(RICHMOND, Va.) — A shooting occurred at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond on Tuesday, the school said.
There is no ongoing threat following a “shooting incident” at the university’s Monroe Park campus, VCU said in an alert.
Multiple police agencies responded to the scene near the Altria Theater, which was scheduled to host several graduation ceremonies for Richmond Public Schools Tuesday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The chain of events set off by an unresponsive plane that eventually crashed Sunday in Virginia continues to raise questions about what happened on board and how the incident was handled.
Six fighter jets were scrambled on the afternoon of June 4 to try to intercept the private Cessna jet, originally on a flight from Tennessee to New York, as it encroached on restricted airspace around Washington D.C. The plane eventually went down in a mountainous area of Virginia, killing all four people on board.
But because the fighter jets weren’t launched until long after the plane first went unresponsive, and after it turned around in New York without landing, it’s unclear why NORAD waited to intercept the plane until it was about 20 miles northeast of the nation’s capital.
White House spokesman John Kirby declined to tell ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Tuesday whether he thought it was okay for 90 minutes to lapse between the time the Cessna jet went dark to it being intercepted F-16s.
“[Department of Defense] will take a look at the process,” Kirby said. Kirby added the response was done in “textbook fashion” but DOD will determine if anything should have been done differently.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has begun an investigation into exactly what happened.
Here’s a timeline of the plane’s path, and the military response that led to a sonic booms over the D.C. region and along the East Coast. All times are Eastern.
Flight takes off from Tennessee
At 1:13 p.m. the plane departed from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York, according to the NTSB. Three passengers and the pilot were on board.
Shortly after take-off, at approximately 1:28 p.m., air traffic controllers lost contact with the jet and repeatedly called out to the plane but received no response, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Defense and homeland security officials were notified of the situation eight minutes after controllers lost contact with the plane, the agency said.
Air traffic controllers began warning pilots as early as 1:50 p.m. that an unresponsive plane was in the air.
Flight reaches Long Island, turns around
At approximately 2:30 p.m., the Cessna jet reached Long Island but did a 180-degree turn, changing its path to a southwestern trajectory as it flew over MacArthur Airport at a cruising altitude of 34,000 feet.
It’s unclear why the plane didn’t land at its intended destination.
The exact timeline is unclear but around 3 p.m., the plane drew closer to restricted airspace over Washington, stoking increased alarm among officials.
It’s at this time that NORAD, or North American Aerospace Defense Command, scrambled six F-16 fighters from three different units and bases: two from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and the other four from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and McEntire, South Carolina.
Sonic boom heard by D.C.-area residents
Starting shortly after 3 p.m., residents across the Washington metro area began to circulate social media postings about what sounded like a loud explosion.
Door-camera footage from northern Virginia at 3:09 p.m. captured the noise of a sonic boom, which was later confirmed to be from the F-16’s that were authorized to travel at supersonic speeds to catch up to the unresponsive Cessna plane.
NORAD said that two F-16s launched from Atlantic City traveling at supersonic speed created the noise.
A U.S. official defense explained to ABC News that as the F-16 traveled the region at supersonic speeds for several minutes, people would have heard the sonic boom at different locations at different times.
F-16s intercept plane
At approximately 3:20 p.m., the plane was intercepted 20 miles northeast of Reagan National Airport, according to NORAD.
A defense official said two F-16s that had taken off from Joint Base Andrews deployed flares and flew around the aircraft to try to capture the pilot’s attention but received no response.
A second U.S. official said the fighter jet pilots “visually confirmed that the Cessna pilot was unresponsive.” A U.S. official told ABC News that the pilot seemed to have passed out.
Experts said it was likely hypoxia, a condition that occurs when the body loses oxygen, that caused the pilot to become unresponsive.
The F-16’s continued to follow the unresponsive Cessna plane until its crash.
Plane crashes in Virginia
The NTSB said the plane began to descend at 3:23 p.m. and crashed at approximately 3:32 p.m. near the George Washington National Forest.
The flight tracking software following the plane’s path also reported it going down at 3:32 p.m.
The Virginia State Police said in a statement they were informed of the crash at 3:50 p.m.
According to state police, first responders were able to reach the crash site shortly before 8 p.m. No survivors were located.
ABC News’ Lauren Minore and Davon Morales contributed to this report.
(BOWIE, Md.) — Two people have been shot, one fatally, at a Maryland cemetery during the burial of a 10-year-old girl who fell victim to gun violence last month, according to police.
It appears Tuesday afternoon’s shooting at Washington National Cemetery in Prince George’s County, just outside of Washington, D.C., stemmed from a “dispute totally unrelated to what was going on with the funeral,” Prince George’s County police Maj. David Blazer said at a news conference.
A man, who died from his gunshot wounds, and a woman, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries, were not directly connected to the funeral for 10-year-old Arianna Davis, Blazer said.
One person is in custody, Blazer said.
Davis was in the car with her family on Mother’s Day when she was “accidentally hit in a barrage of gunfire,” said Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nicole Maines – a transgender actress who has starred in “Supergirl,” “Yellowjackets,” and more – never intended to become an activist.
But when she and her family won a groundbreaking case against her school district in 2014, arguing that the school could not deny her access to the girl’s bathroom because she was transgender, the role came naturally.
Years later, Maines would go on to make history again as the first live action transgender superhero on television as Dreamer in “Supergirl.”
Maines spoke with ABC News in 2015, sharing the excitement she felt about preparing to undergo gender affirming surgery.
“I just knew in my head and in my heart that I was supposed to be a girl,” she said in the 2015 interview. “It was just the voice in my head telling me, ‘No, this is who you are, you need to be a girl.’”
Gender-affirming care can include puberty blockers, hormone medications and surgery.
“I had just graduated high school,” Maines, now 26, said in a recent interview, after watching the old footage of herself. “I was on my way to get my surgery that I’d been looking forward to my entire life, that I’d been talking about my entire life.”
Maines’ story is part of “The Freedom to Exist – A Soul of a Nation Presentation,” airing June 6 on ABC.
As bills restricting transgender youth health care and trans bathroom bans pop up across the country, Maines says “there’s so much work to be done…we all need to decide what kind of country that we want to live in.”
At least 18 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah — have passed laws or policies that restrict gender-affirming care for people under the age of legal adulthood.
In several of these states, adults, too, face restrictions and red-tape toward receiving such care.
Leading medical groups and pediatric experts say gender-affirming care improves the mental well-being of transgender youth, who are more likely to face mental health conditions due to discrimination and gender dysphoria – or not being able to express oneself in the gender they identify with.
Despite this, youth continue to face barriers to care.
The next generation of trans youth
Hobbes Chukumba, a junior in high school, came out as transgender to his father when he was 11 years old.
People would call Hobbes a “young boy,” a “brother,” a “son,” and it would never bother him – “It wasn’t several years later until I realized it’s because that’s really how I identify. That’s how I felt,” he said.
“I was so relieved to finally have this weight put off my chest because it had been something that I was harboring for… I don’t know how long,” Hobbes told ABC News in an interview.
His father told him he loved him, gave him a hug, left the room and immediately went to search for answers. He had no frame of reference on how to support his son.
“For the next two years, I was doing all the research I could to figure out what it was that I was dealing with, and how to best help my child realize who he was, and how he could become his best self,” Hobbe’s father, Stephen, told ABC News.
Hobbes said he knew he wanted to medically transition to feel more aligned with his body.
Stephen, Hobbes’ father, describes the process as “a whole battery of appointments and meetings and doctors and clinicians and psychiatrists.”
“For me, I felt really good,” he continued, “because I didn’t want my son taking something, doing something to alter his body that he didn’t understand, that I didn’t understand.”
Hobbes said that when he began taking testosterone, he felt the change from within immediately.
“It felt like, on the first day, I was like, ‘Oh, look at me, I already have a huge mustache and awesome beard,’ even though, obviously, that wasn’t true. But it was just the feeling, the thought, that one day I will.”
Hobbes was one of several trans youth organizers who helped to plan the Trans Youth Prom to celebrate trans youth and show people that “trans kids are kids.”
“We’re people, we can have fun, we can enjoy ourselves and we have pride to be who we are,” he said.
Hobbes continued, “When I go on to college and into the rest of my life, I want people to look at me as I currently am, and not as I was. I don’t want them to see me as Hobbes, who used to be whoever. I want them to just see me, and see Hobbes.”
(SIOUX FALLS, S.D) — A South Dakota law prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors is set to take effect next month, joining a growing list of states considering or enacting similar bans across the country.
Meanwhile, a concerned mother is grappling with how her transgender daughter will continue to receive transition-related care, telling ABC News they soon may have to travel up to 200 miles away to get her daughter’s puberty blockers prescribed in Minnesota.
“We’re just putting a pause on [puberty] until we get to a point where her therapist, her medical doctor and her parent all agree she’s mature enough to make a decision how she wants to progress,” said Carrie, whose daughter’s name is Willow.
She added, “The most frustrating part of all of those laws for me is that, I’m her parent. I should be able to make decisions regarding my child’s health care.”
Willow began to socially transition in about fifth grade, but kids at her previous school would “deliberately misgender her or deliberately call her by her old name,” Carrie said. The mom and daughter now drive from rural Minnesota to nearby Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for work, school and medical care.
Carrie and Willow’s story is part of “The Freedom to Exist – A Soul of a Nation Presentation,” airing June 6 on ABC.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed HB 1080, known as the “Help Not Harm bill,” into law in February. The law bans both surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming care for transgender youth, including hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers. Supporters of the law believe they are protecting children by prohibiting these treatments until adulthood.
Critics say such restrictions infringe on the rights of parents like Carrie to make health decisions on behalf of their children. They also point to research about the risks associated with disallowing transgender children experiencing gender dysphoria to access essential care.
“[Risks] include increased risk for depression and anxiety and, sadly, increased risks for feelings of self-harm, including suicidality,” Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told ABC News.
“If you’ve got a law in your state that says you are wrong for being who you know you are, that’s going to deeply impact your sense of self,” Hoffman continued.
At least 18 states have passed laws or policies that at least partially restrict gender-affirming care for minors. The laws in Alabama and Arkansas are temporarily blocked, as legal challenges make their way through the courts. At least 14 other states are considering similar laws.
And gender-affirming health care isn’t the only thing under threat, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization is tracking at least 491 anti-LGBTQ bills up for consideration in state legislatures across the country, involving issues like civil rights, free speech and expression.
“There is a lot of anxiety around the increased affirmation and visibility of LGBTQ experiences, and especially trans and nonbinary experiences,” said activist and author Raquel Willis.
Several trans activists told ABC News that a turning point came in 2015, when the Supreme Court struck down the remaining bans on marriage equality for same-sex couples.
“One of the things trans activists absolutely rightly pointed out is that while you might win on gay marriage, where is this huge infrastructure opposing it going to then park all of its energy? And since L-G-B-T — well the T is just sitting right there, they didn’t have to go very far,” said John Hopkins University professor Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson.
ACLU attorney Chase Strangio speculates the anti-trans legislation moving through state legislatures nationwide stems from “an ideological goal of eradicating trans people.”
For Willow’s mom, it’s a frightening — and all too real — possibility.
“Passing of these laws, things that are said about the trans community will make them feel even more like they don’t belong, that their existence doesn’t matter. It’s not going to stop there. And that’s what scares me I think the most,” Carrie said.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Wildfires burning in Canada are continuing to create poor air quality conditions in the U.S. as the smoke makes its way south.
Hazy skies, low visibility and poor air quality will be present in most of the Northeast and the Midwest and even as far south as the Carolinas.
Air quality alerts have been issued in 17 states from Kansas to Vermont. Large cities with the lowest air quality include New York City, Albany, New York, and Cincinnati, a map by AirNow, a website that publishes air quality data, shows.
Cities with unhealthy air quality for sensitive groups include Philadelphia, Columbus and Washington, D.C.
At-risk populations, such as young children, the elderly or those with lung and heart disease, should especially avoid the outdoors, according to the advisories.
The smoke originated from wildfires in Quebec, where more than 160 forest fires are currently active. Some of the fires in the region were ignited by lightning strikes, according to NASA. Unusually dry and warm weather has fueled the fires.
The intensity of the fires has exceeded the capacity of water bombers, Quebec’s wildfire prevention agency announced on Monday, CTV reported.
Firefighters are currently unable to get the wildfires under control, François Legault, a member of the Canadian parliament serving Quebec, told reporters during a news conference on Monday. Firefighters in other provinces are unable to assist because they are battling their own fires but an additional 200 firefighters are traveling from France and the U.S., Legault said.
The number of wildfires in the country had grown past 400, officials said.
Northern U.S. states have been bogged under the haze of the migrating smoke from Canada since May after early-season wildfires began to spark.
Air quality alerts were issued for all of Montana and parts of Idaho, Colorado and Arizona due to wildfires in Alberta, in Western Canada.
Wildfires burning last week near Halifax, Nova Scotia, created hazardous air quality ratings in many of the regions affected by the wildfires currently burning in Quebec.
(WASHINGTON) — Unlawful entries along the southern border have decreased 70% from their record highs since the end of Title 42 on May 11, according the Department of Homeland Security.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has averaged 3,400 encounters in between ports of entry per day and fewer than 300 non-CBP One Office of Field Operations (OFO) encounters at ports of entry per day, for a total of approximately 3,700 unscheduled encounters per day, according to statistics released by DHS Tuesday morning.
From May 12 to June 2, DHS repatriated over 38,400 noncitizens under Title 8 authorities, including single adults and families, to more than 80 countries. This includes over 1,400 noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were returned to Mexico under Title 8 authorities — the first time in our bilateral history that the Mexican government has allowed the repatriation of non-Mexican nationals at the border under Title 8 authorities. The top three nationalities encountered during that time period were Mexican, Honduran and Venezuelan, which collectively accounted for 70% of the encounters per day, according to DHS.
The White House applauded the decrease.
“Political pundits and Republican lawmakers claimed we were unprepared for the end of Title 42. We proved them wrong,” tweeted White House Assistant Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan.
The CBP One app, which was rolled out by DHS as a hub offering a variety of CBP services, saw 1,070 noncitizens presented “in a safe and orderly manner at a port of entry each day to be processed during their scheduled appointment time,” DHS said. CBP has, as of June 1, expanded the number of appointments available to 1,250 each day.
But some Republicans have expressed skepticism of CBP One, saying the app is a vehicle that would allow mass migration.
“Abusing the CBP One App is the Biden admin’s newest tactic to funnel tens of thousands of illegal aliens into the country every month. House Republicans voted to bar DHS from exploiting the app & restore it back to its original intent,” Republicans on the House Committee on Homeland Security tweeted Monday.
The decrease comes as two top immigration officials have announced their departure from DHS. Chief of the Border Patrol Raul Ortiz told employees he was leaving at the end of June, and Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tae Johnson is also retiring, according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Total CBP enforcement actions for fiscal year 2023 are 1,246,371 year-to-date, according to CBP.
(NEW YORK) — The Navy commander in charge of the “Hell Week” training when a SEAL candidate died spoke out on ABC News’ Good Morning America after an investigation found multiple problems with the program.
Capt. Brad Geary told ABC News’ Stephanie Ramos that the death of Kyle Mullen in 2022 was a “tragedy” but defended himself and the program against the probe, which outlined ways the selection progress for SEAL candidates had become dangerous.
“That entire report mischaracterizes, misrepresents and misquotes our organization and Naval special warfare,” Geary said. “Because it was built off of a bias that was inappropriate and regurgitated untruths that simply didn’t exist.”
Mullen, a 24-year-old former Yale football team captain, collapsed and died just hours after completing the program. His death, and the hospitalization of three others from his class, shined a light on the intense, non-stop physical Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course candidates undergo to become elite SEALs.
A nearly 200-page report the Naval Education and Training Command released last month identified “failures across multiple systems that led to a number of candidates being at a high risk of serious injury.”
Poor leadership, inadequately organized medical care and other factors increased the risks for SEAL candidates, according to the report.
Three Navy officers, including Geary, received “non-punitive” letters as a result of Mullen’s death.
“There’s a weight on the shoulders of every commanding officer that has served,” Geary said when asked if he felt responsibility for Mullen’s death. “And I don’t think that weight can be reduced down to one term-like responsibility. I will always carry the weight of Kyle’s death on my shoulders. What I feel responsible for is speaking truth to ensure that it never happens again.”
Geary said there was no one he held accountable for Mullen’s death.
“His death was a tragedy,” Geary said. “And this is one thing I agree with the report on. It was a perfect storm of factors that all combined at the wrong possible moment in time and resulted in the tragic loss of Kyle.”
Mullen’s mother, Regina Mullen, expressed frustration with what she said was a lack of accountability for her son’s death.
“The Navy SEAL code item four says take responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates,” she said. “He’s the commander, the commander’s supposed to command. Four people almost died that day. My son, unfortunately, died. He’s responsible. I don’t know how he could say he’s not.”
(SUNNYVALE, Texas) — Three children remain in critical but stable condition after a “horrific” shooting in suburban Texas that killed one adult and injured four others early Sunday night.
Sunnyvale interim police chief Bill Vegas told reporters the five victims were pulling into an apartment complex when a suspect emerged from a sedan, which police believe was following the family’s car, and shot the five victims while inside the vehicle. Police are still searching for the two suspects in a late-model black sedan, one of whom was the shooter in the attack.
“There was a lot of evil last night,” said Vegas, who described the crime scene on multiple occasions as “horrific.”
At least six bullet holes were found on the left side of the family’s vehicle, which was ambushed around 6 p.m. Sunday, according to Vegas.
Mesquite, Texas, resident Tyesha Merritt, 27, attempted to seek shelter from the shooting in the apartment complex, but died at the scene of the shooting, according to Vegas. Merritt was confirmed as the sister of the adult male victim, police said.
“To walk up on a scene where there have been five people shot, three children, is pretty horrific,” Vegas said.
Three children, between the ages of eight and 10, were injured and are being treated at a local hospital. A male victim, identified as the children’s father, was also injured but has been released from a local hospital, according to police. He is now cooperating with law enforcement, which is struggling to identify the shooting suspects, Vegas said.
“We don’t have a whole lot,” Vegas said about the current state of the investigation.
The mask worn by the shooter has made an identification challenging, according to Vegas. Police now believe the suspects have left the Sunnyvale area, though they likely remain armed and dangerous.
“We do know they are armed,” Vegas said at Sunday’s press conference. “We do know they are capable of shooting, so there is a definite threat.”
Police later clarified in a Facebook post they are “confident that there is no threat to the public,” though the reality of dangerous suspects on the loose persists. Sunnyvale police are now working with law enforcement in Mesquite, where the two suspects are believed to have driven.
Vegas stated he believes there were likely multiple eyewitnesses to the shooting, and law enforcement is calling for the public to come forward with information.
The shooting comes as a shock for the relatively quiet community of Sunnyvale, an affluent suburb in eastern Dallas County, that boasts a population of roughly 8,000 residents with an average household income of $137,656, according to Census data.
“We have our crime, but we don’t normally experience this kind of stuff,” Vegas said.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday opposed an attempt by his former fixer Michael Cohen to dismiss a lawsuit that accused Cohen of breaching his fiduciary duty to Trump “by spreading falsehoods” about his ex-boss.
“Despite Cohen’s arguments to the contrary, the Complaint alleges that Cohen was conferred substantial benefits during his representation of the Plaintiff and utilized such benefits for purposes of obtaining selfish, financial profit at the expense of Plaintiff,” Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Britto, said in a statement.
Trump accused Cohen of “egregious breaches of fiduciary duty and contract” in connection with the publication of books and the production of a podcast that “are intended to be embarrassing or detrimental” to Trump.
Cohen argued that the lawsuit failed to properly state a claim and cast it as an attempt to silence “an important government witness” in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal prosecution of Trump.
Trump’s legal team declined to directly address Cohen’s claim.
“Cohen discusses the rulings in unrelated legal matters, makes references to various news articles designed to taint this Court’s view of the Plaintiff and this case, unnecessarily injects invectives designed to exacerbate this already caustic matter,” Britto said.
