(NEW YORK) — The Justice Department recently unsealed charges against a man who allegedly put a camera inside a bathroom onboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and filmed 150 people, including 40 minors.
Jeremy Froias boarded a Royal Caribbean ship bound for St. Maarten, San Juan and the Bahamas, in Miami on April 29, according to a complaint unsealed last week in federal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“On or about April 30, 2023, when the Harmony was navigating in international waters, Froias installed a hidden Wi-Fi camera in a public bathroom on the aft of the Harmony’s top deck, between the ‘Flow Rider’ surfing simulator and a bar,” an FBI special agent said in a criminal complaint.
That bathroom was a unisex bathroom, according to court documents.
When a passenger reported there was a hidden camera in the bathroom, security found it and reviewed the micro SD card that was inserted into the camera, which allegedly showed Froias adjusting the camera and connecting it to his phone.
“The initial videos depict Froias hiding the camera and adjusting the angle of the camera, so it focuses on the area of the toilet,” the complaint says. “Froias is also seen taking his Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max out of his pocket and appears to have connected the phone to the hidden camera using Wi-Fi. Froias then exits the bathroom.”
More than 150 individuals, including 40 minors, were seen naked or partially naked on camera, the Justice Department alleged, some as young as 4 or 5 years old.
“Individuals are seen coming into the bathroom to either use the toilet or to change into or out of swimsuits,” court documents say. “Froias’ camera captured these individuals in various stages of undress, including capturing videos of their naked genitals, buttocks and female breasts.”
Cruise ship security interviewed Froias, and he allegedly admitted to placing the camera in the bathroom and knew it had been found because he was not able to find it when he went to go get it a day later, court documents state.
Froias is charged with video voyeurism and attempted possession of child exploitation material. He was released on a $25,000 bond by a judge Monday pending trial. He didn’t enter a plea.
The FBI set up a website for anyone who might’ve been a victim to report it to the agency.
“The FBI believes he primarily targeted cruise ship passengers between the timeframe of April 30 and May 1, 2023, who may have used the public bathroom on the aft of the Harmony’s top deck between the ‘Flow Rider’ surfing simulator and a bar,” the form says. “Passengers using this bathroom may have been video recorded by Froias.”
A lawyer for Froias has not yet responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — An 8-year-old boy survived for two full days in a Michigan state park after he disappeared while collecting firewood Saturday on a family camping trip.
Search party volunteers found 8-year-old Nante Niemi at 1:30 p.m. local time on Monday, and the boy has since been reunited with his family, according to the Michigan State Police.
Niemi likely got lost while gathering firewood near his family’s campsite in Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, according to a press release from the Michigan State Police. Last seen around 1 p.m. on Saturday, Niemi was rescued roughly two miles from his campsite after 48 hours on Monday.
“He had braved the elements by taking shelter under a log where he was ultimately found,” the press release noted.
Eli Talsma, an 18-year-old who aided in the rescue, told ABC News that Niemi survived for two days without eating or drinking anything.
Talsma said Niemi gathered branches and leaves to cover himself at night. When he saw a helicopter buzzing overhead at one point, Niemi attempted to signal to it, but the pilot appeared not to see him, according to Talsma.
Talsma said Niemi avoided drinking the water in the forest, fearing getting sick. However, he “ate” a few handfuls of snow – his only sustenance over the two-day period, said Talsma.
“If you didn’t know he was in the woods for two days, you wouldn’t know,” Talsma said about the moment rescuers found Niemi under a log.
“I mean, he was just normal. Nante was just walking around. He was talking. He was asking questions. He said he wasn’t hungry,” Talsma said. “He was perfectly fine, but we did give him a Cliff Bar and a banana and some water.”
Michelle Robinson, a Michigan State Police spokeswoman, said she did not know how the boy survived alone, but said Niemi was “in good health and reunited with his family.”
Over 150 search and rescue personnel participated in the search for Niemi, which covered 40 square miles of a remote and hilly portion of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Volunteers from Michigan and Wisconsin also aided in the successful search.
Steve Lombardo, the elementary school principal of the Hurley School District in Wisconsin, said the announcement about Niemi’s safe rescue prompted cheers through the K-12 school building, which had been on edge since the second-grader’s disappearance.
“We announced it to the entire school, and as my colleague said, it was like being at a big football game with our winning touchdown being scored,” Lombardo told ABC News. “The entire school lit up in cheers, and everybody was just relieved and thankful.”
(ALLEN, Texas) — A mom of two is recounting the harrowing moments she and other shoppers huddled for safety as a mass shooting unfolded at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, on Saturday afternoon.
Racquel Lee told ABC News she was shopping alone when a “spraying” of gunfire rang out.
“I see a woman running in the parking lot, or trying to get to the parking lot. And she’s by our window — and I see her get gunned down,” Lee said.
“All of us were just paralyzed,” she said. “I just remember crouching down. … There was nowhere to run in the store.”
Lee said a store associate then led her and 11 other shoppers to an employee area to hide as the sound of the shots moved closer.
“We’re huddled in this bathroom closet. And one of the men in the bathroom closet was trying to open the door [to get the employee, who hadn’t joined them in the safe area], and we kept begging him not to,” Lee said. “Shots are still going on. So in my mind, we’re next. He’s coming in here, and we’re trying to tell him, ‘Close the door.’ And he said, ‘I have to go get her.’ I didn’t realize [the employee] wasn’t with us.”
“Everyone’s trying to call 911,” Lee said. “No one could dial out and so I connect to WiFi from a store nearby, and I FaceTimed my husband at like 3:40 [p.m.] and I tried to text my family. And I said ‘Please, I love you. I hope you get this.'”
She said the group spent at least 90 minutes in that break room, not knowing if the shooting had ended.
“You’re thinking, ‘Oh God, we’re going to be next,'” she said. “I started praying. I was rocking on my knees and praying.”
“Everybody was just kind of having their own moment trying to reach loved ones,” she said. “I’m trying to text my family for what I thought was my last moments.”
Lee said she texted her husband: “Please tell everyone I love them. I can’t die like this.”
Lee said the group of 12 strangers came together to support each other.
“Every shot, you’re just, like, twitching. And I start crying, and someone’s petting my back. Then they start crying, I’m petting their back,” she said. “It didn’t matter what nationality, race, religion, color person you were. It was just everyone … everyone just collectively being in this moment together.”
Law enforcement eventually opened the door and told them to put their hands up and come out, Lee said.
“You just see bodies, bags, blood, bullets,” Lee said. “It felt like a war zone. … I can’t unsee it.”
Eight victims were killed by the alleged gunman, who died after a confrontation with police.
“That’s the hardest — that you survive, that you made it out. But you relive it and you think of faces,” she explained.
Lee said she’s desperate to find the store employee who ushered Lee and 11 other shoppers to the staff room to hide.
“I’m really trying to find the store associate’s family. I’m thinking about how she saved — that’s the part that really upsets me, that I don’t know if she’s alive,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — The parents of Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver are bringing their new “children’s book” to Washington, D.C., to try to shine a light on gun control in a fresh and provocative way.
Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was among the 17 students and staff killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, stressed that this new book, “Joaquin’s First School Shooting,” is not for kids — it’s for lawmakers.
“We felt this is a new way, a unique way, to make politicians understand,” she told ABC News. “What better example than our own son?”
The short book is written in the simple language a young child could read, with pages including: “He took aim and fired — again, and again, and again. One life at a time, my friends met their end. He came up the stairs, hunting for more. That’s when we all panicked, and ran for the door.”
The book also has “bullet hole” cutouts to mimic finger holes often seen in children’s books.
“This is presented like a children’s book because we believe that politicians need to understand in … any possible way the issue can be presented to them,” she explained. “This time, maybe they can understand better, because it’s like we’re talking to their own kids, but we’re talking to them. To see if they understand the pain — and the importance.”
Patricia Oliver and her husband, Manuel Oliver, have become outspoken advocates for gun control in the wake of their son’s murder. They’re currently pushing for an assault weapons ban.
This week, Patricia Oliver will head to D.C. to present — and possibly read — her new book to lawmakers to “see their reaction.”
“We, hopefully, will be touching their hearts” and inspiring them to take action, she said.
Patricia Oliver picked this week for the trip because it’s just days before Mother’s Day, and she thinks the book could especially help the members of Congress who are parents feel her pain.
“The language that we use [in the book] is the way Joaquin was feeling in his last moments,” she said.
“You open the book and see the illustrations, you will be very impacted,” she added. “And me as a mom [presenting it], I think that we’re gonna get a different reaction.”
Patricia Oliver added that she thinks the book can be used as a tool for lawmakers in any corner of the nation, and even any adult who wants to make a difference with gun reform.
“We need adults to be a part of the solution,” she said.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Dr. Eva Doyle describes herself as one of the “regular Saturday shoppers” at the Tops supermarket on Buffalo’s predominantly Black east side.
But on May 14, 2022, the retired public school teacher broke from her weekend routine and went to pick up her dry cleaning — a twist of fate that likely saved her life.
While waiting for her garments, her cellphone rang with loved ones worried she had been in the grocery store when a horrific racially motivated mass shooting unfolded. A teenage white supremacist drove hours from Conklin, New York, to Buffalo intent on killing as many Black people as possible.
“He took the best of us,” Doyle, 77, told ABC News of the 10 victims who died, among them church mothers, a church deacon, a community activist and a father picking up a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son.
Advocates for the east side say Buffalo’s history of racial tensions and pronounced segregation provided the killer a roadmap to carry out the massacre, further wounding a community that has been reeling from decades of neglect and exposing underlying inequalities.
“I think it was very clear it was going to happen,” said Charley Fisher III, an at-large member of the Buffalo Common Council from 1999 to 2003, who links the Tops killings to those racial tensions.
A 2019 University of California, Berkeley, study ranked Buffalo the 17th most segregated city in America. About 85% of its Black population live on the east side, according to a 2018 study by the Partnership for the Public Good, a Buffalo think tank. And the Tops shooting came amid a nationwide rise in concerns about white supremacy.
In the aftermath of the rampage a year ago this week, the killer, Payton Gendron, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He confessed to plotting the onslaught for months, studying the city’s Black community, pinpointing the neighborhood where the majority of them lived and finding the Tops on Jefferson Avenue, the east side’s only supermarket, packed with Black shoppers on the Saturday afternoon he executed his plan.
Fears of whitewashing
Doyle said she’s concerned the Tops massacre will be forgotten or whitewashed, pointing to the trend of African American history books being pulled from library shelves and African American studies banned from classrooms.
While Buffalo is known widely as a major stop on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves in the early-to-mid-19th century, Doyle said her fears were justified when she learned decades ago that much of the city’s other Black history had gone undocumented.
“I wanted to have a book to read to my students about Buffalo’s Black community. I went to our school’s library and there was no book. I went to some surrounding libraries, there was no book,” said Doyle, who taught in the Buffalo public schools for 30 years and in 1982 penned the first of the dozen history books she has now written.
The Great Migration
During the so-called Great Migration, an estimated 7 million Black people in search of work moved from the South to Northern and Western states between 1915 and 1970.
“When we talk about industrial Buffalo, the focal point was Buffalo’s east side. And where people lived was dictated by where they worked,” said Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, director of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo.
Many Black Buffalo newcomers found jobs at companies like Bethlehem Steel, the Republic Steel Corp. and the Ford Motor Company.
Fisher said his father moved to Buffalo in 1939 from Louisiana and got a job, “sweeping a broom” at the Westinghouse factory in nearby Cheektowaga.
“They weren’t the best of jobs, and he was a college-educated man,” Fisher said. “But he took the job in hopes of an opportunity, and he got it.”
As thousands of African Americans moved into the east side, thousands of their white neighbors began rushing to the suburbs, Taylor said.
Due to “redlining” — a practice once used by mortgage companies to keep people of color out of desirable neighborhoods — most Black residents were limited to buying homes on the east side that had been vacated by whites, Taylor said.
Humboldt Parkway and War Memorial Stadium
One of the neighborhoods where Black residents were able to buy homes was around Humboldt Parkway — a 56-acre green space designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for designing Central Park in New York City. The parkway featured more than a million trees and was the pride of the east side community.
But in 1957, the famous urban planner, Robert Moses, designed Route 33, also known as the Kensington Expressway. The partially below grade freeway was completed by 1964, replacing much of Humboldt Parkway, uprooting most of its trees, displacing hundreds of households and cutting the east side in half. It greatly devalued homes in the area, Taylor said.
Nevertheless, through the late 1950s and early 1960s, Buffalo’s east side remained a bustling community, full of grocery stores and businesses, many owned by Black merchants, Doyle recalled.
“We had a Black-owned grocery store. We had a furniture store. We had movie theaters, one was called The Apollo, where you could go on Saturday nights to see movies. We had an ice cream store,” Doyle recalled.
The centerpiece of the east side was the War Memorial Stadium. Nicknamed the “The Rockpile,” it was where the Buffalo Bills played and won back-to-back American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965.
In 1967, however, conditions on the east side began to take a drastic slide, Doyle said.
“Something happened in 1967,” she said. “We had a race riot.”
1967 race riot
During the summer of 1967, race riots broke out in more than 150 cities across the nation as frustration over abusive policing and deteriorating economic conditions in African American neighborhoods boiled over. In June 1967, hundreds of residents took to the streets of the east side protesting the police abuse of two Black teens.
“Cars were turned over, fires started, bricks were thrown at businesses,” Doyle recalled.
The riots lasted for six days.
Then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller sent Black baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who was serving as the governor’s special assistant for urban affairs, to Buffalo to try to quell tensions. And in November 1967, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Buffalo’s Kleinhans Music Hall, telling a crowd, “We are moving toward the day when we will judge a man by his character and ability instead of by the color of his skin.”
In the aftermath of the 1967 riots, some of the damaged businesses never reopened and many of the neighborhood’s few remaining white residents threw in the towel and moved out, Taylor said.
In 1972, the east side was dealt another major setback when the Buffalo Bills also moved to the suburbs, landing at Orchard Park.
‘A real sense of despair’
Conditions on the east side continued to rapidly deteriorate in the early 1980s, when the Republic Steel and Bethlehem Steel plants shuttered.
Fisher, president of the community activist group B.U.I.L.D. of Buffalo, said that in the 1970s and mid-1980s, Buffalo’s population plummeted from 500,000 to around 250,000.
“In 1980, I felt a real sense of despair of blighted buildings, buildings closed, no job opportunities,” said Fisher, adding the same conditions exist today as much of the country emerges from the COVID pandemic and the worst inflation in 40 years.
During the downturn of the 1980s, Buffalo’s Black community was terrorized by a racist serial murderer dubbed the “.22-Caliber Killer,” a 24-year-old white Buffalo resident who prosecutors suspect killed 12 Black people in Buffalo and throughout New York.
“The tensions leading up to the Tops shooting are the same tensions that led up to the .22-caliber killings,” Fisher said. “It’s an undercurrent, a counterculture of hate. We never learned the lesson of being too busy to hate.”
(PLYMOUTH, Minn.) — In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week , “GMA” is honoring educators, including educators like Mike Peterson, a custodian-turned-substitute at Plymouth Middle School in Plymouth, Minnesota.
Before becoming the school’s favorite teacher, Peterson was a custodian for nearly three decades. He eventually became the director of the custodian program at the school and earned a bachelor’s degree in his spare time.
“I started in the district 29 years ago, working as a night person. While I was doing nights, I was going to school,” Peterson told “Good Morning America.”
When Peterson decided to retire in 2021, he came right back to the school as a substitute teacher for math, his favorite subject.
“I wanted to be a teacher and [the school gave] me a part-time job because I keep busy,” said Peterson.
Barb Wurdeman, a social studies and science teacher, said she was glad to see Peterson again in the hallways.
“Initially, I thought he came back as a custodian when I saw him in the hall. But then, [when I realized] he had a class and he came back as a substitute teacher, I was just so impressed,” said Wurdeman.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , close to 600,000 substitute teachers cover over 30 million teacher absences in K-12 schools and 20% of requests for substitutes go unfilled.
Paula Engel, a Spanish teacher, said Peterson became a hero.
“When we were coming out of the pandemic, we needed substitute teachers. We were desperate. I mean, it was a big problem. And Mike solved that problem,” said Engel.
Other colleagues said Peterson inspired them.
“He was one of the reasons why I decided to go back to school and finish up getting my degree,” said John Davis, a special education teaching assistant. “It just made me think about, ‘You know what? If Mr. Peterson can go back to school and do what he did to get his degrees, why can’t I do it?’”
After decades of working in the district, Peterson was able to transition into the substitute teacher role seamlessly.
“You can’t replace that knowledge from all those years. How can you replace somebody who knows things from 29 years of working there now?” said wife Sheri Peterson. “That’s his family.”
Freedom Trotter, a school climate and culture specialist at the school, said Peterson has always been a teacher — long before his new role.
“I would say he was a teacher before he actually became a licensed teacher. And so, it started with building those relationships with students and it carried on into the classroom,” said Trotter.
Most importantly, the students are happy to have Peterson back in the school and say he is always in a good mood and treats students like family.
“He connects more with the kids. He’s more willing to talk to us and not just like sit there and be like, ‘Oh, I have to babysit these kids.’ No, he’s interacting with us and making us laugh and we’re just all having a good time,” said Virginia Smit, a student.
Peterson said he sees it as just being there for the people who are always there for him.
“Why not help your friends?” he said. “You know, it’s my family.”
Students, teachers, friends and family gathered Monday morning to surprise Peterson in person.
“GMA” surprised Peterson with a donation in his name through The Minneapolis Foundation to the Seven Dreams Foundation to bring teachers from diverse backgrounds and experiences into classrooms.
After the check surprise, Peterson shared an encouraging message. “You can succeed. Never stop. Go into it. I’m here for you to help you succeed and all the teachers that I’ve worked with, they’re there for you,” he said.
“That’s what I’d like to introduce for the kids that are having some issues. When I was a kid I had some issues but I’ve learned to go and did I stumble? Yes. But I kept going and going and going and tell you the truth, through that, I’ve been successful. I think I have the best building. I enjoy working. It’s one of those things, coming in here, it is an adventure every day in the classroom,” Peterson added.
“GMA” also teamed up with Ace Hardware to surprise Peterson with a new toolset to support Peterson’s side projects both at school and at home.
“I feel that all this is helping not only the kids that I love working with and for teachers and they’d be going so that people that want to sub, come on in. You know, the water is sometimes warm, sometimes cold but it’s a new adventure and I think everybody needs a new adventure,” Peterson said.
“And these kids need help. And I love if they can’t figure out stuff that I can sit down and help them. If I can play help just one or like I wrote in my Facebook, it’s like Batman going into the Flash. Save one, then save another. So if I can sit down and work with them, that’s what I’m here for.”
(NEW YORK) — The family of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who died after allegedly being put into a chokehold by Daniel Penny during an altercation on a New York City subway on May 1, has responded to Penny’s statement on the death.
They called Penny’s response a “character assassination” of Neely.
Attorneys for Penny offered “condolences to those close to Mr. Neely” and claimed “Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel,” and that the Marine veteran and others “acted to protect themselves.”
In footage of the incident, Penny can be seen holding Neely in a chokehold for several minutes, as another man held down Perry’s body.
Penny put Neely in the chokehold leading up to his death, which has been ruled a homicide by the medical examiner’s office. Some witnesses reportedly told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train.
Police sources told ABC News that Penny was not specifically being threatened by Neely when he intervened and that Neely had not become violent and had not been threatening anyone in particular.
Penny, 24, was questioned by detectives and released, according to police. He told police he was not trying to kill Neely.
According to police sources, Neely had a documented mental health history. Neely had been previously arrested for several incidents on the subway, though it’s unclear how many, if any, led to convictions.
“Mr. Neely had a documented history of violent and erratic behavior, the apparent result of ongoing and untreated mental illness,” said the statement from the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff. “When Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers, Daniel, with the help of others, acted to protect themselves, until help arrived. Daniel never intended to harm Mr. Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”
The Neely family attorneys criticized Penny’s response.
“The truth is, he knew nothing about Jordan’s history when he intentionally wrapped his arms around Jordan‘s neck, and squeezed and kept squeezing,” said the Neely family attorneys.
“Daniel Penny’s press release is not an apology nor an expression of regret. It is a character assassination, and a clear example of why he believed he was entitled to take Jordan’s life,” the statement from attorneys Donte Mills and Lennon Edwards continued.
Neely family attorneys called on Mayor Eric Adams to give them a call: “The family wants you to know that Jordan matters. You seem to think others are more important than him. You cannot ‘assist’ someone with a chokehold.”
The mayor, who has been outspoken about addressing crime in the city, called Neely’s death “tragic,” but refrained from commenting further as “there’s a lot we don’t know about what happened here.”
“We do know that there were serious mental health issues in play here, which is why our administration has made record investments in providing care to those who need it and getting people off the streets and the subways, and out of dangerous situations,” Adams told reporters last week. “And I need all elected officials and advocacy groups to join us in prioritizing getting people the care they need and not just allowing them to languish.”
Neely’s death has prompted protests throughout the city, including one that blocked a subway train.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have spoken out over Neely’s death.
“NYC is not Gotham. We must not become a city where a mentally ill human being can be choked to death by a vigilante without consequence. Or where the killer is justified & cheered,” Lander said in a tweet.
Ocasio-Cortez called for Penny’s arrest in a series of tweets.
Gov. Kathy Hochul called Neely’s death a “wake-up call” for officials facing the nation’s mental health crisis.
The Manhattan DA’s office encourages anyone who witnessed the incident or might have information to also call 212-335-9040.
The case is likely headed to a grand jury next week, law enforcement sources said.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Ten people, all African American, were killed in a racially motivated mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, a year ago this week, an attack that shook the nation and underscored a rise in white supremacy across the country.
The victims included mothers and grandmothers, a church deacon, a community activist, a retired police officer working security at the store and a father picking up a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son.
“I’m going to tell people that our community suffered a terrible tragedy. We lost precious members of our community,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told ABC News of what he plans to say this weekend to commemorate the May 14, 2022, attack, perpetrated by a teenage white supremacist at a Tops grocery store on the city’s predominantly Black east side.
“But we came together in a way that is an example to the nation and the world of how to handle adversity. We are resilient beyond measure and we will rebuild beyond imagination,” Brown said. “So, there is hope for the future. There is reason out of this darkness to be optimistic, and we will be the city that we want to be.”
Here is how those who perished have been remembered:
Ruth Whitfield, 86
Ruth Whitfield was returning home from visiting her husband in a nursing home when she stopped by Tops to pick up seeds for a garden her son had built her as a Mother’s Day present a year ago, her family told ABC News.
Her son, Garnell Whitfield Jr., the retired Buffalo fire commissioner, described his mother’s devotion to her family, especially her husband of 68 years, who suffers from dementia.
“She was there just about everyday, taking care of him, making sure he was well cared for by the staff, washing, ironing his clothes, making sure he was dressed appropriately, making sure his nails were cut and clean and shaved,” he said. “All of that. Everyday.”
Even as her own health began to weaken, Ruth Whitfield still tried to visit her husband each day, taking days off only when she felt too debilitated to make the trip, her son said.
In a recent interview, Garnell Whitfield told ABC News his mother “never worked professionally. She stayed at home with us. She sacrificed her entire life, all of her dreams and aspirations to raise her family.”
“My dad worked two, sometimes three jobs in order to allow her to stay home. And my mom would be in our schools all the time when we were kids,” he added.
Roberta Drury, 32
Roberta Drury, who was also a regular shopper at Tops, was a “vibrant and outgoing” woman who could “talk to anyone,” her sister, Amanda Drury, told ABC News.
Roberta Drury was born in Cicero, New York, about 150 miles east of Buffalo, and moved to the city in 2010 after her oldest brother, Christopher Drury, received a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia. She helped her brother run his restaurant, The Dalmatia, and care for his family, Amanda Drury said.
She was picking up groceries for Christopher when she was fatally shot, her family said.
“When people ask, how many children do you have? I don’t know what to say. Will I ever be able to enjoy August 11th, her birthday. May 14th … how will my family ever have a nice thought of a beautiful spring day,” Dury’s mother, Leslie Vangiesen, said in February, as she gave a victim impact statement at the sentencing hearing for the killer, Payton Gendron. “How do I look at her Christmas stocking hanging every year.
“She was a beautiful girl,” a tearful Vangiesen added. “I think of her alone, laying on the pavement for hours. I’ve never been able to see or touch her after that day. My life has been profoundly changed. My life view is just saddened. Robbie’s family, my family, has been permanently damaged and there is no punishment that will ever reverse our loss.”
Aaron Salter Jr., 55
Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer, was killed after he confronted the gunman, who entered the store wearing military fatigues, body armor and a tactical helmet.
Salter was working as a security guard and shot at the assailant, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told ABC News. But the bullets had no effect due to the bulletproof vest the suspect wore, and the gunman returned fire, striking Salter.
Gramaglia described Salter as a “true hero” who undoubtedly saved more lives during the encounter.
“He went down fighting,” Gramaglia said. “He came in, he went towards the gunfire. He went towards the fight.”
One Tops employee, Fragrance Harris Stanfield, a mother of seven, told ABC News that if it hadn’t been for Salter, she and her 20-year-old daughter, who was working at the register, would not have known the gunman was headed in their direction.
When she saw Salter pull out his weapon, they knew they had to run, and they both made it out alive, she said.
Salter was a “beloved” employee of Tops, several years after he retired from the police department.
“He took on a responsibility to protect the customers and the employees in the store,” Gramaglia said. “And he did exactly what he signed up for.”
During a Medal of Valor ceremony a few days after the massacre, President Joe Biden commended Salter, saying, he “gave his life trying to save others.”
Heyward Patterson, 67
Deacon Heyward Patterson was shot while inside his truck in the parking lot of the supermarket as he waited for a person he drove to Tops to pick up groceries, friends and relatives said.
Patterson’s family described him as a loving person, who left behind a wife and daughter.
“He didn’t deserve that. Our community didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. It’s wrong,” Mercedes Patterson told ABC Buffalo affiliate station WKBW, describing her relative as “an honorable man. A family man. A working man. A community man. An honest man that was at a grocery store in a parking lot.”
Patterson was a deacon at the State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Buffalo.
Patterson would often drive people to Tops to do their shopping. He was doing just that on the day he was killed.
Following his funeral in May, his wife, Tirzah Patterson, stood next to her and her husband’s only son, Jake, and spoke to news reporters.
“This is his only son, who will carry on his name,” Tirzah Patterson said. “And everyday I have to pray and do a check in with him to make sure he’s not mentally all over the place. His heart is broken. As a mother, what am I supposed to do to help him get through this? I need a village to help me raise and be here for my son.”
Pearl Young, 77
Pearl Young, an Alabama native, spent the final years of her life teaching children as a substitute teacher in the Buffalo School District and was heavily involved in her church community, her sister, Mary Craig, told ABC News.
“She loved her students, and they loved her back,” according to a statement from her family shortly after her death.
Craig described Young as “such a beautiful, sweet woman.”
Young leaves behind two sons and a daughter, Craig said.
Young was described in the statement as a missionary who would be “truly missed.”
“Missionary Pearl Young was a worshipper and loved God. She loved her children, her family, and her Good-Samaritan COGIC church family,” the statement read. “She was a true pillar in the community.”
In a tribute, President Biden said of Young, “She touched the apple of God’s eye.”
Young’s daughter, Pamela Pritchett told ABC News she has found comfort in remembering how her mother lived. The devoted wife of a church pastor, a loving mother and grandmother. In addition to working as a substitute teacher, Young ran a food pantry for her church, Pritchett said.
Pritchett said she refuses to allow the May 14, 2022 killings “to be the defining moment of who my mother was.”
Geraldine Talley, 62
In her final moments, Geraldine Talley, who went to the Tops store that fateful afternoon for a few items, sent her fiancée down an aisle to retrieve something off a shelf.
Before they could reunite, the mass shooter entered the supermarket and opened fire. Her fiancée survived the massacre.
Talley’s last moments were described to ABC News by Kaye Chapman-Johnson, her younger sister, who was not at the store with the couple.
“Our sister, we had so many plans together, so many plans, and everything has just been stripped away from us,” Chapman-Johnson told ABC News. “Our lives will definitely never be the same again.”
Two years older, Talley, 62, was Chapman-Johnson’s “best friend,” her sister said. “We talked everyday.”
Talley was one of nine siblings and was “an amazing sister, mother, aunt,” said Chapman-Johnson. “She just was truly an amazing woman.”
Talley’s son, Mark Talley, told ABC News that his mother — who friends and relatives called “Gerri” — was known on the east side of Buffalo for her sweet and savory dishes, especially banana pudding cakes.
“She was always having company over,” Mark Talley said of his mother. “She would make all the customary Thanksgiving-type foods on a weekly basis.”
In a recent interview, he described his mother as an “extrovert.”
“She was the one calling up everybody, checking up on everybody, just constantly talking,” the 33-year-old Talley told ABC News.
Celestine Chaney, 65
Celestine Chaney, 65, was a mother and grandmother of six.
“My mom was in my corner for whatever, for better or worse,” Wayne Jones, Chaney’s only child, told ABC News in a recent interview.
Jones said his mother, who had survived breast cancer and two brain aneurysms, was killed while shopping for ingredients to make strawberry shortcake.
He said a cherished childhood memory was going with her to the store on the first of every month to buy everything needed for her favorite dessert.
“We were poor, so we got food stamps. That was probably the only time we could afford strawberry shortcake,” he said. “It’s ironic she would die at Tops trying to get that same dish. It’s just senseless.”
He said he will always remember his mother for her deep love for him.
“I’ve never felt the love that my grandmother and mother gave me,” Jones said. “That’s a love that was unconditional.”
Katherine “Kat” Massey, 72
Katherine “Kat” Massey was a civil rights activist who worked tirelessly to improve Buffalo’s Black community, her sister, Barbara Massey Mapps, told ABC News.
She said her sister was involved in up to 20 community organizations, including serving as the president of her block club.
“Kat was just a good person,” Mapps told ABC News in a recent interview. “She was just a normal, everyday person that cared about what was going on in her community, she cared about people. She wanted things to be better for everyone.
She described her sister as a “big advocate” for gun control. In one of the last opinion letters she wrote to the Buffalo News, Kat Massey said, “There needs to be extensive federal action/legislation to address all aspect of the issue. Current pursued remedies mainly inspired by mass killings — mainly universal background checks and banning assault weapons — essentially exclude the sources of our city’s gun problems. Illegal handguns, via out of state gun trafficking are the primary culprits.”
“And then to get killed by a gun, that’s just a …. the devil came to town,” Mapps said.
Mapps said her sister never had children of her own, but her many nieces and nephews considered her a second mom. She said her sister, in essence, adopted the children in the Buffalo Public Schools, secretly sending pizzas to classrooms, purchasing books and classroom supplies for children in her family and others in need.
“She loved kids in general, but Buffalo city kids, all 34,000, those were her children,” Mapps said of her sister, who worked for 40 years for the Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance company.
Margus Morrison, 52
Margus Morrison was a “great father” and “wonderful person” who was always willing to help his family, his stepdaughter, Cassandra Demps, said in a text message to ABC News shortly after he was killed.
Morrison is “a soul that will always be missed,” Demps wrote.
Morrison was a father of six, who worked as a school bus aide for the Buffalo Public Schools District.
His brother, Frederick Morrison, described his sibling as “cool.”
“He was a bubble. A nice guy, full of energy,” Frederick Morrison told WKBW. “That was my dude. That smile, that energy, and a funny laugh. It was contagious.”
Andre Mackneil, 53
Andre Mackneil was at Tops shopping for his young son’s birthday party when he was gunned down in the rampage, his family said.
“He went to that store to pick up a cake for my little brother because May 14 was my little brother’s birthday. And he turned 3 years old and he didn’t get to celebrate his birthday with his dad because he never came back,” Mackneil’s daughter, Deja Brown, said while giving a victim impact statement at the killer’s sentencing hearing in February.
She called her father “my best friend, who was snatched from this world because of something he couldn’t change — the color of his skin.”
Brown said that even though they had been separated at one point in their lives, they later became “inseparable.”
“I called him for literally everything, especially when I wasn’t getting my way because I knew he would make a way,” Brown said at Gendron’s sentencing. “But most of all, I would be lost without him because I finally found somebody who understood me to a T. We thought a lot alike. And even though he had to be dad before friend, I always respected everything he said. He was so wise and he made the world easier to live in because he had all the answers to my wild questions.”
She said she always wanted to be around her father, and tagged along on nearly his every move.
“And the one time he leaves without me, he doesn’t come back,” she said. “After this happened, I constantly beat myself up about him going and I’m still pissed off because he wasn’t given a chance to fight. He was blindsided.”
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in 2022 and has been updated
(DALLAS, Texas) — One person is dead and two are injured after a fight broke out between two people Sunday on a Dallas Area Rapid Transit train, a spokesperson said.
A man involved in the altercation was transported but has since died, the statement said.
The incident took place just south of Hatcher Station on the train’s Green Line, according to authorities.
After a manhunt, a suspect was taken into custody Monday, according to Gordon Shattles, DART’s assistant vice president for external relations. The person, who was unnamed, has been charged with one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
One bystander was transported to Baylor Hospital in Dallas, the other was treated at the scene with non-life-threatening injuries, a spokesperson said.
The gun used in the shooting was also recovered, Shattles said.
The shooting on the train came just one day after eight people were murdered in a mass shooting at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas.
ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.
(DALLAS, Texas) — A mass shooting at a mall near Dallas on Saturday — which left nine dead, including the suspect, as well as seven injured — turned a shopping destination into a site of horrifying carnage.
The attack comes less than a year after a gunman opened fire at a mall in Greenwood, Indiana, killing three people and injuring two others. A few months before that, last April, a shooter at a mall in Columbia, South Carolina, injured 14 people.
Shopping malls offer a vulnerable target for mass shooters and a near-impossible task for security, since droves of people often converge through multiple entry points with easy access, experts told ABC News.
Moreover, efforts to better secure malls with metal detectors or additional security guards risk pushback from developers and stores forced to bear added costs as well as customers faced with the inconvenience of airport-style lines and armed surveillance, they added.
“People can get out of their car, walk into a mall and do mayhem inside,” Kenneth Gray, a lecturer in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of New Haven, told ABC News.
Still, some malls may seek to find a balance between heightened security and consumer comfort, the experts said, noting that safety at such venues owes in large part to the wider context of gun laws and mental health services.
Simon Property Group, the real estate developer behind Allen Premium Outlets, the Allen, Texas, mall where the shooting took place, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A security guard, Christian LaCour, 20, was among the victims who died in the shooting.
“You want to have an open environment that’s welcoming to people,” Gray said. “At the same time, you don’t want them to be sitting ducks.”
Retail locations make up the second-most common site of mass shootings, accounting for nearly 17% of mass shootings recorded between 1966 and 2021, according to a previous ABC News analysis of data compiled by The Violence Project.
Workplaces, many of which are private commercial establishments, mark the most frequent location for mass shootings, the data showed.
The nation’s roughly 700 malls are part of a category referred to as “soft targets,” which includes religious institutions, restaurants and other locations.
Bolstered security at such locations would require checkpoints at every entryway as well as round-the-clock guards available to respond quickly in the event of an attack, Tung Yin, a national security expert and professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, told ABC News.
Such measures would call for malls to make a significant financial investment and consumers to tolerate inevitable delay and discomfort, Yin added.
“If you’re going to have people jamming into these checkpoints,” he said, “think about the impact that would have on day-to-day life.”
Peter Eliadis, a former law enforcement official and founder of the firm Intelligence Consulting Partners, said religious institutions have recently flooded him with calls inquiring about threat preparedness trainings but he has received far fewer requests from malls.
“Think about a mall with 50 stores that want to do active-threat training — who’s going to pay for it?” Eliadis told ABC News. “Every store says, ‘I’m not doing it, you do it. Oh, the landlord should do it.'”
Bolstered security at malls would not ensure their safety, experts said, since larger policies dictate key factors that contribute to mass shootings, such as the availability of guns and the screening of individuals with mental health issues.
“The upstream part is addressing mental health issues and other behavioral signs that someone is on the path to becoming a mass shooter,” Javed Ali, a former official at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security and a professor at the University of Michigan, told ABC News.
“And the gorilla in the room is the whole gun control issue,” he added.
ABC News’ Miles Cohen and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
