(NEW YORK) — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced that all patient-facing health care workers in hospitals run by the state will be required to get vaccinated. He said, “There will be no testing option.”
Additionally, as of Labor Day, all state employees must either be vaccinated or get tested on a weekly basis.
Governor Cuomo said the decision was made due to the “dramatic action” needed to control a surge in COVID-19 cases linked to the Delta variant. He said school districts in areas of high transmission should also consider taking a more aggressive approach.
“I understand the politics, but I understand if we don’t take the right actions, schools can become super-spreaders in September,” Cuomo said.
Calling on private sector businesses, Cumo said they should incentivize vaccinations by only allowing vaccinated people in.
75% of adults in New York state have been vaccinated.
(AURORA, Colo.) — Two Colorado officers from the Aurora Police Department are facing charges after body camera footage purportedly shows one hitting a suspect in the head and then choking him.
Officers John Haubert and Francine Martinez responded to a reported trespassing, attempting to arrest 29-year-old Kyle Vincent and two other adult men.
Martinez learned that they all had felony warrants, and the officers tried to take them into custody. When two of the men fled, Haubert drew a pistol and directed it at Vincent.
Haubert grabbed the back of his neck and pressed the gun against Vincent’s head.
The man denied having a warrant and attempted to avoid being handcuffed. Police say Haubert came on top of the man and grabbed the side of his neck, hitting him with the gun 13 times.
Haubert is facing three felony charges; attempted first-degree assault, second-degree assault and felony menacing. There is also misdemeanor charges of official oppression and official misconduct.
“This is not the Aurora Police Department, this is criminal,” said Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson.
Officer Martinez faces criminal charges for not intervening.
(SALINA, Kan.) — NASA recently began new research to investigate how extreme summer weather may be affecting the upper layers of earth’s atmosphere.
Kenneth Bowman, Ph.D., the principal investigator for the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) research project, spoke to reporters about the project during a press briefing on Tuesday. He said their goal is to understand how intense summer thunderstorms over the U.S. affect the stratosphere — the second layer of earth’s atmosphere as you move toward space — especially as climate change causes severe thunderstorms to occur more often.
“Most thunderstorms occur in the lower layer of the atmosphere, which we call the troposphere. But when we get particularly intense thunderstorms, the updrafts — the rising air in the storm — can actually overshoot into the layer above, which is the stratosphere,” Bowman said.
He said that when this happens, the air in the troposphere can rise up to the stratosphere in as little as 20 to 30 minutes. Those updrafts can transport pollutants and water that might not normally reach this level of the atmosphere in such a short amount of time.
The stratosphere is usually dry, according to the project’s website, and the water and pollutants may “have a significant impact on radiative and chemical processes” in the atmospheric layer.
David Wilmouth, Ph.D., a scientist at Harvard University who is working on the project, said the updrafts could potentially “change the chemical composition of the stratosphere, a process that would not otherwise happen.” Their work will determine if that’s the case.
Bowman explained that the stratosphere is important because it contains the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun. About 90% of the world’s ozone layer exists within the stratosphere, according to Wilmouth.
Wilmouth said the ozone layer is “critical” for protecting life on earth. If its protective shield was to weaken, humans would be more susceptible to skin cancer, cataracts disease and an impaired immune system, according to NASA.
Dan Csziczo, Ph.D., a professor and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, said during the briefing that their goal is specifically to understand the composition and size of the particles that make their way up to the stratosphere, and how they might influence the earth’s climate. Csziczo said the research would also help scientists understand the process of cloud formation and subsequent precipitation.
Understanding the relationship between climate change and particulate matter in the air is critical because, ultimately, each of them might exacerbate the impact of the other on humans’ health and way of life.
For the project, NASA is working with several universities across the country, as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The mission consists of three eight-week-long deployments over the course of the 2021 and 2022 summer seasons. The DCOTSS will be using NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft for the mission.
DCOTSS will be operated out of Salina, Kansas, a site chosen by the researchers due to its central location within the U.S. It’s also a region of the country that’s particularly prone to severe and intense thunderstorms during the summer.
The ER-2 aircraft is equipped with fully robotic, pre-programmed instruments that can measure the gases and particles that come out of the overshooting tops of the thunderstorms, as well as meteorological information, such as water vapor, Wilmouth said.
The aircraft can only transport its pilot, who must wear a pressurized suit to withstand the high altitudes, which can go as high as 70,000 feet — about twice the altitude of typical commercial airlines, according to the project’s website.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — After a full school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, elementary and middle school students are heading into the fall with lower rates of achievement gains in reading and math than they would have during a typical school year, new research shows.
The researchers say the results were worse in high-poverty areas and could have been even worse overall had thousands of students “missing” from school systems been counted. Separately, they say that it would take “unprecedented” levels of growth to make up for the past school year.
NWEA, a Portland-Oregon-based education research organization that develops pre-K-12 assessments, expedited research on test scores from the 2020-21 school year to help spotlight student needs ahead of the fall.
Researchers compared gains in student achievement in grades 3-8 across the school year to pre-pandemic levels — specifically, the 2018-19 school year — based on the average results of its MAP Growth assessments in reading and math.
They found that, looking at the results of 5.5 million test-takers, students did make modest progress overall over the course of the school year — but not as much as during a typical year. Compared to 2018-19, average achievement gains declined 3 to 6 percentile points in reading depending on the grade level. There was an even steeper decline in math, between 8 and 12 percentile points.
Unexpectedly, the gains in math and reading decelerated between winter and spring relative to a typical school year, researchers found.
“I think many of us expected to maybe start to see some signs of hope closer to the spring, when more kids were returning to the classroom,” Karyn Lewis, a senior research scientist with NWEA, told ABC News. “So that that’s when learning really stalled more was surprising to me.”
Lewis pointed to “pandemic fatigue” as possibly being behind the unanticipated results.
“When I think back and reflect on my own experiences in the winter, that’s I think when pandemic fatigue really started to set in,” she said. “I think that it’s starting to show in these data that kids were also affected.”
When they dug deeper into the data, researchers found that there were even greater declines in math and reading progress for disadvantaged students. Those attending high-poverty schools showed more than double the declines of students attending low-poverty schools for many grades. This was especially pronounced at the elementary level: Third graders in high-poverty schools showed 11-percentile-point declines in reading and 17 percentile-point-declines in math, the report found.
“We know that the pandemic was not an even crisis across families in our country, and families in high-poverty situations were impacted in different ways,” Lewis said. “Parents were less likely to be able to stay home and support virtual learning opportunities because of the way their jobs were structured. These homes may have had less reliable internet access or less reliable access to a dedicated computer. … It’s just layer upon layer of different factors that I think are probably attributing to this.”
The recent findings don’t show the complete picture, Lewis said, due to a higher attrition rate than normal — and so-called “missing” students likely adding to the lower achievers. The overall attrition rate for the 2020-21 school year was about 20%, researchers said — meaning 1 in 5 students who tested the prior year did not test this year. For 2018-19, the overall attrition rate was 13%.
“The kids that went missing are not the random sample of students but are more likely to be in schools that serve a high proportion of kids in poverty, that were lower achieving in prior years and that were from communities of color,” Lewis said. “This may actually be kind of the best-case scenario because we are missing the voices of many of the students in these groups that were most impacted.”
Researchers also emphasized that their work didn’t specifically address the impact of remote learning on performance.
“This national data is fantastic for giving us the lay of the broad landscape, but we really need as districts and schools come back to lean into the local context and look at our own data and see how that compares with the trends that we’re seeing nationally,” Brooke Mabry, strategic content design manager for NWEA’s Professional Learning Design team, told ABC News.
With students going into the fall with, on average, lower gains in math and reading, there would need to be “unprecedented” levels of growth to catch up, Lewis said. The delta variant may also throw a “big curveball” for schools this fall, as COVID-19 cases rise across the country. But there are signs of hope, researchers said.
“We do know that what we learned from what happened with kids over the summer months, when they are out of school altogether, the kids that seem to lose the most across the summer period are also those that tend to rebound the quickest when they’re back in the classroom,” Lewis said.
(NEW YORK) — Vaccine lotteries and other incentives designed to encourage COVID-19 vaccination after the rate steeply declined didn’t consistently raise numbers as many public health officials had hoped.
Now, officials are turning to community partnerships and other means of engagement to drive vaccinations — and the personal approach appears promising.
Vaccinations peaked at over 4 million per day in early April before dropping down to an average of about 429,000 per day by early July. Despite at least 30 states and territories implementing vaccine incentives such as cash lotteries, free food and free entrance to local attractions, the weekly moving average still hovers close to 470,000.
Experts caution not to say that vaccine incentives didn’t work. States such as Ohio and Missouri saw a temporary but meaningful bump in vaccinations in the week after the lotteries were announced.
“I think vaccine incentives have worked better than we think,” said Dr. Stacy Wood, professor of marketing at North Carolina State University. “When any given incentive didn’t work, it was because it didn’t match the hurdle that a particular person was facing for vaccination. … There’s no one-size-fits-all incentive.”
But for some, the vaccine incentives themselves are a turn off. “It actually makes me a little more leery,” said Camille Holmes, a school-based speech therapist from Westchester County, New York.
Holmes said she routinely gets vaccines for herself and her family but right now is “indifferent” about the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think as time progressed, my answer went from ‘absolutely not,’ to ‘I don’t know,’ to ‘I’m not ready,’ to ‘I probably am going to get it when I’m forced to do so.'”
So what is the key to encouraging vaccinations? For some, it might be a mandate from their employer. For others, it might be about renewed fear as the more contagious delta variant spreads. Now that cases are rising due to the delta variant, there has been a gradual increase in vaccinations, up 14% last week, according to the White House.
But for many, it’s about meeting people where they are — literally. According to research by Wood, “small incentives combined with that immediacy” tailored to a specific population works well.
This might be especially true for younger people, who aren’t necessarily opposed to getting a vaccine but don’t feel as deeply concerned they’ll become very sick or die without it.
St. Louis County, Missouri, recently announced a new initiative called Sleeves Up STL that will enlist local barbershops and beauty salons to provide information to their customers about getting the vaccine.
Randy Barnes, the owner of R & R Style Shop in Florissant, Missouri, plans to participate in this initiative because COVID-19 has been rising in his community.
“I’m thinking because of the barber and the beauty shops, people trust us. If the information is there, if the education is there, people maybe would be more apt to [get vaccinated],” Barnes said. “Those that were skeptical, given the right information, maybe would go ahead and get themselves vaccinated and even convince other people.”
There is already evidence that getting information from trusted friends, family members and community leaders spurs vaccination. Since Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson began traveling the state and having community conversations, the rate of vaccinations in the state has increased 40%, he told NPR.
Research has shown, and Barnes and Wood believe, that hearing from those who’ve had COVID-19 or lost someone due to the disease would be helpful. Barnes lost his brother to COVID-19 last April.
In addition to discussing vaccination with people, having vaccines immediately available at places where people commonly go, such as subway stations or museums can be helpful.
Whether it’s a lottery ticket, free meal, a conversation with a survivor or a trusted person or convenience, Barnes said he hopes one of these measures motivates people.
Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, M.D., D.Phil., trained in immunology and a psychiatrist in New York City, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(POWESHIEK COUNTY, Iowa) — The lead agent who investigated the disappearance and murder of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts testified Tuesday that there was no doubt in his mind who killed her.
“Cristhian Rivera murdered Mollie Tibbetts,” special agent Trent Vileta said in court.
Vileta rejected a theory by Cristhian Bahena Rivera’s attorneys that he was framed for Tibbetts’ kidnapping and murder as part of a sex trafficking ring. The attorneys claim the alleged sex trafficking ring was investigated and that resulting evidence was withheld from them by law enforcement authorities.
“I don’t remember any tips that she (Tibbetts) was the victim of sex trafficking, but I didn’t see all of them either,” Vileta said.
A jury convicted 27-year-old Bahena Rivera in May of first-degree murder, but his sentencing was postponed after his attorneys requested a new trial in order to be allowed to review evidence in any ongoing investigations into sex trafficking in and around Poweshiek County, Iowa, where Tibbetts went missing in July 2018. Her body was discovered in an Iowa cornfield about a month after she vanished.
During Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted more than four hours, Bahena Rivera’s attorneys called Arne Maki to testify about a conversation he said he had in July 2020 with a 21-year-old inmate while they were both being held at the jail in Keokuk County, Iowa.
Maki, 46, who is now serving a prison sentence for domestic violence, claimed the inmate who he befriended told him that he and another man killed Tibbetts on the orders of a sex trafficker after she was kidnapped and brought to a sex trafficking “trap house.”
“He’s like, ‘yeah, I killed her,'” Maki testified about the inmate who defense attorneys named in court documents and during the hearing. “I’m like, ‘I don’t believe you.'”
Maki claimed the man then mentioned Bahena Rivera, a Mexican national who was in the country illegally and working at a dairy in Poweshiek County when he was arrested and charged with Tibbetts’ killing.
“He’s like, ‘We set him up.’ He’s like, ‘It’s a sex trafficking case gone wrong, and I stabbed her to death and put her in a tarp, me and my Black friend that don’t speak English good.'”
Maki testified that he doubted the inmate’s story until he saw TV news reports on Bahena Rivera’s testimony during his trial.
Bahena Rivera claimed he was kidnapped at his home near Brooklyn, Iowa, by two armed masked men, who ordered him to drive to where Tibbetts was expected to be jogging. He claimed that when they found Tibbetts, one of the men stabbed her to death, put her body in the trunk of Bahena Rivera’s car and made him drive to a cornfield, where the young woman’s badly decomposed remains were discovered a month after she went missing.
Bahena Rivera said that while he placed Tibbetts’ body in the cornfield, he did not kill her.
“Right there my conscience told me that I should say something, even if it’s not true,” Maki said, explaining why he told authorities about the inmate’s purported confession.
But under cross-examination from prosecutor Bart Klaver, Maki said he did not know that the inmate who confessed to him was in a rehab facility under court supervision at the time Tibbetts disappeared.
Judge Joel Yates, who presided over Bahena Rivera’s trial, told the attorneys he will make a written decision as soon possible on the defense motion for a new trial.
Earlier this month, Yates rejected the motion to allow Bahena Rivera’s attorneys an opportunity to review evidence in ongoing sex trafficking investigations in Poweshiek County and in the case of a missing 11-year-old boy, Xavior Harrelson, who vanished in May from his home in Poweshiek County. The defense attorneys suggested that the man who they allege operated the sex trafficking “trap house” once had been the boyfriend of Harrelson’s mother.
(NEW YORK) — The sole copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” owned by one-time hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli until he forfeited it following his securities fraud conviction, has been sold, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, said Tuesday.
The terms of the sale were confidential, as was the identity of the buyer, but the proceeds will be applied to the balance of the nearly $7.4 million Shkreli owes in forfeiture.
“Through the diligent and persistent efforts of this office and its law enforcement partners, Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself. With today’s sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete,” said Jacquelyn Kasulis, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Shkreli, best known for hiking the price of a life-saving drug when he was a pharmaceutical executive and for trolling critics on social media, was convicted of securities fraud in 2017 for orchestrating a series of schemes to cheat investors in two hedge funds he controlled as well as a biopharmaceutical company then known as Retrophin. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The millions the government is seeking in forfeiture “represents a conservative computation of the proceeds Shkreli personally obtained as a result of his three different securities fraud crimes of conviction,” prosecutors wrote at the time.
Shkreli was ordered to forfeit the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, which he purchased for $2 million at an auction in 2015. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, it includes a hand-carved nickel-silver box as well as a leather-bound manuscript containing lyrics and a certificate of authenticity.
In September 2017, after he had been convicted but before the district court ordered the forfeiture of his assets, Shkreli attempted to sell the album through an online auction, prosecutors said.
The album, which has been considered one of the most valuable musical albums in the world, is subject to various restrictions, including those related to the duplication of its sound recordings.
ABC News’ Celia Darrough contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 summer surge as the delta variant spreads.
More than 611,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 57% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 has infected more than 194 million people worldwide and killed over 4.1 million.
Latest headlines:
-US moved into ‘high’ community transmission category per CDC
-Dept. of Veterans Affairs mandates vaccine
-Savannah reinstates mask mandate indoors
-Orlando area in ‘crisis mode’ as cases skyrocket
Here’s how the news is developing today. All times Eastern.
Jul 27, 4:10 pm
CDC reverses guidance on masks for vaccinated people
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reversed its mask guidance for vaccinated people due to the delta variant surge.
Vaccinated Americans should now wear masks inside if they’re in places with substantial or high transmission, the CDC said.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said data show that on “rare occasions, some vaccinated people with the delta variant … may be contagious and spread the virus to others. This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.”
Walensky added, “This moment — and most importantly — the associated illness, suffering and death, could have been avoided with higher vaccination coverage in this country.”
In May, the CDC said vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors.
The CDC also said Tuesday that masks should be worn in schools by all students, teachers, staff and visitors, even for those who are vaccinated. The CDC said students should return to full-time in-person learning this year with prevention strategies in place.
President Joe Biden in a statement called the CDC’s new rules “another step on our journey to defeating this virus.”
“While we have seen an increase in vaccinations in recent days, we still need to do better,” he added.
Jul 27, 3:42 pm
NYC hospital mandating vaccines for staff
New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery is requiring its staff be vaccinated as of Sept. 15.
Only staff with a medical or religious reason will be exempt, the hospital said Tuesday.
Jul 27, 3:00 pm
CDC reverses guidance on masks for vaccinated people
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reversed its mask guidance for vaccinated people due to the delta variant surge.
Vaccinated Americans should now wear masks inside if they’re in places with substantial or high transmission, the CDC said.
“In rare occasions, some vaccinated people can get delta in a breakthrough infection and may be contagious,” the CDC said.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said data shows that on “rare occasions, some vaccinated people with the delta variant … may be contagious and spread the virus to others. This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.”
In May, the CDC said vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors.
The CDC also said Tuesday that masks should be worn in schools by all students, teachers, staff and visitors, even for those who are vaccinated. The CDC said students should return to full-time in-person learning this year with prevention strategies in place.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, calling this an “evolving pandemic,” said Tuesday, “Our responsibility here is to always lead with the science and always lead with the advice of health and medical experts.”
“We’re not saying that wearing a mask is convenient, or people feel like it, but we are telling you that that is the way to protect yourself, protect your loved ones and that’s why the CDC is issuing this guidance,” Psaki said.
-ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Eric Strauss
Jul 27, 2:03 pm
Cal State requiring vaccinations
California State University, the nation’s largest university system that’s home to nearly 500,000 students, will require vaccinations for in-person students, staff and faculty.
“The current surge in COVID cases due to the spread of the highly infectious delta variant is an alarming new factor that we must consider as we look to maintain the health and well-being of students, employees and visitors to our campuses this fall,” CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro said in a statement Tuesday.
Jul 27, 1:10 pm
Louisiana reports 2nd highest daily case count since January
Louisiana is in a “continued surge,” logging 6,797 new daily cases on Tuesday, the second highest single-day case count since Jan. 6, the state’s Department of Health said.
The department said 99.56% of the cases are linked to community spread, not congregate settings like nursing homes.
New Orleans city officials said Monday that hospital capacity in the region and the state are being stretched to the limits due to a large uptick in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. New Orleans officials said 97% of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state are unvaccinated.
Jul 26, 7:46 pm
Delta variant is ‘a whole new virus,’ St. Louis health official
St. Louis’ top health official talked with ABC News Monday about Missouri’s rising coronavirus cases and gave a stark warning to the rest of the country.
“The delta variant is a whole new virus,” Dr. Sam Page, the county executive for St. Louis County, Missouri, told ABC News.
Since June, Missouri’s daily case average has surged by 500%, with the state now reporting its highest number of new infections since mid-January. Hospital admissions have more than doubled in recent weeks. They are up by 125% in the last month, according to Page.
At the same time, vaccinations have seen a slight increase the county, Page said. However, he reiterated that it will be at least another month before the county sees full effect of the vaccines in those patients.
“We just wish that we could get people vaccinated sooner because the illness has an unfortunate loss of life associated with it. And that’s just a terrible thing to watch,” Page said.
Page said there was no “silver bullet” that will help increase vaccination rates across the state, or drive down cases immediately, but said that officials must work together fast.
“It’s going to be multifactorial, a lot of education, a lot of time, a lot of comforting,” he said.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Arielle Mitropoulos
Jul 26, 3:45 pm
US moved into ‘high’ community transmission category per CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now categorizing the U.S. as having “high” community transmission, with nearly 62% of counties in the nation reporting high (43.79%) or substantial (18.17%) transmission.
New York County, which includes Manhattan, is among those now reporting substantial community transmission.
One month ago, only 8% of counties were reporting high transmission.
Louisiana, Florida, and Arkansas have the country’s highest case rate with over 300 new cases per 100,000 residents.
Missouri follows closely behind with 200 new cases per 100,000 residents.
Hospitalization numbers are also rising. More than 27,300 COVID-10 patients are in hospitals across the country — a 36.8% jump in the last week.
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jul 26, 2:44 pm
Dept. of Veterans Affairs mandates vaccine
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced Monday that COVID-19 vaccines will be mandatory for the department’s health care personnel.
Four VA employees, all of whom were unvaccinated, died in recent weeks, the department said. At least three of those cases were linked to the delta variant.
VA employees will have eight weeks to be fully vaccinated.
McDonough said this mandate is “the best way to keep Veterans safe, especially as the Delta variant spreads across the country.”
ABC News’ Cindy Smith
Jul 26, 2:06 pm
Unvaccinated NYC municipal workers will have to get weekly testing
All unvaccinated New York City municipal workers will have to get weekly testing by the start of school in September, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.
The new requirement will apply to all city workers, including police officers, firefighters and teachers. The new rule will go into effect on Sept. 13, when students are expected to return to public schools.
The New York Police Department has a 43% vaccination rate while about 55% of New York City Fire Department employees are vaccinated.
Workers in publicly run residential or congregate care facilities, like nursing homes, must present proof of vaccination even earlier, on Aug. 16.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a similar mandate on Monday. Beginning on Aug. 9, state employees and health care workers must show proof of vaccination or get tested regularly.
In California, 75% of those eligible have received at least one dose.
“Everyone that can get vaccinated—should,” Newsom tweeted.
(ATLANTA) — The 22-year-old man who killed eight people during a shooting rampage in March targeting Atlanta-area spas pleaded guilty Tuesday to four of the murders and accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Robert Aaron Long entered his plea in Cherokee County Superior Court after answering a series of questions from Judge Ellen McElyea. He loathed his sexual addiction, he said, and it drove him to transfer blame from himself to sex workers at the spas he frequented for sex.
Long pleaded guilty to the killings he committed on March 16 at Young’s Asian Massage near the Atlanta suburb of Woodstock in Cherokee County.
Killed in the Cherokee County massacre were Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54.
Long still faces multiple murder charges in Fulton County, where he allegedly continued his shooting rampage at two different spas in Atlanta.
He was indicted in Fulton County for the deaths of Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.
Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace told McElyea that while most of the victims were Asian, a thorough investigation involving the FBI found no evidence to warrant bringing hate crimes against Long. Wallace said investigators interviewed more than 40 people, including Asian friends of Long, and found “this was not any kind of hate crime.”
McElyea responded, “Once hatred is given a gun, it doesn’t matter who gets in the way. We are all subject to being the victim of a hate crime, whether we belong to that group or not.”
In May, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed court documents saying her office intends to seek the death penalty and hate crime charges against Long.
Willis filed a motion last week requesting Long be transferred to the Fulton County jail following his court hearing in Cherokee County, and requested to schedule an arraignment for Long in Fulton County “on or before Aug. 6, 2021, or as soon as practical,” according to court documents.
(NEW YORK) — In Watertown, Connecticut, you can hear the squeak of a swing’s chain as it glides back and forth, along with the laughter of children at play. They are sounds that harken back to the simpler and sweeter moments of childhood.
This playground has special significance. It was built in honor of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the former principal of Sandy Hook Elementary. She was one of the five school faculty members and 20 first and second grade students shot and killed in December 2012, when a former student stormed the building.
Bill Lavin heads up the construction of the playgrounds for the charitable organization Where Angels Play. “This is the final of the 26 playgrounds that we did, and this was dedicated to really all of the children and the teachers, but in particular, Dawn Hochsprung,” he said. “This is celebrating Dawn’s life and her love of teaching.
Lavin calls it the flagship of the project, which includes playgrounds throughout Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Each one reflects the personalities, passions and lives of those who died. “So you’ll see that here there’s 20 swings that represent — for us, anyway — the special number of the children.” Six other toys represent the educators who were killed.
He says the idea grew out of an effort by the New Jersey State Firefighters’ Mutual Benevolent Association to provide support for families after 9/11 and then Superstorm Sandy. When the Sandy Hook shootings happened, Lavin said he had to act and the victims’ families united behind the project.
“So we made sure that this was their project, and that they would honor and find a way to express how these beautiful children lived, rather than how they left us,” Lavin said.
Carlos Soto helped build some of the playgrounds, including one in memory of his daughter, in nearby Stratford, Connecticut. Victoria Soto was the Sandy Hook teacher who died shielding her students.
“She always told us that she wanted to be special, different than other teachers,” he said. “And that made us very happy with that, knowing that she was helping other kids.”
Soto, along with other parents, children and colleagues, are left to cope with the loss each day. He’s working to support others affected by gun violence.
“I think that my daughter has given me that tool to help other parents that have lost kids,” he said. But he also said the inaction by lawmakers on gun violence following Sandy Hook is painful for him and his family.
What has changed?
A generation of K-12 students have grown up in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting preparing for the possibility of a shooting at their school, even if they don’t know it.
In a kindergarten classroom in New Jersey, 6-year-old Liam and his classmates practiced a drill they have yet to learn the significance of, an active shooter lockdown drill. They were told the intruder was an animal. He recalled to his mom Tara Gimbel, an ABC News producer, “We had to go down and hide under our desks and we pretended there was a bear.”
Hannah Jack, who’s 19, calls this the new normal. “That was life at that point it didn’t even dawn on me that it would be any different.”
Jack was in 5th grade in Watertown, Connecticut, when the Sandy Hook shooting happened. “I could see the pain in their face and how scared they were when the alarms went off and it scared me too, you know?”
John Woodrow Cox, the author of “Children Under Fire: an American Crisis,” estimates that during a single school year, 4 to 8 million kids experience lockdowns. He says even false alarms are leaving their mark.
“A meaningful number of that, four to eight million kids thought, at least momentarily, that they might get shot to death in their school. And we know that because they text their parents goodbye, they write wills saying who they want their toys to go. They soil themselves. They weep,” Cox said. “And none of those kids –- right? — none of those kids actually saw a school shooting. They didn’t get shot at. They didn’t see someone get shot. It was the threat of it that was so terrifying. And it’s terrifying because they know about Parkland, they know about Columbine, they know about all these other school shootings.”
Even in the safety of homes, children are getting their hands on the guns, hurting others or themselves. According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 3,700 children and teens died or were injured in gun incidents in 2019.
Cox says the ripple effect of gun violence is far-reaching and long-lasting. “The reality of America, is that gun violence, there’s 400 million-plus guns in this country. Gun violence can affect a family or a child’s life at any time, regardless of the community that they’re in,” he said.
Cox points to other countries whose gun-fatalities numbers are far lower than ours. “There is no evidence that Americans are more evil than people in Australia or England or Canada or anywhere else,” he said. “The difference is anybody who wants to get a gun in this country at this moment, it’s not that hard.”
Back at the playground in Watertown, Lavin says the families of Sandy Hook victims want to move beyond politics and find common ground.
“You know, we should be able to figure it out,” he said. “And I think that’s what their hope is. Not that they want, you know, their children to be poster children, but maybe to prevent another family from going through what they had to experience.”
Soto says, on the bad days, he goes to his daughter’s playground. “They ask me, ‘Carlos, how can you do it?’ I say it’s not easy, but it’s not hard. And I sit there watching the kids play, and enjoying it, and that gives me more relief. And it gives me peace.”
This story is part of the series Gun Violence in America by ABC News Radio. Each day this week we’re exploring a different topic, from what we mean when we say “gun violence” – it’s not just mass shootings – to what can be done about it. You can hear an extended version of each report as an episode of the ABC News Radio Specials podcast. Subscribe and listen on any of the following podcast apps:
