(DENVER) — A manhunt was on Tuesday for a suspect who stabbed a ranger at the Staunton State Park in Colorado, according to police.
The stabbing unfolded around noon local time in the nearly 4,000-acre park southwest of Denver, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
The injured ranger was taken to a hospital, but his condition was not immediately released.
The suspect fled on foot after stabbing the ranger.
A motive for the stabbing remains under investigation.
Aerial footage from Denver ABC affiliate KMGH showed heavily armed officers searching the park.
Due to the ongoing search for the suspect, Staunton State Park was closed to the public and they were evacuating visitors from inside the park, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
State Attorney General Letitia James. Jim Franco/Albany Times Union via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Days after the Justice Department assigned its Weaponization Working Group to open an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, the group’s director, Ed Martin, sent a letter calling for her resignation — leapfrogging multiple steps federal prosecutors ordinarily undertake to determine whether the subject of an investigation engaged in criminal activity.
The letter was sent last week to James’ attorney, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by ABC News.
Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas earlier this month as part of a civil rights investigation into James’ business fraud case against President Donald Trump and her office’s corruption case against the National Rifle Association, ABC News previously reported.
Trump and his eldest sons were found liable last year for 10 years of fraud that inflated the president’s net worth, and the case is now on appeal. James earlier won a $4 million judgment against NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, after a jury found that he and others had misappropriating donor funds to finance luxury items for themselves.
Martin is also investigating two properties James owns in New York and Virginia.
The inquiries into James are part of a retribution battle President Trump promised to wage against perceived adversaries, which he tapped Martin to help lead.
In neither case has James been formally accused of wrongdoing, but Martin in his letter said her resignation would serve the national interest.
“Her resignation from office would give the people of New York and America more peace than proceeding. I would take this as an act of good faith,” Martin wrote.
On Aug. 15, three days after he sent the letter, Martin showed up wearing a trench coat outside James’ Brooklyn home and posed for a New York Post photographer who was there waiting.
When a neighbor asked what he was doing, Martin replied, “I’m just looking at houses,” but he later told Fox News, “I’m a prosecutor … I wanted to lay eyes on it … I wanted to see the property.”
The staged visit appeared to violate Justice Department protocol and both Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, told Martin the visit was unhelpful and counterproductive, multiple sources told ABC News.
The Justice Department declined to comment. Martin did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said Martin’s conduct demonstrates that he is not conducting a serious investigation.
“[D]espite the lack of evidence or law, you will take whatever actions you have been directed to take to make good on President Trump’s and Attorney General Bondi’s calls for revenge for that reason alone,” Lowell said in a letter to Martin sent Monday, a copy of which ABC News reviewed.
“Just four days into your role, no search for facts or questions of law; instead, you twice called for Ms. James to resign. DOJ has firm policies against using investigations and against using prosecutorial power for achieving political ends,” Lowell wrote.
A manhunt is underway after 36-year-old Troy Dugas, an inmate at the Harris County Jail, seen here in this undated police photo, was accidentally released from prison on Aug. 17, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Harris County Sheriff’s Office
(HOUSTON) — A manhunt is underway after an inmate was accidentally released from a Texas jail on Sunday, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Troy Dugas, a 36-year-old inmate at the Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas, was mistakenly released on Sunday at approximately 4:30 a.m., the sheriff’s office said in a press release on Monday.
Dugas had been previously sentenced to five years in state prison for assaulting a woman “with whom the defendant had a dating relationship” on Oct. 16, 2019, according to an indictment obtained by ABC News.
He was also serving a two-year sentence for evading arrest, officials said. He had been held at the Harris County Jail since Aug. 14 on additional local charges that were “subsequently dismissed,” the sheriff’s office said.
Officials said preliminary indications show that jail staff “did not properly document his state prison sentence in his file, leading to the mistaken assumption that Dugas was eligible for release once his Harris County charges were dismissed.”
An investigation will be conducted to determine the circumstances leading to Dugas’ “erroneous” release, officials said.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office replied to an ABC News request for comment with no additional information.
Dugas is approximately 6 feet, 1 inch tall, weighs 215 pounds and has a tattoo on his neck, officials said.
Authorities said anyone who has any information regarding Dugas’ whereabouts should call 911.
This is not the first time the Harris County Jail has mistakenly released an inmate. On Feb. 20, 21-year-old Justin Tompkins, who had been in jail since December 2022 on a capital murder charge, was set free after staff mistook him for “another inmate with the same name,” officials said in a press release. Jail staff realized the mistake the next day and “immediately launched a search,” according to officials. Tompkins voluntarily returned to the jail to surrender that evening.
A sign for the Food And Drug Administration is seen outside of the headquarters on July 20, 2020 in White Oak, Maryland. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The Food and Drug Administration is warning the public not to eat, sell or serve certain Great Value raw frozen shrimp sold at Walmart due to possible contamination with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection alerted the FDA about possible Cesium-137, or Cs-137, detected in shipping containers at four U.S. ports, the FDA said Tuesday in a press release. Testing on frozen shrimp from the distributor, Indonesia’s BMS Foods, also tested positive, the FDA said.
However, no shrimp that has tested positive for Cesium-137 has entered the U.S. food supply, according to the FDA.
The FDA is still recommending a recall on all products from BMS Foods that were shipped after the company’s shipping containers tested positive for Cesium-137, even though the products themselves have not tested positive.
The following Great Value brand frozen shrimp products should not be eaten, sold or served:
Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005540-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005538-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
Great Value brand frozen raw shrimp, lot code: 8005539-1, Best by Date: 3/15/2027
“If you have recently purchased raw frozen shrimp from Walmart that matches this description, throw it away,” the FDA said in its press release.
The FDA said it is working with distributors and retailers that received the shrimp from BMS Foods “to recommend that firms conduct a recall,” according to the press release.
The FDA said it determined the shrimp from BMS Foods violates the Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act “in that it appears to have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with Cs-137 and may pose a safety concern.”
All products from the company are now banned from coming into the U.S. “until the firm has resolved the conditions that gave rise to the appearance of the violation,” the FDA said.
Cesium is a soft, flexible, silvery-white metal that becomes liquid near room temperature, but easily bonds with chlorides to create a crystalline powder, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
External exposure to large amounts of Cesium-137, according to the EPA, can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death.
Emergency responders gather at Times Square in Manhattan after a suspicious package was discovered on August 18, 2025 in New York City. Police evacuated a part of the popular tourist destination for over an hour as they examined the package, which turned out not to be a threat. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A suspect faces multiple charges after allegedly leaving a suspicious package in Times Square on Monday, according to the New York Police Department.
On Monday at approximately 10:32 a.m., police responded to a call of a “suspicious package” in the vicinity of West 43 Street and Seventh Avenue, officials said in a statement to ABC News.
Once on the scene, officials said they located the package “in front of the New York Police Department facility.”
Police requested the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and Bomb Squad to respond to the scene, with officials also releasing an advisory urging the public to avoid the area.
An hour after the initial advisory was released, officials said the object was determined to not be a threat and the area was reopened “to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic.”
The suspect, 26-year-old Desean Maryat, was taken into custody on Monday at approximately 2:11 p.m., police said. Maryat, who is from the Bronx, was charged with reckless endangerment, placing a false bomb or hazardous substance, making terroristic threats, making a threat of mass harm and disorderly conduct, police said.
Maryat was taken to a hospital for a psych evaluation before being charged, according to New York ABC station WABC.
Police said the investigation remains ongoing.
Maryat has been previously charged with criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree menacing and second-degree harassment, according to court records.
It is unclear whether Maryat has an attorney who can speak on his behalf or when his next court appearance is scheduled.
(MADBURY, N.H.) — Four members of a family, including two children, were found dead in a New Hampshire home and police are investigating the incident as a possible murder-suicide, authorities said.
A toddler was found alive and uninjured in the home in Madbury, a small town in the state’s Seacoast region northwest of Portsmouth, according to a statement from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Police officers discovered the bodies of two adults and two children around 8:21 p.m. on Monday after a 911 caller reported that several people were deceased inside the home, according to the statement.
“Each of the deceased family members appears to have suffered gunshot wounds, and were pronounced dead at the scene,” according to the statement from authorities.
The names of the deceased family members are being withheld by law enforcement pending autopsies scheduled for Wednesday by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and notification of next of kin, officials said.
Investigators said there is no known threat to the public.
“I think investigators still have probably more questions than they have answers,” Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati told ABC affiliate station WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire. “One of the biggest questions they have right now is motive. Why? And I think that’s probably one of the more difficult things that they are trying to grasp, to understand how this came to be and to be able to be more definitive and to understand what the sequence of events was like inside that house.”
The temporary detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” was built on a rarely used airstrip in the Florida Everglades. Peter Charalambous/ABC News
(MIAMI) — A federal judge in Miami has dismissed part of a lawsuit from immigrant advocates after finding that many of the detained plaintiffs at the migrant detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” have received access to legal counsel.
The judge also transferred the case to a different jurisdiction after agreeing with the Trump administration and state attorneys for Florida that the venue where the case was filed is improper.
The order came hours after a hearing on Monday in which lawyers for the detainees sought a ruling from the judge, U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz, that would require authorities to expand legal access at the facility,
“Several developments have occurred since Plaintiffs filed this case,” Judge Ruiz, a Trump nominee, said in his order overnight.
“First, many of the Detained Plaintiffs have been transferred out of Alligator Alcatraz,” Ruis said. “Second, many of the Detained Plaintiffs (including those who have since been transferred out of Alligator Alcatraz) have received access to counsel, and all the Attorney Plaintiffs have received access to Alligator Alcatraz detainees.”
The plaintiffs had also argued that the defendants hadn’t made clear which immigration court had jurisdiction over the detention facility, preventing detainees from filing court petitions.
But after the defendants filed a notice with the court designating the immigration court at Krome Detention Center in Miami as the court with jurisdiction over Alligator Alcatraz, the judge ruled the plaintiffs claim is moot.
Ruiz also agreed with the defendants that the Southern District of Florida is the wrong venue since the facility is located in the state’s Middle District of Florida.
Hurricane Erin – The Fifth Named Storm Map/ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Erin, now a Category 2 hurricane, has prompted a tropical storm watch for North Carolina’s Outer Banks and is expected to bring dangerous waves and rip currents to beaches along the East Coast.
Here’s the latest forecast:
The Outer Banks
While the storm won’t make landfall on the East Coast, it has prompted mandatory evacuations for some Outer Banks residents and visitors.
The Outer Banks is forecast to get heavy rain Wednesday night into Thursday and winds over 40 mph.
A storm surge watch and a high surf advisory have been issued, with destructive, large breaking waves up to 20 feet in the forecast. Coastal damage is likely from large waves destroying protective dunes. The flooding will also extend inland, likely impacting roads.
Tracking Erin
Dangerous rip currents and large waves are forecast for the East Coast through Friday.
The popular beach towns of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Wildwood, New Jersey, banned swimming on Monday due to the rough surf.
More than 50 people were rescued from the ocean at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Monday local officials said, and no swimming is recommended at Wrightsville Beach from Tuesday though Friday.
On Tuesday, waves will pick up along the East Coast, with Florida to the Outer Banks facing the worst conditions.
By Wednesday, the waves will increase along the Carolinas as Erin makes its closest pass to the Outer Banks Wednesday night into Thursday.
On Thursday, the high surf will arrive to beaches in the Mid-Atlantic and New England. A high surf advisory is also posted for portions of New Jersey, Long Island and Massachusetts.
(NEWS YORK) — A Michigan man was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a woman he stalked for more than a decade, in a case that highlighted the potentially devastating impact of stalking.
Christopher Thomas, 39, pleaded guilty to kidnapping, torture and aggravated stalking in December 2023, and was sentenced in 2024. The charges stemmed from a horrific October 2022 incident in which he kidnapped Samantha Stites and held her in a soundproof bunker he had constructed inside a storage unit.
“I wondered if I would see daylight again,” Stites said in her victim impact statement during sentencing. “I shook and sobbed after he raped me, I wasn’t sure he would stop.”
ABC News Studios’ “Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror,” a three-part series, is streaming in its entirety on Hulu and Disney+ from Tuesday, Aug. 19.
While Thomas was initially charged with criminal sexual conduct, those charges were later dropped as part of a plea agreement.
The case gained national attention due to its disturbing details, but also because Stites had previously sought protection from Thomas through the legal system. Just months before the kidnapping, her request for an ex parte — meaning the defendant was not present — personal protection order was denied.
The stalking began in 2011 when Stites was a college student at Grand Valley State University. Thomas, who is seven years older than Stites, began appearing at the same Christian group she attended. What started as seemingly innocent interactions quickly evolved into something more sinister.
“At first I think he is just lonely and for some reason finds me an approachable person to talk to,” Stites told ABC News. “And then at some point, it kind of changes.”
Despite Stites’ repeated rejections and clear boundaries, Thomas’s behavior escalated. He would appear at her workplace with flowers, show up at her sports practices and eventually began following her movements through GPS trackers he secretly placed on her vehicle and those of her friends.
“She felt sorry for him. So she was a little bit nice to him,” Charissa Hayden, Stites’ former roommate, told ABC News. “And he took that and he spun it into something it wasn’t and ran away with it.”
On Oct. 7, 2022, Thomas broke into Stites’ home early in the morning and kidnapped her. He had spent months preparing for this moment, building a soundproof room within a storage unit.
“He spent thousands of dollars on creating this box so he could spend time with Sam,” Detective Mike Matteucci of the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News. “And do God only knows what.”
Inside the bunker, Thomas revealed he had tracked Stites’ movements for over a year using GPS devices, showing her the tracking app on his phone. He told her she would be held for two weeks, showing her supplies he had gathered including food, water and a bucket for bathroom needs.
Stites, fearing for her life, strategically engaged him in conversation. When Thomas expressed fear about going to prison, Stites saw an opportunity. After nearly 14 hours in captivity, she convinced him to release her by promising not to report the crime. Once free, she immediately sought medical attention and reported the incident to authorities.
The investigation revealed Thomas had a prior conviction for stalking another woman. Kelli, whose last name was withheld for legal reasons, told ABC News she had obtained a protection order against Thomas in 2009 after he engaged in similar stalking behavior.
“I always knew that there would be somebody else,” Kelli said after being contacted by detectives investigating Stites’ case. “When they called me in 2022, there’s like this guilty feeling like he did do it to somebody else. I was right.”
During the sentencing, Judge Kevin Elsenheimer — who had denied Stites’ ex parte protection order request in July 2022, just three months before the kidnapping — acknowledged the severity of Thomas’s actions and his likelihood to reoffend.
The judge pointed to Thomas’s jail conversations with his mother as evidence of his obsession, noting that Thomas admitted “nothing would have mattered, that nothing would have stopped you from doing what you were going to do.”
If Thomas is ever released, he will be required to wear a GPS monitor for the remainder of his life.
“Justice is a funny thing. It doesn’t necessarily come in the form of prison years,” Stites said. “I can’t ever go back to before I was kidnapped. And that’s something I had to grieve. But knowing that I’m finally turning the page on this and that I should feel safe with him off the street and that I am protected meant a lot. I felt free.”
According to court documents, the case prompted changes in how courts handle protection orders in Michigan. New policies require referees — who consider PPO applications and make a referral to the judge on what to do — to examine any prior PPOs before making recommendations to the court.
According to national statistics presented in the case, one in three women will be stalked in their lifetime.
“I want other women, whether they’ve been stalked or sexually assaulted or not believed, I want them to see my story and think things can change,” Stites said.
The entrance to the state-managed immigration detention center dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, located at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Florida Everglades on August 03, 2025 in Ochopee, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(MIAMI) — A federal judge appeared skeptical about a lawsuit challenging the temporary detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” during a court hearing on Monday, despite plaintiffs’ claims that the Trump administration and the state of Florida have run “roughshod over constitutional concerns” in their rush to build the controversial facility.
A group of detainees at the facility is asking U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Armando Ruiz II, a Trump appointee, to issue an order that would require authorities to expand legal access at the controversial facility, where the detainees say they lack a standard way to communicate with their attorneys, and that they are being held without any formal criminal or immigration charges against them, making it challenging, if not impossible, for them to seek release on bond.
Judge Ruiz told plaintiffs’ lawyers that their lawsuit might need to be transferred to a different court, remarking that the case suffers from a “breakdown” over venue. The judge also struggled to articulate how he could craft an order that would remedy the concerns raised by the detainees.
While legal access at the facility has improved since the facility’s early days, lawyers for the detainees argued that their clients still lack a consistent way to contact their lawyers confidentially.
“The government has been in such a rush to build and detain people at the facility that it has run roughshod over constitutional concerns,” said ACLU attorney Eunice Cho. “The irreparable harm here is extraordinary.”
During the hearing, Judge Ruiz appeared receptive to the ongoing issues raised by the plaintiffs but acknowledged that the access issues were “a natural byproduct of a facility being stood up very quickly.”
ACLU attorneys said that at least one person was wrongly deported from the facility after failing to contact their lawyers, and claimed that a mentally disabled man was encouraged to sign a voluntary departure form without an attorney. They also claimed that one lawyer had to wait three weeks to contact their client.
According to Judge Ruiz, the improvements to the access have “narrowed” the lawsuit, but a “live controversy with the nature of access” continues.
He added that granting the relief requested by the detainees would be challenging, given that the issue is not about whether they have access to their attorneys, but the degree of their access.
“What am I going to put in an order?” he said. “You’d need to have some metric. It’s not necessarily that it can’t be done, but I think you can understand why crafting a scope of relief on the ground [is challenging].”
The judge noted that he might need to transfer the case out of the Southern District of Florida because the alleged legal claims stem directly from the facility in the Everglades, which is in the Middle District of Florida. Plaintiffs initially tried to tie the case to the Southern District of Florida by relying on the federal defendants based in Miami, rather than the state defendants who oversee running the detention center in the Everglades.
“That’s where the rubber hits the road,” Judge Ruiz said. “If I can get to the merits, I will. If I have to transfer, I will.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration encouraged Judge Ruiz to toss the case, arguing that the detainees are using their First Amendment claims to challenge “the decision of the attorney general of DHS to use the alligator Alcatraz as a detention facility.”
“I think the best argument they’re attempting to advance today on the federal side is that this is almost a Trojan horse [that] the First Amendment argument is all window dressing, that at its core, this is really attempting to challenge kind of the underlying immigration determinations or detention determinations being made,” Judge Ruiz said.
In court filings prior to the hearing, plaintiffs argued that “Alligator Alcatraz” exists in a legal “black hole” with no clearly defined immigration court to challenge their detentions, but the Trump administration recently designated the Krome North Service Processing Center near Miami as the immigration court with responsibility for the facility.
This is the second major lawsuit challenging the operation of “Alligator Alcatraz,” as another federal judge is considering blocking the use of the facility over environmental concerns.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, after a multi-day hearing earlier this month, issued a temporary restraining order blocking further construction at the facility, and is now considering a broader order barring use of the facility.
