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(HONOLULU) — Bail was denied Monday for the wife of a U.S. defense contractor accused of stealing the identity of a dead child, as well as conspiracy, according to her attorney.

Walter Glenn Primrose, 66, and Gwynn Morrison, 66, were indicted for conspiracy against the U.S. government, aggravated identity theft and making false statements in the application and use of a passport, federal court documents show.

The Hawaii couple pleaded not guilty in federal court on Aug. 2. They both will be held behind bars without bail, a judge ruled. Primrose was denied bail last month.

In court documents, prosecutors allege that Primrose and Morrison stole the identities of two Texas infants, Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague, both born in the late 1960s.

Primrose, aka Bobby, and Morrison, aka Julie, “assumed the identities of deceased American-born infants and have been fully living in these fraudulently assumed identities since 1987,” an affidavit in the complaint shows.

During a hearing last month, U.S. attorneys accused Primrose of abruptly leaving Texas in 1987 after assuming Bobby’s identity. The couple reportedly told a family member that they were entering the Witness Protection Program.

The real Bobby Edward Fort died in 1967 from asphyxia, while the real Julie Lyn Montague died in 1968, according to the complaint.

Unlike Primrose — who identified himself as Walter Primrose and accepted that identity at last week’s bail hearing — Morrison insisted that her name was Julie Lyn Montague.

According to an affidavit, Primrose told a family member that he worked for a government agency and wasn’t allowed to share photos of himself.

Prosecutors argued Primrose should be denied bail because they said the defendants might have “troubling foreign connections,” ABC News learned.

U.S. attorneys said witness interviews in Texas and Hawaii revealed that the couple “had a longstanding interest in espionage issues.”

Prosecutors also say searches of their home revealed maps of military bases, coded messages, sets of invisible ink and photos of them dressed up in KGB military outfits.

The U.S. attorneys said forensic experts believe the photos were taken in the 1980s. Defense attorneys claimed the outfits were a costume.

Prosecutors said that after their arrest, while left in a room alone, Primrose and Morrison allegedly referenced things related to espionage.

Primrose enrolled in the U.S. Coast Guard using fake documents in 1994 and served until 2016, court documents allege. Since then, he has been a Department of Defense contractor with access to military installations, according to court documents.

Defense attorneys pointed out that their clients have not been charged with anything related to espionage but only “white collar” crimes related to identity fraud.

Morrison’s attorney, Megan Kau, and Primrose’s attorney, Maximilian Mizono, did not have a comment when reached, respectively, by ABC News.

Both will go to trial on Sept. 26.

ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.

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(ATLANTA) — One person was killed and two were injured in shootings at two locations in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Monday afternoon, Atlanta police said.

Police said a suspect is in custody.

This comes after police said they were searching for an unknown woman in connection with the shootings. Police shared photos of the individual with a suitcase.

Police said she was taken into custody at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Authorities said it’s not clear what led to the shootings and that they’re investigating the connection between the two locations.

The first two victims, including the person who died, were found at 1280 W. Peachtree Street. The third victim was at 1100 Peachtree Street, police said.

Police also said they’re investigating whether the shootings were targeted or random.

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(ATLANTA) — Two people have been killed and one was injured in shootings at two locations in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Monday afternoon, Atlanta police said.

Police said a suspect is in custody.

This comes after police said they were searching for an unknown woman in connection with the shootings. Police shared photos of the individual with a suitcase.

Police said she was taken into custody at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Authorities said it’s not clear what led to the shootings and that they’re investigating the connection between the two locations.

The first two victims, including the person who died, were found at 1280 W. Peachtree Street. The third victim was at 1100 Peachtree Street, police said. The third victim later died at the hospital, according to police.

Police also said they’re investigating whether the shootings were targeted or random.

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(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Prompted by the racially motivated mass shooting in May that left 10 Black people dead and three other people injured, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a listening session in Buffalo on Monday to hear from loved ones of the victims who pointed out in emotional statements that systemic racism played a major role in the massacre.

It was the first time since 2015 that the EEOC panel has held a meeting outside of Buffalo. The panel’s chair, Charlotte A. Burrows, vowed to incorporate what the commission learned into its multi-year strategic enforcement plan.

“Like most of America, I mourned the tragedy and condemned that vicious attack in Buffalo in May. And it claimed the lives of 10 innocent people,” Burrows said in an opening statement. “But to illuminate the underlying injustice and racism that helps create the conditions for racially motivated violence and discrimination, we also need sustained, thoughtful and persistent action. Grief and anger are not enough.”

Garnell Whitfield, a retired Buffalo fire commissioner whose 86-year-old mother, Ruth Whitfield, was among those killed in the rampage at the Tops supermarket in the predominantly Black neighborhood of East Buffalo, told the commission that racism just didn’t suddenly rear its ugly head on May 14.

“I brought only my lived experiences to share with you because I want you to know what it feels like to be traumatized in this manner, not just on May 14, but every day of your life just because of the color of your skin,” Whitfield said.

He said that as a teenager, he was wrongfully accused of robbery and abused by white police officers. He said that a fire department company officer attempted to sabotage his ability to join the fire department in the 1980s.

Whitfield said that while he might appear to be successful on the surface, his reality is a different story.

“The truth is, I, like every other Black American, is a victim and survivor of racism, treated differently and put under constant pressure to be quiet and ignore the incessant barrage of biases, implicit and otherwise, just to get along, just to fit in — and just maybe get a piece of that so-called dream that you’ve been taught to believe in,” Whitfield said. “The problem is, reality keeps waking you up.”

He went on, “I felt it was important for you to know what we go through. No matter what opportunity you provide for us, we come to that opportunity with baggage, with trauma. Our communities have been traumatized. All of the statistics, all of the things that you hear, this didn’t just start on May 14. We’ve been living with this our entire lives.”

Zaneta Everhart, whose 20-year-old son Zaire Goodman was wounded in the attack, also addressed the commission, saying, “It boggles my mind that I sit here before you today saying the same things that Black people have been saying for centuries.”

“What is happening in my community and communities just like the East Side of Buffalo all across the country is violence,” Everhart said. “The starvation of resources, the lack of education, the poor health system, the dilapidated housing, few employment opportunities, food insecurity, limited transportation, redlining, not having enough green space. Not having sidewalks. This is violence.”

She said her son is now living with the results of decades of inequality and unchecked racism.

“The world we live in is by design. Systemic racism is a calculated construct. That is why it was so easy for the terrorist to find the Black people here in Buffalo and cause terror,” Everhart said.

She said her son, who was working at Tops the day of the attack, was shot in the neck and will have to live with shrapnel in his body for the rest of his life.

“He is left with the memory of feeling his flesh being torn open by a bullet from an AR-15,” she said. “He is also left with the memory of seeing an elder from his community, who he says was a wonderful woman, being shot and killed right in front of him as well as the memory of bodies lying dead in the parking lot of the grocery store where he was employed. So, therapy will now be a normal part of his healing journey.”

But she also told the commission that her ability to stay strong comes from the resilience of her son.

“Seeing the way that Zaire has handled all of this has given me the strength to advocate for change,” Goodman said. “The first thing Zaire said to me after he was shot while lying in the hospital bed was, ‘Mom, I knew I’d be fine.'”

She added, “He is resilient. Besides going to doctors, his first time really getting out of the house was 15 days after the massacre and he wanted to go to the memorial in front of Tops to put flowers down.”

She said her son is also pleased that the Tops store, the only large grocery market in East Buffalo, has reopened.

“While he realizes that the scene there is a source of pain for so many in the community, he feels that the reopening of the store shows the terrorist that he cannot destroy our community,” Goodman said.

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(NEW YORK) — A sheriff’s deputy has died after being shot while serving a lockout order at a home, the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

One deputy was shot and a second deputy was hit while trying to get the first out of the way of gunfire, an emotional Sheriff Tommie Johnson III said during a press conference.

The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office identified Sgt. Bobby Swartz as the officer who was killed.

“Today, the Oklahoma County Sheriffs Office mourns the loss of a good man. Two of our deputies were shot while serving a lock out order. One deputy succumbed to his injuries; the other is in stable condition. We plan to release more details soon. Until then please keep us in your prayers,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.

The suspect took off on a pursuit and was taken into custody at the entrance of Tinker Air Force Base.

The other deputy is in the hospital and sustained serious injuries.

ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman and Teddy Grant contributed to this report.

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(ALBUQUERQUE, N.M) — The man charged in the killings of at least three of the four Muslim men killed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in recent months has a history of arrests for domestic violence, police said.

Muhammad Syed, 51, is charged with murder in the shooting deaths of 25-year-old Naeem Hussain on Aug. 5, 41-year-old Aftab Hussein on July 26 and now the Aug. 1 murder of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, according to the Albuquerque Police Department. Syed denied being involved in the deaths of the men after he was arrested, according to police.

Investigators said they are working with the district attorney’s office on potential charges for the murder of the other man who was killed within months of the others.

Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, was killed last November outside a business he ran with his brother, police said.

The victims of the shootings in August and July were from Pakistan. Ahmadi was from Afghanistan.

Syed moved to the U.S. from Afghanistan several years ago and has since been arrested at least twice on misdemeanor domestic violence charges, police said.

According to a criminal complaint from May 2018, Syed and his wife had an argument that turned physical while in a state Department of Human Services office.

Syed claimed his wife slapped him while they were arguing in the car and kicked him while in the waiting room of the office, the complaint says. His wife told police Syed pulled her by the hair and kicked her out of the vehicle, forcing her to walk for almost two hours to the office. When she arrived, the argument continued and she claimed Syed grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground, according to the complaint.

An employee at the office told police that she found Syed’s wife on the floor with a large piece of hair that had fallen to the ground, the complaint says. Employees stated that Syed arrived about an hour and a half before his wife arrived, according to the complaint.

He was placed under arrest for battery on a household member, but his wife did not want to pursue charges or participate in prosecution, which led to the dismissal of the case, according to a spokesperson from the Office of the Second Judicial District Attorney.

In December 2018, Syed’s son called officers to the home, and claimed that the father was “striking” the mother and son, according to a criminal complaint. The son had locked himself in his room after the son had been hit by his father with a metal spoon, which drew blood on the back of his head, the complaint says.

The son advised officers that Syed had routinely beaten him and his mother in the past. Syed denied any violence, the criminal complaint showed. Victims were again unwilling to pursue charges or cooperate with police.

An attorney for Syed did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

The string of slayings had left Muslim communities across the country shaken.

“I hope that our community can breathe a sigh of relief and be assured about safety and security that our main suspect has been put behind bars and that’s where he belongs,” Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a press conference Aug. 10.

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(DALLAS) — Officials have announced one fatality after three months’ worth of rain pounded the Dallas area overnight.

A 60-year-old woman was killed when her vehicle was swept away by flood waters, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced on Twitter Monday afternoon.

Clay did not release the woman’s identity.

Eastern Dallas saw a whopping 15.16 inches of rainfall — a one-in-a-thousand-year flood.

During an average summer, Dallas sees a total of 8 inches of rain.

At one point overnight, the rainfall rate climbed to 3 inches per hour, forcing drivers to abandon their cars on roads.

The Fort Worth Fire Department said it responded to 133 high water calls. Dallas Fire-Rescue said it responded to 186 high water incidents and 314 car crashes.

Jenkins declared a state of disaster in the county Monday night.

“Based on preliminary damage assessments, I am declaring a state of disaster in Dallas County and requesting state and federal assistance for affected individuals,” Jenkins tweeted.

This comes after the Dallas area faced an exceptional drought, the highest category assigned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The rain is now shifting east and will reach eastern Texas, northern Louisiana and central Mississippi by Monday evening.

Louisiana and Mississippi are forecast to get hit with 6 inches of rain in just one or two days, which could cause flooding Tuesday and Wednesday.

ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke and Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.

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(PARKLAND, Fla.) — The attorney for Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz presented her opening statement to the jury on Monday, arguing for Cruz’s life to be spared during the penalty phase of his trial.

The jury will determine if Cruz will be sentenced to death for shooting and killing 14 students and three staff members at his former South Florida school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, on Feb. 14, 2018. The jury’s decision must be unanimous for the death penalty. Cruz pleaded guilty last year to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Defense attorney said in her opening statement that Cruz is responsible for the massacre, adding that “there is no defense to these crimes.”

However, she said, “We must understand the person behind the crime.”

“Some people say that the crime itself is enough to impose sentence. You are not those people. Those people that said the sentence can be imposed based solely on the crime were excused [during jury selection],” she told the jurors. “Each one of you said that life without the possibility of parole could be a severe enough punishment for those crimes.”

McNeill alleged that Cruz suffered lifelong developmental delays that traced back to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

Cruz’s birth mother was a drug and alcohol addict who drank and used drugs up until six weeks before Cruz was born, McNeill said. Cruz was “poisoned in the womb” and his “brain was irretrievably broken,” she said.

Cruz was adopted at birth by Linda Cruz, a 48-year-old Parkland woman. Cruz’s adoptive father was 62 years old, McNeill said.

Nikolas Cruz saw a psychiatrist for the first time at age 3 and the doctor called him a challenging child, McNeill said.

The Broward County School Board classified Nikolas Cruz as “developmentally delayed in all areas” and said he had “a language impairment,” McNeill noted. The district classified him as an “ESE” student, or a special needs child, she said.

“We don’t excuse the horrific acts of damaged and wounded people — we punish them,” McNeill said. “But we take into consideration their damage when we impose sentence.”

Victims’ parents, including Fred Guttenberg and Max Schachter, sat in court as McNeill spoke.

In prosecutor Mike Satz’s opening statement last month, he described the shooting as a “planned, systematic … mass murder.”

Satz said, “Three days before the massacre, Cruz made a video saying, ‘My name is Nik. I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018. My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds. It’s gonna be a big event and when you see me on the news you’ll know who I am. You’re all gonna die. … I can’t wait.'”

The victims’ families took the stand earlier this month to provide victim impact statements.

Dr. Ilan Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was among the 17 killed, said a piece of his heart was “ripped out of my damn chest.”

“I get to watch my friends, my neighbors, colleagues, spend time enjoying their daughters, all the normal milestones,” he said. “I can only watch videos or go to the cemetery to see my daughter.”

“To me, it was yesterday,” Ilan Alhadeff said of his daughter’s death. “Alyssa will always be 14.”

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(ATLANTA) — Three people have been shot in an “active situation” in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood, Atlanta police said.

Officers are searching for the shooter, police said.

Police advised residents to stay off the streets in Midtown, specifically near 12th Street and Peachtree Street NE and 15th Street and W. Peachtree Street NW.

Additional information was not immediately available.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — The Columbus teachers union in Ohio is on strike after a vote on Sunday, just days away from the district’s first day of school on Wednesday.

Teachers began picketing outside over a dozen of the district’s schools on Monday morning. The union said it will gather outside schools from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day until a deal is reached.

The Columbus Education Association, with 4,000 members, reached a 94% majority on the vote Sunday.

“It is with a full understanding of the sacrifices that students, parents, and teachers will make together to win the schools Columbus Students Deserve that CEA members overwhelmingly rejected the Board’s last, best and final offer tonight and voted to strike,” Columbus Education Association spokesperson Regina Fuentes said on Sunday in statement.

The Columbus Board of Education called the decision to strike “incredibly disappointing” in a statement on Sunday.

Fuentes said Sunday the board has “tried desperately” to make the compromise about teacher salary, teacher professional development and teacher leaves.

“Let me be clear,” Fuentes said. “This strike is about our students who deserve a commitment to modern schools with heating and air conditioning, smaller class sizes, and a well-rounded curriculum that includes art, music and P.E.”

Jennifer Adair, Columbus Board of Education President, said in a statement on Sunday the board’s offer “put children first and prioritized their education and their growth.”

Adair said the board offered a generous compensation package for teachers and responded to the concerns raised by the teacher’s union during the negotiations process.

The union and board last met in a mediated discussion on Aug. 18, where the board offered guaranteed raises of 3% annually for three years and $2,000 per CEA member in retention and recruitment bonuses.

According to the board, by the end of the contract, a teacher with a current average salary of $74,000 will earn more than $91,000.

The board’s last offer also stated that it committed funds to install air conditioning in every school, with the exception of one that already has central air in about 50% of the building and is slated to be replaced by a new school in a proposed facilities master plan, the board said.

With the 2022-2023 school year scheduled to begin on Wednesday, the board has decided to make back-to-school virtual, led by substitute teachers, in order to begin instruction on time, according to their statement on Sunday.

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said in a statement Sunday night that there needs to be another negotiation, in order to get students back in the classroom.

Ginther said the past few years have “underscored the value of our teachers, the resiliency of our kids and the need for Columbus City Schools to position itself for the future.”

He added the pandemic, “more than anything,” made clear that it is essential to get students back into the physical classroom.

“A responsible solution is within reach, but only if negotiations restart now,” Ginther said.

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