(PITTSBURGH) — A federal jury has decided if Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooter Robert Bowers will be sentenced to death or to life in prison following weeks of testimony in the trial’s penalty phase.
The jury’s verdict is expected to be announced shortly.
Bowers stormed the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, gunning down 11 congregants in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.
Bowers allegedly told investigators after his arrest that he wanted to kill Jewish people, according to a criminal complaint.
Bowers had offered to plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table, but prosecutors turned him down.
Bowers was convicted in June on all 63 charges against him, including 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death.
At Bowers’ trial, prosecutors said he moved “methodically” through the synagogue with a semi-automatic assault-style rifle and three handguns, shooting many of his victims at close range.
Defense attorney Judy Clarke admitted at trial that Bowers was the shooter, but asked the jurors to “scrutinize his intent” in the attack.
(NEW YORK) — Severe storms spawned multiple tornadoes across northern Illinois on Wednesday evening that knocked down trees, ripped off roofs and disrupted hundreds of flights in the Chicago area.
There were at least five reported tornadoes in the Prairie State — two in Cook County and one each in DuPage, Kane and McHenry counties. One of the twisters that touched down in Cook County reportedly damaged warehouses on the west side of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Damage to homes and other buildings were reported elsewhere, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 170 flights departing O’Hare International Airport were canceled while over 500 were delayed on Wednesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.
The dangerous weather was part of a storm system moving through the midwestern United States. The severe threat shifts back into the Northeast on Thursday, stretching from Ohio to to Vermont.
A flood watch has been issued for much of Vermont, including the capital of Montpelier, which was already hit by historic rainfall and flooding earlier this week. The latest forecast shows an additional 3 to 5 inches is possible across northern New England, including Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
Meanwhile, 100 million Americans across 13 U.S. states were under heat alerts on Wednesday, from California to Texas to Florida. Temperatures in Phoenix reached 110 degree Fahrenheit for the 13th straight day, putting Arizona’s capital on track to break the record 18-day streak that was set in 1974.
The latest forecast shows the heat is only going to get worse and won’t ease for at least another week, with temperatures across the Southwest expected to peak over the weekend.
Hospitals nationwide have seen emergency department visits for heat-related illness more than double over the past month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(NEW YORK) — Authorities in Pennsylvania are searching for two suspects after an alleged attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old took place at the Willow Grove Mall in Montgomery County Wednesday evening.
The Abington Township Police Department received a call for an attempted child abduction at about 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to a press release. The victim, a 14-year-old girl, told police she was riding down an escalator of the mall when she was confronted by an adult male at the bottom.
The man, who identified himself to her as “Alex,” asked her to walk with him. The child then informed him that she was underage. When she attempted to step away from him, the man grabbed her arm and restrained her, forcibly taking her through the mall, Abington police said.
Eventually, the teenager was able to break free from the man and screamed as she ran away, according to police. Multiple bystanders witnessed what happened and stepped in, standing in the way of the male suspect approaching the child again, police said. After witnesses stepped in to help the child, the suspect and one other man then left the mall, officials said.
No arrests have been made at this time, Abington police said.
Following their initial investigation, officials with Abington Township Police Department said that the man was working with another person, and authorities are now looking for two suspects.
The first suspect, who allegedly identified himself as “Alex,” was described by authorities as a Black man between 25 and 40 years old with a goatee and short braids, who was wearing a white shirt, pants with a dark stripe and dark-colored shoes.
The second suspect was described as a Black man with thick facial hair who was wearing a dark blue T-shirt, jean shorts and white-and-black sneakers.
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — Asbestos and lead — in addition to objections from some of the victims’ families — have delayed the process of tearing down the Idaho home where four college students were stabbed to death last fall.
The University of Idaho announced the sudden halt to the high-profile demolition Wednesday, saying it would pause plans for the house until October, which is also when the trial for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused in the murders of Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, is set to start.
“While we look forward to removing this grim reminder of this tragedy, we feel holding until October is the right thing to do,” University President Scott Green said in a statement, acknowledging “every action and decision around this horrific incident is painful and invokes emotions.”
He also noted “every decision we have made” has been “with the families of the victims and our students in mind.”
Disaster response crews have been on-site for weeks, preparing for the eventual demolition of the home on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, cleaning and clearing out the property, and hauling out personal belongings for families to collect.
The investigative work that occurred after the bodies were found exposed “hazardous” materials, including asbestos, which must be eliminated before the building can be razed, Jodi Walker, the spokesperson for the University of Idaho, which now has control of the site, said in an interview.
Walker said the “lead and asbestos mitigation” inside the home requires meticulous “expertise” to “safely demolish the house.”
In the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, prosecutors allege that Kohberger, a 28-year-old criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke in and stabbed to death Chapin, Mogen, Kernodle and Goncalves inside the girls’ off-campus home.
A massive investigation ensued, and in their hunt for clues and evidence at the crime scene and the cleanup that followed, authorities scoured every inch of the property, cutting into walls and even pulling up flooring.
After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as the suspect, arresting him on Dec. 30, 2022, at his family’s home in Pennsylvania. He was indicted in May and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.
Now, the interior of the King Road home bears little resemblance to how it looked before the killings, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson, leading the case against Kohberger, told the university in an April email to the school, obtained by ABC News.
After the killings, the property owner donated the home to the school, which announced in February the site would be torn down as a “healing step” that “also removes efforts to further sensationalize the crime scene.”
Neither the prosecution nor Kohberger’s defense pushed back on the planned demolition, according to emails obtained by ABC.
In early April, Kohberger’s attorney Anne Taylor told the university that the defense had “no objection” to the school “proceeding as it sees fit” with the residence.
In another email obtained by ABC, prosecutor Thompson told the school’s general counsel he too had “no objection,” adding that the scene was “substantially altered from its condition at the time of the homicides” with “removal of some structural items such as wallboard and flooring.”
Though the site is so drastically changed from its original appearance, the structure remains standing and has become a “daily reminder of the horrific crime that happened there,” Walker said — explaining why the university had decided the house would be demolished.
“We have family members of the victims that look out on that house every day that they’re on campus,” she said. “On the flip side, it’s also that last visible piece of where those students lived.”
Moscow Mayor Art Bettge said it’s been tough for the community, too.
“Your eyes are drawn that way; you can’t help it. And it’s just sitting there boarded up and derelict. But it really should go; it needs to go away,” Bettge told ABC News.
The university had wanted it torn down before students returned from summer break. But now, more than seven months after the killings and just weeks before the fall semester begins, there is still no demolition date set for the house, Walker said.
The decision on timing is “incredibly difficult,” Walker said, and though the time-consuming process is underway, the university is weighing both families’ concerns and the health of those nearby.
“It is in a residential neighborhood, so we want to make sure that that process is done as safely as possible for the people in the other structures around,” she said. “There’s a whole expertise to that, that we certainly don’t have.”
Not everyone agreed with the plan to demolish the building. Some of the victims’ families said they fear the elimination of the home now, before Kohberger’s trial, could cause unanticipated problems for prosecutors as they work to secure a guilty verdict.
Shanon Gray, a lawyer representing the Goncalves family, had said postponing demolition “until after the trial would honor the [families’] wishes and support the judicial process if the home is needed in the future by the prosecution, defense or jurors.”
“The Goncalves Family, members of the Mogen Family and members of the Kernodle family have all expressed to the University that they do not want the home demolished,” Gray said in a statement before the university said they would pause their plans, adding those families “believe that there is an enormous amount of evidentiary value to the home.”
Kohberger’s trial in the quadruple homicide has been set for Oct. 2, though that could be delayed.
The prosecution has already ruled out the idea of a jury visit to the home. Though the walls still stand, because the insides have already started to get dismantled and have been “subjected to extensive chemical application creating a potential health hazard,” they concluded a “jury view” of the home “would not be appropriate,” Thompson said in his email to the school.
Gray maintains a jury walk-through could become relevant later, noting “the families [cannot] understand why” neither side has pushed back against the plans to tear the home down.
“There is simply no reason to not honor the wishes of the Victim’s families,” he said. “The reality is that what is good for the community is a fair trial and a conviction.”
While the school wants to “keep everything moving forward,” Walker said there are “many voices” to consider, and they have been in “regular contact with all of the families throughout this entire process,” who have “varying opinions and various ways of healing, much like the rest of the campus and the community.”
“And sometimes that just takes a little bit more time, and we want to make sure that we’re doing the right things for the right reasons,” she said. “The last thing we want to do is to cause any harm to those families.”
The university plans to build a memorial garden on campus to honor the slain students — something Mayor Bettge looks forward to.
“To have a place where people who go just to dwell in the horror that went on there is not useful to the community, the university, or anyone else,” Bettge said, preferring “to have a permanent memorial to them in a positive fashion that reflects the good that they were, and doesn’t dwell on the bad.”
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Loved ones of those murdered in the 2022 racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store filed what their lawyers described as a “landmark” lawsuit Wednesday, alleging social media companies, firearm manufacturers and body-armor makers all helped the teenage killer “load that gun.”
The lawsuit, filed in the state Supreme Court in Buffalo, names several big tech companies as defendants, including Meta, the parent company of Facebook; Amazon, Instagram, Reddit and Google, the parent company of YouTube. Also named as defendants were Vintage Firearms, the Endicott, New York, gun dealer where mass shooter Payton Gendron legally purchased the semi-automatic Bushmaster XM-15 used in the rampage, and RMA Armament, the online company that sold Gendron his body armor.
Website and apps, such as 4Chan, Discord and Twitch, as well as Gendron’s parents, Paul and Pamela Gendron, were also named as defendants.
“Payton Gendron pulled the trigger, but he did so only after years of exposure to addictive social media platforms, which led to his radicalization and encouragement — via the Internet — to purchase weapons and body armor to commit this heinous attack,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court-ordered injunction requiring social media platforms named in the legal action to “remedy the unreasonably dangerous features in its social media products, provide adequate warnings to minor users and parents that its products are addictive and pose a clear and present danger to unsuspecting minors.”
National civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the lawyers representing the victims’ families, said at a news conference Wednesday that the lawsuit is one more step in the pursuit of justice for the 10 people murdered on May 14, 2022, at a Tops supermarket on the east side of Buffalo.
“Even though Payton Gendron fired the weapon that killed all their loved ones, and critically injured others, there were many people who helped him load that gun,” Crump said. “It is our objective … to make sure that everybody who loaded that gun is held to account. They were the conspirators.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families of fatal shooting victims Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Margus Morrison Jr., 52; Roberta Drury, 32; Pearl Young, 77; Geraldine Talley, 65; Heyward Patterson, 67; and Ruth Whitfield, who at 86 was the oldest victim killed. Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include those wounded in the shooting, including Tops workers, Christopher Braden, 56, and 21-year-old Zaire Goodman.
A similar lawsuit was filed in May naming many of the same companies as defendants on behalf of the families of Patterson, Katherine “Kat” Massey, 72; and Andre Mackneil, 53.
Kim Salter, the widow of Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer and Tops security guard who died after confronting Gendron during the massacre, said she and the other families who lost loved ones are still grieving.
“We live with this each and every day, each and every moment of the day,” Kim Salter, the lead plaintiff in the new lawsuit, said at Wednesday’s news conference. “I stand here still grieving my husband’s loss because he sacrificed his life, not only for his family, but for a whole lot of people. And I honor him, I honor my husband.”
In October last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office released a report alleging several online platforms, including some of those named in the lawsuit filed Wednesday, played roles in the Buffalo mass shooting by radicalizing Gendron as he consumed voluminous amounts of racist and violent content, and then by allowing him to live stream the deadly attack on the website Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. James’ report contended that Twitch was “weaponized” to publicize and encourage copycat attacks.
Gendron pleaded guilty in November to 15 charges, including murder and attempted murder. He is the first person in state history to be charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate, a crime he also pleaded guilty to. He was sentenced in February to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During the sentencing hearing, Gendron, now 19, apologized to the victims’ families and claimed he was brainwashed by online racist propaganda, saying, “I believed what I read online and acted out of hate.”
Gendron still faces federal hate crimes charges stemming from the shooting. Federal prosecutors have yet to decide whether to pursue the death penalty.
Amy Keller, another attorney representing the families in the latest lawsuit, slammed the companies named in the legal action, saying, “Corporations have put profits before people. We have detailed in our complaint how social media companies knew there was a problem” and failed to address it.
A spokesman for Google referred ABC News to a statement the company made in May when the previous lawsuit was filed by the victims’ families.
“We have the deepest sympathies for the victims and families of the horrific attack at Tops grocery store in Buffalo last year,” the Google statement reads. “Through the years, YouTube has invested in technology, teams, and policies to identify and remove extremist content. We regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices.”
The other companies named in the suit did not respond to requests from ABC News for comment.
RMA Armament told ABC News in May when it was included in the previous lawsuit, that it was surprised to be included in the lawsuit and the claims lack merit.
“RMA Armament products are intended for the protection of law-abiding private citizens, police departments and government partners,” RMA’s president, Blake Waldrop, said in a statement to ABC News. “We are surprised to be named in this lawsuit and believe the claim lacks merit. We do understand this has been a difficult and painful year for the families and the Buffalo community.”
Meta previously said that as of Aug. 15, 2022, it identified more than 1,151 “militarized social movements” mostly associated with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon and removed about 4,200 pages, 20,800 groups, 200 events, 59,800 Facebook profiles and 8,900 Instagram accounts.
“We continue to strengthen our enforcement by identifying additional militarized social movements and new terms associated with QAnon,” Meta said. “We’ll continue consulting experts to inform our strategy and will identify and remove content accordingly.”
Discord also released a statement in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, saying, “We extend our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families, and we will do everything we can to assist law enforcement in the investigation.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — For 19-year-old Sam Schwartz, arriving in Uvalde, Texas, “was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Getting off that bus and walking to that memorial, there were 21 crosses around the fountain,” he told ABC News, calling it the “most deeply disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Schwartz’s visit this week was part of a summer campaign organized by Patricia Oliver and her husband.
The Olivers’ cheerful and athletic son, 17-year-old Joaquin, was among the 17 people killed in the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting in 2018. Patricia Oliver and her husband have become outspoken advocates for gun control, and each summer, they ramp up their efforts to mark their son’s Aug. 4 birthday.
This summer, in honor of what would’ve been Joaquin’s 23rd birthday, they’re taking their mission on the road, visiting 23 cities across the country that have been impacted by gun violence, from Columbine, Colorado, to Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The campaign is called “Guacathon,” named after Joaquin’s nickname, “Guac.”
The tour aims to unite families of gun violence victims and offer a way for Americans “to get a closer look at what gun violence does to families, to communities,” Oliver told ABC News.
Through this unity, families impacted by gun violence could have a better chance at making the legislative reforms they’re looking for, added Schwartz.
This campaign is just as personal for Schwartz, whose cousin and best friend, 14-year-old Alex Schachter, was killed at Parkland.
“I would feel in a very depressed state if I chose not to do anything,” he said. “A lot of other people on this bus right now feel the same about the loved ones they lost.”
On Tuesday, the “Guacathon” bus stopped in Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in May 2022, in one of the latest school massacres to shake the nation.
“I’ve known these families for a year now,” Schwartz said. “Going to their community and seeing what they go through … that’s how you get to know someone — especially in this fight.”
Schwartz said he’s befriended Jazmin Cazares, a Uvalde teenager who also turned to activism after her 9-year-old sister, Jackie, was killed at Robb Elementary.
“It’s always nice to talk to kids my age, I feel like I can share my experiences,” Schwartz said.
After visiting the memorial, the “Guacathon” participants held an emotional rally where Uvalde families shared stories of their loved ones and urged people to vote for gun reform.
“Seeing all the families coming together, expressing their feelings … at the end of the gathering, they were relieved,” Oliver said. “That was our purpose — let Joaquin bring some relief, some kind of comfort.”
To Oliver, the most poignant moment was when she saw one grieving Uvalde mom, who seemed burned out in recent months, come to the rally and speak.
“She reminded me of me,” Oliver said. “Even though you see me on the road for so long, I struggle. When I come back to the hotel or I go back home, maybe I have to spend two days in bed.”
“She felt that need to express herself again. And I was so glad to hear from her,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — A sheep herder has survived after a bear woke him up and viciously attacked him in the middle of the night, authorities say.
The bear attack happened at approximately 1 a.m. Tuesday near a camp in the Weminuche Wilderness above Lemon Reservoir, located roughly 23 miles northeast of Durango, Colorado, according to a statement from Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
“The victim reported being woken up by a disturbance at the camp involving his sheep and a black bear,” CPW said. “The victim reported having fired a .30-30 caliber rifle at the bear before it attacked him.”
The unnamed 35-year-old man was a herder working for a permit holder of a sheep grazing allotment on the San Juan National Forest, authorities say, and he sustained bite wounds to his head as well as additional wounds to his left hand and arm, severe lacerations to his left hip area and scratches on his back during the attack.
“This is an unfortunate incident and we are thankful the victim was able to contact help to get emergency services deployed and that he was able to be extracted to receive necessary medical care,” said CPW Area Wildlife Manager Adrian Archuleta.
The herder was able to crawl to his tent and contact his cousin following the attack, according to CPW, and emergency services were able to locate and airlift him to Mercy Regional Medical Center where he received initial treatment before being flown to Grand Junction for surgery. The man’s current condition is unknown.
“CPW was notified of the attack at 4 a.m., and three wildlife officers were at the Transfer Park trailhead and on scene of the camp near the Burnt Timber Trail by 8:30 a.m.,” CPW said in a press release following the attack. “They quickly discovered a blood trail, the victim’s rifle and collected multiple DNA samples from the attack scene. CPW also discovered two dead sheep at the site with wounds consistent with bear depredation.”
Unsure if the bear had been hit by any of the rifle shots fired by the victim, CPW officers began to search for the animal involved in the attack and contacted an agent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) with a team of dogs to search for it.
“The dog team arrived at 5 p.m. and began to work the scene. Soon after, the hounds alerted a scent trail on the south side of the creek drainage and were immediately in pursuit of a bear suspected in the attack,” CPW said. “The hounds pursued the bear to the Florida River, and CPW officers followed in steep and treacherous terrain following the GPS signal from the collars of the dogs. At 10:53 p.m., the APHIS agent shot and killed the bear. Because the bear made contact with a human, it is classified under CPW policy as an attack and the agency’s policy is to euthanize the bear.”
The male bear — estimated to be approximately 8-years-old and weighing 250 pounds — had wounds in the chest area when it was killed but officers were unable to determine if they were due to gunshot wounds fired by the victim during the attack.
“This is a difficult part of the job,” Archuleta said. “But when it comes to injuries to humans as a result of a predator attack, human health and safety is our top priority.”
This is the first reported bear attack in Colorado in 2023 and the first in La Plata County since April 2021.
CPW collected evidence from the deceased bear and several DNA samples were sent to the CPW Wildlife Health Lab in Fort Collins for testing to compare it with samples collected at the attack scene, authorities said. Additionally, sheep wool was found in the bear’s stomach contents and the animal will be checked for disease, such as rabies, because the victim was bitten by the animal.
“Until we get results back from the lab regarding DNA testing, we can’t 100% confirm that this is the offending bear,” Archuleta said. “But based on the information we have at this point, we feel confident that it is the offending bear.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Secret Service and other Washington D.C., law enforcement agencies are looking for a hit-and-run driver, who killed a man and injured a teenager Wednesday after the suspect allegedly ran a red light during a traffic stop near the National Mall.
The incident took place around 1:30 p.m. after Secret Service agents stopped the driver of the vehicle at the corner of 17th Street NW and Constitution Avenue over an alleged expired registration, the Secret Service said.
The unidentified driver allegedly signaled he would slow down and pull over, but just before he stopped, he sped up, according to the Secret Service.
The driver allegedly crossed a red signal light and struck two people before driving off. The two victims were a 75-year-old man from Philadelphia and 13-year-old girl, the U.S. Park Police said.
The elder victim was pronounced dead at the hospital, and the teenager was treated at the scene and released, according to Park Police.
The Park Police is currently urging any person with information related to this investigation to contact the USPP tipline at (202) 379-4877 or uspp_tipline@nps.gov.
(NEW YORK) — A pair of dinosaur fossils of species that roamed the Earth millions of years ago are expected to garner millions in an upcoming auction.
The pterandon, described as one of the “largest” and “most fearsome species ever to roam Earth,” is predicted to fetch between $4 million and $6 million at auction, while the the fossils of the plesiosaur, the “best-preserved” of the species ever offered on the market, is expected to sell between $600,000 and $800,000, according to Sotheby’s.
The dinosaurs, “Horus” the pteranodon, nicknamed after the falcon-headed Egyptian god of kingship, protection and sky, and “Nessie” the plesiosaur, which shares the same nickname of the Loch Ness monster, are among the most feared predators to have ever lived on this planet, according to Sotheby’s.
The pteranodon, one of the largest known flying reptiles, lived in the late Cretaceous Period, around 100.5 million years ago to 66 million years ago, in North America in present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota and Alabama. The dinosaur would typically feed far from shore, sometimes hundreds of miles from the coastline, and would hunt aquatic prey by dipping or plunge diving.
In the air, pteranodons were superior over the feathered dinosaurs and birds during the Mesozoic Era, before going extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The pteranodon is currently displayed in Sotheby’s galleries with wings outstretched in a soaring position and is mounted on a custom armature rigged for ceiling suspension.
The specimen for sale has a displayed wingspan of approximately 20 feet and is believed to be a fully mature adult. It was discovered in 2002 in what was once the Western Interior Seaway, an inland sea that divided the continent of North America into two landmasses, known as Laramidia and Appalachia, according to Sotheby’s.
Almost all of the original fossil bones remain on the pteranodon’s remains and are essentially unrestored, meaning that artificial filler was not used to replace missing bone sections. This makes the fossil “ideal” for scientific study and transparency of authenticity, according to Sotheby’s.
The exception is the pteranodon’s skull, which utilized 3D restoration for accurate and aesthetic display of skull sections that were not found at the dig site. Those fragments were replaced with high-resolution 3D printed elements, primarily mirrored from the specimen itself, according to Sotheby’s.
The plesiosaur, a long-extinct marine reptile, lived in the lower Jurassic Period, about 200 million years ago, and is thought to have inspired the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, a mythical creature in Scottish folklore that was believed to live in a lake in the Scottish Highlands.
They evolved a unique body design not seen in other marine creatures, with a relatively small head and jaws packed with numerous long pointed teeth on a snake-like neck. While the body of the plesiosaur was rigid, it could swim rapidly using its big, powerful flippers.
Plesiosaurs were extremely fast predatory reptiles, and may have hunted fish, squid and other small prey.
The specimen for sale was discovered in the 1990s in Gloucestershire, England, and measures nearly 11 feet in length. It is the most valuable of its kind to ever be offered at auction and the best preserved to ever come to market, according to Sotheby’s.
“Both of these species have long played an important role in our collective imaginations, from inspiring ancient folklore and myths to appearing in Hollywood blockbusters and television shows,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, said in a statement. “They are each instantly recognizable and are remarkable witnesses to the incredible evolutionary power that has shaped life on Earth for eons.”
A public exhibition for the fossils will open on July 20, while the live auction will take place on July 26.
Last year, Sotheby’s auctioned the first-ever Gorgosaurus skeleton in July 2022 for $6.1 million, and the first sale of a standalone Tyrannosaurus rex skull for $6.1 million the following December.
“These specimens mark the next significant new additions to Sotheby’s history of groundbreaking Natural History sales,” the auction house said of the dinosaur fossils up for auction.
The auction is part of Sotheby’s “Geek Week,” which features sales that celebrate the history of science & technology, space exploration and the natural world from July 18 to July 27.
Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) — The federal government has launched a civil rights investigation into how Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles treats Black women who give birth at the hospital, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to ABC News.
“Maternal health is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration and one in which the HHS Office for Civil Rights is working on around the country to ensure equity and equality in health care,” the HHS spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Wednesday. “To protect the integrity of this ongoing investigation we have no further comment.”
Asked about the probe, a Cedars-Sinai spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday that the medical center is “concerned” about the racial disparities in maternal care and is working to address the issue.
“Cedars-Sinai clinicians, leaders and researchers have long been concerned with national disparities in Black maternal health, and we are proud of the work we’ve done (and continue to do) to address these issues in Los Angeles as well as at the state and national levels,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the medical center has made ongoing efforts to address the issue, including distributing more than $2.2 million in grants to nonprofits addressing racial disparities in maternal care, holding annual training on unconscious bias, conducting research to identify racial disparities and partnering with organizations and Black leaders to find solutions.
The medical center is working with the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative to develop and implement “standardized treatment protocols for the most common causes of maternal morbidity and mortality,” the spokesperson said.
The federal probe into Cedars-Sinai’s treatment of Black mothers comes over seven years after the April 2016 death of Kira Dixon Johnson, who died after she suffered internal bleeding following a cesarean section. The baby, Langston Johnson, survived.
The death of Kira Dixon Johnson sparked a national conversation about the racial disparities in Black maternal care.
Charles Johnson, Kira Johnson’s husband, told ABC News in a phone interview on Wednesday that the federal probe has been an “extremely long time coming.”
“I am extremely proud that HHS is going forward with this [investigation]; that they are taking it seriously and this has been I think an extremely long time coming,” Johnson said. “This investigation is a very important step toward accountability, transparency and ultimately, an important step in making sure that families from all walks of lives receive the safe, dignified, respectful care that they deserve not only in material health but healthcare as a whole.”
After his wife’s death, Johnson worked with former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., on legislation to prevent maternal deaths that was signed into law in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.
Johnson, while advocating for the legislation, shared his family’s story with ABC News in 2019.
He said that after seeing blood in his wife’s catheter after she delivered their second son, he pleaded with medical staff to provide her care, but his pleas were ignored for hours. She was taken into a procedure room 10 hours later and died of internal bleeding.
Johnson filed a medical malpractice lawsuit in March 2017 and a civil suit against the medical center in May 2022, alleging that racism played a role in the treatment that his wife received at Cedars-Sinai. Both lawsuits have since been “resolved,” Johnson said, but the terms were not shared publicly. Plaintiffs named in the 2017 lawsuit denied wrongdoing, per court documents.
ABC News has reached out to Cedars-Sinai for further comment.
In 2017 Johnson founded 4 Kira 4 Moms, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for legislation and resources to address the disparities in Black maternal care.
Johnson told ABC News on Wednesday that his wife’s story and the awareness the family has worked to raise about disparities in maternal health care played a role in holding Cedars-Sinai and other hospitals around the country accountable.
“My hope is that this will have an impact not only on what’s happening at Cedars-Sinai but other hospitals across the country,” he said.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 861 women died of maternal causes in the United States in 2020, compared to 754 in 2019. According to the CDC, more than 80 percent of those deaths were preventable and the data shows significant racial disparities, where “American Indian, Alaska Native, and Black women are two to three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than White women.”
Maternal mortality rates in the United States rose in 2021 and Black women continue to be most affected, according to a March 2023 report published by the National Vital Statistics System.
According to the report, non-Hispanic Black women died during and just after pregnancy at a rate 2.6 times that of non-Hispanic white women, and the gap is consistent with previous reports.
ABC News’ Lauren M. Cuénant contributed to this report.
