(MEMPHIS) — Tennessee’s lead law enforcement agency is investigating an officer-involved shooting of a man who allegedly opened fire outside a Jewish school in Memphis on Monday afternoon.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced in a press release on Monday evening that it has launched a probe into the incident at the request of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
Preliminary information indicates that an armed man, whose identity has not yet been released, attempted to enter a school on South White Station Road in Memphis just before 12:30 p.m. CT. The man reportedly fired shots before driving away in a car, according to the TBI.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. CT, a Memphis police officer located the suspect’s vehicle a few miles away on McCory Avenue. The driver reportedly got out of the car holding a gun and, “for reasons still under investigation, the officer fired his service weapon, striking the individual,” the TBI said.
The man was subsequently transported by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment. No officers were injured in the incident, according to the TBI.
“TBI agents continue to work to independently determine the series of events leading to the officer-involved shooting, including collecting evidence and conducting interviews,” the agency said. “Throughout the process, investigative findings will be shared with the District Attorney General for his review and consideration. The TBI acts solely as fact-finders in its cases and does not determine whether the actions of an officer were justified in these types of matters; that decision rests with the District Attorney General requesting TBI’s involvement.”
“The TBI does not identify the officers involved in these types of incidents and instead refers questions of that nature to the respective department to answer as it sees fit,” the agency added.
Earlier Monday, Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis said in a statement that her officers “mitigated a potential mass shooting situation.”
Officers were dispatched to the Margolin Hebrew Academy-Feinstone Yeshiva of the South after receiving 911 calls about a gunman outside of the school, according to police.
The unidentified suspect allegedly tried to gain entry into the school and opened fire outside when he couldn’t get in, police said. A screengrab from the school’s security footage, obtained by ABC News, shows a man going through the pre-entrance doors holding what appears to be a handgun.
“Thankfully that school had a great safety procedure process in place and avoided anyone being harmed or injured at that scene,” Memphis Police Assistant Chief Don Crowe said during a press conference on Monday afternoon.
The suspect fled the scene in a maroon pickup truck with California license plates, but school officials were able to provide officers with images of the man and a description of his vehicle. Officers were soon able to locate the suspect’s vehicle and conducted a traffic stop about 3 miles from the school, according to police.
The suspect allegedly exited the vehicle with a handgun and an officer shot him. The suspect was taken to a hospital in critical condition, police said.
The TBI was contacted to conduct an investigation “due to the suspect’s condition and in accordance with policy,” according to police.
Citing the ongoing investigation, Crowe declined to give details on what prompted the officer to fire their weapon or if the suspect fired any shots during the traffic stop.
“I personally truly believe we prevented a tragedy,” the assistant police chief told reporters.
ABC News’ Kerem Inal, Christopher Looft, Ivan Pereira and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Five days a week, at 8:30 a.m., two-year-old Catherine Arias arrives at a children’s hospital in Valhalla, New York — 10 miles north of New York City.
Her mother says she’s often tired, just starting to wake up, but she has a full day of therapies to get to: depending on the day, physical and occupational to improve her strength and motor skills, speech therapy to improve her language skills and even feeding therapy to make sure she’s eating well, all of which lasts until 11:30 a.m.
This has been Catherine’s life for the past year, ever since she was accidentally shot during a drive-by shooting in the Bronx in January 2022 while sitting in a parked car with her mother.
Her parents, Miraida Gomez and Gregory Arias, spoke to ABC News exclusively about Catherine’s recovery more than one year after the shooting.
They say her story is a reminder of the far-reaching effects of gun violence, particularly on young victims, and how the trauma — both for the patient and the families — doesn’t end after the initial discharge from the hospital.
“It’s definitely a lifelong battle after the incident,” Gomez told ABC News. “I don’t look at my child as disabled, I don’t look at her with any disabilities. But the reality is that these are her medical diagnoses…Following the incident, it’s affected our mental health.”
Shot while sitting in a parked car
On Jan. 19, 2022, two days before Catherine’s first birthday, Gomez and Arias say they left their two older children — Delilah, 7, and Haylee, 12 — at their grandparents’ house for a sleepover and left to go home with Catherine.
They say they stopped at Leroy Pharmacy on Valentine Avenue and 198th Street in the Bronx to pick up Gomez’s thyroid medication. Arias went inside while Gomez and Catherine waited in the back seat of the parked car outside.
While Arias was inside, gunshots rang out. Gomez — holding Catherine — dropped down behind the driver’s seat. When she sat up, Gomez said she realized her toddler was half-gasping, half-crying and her baby pink coat was red with blood.
A stray bullet had hit the car, entering Catherine’s left cheek and exiting at the top of her head.
Gomez said she got out of the car, immediately began performing CPR on Catherine and when her husband exited the pharmacy she told him to call 911.
“She just tells me, ‘Call 911, Catherine has been shot’ and the rest of the time is super slow down and I couldn’t even focus on three simple numbers: 9-1-1,” Arias told ABC News. “And that was the beginning of the, I wouldn’t say nightmare, but of the surreal experience of knowing that an 11-month-old child — your child — was shot.”
An ambulance arrived and took Catherine to Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, where she stayed for two weeks.
Four months in the hospital
During that time, Gomez said Catherine had surgery to remove parts of her frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes on the left side of the brain. The left side of her skull was shattered by the bullet, which required her to receive a titanium implant.
Catherine also experienced a stroke early in recovery, which resulted in a weakening of the muscles on the right side of her body.
“We were initially told that she may not be able to walk again, her speech may not be the same,” Gomez said. “So that’s pretty much what we were looking at when they gave us the initial diagnosis following the injury.”
After two weeks, Catherine was transferred to Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, where Dr. Kathy Silverman, unit chief of the pediatric, adolescent and traumatic brain injury units, was her attending physician for the entire length of her stay.
“Catherine was a normal child, she was healthy, she was developing normally,” Silverman said, but the gunshot wound came with major consequences. “From then on, she had weakness on the right side of her body, she had difficulty swallowing, she had visual deficits. she had difficulty with bowel and bladder issues, she had difficulty with moving, all the things that a child is able to do.”
Catherine slowly began improving and was eventually discharged from inpatient therapy in April 2022, but she continues to receive a variety of therapies — feeding, occupation, physical and speech — every day with each session lasting about half an hour, her parents say.
A GoFundMe set up by a relative helped make sure they were fed and able to pay their bills. Additionally, because of Catherine’s disability, her parents say they were able to get Medicaid, which helps cover the cost of her therapies. They’re still waiting to see if they’ll be approved for Social Security disability which, for children, is approved according to the parents’ income.
Arias’s job involves driving trucks, so Gomez is usually the parent who takes Catherine to her therapy sessions. She said her consulting job has allowed her to work remotely.
Recovery more than a year later
Catherine initially had a feeding tube when she was in the hospital and, after it was removed, a swallow study showed thinner liquids were going down the wrong way into her lungs.
Because of this, she has to drink thicker liquids, Gina Longarzo, a senior speech-language pathologist at Blythedale Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. That’s one of the reasons Catherine is in feeding therapy.
Catherine has since been able to have thinner liquids, but not yet to the consistency of water, Longarzo says. She also is working on trying new kinds of food.
“We’re working on aversion because when a child goes through a trauma like [Catherine] did, they can become aversive to food, because it’s something they can control,” Longarzo said. “So, they’re not controlling a lot of what happened to them, but they can control what they eat.”
Although physicians cannot know for certain how long Catherine would benefit from continuing therapies, Silverman said she will need them, likely, for years.
“It’s a lifelong recovery,” she said. “This has changed the course of her life when that happened to her. It’s changed the life of her family as well.”
Research has shown that there has been an increase in gun violence, particularly, among children, since the COVID-19 pandemic.
One study, led by Dr. Jonathan Jay, an assistant professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, looked at fatal and non-fatal shootings in four cities: New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
“We saw that shootings affecting children, they nearly doubled across those cities, and that the impacts were disproportionately experienced by children of color,” Jay, who studies gun violence and its impacts, told ABC News. “So, the racial disparities, the gaps between children of color and white children, which were already large, they got even larger.”
He added, “In fact, the only group for which the pandemic shooting rate did not increase was non-Hispanic white children, so there was something going on in those cities where white children were able to stay safe while all other children were not.”
While fatal gun injuries can be devastating for a family, non-fatal gun injuries can also have devastating impacts. Jay said between two and four times as many gun injuries are not fatal compared to those that are fatal.
“Even if you survive a firearm injury, there are important lasting physical health effects,” he said. “Many firearm injuries cause long-term physical disability, and also really important mental health effects, so we expect to see anxiety, depression, PTSD.”
‘This has affected our mental health’
Gomez said this has affected her own mental health as well as the mental of their other two daughters.
“Whenever there’s a lockdown at the school, it’s enough to send our 12-year-old into a panic,” Gomez said. “Our seven-year-old started to decline in her in her studies, because all she could talk about was ‘bad people shooting.’ So, we’ve gone through a lot as a family.”
Gomez said she suffers from anxiety, PTSD and intrusive thoughts and while therapy has helped her, it’s still an ongoing battle.
“In the moment, if I’m at a red light, I’m driving, sometimes the thoughts of getting shot comes into my head, and that’s because I was sitting right next to my daughter when she got shot,” Gomez said. “Whenever I hear that the schools are on a lockdown, the only thing I can think of is, ‘How can I get my babies out of the school safely?'”
Arias added that for a while, he wasn’t even able to look outside of a window without the visualization of Catherine just after she was shot. He’s still worried about taking his children out sometimes.
“That’s the debilitating part for us,” he said. “It’s just, we can’t enjoy outside time, can’t even enjoy going to the park. What if people just decide to go off on a rampage and get into it with each other over nonsense and we’re just there and it’s like, there’s no way out?”
When Catherine was born, Arias said the family moved to the eastern part of the Bronx because they believed it would be quieter and more residential than the western part. The shooting occurred in their old neighborhood.
Now the family is considering leaving the Bronx altogether and either moving to the suburbs or even out of state completely.
Catherine’s parents said the experience has made them stronger as a family unit and they don’t want Catherine’s whole life to be defined by this one incident, but they are nervous about how they will one day have to explain what happened to her.
“As I see my kid getting older, how am I going to explain to her that she got shot?” Gomez said. “How is that going to affect her mental health and understanding. You know, ‘Hey, my right side may be weak because I got shot,’ or ‘I have half of my skull as a plate because I got shot.'”
She added, “That’s not normal. A kid shouldn’t have to live this experience, be told this by their parents. So, it’s heavy.”
(NORTH CAROLINA) — Police in Lincolnton, North Carolina, arrested a man on felony hit and run charges on Monday after six migrants were allegedly hit by a vehicle outside a store on Sunday.
Daniel Gonzalez, 68, was arrested Monday night after turning up with family members at the Lincolnton Police Department, officials said in a statement.
Family members told the authorities that Gonzalez explained to them he hit the migrants by accident Sunday, according to the LPD. The family members said Gonzalez told them he hit the gas by accident while he was parking, and then panicked and left the scene, the LPD said in a release.
Authorities said Gonzalez has been cooperating with detectives. He was arrested and charged with felony hit and run and received a $50,000 secure bond, police said.
Six people were allegedly hit by a car outside a store in Lincolnton in what authorities said they suspected at the time was an intentional vehicular assault on a group of migrant workers.
Authorities on Sunday asked for the public’s help in identifying the driver, providing photos of the vehicle, a black SUV.
The six people hit were taken to Atrium Health Lincoln and released the same day, a police official told ABC News Monday. The victims had various injuries including broken and sprained ankles and some abrasions.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds and Armando T. Garcia contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The wife of Rex Heuermann, the suspect arrested on suspicion of murdering three women in the Gilgo Beach, Long Island, area told ABC News Monday that “everything is destroyed” following the arrest of her husband.
Asa Ellerup told ABC News in a phone call that she and her two adult children are adjusting to the reality that they have a family member who has been arrested on suspicion of being a serial killer.
“[My children] have been crying themselves to sleep and I’ve been crying myself to sleep too,” Ellerup, who has filed for divorce from Heuermann, told ABC News.
Ellerup said that following the search of the family home, her family’s belongings — which are now piled in boxes or otherwise strewn across their floors — are a constant reminder of Heuermann’s alleged crimes.
“Every time my kids go through something … they open a box. Every single time they cry,” Ellerup said. “Everything is destroyed,” she said.
Ellerup told ABC News that the situation has prompted her son, who is developmentally delayed, to sleep in a chair at night.
Earlier this month, Heuermann was arrested in Manhattan and charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found covered in burlap along Ocean Parkway on Long Island’s South Shore in December 2010. He was also named the “prime suspect” in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a fourth woman discovered in the same spot, police said.
Heurmann has pleaded not guilty. He is expected in a Suffolk County Court on Tuesday.
(LOS ANGELES) — A part of Los Angeles County is under quarantine following the discovery of an invasive fruit fly from Asia, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
State officials found 20 Tau fruit flies in an unincorporated area of Stevenson Ranch, close to the city of Santa Clarita.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture has quarantined 79 square miles of the area, the department said last week in a press release.
The Tau fruit fly is a major pest for agriculture and natural resources, CDFA said, including various fruits and vegetables such as cucurbits, avocado, citrus, tomatoes, peppers, as well as some plants native to the state.
This is the first time there’s been a Tau fruit fly quarantine in the Western Hemisphere, according to the CDFA.
“It’s believed the fly was introduced by travelers bringing uninspected produce into the state– a common pathway for invasive species,” the California Department of Food and Agriculture said in the press release.
The Tau fruit fly was first spotted in California in 2016 in San Bernardino County and has been seen and destroyed three other times, according to CDFA.
State officials have advised residents in the quarantine zone not to move any vegetables or fruit from their property as part of the efforts to stop the spread of the Tau fruit fly.
Residents can consume or process the fruits and vegetables wherever they picked them up, “Otherwise, they should be disposed of by double-bagging in plastic and placing the bags in a bin specifically for garbage,” CDFA said.
Other insects can also be harmful to agriculture.
Last year, agriculture and park departments told people if they came across the spotted lanternfly they should kill it because of its impact on agriculture.
The New York City Parks Department offers similar guidance on its website.
“Harming our city’s wildlife is broadly prohibited, but in an effort to slow the spread of this troublesome species, the current guidance remains: if you see a spotted lanternfly, please squish and dispose of this invasive pest,” the New York City Parks Department said at the time.
The spotted lanternfly also originated in Asia but was first found in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 2014, and soon after in other states in the Northeast, including Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
The insect, known scientifically as the Lycorma delicatula, feeds on at least 70 different species of trees, as well as vines and shrubs, including fruit trees, grapevines and several hardwoods, according to a report from the University of Michigan.
Additional information on the Tau fruit fly can be found on the CDFA’s website.
(NEW YORK) — The shooting happened around 1 a.m. outside the Logan Square Shopping Center in Lansing, Michigan, according to police.
At least nine mass shootings rocked cities across the nation over the weekend, leaving five people dead and 56 wounded, according to a national website that tracks gun violence.
The mass casualty shootings occurred at parties, outside of a nightclub and a convenience store, during a street game of dominoes and even at a community meeting on how to combat gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as a single event with four or more victims either injured or killed.
The weekend violence upped the number of mass shootings in 2023 to 419, with still five months left in the year. The number of mass shootings this year has already surpassed the total number that occurred in all of 2019, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
According to the website’s data, an average of two mass shootings have occurred every day this year. In all of 2022, there were 647 mass shootings nationwide, slightly down from 690 that occurred in 2021.
1 dead, 19 injured in Muncie, Indiana
One of the worst incidents occurred early Sunday in Muncie, Indiana, where gunfire broke out at a large block party, according to the Muncie Police Department.
The shooting unfolded at about 1:14 a.m. at a business in the city’s Industry neighborhood, police said.
A 30-year-old man killed in the shooting was identified by the Delaware County Coroner’s Officer as Joseph Bonner. At least 17 of the 19 people injured in the shooting suffered gunshot wounds, police said.
Two of the people injured were juveniles, authorities said.
“On Sunday morning, our community was shaken to the core by violence,” Muncie Mayor Dan Ridenour said in a statement Monday morning.
Ridenour said a motive for the shooting is under investigation, but added, “At this time, we do not believe that this was the act of a single gunman, with the intent to target a specific group of people.”
No arrests have been announced at this time.
9 women injured, 1 fatally, in drive-by shooting in Chicago
One woman was killed and eight others wounded in Chicago when multiple gunmen opened fire on them in a residential neighborhood, police said.
The shooting erupted just before 1 a.m. during a birthday party in the city’s Lawndale neighborhood when a black Jeep pulled up and multiple gunmen got out and opened fire on the group, according to a police incident report.
A 21-year-old woman was shot in the face and later pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago, police said. A 28-year-old woman was shot eight times in the incident and was taken to Mt. Sinai in critical condition. The other gunshot victims ranged in age from 20 to 33 and were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
A motive for the shooting is currently under investigation. Police said investigators are working to identify the gunmen.
The shooting came during a violent weekend in Chicago. Between 6 p.m. Friday and 11:59 p.m. Sunday, a total of 47 people were shot, five fatally, in 29 separate shooting incidents across the city, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Michigan shopping center shooting leaves 5 wounded
Gunfire erupted early Sunday in the parking lot of a Lansing, Michigan, shopping center, leaving five people wounded, two critically, and several people detained for questioning, police said.
The shooting unfolded about 1 a.m. outside the Logan Square Shopping Center, according to the Lansing Police Department.
When officers arrived at the scene, they found a large crowd with multiple gunshot victims, police said.
The victims ranged in age from 16 to 26, police said. Two of the victims were taken to local hospitals in critical condition, according to police.
Police officials said several firearms were recovered at the scene and several people were detained for questioning, but no arrests have been announced.
5 shot Seattle community outreach meeting
Five people were shot on Friday night at a Seattle community outreach meeting, according to the Seattle Police Department.
Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz told ABC affiliate station KOMO in Seattle the shooting broke out just before 9 a.m. in the Rainier Valley neighborhood. Two of the gunshot victims, both women, were critically injured, police said.
All of the victims, according to police, were attending the community outreach meeting on combating poverty and gun violence in the Rainier Valley neighborhood.
“Honestly, this is really disturbing when you have victims who are trying to do an outreach effort, trying to help people out and get people on the right path and this is what they get hit with,” Diaz said.
No suspects have been identified.
Dominoes game prompts Fort Lauderdale shooting
Gunfire broke out during a game of dominoes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that left four people wounded, according to police and witnesses.
The shooting occurred about 11 p.m. on Friday outside a convenience store, where a group of people were playing dominoes, a witness told ABC affiliate station WPLG in Miami.
Police suspect the incident started as a fight between two people and escalated. Witness Ashraf Hanna, who works at the convenience store, told WPLG that he heard at least six shots and saw at least one of the injured victims holding his bleeding hand in the aftermath.
No arrests were immediately announced.
7 shot outside Texas nightclub
Seven people were shot outside a Port Arthur, Texas, nightclub early Sunday, according to police.
The shooting occurred about 1 a.m. outside the Opulence Lounge, police said. One of the victims was critically injured, according to police.
A motive for the shooting is under investigation and no arrests have been announced.
4 shot, 1 fatally, in Tampa Bay
A man was killed and three others were wounded Friday night in Tampa Bay, Florida, according to police.
Police officers were called to the city’s Jackson Heights neighborhood around 9:47 a.m. to investigate a report of gunfire, officials said. When officers arrived at the scene they found a black 4-door Infiniti sedan abandoned with “several visible pools of blood in and around the car, but no apparent victims,” the Tampa Police Department said in a statement.
Officers later learned that four men suffering from gunshot wounds had been taken to a local hospital in a private vehicle, according to police. One of the wounded men was pronounced dead at the hospital, police said.
No arrests were announced and a motive for the shooting is under investigation.
Los Angeles shooting leaves 1 dead, 3 injured
Four people were shot, one fatally, when gunfire erupted Saturday night in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to police.
The shooting broke out just before 11 a.m. Sunday, according to police. Officers who were sent to the scene to investigate a report of shots fired, discovered a man shot dead on the street, officials said.
Officers later learned that three other people, a 29-year-old man and two women, arrived at a local hospital on their own and were treated for gunshot wounds.
No arrests were announced and a motive for the shooting remains under investigation.
Shooting in suburban Chicago leaves 1 dead, 4 shot
Gunfire broke out at social gathering in a suburban Chicago community on Friday night, leaving one person dead and three other people wounded, authorities said.
The shooting occurred about 7:15 p.m. at a gathering in Ford Heights, southwest of Chicago, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
A woman gravely injured the shooting was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, the sheriff’s office said. Three other women and a man were also hospitalized with gunshot wounds, the sheriff’s office said.
A motive for the shooting is under investigation. No arrests were announced.
(BOISE, Idaho) — Lori Vallow Daybell is set to be sentenced on Monday for the killing of two of her children in what prosecutors argued was a doomsday plot.
Vallow Daybell, 50, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2019 deaths of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16, whose remains were found on an Idaho property belonging to her husband, Chad Daybell, following a monthslong search.
She was also found guilty of conspiring to kill her children and her husband’s first wife, Tamara Daybell, who died on Oct. 19, 2019, less than a month before Lori and Chad married in Hawaii.
She faces up to life in prison without parole. The judge had previously granted the defense’s motion to dismiss the death penalty in the case.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 31, 11:46 AM EDT
Tammy Daybell ‘taken from us by murdering thieves’
Vicki Hoban, the aunt of Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybell, who died of asphyxiation in 2019 less than one month before Chad and Lori Daybell married, gave a victim impact statement through tears on Monday.
“Tammy was a most excellent person and she led her life with the utmost dignity,” Hoban said. “There will be a huge void.”
Her niece was “brutally executed in her own bed,” Hoban said as she wept, “taken from us by murdering thieves.”
Tammy Daybell was “robbed of her entire life,” she said, and “all her family robbed of ever seeing her again.”
“Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, unbearable is not a big enough statement,” she said. “The most innocent of lives was simply discarded like it meant nothing.”
Hoban said Vallow Daybell turned her niece’s “home into a cemetery,” adding, “Tammy would have been horrified to know what you have done — and it’s broken us as a family.”
Chad Daybell is charged with Tammy Daybell’s murder and conspiracy to commit murder and pleaded not guilty. Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit Tammy Daybell’s murder.
Jul 31, 11:40 AM EDT
Tammy Daybell’s sister: ‘My family has been ripped apart’
Samantha Gwilliam, the sister of Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybell, who died of asphyxiation in 2019 less than one month before Chad and Lori Daybell married, took the stand to give a victim impact statement.
Gwilliam testified that Chad Daybell told her that he’d married Vallow Daybell two weeks after her “beloved sister,” Tammy Daybell, was buried, and claimed the new couple then told lie after lie.
“Because of you and your desire to get what you want at any cost, my family has been ripped apart. I helped raise Tammy’s children and because of you they no longer have their mother or grandmother,” Gwilliam said.
Choked up, she said her relationship with Tammy and Chad Daybell’s children is “strained and most contact with them is gone” she said.
“Your trial is the last thing my ailing mother had to live through,” she said, adding that her death in June “was marred by the fact that Tammy’s children chose not to participate in her funeral by fear of causing more drama.”
“We blame you and Chad for all the lies you told in ripping apart this family,” she said.
“I choose to forget you … I choose to never think of you again,” she said.
Gwilliam also read a statement on behalf of her father, Ronald Douglas.
“Tammy’s death was unexpected and had a profound impact on all of us,” Douglas’ statement said, adding “we were barely into our recovery process” when learning that Chad Daybell had remarried weeks later.
“The emotional stress” accelerated Tammy Daybell’s mother’s declining health, he noted.
“The eternal ramifications of [Vallow Daybell’s] actions are yet to be calculated. Lori needs to pay,” he said.
Chad Daybell is charged with Tammy Daybell’s murder and conspiracy to commit murder and pleaded not guilty. Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit Tammy Daybell’s murder.
Jul 31, 11:03 AM EDT
Who the court is allowing to speak at the sentencing
Multiple people sought to give victim impact statements at Monday’s sentencing hearing on behalf of Tylee Ryan, J.J. Vallow and Tamara Daybell, according to a June court filing.
Those granted permission to address the court include Colby Ryan, the half-brother to Tylee and adoptive brother to J.J.; Summer Shiflet, the sister of Lori Vallow Daybell; and Kay Woodcock, a representative of Charles Vallow, who was J.J.’s adoptive father and Lori Vallow Daybell’s late husband. Vicki Hoban, the aunt of Tamara Daybell, was also later granted permission to speak as a designated representative of Tamara Daybell’s late mother.
Idaho law allows the “immediate family members” of homicide victims to address the court.
It was unclear ahead of the hearing who was scheduled to address the court.
Jul 31, 10:59 AM EDT
Defense request for a new trial was denied
Ahead of Lori Vallow Daybell’s sentencing, defense attorneys unsuccessfully sought a new trial.
On May 25, the defense filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that the jury instructions were “confusing” and “prejudicial,” among other claims.
Judge Steven Boyce denied the request for a new trial on June 15.
The jury handed down its verdict in mid-May, after deliberating for approximately six hours across two days. The verdict was read before a packed Boise courtroom and also livestreamed by the court.
The verdict followed a six-week trial during which prosecutors argued that Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad Daybell thought the children were zombies and murdered them. Prosecutors called roughly 60 witnesses, while the defense called none.
Prosecutors said at the time they were “very pleased” with the jury’s verdict but declined to comment further given the pending case against Chad Daybell. His case is scheduled to go to trial in April 2024.
Jul 31, 10:56 AM EDT
Sentencing comes nearly four years after children disappeared
Joshua “J.J.” Vallow and Tylee Ryan were last seen alive in September 2019 and were reported missing by their extended family members to police in November 2019.
Their remains were found on Chad Daybell’s property in Fremont County, Idaho, in June 2020. Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were indicted on murder charges nearly a year later.
Among the revelations during Lori Vallow Daybell’s trial, a DNA expert testified for the state that a strand of hair attached to duct tape found among the remains matched the mother’s DNA profile.
The jury also heard text messages that prosecutors said were sent between Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband in the weeks prior to her children’s disappearance.
The messages discussed demons inhabiting the children’s bodies and that they were “weary” taking care of demons. Lori Vallow Daybell reportedly texted her husband to “please ask the Lord to take them” and, days later, if he thinks there is a “perfectly orchestrated plan to take the children,” to which he reportedly responded, “There is a plan being orchestrated for the children.”
(BOISE, Idaho) — Lori Vallow Daybell is set to be sentenced on Monday for the killing of two of her children in what prosecutors argued was a doomsday plot.
Vallow Daybell, 50, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2019 deaths of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16, whose remains were found on an Idaho property belonging to her husband, Chad Daybell, following a monthslong search.
She was also found guilty of conspiring to kill her children and her husband’s first wife, Tamara Daybell, who died on Oct. 19, 2019, less than a month before Lori and Chad married in Hawaii.
She faces up to life in prison without parole. The judge had previously granted the defense’s motion to dismiss the death penalty in the case.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 31, 2:30 PM EDT
Vallow Daybell sentenced to life in prison without parole
Judge Steven Boyce sentenced Lori Vallow Daybell to life in prison without parole.
Boyce mentioned several times that Vallow Daybell “lived a law-abiding life” until this case.
Boyce said Vallow Daybell suffers from mental health issues, adding, “Something radically changed in you that led you to where you are today.”
A mother killing her children is the most “unimaginable type of murder,” he said.
“You had so many other options. … You could have found someone to take care of those kids,” he said. “You killed those children … to remove them as obstacles and to profit financially.”
The judge noted, although Vallow Daybell was convicted, she in court on Monday denied committing the murders.
The judge said he doesn’t think she’s shown any remorse for the crimes or for those who searched for her children while they were missing.
Jul 31, 1:59 PM EDT
Lori Vallow Daybell: ‘No one was murdered’
Lori Vallow Daybell spoke at sentencing, and started by quoting a Bible verse.
She then said, “Jesus knows me and Jesus understands me. I mourn with all of you who mourn my children and Tammy.”
She continued, “Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here. … No one was murdered in this case. Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medications happen.”
Jul 31, 1:50 PM EDT
Defense: ‘Lori’s a very misunderstood person’
Lori Vallow Daybell’s defense attorney, John Thomas, said to the court, “We need peace to replace the hurt. And that peace and that healing will only come about by love and compassion.”
“Lori, if she could speak to each one of those people who have been hurt by this case … her message would be one of love,” Thomas said.
Vallow Daybell was given the opportunity to give her own statement in court but she has not spoken at this point.
“Lori’s a very misunderstood person,” Thomas said, describing her as kind, loving and caring.
“She was a great mother to her kids,” he said. “She has redeeming values.”
Thomas added, “There’s a lot of confusion and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about how this ultimately came to pass.”
Jul 31, 12:32 PM EDT
Prosecutor: ‘There’s no rehabilitation possible’
A statement was read in court on behalf of Vallow Daybell’s only surviving child, Colby Ryan.
“Tylee and J.J. brought so much light into this world,” Ryan said. “My girls will never have a chance to know them.”
“I want them to be remembered for who they were,” he said.
“Tylee was sweet and kind, funny and bold,” Ryan said, while J.J. was “the most fun, sweet and silly kid I’ve ever known.”
“I pray for healing for everyone involved, including those who took the lives of all the ones we loved,” he said.
Jul 31, 12:22 PM EDT
Vallow Daybell’s son: ‘I pray for healing’
A statement was read in court on behalf of Vallow Daybell’s only surviving child, Colby Ryan.
“Tylee and J.J. brought so much light into this world,” Ryan said. “My girls will never have a chance to know them.”
“I want them to be remembered for who they were,” he said.
“Tylee was sweet and kind, funny and bold,” Ryan said, while J.J. was “the most fun, sweet and silly kid I’ve ever known.”
“I pray for healing for everyone involved, including those who took the lives of all the ones we loved,” he said.
Jul 31, 12:18 PM EDT
JJ’s grandmother speaks of ‘depravity, cruelty and betrayal’
JJ. Vallow’s grandmother, Kay Woodcock, spoke in court Monday about what she called Lori Vallow Daybell’s “cruel campaign of terror.”
“J.J. and Tylee could have been with us living happy lives,” she said as she started to cry.
“Instead she took all that away,” she said, calling Vallow Daybell a “monster.”
“Today I take the power back by standing here, speaking out loud about all the pain and loss she’s caused,” Woodcock said.
Woodcock recalled the birth of J.J., who was born premature and with illicit substances in his system. “As soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew he was my grandson,” she said.
“He was a champion and oh so very special,” she said through tears.
Lori Vallow Daybell and her then-husband, Charles Vallow, later adopted J.J.
Woodcock and her husband would still often visit, and she noted that her “incredibly smart,” compassionate and empathetic grandson “had an innate and unbroken attachment to us.”
Woodcock, choked up, said, “That same mother murdered that same child she expressed deep appreciation for. It is mind-boggling.”
“What did Lori deprive the world of?” she said.
“I will only have the precious memories to cling to,” she said through tears.
Lori Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, was 9 when J.J. became her little brother. “She doted on him and J.J. loved every minute of attention,” Woodcock said.
Vallow Daybell was found guilty of the first-degree murders of J.J., 7, and Tylee, 16, who were killed in 2019.
J.J.’s “life was expendable to [Vallow Daybell],” Woodcock said. “His materialistic, self-centered mother cruelly and brutally stole his life — and him from the world. Lori’s acts of depravity, cruelty and betrayal have no limits.”
When J.J. and Tylee were missing, “fears continued to mount daily,” Woodcock said.
When she learned J.J. and Tylee had been “buried like animals” in Chad Daybell’s backyard, Woodcock said she let out a “guttural” sound.
“We were destroyed,” she said.
Woodcock called Vallow Daybell “a danger to society.”
“She is driven by her greed and her need to be the center of attention,” she said.
She said she believes Vallow Daybell should be sentenced to life in prison.
Jul 31, 11:46 AM EDT
Tammy Daybell ‘taken from us by murdering thieves’
Vicki Hoban, the aunt of Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybell, who died of asphyxiation in 2019 less than one month before Chad and Lori Daybell married, gave a victim impact statement through tears on Monday.
“Tammy was a most excellent person and she led her life with the utmost dignity,” Hoban said. “There will be a huge void.”
Her niece was “brutally executed in her own bed,” Hoban said as she wept, “taken from us by murdering thieves.”
Tammy Daybell was “robbed of her entire life,” she said, and “all her family robbed of ever seeing her again.”
“Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, unbearable is not a big enough statement,” she said. “The most innocent of lives was simply discarded like it meant nothing.”
Hoban said Vallow Daybell turned her niece’s “home into a cemetery,” adding, “Tammy would have been horrified to know what you have done — and it’s broken us as a family.”
Chad Daybell is charged with Tammy Daybell’s murder and conspiracy to commit murder and pleaded not guilty. Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit Tammy Daybell’s murder.
Jul 31, 11:40 AM EDT
Tammy Daybell’s sister: ‘My family has been ripped apart’
Samantha Gwilliam, the sister of Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybell, who died of asphyxiation in 2019 less than one month before Chad and Lori Daybell married, took the stand to give a victim impact statement.
Gwilliam testified that Chad Daybell told her that he’d married Vallow Daybell two weeks after her “beloved sister,” Tammy Daybell, was buried, and claimed the new couple then told lie after lie.
“Because of you and your desire to get what you want at any cost, my family has been ripped apart. I helped raise Tammy’s children and because of you they no longer have their mother or grandmother,” Gwilliam said.
Choked up, she said her relationship with Tammy and Chad Daybell’s children is “strained and most contact with them is gone” she said.
“Your trial is the last thing my ailing mother had to live through,” she said, adding that her death in June “was marred by the fact that Tammy’s children chose not to participate in her funeral by fear of causing more drama.”
“We blame you and Chad for all the lies you told in ripping apart this family,” she said.
“I choose to forget you … I choose to never think of you again,” she said.
Gwilliam also read a statement on behalf of her father, Ronald Douglas.
“Tammy’s death was unexpected and had a profound impact on all of us,” Douglas’ statement said, adding “we were barely into our recovery process” when learning that Chad Daybell had remarried weeks later.
“The emotional stress” accelerated Tammy Daybell’s mother’s declining health, he noted.
“The eternal ramifications of [Vallow Daybell’s] actions are yet to be calculated. Lori needs to pay,” he said.
Chad Daybell is charged with Tammy Daybell’s murder and conspiracy to commit murder and pleaded not guilty. Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit Tammy Daybell’s murder.
Jul 31, 11:03 AM EDT
Who the court is allowing to speak at the sentencing
Multiple people sought to give victim impact statements at Monday’s sentencing hearing on behalf of Tylee Ryan, J.J. Vallow and Tamara Daybell, according to a June court filing.
Those granted permission to address the court include Colby Ryan, the half-brother to Tylee and adoptive brother to J.J.; Summer Shiflet, the sister of Lori Vallow Daybell; and Kay Woodcock, a representative of Charles Vallow, who was J.J.’s adoptive father and Lori Vallow Daybell’s late husband. Vicki Hoban, the aunt of Tamara Daybell, was also later granted permission to speak as a designated representative of Tamara Daybell’s late mother.
Idaho law allows the “immediate family members” of homicide victims to address the court.
It was unclear ahead of the hearing who was scheduled to address the court.
Jul 31, 10:59 AM EDT
Defense request for a new trial was denied
Ahead of Lori Vallow Daybell’s sentencing, defense attorneys unsuccessfully sought a new trial.
On May 25, the defense filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that the jury instructions were “confusing” and “prejudicial,” among other claims.
Judge Steven Boyce denied the request for a new trial on June 15.
The jury handed down its verdict in mid-May, after deliberating for approximately six hours across two days. The verdict was read before a packed Boise courtroom and also livestreamed by the court.
The verdict followed a six-week trial during which prosecutors argued that Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad Daybell thought the children were zombies and murdered them. Prosecutors called roughly 60 witnesses, while the defense called none.
Prosecutors said at the time they were “very pleased” with the jury’s verdict but declined to comment further given the pending case against Chad Daybell. His case is scheduled to go to trial in April 2024.
Jul 31, 10:56 AM EDT
Sentencing comes nearly four years after children disappeared
Joshua “J.J.” Vallow and Tylee Ryan were last seen alive in September 2019 and were reported missing by their extended family members to police in November 2019.
Their remains were found on Chad Daybell’s property in Fremont County, Idaho, in June 2020. Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were indicted on murder charges nearly a year later.
Among the revelations during Lori Vallow Daybell’s trial, a DNA expert testified for the state that a strand of hair attached to duct tape found among the remains matched the mother’s DNA profile.
The jury also heard text messages that prosecutors said were sent between Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband in the weeks prior to her children’s disappearance.
The messages discussed demons inhabiting the children’s bodies and that they were “weary” taking care of demons. Lori Vallow Daybell reportedly texted her husband to “please ask the Lord to take them” and, days later, if he thinks there is a “perfectly orchestrated plan to take the children,” to which he reportedly responded, “There is a plan being orchestrated for the children.”
(NEW YORK) — Millions of people in the eastern United States awoke to cooler, drier air on Monday morning after blustery storms helped bring an end to the first heat wave of the season.
Over the weekend, severe storms swept through Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland, downing trees and knocking out power for more than 200,000 customers.
There were five reported tornadoes from Colorado to Massachusetts on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. One tornado with winds up to 105 miles per hour touched down in Foxborough, Massachusetts, about 22 miles southwest of Boston.
Strong winds from the tornado in Foxborough caused a tree to fall on a house in the nearby town of Easton, with the residents narrowly escaping.
“My wife was actually on the porch filming the rain and she turned her camera off. Within 15 seconds, that tree came down,” Mark Butler told Boston ABC affiliate WCVB-TV.
In Washington, D.C., winds gusted to 84 mph as storms moved through the area.
On Sunday, powerful storms pummelled the Plains, from Montana to Missouri, with damaging winds up to 91 mph and hail larger than the size of a baseball. Kansas City, Missouri, got hit hard overnight with winds gusting near 80 mph in the metropolitan area.
Now, comfortable weather is settling on the East Coast.
But scorching temperatures continue to plague the South, where more than 70 million Americans are on alert for extreme heat.
Arizona’s capital is currently on a record stretch of 31 consecutive days with high temperatures at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Earlier this month, overnight temperatures in Phoenix did not drop below 90 degrees for a record 16 days in a row.
For now, the Southwest will catch a short break from the record-smashing heat wave as monsoon storms bring much-needed moisture to the area. The heat will instead focus on Texas and the Gulf Coast this week, according to the latest weather forecast.
Austin, Texas, already went 19 straight days with high temperatures at or above 103 degrees, the most on record and marking the hottest July ever for the city.
The National Weather Service has issued heat alerts that are in effect Monday morning across 10 states, from Florida to Kansas. A number of cities could see record high temperatures by the afternoon, including 106 degrees in Dallas, Texas; 103 degrees in Austin, Houston and San Antonio, Texas; 99 degrees in New Orleans, Louisiana; and 95 degrees in Miami, Florida. The heat index values — a measure of how hot it really feels when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature — are forecast to be even higher.
The heat waves occurring in North America, Europe and China throughout the month of July would not have been possible without global warming, according to a rapid attribution analysis by World Weather Attribution, an academic collaboration that uses weather observations and climate models to calculate how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of extreme weather events. In some regions, the sweltering temperatures have triggered wildfires as well as heat-related hospital admissions and deaths, the researchers said.
(BOISE, Idaho) — An Idaho mother is set to learn her fate after being convicted in the murders of her two youngest children.
Lori Vallow Daybell will return to court in eastern Idaho’s Fremont County on Monday for a sentencing hearing, according to Boise ABC affiliate KIVI-TV. She faces up to life in prison without parole. In March, before the trial began, a judge granted the defense’s motion to dismiss the death penalty in her case.
Lori and her husband, Chad Daybell, were both charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the 2019 deaths of her two youngest children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “J.J.” Vallow. The children were last seen alive in September 2019 and were reported missing by extended family members that November. Their remains were found on Chad’s property in Fremont County in June 2020, according to authorities.
The couple were also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Chad’s ex-wife, 49-year-old Tamara Daybell, who died of asphyxiation of in October 2019, less than a month before Lori and Chad married. Chad was also charged with his former wife’s murder.
Both Lori and Chad pleaded not guilty to their charges. In April, a Fremont County judge allowed their cases to be tried separately, with Lori’s first and Chad’s expected to start at a later date.
Lori was deemed fit to stand trial last year following a 10-month stint at an Idaho mental health facility. Her defense attorneys had said they did not plan to raise a mental health defense at the guilt-phase portion of the trial.
During Lori’s six-week trial, prosecutors argued that she and her husband thought the children were zombies and murdered them. Chad has authored many religious fiction books and is Lori’s fifth husband. The couple both reportedly adhered to a doomsday ideology, with Lori at one point claiming she was “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020” and didn’t want anything to do with her family “because she had a more important mission to carry out,” according to court documents obtained by ABC News.
The defense characterized Lori as a devoted mother who loved her children and Jesus, but that all changed near the end of 2018 when she met Chad.
Prosecutors argued that Lori set a plan for the children’s murder in motion in October 2018 “using money, power and sex,” and that she and her husband “used religion to manipulate others.” Lori was additionally charged with grand theft related to Social Security survivor benefits allocated for the care of her children that prosecutors said were appropriated after they were reported missing and ultimately found dead. Meanwhile, Chad was additionally charged with two counts of insurance fraud related to life insurance policies he had on Tamara for which prosecutors said he was the beneficiary.
Prosecutors also shared photographs of Lori and Chad dancing on a beach during their wedding in Hawaii when her children’s bodies were buried in his backyard.
In May, a 12-member jury reached a verdict after two days of deliberations, finding Lori guilty on all charges. The defense declined to comment on the verdict at the time.
