(NEW YORK) — One of three Colorado teenagers accused of throwing large landscaping rocks toward at least seven cars allegedly took a photo of the final victim’s car after hitting it “as a memento,” according to court documents.
Joseph Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, all 18-year-old high school seniors, were arrested this week in connection to the April 19 rock-throwing spree, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said. The final rock-throwing incident claimed the life of 20-year-old driver Alexa Bartell. In two of the seven incidents, drivers suffered minor injuries.
After Bartell’s death, Kwak said Koenig and Karol-Chik talked about being “blood brothers,” and said they agreed to never speak of the incident again, according to court documents. The day after Bartell was killed, they allegedly met up to discuss what happened, according to court documents.
Karol-Chik told police all three teens threw rocks at cars and they were “excited” when they hit them, according to court documents. He said Kwak was the one who threw the fatal rock at Bartell’s car, the documents said. After Bartell’s car was hit, Kwak allegedly said, “We have to go back to see that,” and when they turned around, Kwak allegedly took a photo of Bartell’s car, according to the documents.
When Kwak was questioned, he admitted taking a photo, saying “he thought Joseph or Mitch would want it as a memento,” according to court documents.
Kwak said the impact of the rock on Bartell’s car made a very loud noise, like a “rail gun shooting a block of concrete,” and he saw the 20-year-old’s car leave the road, according to court documents.
The teens are charged with first-degree murder with extreme indifference. Additional charges are expected, authorities said.
Koenig and Karol-Chik had allegedly thrown rocks at cars on at least 10 separate occasions since February, according to court documents.
As the three suspects made their first court appearance on Thursday, prosecutors said the community is outraged, and that the teens’ reckless and irresponsible actions took away “an innocent life.”
The teens, who were held on no bond, are set to return to court on May 3.
Koenig’s father was also arrested for allegedly trying to obstruct his son’s arrest, the sheriff’s office said.
(NEW YORK) — A 70-year-old man survived a cougar attack in Utah without serious injuries, officials said.
He suffered only lacerations to his head and arms when he was confronted by the animal at Spanish Fork Canyon around 1 p.m. Thursday, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said.
He was hospitalized and listed in fair condition, according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities said officials with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources will search for the cougar on Friday.
Cougars, also known as mountain lions or pumas, are seen regularly in mountainous regions of Utah. There are about 1,600 cougars in Utah, according to the Division of Wildlife Resources, though that number is declining “due to increased trophy hunting and habitat loss.”
(NEW YORK) — Multiple tornadoes were reported in Florida and Georgia on Thursday, as a new storm brings a severe weather threat and possible tornadoes to Texas.
Seven tornadoes were reported in the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia on Thursday. A large and “extremely dangerous” tornado was confirmed west of Tallahassee Thursday afternoon. Major damage to homes was reported in Hosford in the area.
Straight-line winds gusted to 76 mph near Panama City, Florida, as severe storms progressed east across the southeast Big Bend.
Another storm is forecast to bring a severe weather threat for most of eastern Texas Friday, from Dallas to Houston and down to Corpus Christi.
Damaging winds in excess of 75 mph, huge hail and tornadoes are possible. The highest tornado threat will be from Dallas to Waco Friday afternoon between 3 and 7 p.m. CT.
On Saturday, this severe threat moves into the Florida Panhandle again, as well as southern Georgia and Alabama. Damaging winds will be the biggest threat, but a few tornadoes can’t be ruled out.
(FAIRBANKS, Alaska) — Three soldiers were killed and one has been injured after two Army helicopters crashed during training over Alaska on Thursday, officials said.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson said two AH-64 Apache helicopters returning from a training mission collided and crashed near Healy.
Two of the soldiers were declared dead at the scene and another died while en route to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, the base said. The fourth soldier is being treated at the hospital for injuries.
The helicopters were from the 1st Attack Reconnaissance Battalion’s 25th Aviation Regiment at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, officials said.
“This is an incredible loss for these soldiers’ families, their fellow soldiers, and for the division,” Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, commanding general of the 11th Airborne Division, said in a statement. “Our hearts and prayers go out to their families, friends and loved ones, and we are making the full resources of the Army available to support them.”
“The Fort Wainwright community is one of the tightest military communities I’ve seen in my 32 years of service,” Eifler added. “I have no doubt they will pull together during this exceptional time of need and provide comfort to our families of our fallen.”
Fort Wainwright’s Emergency Assistance Center has been activated for support, and people can call 907-353-4452, officials said.
The incident is being investigated. Healy is about 110 miles southwest of Fairbanks by vehicle.
In March, nine service members died after two Army Black Hawk helicopters crashed during a training mission in Trigg County, Kentucky, an Army official said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Victoria Arancio, Kevin Shalvey and Jaclyn Lee contributed to this report.
(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Lawyers for the school board in Newport News, Virginia, have filed a motion to dismiss the $40 million lawsuit filed by first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner who was shot in her classroom by a 6-year-old student.
The attorneys for the board claim that her injuries are covered under the state’s worker’s compensation law for which she was approved to receive benefits, but they say she refused to accept them and filed suit instead.
In Zwerner’s lawsuit, she alleged that school administrators were told the boy brought a gun to school prior to the shooting and “had a history of random violence,” yet did nothing to stop him from harming her.
In response to her lawsuit, the motion filed on Wednesday by the attorneys for the Newport News School division claims the allegations made in the lawsuit fall under Virginia’s Workers’ Compensation Act.
They argue the act doesn’t fall in the jurisdiction of the Newport News Circuit Court.
The lawyers for the board are representing former Newport News School Superintendent Dr. George Parker, III, and former Richneck Elementary Principal Briana Foster Newton. Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at Richneck who was named in Zwerner’s lawsuit, was not included in the school board’s motion.
Lawyers for the school board wrote in the motion that Zwerner’s complaints about the shooting in her lawsuit, “alleges in detail a long list of workplace conditions that were a direct and proximate cause of the attack on Zwerner.”
The motion argues that under the Workers Compensation Act, Zwerner is barred “from maintaining a cause of action against the School Defendants for the injures she sustained in the course of her employment as a first-grade teacher with Newport News School.” The court, thus, lacks subject matter jurisdiction over Zwerner’s claims arising from the injuries she sustained during the shooting, the motion argues.
It further argues that Zwerner’s assertion that the 6-year-old’s attack was personal to her is in violation of the state’s laws that children under the age of seven are unable to be guilty of negligence. The attorneys for the board add that Zwerner’s lawsuit “attempts to circumvent the Act” by alleging that the child’s actions on the day of the shooting were “personal” and pointing to the handgun as the problem.
Zwener “goes as far as to claim that she reasonably anticipated that ‘she would be working with young [elementary school] children who posed no danger to her.’ While in an ideal world, young children would not pose any danger to others, including their teachers, this is sadly not reality,” the motion says.
The motion says this is why Zwerner focused on the use of the handgun compared to any other weapon “with less perceived notoriety and shock value, even though serious injuries can be inflicted with scissors, knives, pencil, rocks, chairs, and hands.”
The motion alleges that Zwerner, alongside other school officials, allowed the 6-year-old who shot her to return to school without the requirement of a parent. They claim that Zwerner had raised that the 6-year-old’s improvement in class warranted an extended school day and other modifications.
Diane Toscano and Jeffrey Breit, attorneys for Zwerner, told ABC News on Thursday, “No one believes that a first grade teacher should expect that one of the risks of teaching first grade is that you might get shot by a six-year-old.”
Zwerner’s lawyers added, “The school board’s position is contrary to how every citizen in Newport News thinks teachers should be treated, and the law does not support the board’s position. Teachers across the district will be alarmed to learn their employer sees this as part of the job description.”
(NEW YORK) — In 2015, three men, all current or former Florida correctional officers, were arrested after investigators revealed they were Ku Klux Klan members plotting to kill a Black former inmate.
Now, “Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the KKK,” a new documentary and first-time collaboration between ABC News and The Associated Press takes viewers inside one of America’s most sinister secret societies and the covert FBI operation to stop a modern-day lynching.
When the state of Florida announced the arrests of Thomas Driver, Charles Newcomb, and David Moran, it caught the eye of Associated Press journalist Jason Dearen.
“I just started looking into it and I kind of became obsessed with it.”
“Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the KKK” is now streaming on Hulu.
Dearen wrote a series of articles about the case, piecing together information from court documents and interviews, but said, “there were just a lot of questions, a lot more questions than answers.”
He knew that a confidential informant who infiltrated the klan had exposed the murder plot and led to the arrests, but he didn’t know much else about this person.
“It was only after I wrote the second article in my series that I received an email and my heart stopped. The subject was, ‘This is Joseph Moore.'”
In 2013, the FBI asked Joe Moore, a former Army sniper, to go undercover inside a local klan organization.
“We had been receiving a series of directives going back to 2006 concerning the threat from domestic terrorism extremism groups,” said Chris Graham, the FBI Supervisory Special Agent in Jacksonville, Florida during Moore’s recruitment. “The KKK has the history, the image, so to speak. They’re capable and dangerous.”
Moore said his mission was to “go inside the KKK to identify people that are involved and to forewarn the FBI of any illegal activities.”
In order to join the Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK (TAKKKK), he embellished his military accolades and signed a blood oath. “They tell you that if you violate or disclose the secrets of the KKK, you’ll pay with your blood.”
Moore, 51, during an extensive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, revealed that he fears for his family’s safety since his undercover operation.
According to Moore, even though his family was relocated and given new identities by the FBI, they have received threats from KKK members and supporters. He says he is coming forward now in an effort to protect them.
“If something were to happen to me, I need the world to know the truth,” Moore said.
Produced by George Stephanopoulos Productions for ABC News Studios, the documentary features rarely-heard undercover audio and video from the investigation, firsthand accounts from FBI agents and the intended victim’s mother, and intimate access and interviews with undercover source, Moore.
Moore spent his first year inside the TAKKKK gathering intelligence and learning the intricacies of the klan. Offering ABC News a look at confidential klan documents, Moore explained that the klan has an extensive language to weed out potential intruders.
“They use acronyms in order to ensure that impostors were not infiltrating the meeting or the klan. They would use terms like ‘A.Y.A.K..’ ‘Are you a klansman?’ And the proper response if you are a Klansman is, ‘A.K.I.A..’ ‘A klansman I am.’ If you don’t respond with ‘A.K.I.A.,’ they know you’re not a Klansman.”
After rising through the ranks, thanks to his military background, Moore became the Grand Knighthawk for the Florida and Georgia realm of the TAKKKK, expanding his purview and connecting him with high-ranking klan leaders across the country.
The role made him the top security officer of the region’s klan, among other, more nefarious, responsibilities.
“The Grand Knighthawk has been sort of a hitman for the KKK,” said Moore. “I embraced the fact that the KKK might call upon me for violence.”
Dearen’s investigation into the organization found that multiple members had violent pasts. “The Klan tries to present a public face of being kind of a social club, but behind the scenes, oftentimes they’re plotting violence,” he said.
The news that Driver, Newcomb, and Moran were members of a white supremacist organization while working as correctional officers, may have surprised some, but according to Dearen, Florida law enforcement moonlighting as klansmen was nothing new.
Over the past decade alone, investigators discovered klan members working in local, county and state law enforcement agencies in Florida.
“These groups are trying to recruit law enforcement,” said Greg Ehrie, the former FBI Section Chief of Domestic Terrorism Operations. “They’re armed. They’ve had training. They have access to confidential information.”
The extremist group’s continued presence in Florida law enforcement agencies is in keeping with state history, Dearen said. Klan members ran towns and were sheriffs less than 100 years ago in Florida.
“You’re not gonna surprise no Black person by telling them the klan is working in prisons, not southern Black people,” said Antwan Williams, a former inmate of the Florida Department of Corrections.
Driver, Newcomb, and Moran all, at one time, worked at Florida’s Reception and Medical Center, a state prison and hospital in Lake Butler.
It was at this correctional facility that Thomas Driver got into an altercation with the intended victim, Warren Williams.
Williams, who has a history of mental health issues, was serving time at the facility after hitting a police officer during a mental health episode. During their fight, Williams bit Driver.
According to Williams’ mother, Latonya Crowley, Williams was beaten so badly by Driver that he was sent to the hospital.
Warren Williams grew up in North Florida, in a town called Palatka, on the St. John’s River. Crowley said that as a child, Williams enjoyed spending time outdoors, especially fishing.
Williams spent a year in prison and came home to his mother’s house, the fight with Driver still heavy on his mind.
“He said, ‘Momma, ain’t nobody will ever hear my story,'” Crowley said. “I was like, ‘Okay, well, sit down and tell me your story.'”
The fight was still on Driver’s mind, too. He had to undergo routine testing for communicable diseases, like HIV and Hep-C, after Williams’ bite.
“Because of the worry over whether or not he picked up one of these diseases, he said it had caused his family immeasurable stress and that he just wanted this guy assassinated,” Dearen said.
In December 2014, at a cross burning in rural North Florida, the three men approached Moore with a request. Driver told Moore about his fight with Williams and handed him a piece of paper with Williams’ information on it.
“I asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ Moore said. “‘Do you want him six feet under?’ And they said, Yes.'”
Up until that moment, Moore’s time undercover had been largely uneventful, but that night would change everything.
After their conversation, Moore said he immediately called his FBI handlers to warn them about the potential murder plot.
“Everything about that meeting was chilling,” said Graham. “It’s not illegal to engage in hateful speech. What is illegal is to go from hateful speech into the planning of a criminal act, a violent act.”
“The KKK wanted to catch my son, cut him up in pieces on the creek, and leave him there,” Crowley said.
“It was obvious that they did harbor racial animosity toward the victim,” said Paul Brown, a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent. “There was absolute intent to see this carried out.”
Realizing the severity of the threat, the FBI formulated a plan, getting Moore to continue discussing the would-be murder with the klan members, this time wearing a wire.
“He’s obviously interacting with and around people that have expressed a clear intent to commit murder,” Brown said. “If it came out that Joe was cooperating and working with the FBI, we feared his life could very well be in danger.”
Over the next several months, Joe Moore would find himself pushed to the edge – balancing two lives and desperately racing to stop this murder.
“I’ve asked myself time and time again if knowing then what I know now, would I have done it again?” Moore said. “Ultimately I know I would say yes.”
(NEW YORK) — A large and “extremely dangerous” tornado was confirmed in Florida Thursday amid a severe weather threat across much of the state.
The tornado was located nine miles south of Greensboro at 4:09 p.m. ET, moving northeast at 20 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee has issued a tornado warning for Aucilla until 7 p.m. and for Coolidge, Georgia, until 7:15 p.m. ET, as “severe storms continue to progress east/southeast across the southeast Big Bend.”
A confirmed tornado was located over Lynn Haven, near Panama City on the Gulf Coast, shortly after 3 p.m. CT, the NWS said.
Severe thunderstorm watches have been issued for much of northern and eastern Florida, as well as southeastern Georgia, through 10 p.m. Thursday.
More than 15 million people are under a severe weather threat Thursday, affecting areas along the Gulf Coast, the east coast of Florida from Jacksonville to West Palm, far southern Texas and the Mid-South from Memphis to Tupelo, Mississippi.
In addition to the tornado threat, hail and damaging winds are possible.
(PITTSBURGH, Penn.) — A school district in Pennsylvania is proposing starting classes later in the morning to improve the physical health and mental well-being of students.
Upper St. Clair School District — a suburb of Pittsburgh — would change the start times of its high schools, elementary schools and middle schools, if the plan is approved by the school board, Superintendent Dr. John Rozzo told ABC News.
Currently, high school students in the district begin classes at 7:30 a.m. ET. However, under the new start time, they would begin at 8:00 a.m. ET.
Because of transportation — such as school buses — being pushed back for older kids, elementary and middle school students would also get later start times with the former now beginning at 8:35 a.m. ET and the latter at 8:55 a.m. ET.
Rozzo said that the district had been studying the benefits of moving back school start times since the early 1990s, but it never got off the ground. However, it was revisited in 2015 as part of the district’s five-year plan.
“One of the focal points of that 2015 strategic plan was the high school experience and examining start time for students and the impact it had on academics, on their health, their mental health and behavioral health and physical health,” he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed plans but now “we finally feel confident that we had a point making the recommendation and hopefully, if approved, would go into effect in August,” Rozzo added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics have both advocated for later start times for students.
It is currently recommended that teenagers between ages 13 to 18 get between eight and 10 hours of regular sleep every night.
Research has shown this helps reduce the risk of being overweight, suffering from symptoms of depression, poor academic performance in school and engaging in risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking and drug use.
“This is not something that’s driven by our opinions or our personal preferences, or even administrative conveyance,” Rozzo said. “It’s driven by what is well documented in the research literature, and that’s that later starts have a significant amount of benefits for students, particularly adolescents and teens.”
Of course, the district is not the first in the country to introduce such a measure.
In 2019, California became the first state to mandate that high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
Bills have been introduced asking for similar start times, including in New Jersey and in Tennessee.
For the Upper St. Clair School District, the recommendation for the change in start times will be presented at a May school board meeting, where there will be a vote for approval.
Rozzo said the recommendation has been met with overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, staff and parents alike and — although recognizing every district has specific needs — he hopes other administrators consider changing starting times.
“I would hope that as more districts like ours make this change and that others see the importance and the need to also do it,” he said. “I fully recognize though everyone has their own unique challenges specific to their communities, specific to their districts…I think if it were easy, a lot more people would have done it already.”
(FORT LEE, Va.) — Fort Lee, a U.S. Army post named after the leader of the Confederate army during the Civil War, was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of two Black U.S. Army trailblazers during a redesignation ceremony Thursday.
“I hope that this community will look with pride on the name Fort Gregg-Adams and that the name will instill pride in every soldier entering our mighty gates,” said Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg, one of the pioneers the Virginia post is renamed after, during the ceremony.
Among his accomplishments in over 35 years of service beginning in 1946, Gregg was the first Black quartermaster officer to rise to the rank of brigadier general, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Simerly, commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command and senior commander of Fort Lee. When Gregg was promoted to lieutenant general, he became the first Black officer in the Army to reach a three-star rank.
The army post was also renamed in recognition of Lt. Col. Charity Adams, who paused her pursuit of a master’s degree in psychology to serve in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II, the Army said. At 25, she was chosen to lead the sole unit of predominantly Black women in the European Theater of Operations. Her unit delivered mail to and from millions of soldiers fighting in Europe.
The military base had previously been named after Gen. Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate forces.
During Gregg’s remarks, he noted how proud he was to share the honor with Adams.
“Her performance in getting the mail delivered in a very chaotic environment has made the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion a legend that gets bigger every day,” he said.
Simerly described the two pioneers as “exceptional leaders.”
“They led with dignity, they looked the part, they maintained their composure and they led by example,” he said. “In short, these two epitomize the professional qualities we seek in every leader who wears the uniform of the United States Army.”
Fort Gregg-Adams is one of several Army installations being redesignated in the mission of removing displays commemorating the Confederacy, according to the Army.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday it has suspended its search for a cruise ship passenger from Australia who went overboard a few hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii.
The incident occurred at approximately 11:03 p.m. Tuesday night, when the Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu received a report from the Quantum of the Seas cruise ship that a man had gone overboard about 500 miles south of Kailua Kona, Big Island, according to the Coast Guard.
The cruise ship’s crew searched for approximately two hours, deploying six life rings, the Coast Guard said.
A Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point C-130 Hercules aircrew launched at 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning and arrived on the scene at approximately 9 a.m. but did not have any luck finding the missing man after completing five searches.
The search resumed Thursday morning, before the Coast Guard announced it has suspended the active search later that day.
“After reviewing all relevant information of the case and discussing with our Australian consulate counterparts as well as with the next of kin, the Coast Guard has made the difficult decision to suspend the active search for the passenger aboard the Quantum of the Seas,” Kevin Cooper, a search and rescue mission coordinator for the Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu, said in a statement.
Quantum of the Seas departed from Brisbane, Australia, on April 12 and is scheduled to arrive in Honolulu on April 28.
Royal Caribbean — who operates Quantum of the Seas — also released a statement on Wednesday confirming the missing passenger.
“While on its trans-pacific sailing, a guest onboard Quantum of the Seas went overboard,” Royal Caribbean said. “The ship’s crew immediately launched a search and rescue operation and is working closely with local authorities.”
Authorities did not give any further details on how the man may have ended up going overboard.
ABC News’ Clara McMichael contributed to this report.
