(WELLFLEET, Mass. ) — Some 125 dolphins are currently stranded on a beach near Wellfleet, Massachusetts, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
The Atlantic white-sided dolphins are stranded at the Great Island at the Herring River — also known as the “Gut” — which is a very difficult location to access and is covered in “dangerous mud,” Stacey Hedman, director of communications for the IFAW, said in a statement on Friday.
Ten dolphins had died before IFAW staff even arrived on the scene, Hedman said, describing the incident as the single-largest mass stranding event the group has ever responded to.
Low tide occurred at 11:23 a.m., Hedman said. Given the large number of distressed dolphins, the plan is to triage and support the animals before attempting to refloat and herd as many as possible.
Aerial footage taken by ABC Boston affiliate WCVB showed dozens of immobile dolphins lying on the coast on Friday afternoon, many of them covered in wet towels placed there by rescuers to keep the dolphins’ skin from drying out.
The video captured volunteers arriving to begin assisting the dolphins. Soon after, more crowds arrived, also appearing to help.
At least 25 IFAW staff and 100 volunteers were on the scene by late afternoon, Hedman said. Using three small vessels in the water, they continued herding and using underwater pingers to encourage the dolphins to twin in the proper direction as high tide approached.
Although temperatures were cooler on Friday than in recent days, the dolphins risk getting sunburned and overheated should they remain on the beach until the tide rises, Hedman said. High tide was expected to occur at about 5:34 p.m.
The IFAW has had success in the past herding white-sided dolphins, Hedman said.
Cape Cod is a global stranding hotspot due to the curvature of the shores and the fluctuation of the tides, according to experts.
It is unclear why dolphins strand themselves, Hedman said.
(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — A North Carolina mother has been arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter after she allegedly left her 8-year-old daughter in a hot car while at work and the girl died, police said.
Officers responded Wednesday evening to reports of a child in critical condition inside a vehicle in Charlotte, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
The child was transported to a hospital where she was pronounced dead early Thursday, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Her mother, 36-year-old Ashlee Stallings, allegedly left her daughter in the vehicle “in hot weather conditions” and the 8-year-old suffered a medical emergency, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a press release. Temperatures in Charlotte on Wednesday had reached the upper 90s.
Stallings allegedly told police she had left her daughter in her car while she was at work, running with the air on, but “believed the victim turned the car off because she was cold,” the arrest warrant affidavit stated.
When the mother returned to her vehicle about an hour and a half after last hearing from the girl via text, she found her daughter unresponsive on the backseat floorboard, taking shallow breaths and foaming at the mouth, according to the affidavit. Stallings used a hammer to break open the back window and then attempted to drive to a local hospital before stopping at a business for help, according to the affidavit.
“She admitted she knew the temperature was 94 degrees outside and that she should not have left the victim inside the car alone,” the affidavit stated.
Medical staff at the hospital told police the girl suffered brain herniation due to hyperthermia, according to the affidavit.
Stallings was arrested Thursday and charged with involuntary manslaughter and child abuse by willful act causing serious injury, online court records show.
Stallings was appointed a public defender during an initial court appearance on Thursday. Online court records do not list any attorney information.
She is being held at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center on a $250,000 bond, online jail records show. Her next court date has been scheduled for July 16.
The investigation remains ongoing, police said.
Amazon confirmed to ABC Charlotte affiliate WSOC that Stallings worked at an Amazon facility and said it is “working closely” with police as they investigate.
“This is an incredibly tragic incident,” Amazon said in a statement to WSOC. “During this difficult time, we’re supporting our employees and have made counseling resources widely available.
The incident marked at least the fifth hot car death so far this year, according to the nonprofit Kids and Car Safety.
It takes very little time for a car to get too hot for children. A car can heat to 124 degrees in only 30 minutes when it’s 90 degrees outside, according to the National Weather Service.
(YULEE, Fla.) — A man was fishing in Florida when a shark bit him, severely injuring his arm, officials said.
The man, who is in his 40s, was on a boat at the time of the attack, which unfolded around 11 a.m. Friday at West Rock near the port of Fernandina, which is north of Jacksonville near the Florida-Georgia border, Nassau County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Alicia Tarancon said.
A responding deputy boarded the man’s boat and applied a tourniquet to his right arm to slow the bleeding, Tarancon said.
The deputy then drove the boat to shore, where rescue crews were waiting, Tarancon said.
The victim was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition, Tarancon said. He’s expected to recover, Tarancon added.
This attack comes after a well-known surfer and lifeguard was killed by a shark in Hawaii on Sunday.
Tamayo Perry, 49, had been a lifeguard with Honolulu Ocean Safety since 2016. He was a local surf coach and competed for years in the Pipeline Master Trials, according to his official bio on his coaching site. Perry appeared in the 2002 movie “Blue Crush,” along with episodes of “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Bridge,” according to IMDb.
“The world knew Tamayo as a surfer and an actor, but to those who knew him best, he was a man of deep faith … now taken too soon,” his wife, Emilia Perry, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “I feel so upset and devastated. But I also have a weird calmness in my heart knowing that he’s in a better place.”
ABC News’ Kori Skillman contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday narrowing a key obstruction statute used against more than 300 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol could affect dozens of cases brought by the Justice Department in the three years since prosecutors say a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters disrupted Congress’ certification of his election loss.
In a 6-3 opinion, the majority of the court ruled that prosecutors overstepped in using the charge against defendants in cases where defendants were unable to show their actions impaired the integrity of actual physical evidence used in a disrupted proceeding.
In a statement Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would be taking “appropriate steps to comply with the Court’s ruling,” while noting the “vast majority” of the more than 1,400 defendants charged thus far in its Jan. 6 probe would remain unimpacted.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., of the 249 cases where defendants have either been charged or convicted of the obstruction statute at issue, there are no cases in which it is the only criminal charge they faced.
“Today’s decision will most significantly impact a narrow band of cases: those where the only felony for which a defendant was convicted and sentenced was 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2),” the office said in a fact sheet sent to reporters. “In total, approximately 52 individuals have been convicted and sentenced on that charge and no other felony; of those individuals, only 27 are currently serving a sentence of incarceration — less than 2 percent of all charged cases arising from the Capitol Breach.”
Judges in D.C.’s district court overseeing the Capitol riot cases already began responding Friday to the court’s ruling, including in at least one case where a defendant was convicted of the obstruction statute alongside other felonies.
D.C. District Judge Dabney Friedrich issued an order for prosecutors and defense attorneys for convicted Jan. 6 rioter Guy Reffitt, who was the first Capitol breach defendant to take his case to trial, to confer and propose a schedule for future proceedings in the case in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Friedrich further told parties to contact the court to schedule a date for Reffitt’s resentencing.
In August of 2022, Reffitt was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on multiple felony counts, including the obstruction charge now impacted by the court’s ruling.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, prosecutors may still have a limited path to continue pushing for the charge’s application against defendants if they have evidence that a defendant intended to specifically prevent Congress from signing off on the physical electoral certification records used in the Jan. 6 proceedings.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson left open the possibility that even the defendant who brought the challenge at issue in Friday’s ruling, former police officer Joseph Fischer, could still be convicted of the charge after his case was remanded, should prosecutors be able to show his conduct “involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding.”
Such a reading of the statute could also help special counsel Jack Smith in his argument for the obstruction charge’s application against former President Donald Trump in his federal election interference case.
In a legal brief with the Supreme Court last year, Smith’s prosecutors said that even if the court sided with Fischer’s interpretation of the statute, it should not impact the two similar charges Smith indicted Trump over for his involvement in allegedly obstructing the Jan. 6 certification.
Their reasoning: While a case may be harder to make against individual rioters in obstructing or altering physical evidence connected to the proceeding, the Trump indictment does allege a tie to specific documents — the fraudulent certificates delivered by so-called “fake electors” that falsely certified a Trump victory in swing states he lost to Joe Biden.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday denied ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s request to remain out of jail while he continues to appeal his contempt of Congress conviction.
Bannon earlier this month was ordered by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence.
Bannon was sentenced to four months in October 2022 after he was found guilty of defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
After Bannon was sentenced, Nichols agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the conviction.
He ordered Bannon to report to prison after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction last month.
Bannon last Friday filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to remain out of prison.
The Supreme Court provided no vote breakdown in its decision to deny his request.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Laura Romero contributed to this report.
(WELLFLEET, Mass. ) — More than 80 dolphins are currently stranded on a beach near Wellfleet, Massachusetts, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The Atlantic whitesided dolphins are at the Great Island at the Herring River — also known at the “Gut” — which is a very difficult location to access and is covered in “dangerous mud,” Stacey Hedman, director of communications for the IFAW, said in a statement on Friday.
Low tide occurred at 11:23 a.m., Hedman said. Given the large number of distressed dolphins, the plan is to triage and support the animals before attempting to refloat and herd as many as possible.
Aerial footage taken by ABC Boston affiliate WCVB showed dozens of immobile dolphins lying on the coast on Friday afternoon, many of them covered in towels.
The video captured volunteers arriving to begin assisting the dolphins. Soon after, more crowds arrived, appearing to help as well.
Although temperatures were cooler on Friday than in recent days, the dolphins risk getting sunburned and overheated should they remain on the beach until the tide rises, Hedman said. High tide is not expected to occur until about 5:34 p.m.
The animal welfare group has had success in the past herding whitesided dolphins, Hedman said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(YULEE, Fla.) — A shark attacked a man in Florida, seriously injuring his arm, officials said.
The attack unfolded around 11 a.m. Friday at West Rock near the port of Fernandina, which is north of Jacksonville near the Florida-Georgia border, Nassau County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Alicia Tarancon said.
The man, who is in his 40s, has been airlifted to a hospital in critical condition, Tarancon said.
This attack comes after a well-known surfer and lifeguard was killed by a shark in Hawaii on Sunday.
Tamayo Perry, 49, had been a lifeguard with Honolulu Ocean Safety since 2016. He was a local surf coach and competed for years in the Pipeline Master Trials, according to his official bio on his coaching site. Perry appeared in the 2002 movie “Blue Crush,” along with episodes of “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Bridge,” according to IMDb.
“The world knew Tamayo as a surfer and an actor, but to those who knew him best, he was a man of deep faith … now taken too soon,” his wife, Emilia Perry, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “I feel so upset and devastated. But I also have a weird calmness in my heart knowing that he’s in a better place.”
ABC News’ Kori Skillman contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Homelessness advocates are condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling that an Oregon city’s ordinance to bar anyone without a permanent residency from sleeping outside does not amount to “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
In 2013, the Grants Pass city council attempted to ban anyone “from using a blanket, pillow or cardboard box for protection from the elements” while sleeping outside, threatening violators with citations and tickets. Lower courts initially found that this was “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
The case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, has major implications for the rising population of unhoused Americans and the disciplinary actions they face in public spaces, advocates say.
Across the country, homelessness has been on the rise since 2016.
The most recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in December found that more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023 across the country, a 12% increase from 2022. As this number rises, local legislators continue to implement bans on homeless encampments or sleeping outside.
Advocates say these policies don’t address the lack of affordable housing for the homeless and instead they criminalize people “for trying to survive” with nowhere to go, said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center in a statement to ABC News.
He called the ruling “inhumane.”
Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, told ABC News that unhoused people are often forced to face the elements in winter and summer, which may cause further physical and emotional trauma. Oliva argues that taking away their possessions or adding further financial burden to the homeless only worsens the harm.
“It makes it harder for them to get jobs. It makes it harder for them to get it into apartment, because fines rack up, sometimes they turn into criminal charges and bench warrants,” said Oliva. “So it not only doesn’t end homelessness for anybody, it actually makes it worse for the people who are subject to these kinds of ordinances.”
The decision is a win for lawmakers across the country who have recently implemented similar bans on the homeless and restrictions on encampments or possessions in public spaces, but who have been faced with legal challenges.
When SCOTUS first agreed to hear the case in January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the Supreme Court to “correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.”
The 6-3 SCOTUS opinion was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Gorsuch wrote. “At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued the ordinance punishes homeless people with nowhere else to go based on status.
“It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles,” Sotomayor wrote. “Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
(NEW YORK) — Severe storms ravaged the country from Montana to Florida on Thursday, with winds gusting to 91 mph in South Dakota and hail as large as golf balls in Montana.
In Melbourne, Florida, a tornado ripped through a neighborhood, damaging homes.
“Fortunately no one was injured,” Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey wrote Thursday night. “Although some of the area is without power [Florida Power & Light] is en route and will be working through the evening replacing power poles and downed lines.”
On Friday, the severe weather is forecast to impact Colorado to Iowa, bringing damaging winds and large hail.
The highest tornado threat will be in the Kansas City area.
The severe weather will move east on Saturday, ripping through Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, New York. Damaging winds, hail and isolated tornadoes are possible.
By Sunday, the severe weather will hit the Interstate 95 corridor, including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. Damaging winds will be the biggest threat.
The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center is the first LGBTQ center in the National Park Service. — Courtesy of Stephen Kent Johnson
(NEW YORK) — Mark Segal was 18 years old and had only lived in New York City for six weeks when he found himself at the center of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969.
The very spot where Segal once danced, drank and took part in one of the most consequential moments in LGBTQ history is now the first LGBTQ visitor center within the National Park System.
“Before Stonewall, there were no more than 100 out activists in the entire United States of America on that first Pride,” said Segal, now 73. “Today, if you look around the world, there are millions of people who celebrate Pride. And it all started in that building.”
The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, which opened to the public Friday, is what Segal would have hoped for over 55 years ago as a Stonewall veteran.
“If we are visible, that creates dialogue. Dialogue creates education, education creates equality,” said Segal.
The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969, began in response to a routine police raid on a gay bar, according to the Library of Congress.
Segal recalls the lights in the bar blinking on and off — signifying the arrival of the police who would typically “come in, take some money and leave.” But that’s not what he says happened that night.
“The police burst through the doors, started breaking up the bar, started throwing liquor bottles around, took people and threw them up against the wall — screamed, shouted, it was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Segal.
Patrons responded by fighting back, entrapping the police in the bar: “We were in an uprising against those who oppressed us. For the first time in history, the people that are always incarcerating us, we were now incarcerating them,” Segal said.
Before the 1960s, living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer person was largely illegal, according to the National Park Service.
“At that time, we as a community were totally invisible,” said Segal. “LGBT people were not in newspapers, were not in magazines, were not radio, not in television.”
NYPD officials have since apologized for past anti-LGBTQ practices and the raid of Stonewall.
The Stonewall Inn, as it stands today, only holds a part of where the original bar once stood. The visitor’s center is now housed in the other half of the original bar — reclaiming the dark LGBTQ history of the location.
“The power of place can be felt walking through the Greenwich Village streets where people stood up and spoke out, paving the way for equality for all,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association, in a recent statement. “When you explore the new visitor center, you’re learning from and honoring those courageous people. Stonewall will continue to inspire for generations and we’re proud to work to help ensure our national parks include diverse, inclusive stories that welcome and represent the people that shaped our nation.”
The bar became a national monument in 2016 under the Obama administration. Shortly after, LGBTQ advocacy group PrideLive secured the lease to the long vacant 51 Christopher Street part of the historic location and transformed it into the center it is today.
The center – organized by two queer women of color, PrideLive’s Diana Rodriguez and Ann Marie Gothard – hopes to serve as a living monument to those who have shaped the LGBTQ equality movement.
It has visual art displays and a dedicated theater space, with the hopes of growing even larger to tell more Stonewall stories. Segal in particular hopes to see further discussions about the intersectionality of the LGBTQ liberation movement and its connections to other movements for equality and civil rights.
“We’re intertwined with history, but people have made us invisible,” said Segal.
He said he’s seen backlash against the community throughout his lifetime whenever there is progress. This latest rise in anti-LGBTQ sentiment in the U.S. — particularly anti-transgender sentiment — is not shocking to him.
“We’re not going to be invisible ever again,” he added.
The center’s jukebox, the same model as the one that was previously housed in the original Stonewall Inn, plays the same songs that would have been played at the time. It gives Segal chills.
“I’ll stand back and I’ll close my eyes and I will almost dream of myself being back there,” said Segal.
He continued, “Please don’t be mournful. Be cheerful, because what happened [in the LGBTQ equality movement] got us to where we are today. So we should be somewhat celebratory. I know some of us didn’t make it. But we’re in a better place thanks to those people.”
