(STOCKTON, Calif.) — A suspect has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old girl at a high school in Stockton, California, in what officials said appears to be a random attack.
The student was killed when a trespasser, initially described as a man in his 40s, entered Stagg High School on Monday and stabbed her multiple times. Responders immediately began lifesaving measures, but she was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Stockton police said.
“A trespasser entered the front of our school today, stabbed one of our students multiple times,” Stockton Unified School District Superintendent John Ramirez Jr. said at a press conference Monday. “Unfortunately, she did not make it. The assailant was taken, was detained, and taken into custody immediately.”
“The school was also put on lockdown to assure the safety of the rest of our students,” he added. “We began to work with local law enforcement immediately and they’ve taken over the investigation.”
Anthony Gray, 52, was arrested in connection with the stabbing and booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on murder, police said late Monday.
“Detectives believe this appears to be a random act and they are trying to determine why this student was targeted,” the Stockton Police Department said on Facebook.
Gray is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
Officials had said Monday they did not have a motive for the attack but said the man was not a parent.
Ramirez praised the school’s resource officer for acting quickly to apprehend the suspect, saying it helped to prevent the stabbing from continuing.
“When the incident happened, there were staff immediately there,” he said. “It had been so quick that they weren’t able to stop it, but they were there immediately.”
(PONTIAC, Mich.) — The parents of the accused Michigan school shooter were denied a request to reduce their bond on Tuesday.
Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said the events leading to the arrest of Jennifer and James Crumbley make the bond currently set appropriate, as their actions were “premeditated to conceal their whereabouts.”
The two are charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly failing to recognize warning signs about their son in the months before their son allegedly shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021.
Prosecutors have accused the parents of giving their son a gun that was later used in the school shooting and allege the parents hid in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and had concealed their car by hiding their license plates instead of turning themselves in the day they were charged.
Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is facing 24 counts, including four counts of murder and a terrorism charge
A judge ruled that Ethan Crumbley must remain in adult jail. His lawyers said in January they will claim an insanity defense. He is being held in isolation, under behavior watch, and must be checked on every 15 minutes.
The Crumbleys’ bond is set at $500,000 each, which they were attempting to get reduced to $100,000 each.
A lower court denied a similar motion to reduce their bond in January.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A man who has spent 32 years in prison for being wrongly convicted of murder was exonerated by San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin on Monday.
Joaquin Ciria was arrested in 1990 and convicted of shooting and killing his friend, Felix Bastarrica, in San Francisco. His conviction was based on false witness testimony and police misconduct, according to Boudin.
“Our office is proud of and grateful for the work of the Innocence Commission in rectifying the wrongful conviction of Mr. Ciria,” Boudin said in a press release.
He added, “Although we cannot give him back the decades of his life lost we are thankful that the court has corrected this miscarriage of justice.”
Boudin dismissed the case against Ciria after a judge overturned his conviction.
According to Boudin, no physical evidence linked Ciria to the crime, but San Francisco police believed Ciria to be the shooter based on street rumors and statements from the alleged getaway driver, George Varela.
Varela testified in exchange for complete immunity that he drove Ciria to and from the scene. Boudin states that Varela, who was then a teenager, was pressured by police to name Ciria as the perpetrator.
The commission found that Varela has admitted to Ciria’s family members that he had falsely testified.
The jury heard from three eyewitnesses in Ciria’s trial, two of whom Boudin’s office says were “cross-racial identifications by strangers whose views were compromised by distance and poor lighting during the late-night shooting.”
An alternate suspect was not mentioned to the jury, and evidence of Ciria’s alibi was not given on trial despite two available alibi witnesses.
The Innocence Commission also found that another eyewitness, the victim’s best friend, identified another person as the shooter, and that other witnesses confirmed details to corroborate this new eyewitness’ story, including the description of the shooter provided by the stranger eyewitnesses, which more closely matches another suspect.
Ciria’s case was the first one reviewed by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office’s Innocence Commission since its formation in 2020. The commission was created to review potential wrongful convictions and present findings to Boudin’s office.
“When a conviction is a perversion of justice because it deprives an innocent person of his freedom while robbing the victim and his family of justice, the District Attorney has a duty to correct that intolerable violation,” said Lara Bazelon, the chair of the Innocence Commission.
Ciria has long maintained his innocence. His release date is not yet known, but could be within the next few days, the DA’s office said.
“Joaquin’s case highlights so many issues with our system, including how long it takes to undo a wrongful conviction, the problems with using incentivized testimony, the unreliability of cross-racial identifications, and the ways people of color aren’t afforded the presumption of innocence,” said Paige Kaneb, supervising attorney at the Northern California Innocence Project, who represented Ciria.
There have been more than 270 known wrongful convictions in California alone since the National Registry of Exonerations began tracking wrongful convictions in 1989. Ciria will be added to that registry.
“Studies on the causes of wrongful convictions demonstrate that key contributing factors include mistaken eyewitness identification, false testimony, and official misconduct,” Boudin’s office said in a press release. “All three of those factors were present in Mr. Ciria’s case and led to his wrongful conviction in this case.”
(PONTIAC, Mich.) — The parents of the accused Michigan school shooter were denied a request to reduce their bond on Tuesday.
Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said the events leading to the arrest of Jennifer and James Crumbley make the bond currently set appropriate, as their actions were “premeditated to conceal their whereabouts.”
The two are charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly failing to recognize warning signs about their son in the months before their son allegedly shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021.
Prosecutors have accused the parents of giving their son a gun that was later used in the school shooting and allege the parents hid in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and had concealed their car by hiding their license plates instead of turning themselves in the day they were charged.
Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is facing 24 counts, including four counts of murder and a terrorism charge
A judge ruled that Ethan Crumbley must remain in adult jail. His lawyers said in January they will claim an insanity defense. He is being held in isolation, under behavior watch, and must be checked on every 15 minutes.
The Crumbleys’ bond is set at $500,000 each, which they were attempting to get reduced to $100,000 each.
A lower court denied a similar motion to reduce their bond in January.
(COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz.) — A woman died after she was caught on a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a local sheriff’s office.
On April 11, Cochise County, Arizona, deputies were dispatched to a section of the border where they found a 32-year-old woman hanging upside down, the sheriff’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook.
“The woman reportedly climbed onto the top of the International Border wall and when attempting to maneuver down on the US side via a harness similar to rappelling, her foot/leg became entangled and she was trapped upside down for a significant amount of time,” the statement said.
An autopsy was being conducted to figure out exactly how the woman died.
“These types of incidents are not political, they are humanitarian realities that someone has lost a loved one in a senseless tragedy,” Sheriff Mark Daniels said. “We have to do better in finding solutions to the challenges facing our border, and we have to do it for the right reasons. Regardless of opinions, it is the facts that should direct our progress and we will keep working towards a shared goal of border safety and security.”
In a statement, Customs and Border Protection told ABC News the incident is under investigation.
“On April 11, 2022, Tucson Sector Agents received information from the emergency services dispatch in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico of an incident approximately 10 miles west of the Douglas Port of Entry at the International Boundary Barrier,” a CBP spokesman told ABC News.
“Border Patrol Agents and local emergency services responded to the scene and located an individual who was transported to a local hospital. Personnel from the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office and CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility are investigating; more information will be shared as it becomes available,” the spokesman said.
The incident comes as Customs and Border Protection had over 220,000 encounters with migrants along the southwest border in March, the third-highest on record.
Lauren Owens Lambert/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(BOSTON) — It was a triumphant and emotional moment for Henry Richard as he threw his arms up in the air and crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon Monday.
Nine years ago, Henry’s younger brother, Martin Richard, was one of three people who were killed when two bombs detonated near the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Martin was 8 years old at the time.
Henry told ABC Boston affiliate WCVB-TV that he thought about his brother while running the course’s 26.2 miles.
“I know if he was here, either this year or the next coming years, he would have been doing it with me. So that’s all I could think about,” Henry said.
Henry had his brother’s name written in black marker on his right arm and his sister’s name on his left arm for the occasion, he said. He also wore a yellow jersey with the word “Peace” written on it, underneath “Team MR8,” the logo for the Martin Richard Foundation. The organization was launched in 2014 in Martin’s honor, to promote the values of “inclusion, kindness, justice and peace,” according to its website.
Before he reached the finish line, Henry also paused at the marathon’s memorial with a teammate and after he crossed the finish line, he shared an embrace with his parents, Denise and Bill Richard, and his sister, Jane Richard.
“So many people were out there for me. All my friends, my family. Motivation was the least of my worries. There was so many people there to support me. It was wonderful and I couldn’t believe it,” Henry told WCVB.
Henry added that he would definitely run another Boston Marathon in the years to come.
“I loved every second of it and this feels so great, I can’t wait to do it again,” he said.
Monday’s race was the 126th running of the Boston Marathon and passed through eight Massachusetts towns: Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton and Brookline, before finishing on Boylston Street in Boston. The top finishers this year were Evans Chebet for the men’s division, who clocked in at 2 hours, 6 minutes, 51 seconds, and Peres Jepchirchir for the women’s division, who finished in 2 hours, 21 minutes, 1 second, ESPN reported.
(NEW YORK) — Over the holiday weekend, 12 people were shot at a Columbia, South Carolina, mall. In nearby Hampton County, nine people were shot outside a nightclub. And in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, two juveniles were killed and eight were injured after a shooting at a birthday party.
The recent incidents are just the latest examples of mass shootings that have been occurring at a sustained pace across the United States for the past two years and counting and which coincide with an increase in fatal shootings overall. Fatal shootings, not including suicides, jumped by more than 4,000 from 2019 to 2020 — a 26% increase in one year, according to statistics compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit which identifies mass shootings as cases in which four or more people are shot and tracks them through public data, news reports and other sources.
“These two devastating shootings will leave permanent scars on survivors and entire communities, and unfortunately, they represent only a fraction of the gun violence that impacts South Carolinians on a daily basis,” said the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety in a statement responding to the South Carolina shootings. “Just weeks ago, a twelve-year old was killed in a shooting at Greenville’s Tanglewood Middle School. Days after that, five people were wounded in a shooting along a rural road in Colleton County.”
While the rate of increase in fatal shootings slowed last year, the total number of fatal shootings still grew — to nearly 21,000, according to the GVA. And as the overall number of fatal shootings has increased, there has also been a rise in mass shootings. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings, and just two years later, there were 693. Through April 17, the pace of mass shootings has slowed, but there have already been 139 such incidents (compared to 148 by the same date last year). Meanwhile, the number of non-mass shootings is on the rise from 5,445 through April 17 last year to 5,451 for the same period this year.
In an effort to address gun violence, President Joe Biden announced earlier this month an initiative to combat ghost guns — a firearm that comes packaged in parts, can be bought online and assembled without much of a trace.
“Anyone could order it in the mail, anyone … Terrorists and domestic abusers can go from a gun kit to a gun in as little as 30 minutes. Buyers aren’t required to pass background checks because guns have no serial numbers,” Biden said.
The new rule essentially expands the definition of a “firearm,” as established by the Gun Control Act, to cover “buy build shoot” kits that people can purchase online or from a firearm dealer and assemble themselves. It will make these kits subject to the same federal laws that currently apply to other firearms.
The goal, officials said, is to keep untraceable guns off the streets and out of the hands of those prohibited from possession.
Biden also nominated former U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach to become the next director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a role that includes enforcing and implementing gun laws.
The White House and gun control advocates, however, have argued that substantive gun control measures will require legislative action through Congress, but that is unlikely given Republican opposition.
“The United States is not the only country with mental illness, domestic violence, video games, or hate-fueled ideologies, but our gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than our peer countries. The difference is easy access to guns,” according Everytown for Gun Safety, which applauded and had called for the recent moves by the Biden administration.
(NEW YORK) — The New York City Police Department is searching for the person who stabbed a New York City mother to death and dumped her body in a large rollable duffel bag, police sources told ABC News.
Just after 8 a.m. Saturday, authorities responded to a 911 call reporting a suspicious duffel bag with blood on it on a Queens, New York, street corner, the NYPD said.
Officers found 51-year-old Orsolya Gaal inside the bag, police said.
Gaal was stabbed dozens of times, according to police sources. The medical examiner’s office said she died from “sharp force injuries” to the neck.
A trail of blood from the duffel bag led to Gaal’s Queens home, police said.
According to police sources, Gaal may have known her killer.
It’s believed she went out for the night while her husband was out of town and it appeared she was killed in her basement, sources said.
Detectives are looking to speak with three men whose numbers were found in Gaal’s phone, sources said.
(LOS ANGELES) — A 15-year-old girl was fatally stabbed by an intruder at a high school in Stockton, California, on Monday, according to officials.
The student was killed when a man in his 40s entered Stagg High School and stabbed her multiple times. Responders immediately began lifesaving measures, but she was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Stockton police said.
“A trespasser entered the front of our school today, stabbed one of our students multiple times,” Stockton Unified School District Superintendent John Ramirez Jr. said at a press conference. “Unfortunately, she did not make it. The assailant was taken, was detained, and taken into custody immediately.”
“The school was also put on lockdown to assure the safety of the rest of our students,” he added. “We began to work with local law enforcement immediately and they’ve taken over the investigation.”
Officials said they do not have a motive for the attack, but said the man was not a parent.
Ramirez praised the school’s resource officer for acting quickly to apprehend the suspect, saying it helped to prevent the stabbing from continuing.
“When the incident happened, there were staff immediately there,” he said. “It had been so quick that they weren’t able to stop it, but they were there immediately.”
Stockton Police Department Deputy Chief Eric Kane said they are still investigating the relationship between the girl and the unidentified attacker.
ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The Colorado River, a major freshwater source for over 40 million people in seven southwestern states and parts of northern Mexico, has lost 20% of its water levels over the past 22 years and environmentalists forecast it’s going to get worse.
Farmers and other agriculture workers have been especially hit by the water loss as the fields have dried up, making it harder to cultivate crops and cattle.
“We’ve really been working on some of this for two decades. You know, we’ve kind of seen this coming,” Paul Bruchez, a fifth-generation Colorado rancher, told ABC News.
Now Bruchez, his family, other ranchers and farmers are teaming up with conservationists to adapt to the changing environment and try to repair some of the damage, and they hope that they can encourage others to step up before it’s too late.
Twenty-three years of drought conditions in the West and Southwest have resulted in the lowest water levels at the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dam reservoirs since they were filled. The Colorado River is now at the top of the country’s most endangered rivers list, according to the non-profit American Rivers.
“We’re faced with this, this new reality where we have to learn to live with less water,” Matt Rice, the southwest regional director for American Rivers, told ABC News.
Bruchez said ranchers have been hit hard, because without the freshwater supply, the forage isn’t fertile enough for livestock to feed on. He said his family had to sell half of their livestock due to poor land conditions.
“Mother Nature is key for our business,” he said.
Bruchez, who sits on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, however, isn’t taking the climate crisis lying down and has implemented ecological projects to mitigate the damage and restore the river.
Working with conservationists, Bruchez installed five artificial riffles along a 12-mile stretch of the river. The riffles use cobbles at parts of the river that cascades down and promotes irrigation and invertebrate growth at low water level areas.
“It is this region’s adaptation to climate change,” he said.
Bruchez’s family has also worked on restoring the soil so that it can make use of what little water it does get.
Doug Bruchez has worked with his brother to bring in specialized plants and forages that are better suited to the fields around the river.
“We are looking for drought-resistant plants, we are looking for plants that will use less water,” Doug Bruchez told ABC News.
Paul Bruchez said since his family rebuilt a meadow using this drought-resistant flora, the livestock has been liking their feeds “significantly better.”
“The nutrition value of the feed is higher, and we use them as a tool to assist us in managing the soil,” he said.
Rice said these Colorado River restoration projects have “quantifiably improved the habitat and the environmental health of the river.”
“We’re actually implementing them kind of in real-time right now. If we weren’t doing that, not only would it have a tremendous impact on the communities upstream of here, the agricultural communities, it [would have] a tremendous impact on the environment,” Rice said.
Bruchez said he is looking to expand these programs throughout the Colorado River basin and improve the water and soil conditions throughout the southwest.
Bruchez said of his efforts and outreach that “it is both an honor and terrifying,” but in the end he hopes that they can make a difference.
“These are tough conversations when people realize that survival will require adaptation,” he said. “Without adaptation, we wouldn’t be here for our generation [and] the generation after us.”
