(NEW YORK) — Three people are dead after a small plane crashed in Tennessee on Wednesday, authorities said.
A 911 caller reported an explosion around noon Wednesday in Williamson County that was believed to have been a possible plane crash, authorities said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a Beech V35 aircraft crashed near Franklin.
It is unclear what caused the crash but it “does appear that the plane did break up in the air,” Chief Deputy Mark Elrod with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office said during a press briefing Wednesday evening.
There were no survivors, he said.
“This is a tragic scene,” Elrod said.
The debris field is “rather large,” Elrod said. It is estimated to be about a half mile long, authorities said.
“We’re unsure exactly where the crash started and where it ended,” Elrod said.
There was no damage to any structures but people have been reporting debris on their property, including yards and driveways, Elrod said. A section of a roadway near the crash scene will be closed Thursday for traffic as authorities continue to search for debris, he said.
The plane left Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was en route to Louisville, Kentucky, when it crashed, authorities said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to arrive later Wednesday and begin their investigation on Thursday, Elrod said.
(NEW YORK) — Authorities in Florida said they have seized a boat believed to be connected to a hit-and-run that killed a teenager wakeboarding in the Miami area over the weekend.
Ella Adler, 15, was struck by a boat while wakeboarding near Nixon Beach in Key Biscayne Saturday afternoon, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said.
The teen had fallen in the water while being towed about a mile from shore and was waiting to be recovered by her boat when another vessel fatally struck her, Reynaud said. The boat that struck the teen did not stop, FWC said.
Following a dayslong search, FWC said Tuesday it has a boat matching the description given by witnesses of the striking vessel in their custody. The 42-foot Boston Whaler has been transported to an FWC evidence compound, the agency said.
The boat’s owner and operator — identified as a 78-year-old man from Coral Gables — is cooperating with the investigation, FWC said. No charges have been announced in the case.
FWC had called in additional resources and “worked around the clock” to find the vessel, FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto said Tuesday.
“As a father and grandfather, my heart is broken for the Adler family,” Barreto said in a statement. “Ella’s death is devastating for her family, friends and the community at large. The FWC and our partner law enforcement agencies will not stop until we have all the answers and the case is solved.”
The investigation remains ongoing. FWC called for anyone with information or footage to contact them.
“The world lost a star this weekend. Ella was beautiful and shined brightly. In her 15 years she gave us more light than we could have ever dreamed,” her parents, Amanda and Matt Adler, said in a statement to ABC News. “While we cope with this unspeakable tragedy, we hope the public will help us find the person who took her from us.”
Ella Adler was a student at Ransom Everglades School, a college prep day school in the Miami area. The school described her as an “outstanding student, a wonderful dancer and an active member of the Jewish Student Association and speech and debate team.”
“Our hearts are broken and our community has been devastated by this tragedy,” the school said in a statement. “Ella shined in our classrooms and on our stages, and she embodied the mission of Ransom Everglades School.”
Adler was a ballerina who appeared in more than 100 performances with the Miami City Ballet, according to her obituary, which called her a “star” and “force of nature.”
(WASHINGTON) — In the heart of Washington, D.C., in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, stands Purple Patch, a Filipino American restaurant that embodies the rich tapestry of Patrice Cleary’s heritage.
Cleary, a self-taught chef, a mother, a daughter, and a former Marine, is a first-generation Filipino-American. Her story is set within the four-story building that houses Purple Patch.
“I was able to introduce my food, that I grew up on, that I loved…to people that may have never had it, but also people from the diaspora that missed it and wanted it,” Cleary said.
Purple Patch has not only become a culinary hotspot, but has also played a significant role in bringing Filipino food to prominence in Washington, D.C., elevating Cleary’s stature as a pioneer in her industry.
Since its opening in 2015, Purple Patch has grown to accommodate more than 200 tables, inside and out, with one very important regular: Mama Alice.
“Mama Alice” is Cleary’s mom, who was born and raised in the Philippines. Cleary, whose father served in the U.S. Marines, moved around frequently during her childhood. However, she found her place in the kitchen, learning its mechanics and the art of bringing people together through food.
This connection to her roots inspired Cleary to share her culinary creations with others. “Anybody that opens a restaurant has to be borderline crazy. I went from being a stay-at-home mom one day to a restaurateur the next day,” she said.
Within months of opening, Purple Patch gained recognition in the nation’s capital. The restaurant received accolades from notable Washingtonians, including the vice president and the Washington Post’s food critic. Its name, a British phrase meaning a period of great success, reflects its fusion roots and is also the color of the famous sweet potato, ube, a staple in Filipino cuisine.
Cleary’s menu at Purple Patch is vast, aiming to be approachable for everyone. “I feel like I make dishes that entice people to want to try it — I love food. I get lost in my kitchen, whether it’s here or when I go home. I can never get tired of it.”
Before Purple Patch reached its fifth-year anniversary, everything changed. In 2020, COVID-19 was declared a national emergency and Cleary transformed her food haven into a food kitchen, providing over 8,000 free meals to local families in need.
“We probably did over 8,000 meals, free meals from 10 to 1 p.m. It could be pancakes and waffles and lumpia and pancit and juice boxes,” Cleary said.
Despite the challenges, Cleary found a way to keep her doors open, her staff employed, and her family’s recipes alive. One recipe is Cleary’s favorite — ginataang alimasag, a dish native to the region where Mama Alice was born and raised. It’s a stew of crabs in coconut milk with ginger and kale, served over rice. Cleary was able to adapt the recipe for her restaurant. Instead of whole pieces of crab, including the shell, she uses jumbo lump crab meat. But Cleary acknowledges Mama Alice’s original recipe reigns supreme in a side-by-side taste test.
Perhaps the most beloved dish on the menu is lumpia — highly addictive, crunchy cigar-shaped appetizers filled with ground pork and beef, carrots and spices, deep-fried to perfection.
In 2021, Patrice had the opportunity to buy the building that houses Purple Patch. Now, from the foundation up, Purple Patch is entirely in Cleary’s name.
“We don’t even own residential real estate, but we own commercial real estate. This is a dream,” Cleary said.A dream that, for Cleary, has now expanded into a second restaurant called Joia Burger, just a few doors down from Purple Patch.
“I own a Filipino restaurant, and I’m part of my own diaspora, you know, and I’m learning so much from my own people, and I’m giving back just as much as they’re giving to me,” she said.
Cleary said her restaurant allows her to share her culture and heritage with her community, letting her stand shoulder to shoulder with her mother, Mama Alice, in the kitchen, cooking meals they love, in a space they own.
An age progression photo from the FBI of what Stephen Gale may look like at age 71. Via Middlesex District Attorney’s Office
(NEW YORK) — Massachusetts authorities are searching for a newly identified suspect in two rapes from 1989 — a crime the Framingham police chief said “haunted the Framingham community for decades.”
Stephen Paul Gale, 71, who was identified through genetic genealogy, is wanted on four counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping and one count of armed robbery, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
The crime unfolded on the morning of Dec. 27, 1989, when a man armed with a gun went into a Framingham clothing store and confronted two employees — women ages 18 and 29, prosecutors said.
The man forced the 29-year-old to give him money from her purse, from a locked safe and from the store’s register, prosecutors said. He forced the 18-year-old woman to lock the doors and put a sign out front saying the store would be opening late, prosecutors said.
The man then sexually assaulted both women at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
The suspect’s DNA was collected from the crime scene. It was later uploaded to CODIS, the national law enforcement DNA database, but no match was found, prosecutors said.
In 2022, investigators began working with Parabon Nanolabs to try to solve the case through genetic genealogy, prosecutors said.
Genetic genealogy takes an unknown suspect’s DNA left at a crime scene and identifies it using family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a database. Police can then create a much larger family tree than if they only used databases like CODIS. Genetic genealogy first made headlines in 2018 when it was used to find the Golden State Killer.
Massachusetts investigators later obtained DNA samples from Gale’s relatives, which confirmed Gale was their suspect, prosecutors said.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said investigators spoke to both victims on Tuesday. She said they expressed gratitude for the police work done in their case and were hopeful that Gale will be brought to justice.
Framingham Police Chief Lester Baker in a statement on Tuesday thanked the victims for their bravery, saying, “Without their ongoing help and courage, we would never have been able to finally have a break in this horrific crime.”
“It’s been a long time coming — over 30 years now — and I am grateful to now have the opportunity to finally tell them — and their loved ones — that all of their efforts have not been in vain,” Baker said.
The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a reward up to $5,000 for information leading to Gale’s arrest, prosecutors said. Anyone with information about Gale’s whereabouts is asked to call the Framingham Police Department at 508-532-5923.
Gale, who has ties to organized crime, has lived in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, prosecutors said. He’s used aliases including: Stephen Pisarcik, John Rossi, Paul Costa, Paul DeRosa, Paul DiCarli, Paul Joseph DeCarlo, Steve Miner, Paul Williams and Paul Ptaszynski, according to prosecutors.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Supreme Court’s celebrated ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, ending racial segregation in America’s public schools, turns 70 this week, and the anniversary is being marked as a major advance for civil rights.
But less well-known is that the landmark case had a crippling impact on Black male teachers.
A direct response to the decision ripped them from the profession, especially the Black men who were educators in the pre-Brown era, according to education experts who spoke with ABC News.
“In [white] massive resistance to the Brown decision, we see the roots of the Black male educator shortage, not just teacher shortage — but educator shortage,” Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, author of “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership” told ABC News. “We see the purge of Black male principals and teachers and we are still living with that purge.”
A southern strategy by white segregationist politicians to define Brown aided the Black male teacher crisis, according to Fenwick. The professor of education policy said white leaders feared the decision to integrate Black educators — superintendents, principals, teachers — coupled with integrating students would loosen their control over education policy and funding. Fenwick told ABC News that today’s education system is still affected by the atomic bomb-like response.
“The radioactive bomb was [white] massive resistance,” she said, adding that “it nearly decimated the Black educator pipeline.”
“History is not dead. We’re living with the aftermath of that atomic bomb. And, we’re trying to come up with a solution to the bomb’s aftermath without acknowledging and talking about the bomb,” Fenwick told ABC News.
For the most part, a solution hasn’t been found. Decades later, Black male educators haven’t been rehired.
Just 1.3% of public school teachers identified as Black men in the National Center for Education Statistics’ National Teacher and Principal Survey in 2020, the last year of available data. They makeup around 3% of the nation’s principals.
The dearth of the Black male experience in education is a topic ABC News has reported on extensively. In interviews with administrators, heads of schools, instructional coaches, principals and teachers, the Black male educator has signaled feeling outstretched, overworked and undervalued, particularly during a shortage exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Education advocate Curtis Valentine of the Progressive Policy Institute is helping recruit Black male teachers through Real Men Teach, established during the pandemic as a national campaign reimagining what it means to be a teacher. It also raises funds to help keep male educators in the classroom.
“The work that [Real Men Teach does] to re-imagine the teaching profession, through our own eyes, through our own voice is one that gives us the power to reclaim what it means to be a Black male teacher, to reclaim our own identity in these spaces,” Valentine said.
Valentine also said organizations like Real Men Teach, the Center for Black Educator Development and Black Male Educators Talk, just to name a few, are doing what they can to redress the shortage. However, the greatest pipeline of Black teachers already exists: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Valentine said.
“Because HBCUs have punched above their weight in so many ways to support Black achievement, you have over 50% of all [Black] teachers in this country that are HBCU graduates,” Valentine said.
“I don’t think we have to really recreate the wheel when it comes to this stuff. It’s really just investing in what’s already working,” he added.
But HBCUs have been underfunded since their inception, according to Howard University’s Dr. Ivory Toldson. And, like after Brown, Toldson said white racism has always disrupted inclusive public education efforts.
“I don’t think there’s any system where there’s been more active resistance from the white community — in general — than education,” Toldson said.
Therefore, Fenwick said she believes, a federal grant should be given to HBCU education departments to help aid the Black male educator crisis. She said it would prepare even more Black men for education positions, asserting that since HBCUs have a strong track record of preparing Black people for all fields — including teaching — the schools are deserving of greater investment. Additional grant funding should target student scholarships and expanding faculties in schools and colleges of education, according to Fenwick.
Recently the White House’s Augustus F. Hawkins Program has been issuing grants for teacher training programs for HBCUs and minority-serving institutions after several years without funding.
Seventy years after the Brown decision, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona touted the Hawkins program and told ABC News that there needs to be continued “intentionality” around increasing teacher diversity.
Americans should be reminded of “the value that Black teachers bring not only to Black students, but to all students,” according to Cardona.
Still, according to experts, there’s no need to alter the desegregation decision in order for Black male educators to return to schools. In fact, Fenwick said there is no “fault of Brown.” The architects of the legal argument included Black men, such as Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston and James Nabrit, Jr.
“[The problem] was not the genius of the Black men who crafted the groundbreaking strategy to move our nation toward being more American — meaning fulfilling the ideals of the Constitution,” Fenwick said.
Massive organized resistance to the new law of the land “crippled” the decision, Fenwick added.
“Everything that failed — in terms of the intention of Brown — was a result of massive resistance, which continued until the late 1970s,” she said.
Even after decades of lost teachers, Black men have risen to prominence in teaching. Many have won or been finalists for the National Teacher of the Year award.
Texas educator Eric Hale was his state’s first Black male teacher of the year, an honor given by the Council of Chief State School Officers, yet Hale told ABC News that it’s still a difficult job. He said it isn’t fair Black students rarely see themselves in schools’ leadership.
“They need to see more people that look like them in leadership positions and there’s no greater leadership position than being an educator,” Hale said.
There should be no “wait time” for a young student to experience Black male teachers, according to Hale.
“Instead of maybe being the first Black man that they’ve had any encounter with, I might be the third or the fourth or the fifth or the 10th that they’ve had a positive relationship with,” he said. “[A Black man] that they know that they can acquire knowledge from that’s going to help them for the future.”
(NEW YORK) — Across two days of testimony in former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen detailed Donald Trump’s extensive involvement in an alleged scheme to hide negative information about himself from voters in the run-up to the 2016 election.
On Tuesday afternoon, defense lawyers launched their effort to convince jurors to not believe a single word Cohen said.
Cohen’s cross-examination quickly became combative, with defense attorney Todd Blanche highlighting Cohen’s animosity for his former boss, who Cohen has called a “boorish cartoon misogynist,” a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain,” and a “dictator douchebag.”
The cross-examination focused on Cohen’s actions and remarks since being released from prison in 2020, leaving the more substantive cross-examination about Cohen’s conduct related to the case for Thursday, when the proceedings resume.
Trump is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records to hide the reimbursement of a hush money payment that Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost Trump’s electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election. The former president has denied all wrongdoing.
Here are four big takeaways from Day 17 of the trial:
Defense questions Cohen’s motivations
Defense attorney Todd Blanche began an aggressive cross-examination to highlight Cohen’s alleged “obsession” with Trump.
Cohen acknowledged that he often references Trump during media appearances and has made at least $3.4 million from his two books about Trump, as Blanche pushed the suggestion that Cohen has made a living since 2018 profiting from Trump.
Blanche homed in on Cohen’s use of TikTok, referring to ABC News’ initial coverage in his questioning.
“You are also hoping to make money on that?” Blanche asked.
“I do make money on that, but it’s not significant,” Cohen said.
Blanche also highlighted Cohen’s past praise and admiration for Trump.
“You’re actually obsessed with President Trump?” Blanche asked, pursuing a line of inquiry that he drew attention to in the defense’s opening statement.
“I don’t know that I would characterize it as obsessed,” Cohen said. “I can’t recall using that word, but I can’t say it would be wrong.”
Blanche asked if Cohen was “knee-deep in the cult of Donald Trump” when he said flattering things about Trump in the past.
“That’s how I felt,” Cohen said.
“Fair to say you admired President Trump when you were working for him?” Blanche asked.
“Yes sir,” Cohen said.
Cohen recounts White House meeting
Cohen recounted a February 2017 meeting with Trump at the White House where prosecutors allege Trump personally discussed the repayment arrangement for the hush money Cohen had paid to Stormy Daniels.
“So I was sitting with President Trump and asked me if I was OK. He asked me if I needed money. And I said no, all good. He said, ‘I can get a check.’ I said, no I’m OK,” Cohen recounted of the conversation.
“He said all right, just make sure you deal with Allen,” Cohen said, referring to then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
“Did he say anything about anything that would be forthcoming to you?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.
“Yes, there would be a check for January and February,” Cohen said, later walking through each of the fraudulent invoices he submitted and checks he received from Trump.
Cohen testified that he last spoke with Trump in April 2018 after the FBI raised Cohen’s office and hotel room.
“I received a phone call from President Trump in response to me leaving a message for him to call,” Cohen said. “I wanted obviously for him to know what was taking place. He said, don’t worry, I am the president of the United States — there is nothing here. Everything is going to be OK. Stay tough. You are going to be OK.”
Cohen said Trump’s statements at the time “reinforced my loyalty and my intention to stay in the fold.”
Cohen describes Trump’s pressure campaign
Cohen told jurors that Donald Trump orchestrated a pressure campaign in 2018 to prevent his cooperation with federal investigators.
“Mr. Trump did not want me to cooperate with the government, certainly not to provide information or flip,” Cohen said.
Jurors saw a series of emails between Cohen and attorney Robert Costello, who told Cohen his representation “would be a great way to have a backchannel of communication to the president in order to ensure you’re still good and still secure,” Cohen testified.
Jurors saw an email where Costello told Cohen, “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”
“The friend in high places was President Trump,” Cohen testified.
Cohen said he ultimately declined Costello’s offer to represent him, though Cohen said Trump’s message was clear.
After spending a decade working for Donald Trump, Cohen testified that in 2018 he decided to begin cooperating with authorities at the urging of his family.
“My family — my wife, my daughter, my son — all said to me, ‘Why are you holding onto this loyalty? What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty,” Cohen testified.
“So what decision did you make?” asked prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.
“That it was about time to listen to them,” Cohen said. “To my wife, my son, my daughter, to the country.”
Cohen testified that he pleaded guilty to federal charges in August 2018.
“I would not lie for President Trump any longer,” Cohen said.
While Cohen said he had some “great times” working for the Trump Organization, he testified that regretted many of the things he did on Trump’s behalf.
“I regret doing things for him that I should not have. Lying. Bullying people in order to effectuate a goal,” Cohen said. “But to keep the loyalty and do things that he had asked me to do — I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family.”
(LOS ANGELES) — Eight teenagers got “acutely ill” and were transported to the hospital after ingesting marijuana edibles during a field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, authorities said.
An on-site security officer found the sickened male and female students and called 911 around 2:30 p.m. PT Tuesday, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
“LAFD Paramedics arrived quickly to determine each had an altered level of consciousness, following their reported ingestion of cannabis edibles,” LAFD said in a statement.
The eight teens were transported by ambulance to area hospitals in fair condition for further assessment, LAFD said.
It is unclear where the students attend school.
The La Brea Tar Pits said in a statement on X that the high school students were on a chaperoned field trip to the famed paleontological research site when they fell ill and that their staff “acted quickly to assess the situation and seek medical aid.”
“According to first responders, their symptoms were caused by something the students ingested on their own, unrelated to their visit to La Brea Tar Pits,” the statement continued. “We extend our care and concern to the students and their families and wish them a healthy recovery.”
(WASHINGTON) — Air Force prosecutors on Tuesday asked a military hearing officer to recommend that Jack Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman, be court-martialed for disobeying orders and obstructing justice after leaking national defense secrets.
Teixeira, 22, who appeared at Hanscom Air Force Base, about 20 miles outside of Boston, for the military court hearing, pleaded guilty to federal charges in March for disseminating confidential defense documents on the social media platform, Discord. Some of those documents included intelligence about the war in Ukraine, including classified information about troop movements.
Teixeira is facing more than a decade behind bars and is expected to be sentenced by a judge in September.
The fate of the junior airman is now in the hands of the hearing officer, who will consider the evidence presented on Tuesday by military prosecutors and will write a recommendation to the convening authority — in this case the commander of the Air Force District of Washington. It will ultimately be up to the commander to decide whether Teixeira’s case will be referred to a military trial, also known as a court martial.
On Tuesday, Teixeira entered the courtroom unrestrained and in his military uniform. As prosecutors presented their evidence, his family members in the audience whispered to one another. His mother, Dawn Dufault, said it appeared as if his Air Force blues no longer fit.
“It’s all the junk they’re feeding him in there,” she said.
Prosecutors did not call any witnesses to prove that there is probable cause behind the “specifications” or counts, instead opting to enter a series of exhibits to support their accusations.
To show that Teixeira failed to obey orders, prosecutors submitted memos spanning from September 2022 to April 2023 from his superiors urging him to stop accessing information unrelated to his duties.
They then entered photographs of Teixeira’s electronics, including an iPad and a hard-drive, which they said had been recovered from a nearby dumpster following his arrest.
Capt. Stephanie Adams argued Teixeira acted with “malicious intent to cover his tracks,” and that he thereby obstructed justice.
Prosecutors also submitted Discord messages from an account which prosecutors say belonged to Teixeira, in which he asked another user to delete messages.
Teixeira’s defense attorneys, including Lt. Col. Bradley Poronsky, a former offensive lineman for the Texas Longhorns, declined to call any witnesses or enter any evidence.
However, his team argued that the latest charges should be thrown out because of the concept of double jeopardy — or the concept of not being prosecuted twice for the same crime.
Maj. Luke Gilhooly, an attorney for Teixeira argued that the charges facing the disgraced airman had already been adjudicated in federal court — and that the latest prosecution amounts to the Air Force wanting “to get its own pound of flesh.”
The defense argued that even despite “double jeopardy” the government failed to show that Teixeira intended to evade orders or obstruct justice.
There is no timeline for when the hearing officer must file his recommendation or for when the convening authority must make a decision.
The exterior of the Boeing Company headquarters is seen on March 25, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice has notified a federal court in Texas that it has determined Boeing breached a non-prosecution agreement that allowed the company to escape criminal prosecution over two fatal crashes of 737 Max airplanes in 2018 and 2019, according to a newly filed letter.
Federal prosecutors entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with Boeing in January 2021, allowing the aircraft manufacturer to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for following new safety obligations.
The DOJ stated in the letter that based on the breaches of the agreement, identified by the government, that Boeing is now subject to prosecution, though the department is “still determining how it will proceed in this matter.”
In the letter, federal prosecutors said the aerospace giant failed “to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”
The DOJ has given Boeing until June 13 to respond to their determination.
The fatal Boeing crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 killed 346 people in total.
The first crash on Oct. 29, 2018, in Jakarta, Indonesia, killed all 189 passengers and crew. The second crash, on March 10, 2019, happened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when a Boeing aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff and killed 157 people onboard.
Both crashes preceded the Alaska Airlines incident earlier this year, when a door plug fell out of the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max 9, a newer model, after departure.
Responding to the letter, Boeing released a statement to ABC News, saying, “We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue.”
Boeing continued, stating, “We will engage with the Department with the utmost transparency, as we have throughout the entire term of the agreement, including in response to their questions following the Alaska Airlines 1282 accident.”
In April, family members of victims of the 2019 crash in Ethiopia met with prosecutors in Washington D.C. to urge the DOJ to prosecute Boeing.
Paul G. Cassell, the lawyer representing families of the Boeing crash victims, called the DOJ’s announcement a “promising first step,” in a statement to ABC News.
“This is a positive first step, and for the families, a long time coming,” Cassell said. “But we need to see further action from DOJ to hold Boeing accountable, and plan to use our meeting on May 31 to explain in more detail what we believe would be a satisfactory remedy to Boeing’s ongoing criminal conduct.”
In the letter, the DOJ said it will be meeting with the Boeing crash victim families on May 31.
The victims’ families allegedly had no advance notice federal prosecutors were going to file the letter Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the situation.
In this aerial view, a steel truss from the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge that was pinning the container ship Dali in place was detached from the ship using a controlled detonation of explosives in Baltimore, MD, May 13, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(BALTIMORE) — The shipping vessel that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March experienced two power blackouts while docked, 10 hours before the collision that toppled part of a bridge span, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
In addition to two power losses while the ship was in port, there were two power failures in the moments leading up to the crash, causing the ship’s main to shut down, according to the NTSB. The crew was unable to regain propulsion before it slammed into the bridge, the report said.
Federal investigators say fuel tests did not show irregularities and they are now focusing the probe on the ship’s electrical system.
Blackouts before departure
The M/V Dali experienced two blackouts on March 25 while the Sri Lankan-based ship was undergoing maintenance at the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore Harbor, the report said.
A crew member mistakenly closed an inline engine exhaust damper for one of the vessel’s four diesel generators, which blocked the engine’s exhaust gases from exiting the vessel, according to the NTSB. That, in turn, caused the engine to stall and diesel generators to stop working, the report said.
When the Dali’s systems detected the power loss, another generator started, according to the NTSB report.
Crews were able to get the first generator back online. However, a second blackout occurred when “insufficient fuel pressure caused [the second generator’s] speed to decrease, and its breaker … opened,” causing another blackout, according to the NTSB.
After crews were able to re-open the exhaust damper for the first malfunctioning generator, it automatically restarted and power was restored, the report said.
Blackouts hit moments before the crash
The Dali slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge over Baltimore Harbor at 1:28 a.m. ET on March 26, causing part of a bridge span to collapse during the early morning hours of March 26 after it experienced two blackouts. The first blackout caused the Dali’s engine to shut down and its propeller stopped, according to the report.
The report found that the Dali lost power twice the night of the incident as it made its way out of port.
The first power loss shut down the main engine, according to the NTSB. The crew was able to restore power, but then the ship lost power again moments later when it was approaching the bridge, according to the NTSB.
The crew was able to regain power again but unable to regain propulsion, the report said.
“The NTSB is still investigating the electrical configuration following the first in-port blackout and potential impacts on the events during the accident voyage,” the report said.
There were no reported blackout incidents recorded when the Dali was docked at ports in Newark and Norfolk during its recent U.S. voyage, according to the NTSB.
Video of the incident showed the lights on the Dali going off and smoking coming from the ship before it crashed.
Recovery, investigation continue
Crews onboard were able to warn officials about the malfunction, giving them time to close off the bridge to oncoming traffic before the crash. However, six men, who were working on the bridge, were not able to get off and were killed.
The crash affected entry into the Port of Baltimore for weeks as the debris blocked entry for other ships.
The investigation and recovery efforts are ongoing. The final NTSB report with the cause of the incident could take up to two years to complete.
The Dali has remained stuck at the crash site but recovery teams made progress this week after they set off controlled explosions Monday to remove the section of the bridge that was attached to the boat.
