are undercounted.
Several tragedies including a Dallas salon shooting that targeted three Korean women, and the mass shooting that left eight people dead at three Atlanta-based Asian-owned or operated spas in 2021 have highlighted the growing, deadly nature behind anti-Asian hate.
This kind of hate has particularly impacted Asian American communities in California. In San Francisco, for example, anti-Asian hate crimes saw an astonishing 567% from 2020 to 2021, according to Mayor London Breed.
“One of the things that we believe in fundamentally is that we all deserve to feel safe and to move about freely without being targets of hate and harassment,” Choi said.
The No Place for Hate initiative includes three bills that target the kinds of places where these hate incidents are happening frequently: AB 2549 which declares street harassment a public health problem; SB 1161, aiming to protect the safety and welfare of public transit passengers; and AB 2448 to end harassment in businesses.
The Ending Street Harassment Bill, AB 2549, declares street harassment a public health issue, and will fund research and programs to prevent common forms of harassment.
“If you think about what it means for women and the AAPI community and others to be going down the street, there’s no recourse to be able to share that you’ve been verbally assaulted,” Assemblymember Mia Bonta told ABC News.
Bonta and Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, who helped author the bill, say a public health approach allows for solutions to focus on education and building community, rather than putting more people into the criminal justice system.
“There have been many Asian American community organizations that have expressed concerns about focusing on criminal laws as tools to address the issue of hate crimes,” Muratsuchi told ABC News. “That’s why we’re taking this innovative public health approach.”
The Increasing Safety for Public Transit Riders Bill, SB 1161, will require transit agencies to gather data on ridership and rider safety. That data would then be used to implement solutions that could address the harassment and assaults that people have experienced while using public transit.
State Sen. Dave Min, the author of the bill, told ABC News that a lot of women from all backgrounds have been reporting that they feel unsafe or have been repeatedly harassed while using public transit.
“They’ve had to change their routes to avoid being stalked or harassed or followed, so this is a chronic problem,” Min said.
He said the legislation doesn’t direct transit officials to take any specific kind of action, but looks toward the collected data to propose the best solutions: “Should we have more security at certain places? Should there be training for transit operators on what to do in the event that someone reports harassment to them?”
The Expanding Civil Rights Protections at Businesses Bill, AB 2448, would direct businesses to develop and implement protections against discrimination and harassment for customers.
These bills are currently being reviewed and debated by their respective committees.
“It’s important for us to do more than just put out slogans and develop hashtags,” said Bonta. “It’s incredibly important for us to develop viable solutions that have the weight of impact and an opportunity to change people’s everyday experience.”
They say these bills don’t just solve the anti-AAPI hate issue, but reach further to offer solutions to the same issues many marginalized people from different backgrounds have also been experiencing.
Choi calls it “cross-solidarity, community-building work.”
“Everyone including women of color, people with disabilities, the young, the elderly, the LGBTQI community — we want to be able to walk to the park, to take public transit, shop, care for our families, and live our lives without being harassed and so our bills really speak to that,” Choi said.
The organization hopes it will set an example for states across the country that are grappling with anti-Asian hate, though several cities have begun to make strides in these efforts.
“At the end of the day, what we what we firmly believe is that it’s not one piece of legislation, it’s not one intervention — we need to take a whole of society approach to addressing all these forms of harm,” Choi said.
(GOSHEN, Ind.) — “Multiple people” were injured in a shooting in northern Indiana Saturday, police said.
The victims were transported to area hospitals and their conditions are unknown at this time, the Goshen Police Department said on Facebook.
“Based off of information that officers have obtained, it is not believed there is any danger to the public related to this incident,” the department said.
The shooting occurred on the south side of Goshen Saturday afternoon, police said. No additional information was provided.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(GAYLORD, Mich.) — Two people are dead, multiple people were injured and “heavy damage” reported after a destructive tornado tore through northern Michigan Friday afternoon, authorities said.
The National Weather Service said the tornado has been given a preliminary rating of EF-3. Peak winds were estimated to be up to 140 mph.
6,500 homes are without power in Gaylord with some also without power in the surrounding area, Lt. Derrick Carroll, PIO with the Michigan State Police, said at a press conference Saturday.
“The area is not safe we are in the process of stabilizing it,” Carroll said, urging those affected to stay at home and shelter in place.
In addition to the two dead, 44 are injured and one person is still unaccounted for after a tornado hit the Gaylord, Michigan area. The two people who died were in their 70s and both lived in a mobile home park, Carroll said.
The tornado touched down on Friday at 3:48 p.m., near Nottingham Forest, a mobile home park, and continued along the M-32 Highway through the Gaylord business area, causing “extensive damage” to other commercial and residential structures in the tornado’s path, Carroll said.
Otsego County Fire Chief Chris Martin added that about 95% of the mobile home park has been destroyed, with “trailers picked up and turned over on top of each other.”
The tornado warning code red alert sent out gave people in the Gaylord area about 10 minutes to prepare, John Boris, Science and Operations Officer with the National Weather Service, said.
Data collected by the NWS suggests that the tornado was on the ground for 26 minutes, with the storm moving at about 55 mph. It moved east through Gaylord before hading north, according to Boris.
As of Friday, the injured were being treated at four separate hospitals. 23 patients have been admitted at Otsego Memorial Hospital, 12 patients at Grayling Hospital, eight patients at McLaren Northern Michigan Petoskey, and one patient Munson Medical Center Traverse City.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a declaration of emergency for Otsego County on Friday night.
“Michiganders are tough. We are resilient. We will do what it takes to rebuild. There’s no challenge we can’t get through together,” she said on Twitter.
Michigan State Police for the Seventh District confirmed that a tornado touched down in Otsego County.
“Trees and power lines blocking roadways. Multiple homes and businesses damaged,” the agency said on Twitter. “Avoid the Gaylord area. Emergency crews are responding.”
Images from the scene showed leveled buildings, damaged roofs on businesses, downed trees and cars flipped over.
“My heart goes out to the families and small businesses impacted by the tornado and severe weather in Gaylord,” Whitmer said on Twitter. “To the entire Gaylord community — Michigan is with you. We will do what it takes to rebuild.”
William Gretsky and Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) — Nine people were shot, including one fatally, during a party in Southern California late Friday night, police said.
Police officers responded to a shooting at a business in the city of Highland, east of Los Angeles, shortly before midnight Friday, the San Bernardino Police Department said.
“Upon arrival, officers encountered a large crowd and learned that they were in the area attending a party,” Sgt. Equino Thomas, a department spokesperson, said in a statement.
One shooting victim was found outside the business, which was located in a shopping center, and pronounced dead at the scene, Thomas said. No further information on the victim was released.
Eight additional shooting victims have since been confirmed, Thomas said. Most of the victims brought themselves to local hospitals and were treated for what appear to be non-life-threatening injuries.
The motive and suspect in the shooting are under investigation, police said.
“Based on the preliminary investigation, it does not appear that the victims were intentionally targeted and that this may have stemmed from a conflict in a crowded room that spilled out into the parking lot of the business,” Thomas said.
Footage from the scene overnight showed a large police presence outside the strip mall and at a gas station across the street.
A witness told ABC Los Angeles station KABC that shots were also fired from a car at the gas station.
(NEW YORK) — Just one week ago, an 18-year-old suspect allegedly gunned down 10 Black people at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in what authorities called a “racially motivated hate crime.”
A day later, a shooting at a Southern California church would leave one person dead, five others injured. The suspect, a 68-year-old man, was motivated by the political tension between China and Taiwan, the Orange County Sheriff’s office said this week.
In both cases, the FBI is said to be investigating the shootings for possible hate crimes.
But aside from those high-profile deadly shootings, a recent spate of violence has occurred at gatherings typically known to bring joy and celebration to children and parents alike — graduations.
There have been at least three shootings this week at graduation ceremonies across multiple states, none appearing to be at random.
An 18-year-old identified as Hasani Brewer was killed and a 17-year-old injured in a shooting Wednesday night as a crowd was leaving a Riverdale high school graduation ceremony being hosted on the Middle Tennessee State University campus.
Murfreesboro Police said the shooting stemmed from an altercation between Brewer and the teen near the on-campus arena when another 17-year-old opened fire. The alleged teen shooter was taken into custody Thursday and arraigned in juvenile court on a first-degree murder charge, according to police.
In Louisiana, chaos ensued Thursday night when shots rang out as family and friends were leaving the University Center at Southeastern Louisiana University’s campus after a Hammond high school graduation ceremony.
Hammond Police said three bystanders were shot after an argument turned into gunfire and another person was injured attempting to flee the scene. All the injuries were considered to be non-life threatening, according to police. No students were believed to be involved or among the injured.
“The sad thing is that people bring guns to events like this when it should be a joyous moment for people that have spent the last twelve years of their life, come to a graduation and all of a sudden we end up in a situation like this,” Hammond Police Chief Edwin Bergeron Jr. said during a press conference.
“[I’m] in disbelief that something like this could be happening at such a joyous occasion for these, you know, there was 280-something kids graduating,” Penny Lapre told ABC affiliate WBRZ-TV. “It was mass chaos,” Lapre said.
20-year-old Trent Thomas was arrested in connection to the shooting and faces three counts of attempted second-degree murder, possession of a firearm in a gun-free campus, and obstruction of justice, according to Southeastern Louisiana University Police Chief Michael Beckner.
And in Michigan, two people were injured Thursday when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a high school campus hosting a graduation ceremony on its football field with 400 people in attendance.
The Kent County Sheriff’s Office said a gun battle between two vehicles occurred in the parking lot following the end of a graduation for Crossroads Alternative High School students at East Kentwood High School. A 16-year-old male from Texas suffered a wrist wound and has since been released from the hospital. The vehicles involved had fled the parking lot. A 40-year-old Grand Rapids woman suffered wrist and abdomen injuries and remained hospitalized in critical, but stable condition, authorities said. The vehicles involved had fled the parking lot.
On Friday, the sheriff’s office said they had located the two vehicles involved, a white Hyundai sedan and a white Mercedes-Benz sedan. The Hyundai was found abandoned and still running behind a business in Grand Rapids. The car had bullet holes in it and was reported stolen from the city of Kentwood.
Later that day, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office announced they had detained five people in connection with the shooting following a traffic stop in Livonia, Michigan.
“It is believed that two of the individuals detained were involved with the shooting incident at East Kentwood. There is possibly a third individual as well, but we are awaiting further investigation by detectives on scene,” a statement said. Multiple guns were recovered.
The series of shootings at graduations adds to an ongoing alarming trend of gun violence in the United States. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 1,247 teens ages 12 to 17 were killed in 2021, and 3,381 others were injured.
So far this year there have been 487 teens killed in that same age group and 1,248 injured.
More broadly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data this month showing gun homicides increased 35% across the country during the first year of the pandemic to the highest level in 25 years.
According to the new CDC study, firearm homicides increased 40% for those ages 10 to 24 in 2020 — the highest increases for people of color, notably Black males.
The rise in violence could be attributed to the social and economic pressures stemming from the pandemic that reinforced “longstanding” inequities between communities, the study noted.
“Longstanding systemic inequities and structural racism have resulted in limited economic, housing, and educational opportunities associated with inequities in risk for violence,” the authors of the study wrote, “the COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated existing social and economic stressors.”
The new CDC data confirms trends identified by ABC News as it studied data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive over the past year.
Back in Tennessee, a family and community is in mourning over the loss of their loved one.
“Always had a smile, always ready to joke, he was a prankster. He just had this light,” said Natalie Gant speaking at a vigil Thursday evening for her son, Hasani Brewer, also known as Sunny Gant, WKRN reported.
ABC News’ Med Unit contributor Eli Cahan contributed to this report.
