(NEW YORK) — It’s still “too soon to know” whether the Russian government was behind Monday’s cyberattacks on over a dozen U.S. airports, according to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
“We just don’t really understand fully who’s behind this, what the motivation was, certainly at what level — if any — Kremlin officials were aware. We just don’t know,” Kirby told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview Tuesday on Good Morning America.
(NEW YORK) — The Merced County District Attorney filed charges on Monday against a suspect in the alleged kidnapping and murder of four family members in California.
Charges against Jesus Manuel Salgado include four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, officials said.
“Special Circumstances allege that the murders were committed during the commission of a kidnapping and that there were multiple murders in the same case,” the statement said.
Salgado made his first court appearance in Merced Superior Court on Monday, ABC News’ Fresno station KSFN-TV reported. He’s accused of kidnapping four family members, who were later found dead in a rural almond orchard.
Eight-month-old Aroohi Dheri and her parents — 27-year-old mother Jasleen Kaur and 36-year-old father Jasdeep Singh — had allegedly been taken against their will from a business, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. The baby’s uncle, 39-year-old Amandeep Singh, was also allegedly kidnapped, the sheriff said.
The charges filed on Monday against Salgado — which also include arson and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person — carry a possible sentence of life in prison without parole, the district attorney’s office said on Monday.
“District Attorney Kimberly Lewis will not be making a decision regarding the death penalty in 2022,” the office said in a statement. “The People are preserving their right to pursue the death penalty in the future.”
Salgado’s brother, Alberto Salgado, has been arrested but not charged, KSFN reported.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The superintendent of a school district in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers earlier this year, has announced his plans to retire.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell — along with other school officials and local law enforcement — has faced intense scrutiny over the handling of the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Nearly 400 law enforcement officers rushed to the scene, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in allowing the 18-year-old shooter to remain active inside a classroom for more than 70 minutes before he was finally confronted and killed, according to a damning investigative report released by Texas lawmakers in July.
Harrell’s impending retirement was announced on Friday. In a statement posted on his wife’s Facebook account on Sunday, Harrell said the decision was “not made lightly and was made after much prayer and discernment.”
“My heart was broken on May 24th,” he added.
On Monday evening, after an hour-and-a-half of closed-door deliberation, the school board confirmed their acceptance of Harrell’s retirement and unanimously approved a motion to conduct a search for his replacement. Walsh Gallegos, an education-focused law firm with offices in Texas and New Mexico, will oversee the hiring process. Harrell has said he intends to stay on through the academic year until a new superintendent is named.
A crowd of people gathered outside before the start of Monday’s meeting to show their support for Harrell, with many holding up homemade signs, hugging him and cheering him on.
Harrell has worked for the school district since he started as a special education teacher in 1992, eventually working his way up to Uvalde High School principal and then following in his father’s footsteps in 2018 when he became superintendent.
Families of some of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims spoke at Monday’s meeting, telling the school board that they believe negligence and incompetence contributed to the massacre. They pleaded with Harrell directly to bring the tragedy-torn community together. They also expressed frustration at their fellow community members, saying they didn’t receive as much support after the shooting as Harrell has this week.
“I’m disgusted with this community,” said a tearful Kimberly Rubio, the mother of 10-year-old student Lexi Rubio, who was among those killed.
“We can’t get people to care enough to come to the school board meetings, the city council meetings or anything else,” said Brett Cross, the guardian of 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia.
Cross had been staging a sit-in protest outside the school district’s administration building until Friday.
After voting on Harrell’s retirement, school board members continued with other items on the agenda for Monday’s meeting as dozens of people in the audience got up and left.
“What happened to accountability?” one Uvalde resident said on their way out. “We’re not getting none.”
Last week, the school district suspended its entire police force. Some officers employed with the police department were placed on leave, while others were reassigned. The school district also fired a recently hired officer who had been a Texas state trooper on the scene at Robb Elementary School when the shooting took place and was under internal investigation for her actions that day.
(SAVANNAH, Ga.) — Over 40 FBI agents are on the ground in Savannah, Georgia, to help search for a toddler who mysteriously vanished nearly one week ago, police said.
Quinton Simon, 20 months old, has been missing since Oct. 5, the Chatham County Police Department said.
Chatham County police requested FBI assistance the day Quinton was reported missing and authorities are continuing “aggressive efforts to find him,” Chatham County police chief Jeff Hadley said at a news conference Monday.
Quinton was last seen at his Savannah home around 6 a.m. Wednesday by his mother’s boyfriend, the chief said. After Quinton’s mother woke up, she reported him missing around 9:40 a.m., he said.
Police said last week that the case didn’t appear to involve a custody dispute.
Hadley added Monday that police have had contact with Quinton’s biological father and said he’s not a suspect.
Authorities have “conducted multiple interviews, executed multiple search warrants and we’ve canvassed numerous specific geographic areas,” Hadley said Monday.
Hadley stressed that he’s committed to finding answers and finding Quinton.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — Eight-year-old Cooper Roberts, who was shot and partially paralyzed in the Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooting, is “overjoyed” to return to school with his classmates for the first time since the attack, his family said in a new statement Monday.
Cooper was enjoying the 4th of July parade with his family when gunfire broke out and he was shot in the back. Seven people were killed and Cooper was among dozens who were injured. The suspected gunman was arrested.
Cooper, now in a wheelchair, got to join his twin brother, Luke, at school this week, in what his parents call “an incredible milestone.”
Jason and Keely Roberts said they cried in the parking lot as their 8-year-old son wheeled himself into school.
They were so impressed to find that Cooper “loved every minute” of his return, the family said. Cooper told them: “If I had not been shot and paralyzed and had to be in a wheelchair, it would have been a perfect school day, but it was a really great day! I loved it!'”
But, his parents added, Cooper “is terribly sad about not getting to run around with his friends in the field at recess. He is heartbroken about not getting to play on the jungle gym, hang on the monkey bars, slide down the slide, swing on the swings, kick the ball. He can’t be there all day or even every day.”
“Yet, Cooper continues to affirm for us that his spirit, his soul, his ‘Cooperness’ remains,” they continued. “The hideous, evil act did not take that from him because he won’t let it. He is always going to be more concerned about others than he is for himself, find the positive in any situation, still be ‘the sporty kid,’ and will always love his family and friends fiercely.”
The family added that Cooper’s recovery is ongoing and his “transition back to school will be slow.”
“The anxiety about all of the countless unknowns he will encounter … the endless ‘what if’ questions he thinks about … these run across his mind and ours literally all day long, like an endless reel of worry,” the family said. “We all are learning how to cope with these components of our new reality.”
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez has stepped down after a recording emerged of her making racist and offensive comments about fellow council members.
Martinez will remain as a member of the city council, but will relinquish her leadership role.
(NEW YORK) — Some of the nation’s largest airports have been targeted for cyberattacks Monday by an attacker within the Russian Federation, a senior official briefed confirmed to ABC News.
Importantly, the systems targeted do not handle air traffic control, internal airline communications and coordination, or transportation security.
“It’s an inconvenience,” the source said.
The attacks have resulted in targeted “denial of public access” to public-facing web domains that report airport wait times and congestion.
The attacks were first reported around 3 a.m. ET when the Port Authority notified the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that the LaGuardia Airport system had been hit. LaGuardia has been restored, but other airports around the country have subsequently been targeted.
The websites for Des Moines International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Chicago O’Hare International Airport appeared impacted Monday morning.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport reported around 10:30 a.m. ET that its site is back up and running and that “at no time were operations at the airport impacted.”
“Early this morning, the FlyLAX.com website was partially disrupted,” LAX said in a statement to ABC News. “The service interruption was limited to portions of the public facing FlyLAX.com website only. No internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions.”
Engineers and programmers are actively working to close backdoors that allowed the attacks and shoring up more critical computer infrastructure.
ABC’s Pierre Thomas traveled to Chicago for an exclusive conversation with police Superintendent David Brown as part of ABC’s continuing coverage of guns in America. – John Parkinson/ABC News
(CHICAGO) — Over one recent weekend in Chicago, two children under the age of 10 became victims of the city’s rampant gun violence.
Mateo Zastro, 3, was shot and killed while in the car with his mother and siblings in an apparent road rage incident on Sept. 30. Then 7-year-old Legend Barr was shot and wounded as his family arrived at church on Oct. 2.
ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas spent a day with Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown for an inside look at the department’s efforts to curb gun violence — incidents affecting many Chicagoans — throughout the city.
“It’s the most complex policing landscape ever in this country’s history. We are making progress, but the complexities make it such that it is so fragile,” Brown told Thomas. “The ebbs and flows of violence are persistent.”
While shootings like those that killed Zastro and wounded Barr continue, the violence does seem to be ebbing: An ABC News/Gun Violence Archives analysis of the nation’s 50 largest cities shows homicides are down nearly 5% from last year after two years of pandemic-era increases.
In Chicago, shootings are down 20% through the end of summer and homicides have fallen 16%. That means 101 fewer people were shot this year than last.
What’s behind the small but encouraging decline? The Chicago police credit both community engagement as well as a new, more surgical deployment of officers to crime scenes after an analysis by the department showed half of all shootings and homicides occurred on 55 “beats,” or areas that are roughly the size of a block.
According to Brown, police have also been taking an average of 12,000 guns off Chicago’s streets every year — including “ghost guns,” which are unregistered firearms that can be assembled from at-home kits.
But Brown told Thomas that’s likely only 10% of the illegal firearms out there. “I don’t think we’re even chipping away,” Brown said.
Police say they have another powerful tool in their investigations, however: The department uses a system called “ShotSpotter,” where sound sensors are placed throughout Chicago to detect and locate gunfire.
“It’s like the intelligence network for how we respond to crime, how we solve crime,” Brown said. “I think more importantly, this is one of our major linchpins for how we prevent crime.”
Thomas had rare access inside the department’s technology center, where officers comb through surveillance camera footage from businesses and homes near crime scenes to identify and track down suspects. Brown said using such footage also protects witnesses who are “fearful to come forward,” while still helping solve cases.
In 2021, the department said it had cleared about half of its homicide cases, a nearly 20-year high, though a quarter of those did not result in prosecutors bringing charges, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
Brown stressed to Thomas that gun violence was a multi-pronged issue.
“We’re talking about policing, but this is about economic development,” he said. “This is about poverty. This is about, in many instances, race.”
Community investment and engagement
Brown touted Chicago’s $1.4 billion investment to revitalize South and West side communities, which are disproportionately affected by crime.
“Our impoverished communities in Chicago here, we just did not have the commitment,” he said.
Brown explained his belief in economic development as a crime-fighting tactic by comparing his city to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood.
“You look at Harlem in New York today versus Harlem in New York 30 years ago, where you see actually some gentrification, but you see, really, a commitment to economic development. And you see Harlem much safer than it was 30 years ago,” Brown said.
“You did not have that here in Chicago,” he continued. “We’re starting to see that commitment now. So that we can have that sustained decline, because we are investing in affordable housing. We’re investing in jobs, we’re investing in mental health services and other drug treatments, social services.”
Brown showed Thomas what he says is an example of how that support has made an impact, visiting an area once known for being a crime hotspot that’s now been turned into a basketball court and green space for the community.
“Instead of it being an attraction to hand-to-hand drug transactions, it’s an attraction to community engagement with each other and with police,” Brown said.
With decreased crime and increased investment, the area can foster something more important, the superintendent said.
“Hope, hope, people have hope. People who have hope can have dreams of a better life. People who have dreams of a better life are not attracted to violence,” Brown said. “That’s what economic development does — different than what policing does.”
Working to build trust
Community engagement is another strategy Chicago police have been employing, one Brown told Thomas is key to gaining trust in communities of color, especially in light of high-profile police killings like George Floyd’s murder by an officer in Minneapolis.
“How difficult has it been?” Thomas asked of forging bonds between police and those they are assigned to protect.
“[It] made it more difficult to even be heard,” Brown said.
He also acknowledged the role race plays in perspectives on crime and policing.
“The demographics are what they are, in terms of people who look like you and me, who are shooters and are victims,” Thomas said. “How, as a Black man and as a law enforcement executive, do you balance how you feel about that?”
Brown said: “I think the first step for me personally is to never forget where I’ve come from.”
ABC News’ Jack Date, Quinn Owen and John Parkinson contributed to this report.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde, Texas, school district — still facing withering criticism over its police department’s failings both during the May 24 elementary school massacre and since — announced the suspension of the entire district police force on Friday.
Hours later, Uvalde school district Superintendent Hal Harrell announced he would be retiring. In a Facebook statement, he said retirement was “completely my choice” and that he’ll stay on through the year until a new superintendent is named. The transition will be discussed in a closed session of the school board on Monday.
Amid the police department suspension, the district said it’s requested more Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to be stationed on campuses and at extracurricular activities, adding, “We are confident that staff and student safety will not be compromised during this transition.”
The length of the school district police suspension is not clear.
Lt. Miguel Hernandez, who was tasked with leading the department in the fallout from the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers, and Ken Mueller, the UCISD’s director of student services, were placed on administrative leave.
Hernandez acknowledged in a law enforcement communication in August that he’d received formal notification from DPS that an officer applying to Uvalde’s school police force was under investigation for her response at Robb Elementary.
Mueller has elected to retire, according to the school district.
“Officers currently employed will fill other roles in the district,” the school district said. According to the district’s website, that includes four officers and one security guard.
Victims’ families, led by Brett Cross, guardian of 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia, had been holding a round-the-clock vigil outside the school district headquarters calling for change. The families are now commending Friday’s police department announcement.
“We’ve gotten a little bit of accountability,” an emotional Cross told ABC News. “So, it’s a win, and we don’t get very many of those.”
Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter, Lexi, was killed at Robb, said the department suspension was “what we’ve been asking for — it’s more than we’ve been asking for.”
“They don’t know how to hire people, they don’t know how to vet officers,” she told ABC News. “They haven’t provided proper training.”
Gloria Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter, Jackie, was killed, called the department suspension “bittersweet.”
“It’s a win — a small win,” she told ABC News. “We’re not done.”
Berlinda Arreola, the grandmother of victim Amerie Jo Garza, added, “This is the perfect example of why we didn’t stop.”
“We are going to continue because there are other children that still go to school here. We have a lot of siblings of the deceased that go here,” she said. “We want to make sure our kids are secure and protected. And we want to make sure that the people protecting them are willing to protect them.”
The department suspension comes one day after the firing of Crimson Elizondo, the officer who was hired by Uvalde’s school district despite being under investigation for her conduct as a DPS trooper during the massacre.
Elizondo was the first DPS member to enter the hallway at Robb after the shooter gained entry. The trooper did not bring her rifle or vest into the school, according to the results of an internal review by DPS that was detailed to ABC News.
As a result of potential failure to follow standard procedures, the trooper was among seven DPS personnel whose conduct is now being investigated by the agency’s inspector general. The seven were suspended, however, by Elizondo resigning from DPS to work for the Uvalde schools she was no longer subject to any internal discipline or penalties. Her conduct — if found to be in violation of law or policy — would still be included in the final report from the DPS inspector general.
The school district said in Friday’s statement that “decisions concerning” the school district police department have been pending results of investigations from the Texas Police Chiefs Association and the private investigative firm JPPI Investigations, but “recent developments have uncovered additional concerns with department operations.”
Results of the JPPI investigation “will inform future personnel decisions” and the Texas Police Chiefs Association’s review “will guide the rebuilding of the department and the hiring of a new Chief of Police,” the statement said.
The school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, was fired in August.
ABC News’ Patrick Linehan and Olivia Osteen contributed to this report.
(SAN ANTONIO) — The San Antonio Police Department fired a police officer after bodycam footage showed him shooting a teenager eating a hamburger in a McDonald’s parking lot in Texas.
The 17-year-old, identified by police as Erik Cantu, was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized.
The department terminated Officer James Brennand on Wednesday over the incident due to his actions, which violated department tactics, training and procedures, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus.
According to police, Officer Brennand was responding to a disturbance call on Oct. 2 when he noticed a vehicle he thought had fled from him the night before during an attempted stop.
The footage shows the officer approaching the car and opening the door, when he sees Cantu eating a hamburger alongside a female passenger and orders him out.
Police said the officer reported the car door hit him as the teen started to reverse the car.
Bodycam video shows the officer firing 10 times at the moving vehicle before chasing after it on foot.
Police said that the passenger in the vehicle was not injured during the incident.
In a statement to ABC News on Sunday, Cantu’s family, through his attorney, said the teenager is on life support and fighting to stay alive.
“We thank you for the heartfelt thoughts on the status of Erik’s recovery. We will inform you that he’s still in critical condition and literally fighting for his life every minute of the day as his body has endured a tremendous amount of trauma,” Cantu’s attorney, Brian Powers, said. “He is still on life support. We need all the blessing we can receive at this time. We kindly ask for privacy beyond this update as this is a delicate moment in our lives and we are focusing on one thing and that’s getting him home.”
The San Antonio Police Officer’s Association had no comment immediately following Brennand’s dismissal from the force, but in a new statement to ABC News, the president of the union, Danny Diaz, said that the organization will not represent Brennand because he had not completed his 1-year probationary period for new officers at the time of the shooting.
“New police recruits must complete a 1-year probationary period before becoming eligible for benefits provided by the union,” Diaz said. “We understand the San Antonio Police Department’s decision to terminate Officer James Brennand but will refrain from further comment until a full investigation is completed.”
ABC News’ Nick Kerr and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
