(MOSCOW, Idaho.) — A trial date of June 2, 2025, has been set for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in an off-campus house.
The trial is expected to run until Aug. 29, 2025, precluding Juneteenth and the Fourth of July.
The defense still wants a change of venue, which has not yet been determined. If the venue changes, the trial date should still hold, Judge John Judge said.
The parents of 21-year-old victim Kaylee Goncalves had been desperate for a date to be set, telling ABC News in January their family is “in limbo” until trial begins.
“We got to get this case over,” Steve Goncalves said. “Let’s do it. Let’s stop playing these delay tactics, let’s just get it done.”
The Goncalves family said in a statement Thursday, “We are hopeful the trial stays in Latah County so as not to disrupt the scheduling order and we are praying for no more delays. We moved a little closer to justice today for Kaylee, Maddie, Xana and Ethan.”
Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus home in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022. Two other roommates survived.
Kohberger, who was a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University at the time of the gruesome crime, was arrested weeks later.
A not guilty plea was entered on Kohberger’s behalf for four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
The prosecution and defense have gone back-and-forth proposing potential trial dates at hearings this year.
On Jan. 26, the prosecution told the judge it was ready to go to trial in summer 2024. Prosecutors said summer is best because there will be out-of-state witnesses who need accommodations in Moscow, which they said is difficult while local schools are in session.
The defense argued a summer 2024 trial is not realistic for this complex case. The defense said it still had a lot of digital evidence to go through, more potential witnesses to speak with and more documents to collect from Kohberger’s past and his family.
The prosecution agreed that there was a large amount of information to sift through.
The defense recommended a summer 2025 trial if the case moved forward in Latah County, but days after the Jan. 26 hearing, Kohberger’s defense filed a motion for a change of venue.
The prosecution said the case has national and international interest, so a change of venue would not solve any problem.
At a Feb. 28 hearing, the judge and prosecution proposed a trial date of March 3, 2025, while the defense asked for a June 2025 trial.
The next hearing to discuss a change of venue will be on Aug. 29.
ABC News’ Julie Scott and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(BEND, Ore.) — A wind-driven wildfire threatening homes and causing evacuations in Central Oregon has grown to 3,889 acres, officials said Thursday.
The Darlene 3 Fire, which started around 2 p.m. Tuesday in Deschutes County, remained 30% contained Thursday for the second consecutive day. Between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, an additional 1,474 acres had burned, according to the Central Oregon Fire Management Service.
Fanned by gusty winds, the blaze quickly spread through a pine forest near homes on the south side of La Pine, a small town of about 2,500 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, officials said. On Wednesday, fire officials said a new blaze broke out on the east side of La Pine, threatening homes in several neighborhoods and triggering more evacuation ordered from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
Officials said shelters were opened at a local high school and the La Pine Rodeo Grounds.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses.
It was not immediately clear if any structures had been damaged or destroyed.
Several campgrounds and hiking trails in the area were also closed, officials said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The sheriff’s office posted photos and video on its Facebook page showing a large plume of smoke emerging from a forest behind a group of homes and a firefighting air tanker dropping fire-suppression retardant on the flames.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act after determining the fire posed a threat to life and property and exceeded the resources of the local fire agencies. The act allows the state fire marshal to mobilize firefighters and equipment throughout the state to assist local fire crews in battling the fire.
Oregon State Fire Marshall Mariana Ruiz-Temple said gusty winds and hot weather caused the fire to quickly spread.
“The Emergency Conflagration Act allows us to send the full power of the Oregon fire service to protect life and property,” Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. “As we enter the hot and dry summer months, I am asking Oregonians to do everything they can to prevent wildfires.”
(BEND, Ore.) — A wind-driven wildfire threatening homes and causing evacuations in Central Oregon has grown to more than 3,614 acres, officials said Thursday.
The Darlene 3 Fire, which started around 2 p.m. Tuesday in Deschutes County, remained 30% contained Thursday for the second consecutive day. Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, an additional 1,200 acres had burned, according to the Central Oregon Fire Management Service.
Fanned by gusty winds, the blaze quickly spread through a pine forest near homes on the south side of La Pine, a small town of about 2,500 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, officials said. On Wednesday, fire officials said a new blaze broke out on the east side of La Pine, threatening homes in several neighborhoods and triggering more evacuation ordered from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
Officials said shelters were opened at a local high school and the La Pine Rodeo Grounds.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses.
It was not immediately clear if any structures had been damaged or destroyed.
Several campgrounds and hiking trails in the area were also closed, officials said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The sheriff’s office posted photos and video on its Facebook page showing a large plume of smoke emerging from a forest behind a group of homes and a firefighting air tanker dropping fire-suppression retardant on the flames.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act after determining the fire posed a threat to life and property and exceeded the resources of the local fire agencies. The act allows the state fire marshal to mobilize firefighters and equipment throughout the state to assist local fire crews in battling the fire.
Oregon State Fire Marshall Mariana Ruiz-Temple said gusty winds and hot weather caused the fire to quickly spread.
“The Emergency Conflagration Act allows us to send the full power of the Oregon fire service to protect life and property,” Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. “As we enter the hot and dry summer months, I am asking Oregonians to do everything they can to prevent wildfires.”
(ALTON PARK, Ill.) — A massive, 100-foot-wide sinkhole left a soccer field in southern Illinois partially collapsed, according to officials.
The sinkhole formed at approximately 9:15 a.m. Wednesday at Gordon Moore Park in Alton, Illinois, which lies over a limestone mine operated by New Frontier Materials, the company said in a statement to the Alton Telegraph.
There were no injuries as a result of the incident, officials said.
“No one was on the field at the time and no one was hurt, and that’s the most important thing,” Alton Mayor David Goins told the outlet.
Footage of the sinkhole forming shows a light pole, benches and the soccer field’s artificial turf being swallowed into the mine below.
The mine, which has a reported 40 to 50-foot thick ceiling, collapsed and resulted in the 100-foot-wide hole, officials told the outlet.
“The impacted area has been secured and will remain off limits for the foreseeable future while inspectors and experts examine the mine and conduct repairs,” New Frontier Materials’ spokesman Matt Barkett said in the statement.
“Safety is our top priority. We will work with the city to remediate this issue as quickly and safely as possible to ensure minimal impact on the community,” Barkett said.
Barkett said the mine collapse was reported, as required, to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
ABC News reached out to New Frontier Materials for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Michael Haynes, Recreation Department director for Alton Parks, told First Alert 4 the mines, which have been active in the area for decades, have never been an issue for the park above.
“The mines have been here and in this area for decades and decades,” Haynes told the outlet. “It’s never been brought up before so I’m told it’s an anomaly. We’ll wait until the investigation is complete,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case on Thursday ordered an additional hearing to determine whether prosecutors improperly used evidence protected by attorney-client privilege to secure their indictment against the former president.
In an 11-page ruling issued Thursday, Judge Aileen Cannon wrote that an additional hearing was necessary to resolve “pertinent factual disputes” related to key evidence in the case.
As previously reported by ABC News, prosecutors have relied on the notes of Trump’s former lead attorney Evan Corcoran to support their allegations that the former president obstructed justice by hiding classified documents from investigators.
After a federal judge in Washington D.C. determined last year that the notes were not protected by attorney-client privilege because Trump used his attorney in furtherance of a crime, defense attorneys asked Cannon to reconsider whether the evidence should be tossed out.
Judge Cannon wrote in Thursday’s order that she would set a date for the hearing in a separate order.
The judge heard arguments on the defense motion to suppress the evidence during a sealed hearing on Tuesday morning. In Thursday’s order she wrote that she considered prosecutors’ concerns that the hearing could “devolve into a ‘mini trial'” — but she said she would impose “reasonable limitations” on the hearing, which could include witness testimony.
“[T]here is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress,” Cannon wrote.
Cannon said she also plans to consider whether an attachment of the search warrant for the FBI’s August 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate contained “ambiguities” about the evidence authorized to be seized. Defense attorneys argued that terms such as “presidential records” and “national defense information” were too vague for the FBI agents who executed the warrant.
Handing a small win to prosecutors, Cannon separately denied a request to hold a hearing about whether the application for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant contained “material false statements or omissions.”
Defense attorneys argued on Tuesday that the warrant application omitted key details, including that Trump did not have to have a security clearance to view classified documents, that an FBI supervisor disagreed about a search warrant being necessary, and the lack of a definition of the word “personal records.”
“[The defense] identifies four omissions in the warrant, but none of the omitted information — even if added to the affidavit in support of the warrant — would have defeated a finding of probable cause,” Cannon wrote.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
(CHICAGO) — One 17-year-old was found dead and two others were rescued in Lake Michigan after they became distressed in the water while swimming.
A possible drowning incident in Lake Michigan was reported to the Milwaukee County 911 Dispatch Center at around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department responded and found three individuals, believed to be 17 years old, in distress in the water.
Two were pulled from the water, one of whom had severe breathing difficulties and was hospitalized in critical condition. The second was uninjured and was medically cleared at the scene.
The third swimmer was later found dead in the water.
All three teens are believed to be related.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident.
(WASHINGTON) — A coalition of racial justice and civil rights nonprofit advocacy organizations are formally joining the fight to prevent a ban on TikTok.
The Asian American Federation, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, Calos Coalition and Hispanic Heritage Foundation are among the 13 groups arguing that TikTok serves as an essential platform for communities of color and other marginalized groups.
“TikTok is a modern-day digital town square that empowers diverse communities, often neglected by traditional media outlets, to share their underrepresented voices with people across America and the world,” lawyers from the firm Cooley LLP wrote in a court filing expected to be filed Thursday on behalf of the coalition.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law as part of a larger spending package, could potentially make the app unavailable in the U.S. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the law, which is now formally supported by the civil rights nonprofits.
Supporters of company’s lawsuit argue the legislation threatens the First Amendment rights of 170 million U.S. users and would effectively ban the app. The groups argue the legislation is unconstitutional and they also expressed “grave concerns about anti-Asian animus undergirding the TikTok Ban.”
“The TikTok Ban imposes an unprecedented prior restraint on free speech, silencing countless voices, while also discriminating on content and viewpoint,” the Cooley lawyers wrote.
Congressional leaders and President Biden have argued that restricting the app is necessary due to security concerns with the Chinese government.
ByteDance refuted those allegations in its lawsuit, arguing there has been no tangible evidence that the app poses any security risk.
(MOSCOW, Idaho.) — The prosecution and defense are working toward a June 2025 trial date for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in an off-campus house.
Judge John Judge said he anticipates the trial to take three months.
The defense still wants a change of venue, which has not yet been determined.
The parents of 21-year-old victim Kaylee Goncalves attended Thursday’s court hearing. The Goncalves had been desperate for a date to be set, telling ABC News in January their family is “in limbo” until trial begins.
“We got to get this case over,” Steve Goncalves said. “Let’s do it. Let’s stop playing these delay tactics, let’s just get it done.”
Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus home in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022. Two other roommates survived.
Kohberger, who was a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University at the time of the gruesome crime, was arrested weeks later.
A not guilty plea was entered on Kohberger’s behalf for four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
The prosecution and defense have gone back-and-forth proposing potential trial dates at hearings this year.
On Jan. 26, the prosecution told the judge it was ready to go to trial in summer 2024. Prosecutors said summer is best because there will be out-of-state witnesses who need accommodations in Moscow, which they said is difficult while local schools are in session.
The defense argued a summer 2024 trial is not realistic for this complex case. The defense said it still had a lot of digital evidence to go through, more potential witnesses to speak with and more documents to collect from Kohberger’s past and his family.
The prosecution agreed that there was a large amount of information to sift through.
The defense recommended a summer 2025 trial if the case moved forward in Latah County, but days after the Jan. 26 hearing, Kohberger’s defense filed a motion for a change of venue.
The prosecution said the case has national and international interest, so a change of venue would not solve any problem.
At a Feb. 28 hearing, the judge and prosecution proposed a trial date of March 3, 2025, while the defense asked for a June 2025 trial.
The next hearing to discuss a change of venue will be Aug. 29.
ABC News’ Julie Scott and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(BEND, Ore.) — A wind-driven wildfire threatening homes and causing evacuations in Central Oregon has grown to more than 3,614 acres, officials said Thursday.
The Darlene 3 Fire, which started around 2 p.m. Tuesday in Deschutes County, remained 30% contained Thursday for the second consecutive day. Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, an additional 1,200 acres had burned, according to the Central Oregon Fire Management Service.
Fanned by gusty winds, the blaze quickly spread through a pine forest near homes on the south side of La Pine, a small town of about 2,500 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, officials said. On Wednesday, fire officials said a new blaze broke out on the east side of La Pine, threatening homes in several neighborhoods and triggering more evacuation ordered from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
Officials said shelters were opened at a local high school and the La Pine Rodeo Grounds.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses.
— Central OR Fire Info (@CentralORFire) June 27, 2024
It was not immediately clear if any structures had been damaged or destroyed.
Several campgrounds and hiking trails in the area were also closed, officials said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The sheriff’s office posted photos and video on its Facebook page showing a large plume of smoke emerging from a forest behind a group of homes and a firefighting air tanker dropping fire-suppression retardant on the flames.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act after determining the fire posed a threat to life and property and exceeded the resources of the local fire agencies. The act allows the state fire marshal to mobilize firefighters and equipment throughout the state to assist local fire crews in battling the fire.
Oregon State Fire Marshall Mariana Ruiz-Temple said gusty winds and hot weather caused the fire to quickly spread.
“The Emergency Conflagration Act allows us to send the full power of the Oregon fire service to protect life and property,” Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. “As we enter the hot and dry summer months, I am asking Oregonians to do everything they can to prevent wildfires.”
(NEW YORK) — Author Sadie Dingfelder discusses her experiences with face blindness in her new book, “Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination.”
From a young age, Dingfelder has been aware of her struggle with remembering people and faces. However, it took her decades to realize that her experience was not the norm.
She didn’t realize this until one day when she mistook her husband for a random man in the grocery store who had a similar build as her spouse.
A recent study found that only 3.08% of Americans meet the criteria for face blindness, or prosopagnosia. This condition affects close to 10 million Americans.
In her latest book, Dingfelder delves into her condition and unveils the incredible neural diversity of humans. ABC News sat down with Dingfelder to discuss her book in more detail.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Since childhood, science journalist Sadie Dingfelder has known that she isn’t good at remembering people or faces, but for decades she failed to notice that most people function otherwise. In fact, a recent study found that only 3.08% of Americans meet the criteria for face blindness. That number is close to 10 million Americans.
In her newest book, “Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination”, Sadie Dingfelder explores her condition and reveals the remarkable neural diversity of humans. Sadie, thank you so much for joining us.
DINGFELDER: Thank you for having me.
ABC NEWS LIVE: All right. So how did you realize that you have face blindness?
DINGFELDER: Well, let me tell you. I was in a grocery store and I was following my husband around. He was. And all of a sudden, he went rogue. And he started filling up our grocery cart with all this junk food. And I, I, you know, had to stop him, obviously. So I plucked a jar of generic peanut butter out of the cart, and I said, ‘since when do you buy generic?’
And Steve looked completely horrified, and it took me a second, but he looked horrified because he was not Steve. He was not my husband. He was a random Steve-shaped stranger. And, you know, and on the way home, I just was thinking, ‘this is not the kind of mistake that neurotypical people make.’
ABC NEWS LIVE: You said that he looked horrified. So you were able to see certain emotions in the face? But not, just give us a sense if you can kind of describe what kind of images you might see.
DINGFELDER: Well, it’s really interesting because face recognition is controlled by a totally different part of your brain than emotion, recognizing emotion or gaze direction or even telling genders. So, I’m normal at all those things. My problem is I just can’t remember faces.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And so when did you connect the dots that this was somehow related to the brain function?
DINGFELDER: Well, so ironically, I am a science writer, and I specialize in neuroscience and psychology.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Convenient.
DINGFELDER: Right! So I knew, like, how to do the research, and I got myself into a study. So I pitched it as a story and I thought, oh, this is a fascinating disorder that I probably don’t have. But I had it, turns out.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And so not only do you have face blindness, but you also have something called stereo blindness. Explain what that is.
DINGFELDER: Yeah. This is. My world is very flat. I can’t catch a ball or a frisbee, and I stumble a lot. It’s because my brain — I only look out of one eye at a time. And in most people’s brains, combine the images from their two eyes into a single, you know, three-dimensional image. And my brain doesn’t doesn’t do it.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So you’ve really kind of taken this deep dive into your own brain. But in the same time, what have you learned just about neuroscience and how other people’s brains work?
DINGFELDER: Yeah, that’s been the huge revelation for me, is that, you know, your father, your best friend, your spouse. They could all be living in a world that like, if you could beam into their minds, you you would find the world to be completely unrecognizable. I had no idea that other people could visualize. I thought that people were speaking in metaphors.
You know, when you’re in yoga class and they’re like, shine your sternum forward, like, I didn’t realize people could actually visualize like, rays of light coming out of their sternum.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So if I were to say, visualize a meadow, a very calm scene, you’re not able to do that?
DINGFELDER: That. No, I can just think I can think about a calm scene.
ABC NEWS LIVE: But you wouldn’t be able to picture it?
DINGFELDER: Right.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Your story is really vulnerable. You really allow your inner thoughts, emotions, experiences. You kind of put it all out there for everyone else. What have you learned along this whole journey?
DINGFELDER: Oh, gosh. I have learned that there is just a wild amount of sort of hidden neurodiversity in the world. And so even people who seem completely, you know, like normal and like they’re fitting in, they might have, you know, they might have ADHD or autism or some of the rare things that I seem to have, and you wouldn’t have any idea.
And they often don’t have any idea either, because they have nothing to compare their experience to. And even cooler is how science, scientists are beginning to study this. You know, they they are peeking into our brains in lots of clever ways and discovering that this is not just a problem with describing things. We really do have very different inner lives from one another.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So fascinating. I think a lot of people are going to be really intrigued by this, Sadie. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You can now purchase “Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination,” wherever books are sold.
