(GRAND LAKE, Colo.) — The body of 23-year-old Lucas Macaj was recovered in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park on Thursday after he took a “significant fall,” according to an initial investigation, the park said.
Search and rescue teams had been looking for Macaj on Mills Glacier since Monday.
His body was flown by helicopter to a landing zone in Rocky Mountain National Park before being transferred to the Boulder County Coroner’s Office. Park rangers completed an on-scene investigation.
The search for Macaj began when he was reported overdue following an attempt to summit Longs Peak on Sunday. He was last heard from at about 1 p.m. on Sunday when he texted a friend indicating that he was on the summit of Longs Peak.
Macaj’s vehicle was found parked at the Longs Peak Trailhead on Monday. The search for Macaj included several agencies as well as air, ground and dog teams.
There were significant storms moving through the high elevations of the park on Sunday afternoon, according to the National Park Service.
The Boulder County Coroner’s office will release the official cause of death.
(NEW YORK) — Krystal Kauffman, a gig worker, spent one workday watching footage captured by a camera that had been placed on a baby’s head, labeling objects as they came into view, she said. For another job, she said she looked at images of feet, while on another, she marked aerial photographs of animals.
Over nearly a decade, Kauffman has performed thousands of tiny tasks that have helped companies assemble the immense data sets used to train artificial intelligence (AI), she said.
“It’s supposed to look like these products are magic,” Kauffman, who performs tasks on the platform Amazon Mechanical Turk and advocates for workers as a lead organizer for the group Turkopticon, told ABC News. “People don’t know that behind all of this is a workforce – a human workforce.”
AI has reshaped everything from medical diagnoses, to wedding vows, to stock market gains, but the technology wouldn’t be possible without gig workers across the globe, like Kauffman.
However, analysts and advocates said the workers whose efforts help train AI are often denied knowledge of the end product they help create, or the company behind it. They also risk rejection of their work after it has been completed, which can leave them without pay or recourse to collect it.
Philadelphia still the 6th-biggest U.S. city, but San Antonio catching up, census data shows “If we want to build a better society, we can’t ignore the tens of millions of people who are doing this work,” Sonam Jindal told ABC News. Jindal is the lead of AI, labor and the economy at the Partnership on AI, a coalition of AI organizations. “If they’re overlooked and facing precarious conditions, that’s a problem,” she said.
To mimic human discernment, AI products typically use an algorithm that responds to queries based on lessons learned from scanning a large quantity of text, images or video. An AI tool that helps doctors diagnose cancer, for instance, may train on digital copies of CT scans.
The training material, however, oftentimes must first be curated by human workers, who make the content legible for an AI model, Jindal said.
“AI models don’t know on their own how to distinguish between cats and dogs, whether or not someone has cancer or not, whether something is a stop sign or not,” Jindal explained. “People are very heavily involved in building these datasets.”
A worldwide gig workforce began to swell a decade ago, in part to complete such AI-related tasks, according to a report published in 2021 by Open Research Europe. Roughly 14 million workers have obtained work through online platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Upwork, the study found, which operate as go-betweens for freelance workers and tech firms.
Many of those global workers live in the U.S. Roughly 96% of workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, for example, log in from the U.S., according to data site MTurk Tracker.
Online gig workers in the U.S. retain flexible schedules, but their tasks carry many of the key characteristics of a “bad job,” Matt Beane, an assistant professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told ABC News.
“A bad job basically is one that doesn’t give you a lot of autonomy around what you get to do,” Beane said. “In other words, you don’t feel like there’s a meaningful connection between what you’re doing and some valuable output in the world.”
The lack of meaning stems in part from the mundane nature of the tasks, and the dearth of information provided to freelance workers about the product being developed or the company making it, Jindal said.
“Transparency is a huge problem,” Jindal said. “This partially has to do with a very utilitarian approach to building AI models. People will say, ‘I just need the data.'”
“It gets passed on to someone else who may not have the full context,” Jindal added.
In addition to a lack of clarity about the final product, the AI gig workers run the risk of what they refer to as “mass rejection,” which is when a company declines a batch of work after it has been completed.
In such cases, a worker both loses out on pay and lacks a means for appealing the judgment, Kauffman said, while the company keeps the data the worker produced. Sometimes, she added, companies offering work on Amazon Mechanical Turk reject the data without cause, and change their username as a means of avoiding accountability.
Workers consequently not only lose out on the immediate income, but they also suffer a blow to their approval rating on the platform, which determines the quality of work made available to them, Kauffman said.
“So the more rejections you have, the worse your approval rating gets,” Kauffman explained. “Something like that can take away a person’s entire livelihood.”
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Amazon said Mechanical Turk monitors for mass rejections and takes appropriate action if they encounter them, up to and including suspension.
The average rejection rate on the platform is less than 1%, Amazon added. Further, the company said it has a Participation Agreement and an Acceptable Use Policy to ensure there is no abuse in the marketplace by either those requesting work, or those agreeing to do tasks.
In her work for Turkopticon, Kauffman and other workers put pressure on Amazon to improve the conditions for the AI gig workforce, she said. The explosion in the popularity of AI products, she added, has generated a surge in public attention around the challenges such workers face.
“It just feels like the power is building and the awareness is building,” Kauffman said. “It’s this incredible feeling.”
(WOODLAND HILLS, Ca.) — When famed stylist and hair care executive Fabio Sementilli’ was found him stabbed to death on the patio of his home in Woodland Hills, California, on January 23, 2017, the crime was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong. Since 2012, police were noticing a rising trend of burglaries in upscale neighborhoods in Los Angeles that were causing alarm among residents.
As detectives got to work and looked deeper, they began to realize something more sinister than a burglary gone wrong happened at the home, something that would lead them on what they described as a trail of love and murder.
“However this went down,” Fabio Sementilli’s sister Mirella Sementilli told ABC News, “it was executed brilliantly because we were deceived.”
A monthslong investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department would result in Sementilli’s wife Monica and her lover Robert Baker arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Documents obtained by “20/20” provide a chilling firsthand account of how Baker said he plotted and carried out Sementilli’s murder.
“The ultimate goal of the killing was so that he and Monica could be together,” according to Baker’s account.
A new “20/20” airing Friday, May 17, at 9 p.m. ET and streaming the next day on Hulu, examines the investigation that revealed what authorities said was a deeply plotted murder coverup, the surprising discovery about who investigators allege would want Fabio Sementilli dead and details recently uncovered in new court documents obtained by ABC News.
Fabio Sementilli was a larger-than-life father of three who had made a major name for himself in the hair industry. Family and friends said the 49-year-old was beloved by all.
“He used to tell stories and he would engage people for hours,” Mirella Sementilli said in a new “20/20” interview. “He’d always make everything really funny.”
A buoyant hair stylist in Canada, Fabio Sementilli worked his way to the top of high-stakes hair competitions across the globe, the pride of his Italian immigrant family. He moved to Southern California in 2007, living with his second wife Monica Sementilli and their two teen daughters.
Friends who visited Fabio and Monica Sementilli’s home described the welcoming atmosphere, full of friends and family gathering for food and drinks.
Elyse Bleuel, a friend of Monica’s who often visited the Sementilli home, recalled how Monica Sementilli relayed that “everything’s really great” in her almost 20-year marriage to Fabio Sementilli.
“Monica was my fancy friend,” Bleuel said. “Everything she touched was elegant. Her home was elegant.”
When Monica Sementilli urgently texted Elyse in January 2017, asking her to come over, she rushed to the house. Bleuel recalled the unusual way she was a greeted when she got to the house: A stranger escorted her inside with a warning: “Don’t step in the blood.”
Inside, police discovered what they described as an extremely gruesome and bloody scene. Fabio Sementilli was stabbed multiple times in his neck, face and chest. His prized red Porsche, which was later found 5 miles away with droplets of blood on the inside, was missing.
“I’m sitting with Monica,” Bleuel remembered about that visit. “She could not put words together. She was like, ‘I’m not a wife anymore,’ over and over. That was her mantra, like she was processing this.”
Family described the disbelief they felt after learning about the hair industry executive’s murder.
“It felt like a nightmare,” Fabio Sementilli’s son from his first marriage, Luigi Sementilli, said in an interview with “20/20.” “After a while, it just feels surreal…When you go through this kind of tragedy, it just doesn’t feel real.”
As family and friends mourned Fabio Sementilli’s passing, police were on the lookout for possible suspects. They were tipped off about a mystery man who showed up unexpectedly at a memorial gathering at the family home. “It seemed out of place because this was more of a memorial for Fabio. This was more of Fabio’s people,” Bleuel recalled.
One friend at the memorial found the man’s presence so unnerving that they took a photo of him and turned it over to police. Detectives learned that this mystery man was Robert Baker – a popular racquetball coach in the Los Angeles area.
“Rob always had a smile. And he’s a good-looking man…He presents this super charismatic personality and he always seems happy,” says Alana Evans, who knew Baker from his previous career in the adult film industry.
However, Evans discovered a darker side of Baker years later. He was a registered sex offender after a conviction for lewd and lascivious acts with a minor in the early 1990s.
Baker also shared a surprising connection with Fabio Sementilli’s inner circle: he was Monica’s racquetball coach. Investigators studied that photo from the memorial more closely and saw what appeared to be an adhesive bandage on Baker’s finger. Baker’s DNA was already in the law enforcement database from his prior conviction. Detectives compared it to blood droplets found in Fabio Sementilli’s Porsche which they had recovered early in the investigation — and it was a match.
With investigators now believing they had enough evidence to put Baker at the scene of Fabio Sementilli’s murder, they set up surveillance and obtained search warrants for his communications. As the Sementilli family continued to mourn for days, weeks and months – investigators finally moved in on a car Baker was driving on June 14, 2017. They put Baker under arrest for the murder of Fabio Sementilli – but he was not the only one in handcuffs.
“Detective Parshal called us… and he said, ‘OK — we’ve made an arrest for your brother’s murder. We arrested Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker,’” Mirella Sementilli recalled. “I blacked out.”
Investigators claimed Fabio’s wife Monica didn’t actually commit Fabio’s murder – but they allege that she did have a role in planning it. According to the indictment, Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker had been having an ongoing affair and conspired to kill Fabio so the couple could be together and collect life insurance money. This was unfathomable news to the tight-knit Sementilli family.
“I don’t know what to think in that moment. I’m, like—‘Are you sure this is right?’…This all seems so, so far-fetched,” Luigi Sementilli told ABC News. “And then, of course, I learn about the quote/unquote “real investigation” and everything else that was going on that was held private from everyone – up until that point.”
The felony complaint against Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker details what investigators depict as an elaborate scheme for the two lovers to get away with murder. Prosecutors say with Monica at the helm, she and Robert Baker orchestrated a plan to murder her husband Fabio. They allege critical to the plot was Monica ensuring Fabio would be home alone the day of the murder.
Court documents state Monica drove to a nearby Target to establish her alibi, aware that her daughters would be out of the house at the time of the murder. While at the Target, court documents state that Baker and another unknown assailant entered the Sementilli home, stabbed Fabio multiple times, and staged a burglary – fleeing the scene in the victim’s Porche and leaving behind blood evidence from Baker’s cut finger.
Investigators discovered Monica had given Robert access to the Sementilli family’s home security system and prosecutors allege she had been monitoring the security camera feed on her phone while Baker entered the Sementilli house, to let Baker know when the victim would be home alone. Prosecutors also allege Monica intentionally planned for her youngest daughter, Isabella, to arrive home first and find her father’s body.
“When all of it came out…my brain just shattered with the dichotomy of the mother and the wife and the home and the life that they created,” Bleuel said.
Robert Baker and Monica Sementilli were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The two pleaded not guilty to all charges.
“The affair has been known, that’s a given,” Monica’s defense lawyer Leonard Levine told “20/20.”
“But it doesn’t mean she had anything to do with the murder of her husband, and she denies it totally and has since the very beginning.”
As the pair awaited trial, Robert Baker decided last July to plead “no contest” to all charges relating to the murder of Fabio Sementilli, including admitting to the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait. Pleading no contest means Baker did not contest the charges and accepts the facts alleged by prosecutors without admitting to being guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“It sounded like I was listening to the Devil speak,” said Mirella Sementilli when asked what it was like to hear Baker’s voice in the courtroom. She and other family members gave victim’s rights statements at the hearing.
After his sentencing, Baker said he planned to testify at Monica Sementilli’s upcoming trial. Court documents obtained by “20/20” revealed that in February 2024 Baker gave a detailed account of what he claimed was his role in the murder to Monica Sementilli’s defense team.
In the documents, Baker alleged “Monica had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the murder.” He said he acted alone after she told him, “divorce was not an option, her family does not do divorces.” Baker described the murder in chilling detail, saying he “slipped into the house with a hunting knife…looking to kill Fabio so he and Monica could be together.” He said he rushed Fabio, stabbing him “anywhere there was open skin.”
“He says he’s going to get up in front of the jury and tell the truth,” Monica Sementilli’s defense attorney Leonard Levine told “20/20.” “If he testifies and testifies truthfully, then we’re hopeful his testimony will be believed by the jury.”
As of May 2024, 10 months after Baker’s sentencing – Monica Sementilli remains in jail, denied bail. Her trial has been delayed by one legal proceeding after another but is currently scheduled to begin December 2024.
As Monica Sementilli’s fate hangs in the balance, those close with Fabio tell ABC News they feel they are moving toward some semblance of closure. Monica’s daughters, however, are continuing to support their mother leading up to her trial.
At Robert Baker’s sentencing, Monica’s daughter Gessica proclaimed that she and her sister “want to clearly state that we’ll continue to stand by our mother as we have done for the last six years and we’ll fight for her innocence.”
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — The fate of the endangered Florida panther, also known as the North American cougar, could depend on a network of wildlife corridors and panther crossings currently being established by conservation groups and state officials.
The North American cougar once roamed throughout the southern U.S., Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told ABC News. The species has even been documented as far north as Louisiana, Tiffany Burns, senior director of animal programs at ZooTampa, told ABC News.
The panthers have been confined to a small geographic area in southwest Florida after being hunted to near-extinction. The population is capped due to the limited amount to space to house them and a lack of safe passage elsewhere in the state, according to panther experts.
There are only about 200 panthers left in the wild. Experts say the only way for the species to recover is to expand their range northward.
“In order to get that panther population to grow and sustain, we need them to move further up the coast,” Burns said.
The goal is to create three separate panther populations with at least 240 adults in order to support the genetic flow of the species, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which listed the Florida panther under the Endangered Species Act in 1967. There is currently only one group in Florida.
The development of highways and roads in Florida has “bottlenecked” the panthers in an area south of the Caloosahatchee River, Bennett said.
Panthers are typically found in three counties in Florida: Lee, Henry and Collier counties, according to Brent Setchell, district drainage design engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation.
The Florida Department of Transportation has collaborated with researchers and wildlife conservation groups to build wildlife crossings across the state to allow animals like panthers, bears and deer a safe passage across roadways. These crossings are meant to deter animals from entering highways and more than 50 have been constructed since planning began in 1972. A new crossing at Interstate 4 near the State Road 57 interchange in Polk County is near completion and more than a dozen are in the works, Setchell said.
Cars are one of the biggest hazards to panthers, Bennett said. Thirteen panthers were hit and killed by cars in 2023, Burns said. At least 13 have been killed on roadways so far this year.
The Florida DOT decides where to build the crossings based on a number of factors, including wildlife cameras and information from the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a statewide network of 18 million acres of connected lands and waters. Finding funding can be a challenge, and the agency often relies on grants to complete the projects, Setchell said.
“One of the biggest challenges is the non-connecting conservation areas here in Florida,” Burns said. “That’s a huge initiative the Florida Wildlife Corridor foundation is actually trying to face.”
Panthers are solitary animals and extremely territorial. Males claim 200-square-mile territories and have been known to fight other males — sometimes to the death — if their territories overlap.
“If panthers are squeezed into an area that’s too small, they’ll fight each other and can even kill each other,” Bennett said.
Agencies have seen “great progress” for panther populations south of the Caloosahatchee River, Setchell said.
In 2017, panther researchers were delighted to document the first-ever panther in more than 40 years seen north of Caloosahatchee River, which flows from Lake Okeechobee to Fort Myers, essentially cutting the state in half. The female panther was leading her kittens through a wildlife crossing along Interstate 4, Setchell said.
Community planners in Florida, one of the fastest-growing states in the country, will need to consider wildlife before constructing new subdivisions and roadways to accompany them, experts said. A century ago, when traffic and human populations were much less dense, officials did not foresee the need for wildlife crossings.
“When one of these major highways needs construction, [engineers are] actually looking how they can put in a wildlife crossing while they’re doing the construction, because it’s gonna be a lot cheaper,” Burns said.
Learning how to live with panthers again as their populations grow will also be necessary, as panthers could target the prized horses that live on ranches in the north, Burns said.
But the success for panther conservation still faces many hurdles.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — The driver of a semi truck that careened off the Clark Memorial Bridge in Louisiana is speaking out for the first time since her miraculous 40-minute rescue.
“It happened so fast,” Sydney Thomas told ABC News Louisville affiliate WHAS.
“I was like, I can’t believe this, that I’m really hanging over the river,” she said.
It all began when the driver of a pickup truck, 33-year-old Trevor Branham, swerved to avoid a stalled car on the bridge. Branham then slammed into the semi Thomas was driving.
As a result, the semi crashed through the railing, leaving Thomas dangling above the Ohio River.
“I’m going to have to jump. I can’t swim either,” she told herself. “I didn’t know how bad it was. I thought the trailer was still on the bridge, I didn’t know it was like this,” she added, using her hands to demonstrate the steep angle.
Thomas said she wondered what would happen to her 5-year-old son if she died.
“It was really hard for me to think about like leaving him behind on Earth,” Thomas told WHAS.
A crew of firefighters from the Louisville Fire Department rushed to the bridge to help rescue Thomas.
“It was terrifying to be that high up in the air and all you see is the Ohio River,” she said.
Firefighter Bryce Carden reached Thomas first.
“He was like, ‘Are you a praying woman?’ I was like ‘Yep,’ and we just started praying,” she recalled.
She added: “Sometimes you pray and I’m guilty of this, I pray and I don’t think God is listening, but he was that day.”
Branham was charged with endangerment and driving on a suspended license, according to authorities.
Thomas said she hopes to get back on the road in June.
(LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) — Seventy years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ended racial segregation in public schools, members of the “Little Rock Nine” — the first group of African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School — sat down with ABC News to discuss the challenges they faced in education then and the challenges that remain today.
Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls LaNier, known as the Little Rock Nine, began attending Little Rock Central High School in 1957, three years after the historic decision, making them the first students to desegregate the school.
The Nine were all volunteers recruited by the NAACP, under the leadership of Daisy Bates, the president of the Arkansas chapter, to be part of the first official enactment of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the “separate but equal” doctrine. Their journey to the classroom was not simple.
“We are young black kids and literally having experienced legalized segregation for the better part of our lives,” Roberts told ABC News, “In truth, there was always separatism but never equality. I thought this was a short window or door of opportunity opening, probably wouldn’t last very long, based on my knowledge of the history of the country. So I was eager to volunteer to see what I could do to promote this whole notion of change.”
On Sept. 3, 1957, the Nine were set to begin their first day at the formerly all-white high school. They arrived to find the National Guard blocking their entrance to the school on Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus’ orders, despite the Supreme Court’s then-recent decision that deemed segregation unconstitutional.
They returned the next day to again find the National Guard, this time joined by a mob protesting against integration.
“First day, it did not bother me. I saw the crowd. I heard the name-calling. I recognized that there would be people out there that did not want me there. That, I expected, okay … not for it to last as long as it did,” LaNier, who is the youngest of the Nine, recalled.
With testimony from the Nine, United States District Judge Ronald N. Davies ordered the removal of the National Guard on Sept. 20, 1957. Three days later, the Nine finally entered Little Rock Central High School – through a side door and escorted by Little Rock police. On their first day, the Nine were able to attend class for three hours before being sent home for their safety.
In response to the continued concerns and threats to the students’ safety, then-President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops from the U.S. Army to guard and escort the Nine. On Sept. 25, 1957, the Little Rock Nine finally began regularly attending classes at Little Rock Central High School.
At Central, the Nine hoped to get access to the resources that were absent in all-Black schools. They sought the educational opportunities that the 1954 Court decision said segregation was depriving minority children of.
“But we didn’t have time to think about those things because our focus was on staying alive,” Roberts said. “Believe it or not, this was a life-threatening situation. People threatened to kill us every hour, every day. But in spite of that, we were willing to stay there because it was important to be there.”
Derrick Johnson, the current president of the NAACP, highlighted the importance of acknowledging the hardship the Nine went through.
“What we need to do is celebrate those individuals, think about the Little Rock Nine, here are young people who was put in harm’s way with trauma. Those individuals had to carry that trauma from their childhood through adulthood, we just need to say thank you. We have the Brown litigants and their families and their descendants,” he said.
Johnson also pointed out that efforts to ban or censor teaching Black history in schools may exclude teaching about segregation, Brown v. Board, and the Little Rock Nine.
Friday, in honor of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board, the NAACP and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture are honoring the Little Rock Nine. Johnson says it’s important to acknowledge the Brown litigants, their families and their descendants too.
Cheryl Brown Henderson is the daughter of Oliver Brown, a main plaintiff in the case whom Brown vs. Board of Education was named after. Born, raised and buried in Topeka, Kansas, Brown partook in the lawsuit because his oldest daughter, Linda – Cheryl’s sister – had to travel 24 blocks to attend the nearest African American school.
Addressing the media following a closed meeting with President Biden and other Brown-involved parties, Brown Henderson said that the fight is not over, saying that public education should be funded well and can be improved.
“Anytime we can talk about failing underfunded public schools, there is a problem. There should be no such thing. Public institutions, where most of us got our education, should be world-class, educational institutions,” Brown Henderson said. “So I’m not understanding that and I want us to roll up our sleeves and get back to the hard work of educating our children.”
LaNier echoed this sentiment and called upon young people to “stand up,” as she and her eight classmates once did.
“I’m disappointed over these 60-plus years that all the achievements that we have made here in this country is now being taken away from us,” LaNier said. “If young people don’t stand up and stop some of this process and strategize as to how they’re gonna go about changing these things or at least put some rush to what is being changed by others, we’re in a mess the way I see it.”
ABC News’ Tesfaye Neguisse, Abby Cruz, Adisa Hargett-Robinson, Sabina Ghebremedhin, and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(MORGANTON, N.C.) — Police in North Carolina are searching for the person who threw a rock at a moving car, hitting and killing a 23-year-old woman, authorities said.
Brittany Elizabeth Ferguson was driving in Burke County around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday when a rock went through her windshield and fatally struck her in the head, North Carolina Highway Patrol said.
Ferguson’s 2006 Ford Taurus then drove off the road and hit a house, according to the highway patrol.
Ferguson, of Morganton, North Carolina, died at the scene, authorities said.
After the crash, witnesses saw a white Chevrolet S-10 single-cab truck — with a man riding in the truck bed — driving back and forth in the area, the highway patrol said.
Anyone with information on the white truck or the incident in general is asked to call the highway patrol at 828-466-5500.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, was arrested Friday morning for allegedly driving past a police roadblock at the Valhalla Golf Club, according to ESPN.
The arrest came about an hour after a deadly accident near the golf course. Around 5 a.m., a man was fatally struck by a shuttle bus as he tried to cross a road near the course holding the PGA Championship, according to a statement released by Louisville Metro Police Department.
The roadblocks and confusion over the accident allegedly led Scheffler to drive past police who were on site, according to reports from ESPN.
“This morning, I was proceeding as directed by police officers,” Scheffler said in a statement on social media. “It was a very chaotic situation, understandably so considering the tragic accident that had occurred earlier, and there was a big misunderstanding of what I thought I was being asked to do. I never intended to disregard any of the instructions. I’m hopeful to put this to the side and focus on golf today.”
Scheffler was released from jail after processing around 8:40 a.m. local time, and returned to the course about an hour before his 10:08 a.m. tee time.
A “police officer attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car, and Scheffler then stopped his vehicle at the entrance to Valhalla,” according to ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington who witnessed the altercation take place right in front of him. “The police officer then began to scream at Scheffler to get out of the car. When Scheffler exited the vehicle, the officer shoved Scheffler against the car and immediately placed him in handcuffs. He is now being detained in the back of a police car.”
Scheffler refused to comply with the police officer’s request to stop and “accelerated forward,” dragging the detective to the ground, according to the police report. The officer was taken to the hospital after suffering “pain, swelling, and abrasions to his left wrist and knee.” The detective’s uniform pants, “valued at approximately $80, were damaged beyond repair,” according to the report.
Breaking News: World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler has been detained by police in handcuffs after a misunderstanding with traffic flow led to his attempt to drive past a police officer into Valhalla Golf Club. The police officer attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car,…
Scheffler now faces charges of second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic, according to the police report.
He is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday morning.
Louisville police said that the start of the second round of the PGA Championship was delayed as a result of the accident. Scheffler had originally been scheduled for an 8:50 a.m. tee time, but it was delayed until 10:08 a.m. after the fatal accident.
The LMPD Traffic Unit is investigating and there have been no other injuries reported from the earlier incident.
Scheffler, 27, has won four tournaments on the tour this year, including a dominant performance at The Masters in April — his second Masters win and second major victory as well. He also won back-to-back marquee events in March at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship.
He shot a 4-under 67 in the first round of this week’s PGA Championship — the second major of the year — and was five shots back of leader Xander Schauffele.
Scheffler has career earnings of $61 million on the PGA Tour alone, 10th all-time, according to the tour.
(HOUSTON) — At least four people died Thursday after an “exceptionally” strong storm hit Houston, according to Mayor John Whitmire.
Wind gusts reached 78 mph in the area.
Preliminary investigations indicate falling trees caused two deaths and a fallen crane caused one, according to officials.
Urging residents to stay home, Whitmire said the city was in “recovery mode” and schools will be closed in the Houston area on Friday.
More than 788,000 customers are without power in Texas on Friday morning.
The intense winds came after a rare “high risk” warning for flash flooding was issued in Texas and Louisiana, with the states bracing for up to 9 inches of rain in 24 hours.
“The high risk area has seen over 600% of their normal rainfall for the past two weeks alone,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned, and the flash flooding could be life-threatening.
“High risk” days account for just 4% of days, but they are responsible for more than one-third of flooding deaths, according to the Weather Prediction Center.
The severe weather threat in Houston is now over, allowing residents to begin to clean up on Friday.
The severe weather threat has now moved east, with damaging winds and large hail possible from Louisiana to Georgia.
In this screen grab from police body cam footage released by the San Francisco Police Department, Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, is shown with his assailant, David DePape, at the Pelosi home, in San Francisco, Oct 28, 2022. — San Francisco Police Dept
(SAN FRANCISCO) — The man convicted of breaking into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacking her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer will receive his federal prison sentence on Friday.
David DePape was convicted in November 2023 for the Oct. 28, 2022, break-in and attack at the Pelosis’ San Francisco home.
DePape admitted that he was looking for Nancy Pelosi to question her about Russian influence on the 2016 election and planned to hold her hostage, but only Paul Pelosi was home when he broke in.
Paul Pelosi said on the stand that DePape repeatedly asked him, “Where is Nancy?”
DePape hit Paul Pelosi, then 82 years old, with a hammer, causing major injuries, including a skull fracture.
“I’m sorry that he got hurt,” DePape said at trial. “I reacted because my plan was basically ruined.”
Federal prosecutors want DePape to serve 40 years for his conviction on charges of attempted kidnapping of a federal officer or employee and assault of an immediate family member of a federal official.
DePape is also facing state charges, including attempted murder, and has pleaded not guilty. His state trial is set to start on May 22.
ABC News’ Annie Pong, Ivan Pereira and Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
