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(PURVIS, Miss.) — For the first time this week, a Mississippi couple got to hold their baby quintuplets together and commemorate the milestone with a couple of precious family photographs.

Haylee and Shawn Ladner of Purvis, Mississippi, welcomed their five children — Adalyn Elizabeth, Everleigh Rose, Malley Kate, Magnolia Mae and Jake Easton — back in February but although they’ve been able to hold them individually, it wasn’t until this past Sunday when they could both cradle their little ones simultaneously.

“We got all the babies dressed up in their little Easter outfits and we held all of them at once and had one big group photo for them for their first Easter,” Shawn Ladner explained to “Good Morning America.”

“It was a little bit nerve-wracking because traditionally, you only hold one baby at a time,” the 26-year-old father continued. “So I had three, she had two, that was a little bit of a joke but we managed it fine and it was a really impactful moment to see all of our babies together again because that was the first time that they had all been together, right beside each other since they were in her womb. So it was a really cool moment.”

Haylee Ladner said it was “just so sweet” to see all of their kids, who she describes as “miracle babies,” interacting with each other.

“It’s definitely been miraculous, I would say, to see all five babies grow and not have any complications and to just be perfectly healthy and to be striving and thriving,” the 26-year-old mother told “GMA.”

The Ladner quintuplets — four identical girls and one boy — were conceived through intrauterine insemination or IUI, after Haylee and Shawn Ladner experienced a miscarriage and chemical pregnancy.

The babies were born on Feb. 16 at 28 weeks and 1 day gestation and were delivered by caesarean section at Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Since then, they have been in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s of Mississippi Hospital in Jackson.

Because the babies were born prematurely, they’ve had to receive care such as respiratory support, according to their parents, but have not had any major complications after birth.

“The biggest thing right now is the babies are still learning to bottle feed and so, as they work up their ability with bottle feedings, they’ll be able to be discharged,” Haylee Ladner said.

The Ladners said they’ve been soaking up their time with quintuplets.

“I love getting to be their mom and getting to be here with them every day and getting to see them learn new things and grow and it’s literally the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I couldn’t be any happier,” Haylee Ladner said.

Shawn Ladner, who works as a maintenance mechanic, added, “It’s been amazing really, even through all of the ups and down. I had to go back to work so I’ve been traveling back and forth to come up and see the babies … It made me so happy that they’ve been doing so good.”

As their quintuplets continue to grow, the Ladners say they plan on documenting and sharing all the noteworthy and special moments through their new “5 Little Ladners” YouTube channel.

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(NEW YORK) — After being held for ransom for nearly a month in Haiti, a Florida couple was released Thursday after negotiations with their kidnappers, the Haitian National Police and the couple’s family told ABC News.

Jean-Dickens Toussaint and Abigail Toussaint, who were visiting relatives in Haiti, were kidnapped on March 18 while traveling on a bus from Port-au-Prince, according to their family members.

“They stopped the bus at a stop and they asked for the Americans on the bus and their escorts to come off the bus and then they took them,” Christie Desormes, the couple’s niece, told ABC Affiliate WPLG last month.

The family initially learned about the ransom demands after the friend escorting the Toussaints contacted his relatives, Desormes said.

The family paid the kidnappers’ $6,000 demand but they then raised the price to $200,000 per person, according to Desormes.

The exact details of the conditions of the couple’s release weren’t immediately revealed. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. embassy.

The Touissants, both 33, have a 2-year-old son, but he wasn’t with them during the trip, according to relatives.

The State Department advises Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest.”

ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and Desiree Adib contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A Minnesota judge sentenced a man to life in prison without parole Thursday for the death of his first wife, 13 years after police said he shot her over their financial troubles and lied to investigators that it happened during a home invasion.

Several of Heidi Firkus’ friends and family gave emotional victim statements before the judge sentenced her husband Nick Firkus, 40, for his crimes. For years, Nick Firkus maintained he was innocent and that a mysterious home intruder was involved in her death. However, investigators found there was nothing to back up his alibi and found evidence that he lied to his wife about their debts.

“Every homicide is a tragedy. This one is particularly egregious. He hid behind his status for too many years,” Elizabeth Lamin, the assistant district attorney for Ramsey County, Minnesota, said.

On April 25, 2010, Heidi Firkus called 911 saying there was a break-in and stopped talking after a gunshot went off, according to the audio from the call. Police found her dead and her husband wounded in the leg from a gunshot.

“20/20” will take a deep look into Heidi Firkus’s murder and the 13-year-long investigation in an episode airing this Friday at 9 p.m. ET and streaming the next day on Hulu.

Nick Firkus told investigators that he fought over a shotgun with the intruder and that it went off, hitting both him and his wife.

Firkus also told officers that the couple was facing serious financial problems and were set to be evicted, but that he kept those issues secret from her, his family and their friends.

No suspects were named and no one was arrested for years.

However, investigators were still looking into Nick Firkus’ role in his wife’s death, especially since there were discrepancies in his story. There were no signs of a break-in in the house and only Nick Firkus’ DNA was found on the shotgun.

He was arrested in May 2021 and charged with first and second degree murder. Prosecutors said that Nick Firkus killed his wife to hide from the shame of their financial troubles.

A jury convicted Nick Firkus on both charges on Feb. 10 after deliberating for 10 hours.

Peter Erickson, Heidi Firkus’ brother, blasted Nick Firkus during his impact statement.

“The realization that everything Nick was telling us. To have audacity obviously inconsistent to Heidi’s character [it’s] insulting,” he said.

Linda Erickson, the victim’s mother, got emotional during her statement thinking about the years of life lost.

“Because of the unthinkable actions of one person, she was robbed and those who loved her were robbed of participating in that adventure with her,” Linda Erickson said.

Nick Firkus’ attorneys contended their client’s story was the truth and that his wife’s death was caused by the break-in.

Nick Firkus again reiterated his claims that he didn’t murder his wife before the judge sentenced him.

“I will maintain my innocence until my dying last breath,” he said.

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(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Virginia lawmakers on Wednesday passed a resolution recognizing Abby Zwerner, 25, for what they characterized as courageous actions, saying she earned the state’s “admiration for her courage and dedication to the safety of her students.” The honor follows after the teacher was allegedly shot by a 6-year-old student back in January.

Zwerner attended the honor ceremony and was accompanied by family members.

“Thank you for all that you do for our children, and the lives that you no doubt saved,” Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears told Zwerner. Previously, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew called Zwerner a “hero” who “saved lives.”

Deja Taylor, the mother of a 6-year-old student in Virginia who allegedly shot a first-grade teacher in January, turned herself into law enforcement Thursday. She faces a maximum of six years in prison for charges related to child neglect and allowing her child to access a firearm.

She posted a $5,000 bond, the Newport News Sheriff’s office told ABC News.

Police said the boy’s mother legally purchased the gun. Her attorney, James Ellenson, has said the gun was secured on a top shelf in her closet and had a trigger lock.

In April Zwerner’s attorneys announced a $40 million lawsuit against the Newport News Public School system formally alleging school administrators ignored multiple warnings about the boy leading up to the shooting. In the lawsuit, they allege that Taylor’s son had a “history of random violence, with which all defendants were familiar.” His parents, according to the lawsuit “did not agree for him to be placed in special education classrooms” which dealt with children with behavioral issues.

Zwerner specifically accuses Assistant Principal Ebony Parker, who has since resigned, of failing to act despite being told repeatedly that the student had a gun at school.

Ellenson said Taylor has no prior criminal record. In January she told ABC News in a statement that her family “has always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.”

“The firearm our son accessed was secured” she said, adding her family will regret their “absence on this day for the rest of our lives.” The gun used during the incident was legally purchased and owned by Taylor, they said.

In early January, authorities say Taylor’s 6-year-old son fired one round of a 9mm Taurus Armas pistol at teacher Zwerner in her classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News. The bullet passed through Zwerner’s hand and into her chest, according to police. Despite being wounded, police said Zwerner ushered her students out of the classroom to safety and was the last person to leave the room. No students were physically injured during the incident.

The boy has been hospitalized since the shooting and is “receiving the treatment he needs.”

Following the shooting, the Newport News School Board announced it would hire two security officers and install 90 weapons detection systems throughout the division.

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(LLANO COUNTY, Texas) — A Texas county’s library system is being threatened amid an ongoing battle over banned books.

On Thursday, the Llano County Commissioners Court will discuss whether to “continue or cease operations” of the library system after previously removed books discussing race, health, gender and sexuality were returned to shelves under a court order.

The debate seemingly began in July 2021, when a community group began pushing for the removal of children’s books that they deemed “inappropriate,” according to court documents.

These books included two children series, dubbed the “Butt and Fart books” in the court order. The books “depict bodily functions in a humorous manner in cartoon format, because [critics] believed these books were obscene and promoted ‘grooming’ behavior.”

As months went on, the removal of books continued, targeting books that discussed race, discrimination, gender, sexuality or sexual health, court documents show.

In December 2021, the Llano County Commissioners Court, an elected governing body of the county, voted to close the library for three days to check the shelves for “inappropriate” books, however “inappropriate” was not defined, court documents show.

The Commissioners Court also voted to suspend access to the library’s online resources and dissolve the existing library advisory board, according to court documents.

Instead, a new advisory board was created and members of the community group that advocated for the book removals were appointed to it, according to the court order.

In April 2022, several Llano County residents sued county officials and the library over the book bans, calling the efforts to restrict books “censorship.”

“Book banning offends basic First Amendment principles and strikes at the core of our democracy,” read the lawsuit.

On March 31, a federal judge ordered the previously banned books to be put back on the shelves and allowed to be checked out and looked up in the library’s catalog. Now, the county Commissioners Court partially behind the move to remove books will decide the fate of the library system.

A representative for the Commissioners Court’s public information office declined ABC News’ request for comment regarding the reasoning behind the Thursday special meeting on the library’s potential closure, citing the pending litigation.

Book bans have been seen across the country in record-breaking numbers: Roughly 1,269 demands were made to censor library books and resources in 2022, according to the American Library Association. The organization says it is the highest number of attempted book bans since it began collecting data over 20 years ago.

The vast majority of book banning attempts were made against literature written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color, according to the ALA.

Leila Green Little, one of the residents involved in the lawsuit to bring back the books, called herself a “third generation patron of the Llano County Library System.”

Little said when she decided Llano County was where she wanted to raise her kids, she got them Llano County Library cards.

“My grandmother used to come to this library, my mother used to come to this library system, and they’ve both now passed so I feel a real connection to them when it comes to the library system,” she told ABC News. “My public library is where I have cried, where I have laughed, where. I’ve watched my children grow and learn, where I’ve studied.”

Little is also a member of the Llano County Library System Foundation, which offers support to the libraries through advocacy and grants, according to the foundation’s website.

She called the attempt to close the library system a “tantrum” by the local government.

“Libraries are extremely important to me,” she said. “I got involved in this preliminary injunction because I love my public library system and I must ensure that it serves the public.”

Little’s counsel, Emily Munoz, called the removal of books “censorship.”

“There’s nobody in Llano county that benefits from shutting the library,” said Munoz. “People are gonna lose their jobs. People are going to lose places where they meet. They’re going to lose the opportunity to read books, the opportunity to read books for free, a place to take their children.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s one-time director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, appeared before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Ratcliff is the latest former top Trump adviser to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., following a judge’s ruling last month that a number of top aides must appear.

Former top aide Stephen Miller was at the court earlier this week, and former Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli was spotted there last week. Sources confirm they were appearing before the grand jury.

Both men have previously appeared before the grand jury, but Trump had challenged their grand jury subpoenas by attempting to assert executive privilege.

A judge last month ordered former chief of staff Mark Meadows and other former top Trump aides to testify or provide additional grand jury testimony to the grand jury probing attempts to overturn the election, ABC News was first to report.

Also included in the judge’s order were aides Dan Scavino, Robert O’Brien, Nick Luna and John McEntee. It was not immediately clear whether dates had been set for them to appear.

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(SAN FRANCISCO) — Police arrested a fellow tech executive for the killing of 43-year-old Cash App founder Bob Lee, the San Francisco Police Department said on Thursday.

Police identified the suspect as Nima Momeni, 38, who appears to be the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.

Momeni previously knew Lee, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said.

“Mr. Momeni was taken into custody without incident in Emeryville and transported to San Francisco County jail and booked on a charge of murder,” Scott said at a briefing on Thursday. “Our investigators have been working tirelessly to make this arrest.”

Lee, an executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed in the early morning hours on April 4 in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hillon, the San Francisco Police Department said last week.

He died after “apparent stab wounds,” the police said.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on Thursday applauded the efforts of the SFPD.

“While in some cases we do immediately have as suspect, that was not the situation here,” she said. “Mr. Lee’s killer has been identified, arrested, and now will be brought to justice.”

London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, previously said in a statement to ABC News last week that Lee’s death marks a “horrible tragedy.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump arrived Thursday at the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James for a deposition as part of her $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump and his namesake company — his first return to New York City since he pleaded not guilty last week to 34 felony charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump’s motorcade was seen entering a garage beneath the attorney general’s office near Wall Street.

James sued Trump last September, accusing him, his eldest children, the Trump Organization and some of its executives of scheming for more than a decade to manipulate Trump’s net worth and the value of his real estate holdings in order to receive more favorable terms on loans, taxes and insurance.

The trial is scheduled for October and, if James is successful, could result in a $250 million penalty and a ban on the defendants from operating a business in New York.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and, in a morning social media post ahead of the deposition, called James, who is black, “racist” and her lawsuit “ridiculous.”

Trump is facing deposition questions about his business practices and the reliability of financial statements prepared by the Trump Organization, but it remains to be seen whether he answers those questions or invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the way he did hundreds of times last August when he sat for his first deposition as part of the case.

In a civil case, jurors are allowed to draw an adverse inference from a defendant’s choice to take the Fifth.

Trump’s legal team had sought to delay the October trial, but Judge Arthur Engoron said last month there was no need to postpone what he called a “seemingly simple case” of whether Trump’s disclosures to lenders and insurers were accurate or not.

“The issue is whether the statements were false,” Engoron said during a hearing last month. “This case is complex, but it is not complicated.”

Trump has complained about Engoron, writing in his Thursday morning social media post, “If I had a fair judge, this case would have never happened.”

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(NEW YORK) — A federal U.S. appeals court late Wednesday partially blocked an unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas last week that reverses the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the widely-used abortion drug mifepristone.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s emergency request to put on hold U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision to suspend the FDA’s initial authorization of mifepristone back in 2000, citing the the statute of limitations. However, the three-judge panel determined that other parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which suspends changes the FDA later made to mifepristone’s approved use and halts distribution of the drug by mail, could still go into effect at the end of the day Friday.

The Justice Department could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and completely block Kacsmaryk’s order.

The challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval stems from a lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas, in November 2022 by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group working to outlaw abortion. The case was assigned to Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump and is currently the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

On April 7, Kacsmaryk ruled to suspend the FDA’s authorization of mifepristone, saying the drug was unsafe and its approval process was rushed. The Justice Department subsequently appealed the decision to a higher court.

The lawsuit against mifepristone came just months after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide nearly 50 years ago.

Mifepristone has been on the market for 23 years. In 2016, the FDA lifted some of mifepristone’s original safety restrictions by increasing the maximum gestational age at which the drug can be used from 49 to 70 days, reducing the number of in-person office visits that patients are required to make from three to one, allowing non-doctors to prescribe and administer the drug and eliminating the requirement for prescribers to report non-fatal adverse events.

In 2021, the FDA announced it had permanently lifted its restriction that mifepristone must be dispensed in-person. Last month, the agency went a step further by allowing retail pharmacies to provide the drug too, either by mail or in person, so long as they meet certain requirements.

Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., using a combination of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based research group focusing on sexual and reproductive health.

The FDA has not approved misoprostol to be used for abortions on its own.

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(NEW YORK) — Families of Black men killed by police or gun violence have come together to brainstorm how to turn their “grief into action” to prevent continued instances of police violence.

The conversation comes as the country awaits a decision from a grand jury on the indictment of officers in the death of Jayland Walker, who was shot by police following a 2022 attempted traffic stop.

The panel, held by civil rights organization National Action Network on Wednesday in Manhattan, included family members of Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tyre Nichols, Amir Locke and Botham Jean.

Garner, Locke, Floyd and Nichols were killed in incidents with police.

Martin was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a man who followed Martin for believing Martin was suspicious. He was acquitted on all charges connected to Martin’s death. Arbery was followed by three men and fatally shot by one of them while out for a jog because the men believed he was responsible for trespassing.

Together, the families talked about their collective efforts to keep the memory of their deceased loved ones alive – in some ways, through the implementation of police reform.

On Tuesday, the evening before the panel, Memphis passed an ordinance called the “Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols” that would ban traffic stops for secondary violations like overdue registration or broken lights.

Nichols died in January following a violent traffic stop captured in body camera footage, which shows officers striking Nichols repeatedly. Five officers have been charged so far in connection with his death.

“He was on his way home from watching the sunsets. He liked to go to a park and watch the sunsets as much as possible,” said Row Vaughn, mother of Nichols, through tears.

She continued, “He was stopped. He was beaten. Less than 800 feet from my home … I didn’t watch the video, but I could hear him calling my name.”

She applauded Memphis for the move, but says there is much more to be done.

“We are going to continue to fight so that this doesn’t happen to another Tyre,” said Vaughn. “There’s just too many of our Black men being killed for nothing. I’m not understanding why Black men can’t even go home.”

Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, said the pain over her son’s 2014 death by police in New York City lingers on. She reminds other families facing similar tragedies that they’re “all fighting for the same thing, going down the same road.”

“I remember when this horrible incident happened to my son – I didn’t know what I would do. I was in a dark place at that time. But I decided to turn my mourning into action,” Carr said.

In 2020, several years after Garner’s death, she helped to pass the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, which criminalizes the harmful use of a chokehold by a police officer.

“You’re going to knock on doors that are not going to open, but sometimes you have to kick the door in,” said Carr.

She also helped build the E.R.I.C. Initiative Foundation, which offers scholarships, free meals, toy giveaways and retreats in an effort to connect and uplift those affected by police brutality.

Wanda Cooper Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, also has been fighting for legislative change since her son’s death.

Arbery was killed in Brunswick, Georgia, when three men followed him while he was jogging in their neighborhood and one of the men fatally shot him.

Arbery’s death and the nationwide outcry that followed led to the repealing of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law and the enactment of hate crime laws that criminalize acts motivated by someone’s identity.

“They repealed the citizens’ arrest laws, so white people cannot get in their trucks and chase down a Black boy,” said Cooper Jones.

She said her son’s death made her redefine who she was “as a woman.”

“Wanda, are you just going to sit down or are you going to implement more changes?” she said she asked herself. “Ahmaud is gone, but it is very important that his legacy lives forever.”

Though the evening applauded the wins so far from victims and their families, others said there’s a long way to go in addressing the policing issues that lead to the deaths of their children.

Amir Locke’s father, Andre Locke, is working on federal legislation that would end the use of no-knock warrants, which allow officers to enter a home without announcing their arrival. Locke was fatally shot by police who were executing a no-knock warrant.

The passage of the George Floyd Policing Act also has been an ongoing battle for police reform advocates. The legislation would improve accountability for police misconduct, restrict certain harmful policing practices, and enhance transparency and data collection.

“I cannot explain the pain,” said one of George Floyd’s brothers. “We’ve been fighting since 2020 – it is 2023. Times are changing.”

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