(PICKFORD, Mich.) — Seann Pietila the 19-year-old who allegedly subscribed to a neo-Nazi ideology, was indicted by a grand jury — and the indictment offers more details about what Pietila allegedly said about carrying out a mass attack.
“I won’t be taken alive, I’ll make sure of that,” Pietila allegedly wrote in an Instagram message to another unnamed user. “Remember ‘Heil Hitler!’ boom red mist.”
Authorities initially charged Pietela, 19, of Pickford, Michigan, via criminal complaint with transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure another.
When they searched his home in Michigan, he allegedly had ammunition, magazines, a shotgun, a rifle, a pistol, various knives, firearms accessories, tactical vests, mask, a Nazi flag, a ghillie suit, gas masks and military sniper and survival manuals. Also seized was Pietela’s phone, and in the Notes app, he had identified a particular synagogue in East Lansing, a date, and a list of equipment.
Court documents unsealed on Wednesday allege that Pietila wanted to carry out his shooting online for people “so they could screen record and send it to other people.”
He also allegedly went into detail about which guns he were to use and why and expressed his disdain for Jewish persons.
In communicating with users on Instagram, he allegedly sent pictures that showed Nazi paraphernalia and were supportive of the ideology of the New Zealand shooter.
In 2019, a shooter in New Zealand killed dozens of people in back-to-back shootings at two mosques.
“The crimes alleged in this indictment have made members of our community feel unsafe as they practice their religion. No American should fear engaging in their constitutionally protected rights,” said James A. Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan. “I appreciate the coordinated efforts of our state and local law enforcement partners to disrupt this defendant before he could put his plans into action.”
Pietila’s mother, Brittany Stob, told ABC News earlier this month her son began consuming antisemitic content online when he was isolated during the pandemic and didn’t have access to the mental health treatment he needed.
“He said some stuff online that he shouldn’t have,” she added.
But Stob asserts she believes her son is not violent and was not truly planning an attack.
“He’s a good kid,” she said. “He would never hurt anybody.”
(HOUSTON) — Nearly 9,800 extra live births occurred in Texas the year after a strict abortion ban went into effect in 2021, a new analysis found.
In the study, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a team from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health looked at available data of live births from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. between 2016 and 2022.
Next, they used statistical modeling to estimate what birth counts in Texas would have looked like had S.B.8 — the law banning nearly all abortions after 6 weeks — not passed.
Researchers estimated 287,289 live births in Texas would have occurred from April 2022 to December 2022 had the abortion ban not gone into effect in September 2021. The actual number of births during this period was 297,088, meaning there were 9,799 more live births.
In 2021, Texas lawmakers passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, S.B.8 , which bans abortion after six weeks gestation, before many women know they are pregnant.
S.B.8 also allows any private citizen to sue anyone who performs an abortion or assists a pregnant person in obtaining the procedure.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Texas had a trigger law go into effect in August 2022, banning abortion at nearly all stages, and making it a felony, punishable by up to life in prison, with an exception to save the life of a pregnant person.
“There just are a lot of questions around what’s going to happen to actual fertility, whether people are going to be able to get an abortion or not,” co-lead author Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor in the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, told ABC News.
Gemmill said the findings highlight how thousands of people may not have had a choice but to continue an unwanted or unsafe pregnancy due to the ban, and there may be even more who can’t after the Supreme Court decision, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“At the time that this Texas ban was passed, people could still go out of state to the neighboring states,” Gemmill said. “But since Dobbs, we know that all of those neighboring states have also banned abortion and so there’s the question of whether that impact is going to be larger now that you have fewer states where people can access abortion.”
Although studies have shown there was an increase in abortions provided to Texans in other states, the team said the findings of its analysis suggest not everyone who might have wanted an abortion was able to get one after S.B.8. passed.
This is not the first study to examine the effects of Texas’s abortion ban. A 2022 study found abortions in or around Texas fell by 38% the month after the ban went into effect.
Gemmill said the analysis did not go into the effects of being denied access to abortion, but research has shown it can have a serious impact on physical and mental health.
“Even though we’re not directly measuring the negative consequences of the study, we know from other studies … that people who are denied wanted abortions face a host of negative consequences,” she said. “We need to contextualize what these births mean. It’s nuanced.”
(WASHINGTON) — A man with a Jan. 6-related warrant was arrested near former President Barack Obama’s Washington, D.C., house, and he had guns and ammunition in his car, multiple law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Taylor Taranto, 37, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department and charged with Fugitive from Justice, pursuant to an arrest warrant, according to a statement from the agency. The officials did not specify what the warrant was for.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that they were concerned he was coming to the area and had a Be On the Lookout, or BOLO, order out for his arrest. He was livestreaming just before he was arrested at 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon, according to sources.
Authorities who searched his car found multiple firearms, ammunition and material to make at least one Molotov cocktail, according to law enforcement sources.
Taranto wasn’t in the protective bubble of the former president and had not gotten past any checkpoints, law enforcement sources stressed.
Taranto didn’t make any direct threats to the former president or mention him by name, but he did suggest he had weapons in his comments on his livestream, according to law enforcement sources.
There is no active threat to the community, and the incident remains under investigation, according to MPD’s statement.
The story was first reported by CBS News.
Taranto is a defendant named in a civil lawsuit brought by the widow of MPD officer Jeffrey Smith, who died by suicide following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
The complaint, brought by Smith’s widow in August 2021, identified Taranto as having entered the Capitol and alleged that he aided another rioter, David Walls-Kaufman, in attacking Smith as he was trying to remove rioters from the building.
Walls-Kaufman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense after federal prosecutors acknowledged they couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had assaulted Smith, and he was sentenced to two months in jail earlier this month.
It is not clear why Taranto has not been charged. He has claimed in the civil court proceedings, however, that he was in the mob acting as an “established 1st amendment press agent” that covers Antifa and Black Lives Matter “provocateurs.”
He has otherwise denied aiding in Smith’s assault. The civil lawsuit remains active after being assigned to a new judge in February.
(HOUSTON) — At least 13 people have died from heat-related illness in Texas, The Associated Press reported.
Ten deaths due to heat illness were reported in Webb County and another death occurred in Galveston County in the past two weeks, local officials told ABC News, as the Southern U.S. grapples with a weeks-long heat wave and triple-digit temperatures.
Emergency room visits in Texas between June 18 and June 24 have spiked compared to the same time last year as the state battles an early onset of extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The region averaged 837 heat-related visits per 100,000 ER visits compared to 639 visits per 100,000 emergency department visits during the same period in 2022, CDC data shows.
Much of the South is experiencing waves of extreme heat far earlier in the season than normal. This has been particularly true of Texas, where temperatures have regularly exceeded 100 degrees for several weeks.
On Wednesday, temperatures in Texas reached 107 degrees in Corpus Christi, 108 degrees in Austin and 109 degrees in Houston.
On Monday, Laredo and San Angelo tied their all-time recorded hottest temperatures at 115 degrees and 111 degrees, respectively.
This level of heat in Texas isn’t considered novel but it typically isn’t seen until July and August. When Houston exceeded the 100-degree mark on Wednesday for the first time this season, it did so a full month earlier than it usually does, records show.
The death toll is likely to rise as the scorching temperatures continue, officials said.
Across the country, heat indexes are measuring in the triple digits, with states including New Mexico and Oklahoma all under heat alerts on Thursday.
Human-caused climate change is making near-record heat in parts of Texas at least five times more likely, according to an analysis by the nonprofit climate change research organization Climate Central.
Heat is the number-one weather-related killer in the world, with more than 600 people dying from heat-related illnesses every year in the U.S., according to the CDC.
The U.S. could soon be paying an additional $1 billion in healthcare expenses each summer due to forecasts of continuing waves of extreme heat in the near future, according to a new report by Virginia Commonwealth University and the think tank Center for American Progress.
An increase in prolonged periods of high heat has coincided with the increase in heat-related illness, the report found.
If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, Americans could experience on average up to 53 days every year in which temperatures exceed 95 degrees, according to a report by the consulting firm ICF International.
ABC News’ Gina Sunseri, Flor Tolentino, Jennifer Watts and Tracy Wholf contributed to this report.
(HOUSTON) — A grand jury has declined to indict rapper Travis Scott and five others in connection with the deadly crowd crush at the 2021 Astroworld Festival in Houston, prosecutors said.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said the grand jury on Thursday returned no bills on all criminal charges related to the deaths of the 10 spectators.
“The grand jury found that no crime did occur, that no single individual was criminally responsible,” Ogg said during a press briefing.
Ten people died, including a 9-year-old boy, after the crowd rushed toward the stage during headline and festival founder Travis Scott’s set. Thousands were injured, according to attorneys representing people suing Scott, promoter Live Nation and dozens of other companies.
According to Houston Police and witness accounts, a wave of tens of thousands of people moved toward the stage when Scott — and later rapper Drake — appeared. Concert attendees said they were pushed into one another from all sides. As the crowd pressed its way forward, some began to fall, pass out and get trampled by others in the audience. The 10 victims died from compression asphyxia and were located in the same general area, police said.
“One of the key contributing factors to the deaths was the overpopulation and resulting compaction in this quadrant,” Houston Detective Michael Barrow told reporters during the press briefing. “This was not a crowd stampede, this was not a stage rush, this was not a crowd surge. This was a slow compaction or constriction into this quadrant, resulting in collapses within the crowd.”
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said police completed their criminal investigation into the incident last week, calling it a “very complex investigation.” The investigation will be publicly released, he said.
In addition to Scott, the grand jury weighed whether any criminal charges should be filed against festival manager Brent Silberstein; John Junell, with Live Nation; Shawna Boardman and Seyth Boardman, with crowd management company Contemporary Services Corporation; and Emily Ockenden with production company BWG, according to court documents.
Alycia Harvey, a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, said possible charges under consideration were limited to crimes that can be committed by omission, such as child endangerment. Charges of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide would have needed an “act of causation” to be sustained in front of the grand jury, she said.
An attorney for Scott called the 19-month investigation “one of the most exhaustive investigations in the history of the Houston Police Department” in remarks to reporters Thursday.
The case has “had a huge impact” on Scott’s career, the attorney, Kent Schaffer, said, including lost sponsorships and endorsements.
“As long as there was a pending criminal investigation, it makes it extremely difficult to get insured,” Schaffer said. “Now he’s going to be able to pick back up where he left off, which is great because, you know, in this country everybody’s presumed innocent.”
Following the concert, Scott released a statement on Twitter, saying, “I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld festival.”
In an extensive interview with radio host Charlamagne Tha God in December 2021, the rapper said he was unaware of the injuries and fatalities among fans until after his performance was over.
When asked at the time if he feels responsible for the tragedy, Scott said, “I have a responsibility to figure out what happened here. I have a responsibility to figure out the solution.”
In a statement to ABC News in the days after the concert, Live Nation said it was working with law enforcement to get answers.
“We continue to support and assist local authorities in their ongoing investigation so that both the fans who attended and their families can get the answers they want and deserve, and we will address all legal matters at the appropriate time,” Live Nation said.
Scott and event organizers have been hit with litigation in the wake of the tragedy.
Hundreds of lawsuits filed against the event organizers, managers and performers were consolidated and are being handled by one judge.
A case brought by the family of Axel Acosta, a 21-year-old who was killed in the crush, settled last year under undisclosed terms.
The family of Ezra Blount, the 9-year-old killed, have also sued Scott and other event organizers.
The attorney for his family, Robert C. Hilliard, said in a statement Thursday that “criminal and civil accountability are critical to be sure that those responsible for the loss of innocent lives are made to not only understand the permanent devastation they caused these families — but to show the rule of law applies to the powerful, to the well connected.”
The grand jury’s decision “has no impact on the many civil lawsuits pending,” Ogg said.
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s original defamation claim against him, ruling his arguments lacked merit.
Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, sued Trump in November 2019 over comments he made shortly after Carroll publicly accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. In those statements Trump denied the accusation, said Carroll was “not my type,” and suggested she fabricated her accusation for ulterior and improper purposes, including to increase sales of her then-forthcoming book.
“Regarding the ‘story’ by E. Jean Carroll, claiming she once encountered me at Bergdorf Goodman 23 years ago. I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” Trump posted on Twitter.
Trump argued the case should be dismissed because he is immune from her claim since he was president at the time.
“His theory fails for two reasons,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote Thursday. “First, absolute presidential immunity is not the only type of absolute immunity that raises separation of powers concerns. Second, and more importantly, ‘separation of powers’ is not a magic phrase that automatically transforms any issue it touches into an impediment to the exercise of subject matter jurisdiction.”
Kaplan also rejected Trump’s claim that his denials were part of his official duties as president.
“Mr. Trump did not merely deny Ms. Carroll’s accusation of sexual assault. Instead, he accused Ms. Carroll of lying about him sexually assaulting her in order to increase sales of her book, gain publicity, and/or carry out a political agenda,” Kaplan wrote. “Even assuming that the president’s decision publicly to deny an accusation of personal wrongdoing comes within the outer perimeter of his official duties, it does not follow that the president’s own personal attacks on his or her accuser equally fall within that boundary.”
The civil trial is scheduled for January.
In May, Carroll prevailed in a second lawsuit that alleged defamation and battery. A jury found Trump liable for both and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages.
In a separate filing Thursday, Trump’s attorneys argued he deserved either a new trial or a downward modification of the damage payment.
“Consequently, the Jury’s $2 million award was clearly motivated by sympathy rather than by evidence of harm, and the Court should grant a new trial as to compensatory damages for the battery claim, or grant a remittitur of such award to an amount no more than $400,000,” defense attorney Joe Tacopina wrote.
Trump has also filed a defamation suit against Carroll for continuing to accuse him of rape after the jury in May ruled that he was liable for sexually assaulting her but not raping her as she claimed.
Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(PARKLAND, Fla.) — The former Parkland, Florida, resource officer accused of failing to confront the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter who killed 14 students and three staff members in 2018 has been found not guilty on all counts.
Scot Peterson, 60, was charged in 2019 with multiple counts of child neglect after an internal investigation found that he retreated while students were under attack. Prosecutors accused Peterson, a 30-year veteran of the Broward Sheriff’s Office, of making a false statement, claiming that he did not hear gunshots.
Peterson could be seen sobbing with his head on the table after the verdicts were read by the judge.
Peterson, who was fired after the probe report was released, had pleaded not guilty.
After the verdict, Peterson told reporters the only one person to blame for the tragedy was “that monster,” referring to the gunman.
“In any type of incident, do your due diligence and look at the facts,” Peterson said.
Kristen Gomes, an assistant state attorney at the Broward County State Attorney’s Office, said during closing arguments that Peterson didn’t do anything to search for the shooter and confront him.
“When the defendant ran, he left behind an unrestricted killer who spent the next four minutes and 15 seconds wandering the halls at his leisure. Because when Scot Peterson ran, he left them in a building with a predator unchecked,” she said.
Mark Eiglarsh, Peterson’s attorney, argued that his client was being made a “sacrificial lamb.” Eiglarsh said in closing arguments that Peterson couldn’t accurately detect where the gunshots came from and neither could several other students and teachers.
“He did everything he could,” Eiglarsh told reporters after the verdict.
Peterson faced up to 95 years in state prison and the loss of his pension if convicted on all charges.
When asked if Peterson was considering a civil case against the police, Eiglarsh declined to answer.
“We’ll look into everything after the fact,” he said.
Linda Beigel Schulman,, the mother of slain Parkland teacher Scott Beigel, slammed Peterson for telling reporters that he got his life back following the verdict.
“Well bravo for getting your life back, I cannot get my son’s life back,” she told ABC News Live.
Beigel Schulman said that even though the jury found Peterson not legally responsible for the deaths, she found him morally responsible for her son’s killing.
Peterson told reporters that he was open to talking to the victim’s family members, but Beigel Schulman said that was one offer she wouldn’t accept.
“I am not going to speak to him and absolve him of his moral guilt,” she said. “No way.”
The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, a former student at the high school, was sentenced to life in prison last year after pleading guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
(UVALDE, Texas) — In the 13 months after the Uvalde elementary school mass shooting, resources from across the state flowed into the small Texas town, including the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas.
Now, the bereavement center is permanently establishing its roots in Uvalde, recognizing the irreversible impact loss can have on children.
“Play is the language of children,” Dr. Marian Sokol, CEO of the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, told ABC News. “Sometimes they can’t find the words, but they can create the words.”
The nonprofit from San Antonio, Texas serves children and families grieving the death of a loved one, focusing on therapy through expressive arts.
The center has been in four temporary locations throughout the city, including a space from St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, which is now the lender of their permanent building. Rev. Michael Marsh of St. Philip’s told ABC News that the parish immediately wanted to help the community in a tangible way after the shooting.
“I think about the building, what it used to look like and what it looks like now, and itself is a symbol of hope and transformation,” Marsh told ABC News.
“In some ways, the grief will never go away, we won’t get over it but through it,” said Marsh. “There will be a time that life will get larger.”
The permanent space also includes enhanced security measures in its construction, including ballistic glass and automatic locks on the doors. Sokol hopes to help reduce the high levels of anxiety her team sees in their clients and bring them methods to cope.
The center will include private counseling offices, rooms for art therapy and an outdoor space.
The Children’s Bereavement Center currently has two full-time counselors and three interns, serving roughly 100 children, as they continue to search for additional counselors to hire.
“So much of what we’re seeing now is really trauma,” said Sokol. “Sometimes it takes years to get through the trauma. But being able to put that into a positive train of thought in terms of things that they can do in life to honor and respect and show that the continued love and the continued memorializing of the children.”
All services are provided at no cost to families. The cost for interior structure and design is compensated through donations by several communities in the greater San Antonio neighborhoods.
A dedication ceremony for the new facility was hosted on June 29.
(BOSTON) — Federal prosecutors in Boston are dropping charges against two parents in the college admissions scandal known as Varsity Blues, according to a court filing Thursday.
The decision followed a ruling from the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacating the convictions of Gamal Abdelaziz and John Wilson who were charged with making payments to university accounts so employees would secure their children’s admission as athletic recruits.
Dismissing the charges is a rare blemish for prosecutors who won convictions in about 50 cases tied to the widespread scheme to get kids into college through bribery and cheating.
The two wealthy fathers – Wilson, a former Staples and Gap executive and Abdelaziz, a former Wynn Resorts executive – were found guilty as charged in 2021 in the first trial stemming from the scheme.
While the two men argued they thought their payments to scheme mastermind Rick Singer were legitimate donations, the jury agreed with prosecutors they amounted to bribes to buy their kids’ way into the University of Southern California as athletic recruits even though the kids were nowhere near varsity material.
Abdelaziz paid $300,000, Wilson $220,000, in a case that raised questions about privilege and reaffirmed suspicions about the fairness of the college admissions process.
The trial featured audio recordings of phone calls between Singer, who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate, and each of the men that prosecutors said proved the dads knew this was a scheme.
“Sabrina is loving USC!” Abdelaziz greeted Singer on one phone call when Singer informed him, “I’m not going to tell the IRS that your $300,000 was paid to Donna Heinel at USC to get Sabrina into school even though she wasn’t a legitimate basketball player at that level.”
“You’re okay with that right?” Singer asked. “Of course,” Abdelaziz replied.
“I’m going to say your $300,000 payment was made to our foundation to help underserved kids,” Singer said. “I just want to make sure you’re okay with that.”
“I am,” Abdelaziz said.
In reversing, the First Circuit agreed with the defense that admission slots cannot be considered property fraud because the slots are not property and if USC was the victim, as the government alleged, there’s no way the payments could be bribes because “a payment to an alleged victim cannot constitute a bribe as a matter of law.”
“In short, the government has brought a property fraud case that has nothing to do with property; a bribery case that has nothing to do with bribery; and an aiding and abetting case where the alleged principal is the government’s own cooperating witness,” the defense argued before the appellate court.
(NEW YORK) — The flagship Tiffany & Co. store in Manhattan caught fire on Thursday, months after the renovated jewelry store’s grand reopening, the New York City Fire Department said.
An underground transformer caught fire Thursday morning, engulfing the store’s iconic Midtown building in grey smoke.
The FDNY said no smoke made it into the newly refurbished Tiffany’s store.
The store reopened in April after renovations that took more than three years to complete, according to a company announcement and a government filing.
The fire department said the call came in at 9:38 a.m., before the store opens at 10 a.m., for a fire in an electrical vault.
Two people suffered minor injuries, officials said. Nearly 100 people were evacuated from the building on Fifth Avenue.
ConEd is currently repairing underground electrical equipment.
Tiffany’s did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
A Tiffany’s press announcement in April celebrating the renovated store called it “one of the largest stores in Manhattan.”
The cost of the renovation was not immediately available but in a 2020 financial filing the company said it would require “significant capital investment.”
Revenue at the flagship store represented less than 10% of worldwide sales over each of the three years preceding 2020, the filing said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
