(RICHMOND, Va.) — The removal of Richmond, Virginia’s last standing city-owned Confederate statue was completed Monday but the fight over where it will be relocated continues.
Richmond’s deputy chief administrative officer, Robert Steidel, said the statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill was removed Monday morning.
It will be moved into storage until the administrative process is finished for it to be donated, as planned, to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Steidel said.
Two years ago, amid protests after the murder of George Floyd, the city of Richmond, which was the Confederate capital for most of the Civil War, began removing all of its Confederate monuments.
Since then, more than a dozen such memorials across the city have been taken down. But as ABC affiliate WRIC-TV reported, the removal of Hill’s statue was complicated because the site also includes Hill’s remains and four indirect descendants filed in court to have a say in the process.
According to WRIC, they contended that because the remains of the general, who was killed by Union troops near the end of the Civil War, were buried under the monument in 1891, the statue should be considered a cemetery and grave.
While Hill’s relatives and the city came to an agreement to move his remains to Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper, the family has argued they should also decide where to relocate the statue.
In October, a Richmond Circuit Court Judge ruled against the descendants, WRIC reported, giving the city control over where the statue will end up.
Hill’s distant family has appealed, according to WRIC.
While the city intends to send the memorial to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Hill’s relatives want to have the memorial moved to the Cedar Mountain battlefield by the cemetery where Hill’s remains will be taken.
(NEW YORK) — Sam Bankman-Fried, the embattled former CEO of cryptocurrency giant FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, has been arrested in the Bahamas on criminal charges, the Bahamas Attorney General’s Office announced Monday.
The arrest “followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition,” the office said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time.”
A source familiar said the case could be described as a multi-count fraud indictment, although specific charges will not be unsealed until Tuesday.
Since the collapse of FTX, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have been looking at Bankman-Fried, sources have told ABC News.
The Southern District declined to comment on the arrest.
In response to the arrest announcement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said, “The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.”
“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere,” he added.
FTX, once a $32 billion cryptocurrency darling, filed for bankruptcy protection in November after a rival cryptocurrency exchange announced it was backing out of a plan to acquire it.
Bankman-Fried was expected to appear before Congress Tuesday to testify before the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled “Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part 1.” John Ray, FTX’s new CEO guiding the company through bankruptcy proceedings, will also testify.
Bankman-Fried, in a series of tweets, had said he’s “willing to testify” after initially resisting the committee’s request.
“I still do not have access to much of my data — professional or personal. So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th.”
Bankman-Fried, in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, denied that he knew “that there was any improper use of customer funds.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Alexandra Hutzler, Kirit Radia and Mark Guarino contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — At least 137 flights were canceled across the country on Monday as winter storms wreaked havoc on roadways.
Up to 6 inches of snow hit near Hartford, Connecticut, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Up to 9 inches of snow slammed western Massachusetts and upstate New York.
In the west, a weekend storm dropped up to 5 feet of snow in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range.
That West Coast storm is now moving east and is forecast to bring blizzard conditions from Montana to Colorado.
The Heartland will first get hit with freezing rain and strong winds Monday night from Nebraska to South Dakota. That’ll transition to snow early Tuesday.
Snowfall totals in the Northern Plains could reach 1 to 2 feet this week.
The region should also brace for 55 mph winds and extreme cold. In parts of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming, brutal wind chills as low as 20 degrees below zero could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, Texas to Nebraska should prepare for damaging winds, tornadoes and hail beginning Monday night.
On Tuesday, storms will hit the south from Texas to Oklahoma to Mississippi.
On Wednesday, the storm will be centered over the Gulf states, from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. By Thursday, Georgia and the Florida Peninsula could see strong storms.
Also on Thursday, the storm will push into the Northeast, bringing snow to Pennsylvania, upstate New York and New England. More than six inches of snow is possible Thursday and Friday.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — As police investigate the mysterious murders of four University of Idaho students, an “army of analysts” are combing through the videos submitted to the FBI tip website, according to Moscow Police Capt. Roger Lanier.
“Those videos are from all over town,” Lanier said in a video statement Monday.
“As you can imagine, there’s hours and hours and hours of video, so it does take a lot of time,” he said.
It’s been nearly one month since roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were killed inside the girls’ off-campus house in the early hours of Nov. 13.
Two surviving roommates — who police said are not suspects — were home at the time and likely slept through the attacks, according to authorities. They were on the ground floor while the four students killed were on the second and third floors.
No suspects have been identified.
Lanier said police “do have a lot of information” that they’re choosing not to release to the public.
“We’re not releasing specific details because we do not want to compromise this investigation,” he said. “We owe that to the families and we owe that to the victims. We want more than just an arrest — we want a conviction.”
Police did say they’re looking to speak with the occupant or occupants of a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra that was in the “immediate area” of the house on the morning of the murders.
“We’re looking for that car because we believe, through our investigation, that that car was in the area during the time of the murders,” Lanier said Monday. “The occupants or occupants may have seen something — they may not know they have seen something. So we specifically want to talk to them.”
Police urge anyone with information to upload digital media to fbi.gov/moscowidaho or contact the tip line at tipline@ci.moscow.id.us or 208-883-7180.
(DALLAS) — Aaron Dean, the now-former police officer charged in the 2019 fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson, took the stand Monday in his murder trial.
Dean is charged with fatally shooting Jefferson, a Black woman who was killed inside her Fort Worth, Texas, home on Oct. 12, 2019.
“This jury needs to hear from me and hear the truth,” Dean said of his decision to testify.
The defense focused its questioning on what Dean learned in police academy training, specifically “shoot, don’t shoot survival training.”
Dean testified that he was sent to respond to an “open structure” call around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 12. An open structure call refers to a door or window left open on a building, according to testimony from Officer Carol Darch, Dean’s partner that night.
A neighbor had dialed a non-emergency number about his concerns of open doors at Jefferson’s home, according to testimony from the call center employee who received the call. The neighbor, who testified last week, said he wanted a welfare check on the family.
Officers parked down the street from the home, Dean said. When asked why he didn’t park in front of the house, he responded, “We don’t want to give away our position to a criminal actor who might be on scene, it’s for officer safety.” He said he and Darch did not walk up the driveway of the home for similar reasons.
According to officials and body camera footage, Dean didn’t knock on the door or announce a police presence.
He testified the residence was quiet when he and Darch approached. As they looked inside, “I could see objects strewn all over the floor … it looked ransacked,” Dean said.
He said he believed it was “a possible burglary.” He said he responded by examining “the whole structure for signs of forced entry.”
Dean then testified that he opened a gate to the backyard. He said he saw a person when he looked into the window of the house.
“I could tell there was movement, like the upper arms are moving like someone was reaching for something,” Dean said on the witness stand.
According to Dean, the person was very close to the window.
He continued, “I thought we had a burglar, so I stepped back, straightened up and drew my weapon and then pointed it towards the figure. I couldn’t see that person’s hands and we’re taught the hands — and it’s what’s in them that kill. We need to see the hands. We need to get people to show us our hands. We need to get control of those hands. So I drew my weapon intended to tell that person to show me their hands.”
Dean testified that he looked back after he got his “light on [and] saw the silhouette again.” He said he shouted, “Put up your hands, show me your hands, show me your hands.”
“And as I started to get that second phrase out, ‘Show me your hands,’ I saw the silhouette. I was looking right down the barrel of a gun. And when I saw the barrel of that gun pointed at me, I fired a single shot from my duty weapon,” Dean testified.
(NEW YORK) — Hate crimes in the United States remained at the same level in 2021 as they were in 2020, the FBI said Monday, even as hate crimes based on a person’s sexual orientation increased.
However, the FBI also said there was a nearly 30% drop in police agencies that reported data in 2021, because of the new way the data was reported to the FBI, making it difficult to meaningfully compare 2021 statistics to years past, an FBI official said on a conference call with reporters.
Some of the agencies that didn’t report data were from bigger city agencies, but the FBI did not say which ones.
The FBI said 64.8% of victims were targeted because of their offenders’ bias against race and ethnicity, 15.6% were targeted because of the offenders’ bias toward their sexual orientation and 13.3% were targeted because of their religion.
“The bias groups of sexual orientation and disability showed increases in reported hate-crime incidents and bias-related incidents of anti-Asian and anti-Native Hawaiian [and] other Pacific Islander also increased in 2021, as well as a number of non-juvenile offenders connected to reported hate crimes,” a senior FBI official told reporters on a conference call Monday.
In total there were more than 8,000 victims of a hate crime, the FBI said, adding 44.2% were for intimidation, 35.9% were simple assault and 18.3% were aggravated assault.
The Justice Department has charged 60 people with hate crimes and secured convictions against 55 people since 2021, a senior DOJ official said.
(NEW YORK) — Ninety flights are canceled across the country on Monday, including 36 in Boston, as winter storms wreak havoc on roadways.
Up to 6 inches of snow hit near Hartford, Connecticut, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Up to 9 inches of snow slammed western Massachusetts and upstate New York.
In the west, a weekend storm dropped up to 5 feet of snow in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range and heavy rain fell from the Bay Area to Los Angeles.
That West Coast storm is now moving east and forecast to bring blizzard conditions to the Heartland and a tornado threat to the south.
Five states — South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and eastern Colorado — are under blizzard warnings, as the combination of falling and blowing snow are expected to create whiteout conditions.
Snowfall totals in the Plains and the Heartland could reach 1 to 2 feet.
Tuesday will be the big day for damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes in the south. Strong tornadoes are possible from Lufkin, Texas, to Alexandria, Louisiana.
On Wednesday, the severe weather threat moves into the Gulf Coast. Damaging winds will be the biggest threat from New Orleans to Tallahassee.
That storm system will move into the Northeast later in the week, bringing heavy snow inland and rain to the coast by Thursday and Friday.
(LOS ANGELES) — A Los Angeles City Councilman who has refused to resign over a leaked audio recording of him participating in a meeting in which racist comments were made about his colleagues, is now being investigated by police after a video surfaced allegedly showing him getting into a fight with a community activist at a holiday event, authorities said.
Councilmember Kevin de León was video recorded Friday night getting into a physical confrontation in front of parents and children at a toy giveaway and Christmas tree lighting event in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to which police were called to quell the violence, according to a statement issued by the Los Angeles Police Department on Sunday.
A video obtained by ABC Los Angeles station KABC showed de León, wearing a red and white Santa Claus hat, being confronted by a group of activists calling him a racist and apparently attempting to block his path as he tried to leave the event. In the footage, which has been posted on social media, one of the activists, identified as Jason Reedy, is seen standing nose-to-nose with de León before the councilman shoved him onto a table and grabbed his jacket, pushing him out of the camera’s view.
After the incident, de León claimed he was attempting to defend himself after saying Reedy had headbutted him. De León filed a battery complaint against Reedy, who countered by filing his own battery complaint against de León, according to the LAPD.
The LAPD said the incident is under investigation and no one was taken into custody.
“Kevin de León is a disgrace. Video footage clearly shows him and his supporters initiating this assault while Mr. Reedy stands with his hands up,” Reedy’s lawyer said in a statement. “Not only has Kevin de León lost all political legitimacy, his claims that he was the one attacked here simply underscores how he’s lost touch with reality.”
De León released a statement alleging Reedy is part of “a group of so-called ‘activists'” that has been harassing him and his staff for more than a year.
He claimed the group “cornered and physically assaulted me, a staff member, and a volunteer during a holiday event on Friday evening.”
He said Reedy and other members of the group started shouting obscenities and disrupting the holiday event, prompting him to attempt to exit the event to “draw the disrupters away from the attending families and children,” but the activists blocked all the exit doors.
“Once we were able to push open a door and try to get out, Reedy launched a pelvic thrust, followed by a headbutt to my forehead,” de León alleged. “My response, in defense of myself, was to push him off of me. In the ensuing struggle, Reedy struck me in the face with a closed fist, violently elbowed a female staff member, and injured a volunteer in front of horrified parents and children.”
Earlier Friday, chaos ensued at a city council meeting when de León showed up for the first time since becoming embroiled in the scandal over the closed-door meeting in October 2021 he attended with then-City Council President Nury Martinez and a third Latino member of the city council, Gil Cedillo. In the recording of the meeting, leaked earlier this year, Martinez allegedly made racist comments about her colleagues and the Black son of white councilmember Mike Bonin while discussing redistricting to hold onto their power.
During Friday’s council meeting, community members in attendance booed de León’s presence and Bonin abruptly stood up and stormed out of the meeting. The uproar caused a recess to be called and de León did not return to the meeting.
De León said he attempted to attend the meeting to represent his constituents.
“I remained out of the room after the outburst by agitators to give the council president the opportunity to regain control of the meeting and allow public comment to continue since so many of those present were my constituents,” de León said. “Unfortunately, neither of those things happened.”
But de León’s departure did not curtail the raucous meeting. Instead, outgoing City Councilmember Paul Koretz used his farewell speech to take a parting shot at protesters, saying they “have done their best to make it difficult for us to do our work in the last 2½ years.”
“In their own words: I yield the rest of my time. F*** you,” Koretz said.
De León is also purportedly heard making racially charged comments on the tape recording about Bonin’s son and calls for him and Cedillo to resign have grown louder in recent weeks. Martinez resigned from the city council in October and apologized for her comments.
De León and Cedillo have refused to step down from the council despite calls from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden for them to do so.
On Oct. 26, the city council voted 12-0 to publicly reprimand the three councilmembers.
The bank of Mill Creak in Washington County, Kansas, following a rupture of the Keystone Pipeline on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, in this handout published Dec. 9 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. – U.S. EPA
(WASHINGTON COUNTY, Kan.) — Federal and state environmental officials worked over the weekend to mitigate the fallout from last Wednesday’s Keystone Pipeline rupture that leaked about 14,000 barrels of crude oil into a Kansas creek.
Officials hadn’t yet determined the cause of the incident, TC Energy, the Canadian pipeline operator, said on Sunday.
The spill near Mill Creek, in Washington County, Kansas, had been “contained” by about 250 people working at the site, TC Energy said in a statement.
Some of the thousands of barrels of unrefined oil product ran downhill into the creek, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and the company.
Third-party environmental specialists were among the hundreds of people who responded to clean up the mess, the company said in its Sunday update.
“The product remains contained and multiple vacuum trucks, booms, and additional resources are onsite as we continue the recovery process,” TC Energy said. “Repair planning is also underway, as are shoreline assessments.”
The leak in the 36-inch pipeline was first detected at 9:01 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to an order issued by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
A trip alarm was received six minutes later, the order said. The pipeline was shut down and its isolation valves were closed at 9:08 p.m., according to officials.
As TC Energey staffers approached the site they “identified a crude oil odor,” the order said.
“Continuous air quality monitoring has been deployed and, at this time, there is no indication of adverse health or public concerns,” the company said on Sunday.
TC Energy workers have built an “earthen underflow dam” about 4 miles downstream from the spill, according to the EPA. A pipe is allowing the creek’s water to pass through the dam, “while preventing further migration of oil,” the EPA said in a press release on Friday.
“Oil impacts within Mill Creek are contained upstream of this underflow dam. There are no current concerns for oil migration past the underflow dam,” the EPA said on Friday. “TC Energy has mobilized additional resources, such as vacuum trucks and oil skimmers, to support oil recovery from Mill Creek.”
Rain had been forecast for Monday, the company said, and “crews we are beginning preparations” to deal with worsening weather.
“Additional boom is being deployed and the underflow dam is being shored up to withstand precipitation,” the EPA’s on-site coordinator, Tim Curry, wrote in a statement on Sunday.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(SAN DIEGO) — The Artemis I Orion capsule has splashed down after a 25-day trip that reached within 60 miles of the moon, completing the first step in an ambitious plan to establish a long-term presence there and later send a crewed shuttle to Mars.
The spacecraft spent 25.5 days in space and journeyed on a 1.4-million-mile journey around the Moon, according to NASA.
“Our spacecraft is home,” NASA tweeted at 9:41 a.m. PT Sunday, shortly after the splashdown occurred near Baja California, Mexico.
The mission, which overcame multiple launch delays, will return the unmanned capsule to Earth in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
The capsule has performed well throughout the nearly month-long trip, Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager, said at a press conference on Thursday.
“We are on track to have a fully successful mission,” said Sarafin, who told reporters that the management team had met daily to track the capsule’s progress.
As it returns to Earth, Orion will deploy parachutes that float it down into the ocean over its final descent, Judd Frieling, a NASA flight director, said on Thursday.
After Orion splashes down, it will remain in the water for two hours as NASA performs tests on the heat generated by the capsule upon its return, Frieling said.
Artemis had a rocky start with multiple failed attempts to get the rocket off the ground before the successful launch on Nov. 16.
The first launch attempt on Aug. 29 was scrubbed due to a faulty temperature sensor that indicated an engine hadn’t properly cooled down when it actually had.
The second attempt was subsequently scrubbed on Sept. 3 after engineers discovered several liquid hydrogen leaks. Liquid hydrogen is one of the propellants needed to fill the rocket’s core stage.
A third attempt on Sept. 27 was postponed after Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwestern Florida and gradually traveled to the northeastern part of the state as well as the Carolinas.
In total, the Artemis expedition includes four missions, each of which will cost roughly $4.1 billion. The project will cost up to $93 billion by 2025, according to an audit from the NASA Office of the Inspector General.
If Artemis I is deemed successful, Artemis II is scheduled to send four astronauts into space in 2024 for a lunar flyby before returning to Earth.
Artemis III plans to send four astronauts to the moon in 2025 including the first woman and the first person of color while Artemis IV plans to be the second lunar landing in 2027.
In addition to setting up a permanent base camp on the moon, the program aims to be the gateway to eventual human missions to Mars.
