(WASHINGTON) — A crane ship on the scene where a Chinese surveillance balloon went down in waters off South Carolina has picked up a significant portion of the balloon’s payload that measured as much as 30-feet-long and had all of craft’s tech gear and antennas, a U.S. official said Monday.
Search and recovery efforts had to be halted at the end of last week because of bad weather and rough seas.
The U.S. military shot down the surveillance balloon on Feb. 4 after it flew across the country for several days.
With regard to other object shots down Friday and over the weekend, the official said the U.S. military continues to look for the remnants from the take out of the sky off the coast of Alaska
While the pilots who shot down that object saw pieces land on ice waters, the official said, the search continues for the debris field amid bad weather. The U.S. wants to pinpoint the exact location before it places personnel in dangerous icy conditions, the official said. A Navy P-8 search plane was in the sky looking for debris.
Concerning the object shot down over Canada, the official said, that country’s government is taking the lead but has not yet located the object’s debris.
And about the object shot down Sunday over Lake Huron in Michigan, the official said, the U.S. Coast Guard and Canadian authorities are still looking for the debris that landed on water.
Because there was a good visual of where it may have landed, there is confidence the remnants will be recovered.
(NEW YORK) — A U-Haul driver is in custody after allegedly striking eight people in a “violent rampage” in multiple locations in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday, according to NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
Four people have been hospitalized, two in critical condition and two in serious condition, the commissioner said at a news conference.
Four others suffered minor injuries, Sewell said.
One of the eight injured was a police officer who tried to stop the driver, she said.
“We have seven different locations to process,” the commissioner said.
The driver allegedly screamed that he wanted to die as he sped off and led police on a brief chase, according to a law enforcement official and a local councilman. He allegedly fled from Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood through Sunset Park before being apprehended a few miles away in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook.
Police searched the truck and found nothing suspicious, sources said.
There are no additional credible threats, according to the New York City mayor’s office.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tweeted that she’s been briefed on the incident.
(NEW YORK) — A U-Haul driver is in custody after allegedly striking pedestrians in the Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Bay Ridge on Monday, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
At least four people are injured, according to sources.
The driver allegedly fled the scene in Bay Ridge before being apprehended in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook a few miles away, sources said.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Thirty minutes into the deadly siege on her classroom in south Texas, a 10-year-old student did something extraordinary: she picked up a phone.
“Uvalde County 911,” was how the call started.
“There’s a school shooting at Robb Elementary School,” said the hushed voice of a little girl.
“Can you tell me your name?” the dispatcher asked.
“Khloie,” she whispered.
From deep inside the siege that would end in the deaths of 19 children and two of their teachers, fourth-grader Khloie Torres — terrified that the gunman might hear her — kept law enforcement apprised of what was happening during a series of phone calls. Her repeated pleas for help spanned 46 minutes as officers collected in the hallway outside classroom 112 but did not attempt to end the attack.
“Please hurry, there’s a lot of dead bodies,” Khloie said. “Please, I’m going to die.”
The audio of Khloie’s interactions with a police operator obtained and reviewed by ABC News are part of thousands of pieces of digital and documentary evidence collected by investigators.
Khloie’s parents are aware that ABC News plans to broadcast portions of her 911 calls and wants them to be heard publicly. Her father, Ruben Torres, said the calls prove that law enforcement should have acted sooner to confront the gunman and end the massacre, the second-worst school shooting in American history.
“I was very proud of her during that call,” Torres said. “And when I heard her voice, you know, shedding the tears already happened for me … and I was like, 46 [expletive] minutes, and you guys did nothing.”
Investigators are now seeking to determine whether some of the cascading errors in the law enforcement response amount to criminal culpability, officials told ABC News in a series of interviews. As part of their probe, investigators are scrutinizing officers’ decision to treat the incident as a barricaded subject as opposed to an active shooter.
“The consequences of police inaction at the scene, that is really the whole point of the investigation, and that would be a part of what’s presented to the grand jury” when that time comes, said Scott Durfee, a Uvalde County special assistant district attorney working on the case.
Critics say the information 10-year-old Khloie conveyed to a 911 operator should have given officers the knowledge they needed to confront the shooter and end the siege sooner. Twelve minutes after her initial 911 call, Khloie remained on the line with the police operator: “Please help, please my teacher is about to die,” she said. “Please hurry. Send an ambulance right away.”
“That should have immediately signaled a different course of action,” said Eva Guzman, a former state supreme court judge who served on a special committee of the Texas legislature that investigated the Robb shooting.
But questions remain about whether dispatchers were able to convey Khloie’s information to the officers making decisions on the scene in the building. Radios and cellular systems were too weak inside the school, crippling the lines of communication.
“The idea that someone so young would know to get on a cell phone and call 911, but maintain that line, [an] open line, and report information that was helpful — it would’ve been very helpful, put it that way,” said Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety that is running the criminal investigation.
It is not clear whether Khloie’s information made its way to Pete Arredondo, then-chief of the Uvalde school district police force and the officer making many of the key decisions that day. (Arredondo has denied that he was the on-scene commander and defended his actions.)
“That information should’ve been taken in by the call taker, should’ve been immediately relayed to the incident commander, who should have used that information to understand that this was still an active shooter event,” said John Cohen, an ABC News contributor, veteran law enforcement official, and an expert in active-shooter response.
Evidence collected by investigators suggests that the city’s top police officer on site, Lt. Mariano Pargas, was aware from Khloie’s calls that children remained trapped alive inside the classroom.
“The calls you got in from the — from one of the students,” Pargas asked a dispatcher. “What did they say?”
“OK, Khloie’s going to be — it’s Khloie,” the dispatcher replies. “She’s in Room 112, Mariano, 112.”
“So how many are still alive?” Pargas asked.
“Eight to nine are still alive,” the dispatcher said. “She’s not too sure how many are actually [deceased] or possibly injured. We’re trying–“
“OK, OK, thanks,” Pargas said.
Pargas would later tell investigators that he couldn’t recall those details.
Over the course of her 46-minute dialogue with a 911 operator, Khloie stayed calm, at one point telling the 911 operator: “I know how to handle these situations. My dad taught me when I was a little girl.”
Her father, a former Marine, said he worked hard to make sure Khloie and her siblings knew how to handle life-and-death emergencies in an age of mass-casualty attacks and exploding gun violence. Ruben Torres said he was so proud that Khloie, that day at Robb, had the presence of mind to wipe blood on herself to make it look like she was shot.
“We had spoken about things like this happening around our nation, give them scenarios, what would they do — things of that nature,” he explained. “I find it amazing that my 10-year-old at that time thought about that.”
Khloie continued offering crucial information that critics say should have prompted police action: “Send help for my teachers,” she told the dispatcher. “They are still alive but they’re shot.”
She also served as a conduit for other survivors in the classroom, conveying the police operator’s orders to those nearby.
“They are inside the building you just need to stay quiet OK,” the dispatcher said.
On the other line, Khloie is heard whispering: “They are inside the building; we just need to stay quiet.”
Finally, 46 minutes after Khloie Torres placed her first 911 call, officers from a U.S. Border Patrol tactical unit entered the classroom, shot the gunman, and ended the rampage.
Khloie and nine other classmates from room 112 survived. Now, nine months later, Khloie is in counseling but has not yet returned to school. Her father said her road to recovery has been a struggle.
“She does have survivor’s guilt,” Ruben Torres said. “I hate to say it, but she really don’t care anymore about doing the little things that she used to do, you know? She just wants to be stuck at home.”
(NEW YORK) — More than 40 million Americans are at risk of experiencing storms this week, as a severe weather outbreak is possible in various parts of the U.S.
The mid-week weather outbreaks could bring damaging winds and tornadoes to people living in the Gulf to the Great Lakes and heavy snow to those in the Pacific Northwest.
Rain and snow will push into Portland, Oregon and Seattle on Monday, as well as New Mexico and Arizona.
By Monday afternoon, snow will reach southwestern Colorado, according to meteorologists.
Rain is expected from Austin, Texas, to Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday morning, with snow scattered throughout the Rockies and Cascades.
Tuesday evening will see rain move farther east, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border along the Mississippi River Valley.
Heavy snow will continue for the Rockies and even the Sierra mountain range in California, especially in northern Sierra, where they haven’t seen as much snow this season as the rest of the state.
This week’s snow will reach more than a foot in parts of the Southwest and Northwest, including parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Montana.
Storms in the South are expected on Wednesday evening, some of which may bring threatening wind and tornadoes to the area, which includes Dallas, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee.
Those storms could continue overnight into Thursday as they move east.
By Thursday morning, the possibly severe storms are projected to move from Jackson, Mississippi, to Cincinnati, Ohio. Snow is also expected from Kansas City to Omaha to Milwaukee on Thursday.
A line of storms may stretch to the Great Lakes, passing through Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland on Thursday evening.
Rain showers are expected on Thursday in the northeast from Washington, D.C. to Boston, with snow in Chicago and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
There may be some reprieve for millions of people on Friday, as the severe weather isn’t expected to continue once it reaches the East Coast.
Pam Smart and Bella Gonzalez, who she taught English and became best friends with embrace at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. – Miles Cohen/ABC News
(BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y.) — The New Hampshire Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday whether to grant Pamela Smart a chance at a hearing that could put her on a path to freedom.
Smart was convicted in 1991 at age 22 of persuading her teenage lover, Billy Flynn, to kill her husband. She met Flynn, then a student, through her work in a New Hampshire school district. Soon after their affair began, Flynn fatally shot her husband, Gregg Smart, in the head.
The press flocked to Exeter, a small New Hampshire town, to cover the case against Smart. Her trial, three years before that of O.J. Simpson’s, was one of the first to be broadcast live — and Smart quickly became the center of a saga that led to a fervor for true crime and an era of televised trials.
Smart has now spent more than 32 years behind bars for conspiring to kill her husband. Flynn, who pulled the trigger, has been out of prison for nearly a decade.
Her accomplices, including three other teenagers who were charged as adults in the killing, cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to lesser charges. They have all been released from prison. Smart was convicted at trial of accomplice to murder in the first degree and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Smart’s Feb. 14 hearing will be the first time that she has had a chance to challenge the state’s repeated denials to make a case for her release.
Smart maintains that she did not ask Flynn to murder her husband — a factor the New Hampshire attorney general’s office and her prosecutor from trial have said disqualify her from mercy. Smart says she does feel responsible for Gregg Smart’s death but did not orchestrate his murder. Had she not had an affair, her husband would still be alive, she told ABC News.
If the court rules in favor of her on Tuesday, Smart will have a chance to stand before the governor and his executive council to ask for a commutation — which is a reduction of a sentence, often for good behavior, as opposed to a pardon which absolves someone of their crime.
For Smart, who has exhausted all of her opportunities to appeal her sentence, a commutation remains her only hope to one day get out of prison.
“In some respects the pieces are finally coming together,” Smart, now 55, told ABC News on a phone call from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York two weeks before the hearing.
“It feels like the last straw, the last stand,” she said. “If this doesn’t work out, what is there after this?”
In 1993, Smart was transferred from a New Hampshire prison to Bedford Hills where she has been ever since.
When she arrived at the maximum security prison, she found many people there knew about her case. In 1995, those who hadn’t watched her trial learned about it from “To Die For,” a Hollywood film starring Nicole Kidman, who played Smart.
She says her reputation has followed her for years.
In one instance, she says, a prison guard in 2003 leaked photos of Smart to the National Enquirer of her kneeling on her bed in her underwear, which sparked a new wave of headlines.
“It was like a nightmare my first 10 years here,” Smart said.
It was during that time Smart leaned into her studies. She began working on the first of three graduate degrees — two master’s, in law and English literature, and a doctorate in ministry.
She also worked as a teacher’s aide and, for those who needed extra help on her cell block, she taped a tutoring schedule to the unit’s bulletin board.
When Bella Gonzalez, 17, first arrived at Bedford Hills, Smart encouraged her to sign up for a slot.
“She gave me a new word for my vocabulary every day,” said Gonzalez, who at first spoke very little English.
The two became close over their nearly 20 years in prison together. They played softball — Smart in center field and Gonzalez at first base — and they cried when Gonzalez’s mom died. They also wept when Smart lost her appeals.
Both young women confided in each other about their dreams of motherhood; for Gonzalez a possibility, for Smart a foregone conclusion.
In 2005, the first two accomplices in Gregg Smart’s murder were paroled. Vance Lattime Jr, the getaway driver who supplied the weapon, and Raymond Fowler, who helped plot the murder, were released from prison. That same year, Smart was denied her first request for a commutation hearing.
While incarcerated at Rikers Island, Kelly Harnett had already heard that Smart was an effective jailhouse lawyer. But when she arrived at Bedford Hills in 2015 she found it was impossible to get a meeting with her.
“People would even follow her into the shower” to ask about their cases, she said.
Later that year, Flynn and another accomplice Pete Randall, who held the knife to Gregg Smart’s throat, were released from prison.
In 2018, New Hampshire rejected Smart’s second attempt for a 15-minute hearing with the governor to review her sentence. By that point, all of Smart’s appeals had been denied. Her friends, including Gonzalez, had been released and gone home. Gonzalez later had a daughter; she named her Pamela.
During a recent interview at Bedford Hills, Smart said she worried her ailing mother, Linda Wojas, 81, who has fought to clear her daughter’s name, would die.
“One day someone is going to walk in here, sit down where you are, and tell me my mom is dead,” said Smart. “I just want to go home so she has one night knowing I’m free.”
In 2021, Smart compiled three decades of evidence to support what may be her last request for a commutation hearing. She said she handpicked hundreds of letters written by prison leadership and inmates who say she changed the trajectory of their lives. She turned in copies of her three degrees, and attached at least 28 certificates for completion of rehabilitation programs.
On March 23, 2022 — in less than three minutes — New Hampshire’s Executive Council unanimously recommended that Gov. Chris Sununu again deny Smart a hearing.
A commutation would “demean the value” of her slain husband, one member of the council reasoned. There was no mention of Smart’s rehabilitation efforts, the basis for Smart’s attorney’s argument on Tuesday when he will challenge the decision.
Smart thought back to the council’s brief comments.
“In two years, my release is still gonna ‘demean’ Gregg’s life. In four years. In 87 years. That can never change. So what’s the point?” she told ABC News. “If I’m not rehabilitated, when will I be?”
(COLUMBUS, Ga.) — Robert Earhart Jr. was an agent with the Central Intelligence Agency’s “protective operations division” with a Top Secret security clearance, and he needed a meeting with the Department of Justice.
Or at least that is what Earhart, 38, of Columbus, Georgia, allegedly said in a voicemail he left with the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia on Jan. 11.
The federal official with whom he tried to schedule a meeting unsealed a complaint last week charging Earhart with false personation of an officer or employee of the United States.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia also alleged that Earhart has a history of representing himself as a federal official. The DOJ said that in May 2019, Earhart identified himself as an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency and attempted to free three inmates from Muscogee County Jail in Georgia. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office, Earhart also allegedly represented himself as a Homeland Security agent.
Earhart on Jan. 11 allegedly made a phone call in which he posed as a CIA agent to schedule a meeting with U.S. Attorney Peter Leary, one of the chief federal law enforcement officials in the state of Georgia. The U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges that Earhart specifically mentioned his involvement with the “protective operations division” and said he held a top-secret clearance.
The CIA does not publicly advertise a “protective operations division,” though a popular souvenir site sells a replica movie prop badge for the “protective operations division” for $70.
The CIA hires “protective agents” who “deploy worldwide to perform sensitive operations in support of protective requirements to defend our nation from those that try to do us harm,” according to a CIA job posting. That particular role requires six years of combined military or law enforcement experience, preferably in a special operations unit like the Navy Seals or Army Rangers.
Bad actors in the past have impersonated CIA officers, utilizing the covert nature of the agency to establish credibility. A former DEA public affairs officer was sentenced to seven years for impersonating a covert CIA officer to defraud $4.4 million from over a dozen companies, according to a press release from the DOJ.
Earhart faces up to three years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
(WASHINGTON) — When Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., was sworn in for the 118th Congress in January, he became the highest-ranking Latino in Congress, serving as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the No. 3 position in his party in the chamber.
Aguilar, a fourth-generation Mexican-American, recently sat down with ABC News contributor Maria Elena Salinas to discuss his personal story, his new role in the House and the pressure of representing a demographic that often feels overlooked.
“It’s a sense of opportunity. My story is not very different than so many other, you know, Latinos who grew up in communities where they had to work hard to get by,” Aguilar told Salinas in the interview, which aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
At just 26 years old, Aguilar began his political career in Redlands, California, 11 miles east from where he grew up.
“I joined the Redlands City Council, actually, by getting appointed to fill a vacancy for someone who had left town, and then became elected at the age of 27 and became mayor by 30,” Aguilar said.
He won election to the U.S. House in 2014, representing what is now California’s 33rd Congressional District. Now, as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, his job is to unite members of his party around legislation and party issues, while also finding common ground across the aisle.
“What issues do you feel that you and Republicans can have common ground on?” Salinas asked.
“I think there has been common ground on the ability for ‘Dreamers’ to become citizens,” Aguilar responded, referring to the hundreds of thousands of young people who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children. “We have Republicans on board with that.”
Policies surrounding immigration have been at the forefront of Aguilar’s political career, with the protection of “Dreamers” being at the top of his list. Aguilar supported the DREAM Act, which would allow the young immigrants to establish permanent residency and eventually grant them U.S. citizenship.
His most recent efforts involved a letter pushing for legislation to allow “Dreamers” to hold federal employment.
“The Senate introduced a bill to help guide ‘Dreamers’ toward legalization of their status. This has been happening for decades now and it never comes to fruition,” Salinas said. “What needs to happen to make it a reality?”
“I think we need more friends and allies in the United States Senate,” Aguilar responded. “I can respect that, you know, that certain times the House has been at fault and the Senate’s been at fault. But in the last 10 years, Democrats have continually put these bills on the floor, and Republicans have stood in the way on the House side to see any real reform happen.”
Aguilar said he is also concerned with the influx of migrants at the southern border.
“How do you think President [Joe] Biden is doing on the border?” Salinas asked.
“I think the grade would be incomplete, right?” Aguilar answered. “There’s plenty to do. We know that it’s a humanitarian issue down at the southern border. What President Biden sought to do was to clean up the mess from the prior administration, too.”
“But it’s not less messy right now,” Salinas pressed.
“Well, but I would tell you that the tone of how we address this is very, is very different,” Aguilar said.
He also noted that the Democratic Party has to win back the Latino vote, after recent elections show the party losing ground with those voters. According to national exit polls of the last three election cycles, the share of Latino voters backing Democrats has dropped nine points, from 69% in 2018 to 60% in 2022.
“I think that how we talk to voters, how we meet them where they are and we talk about the issues with them really is important,” Aguilar said. “And there’s no cookie cutter way to talk about Latino issues. We need to realize that we need to have a plan to talk to those voters and those individuals. And I think that we need to do a better job of that.”
The congressman said he is already strategizing how to win back a House majority, emphasizing that lawmakers need to get out and talk to constituents about their legislative wins, such as the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to combat gun violence.
“So can we interpret that as your biggest challenge is going to be winning back the House in 2024?” Salinas asked.
“We have to do it to save democracy, to help our communities,” Aguilar replied.
(WASHINGTON) — Another high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon, this one over Lake Huron, three U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News, marking the latest in a string of such incidents.
The object was shot down by a U.S. military aircraft, according to one of the officials.
A senior administration official said President Joe Biden directed that the object be shot down “out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of military leaders.”
This official said the object shot down was detected on radar over Montana on Saturday and was seen again on radar over Wisconsin and Michigan on Sunday.
The object was octagonal in structure, unmanned and traveling at about 20,000 feet, the official said. There is no indication of surveillance capabilities but the administration cannot rule that out.
“The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard. Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters. We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and [its] purpose,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., tweeted.
“As long as these things keep traversing the US and Canada, I’ll continue to ask for Congress to get a full briefing based on our exploitation of the wreckage,” Slotkin wrote.
The downing is the fourth time in recent days that a high-altitude object was shot by the military over U.S. or Canadian territory.
The first incident involved a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was tracked across the continental U.S. and then shot down off the coast of South Carolina by a U.S. F-22 fighter jet on Feb. 4. That balloon caused bipartisan concern in Washington after it floated across Alaska, Canada and then through the U.S., passing over sensitive military installations, including at least one housing intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The military waited to shoot it over the Atlantic Ocean out of concerns that downing it could risk people on the ground being injured by debris, officials have said. The delay nonetheless sparked criticism from Republicans and some Democrats that President Joe Biden and the Pentagon waited too long to handle the balloon.
Since then, two more objects were shot down before Sunday — one over Alaska and one over Canada — both by U.S. F-22 jets.
The military has not confirmed what kind of objects they were, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday they too were balloons, though smaller than the first one.
Schumer linked them to the Chinese, who initially claimed the first balloon was a civilian craft.
The episodes have only fueled bipartisan calls for more information from the Pentagon over the origin of the subsequent objects and their capabilities, with diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing already ratcheting up over the initial balloon.
One U.S. official attributed the rise in the sightings to boosted surveillance capabilities by the military and not a rush of new foreign objects flying over American airspace.
“Northern Command has adjusted the parameters of their radar capabilities in a way that they can see more than they could before,” the official said.
This official explained that the suspected Chinese spy balloon triggered a new state of vigilance for the U.S. military.
“That’s not to say they were blissfully ignorant before,” the official said, “but there are lots of things floating around and now we are more finely attuned to it.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — An explosion and fire in a San Francisco residential neighborhood that killed a disabled woman and injured her caregiver and a firefighter was allegedly caused by a clandestine drug lab, according to police.
The blast on Thursday that leveled one home and damaged two others in the city’s Outer Sunset neighborhood led to the arrest of 53-year-old Dorron Price, owner of the home that blew up and whose wife was killed in the incident, the San Francisco Police Department announced Saturday.
Price was arrested on charges of involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, manufacturing drugs and reckless arson with great bodily injury, police said. He was being held without bail Sunday in the San Francisco County Jail, according to online jail records.
Price was booked at the jail Friday night after authorities found evidence of the home lab used to manufacture Phencyclidine, a drug also known as PCP or “angel dust,” according to police.
At the time of the blast, Price’s wife and her 65-year-old caregiver were inside the house, according to police. The caregiver, who suffered major injuries, was in the basement doing laundry when the explosion erupted, according to a statement she gave police that was obtained by ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV.
The caregiver, whose name was not released, managed to dig her way out of the rubble. She told police Price and his wife have two children, who were at school at the time of the explosion.
It was not clear where Price was at the time of the blast.
The explosion produced a three-alarm fire that damaged two neighboring homes and displaced five families, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. One firefighter was injured fighting the fire, authorities said.
Once the fire was extinguished, a K-9 search team found the body of Price’s deceased wife, according to the fire department.
More than 100 firefighters fought the blaze, the department said.
“We are aware of the numerous calls and reports of an explosion and houses shaking in the area,” said San Francisco Fire Capt. Jonathan Baxter.
The cause of the explosion and fire left some residents in the neighborhood shocked and angry.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood. People are nice. And in the middle of the street, you have this guy who is doing something illegally,” neighbor Karen Lei, whose home was damaged in the explosion, told KGO-TV.
Lei applauded the arrest of Price, saying, “That’s the right thing to do, because he’s very destructive — causing property damages and disrupting people’s lives.”
