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(LOS ANGELES) — Former Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez announced Wednesday she has resigned her seat, amid demands for her to step down after a recording emerged of her making racist and offensive comments about fellow council members.

In a lengthy statement, Martinez, who served on the council for the past nine years, thanked her staff, saying, “I’m sorry that we’re ending it this way. This is no reflection on you. I know you all will continue to do great work and fight for our district. I’ll be cheering you on.”

“While I take the time to look inwards and reflect, I ask that you give me space and privacy,” she said.

The resignation comes hours after the Los Angeles City Council adjourned its meeting before even starting after protesters demanded the resignations of Martinez and two other council members on the recording.

Protesters chanting in the LA City Council’s chambers caused repeated delays to the start of the meeting, chanting “no resignation, no meeting” and “step down or we shut down.”

A recording posted anonymously to Reddit over the weekend captured Martinez making allegedly racist and offensive comments about a fellow council member’s son. Two other city council members were also on the recording, with protesters calling on them to resign, as well.

The three council members on the recording were not in the chamber Wednesday, according to President Pro Tempore Mitch O’Farrell.

“For Los Angeles to heal, and for its City Council to govern, there must be accountability. The resignation of Councilmember Nury Martinez is the first, necessary step in that process,” O’Farrell said in a statement, while calling on the two other council members implicated in the scandal to resign, as well.

“There is no other way forward,” he said.

Martinez resigned from her role as city council president on Monday, but remained a member of the council. On Tuesday, she announced she was taking a leave of absence from her position.

O’Farrell tried to quiet protesters several times on Wednesday, even saying the council would open the floor for public comments, but protests continued. O’Farrell called two recesses at the beginning of the meeting to quiet protesters, without success. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. and was adjourned just over an hour later after the council was unable to conduct any business.

Protesters could be heard criticizing members of the council who were in the chamber for trying to continue the meeting.

In a recording of three Latino city council members, Martinez allegedly referred to white council member Mike Bonin’s son, who is Black, as an “accessory.” The recording was first posted to Reddit and later deleted. The Los Angeles Times reviewed the recording and confirmed it was authentic.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

In the recording, Martinez allegedly said Bonin’s young son behaved “parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.” In a statements released on Monday and Tuesday, Martinez apologized to her colleagues, Bonin and his family.

Bonin appeared at the beginning of the meeting via video call, telling the council he tested positive for COVID-19 and would be appearing remotely.

Protesters gathered at City Hall on Tuesday, calling for Martinez and the city council members in the recording to resign from their positions. protesters even made their way into the chamber where a council meeting was being held, disrupting it from starting while chanting “resign now” and “not one more day.”

Bonin condemned the statements and called for Martinez and the two other city council members allegedly speaking with her on the recording — Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo — to resign.

The California Department of Justice announced it was launching an investigation into the Los Angeles City Council redistricting process on Wednesday as well. The recording that captured the racist comments was made while the three were discussing redistricting, offering a rare look into the bitterness surrounding those decisions.

“The leaked audio has cast doubt on a cornerstone of our political processes for Los Angeles,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “Given these unique circumstances, my office will investigate to gather the facts, work to determine the truth, and take action, as necessary, to ensure the fair application of our laws. We will endeavor to bring the truth to light as part of the sorely-needed work to restore confidence in the redistricting process for the people of our state.”

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was “glad to see” Martinez’s resignation, and added that all participants in the conversation “should resign.”

Jean-Pierre did not appear to recognize that Martinez only resigned as president of the council, not as a member.

“The president is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned but they all should,” Jean-Pierre said. “He believes that they all should resign. The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling.”

ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.

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(WATERBURY, Conn.) — A Connecticut jury awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to 15 plaintiffs defamed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones when the Infowars host called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax staged by actors following a script written by the government to build support for gun control.

With the plaintiffs sobbing in the gallery, the clerk read out the verdict in which the jury decided compensatory damages for both slander and for emotional distress.

The compensatory damages total about a billion dollars, far exceeding the award in a prior case in Texas. He was ordered to pay just shy of $50 million in that case, which was decided in August.

The jury also awarded attorneys fees and costs Wednesday.

Jones, who was on the air with his radio program as the verdict was read, told his listeners, “This must be what hell is like — they just read out the damages, even though you don’t got the money.”

His attorney, attorney Norm Pattis, told reporters they plan to appeal the decision.

“Candidly, from start to finish, the fix was in in this case,” Pattis said outside the courthouse. “We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with the court’s evidentiary rulings.”

“In more than 200 trials in the course of my career, I’ve never seen a trial like this,” he continued.

The plaintiffs, relatives of victims and an FBI agent who responded to the scene, testified that they were tormented by Jones’ followers who believed his lies about the massacre. The families said they were harassed and threatened in the decade since the shooting.

One of the plaintiffs, Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, thanked his lawyers for helping him “fight and stand up to what had been happening to me for so long.”

“I’m just proud that what we were able to accomplish was just to simply tell the truth. And it shouldn’t be this hard. And it shouldn’t be this scary,” he said in an emotional statement given outside the courthouse.

Parker expressed gratitude for the jury “not just because of their verdict, but for what they had to endure, what they had to listen to,” he continued.

Jones testified he believed at the time the shooting might have been staged but he has since said he now believes it’s real. He declined to apologize to the families on the stand in this trial, saying he had already apologized enough.

A judge last year found Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, liable in the defamation lawsuit, with plaintiffs that include an FBI agent who responded to the scene and eight families of victims that Jones called actors.

The plaintiffs’ attorney had asked that Jones pay $550 million to a group of Sandy Hook parents, who claim the Infowars host spread lies about the mass shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 elementary school children.

The attorney, Chris Mattei, asked the six jurors to “think about the scale of the defamation,” citing as one example Jones’ claim the families, “faked their 6- or 7-year-old’s death.”

Pattis told jurors it was not their job to bankrupt Jones so he would stop broadcasting lies.

Pattis said he represents a “despised human being” but balked at the half-billion-dollar sum proposed by the plaintiffs’ attorney.

“It would take a person earning $100,000 a year hundreds of years to make $550 million,” Pattis said during his closing statement.

Jones faces a third, and final, trial that could result in another hefty damage award.

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(PHILADELPHIA) — Three members of a Philadelphia SWAT team were shot while serving a warrant Wednesday morning, according to police, who again pleaded for an end to the city’s gun violence.

It appears all the injured officers will be OK, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said.

This shooting occurred just after 6 a.m. as SWAT officers tried to serve a warrant on a person who was wanted for an August homicide and was suspected of participating in multiple armed robberies, Philadelphia Police First Deputy Commissioner John Stanford said at a news conference.

As officers approached the door, the 19-year-old suspect shot at them through the door and window, Stanford said.

The suspect tried to flee, and when the SWAT officers followed, the suspect fired at them, according to Stanford.

SWAT officers returned fire and the suspect was pronounced dead at 7:32 a.m., he said.

Two of the injured officers are expected to be released from the hospital later on Wednesday, Stanford said. One officer was struck in the leg, one in the hip and the third was hit in the upper chest, Stanford said.

“It’s good to see them sitting up, talking, and their families around them,” Kenney told reporters.

Stanford called the level of gun violence in Philadelphia “ridiculous,” adding, “it’s enough.”

“There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t either have a child that is shot, or multiple people shot, because there are too many people out here carrying guns and they don’t have consequences,” he said. “Some people need to be in jail.”

“This should not be happening — this is not normal,” he said. “Unfortunately we have come to believe that this is the normal course of events — it’s not … it is troubling.”

Stanford stressed that Wednesday’s suspected gunman was just 19 years old.

“Something has been broken in this young man’s life for a long time, and it just didn’t start today,” he said.

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(BALTIMORE) — Marilyn Mosby, state’s attorney for Baltimore City, who made the decision to drop the murder case against Adnan Syed, said on Wednesday that her office’s re-investigation of the case had raised “major red flags.”

“Our review of the case quickly turned from making a mere recommendation for release to a re-investigation to claim actual innocence,” Mosby said on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday, “because there were major red flags.”

Prosecutors in Maryland dropped charges against Syed, the man who was convicted of killing his former girlfriend in 2000, a case made popular by the 2014 “Serial” podcast that investigated issues with the prosecution.

Mosby said her office was approached by the public defender’s office about the case.

“As we started to dig into the case, one of the things that we saw was not all the evidence was tested,” Mosby said. “The first round of DNA testing we did didn’t produce results, but following the second round of DNA, we found that there was a DNA mixture of multiple contributors. And they excluded Adnan Syed.”

Coupled with the “integrity” of the investigation, there were “so many red flags,” she said.

“This was really the nail in the coffin that assured me, which is why I instructed my prosecutors to dismiss the case yesterday,” Mosby said.

The murder case of Hae Min Lee, Syed’s ex-girlfriend, is open and pending, Mosby said.

Mosby said she never listened to the “Serial” podcast.

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(NEW YORK) — A man arrested in Georgia has confessed to murdering five people in South Carolina, authorities announced Tuesday.

James Douglas Drayton, 24, was taken into custody in Georgia’s Burke County on Monday morning, after he allegedly committed an armed robbery and fled the scene in a stolen vehicle that authorities said was registered to a family member of one of the victims in South Carolina’s Spartanburg County, about 145 miles away.

“He confessed to the crime,” Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said during a press conference on Tuesday. “He basically said he’d been hearing voices. Not sure what that means for him, but he knew he’d been using meth and had been up for like four days. Hadn’t slept in four days, probably not thinking.”

The murders took place over the weekend in the town of Inman at a home that Wright described as a “safe haven” for drug use. Deputies from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office responded to a death call at the residence on Bobo Drive on Sunday evening. Upon arrival, deputies discovered four people who had been shot to death — identified as Thomas Ellis Anderson, 37, Adam Daniel Morley, 32, Mark Allen Hewitt, 59, and Roman Christean Megael Rocha, 19.

A fifth victim was found still showing signs of life and was transported to Spartanburg Medical Center, where they died. Their identity was not released because their family has not yet been notified, according to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

“This is the largest single murder we’ve had in Spartanburg County,” Wright told reporters.

Wright said all five victims were drug users and were known to Drayton, who investigators believe had been staying at the home for about two weeks. The victims were also living there at the time of the incident and investigators located belongings with Drayton’s name, according to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

“Wouldn’t have mattered to me if they were church members and never did any of that stuff, or they were heroin addicts. They were still somebody’s son, brother, friend, dad,” Wright said. “They are all a child of God — they didn’t deserve what they got.”

After the shootings, Drayton allegedly stole a car from the home, which he crashed during a brief, high-speed chase in Georgia, where he was apprehended and is now awaiting extradition to South Carolina. He will be charged with five counts of murder, Wright said.

Drayton gave investigators a “full confession” about the murders, providing “specific information” about the crime scene, including the location of the five victims, according to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

“I don’t have answers as to why. He said some things in his interviews that I’m going to hold on to because his attorney probably needs to process some of this stuff,” Wright said. “It’s awful.”

Burke County’s online jail records did not list an attorney for Drayton.

Although the suspect was arrested, Wright said the victims “did not get justice at all.”

“Just because we have someone in custody doesn’t make things better for these families,” he added. “It just means that they don’t have to wonder.”

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(PHILADELPHIA) — Three members of a SWAT team were shot in North Philadelphia while serving a warrant early on Wednesday morning, ABC News’ WPVI-TV reported.

The officers were taken to Jefferson University Hospital, where they were listed in stable condition.

Story developing…

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(NEW YORK) — Damage from weather and climate disasters in 2022 could exceed $100 billion in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to estimations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So far this year, 15 events — including the recent Hurricanes Fiona and Ian — have incurred damages of more than $1 billion, NOAA announced on Tuesday. It is the eighth consecutive year in which the U.S. has endured 10 or more billion-dollar disaster events.

The current tally for 2022 is $29.3 billion in destruction, but the costs from Fiona, Ian and the wildfires in the West are still being tallied, according to NOAA.

More than 340 people have died in these events, but death tolls could rise as search and rescue crews continue to comb through battered portions of Southwest Florida and Puerto Rico.

Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28 as a strong Category 4 hurricane and tracked across the state before exiting into the Atlantic Ocean and making another landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 storm. Entire neighborhoods on Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach were decimated with storm surge and up to 150 mph winds.

On Sept. 18, Fiona brought major flooding, damage and loss of life to Puerto Rico — five years after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 338 weather and climate disasters in which the overall damages exceeded $1 billion, according to NOAA. The total cost of those 338 events exceeds $2.295 trillion.

Climate scientists warn that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires and drought will become more severe as global temperatures continue to rise.

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(SAN ANTONIO) — A former San Antonio police officer was charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant on Tuesday in the shooting of a teenager last week, according to the San Antonio Police Department Homicide Unit.

The department fired Officer James Brennand after bodycam footage showed him shooting a teenager who was eating a hamburger in a McDonald’s parking lot in Texas.

Brennand turned himself in, police said during a press conference Tuesday night. There were two charges of aggravated assault because of the two passengers in the car, police said.

The 17-year-old, identified by police as Erik Cantu, was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized. He was in critical condition as of Tuesday night, police said.

The SAPD terminated Brennand last 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.”

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(MENLO PARK, Calif.) — A tree trimmer has died after falling into a wood chipper while he was working, police say.

The incident occurred at approximately 12:53 p.m. on Tuesday in Menlo Park, California, approximately 30 miles south of San Francisco, when the Menlo Park Police Department responded to a report of an incident involving a tree trimmer who had managed to accidentally fall into a wood chipper on the 900 block of Peggy Lane while he was working, police say.

“When police units arrived on scene, a male subject was found deceased from injuries sustained in the incident,” the Menlo Park Police Department said in a statement confirming the fatality.

Authorities from the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office also responded to the tragic accident. The street was shut down while authorities conducted their investigation but all other roads in the area were open to traffic during this period.

The worker’s identity has not yet been released and is currently under the jurisdiction of the coroner’s office while they notify the male victim’s next of kin, authorities said. It is unclear when they will be making a further statement on the identity of the victim and the coroner’s office did not release any further details on the incident.

The Menlo Park Police Department confirmed that his death will be investigated by the Cal/OSHA Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

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(NEW YORK) — A man in South Carolina was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing three family members, including a local councilman, the Horry County Police Department said.

Police arrested Matthew Allen DeWitt, 25, on Monday regarding the triple shooting.

The suspect was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, online arrest records show.

Horry police arrived at a home near Conway, South Carolina, on Sunday afternoon to investigate a death where they discovered the body of 52-year-old Natasha Stevens.

Later that evening, police conducted a welfare check outside of Columbia, South Carolina, where they found two people with “apparent gunshot wounds,” the Horry Police Department said on Facebook.

Police identified the two people as Gloria DeWitt, 52, and James DeWitt, II, 52.

According to the Town of Atlantic Beach website, James “Jim” DeWitt II served as a councilman for the Atlantic Beach community.

Atlantic Beach did not respond to a request for comment.

According to its website, the predominately Black town is known as the “Black Pearl” and was a refuge for African Americans in the area who faced discrimination in the 1930s.

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