(NEW YORK) — Thousands of customers in the Great Lakes are without power on Tuesday after heavy snowfall combined with leaves still on trees caused many branches to fall on power lines.
Across the U.S., 28 states are under frost and freeze alerts from Colorado to New York. Actual temperatures are in the 20s and even teens. In the upper Midwest, temperatures in the 30s are widespread, with record cold dipping into the Ohio Valley and parts of the mid-South. Wind chills are in the single digits in North Dakota and Minnesota.
The freeze reaches the Gulf Coast on Wednesday, where temperatures could fall into the upper 20s and lower 30s.
Up to 18 inches of lake-effect snow fell in northern Wisconsin and up to 14 inches of snow fell in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Monday.
Marquette, Michigan, saw record snowfall of 9.1 inches Monday.
Chicago received its first snow of the season on Monday and Indianapolis saw its first snowfall on Tuesday.
Lake-effect snow also fell in northern Indiana, with some areas getting as much as 4 inches.
Dozens of record-low temperatures are expected across the South on Wednesday. Raleigh, North Carolina, could see its first frost of the season.
Some of the cold will swing into the Northeast with temperatures expected to be in the upper 30s on Wednesday morning.
Frost and freeze alerts have been issued for the Northeast, including Philadelphia, but the frosty conditions will stay away from Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston for now.
Temperatures in the West could reach, if not break, records highs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Seven cities are expected to see near-record or record-high temperatures on Tuesday, with twice as many near-record or record-high temperatures forecast on Wednesday. Twelve cities are expected to see record or near-record high temperatures on the West Coast Thursday.
But temperatures are expected to be much cooler over the weekend and wet weather is on the way with mountain snow.
(MARIETTA, Ohio) — A small plane crashed in a car dealership parking lot in Marietta, Ohio, Tuesday morning, leaving the pilot and a passenger dead, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
The pilot and passenger were the only people aboard the twin-engine Beechcraft BE9L, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The accident at the Pioneer Buick GMA dealership sparked a fire that took about 30 minutes to extinguish, said Marietta police.
Police do not believe anyone on the ground was injured.
Marietta is located in southeast Ohio along the West Virginia border.
(MARIETTA, Ohio) — A small plane has crashed in a car dealership parking lot in Marietta, Ohio, according to police.
The accident sparked a fire that took about 30 minutes to extinguish, said Marietta police. Marietta is located in southeast Ohio along the West Virginia border.
Police do not believe anyone on the ground was injured. Information on the passengers and pilot were not immediately clear.
(STOCKTON, Calif.) — The suspected Stockton, California, serial killer is due to make his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon after police say he was apprehended while “out hunting” for another victim this weekend.
Wesley Brownlee, a 43-year-old Stockton resident who police say is linked to six slayings, was arrested early Saturday while driving, Stockton police chief Stanley McFadden said.
Ahead of Brownlee’s arraignment on Tuesday, the police chief said the suspect was near perfect in covering up his tracks and being careful.
“He didn’t make many mistakes. We know he purposely stayed in the dark,” McFadden said Monday.
Both police and the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office said it’s remarkable they were able to make an arrest in less than 90 days of the crime spree.
Authorities said they zeroed in on Brownlee from tips. Police said they then surveilled him as he allegedly prowled the streets for another victim.
McFadden said Brownlee was apprehended while wearing dark clothing and a mask around his neck. Police said he was also armed with a gun.
“He was on a mission to kill. He was out hunting,” McFadden said in a statement. “We are sure we stopped another killing.”
The six slayings — all fatal shootings of men — spanned from April 2021 to September 2022, according to police.
Five of the six killings were in Stockton; one was in Oakland, about 70 miles away. All of the shootings were at night or in the early morning.
A seventh victim, a 46-year-old woman, was shot in April 2021 and survived her injuries, police said.
(LAS VEGAS) — Las Vegas police released body camera footage on Monday showing the moment a man allegedly fired 18 shots at two officers, killing one of them.
Despite being mortally wounded, Officer Truong Thai returned fire as he laid on the ground. The suspect — Tyson Hampton, 24, of Las Vegas — was arrested several blocks away after the pre-dawn shooting on Oct. 13, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said.
“The blue vehicle that Hampton was driving doesn’t just accelerate and try to leave the area. He’s driving very slowly as he fires back at the officers and the citizens on the street,” Las Vegas Police Assistant Sheriff Andy Walsh said during a press conference on Monday, while playing videos from both officers’ body-worn cameras.
Hampton faces eight felony charges, including murder and attempted murder, as well as one count of misdemeanor domestic battery. He made an initial court appearance on Oct. 14, where he did not speak and was temporarily represented by a deputy public defender. He is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, pending his arraignment on Tuesday.
“The tragic part about this is (that) from the evidence, this defendant was being investigated for a misdemeanor,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters on Oct. 14. “That’s why it’s a sad day. It didn’t have to happen. This officer didn’t have to lose his life.”
Hampton’s wife had called 911 at about 1 a.m., saying she had been battered by her husband. Thai and Officer Ryan Gillihan were assigned to respond. Gillihan arrived first and spoke with Hampton’s wife, who was with her mother, several blocks east of the Las Vegas Strip. Hampton was sitting in his car a short distance away, according to police.
Footage from Thai’s body camera shows the officer arriving on scene and walking over to Hampton’s car to ask him “what’s going on,” but the man didn’t reply. Thai tells Hampton to put his hands on the steering wheel, which he does without saying anything, even as the officer asks him again “what’s going on tonight.” Hampton then looks over to the passenger side of the vehicle and removes his right hand from the steering wheel. Thai reaches into the car and attempts to control Hampton’s arm while ordering him to “get out of the car.”
As Hampton begins to drive away, Thai walks backward to his patrol vehicle while Gillihan walks toward Hampton’s car. Hampton then points a gun out of the driver’s side window and unleashes a barrage of bullets, striking his mother-in-law and Thai, who was wearing a ballistic vest. Both officers fire back as Hampton drives away from the area, as seen in their bodycam videos.
A short time later, Hampton’s vehicle was spotted by another officer driving not far from where the shooting occurred. Hampton refused to stop for all marked police vehicles and a PIT maneuver (precision immobilization technique) was conducted. Hampton was then taken into custody with the assistance of a K9 unit, according to police.
Thai, who was shot in the torso, was transported to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, where he died from his wounds. He was 49 and had been a member of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department since 1999. Hampton’s mother-in-law was also transported to the hospital for treatment of a non-life-threatening injury, police said.
(NEW YORK) — A mother allegedly admitted to intentionally killing her 5-year-old daughter before taking her to the hospital where her body was found partially wrapped in plastic and mesh bags, police say.
The incident occurred on Sunday when Melissa Towne drove to HCA Tomball Hospital, located just north of Houston, Texas, at approximately 12 p.m. and asked hospital personnel for a wheelchair because “her daughter’s body was hurting,” according to a statement from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
“An emergency room nurse walked to Towne’s Jeep Cherokee, where she found Towne’s 5-year-old daughter partially wrapped in plastic and mesh bags,” the statement read. “The child was unresponsive and a laceration was visible on the child’s neck.”
The 5-year-old girl was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.
The Tomball Police Department was notified about the death and responded to the hospital where Towne was detained and reportedly told the authorities that she killed her daughter at Spring Creek Park before driving her to the hospital, police say.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide and Crime Scene Units responded to the crime scene and took over the investigation into the death.
“Towne was transported to the Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit, where she provided investigators with a statement admitting to intentionally killing her daughter,” police said in their statement released to the media. “The Harris County District Attorney’s Office accepted a charge of Capital Murder against Melissa Towne and she was booked into the Harris County Jail.”
ABC New’s Houston station KTRK-TV obtained a statement from the surviving members of the little girl’s family.
“We ask for privacy and respect for [the victim’s] father, James, and our family as we all figure out how to grieve her horrible loss and try to figure out how to go on from here. [The 5-year-old girl] has grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and a father that all loved her dearly and never thought such a tragic event would happen to such an innocent child. She will always hold a special place in all of our hearts. We will always remember her as the sweetest little girl who never met a stranger. She was so full of love and giggles and her bright blue eyes shined so full of curiosity. We are hoping and praying justice will be served and the heartless monster who took our sweet girl away from us pay for the innocent life she took,” the statement said.
The initial probable cause magistrate judge set Towne’s bond at $15 million, according to KTRK.
A spokesperson with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services also released a statement to KTRK regarding the case against Towne.
“Child Protective Services is investigating this tragic death alongside law enforcement. The child’s mother, Melissa Towne, does have prior history with CPS, but specific details of CPS investigations are confidential according to law,” the statement read. “Ms. Towne has three additional children ranging in age from 2 years old to 18 years old, who are safe and have been living with other family members.”
It’s unclear if there were any potential witnesses, according to authorities.
The investigation into the alleged murder is ongoing.
(NEW YORK) — Two Wyoming college wrestlers have been seriously injured when they were ambushed in a gruesome attack by a grizzly bear while hunting over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Saturday in Cody, Wyoming, when the two men encountered the bear at close range while they were in heavy cover antler hunting west of the Bobcat Houlihan trailhead on the Shoshone National Forest, the Wyoming Game & Fish Department said in a press release detailing the incident.
One of the men said he jumped on the grizzly to try and get him off his friend, Brady Lowry.
“I grabbed and yanked him hard by the ear,” Kendall Cummings told Cowboy State Daily.
“I could hear when his teeth would hit my skull, I could feel when he’d bite down on my bones and they’d kind of crunch,” Cummings continued.
The two men were somehow able to break free from the attack and call 911 which elicited an immediate response from both Park County Search and Rescue and personnel from the Wyoming Game & Fish Department.
“With the assistance of a hunter in the area, a local resident and other members of their party, the two men were able to reach the trailhead where they met search and rescue and were transported from the area,” said the Wyoming Game & Fish Department.
One of the victims was flown by helicopter to a local hospital while the other was taken by an ambulance, authorities said.
Both men, wrestling teammates at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, reportedly underwent multiple surgeries after sustaining major lacerations to the body and face. Lowry has a broken arm, reports said.
“Special thanks to Park County Search and Rescue and the Park County Sheriff’s office for their quick response and coordination of the rescue,” said Dan Smith, Cody Region wildlife supervisor.
An investigation into the attack is ongoing but authorities say this just appears to be a “sudden, surprise encounter with a grizzly bear.”
Officials added that there has been “an abundance of bear activity at low elevations” throughout the region in the last few weeks and urged people to use a lot of caution in the area where the attack took place.
“In the vicinity where the attack occurred, reports from landowners and hunters indicate there may be six to 10 different bears moving between agricultural fields and low elevation slopes,” Smith said. “Game and Fish will continue to monitor bear activity in the area and work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make management decisions in the best interest of public safety.”
“This is a sad and unfortunate situation, we wish both victims a full and speedy recovery,” Smith added.
For now, however, both Lowry and Cummings are counting their blessings and consider themselves lucky to have survived the attack at all.
“I don’t know what I’m going to pay him back, I don’t. I owe him everything, Brady Lowry told the Cowboy Daily Press regarding Cummings’ quick actions that potentially saved his life. “We’ll be best friends for the rest of our lives.”
(ST. LOUIS, Mo.) — A considerable amount of radioactive waste was found at a Missouri elementary school near St. Louis, according to a new report.
In August, Boston Chemical Data Corp. studied soil, dust and plant samples at Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Missouri, according to the company’s report.
Boston Chemical Data’s finding coincides with findings from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which first detected radioactive contaminants near the school in 2018 and again in 2019, 2020 and 2021, the report said.
“The results show the presence of low-level radioactive contamination on this property located in the banks of Coldwater Creek within the property boundary,” the Army Corps told the superintendent of the Hazelwood School District earlier this year, according to the report.
The company said that it tested soil samples from as much as six feet below the ground surface, but it’s unclear how deep the radioactive contamination goes.
The school is in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated with uranium and other radioactive waste during World War II.
According to the reports, engineers studied samples from homes in the same neighborhood of the school facing the creek. They found the same type of radioactive material discovered at Jana Elementary, both outside and inside the homes in the neighborhood.
In 2019, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that the waste would enter homes from the creek because of flooding, Boston Chemical Data Corp. said.
The Hazelwood School District, where Jana Elementary School is located, said in a statement that it’s aware of the report concerning the radioactive waste.
“Safety is always our top priority, and we are actively discussing the implications of the findings,” the district said. “The Board of Education will be consulting with attorneys and experts in the area of testing to determine next steps.”
(ALEXANDRIA, Va.) — A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is deliberating the fate of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national accused of lying to federal investigators about information he collected in 2016 for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that was compiled in Steele’s now-infamous “dossier” detailing Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
A Washington-based think tank analyst, Danchenko was hired by Steele to contribute intelligence information to Steele’s research. He became a primary source to what came to be known as the “Steele dossier,” which included explosive and unproven claims about Trump.
In a November 2021 indictment, prosecutors accused Danchenko of misleading FBI agents about his sources of information. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.
Danchenko’s trial is the final case of three prosecutions secured by special counsel John Durham in his years-long probe into alleged misconduct by the FBI and intelligence community in their investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia.
On Monday, Durham himself questioned prosecution witnesses and delivered the prosecution’s rebuttal at the end of closing arguments.
Danchenko served as a paid FBI informant from 2017 to 2020, when the bureau was pushed to sever its relationship with him after the Justice Department named him as a source for the Steele dossier.
Federal prosecutors have argued during the trail that Danchenko misled the FBI during three days of voluntary interviews in January 2017 about where the dossier’s information came from and about his contact with other individuals. They said Danchenko told a “shifting story” to the agents who were trying to trace the source of the information.
The government alleges that false information provided to the FBI by Danchenko was used to renew the bureau’s application to continue its secret surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page after Page’s visits to Moscow.
After the prosecution rested its case Friday, the defense asked U.S. Judge Anthony Trenga to dismiss all five counts in the indictment against Danchenko, saying that Durham did not prove Danchenko lied to the FBI and obstructed its investigation into Trump’s alleged Russian ties.
Trenga dismissed one count: the prosecutions’ accusation that Danchenko falsely told the FBI that he never spoken with “a long-time participant in Democratic Party Politics” about any allegations included in the dossier. The judge ruled that Danchenko’s denial was “literally true” because the communication occurred over email and not via the spoken word.
In the defense’s closing argument, Danchenko attorney Stuart Sears accused prosecutors of being on a “mission to prove [Danchenko] a liar” and said they failed to present evidence which “doesn’t support their narrative that he’s a liar.”
Sears also pointed to the defense’s cross examination of the prosecution’s FBI witnesses, during which they spoke of the value of Danchenko’s contributions as an intelligence source and said that his outing as a source had damaged U.S. national security.
“They didn’t say what [the prosecution] wanted them to say,” said Sears, who contended that the prosecutor’s own evidence “proves the defendant is not guilty.”
In the government’s closing argument, prosecutors told jurors that Danchenko’s “own words” in emails from 2016 demonstrate that he provided misleading statements to investigators.
“You didn’t check your common sense at the courthouse door. You need to use it,” prosecutor Michael Keilty told the jury.
(EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, Mo.) — Missouri police officers have faced criticism from some members of the community after they were accused of dismissing claims about the abduction of Black women weeks before a woman made a dramatic escape from a basement she was being held captive in.
Excelsior Springs, Missouri, resident Timothy M. Haslett, 39, was arrested on Oct. 7 after a woman escaped his home, according to a probable cause affidavit for the arrest.
She told neighbors that she had been held captive for a month in the basement.
After the 22-year-old woman fled, she showed up at the front door of a neighbor’s home wearing lingerie, a metal collar with a padlock and duct tape around her neck, according to the court document.
“It was readily apparent that she had been held against her will for a significant period of time,” Excelsior Springs Police Lt. Ryan Dowdy told reporters during a news conference on Oct. 7, according to ABC News Kansas City affiliate KMBC.
Last month, The Kansas City Defender, a nonprofit media startup, posted to Twitter and TikTok alleging that a serial killer had been targeting young Black girls in the area, The Kansas City Star reported.
The post, which has since been deleted, alleged that four girls have been killed and three went missing in the area. In response to the claim, a Kansas City Police Department spokesperson said in a statement there was “no basis to support this rumor,” according to The Star.
In the video posted to TikTok, Bishop Tony Caldwell, a local Kansas City community leader, said he was one of many in the area who had made reports to police of numerous murdered and missing Black women who had been taken from an area on Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, according to the Kansas City Defender.
After the video went viral, Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Donna Drake said in a statement there was “no basis to support this rumor,” according to The Kansas City Star.
The woman who escaped, who is Black, told investigators that Haslett allegedly picked her up on Prospect Avenue in September and then kept her in a small room in a basement he built. Haslett allegedly kept her restrained by her feet and ankles and whipped her repeatedly, according to the probable cause affidavit.
She was only able to escape when Haslett left to take his child to school, the woman said, according to the court document. She was treated at the hospital and released on Oct. 7, Excelsior Chief of Police Greg Dull told ABC News last week.
After the victim escaped and searched for help, she told neighbors that her friends “didn’t make it,” alleging that Haslett killed them, Ciara Tharp, whose grandmother provided shelter for the victim until police arrived, told CBS Kansas City affiliate KCTV. Excelsior Springs police confirmed to the Daily Mail that detectives are actively investigating the possibility of two more victims.
Kansas City Police Department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that there have been no reports of missing persons, more specifically women missing from Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, filed to the department.
“In order to begin a missing person’s investigation, someone would need to file a report with our department identifying the missing party,” the statement read. “Again, we notify the media/public anytime our department responds to a homicide in our city and none match, or have been reported to what has been described.”
Dull declined to provide any further updates as to the status of the investigation.
Haslett was charged with first-degree rape or attempted rape, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault, to which he has entered a not guilty plea. A search of his home revealed a small room in the basement that was consistent with what the victim described, the affidavit stated.
Several items were taken from the home as evidence, Dull said.
ABC News could not immediately reach an attorney for Haslett, who is currently being held in a Clay County jail on $500,000 bond. He has been assigned a public defender and will appear for a bond reduction hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
The Kansas City Defender did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on why the original post to Twitter and TikTok was removed.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Sabina Ghebremedhin and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.
