(PALMER, Alaska) — Two people, including a 9-year-old boy, were injured in a bear attack while hunting in Alaska, authorities said.
The child suffered serious injuries, while a man sustained minor injuries, Alaska State Troopers said.
The incident occurred Tuesday around 6:30 p.m. local time near Palmer, located about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage, police said.
The pair, who are related, were hunting moose in the Palmer Hay Flats area, a state game refuge, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told ABC News. Troopers did not specify their relationship.
They came upon a brown bear that then mauled the child, troopers said. The man shot and killed the bear during the attack, police said.
Troopers and EMS responding to the scene following reports of a bear attack found the two victims, who were taken to a hospital in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area, troopers said.
McDaniel said the last report he received had the child listed in “fair condition.”
The brown bear was with a cub at the time of the attack. The Alaska Wildlife Troopers and Alaska Department of Fish and Game were unable to locate a cub in the area after ground and aerial searches, McDaniel said.
(NEW YORK) — In another twist in the case against former President Donald Trump, who has been accused of keeping classified government material at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a panel of judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday gave the Justice Department the OK to continue their investigation into the documents.
The panel also said the Justice Department no longer has to submit those materials to special master Raymond Dearie for his review.
ABC News contributor and former federal prosecutor Kan Nawaday spoke with ABC News Live Prime to discuss the significance of the court order.
ABC NEWS LIVE: This feels significant.
KAN NAWADAY: It is significant, but in my mind not surprising. What was really significant was the fact that the district court judge enjoined the DOJ from using documents in an ongoing criminal investigation. It’s basically following the law. So they’re basically doing frankly what the district court should have done below.
ABC NEWS LIVE: What does this mean now as far as the special master is appointed? It seems like that’s a moot point now.
NAWADAY: It is with respect to the classified documents. That whole special master thing with classified documents, that was a frolic and a detour.
ABC NEWS LIVE: At this point do you expect Trump’s team will appeal this decision?
NAWADAY: I think they will. I think they have shown they will litigate every point at every stage and take every opportunity they can.
I can see them trying to get an en banc hearing, meaning all of the judges in the 11th Circuit to decide on this. So I think they’re going to fight.
ABC NEWS LIVE: It seems the special master seems a little skeptical. They’re saying it feels like Trump’s lawyers are not providing enough significant or any documentation to suggest that Trump needed or declassified these documents.
NAWADAY: Exactly. They never did. They never did it before the district court, which is why everyone was surprised. Why is the district court having a special master to look into this? The special master said the same thing: ‘Wait, there’s no evidence that there was any declassification or any need.’ And now the 11th Circuit has found the same thing.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And let’s talk about Ginni Thomas, also a new development here. [She’s] the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She’s now agreeing to voluntarily talk to the Jan. 6 committee.
NAWADAY: I think that is significant. She’s not making the Jan. 6 committee subpoena her. And we’ll see maybe one day what her testimony is. I think down the line, the fact that she is testifying, and is potentially a fact witness may have implications for Justice Thomas with respect for any case that ever goes up to the Supreme Court that may involve the testimony of his wife.
(WATERBURY, CT) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is testifying in a Connecticut courtroom Thursday in a second defamation trial to determine what the InfoWars host should pay to Sandy Hook families.
The tempestuous testimony was so frequently interrupted by objections and sidebar conferences at the bench, Judge Barbara Bellis at one point told the jury, “You’re going to get your exercise in today, those of you who wear Fitbits.”
Jones, who has suggested the families who successfully sued him for defamation have a political agenda because they’ve done work on gun control, acknowledged the risks involved in his profession as a conspiracy theorist and provocateur.
“The world isn’t an easy place. When people become political figures they get in the arena,” Jones said.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Chris Mattei, pounced.
“Were you just trying to suggest that my clients, these families, deserve what they got because they stepped into the arena?” Mattei asked.
Jones answered “no” as his lawyer objected to the question.
Jones’ testimony will resume this afternoon following a lunch break.
Bellis last year found Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, liable in a defamation lawsuit for calling the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a hoax.
The jury will decide how much in damages Jones should pay to an FBI agent who responded to the scene and eight families of victims that Jones called actors.
Prior to testifying, Jones has spoken out amid the trial outside the Waterbury courthouse this week, calling the judge a “tyrant” and the trial a “political hit job.” In a press briefing Wednesday, he told reporters did not “premediatively question Sandy Hook,” and that he apologizes if he has caused anyone pain but “didn’t create the story” of Sandy Hook being a hoax.
He repeatedly said he would not perjure himself by saying he’s guilty.
“You can’t have a judge telling you to say that you’re guilty when you’re not. That is insane,” he said.
There is no guilt in civil trials like this one. The plaintiffs successfully sued Jones for defamation in November 2021 over his comments, which included calling them “crisis actors,” saying the massacre was “staged” and “the fakest thing since the three-dollar bill.”
Bellis found Jones liable for damages by default because he and his companies, like Infowars, showed “callous disregard” for the rules of discovery. The jury will now determine much Jones and Free Speech Systems will have to pay the families of children killed in the massacre.
The jury so far has heard from several parents, including Jennifer Hensel, whose 6-year-old daughter, Avielle Richman, was among the 20 children killed in the massacre. She told the jury Wednesday that she still fears for her family’s safety after years of receiving hate mail from people questioning that her daughter had died and checks the backseat of her car before getting in.
After her husband, Jeremy Richman, died by suicide in 2019, she started receiving emails from people calling his death fake as well, she said.
“People were in the cemetery around Avielle’s grave marker looking for evidence that Jeremy had died,” Hensel said.
Other parents have also testified about death threats, rape threats and confrontations outside their homes.
The Connecticut trial comes a month after a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the victims.
In that defamation trial, Jones was successfully sued by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre after he claimed that the shooting — where 20 children and six adults were killed — was a hoax, a claim he said he now thinks is “100% real.”
(LAKELAND, FL) — Leo Schofield has been sitting in a prison cell for over 30 years, convicted in 1989 of killing his first wife Michelle two years earlier, and is still fighting to prove his innocence.
“Innocent is no part in it, no plan in it, didn’t know it was happening, didn’t know it was going to happen, and didn’t want it to happen. That is me,” he told “20/20” in an exclusive interview from prison that airs Friday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET.
Prosecutors argued that Leo Schofield, then 21, was a man filled with anger and waiting to explode against his wife.
Schofield’s defense attorney argued that there was no physical evidence connecting him to the stabbing homicide, and that the state’s timeline of events did not make sense.
Schofield’s second wife Crissie and the non-profit organization The Innocence Project of Florida are among the supporters who have believed Schofield’s story and have worked to exonerate him.
Evidence discovered in the past decade that Schofield and his supporters say link the murder to another man has become central to Schofield’s case, but even that avenue has hit several legal roadblocks.
Michelle Saum Schofield, then 18, didn’t arrive to pick up Leo from her job at a restaurant in Lakeland, Florida, on Feb. 24, 1987. Leo Schofield said he became concerned and began driving around town with his father and mother and talking to friends and family to find his wife.
Police, friends and family searched throughout the area and eventually found her car abandoned and broken into. Three days after she went missing, Michelle’s body was found in a canal in Bone Valley, a region in central Florida.
She had been stabbed 26 times.
“I was so angry at God at that moment. I ripped my shirt off. I punched a tree, punched the ground, I was pulling grass out of the ground,” Leo Schofield said.
Leo Schofield’s past bouts of anger would become a factor in the investigation as neighbors, friends and family told investigators that he was volatile and argued with Michelle in their home. Multiple witnesses also described incidents of physical abuse by Leo against Michelle, including one account by Michelle’s best friend that Leo threatened to kill his wife.
A critical part of their investigation was an interview with a neighbor, Alice Scott, who told police that she heard the couple fighting from her bathroom the night Michelle Schofield went missing and that claimed she later witnessed Leo Schofield put a large object into the trunk of the car and drive off.
A couple who lived near the Schofield’s told police that on the morning after Michelle Schofield’s disappearance they saw her car and a truck belonging to Leo Scofield’s father near the location where her body was found.
Police arrested Leo Schofield in June 1988.
Schofield’s attorney questioned Scott’s testimony at trial, claiming the timing of the alleged fight in the home conflicted with accounts of where he was seen at the time. Schofield’s attorney said that Scott’s testimony claimed the argument took place shortly before Leo Schofield was with his wife’s father, which was several miles away.
The attorney contended that he couldn’t have traveled from their home to his father in law’s residence that quickly.
“In any case that you’ve looked at, you’re going to find some discrepancies with witness testimony,” former Polk County State Attorney Jerry Hill, who presided over the Schofield criminal investigation, told 20/20, “It’s human. I don’t think any witness was looking at their watch saying, ‘There’s Leo.’ I think they were being as honest as they could be in approximating exactly what they observed.”
Alice Scott could not be reached by ABC News for comment.
During the trial, prosecutors called in 21 character witnesses who testified about accounts where they saw Leo Schofield act aggressively and violently. Some described events where they say Leo Schofield was physically abusive towards his wife including pulling her hair.
On the stand Schofield denied claims made by witnesses but admitted to slapping his wife twice.
Schofield maintained to 20/20 that he never physically hurt his wife during their relationship.
“Physical abuse is one type of abuse and then you have the emotional abuse, which I’m guilty of,” he said. “I did a lotta yelling…and I wasn’t beyond punching a wall and being very theatrical,” he said.
In the end, a jury convicted Schofield of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Schofield continued to maintain that he was not involved in his wife’s murder for years, and things began to change after he met Crissie Carter, a former state probation officer who later became a therapist and taught at Schofield’s prison, in 1991.
After listening to Schofield’s story and reviewing the court records on this case, Carter told “20/20” that she, too, believed he was innocent based on what she said were holes in the prosecution’s case.
“What the state said is not lining up and what he’s saying lines up exactly,” Crissie Carter Schofield told “20/20.”
Their relationship would soon become personal and the pair eventually married and adopted a baby.
During her research, Crissie says she came to a major discovery: fingerprints that investigators had found inside Michelle’s car had never been identified.
“Whoever’s fingerprints are in that car had to know something. We’ve got to figure out who that person is,” she said.
Crissie Schofield hired a new defense attorney, Scott Cupp, who was able to obtain a copy of the fingerprints from the Florida State Police in 2004.
The prints were later run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which was not available to Polk County investigators at the time and matched those of convicted murderer Jeremy Scott, who was serving a life sentence for a 1988 homicide.
Jeremy Scott is not related to Alice Scott, the neighbor who testified against Leo Schofield.
Questions also arose after the then St. Petersburg Times began reporting on the case and published an in-depth investigative article in 2007.
Alice Scott’s testimony came under scrutiny after her ex-husband, Ricky Scott, told the St. Petersburg Times that she had a tendency to twist the truth. “No way Alice could’ve seen and heard from that little bathroom window what she said she heard and saw at the Schofields’ that night,” he alleged to the St. Petersburg Times reporters.
When reporters later questioned Alice Scott about her ex-husband’s statement, she explained, “When I couldn’t see and hear from the bathroom window that good, I walked to the screened porch where I could,” which differed from her testimony in Schofield’s trial.
“She never said that at trial,” Gilbert King, a Pulitzer-prize winning author who is the host of a new podcast about the case, “Bone Valley,” told “20/20.” ” That was all new.”
When asked about Alice Scott’s statement to the St. Petersburg Times, Jerry Hill told “20/20” that he believed Alice Scott was “credible” at the time that she testified and that his investigators verified her account.
“We had no less than three separate individuals go confirm that she could actually see what she said she saw, from where she said she saw it,” he said.
Leo Schofield’s new defense team requested a trial based on the fingerprint evidence. During his 2010 deposition with Leo Schofield’s attorney’s, Jeremy Scott admitted to being a car stereo thief in the area during that time, but denied killing Michelle Schofield.
The request for a new trial was denied, as the court found that Scott’s fingerprints alone would not likely have led to an acquittal on retrial and ruled there were no issues with the trial evidence that would have led to Leo’s exoneration.
The decision devastated the Schofields, their attorney and other supporters.
“This was personal to me. I knew then the same thing I know now: Leo’s an innocent man and it just hit me to my core,” Cupp, now a circuit judge in Florida, told “20/20.”
In 2016, Leo Schofield’s defense attorney Andrew Crawford spoke with Jeremy Scott by phone and claimed that Scott confessed to him that he was responsible for Michelle Schofield’s murder. The conversation, however, was not tape recorded.
“This is a huge deal, what Jeremy is telling me, because never before had he ever admitted any involvement in the homicide,” Crawford told “20/20.”
When questioned by state investigators, Jeremy Scott denied confessing but said he would take the rap for any murder if paid $1,000.
“Jeremy Scott, he’s a red herring,” Jerry Hill said, “but he’s the only herring they’ve got. And so they’re going to stick with it.”
In 2017, Crawford enlisted an investigator to interview Scott again, this time with a tape recorder.
It was during this interview that Scott claimed that Michelle Schofield offered him a ride, and there was a struggle after a knife fell out of his pocket.
“Next thing I know, I lost it. I done stabbed her,” Scott said during the interview. “I’m like panicking now because I don’t know what just happened.”
Crawford teamed up with The Innocence Project of Florida and made another request for a retrial, which led to an evidentiary hearing.
An emotional Jeremy Scott took the stand and testified that he killed Michelle.
During cross-examination, the prosecution pointed out multiple times over the years where Scott denied any role in Michelle Schofield’s murder, as well as certain details that he could not recall or got wrong in his testimony, such as the clothes she wore that night.
The hearing took a dramatic turn when Scott was presented with Michelle’s autopsy photographs, at which point Scott stated “I didn’t do that.”
“They took that as a flip flop that he recanted,” Crissie Schofield said.
However, on redirect examination, Scott affirmed to the court that he did in fact kill Michelle.
“I killed her,” he said.
Ultimately, Leo was again denied a new trial. The court ruled that the evidence did not meet the legal threshold for a new trial, and also made a finding that the testimony of Jeremy Scott was not credible.
An appeals court upheld the decision in 2020.
“I wish I could come up with a better word than devastation and disbelief and just madness. There’s no way to understand it,” Crissie Schofield said of her reaction to the court decision.
In 2018, Gilbert King, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Devil in the Grove, which led to the exonerations of four innocent men, was at a conference of circuit judges in Naples, Florida, when he was approached by Cupp and given information about Leo Schofield’s story and his case.
King was at a conference of circuit judges in Naples, Florida in 2018, when he was approached by Cupp and given information about Leo Schofield’s story and his case.
Since then, King , along with “Bone Valley” researcher Kelsey Decker, has been investigating the case and working on a Lava For Good 9-part true crime podcast on Leo’s story, “Bone Valley,” that launched Sept. 21, 2022. Lava for Good is run by Jason Flom, one of the founding board members of the Innocence Project and a well known advocate for wrongly convicted.
Scott was recently interviewed for the podcast and claimed to Gilbert King that “Leo [is] innocent. That man didn’t do nothing. He’s innocent.”
During her exclusive TV prison interview, “20/20” co-anchor Amy Robach played Jeremy Scott’s recording for Leo Schofield.
“I have a lot of anger about it. He murdered my wife,” he told Robach. “It’s a hard thing to forgive.”
Leo Schofield is eligible for parole next year, and even if he does get out on parole Crissie Schofield said she is insistent on clearing her husband’s name.
“It doesn’t end with Leo getting out. This is Michelle’s story,” she said.
(SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO) — Hurricane Fiona, which has become a Category 4 storm as it heads toward Bermuda, left in its wake large-scale devastation in Puerto Rico.
The storm reportedly left at least one person dead, caused catastrophic flooding and knocked out power across the island.
The blackout reminded many of the destruction wrought five years ago by Hurricane Maria, which caused roughly 2,975 deaths and demolished much of the island’s infrastructure.
Over a million customers in Puerto Rico have experienced intermittent power outages since Hurricane Maria, with many losing electricity this time even before Fiona made landfall. As of Tuesday morning, electricity had not been restored for an estimated 1.18 million customers.
Things were expected to change after Hurricane Maria. Billions of dollars in federal support were set aside to repair the island’s energy system but the problems persist.
“Outages have been occurring for one reason or another,” Tom Sanzillo, the director of financial analysis for think tank the Institute of Energy and Economics and Financial Analysis, told ABC News. “It’s beyond belief how bad the system is.”
Here’s what you need to know about Puerto Rico’s power grid and why it remains fragile:
Didn’t a power outage happen five years ago with Hurricane Maria?
Yes, it did. When Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, in September 2017, the storm devastated the island’s electricity grid. It took 328 days, or roughly 11 months, for the island to restore power to all of the customers who lost it during the hurricane, which marked the longest blackout in U.S. history.
The electricity infrastructure had shown signs of fragility even before Maria, said Sanzillo. As the economy in Puerto Rico weakened in the 2000s, the maintenance budget shrank and what has been deemed mismanagement exacerbated the shortfall, he added.
“The system is old and it’s undermaintained,” Sanzillo said. “Maria brought it to light.”
The hurricane’s impact prompted sharp scrutiny of the public utility in charge of the power grid — the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Months before Maria, PREPA had declared bankruptcy, citing a $9 billion debt load. PREPA had issued bonds to finance the energy grid, but could not pay them back.
What was done to fix the electric grid after Hurricane Maria?
The years following Hurricane Maria brought a mix of public and private efforts to improve the country’s electrical infrastructure.
Three years after Hurricane Maria, in September 2020, the Trump administration announced nearly $9.6 billion in federal funding for the repair of the island’s power system. The sum made up more than half of the support that PREPA would need to modernize its electric grid over the ensuing 10 years, bond credit rating service Moody’s said at the time of the announcement.
Billions in additional funds from FEMA brought the total support allocated for rebuilding the power grid to roughly $12.8 billion, FEMA said in June.
But FEMA has only spent a fraction of the overall money, and an especially small amount of the funds dedicated to “permanent works,” or projects that aim to replace or restore a damaged facility for long-term use.
FEMA has spent $1.6 billion in emergency categories and $7.1 million for permanent works, Manuel A. Laboy Rivera, the executive director of Puerto Rico’s Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency said in a press release in June.
In other words, as of June, the amount spent by FEMA on projects to permanently restore the power grid makes up 0.05% of the overall funds made available by the federal government.
The delay owes primarily to disagreement between FEMA and the government of Puerto Rico over the implementation of the funds, said Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rico-based nonpartisan think tank.
“This is a huge, gigantic megaproject and the scope of work for each component has been argued over with FEMA,” he told ABC News.
A report released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan oversight agency, cited as a key impediment the conflict between FEMA and Puerto Rican government entities over the scope of projects. In addition, officials from the government of Puerto Rico said the island has struggled to obtain the materials needed to commence projects, causing delays of as long as 24 months, the report said.
Another reason for the slow progress centers on a system of reimbursement tied to the funds, which requires local officials to put forward the money for approved projects and later receive reimbursement from FEMA, said Cecilio Ortiz-García, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who studies Puerto Rico.
“The municipalities are broke,” Ortiz-García told ABC News. “So that right there is basically a black hole.”
Meanwhile, the island also privatized its electric system. In June 2021, a Canadian-American business partnership called LUMA Energy took over management of the electric grid.
The poorly maintained energy grid poses LUNA with a difficult task, but even so the company has performed “below expectations,” Marxuach said. He cited the ongoing power outages that preceded Fiona and the slow repairs that followed them. “LUMA probably underestimated the scope of what they were undertaking,” he said.
PREPA and LUMA Energy did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
LUMA said in a press release this week that its crews have been “assessing damage, performing critical repairs and working with PREPA and private generators” to reenergize the grid in the wake of Hurricane Fiona.
“We want our customers to know that LUMA has been and will continue to work around the clock to restore power to Puerto Rico following the island-wide outage that began early Sunday afternoon,” Abner Gómez, the company’s public safety manager, said Monday.
Sanzillo said a “fundamental reason” for the intermittent power outages since Hurricane Maria stems from the electric grid’s reliance on imported fossil fuels, noting that heightened energy costs amid the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have exacerbated a budget crunch as the rates paid by customers fail to offset higher costs. Meanwhile, the grid struggles to address facility deterioration tied to longstanding neglect, he added.
Renewables power 3% of the island’s total electricity, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration based on the fiscal year 2021.
“The system is in a state of disrepair,” Sanzillo said. “We’re at the same place we were five years ago.”
What happens next?
Most immediately, Puerto Rico needs to get its power restored. Gov. Pedro Pierluisi declined to say how long it would take to fully restore the grid, but he said for most customers it would be “a question of days,” the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
In the long term, additional federal funds are set to make their way into energy infrastructure projects on the island.
Annie Brink, an associate administrator at FEMA, said last week that the agency had made $9.5 billion available for a massive infrastructure project to fix Puerto Rico’s energy grid. She vowed that the project would “build it back better.”
Many advocates, including Sanzillo, have called for further investment in renewable energy, both as a means of relieving financial woes for the energy system and bolstering resilience in the event of another major storm.
The island’s government appears to share that goal. The Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, signed into law in 2019 by then Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló, sets a goal for the island to obtain 40% of its energy from renewables by 2025.
“We should use money from the government to maximize investment in renewable energy,” Sanzillo said. “If they did those things they’d be very far down the way of having a grid that works.”
Ortiz-García said the prospect of future storms adds urgency to the task faced by Puerto Rico.
“There will be more Fiona’s,” he said. “There will be more frequent and more severe extreme weather events. The question is not on the side of the events. We know the events are coming.”
(NEW YORK) — An Indiana court granted abortion providers’ request for a preliminary injunction on Indiana’s abortion ban, allowing abortions to resume in the state after the ban had gone into effect on Sept. 15.
Plaintiffs asked the court for the temporary stop on the near-total ban until the court issues a final decision in their lawsuit, determining whether it violates the Indiana Constitution.
The ban makes providing an abortion a level 5 felony, only allowing three exceptions for when a woman’s life is in danger, the fetus is diagnosed with a fatal anomaly or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest.
The ban also eliminates abortion clinics in the state.
Providers who violate the ban will have their license revoked and could face between one to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Indiana was the first state to pass an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, removing federal protections for abortion rights.
The lawsuit alleges the abortion ban violates the state constitution in three ways: infringing on residents’ right to privacy, violating Indiana’s guarantee of equal privileges and immunities and violating the constitution’s due course of law clause because of its unconstitutionally vague language.
The lawsuit was filed Aug. 31 against members of the state’s Medical Licensing Board and county prosecutors by Planned Parenthood, the Lawyering Project, the ACLU of Indiana and WilmerHale on behalf of abortion providers including Planned Parenthood, Women’s Med Group Professional Corp and All-Options.
“We knew this ban would cause irreparable harm to Hoosiers, and in just a single week, it has done just that. We are grateful that the court granted much needed relief for patients, clients, and providers but this fight is far from over. Indiana lawmakers have made it abundantly clear that this harm, this cruelty, is exactly the reality they had in mind when they passed S.B. 1,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement Thursday.
The lawsuit alleges that the ban will “severely limit access to abortion care, prohibiting nearly all pregnant [residents] from accessing care in Indiana” and forcing “thousands” of residents to travel out of state in order to get abortion care.
It also alleges women will be forced to incur more medical expenses as pregnancies advance, because the cost of an abortion procedure increases as the pregnancy advances.
The lawsuit also warns that patients unable to travel will “resort to self-managing their abortion outside of the medical system” or be forced to continue a pregnancy against their will.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — A former Minneapolis police officer who pleaded guilty to his role in the 2020 death of George Floyd was sentenced Wednesday to three years in state prison.
Thomas Lane, 39, learned his fate over closed circuit television from a federal prison in Colorado, where he is already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for violating the 46-year-old Black man’s civil rights.
Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill imposed the sentence on Lane Wednesday after defense attorneys and state prosecutors reached a plea agreement earlier this year in which they jointly recommended Lane receive a sentence of 36 months in prison. State Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time that the plea agreement is an “important step toward healing the wounds of the Floyd family, our community, and the nation.”
Upon sentencing Lane, Cahill said he will receive 31 days credit for time he has already served. He will be allowed to serve his state prison time concurrently with his federal sentence.
Lane did not speak during the hearing.
He pleaded guilty in May to a state charge of aiding and abetting in second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.
“I now make no claim that I am innocent,” Lane said during his plea hearing in May.
Lane and two other former Minneapolis police officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes in the May 25, 2020, incident.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.
(HOUSTON) — A toddler was found dead inside a car that was stolen after the child’s father was shot and killed in Houston on Tuesday, police said.
A 38-year-old man now faces charges of murder and tampering with evidence in connection with the case, police said Wednesday. The name of the suspect, who initially had been detained for questioning, will be released once charges are filed, police said.
Police had appealed to the public for information in the hours after the grim discovery amid their search for a suspect.
“We are asking for a lot of things from the public right now,” Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite told reporters during a press conference Tuesday night. “First and foremost, to pray for this family. A mother lost her husband and she lost her 2-year-old child today. We are also asking the public’s help in identifying the suspect. He is still at large.”
The Houston Police Department received a 911 call about a shooting in the area of El Camino Rey Del Rey Street and Chimney Rock Road at around 1:46 p.m. local time on Tuesday. Upon arrival, officers found a 38-year-old man who had been shot to death, according to Satterwhite.
Investigators believe the victim was meeting with another man at the location when possibly an argument ensued. The other man took out a gun and shot the victim multiple times before stealing his black SUV and fleeing the scene, Satterwhite said.
That evening, at approximately 6:36 p.m. local time, a woman called 911 to report her husband and 2-year-old son missing. The information she provided was specific enough that police soon realized the shooting victim was her husband, according to Satterwhite.
“We never knew about the child until she called,” he told reporters.
The stolen SUV with the little boy inside was found on Elm Street, more than 10 miles away from the shooting scene. Officers shattered the windows of the locked vehicle to get to the child, then immediately tried to render aid and called for an ambulance, according to Satterwhite.
“Sadly, it was too late. The child had passed in the car,” he said. “At this time, we don’t know why or how or what the cause of death will be. It could be something like heat exhaustion, we just don’t know. That will be determined later through autopsy.”
Investigators believe the suspect had left the car there, locked up and turned off, with the child in the backseat, according to Satterwhite.
“It’s the hardest thing we do,” he told reporters. “Children are innocent.”
The unidentified suspect, who remains on the loose, is described as a Black man wearing a white T-shirt, black shorts and a black Oakland Raiders cap.
When asked if he had a message for the suspect, Satterwhite said: “Turn yourself in. Turn yourself in now.”
(NEW YORK) — Puerto Rico is facing yet another devastating hurricane that has knocked out electricity across the island, just as the five-year anniversary of the deadly, destructive Hurricane Maria passes.
President Joe Biden has authorized FEMA to supply federal emergency aid to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in response to Hurricane Fiona, which touched down on Sept. 17 after strengthening from a tropical storm.
More than 1.5 million people are without electricity as torrential rain, 85-mph winds, and what the National Hurricane Service calls “catastrophic” flooding, pummels the U.S. territory.
Here are organizations helping deliver relief efforts in the wake of this latest hurricane:
United Nations World Food Programme: international disaster relief
The United Nations group is on the ground providing relief assessment emergency equipment to support recovery efforts in the Dominican Republic following severe flooding and power outages.
The U.N. is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations, working with victims of climate change, conflict and other disasters.
GoFundMe: hosting personal fundraisers
GoFundMe has dedicated a page to verified fundraisers for people affected by the hurricane in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
“We are working around the clock to ensure the families, businesses and communities affected receive the quick and trusted support they need,” GoFundMe said in a statement.
Verified fundraisers are vetted by GoFundMe, and funds are held until the recipients can be added to the fundraiser to withdraw the money themselves.
Hispanic Federation: a coalition of organizations rebuilding Puerto Rico
The Hispanic Federation has helped rebuild homes, health centers and farms, supply solar panels, and more through community-based projects following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The federation responded then by supplying 25 relief planes that carried 7.4 million pounds of food, water, medicine, solar panels and resources to the island and coordinated with mayors on the ground to organize donation delivery.
In the wake of Hurricane Fiona, Hispanic Federation is already on the ground providing emergency relief services.
Their efforts have been combined with hyperlocal organizations such as La Maraña and ViequesLove that focus on different aspect of recovery, many of which were born out of the needs highlighted by Hurricane Maria.
PRxPR: disaster relief fund donating 100% of funds
The PRxPR Relief and Rebuild Fund, run by the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, has delivered humanitarian aid to the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s devastation. Maria killed roughly 3,000 people and left the infrastructure of the country devastated.
The fund works with local organizations to address basic, economic, agricultural and energy needs in an effort to provide immediate and long-lasting relief to communities.
Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rico Community Foundation)
The Puerto Rico Community Foundation has been working for more than 35 years to increase access to renewable energy, drinking water, housing, education and economic development for the people it serves.
The foundation has reactivated the Community Recovery Fund for Puerto Rico to help recovery efforts following Hurricane Fiona.
Foundation for Puerto Rico
The Foundation for Puerto Rico was created to “unleash Puerto Rico’s potential in the global economy.” Now, the organization plans to prioritize relief in the wake Hurricane Fiona, calling for donations and volunteers.
“Our priority is to focus on the emergency that the country is facing and achieve the recovery of Puerto Rico together,” said the organization in a tweet.
SBP: disaster management headed to Puerto Rico
SBP is a nonprofit based in New Orleans, Louisiana, that was created after two volunteers saw what they called “the inefficiency and unbearably slow progress” of institutional or traditional rebuilding processes in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. The group aims to reduce the time between when a disaster hits and when recovery reaches those affected.
SBP says as soon as weather conditions are safe, it will touch down in Puerto Rico to help recovery efforts.
The group will “partner with local and regional organizations to establish contact lists and distribute recovery supplies to impacted communities,” according to the SBP website.
It said it will “connect with state, parish, and municipal leaders in affected areas to ensure survivors and communities secure access to vital recovery resources, protect survivors from fraud, and set clear and aggressive recovery goals to build back quickly and more robust than before.”
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Fiona strengthened to a Category 4 storm on Wednesday, after killing at least four people in Puerto Rico and leaving the entire island without power.
The storm dropped 6 to 20 inches of rain in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with up to 30 inches of rain falling in southern and southeastern Puerto Rico. The rain caused rivers to rise over their banks and triggered rock and mudslides, according to officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
As of early Wednesday morning, the storm system was carrying maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour as it moved away from Turks and Caicos after dropping heavy rains over parts of the islands. Winds could possibly increase to 140 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Fiona is expected to move parallel to the eastern United States, passing between the East Coast and Bermuda late Thursday into early Friday, the National Weather Service said.
The East Coast could see high surf, rip currents and even coastal flooding over the coming days. Meanwhile, a tropical storm watch remains in effect for Bermuda, which could see heavy rain, gusty winds and coastal flooding on Thursday night and Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
FEMA officials said during a press conference Tuesday that at least four people have died in Puerto Rico due to Fiona. A public health emergency was declared in the U.S. territory.
On Monday, officials reported that one person was killed as the then-Category 1 storm slammed the island. The Arecibo resident was attempting to fill his generator with gasoline while it was on, causing an ignition, officials said.
No one has been reported missing as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Steve Goldstein, the National Weather Service’s liaison to FEMA.
FEMA officials were still assessing the extent of the damage in Puerto Rico, saying it is too early to estimate the financial impact of the storm.
Fiona made a second landfall Monday in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma on the eastern side of the island with sustained winds of 90 mph and even higher gusts.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi warned residents that more rain was expected on the island through Tuesday evening.
“We are going through a difficult moment but our people are strong and very generous,” he said during a press conference.
Four helicopters are in the air surveying damage from Fiona. The governor said it would take at least a week to determine the extent of the damage left by the storm.
In addition to the four deaths cited by FEMA, at least two other people died in a shelter due to natural causes, but those have not been labeled as storm-related, Pierluisi said.
Restoring power in Puerto Rico
LUMA Energy said that only 300,000 out of 1.5 million clients have had power restored on the island as of Tuesday morning, with more expected in the coming days.
“We assure you that a large part of Puerto Rico will have electricity today and tomorrow,” Abner Gomez, spokesperson for LUMA Energy, said at a press conference Tuesday.
In an update Tuesday afternoon, FEMA said that 80% of customers still remain without power.
The governor said Monday the goal is for “a large number of LUMA customers” to have power “in a matter of days.” However, LUMA said in a statement Sunday that “full power restoration could take several days.”
Hospitals on the island are currently operating on generators, according to the governor.
Only 34% of households on the island have potable water after rivers grew and heavy rainfall impacted the system — meaning more than 834,000 people are without drinking water, the governor said Monday.
More than 1,000 people have been rescued by authorities, including a woman rescued Sunday who was stuck in a tree for seven hours after trying to look at the damage, officials said.
Heavy rainfall causes flooding across the island
Fiona strengthened to a hurricane from a tropical storm Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Fiona made landfall in southwestern Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 p.m. ET, dumping torrential rain on much of the island.
Some regions measured up to 25 inches of rain by 8 a.m. Monday.
A flash flood emergency was issued due to many rivers rising very quickly out of their banks. The Rio Grande de Arecido river rose 13 feet in one hour.
A bridge near Utuado, a town in the central mountainous region of the island, has collapsed, cutting off the communities of Salto Arriba and Guaonico, local newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported.
The portion of the bridge that collapsed is on Highway 123, a branch of Highway 10, which serves as a link between both roads and is one of the accesses to the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado campus, according to El Vocero.
The bridge, installed by the National Guard following Hurricane Maria, cost about $3 million to construct, the newspaper reported.
The rain saturated areas in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, along with the mountainous areas, where potential mudslides could cause the most damage.
Prior to landfall, Pierluisi said Puerto Rico was prepared as it could be, with enough resources and manpower in place to respond — adding that the island learned its lessons from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
“We’re much in a much better position than we were five years ago,” he said.
Where Fiona heads next
After passing through the Caribbean, the storm system will head northward, passing just east of Turks and Caicos before tracking near Bermuda, forecasts show. The storm system will continue to gradually strengthen in the coming days as it moves north and then northeast this week.
The Dominican Republic is expected to receive up to 10 inches and some regions in Turks and Caicos are expected to see 8 inches of rain.
On Tuesday, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will continue to see gradually improving conditions, however, lingering showers and thunderstorms will still be likely, potentially impacting initial cleanup and recovery efforts.
Winds could be as high as 125 mph as the storm passes near Bermuda, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge. The latest model shows Bermuda will not see a direct hit, with the worst of the storm passing just west of the island.
While it won’t make landfall in the U.S., the hurricane will affect the entire East Coast with huge waves, rip currents and coastal flooding from Florida to Maine as it moves northward.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, which allows federal agencies to coordinate all relief efforts.
Biden’s decision has the “purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” the White House said in a statement.
FEMA Administrator Deanna Criswell arrived in Puerto Rico on Tuesday to coordinate the emergency response, the White House said. “Hundreds” of federal responders are already on the island, including members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
