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(CALIFORNIA) — The city of Antioch, California, and at least 9 police officers are facing a lawsuit over alleged civil rights violations by the officers and their alleged involvement in racist, homophobic and sexually explicit text messages.

Civil rights attorney John Burris announced the lawsuit Thursday at a press conference attended by alleged victims of the officers and their families.

“Exactly everything that I was voicing, but you don’t have a voice when you deal with a system like this,” Adam Carpenter, one of the alleged victims named in the lawsuit, said referring to accusations he made about the police.

The Contra Costa district attorney’s office and the FBI have been engaged in a joint federal and state criminal investigation of Antioch and Pittsburg, California, police officers for a “broad range” of crimes over moral turpitude, according to documents obtained by ABC News from the DA’s office.

The two police departments and eight officers are being investigated by the FBI and DA, according to Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe. The FBI didn’t immediately return ABC News’ request for a statement.

Text messages between Antioch police officers from 2019 to 2022 were released on April 13 by the DA in a 21-page report. The DA’s office released a 14-page report with more text messages on Monday.

“I’ve never seen the pervasive form of racial bigotry that was communicated amongst these officers as if it were a cup of coffee,” Burris said. “Knowing what I know now, this community probably should have been more afraid of the police than the gangsters or the criminal that were in their communities.”

Burris said the words were more than just locker room talk, they were a “state of mind.”

Community organizer Shagoofa Khan is a plaintiff in the lawsuit in which she alleges being the subject of offensive text messages sent by one of the accused officers.

When Khan saw the disclosed texts, she said “it was extremely traumatizing, not just for myself, but the entire community of Antioch. I dropped my phone reading those text messages. They were so vile and disgusting.”

“There were different variations of the N word. Even old southern ways of referring to Black women,” Burris said.

In one set of documents from the DA’s office obtained by ABC News, one officer is shown on text talking about kicking a suspect in the head.

The officer says, “We managed to set up a perimeter and he got his a– whooped in the back yard and I field goal kicked his head.”

Someone responds, “I thought that was a no no.”

The first officer replies, “No we can do that just no chokes … I tried to knock him unconscious.”

Devon Wenger, an officer named in the DA’s 21-page report, told ABC News in a statement that there is much that the public is unaware of concerning the FBI and DA’s joint investigation. According to Wenger, the investigation has been corrupted by the FBI, DA, police administration and Mayor Thorpe.

“Out of both released reports, the initial 21-page report and the secondary 14 page report, I just simply said I do not like body cams,” Wenger told ABC News in the statement. “To put it bluntly, that’s not racist.”

Documents sent to ABC News from the DA’s office show the message which Wenger is referring to.

A police officer in the text message exchange says, “If Pitt didn’t have all those body cams and that was us…we would have f—– him up more. He didn’t get what he deserved.”

Wenger replies, “I agree. That’s why I don’t like body cams.”

The Antioch police told ABC News that they would not be releasing a statement at this time.

“We understand the public scrutiny of police officers throughout the nation, and acknowledge that revelations of text messaging such as that reported in this case can provoke emotional and even sometimes hateful responses,” Michael Rains, an attorney who represents many but not all of the officers, told ABC News through a statement. “Nevertheless, police officers, even when accused of potential misconduct, should be afforded basic and fundamental rights of due process.”

Mayor Thorpe told ABC News the city is preparing to launch its own investigation of the police department. According to Thorpe, before a reporter first revealed the content in the texts to him, he didn’t expect them to be so vile. After the reporter read the eighth or ninth text, he said he asked her to stop. He told ABC News he doesn’t intend to ever read those text messages.

“There are people in those text messages, who didn’t respond and didn’t say anything who I know who I thought were some of our best officers,” Thorpe said. “They may have looked at those text messages and said, ‘This is wrong. But I can’t say anything because I know what will happen to my career.’ That’s a cultural problem.”

ABC News’ Jay O’Brien contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Employees and the owner of an upstate New York midwife practice are facing federal charges due to allegedly running a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination clinic.

Licensed midwife Kelly McDermott, 61, who owns Sage-Femme Midwifery, located in Albany, as well employee Kathleen Breault, 65, another midwife, have been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

According to a grand jury indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York, McDermott and Breault enrolled Sage-Femme as an authorized COVID-19 vaccine administration site with the state Department of Health.

On the outside, Sage Femme looked like one of “the busiest vaccination sites in New York State, outpacing large, state-run vaccination sites,” federal officials wrote in a case summary.

However, between June 2021 and March 2022, Sage Femme created more than 2,600 false entries in the state’s vaccination database and distributed fake COVID-19 vaccination cards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to people who were not vaccinated, including individuals living in Brooklyn and Staten Island, according to court documents.

Additionally, some of the people who allegedly received vaccination cards were minors who had not yet been made eligible by the state officials to be vaccinated and those who aren’t citizens of the U.S. and and lacked the immigration documents necessary to enter the country, according to prosecutors.

These fake vaccinations were then entered into the New York State Information System, a vaccination database run by the NYDOH, according to court documents.

McDermott, Breault and unnamed conspirators allegedly destroyed vials of COVID-19 vaccines that they had received.

The defendants allegedly kept up the façade by holding “vaccination clinic days,” during which patients would be scheduled for COVID-19 vaccination appointments, but not actually receive the shot.

The alleged scheme allowed residents, such as those in New York City, to evade rules that had been set up that only allowed people who were vaccinated to dine indoor, visit entertainment venues and exercise in fitness and recreations centers.

Federal officials also said the conspiracy interfered with efforts made by the CDC and the U.S. Department Health and Human Services to document vaccination efforts.

“The defendants in these cases used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to engage in fraud, including faking vaccine cards and stealing vital funds designed to keep struggling businesses afloat,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said in a statement.

No attorneys were listed for McDermott or Breault. Sage-Femme Midwifery did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

Meanwhile, another employee of Sage Femme, licensed practical nurse, Sherilyn Pellitteri, 41, of Somerset, Kentucky, previously pleaded guilty in connection with the same conspiracy.

Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. carries a penalty of a fine and/or up to five years in prison.

The charges are among a recent series of 18 cases brought against people across the U.S. who allegedly committed fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among them are two people in Florida charged with conspiracy to defraud due to an alleged plan to illegally purchase Medicare beneficiary ID numbers so they could bill Medicare for “over the counter COVID-19 test kits that were ineligible for reimbursement,” according to a case summary.

Two men in Utah were also charged with fraud after allegedly manufacturing and selling about 120,000 fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards online.

“Today’s announcement marks the largest-ever coordinated law enforcement action in the United States targeting health care fraud schemes that exploit the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in a statement.

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(WASHINGTON) — A toddler has been hospitalized after police found them in critical condition from a gunshot wound in a Washington state firehouse Friday morning, according to investigators.

Officers in Tukwila, Washington, responded to several 911 calls from the Allentown neighborhood in which a female could be heard screaming on the phone, investigators said.

Officers went to the vicinity of a fire station and saw a vehicle flee and a toddler, who was wounded by a gunshot, left behind, according to the police. The unidentified child was in critical condition and rushed to a hospital, police said.

“The status of the victim is unknown at this time,” the police said in a statement Friday afternoon.

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(UTAH) — For the past 20 years, Henry Wilson has been forced to travel several miles, multiple times a day, to get water for his family in Monument Valley, Utah.

By the time the sun rises above the red sandstone pillars, Wilson is on his way to a nearby well. But on one day in particular, he arrived much later than he hoped.

“Today it will be about an hour and a half,” Wilson said as he pulled behind several cars in line, each with a giant plastic water dispenser in the bed of the trunk. He waited 90 minutes to fill his 350-gallon tank. In the summer, that wait can stretch to 3 hours.

The Navajo Nation reservation is the nation’s largest, spanning 16 million acres across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But what’s considered sacred in the Navajo culture is also scarce. One in three households do not have access to running water, according the the Navajo Nation Department of water resources.

“We pray with the water; we bless ourselves with water…Water is something really special to us. That’s the only thing we have in life,” Wilson’s wife, Eloise, told ABC News’ Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott.

Henry and Eloise Wilson have 10 grandchildren, who spend every weekend at their home. The couple’s 325-gallon tank typically will only hold enough water to last 24 hours if they’re lucky. Most of the year, Henry Wilson takes multiple trips to the well, including waiting hours under a blazing sun in the summer.

“We have to keep the water coming in the tank every day for us to shower, for us to get ready for work. You know, you always think that those people that have running water are really lucky,” Eloise Wilson said.

The family has found creative ways to preserve water — from keeping a pitcher on the dining room table with the allotted amount for the day, to collecting rainwater during storms to feed their livestock.

Nearly 300 miles away on the reservation in Prewitt, New Mexico, Erica Francis is struggling with access to water, too. She uses one bucket to get water for her family of six from an outdoor tap up the road.

“This is the bucket that we have to fill up with water. The only bucket that we have,” she said.

Francis said she tries to use just 5 gallons a day for her four children — most Americans use 82 gallons a day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We try to just use 5 gallons, a bucket a day, but sometimes that’s not enough. You need more and more,” she said.

“Washing up, I usually just, you know, put up a big pot of water and put it on the stove and heat it up like that until I get hot and mixed with a little bit of cold water and be warm for my littles to bathe in,” she added.

The fight over water rights in the Navajo Nation is a centuries-old debate that has now reached the nation’s highest court.

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to allow the Navajo Nation to sue the federal government for help expanding their reservation’s access to water at a time when the precious resource has been in tight supply across the drying American West.

“I feel that there has been a breach of trust with our federal government,” Davina Smith, a Democratic candidate for Utah’s House Representative, told ABC News. As a Diné woman who grew up on the Navajo reservation, Smith says she would like to see state and federal lawmakers advocate and invest in water resources for native communities.

“Families still have to wait in line all day to get water. We’re not able to provide the basic necessities for our families,” Smith said. “I would love for them to spend a week with a family to live out in these areas and understand from our perspective what we’re going through,” she added.

While federal money has been funneled to tribal communities, indigenous-led nonprofits like Dig Deep have stepped in to bridge the gap.

Most of their operation is run by people in the community who have struggled with access to water themselves.

“My team, they’re all Navajo people. They’re actually out here helping their own people to try to get water,” said Cindy Howe, deputy director of Dig Deep’s Navajo Water Project.

For years, Howe has worked to bring underground water tanks to families living in remote areas on the reservation — the Francis family was next on the list.

“OK, are we ready? Go ahead and pull this lever this way,” Howe instructs the Francis family.

“You happy? You got water,” Francis said to her daughter.

“Cindy, I just want to thank you so much,” Francis said, amid tears.

“Thank you for everything you do.”

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(DADEVILLE, Ala.) — Six people, including four teenagers, have been arrested in connection with a deadly shooting at a birthday party in Alabama over the weekend where four victims were killed and 32 others were injured.

The most recent arrest, an unnamed 15-year-old from Tuskegee, was announced by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency on Friday. He has been charged with four counts of reckless murder.

This came one day after authorities announced the arrest of the fifth suspect, 19-year-old Willie George Brown Jr. of Auburn, who was also charged with four counts of reckless murder.

Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, both of Tuskegee, were each charged with four counts of reckless murder on Tuesday. They have both been charged as adults.

Wilson LaMar Hill Jr., 20, of Auburn, was arrested on Wednesday and also charged with four counts of reckless murder. Johnny Letron Brown, 20, of Tuskegee, was arrested and formally charged with four counts of reckless murder on Thursday, according to the ALEA.

Four victims are still in the hospital in critical condition.

The shooting took place at a crowded birthday party in the small town of Dadeville, located approximately 60 miles northeast of Montgomery, according toauthorities.

“Make no mistake, this is Alabama and when you pull out a gun, and you start shooting people, we’re gonna put you in jail,” Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sgt. Jeremy Burkett said at a press conference Wednesday.

Officials said they are still in the early stages of the investigation and more charges will be coming. Officials asked anyone who has information or was present at the shooting to come forward.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Mike Segrest, district attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Alabama. “We’re going to make sure every one of those victims has justice and not just the deceased.”

Officials did not reveal whether they have identified a motive for the shooting.

One of the victims killed in the shooting — 18-year-old Philstavious Dowdell — was attending his sister’s 16th birthday party, according to Segrest.

“There were so many kids in this venue and what they saw, they’re victims in this. Their families are victims of this,” Segrest said at a press conference Wednesday.

In addition to Dowdell, the three others killed in the shooting were identified as 23-year-old Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 19-year-old Marsiah Emmanuel Collins and 17-year-old Shaunkivia Nicole Smith.

ABC News’ Derricke Dennis reports:

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(HAMPTON, N.H.) — Coast Guard suspends search for last boater after 3 found dead

The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a fourth missing boater a day after three others were found dead in the waters off New England.

On Wednesday, the Coast Guard received a report that the boat was overdue from a family member of one of the boaters aboard the missing 17-foot vessel. The boat had departed Hampton Harbor, in New Hampshire, at about 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning and was due back by sunset, according to the boaters’ family members.

The Coast Guard located an overturned boat approximately 7 miles northeast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, which it confirmed to be the missing boat.

Jia Fu Zheng, 38, and Daxiao Lin, 43, of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Jaime Liu, 42, of Litchfield, New Hampshire, were recovered unresponsive and transported to Station Gloucester, Massachusetts, where they were pronounced dead by local medical examiners. The fourth boater, Bin “Michael” Cai, remains missing, according to the Coast Guard.

“Their reported destination was fishing grounds near Jeffreys Ledge, approx. 50 miles offshore,” the Coast Guard tweeted.

Missing boaters: Michael Sai and 3 additional people departed Hampton, NH, yesterday morning in the pictured 17-ft white center console. Their reported destination was fishing grounds near Jeffreys Ledge, approx. 50 miles offshore. pic.twitter.com/OCqCzewkWR

— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) April 20, 2023

A Coast Guard helicopter, plane and two boats were deployed to search for the missing people, the agency said. The Coast Guard had been using the last known position from a cellphone and the location of their anticipated fishing area to develop a search area. Crews had searched for 27 hours covering more than 1,567 square nautical miles.

The Coast Guard will conduct an investigation into the deaths as it was more than 3 miles from shore.

“We extend our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of these boaters.” Capt. Amy Florentino, the commander of the Coast Guard Sector Northern New England, said in a statement.

“The decision to suspend a search and rescue case is one of the most difficult decisions I must make, but we want the public and especially Mr. Cai’s family that we did everything in our power to find them. The water temperature in New England at this time of the year dramatically reduces the survivability rate for anyone that enters the water, and we urge all boaters to keep the air and water temperatures in mind when planning their voyages this spring,” Florentino said.

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(GROTON, Conn.) — A fuel tanker truck rolled over on the Gold Star Bridge in Groton, Connecticut, on Friday, sparking a massive fire and shutting down traffic on Interstate 95.

The driver of the truck died at the scene and two people have been taken to hospitals, New London Mayor Michael Passero said.

Story developing…

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(GASTONIA, N.C.) — The 24-year-old man accused of shooting a 6-year-old girl, her parents and another neighbor after a basketball rolled into his yard in North Carolina is now in police custody.

Robert Singletary appeared in court on Friday and signed an extradition waiver. He turned himself in on Thursday to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, authorities said.

Neighbors told ABC News’ Charlotte affiliate WSOC-TV the shooting on Tuesday started when a basketball rolled into Singletary’s yard from a group of local children playing basketball in the street. Singletary allegedly fired a gun at a neighbor before approaching a father and daughter, William James White and 6-year-old Kinsley White, who were both seriously wounded.

One woman was grazed by a bullet and a second man was shot at but not injured, police said.

William White remains in serious condition, according to police.

“Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid’s dad?” Kinsley asked in an emotional interview, stitches visible on her cheek from the bullet fragments that hit her.

Family members said William White tried to draw gunfire toward himself to protect his family as Singletary unloaded an entire magazine toward his neighbor. White was shot in the back in his own front yard, according to his partner, Ashley Hilderbrand.

“He looked at my husband and my daughter and told them, ‘I’m going to kill you,'” Hilderbrand said.

Singletary is charged with four counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.

In December, Singletary was separately charged with assaulting his girlfriend with a mini sledgehammer, leading her to bleed profusely from the back of the head and forcing her inside an apartment for two hours.

“The victim further stated that Singletary told her that she could not leave until she had cleaned up all the evidence from the assault,” police said.

“I want to say to the people of Gaston County this sort of violence will not stand,” Gaston County Police chief, Stephen M. Zill, said.

The North Carolina shooting follows a string of similar incidents where seemingly ordinary mistakes have led to serious consequences involving firearms. Over the last week, two cheerleaders in Texas were shot after entering the wrong car in a parking lot, a woman in New York was killed after entering the wrong driveway and a 16-year-old in Missouri was shot after ringing the doorbell to a wrong home.

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(NEW YORK) — As severe weather moves east, a round of damaging storms is expected on Friday from Louisiana to Ohio.

At least 15 tornadoes were reported across three states earlier this week, causing severe damage and leaving three people dead in Oklahoma. At least eight of those tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma. Huge hail — some the size of a softball — was reported from Illinois to Texas.

On Thursday, damaging straight line winds up to 81 mph were reported in Cook County, near Chicago. Baseball-sized hail fell in Henry County, Illinois.  

Severe weather will move east over the next two days bringing damaging winds and hail from the Gulf Coast to the Mid-Atlantic.

Strong to severe storms will hit the South, including New Orleans; Jackson, Mississippi; and Houston as well as another area from Ohio to western Pennsylvania and western New York.  The biggest threat Friday will be isolated damaging winds, some hail and even isolated tornadoes.

The threat moves to the East Coast over the weekend and will stretch from coastal Georgia to the Carolinas and into Virginia and Maryland. Areas in the bull’s-eye will be Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington, D.C.

The biggest threat Saturday will be damaging winds and some hail. There is also a chance of an isolated tornado in the Mid-Atlantic. Some of the storms could even reach Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Most of the Northeast will not see severe weather, but heavy rain and thunderstorms are possible in New Jersey, New York City and into southern New England.  

The heaviest rain hits New York City Saturday night into early Sunday morning. Street flooding is possible. Locally, some areas could see up to 3 inches of rain in a short period of time, with some flash flooding possible.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court in New York on Friday returned E. Jean Carroll’s initial case against former President Donald Trump to a district court judge who had previously decided Trump did not act within the scope of his employment as president when he denied Carroll’s rape claim and allegedly defamed her.

Carroll, a former Elle columnist who alleges that Trump attacked her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in the 1990s, claims Trump defamed her in 2019 when, during his presidency, he denied her rape claim by calling her a liar and saying “she’s not my type.”

Trump, who also denies the accusations, has argued that the Justice Department should be substituted as the defendant in the case because, at the time of his allegedly defamatory statements, he was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government.

Friday’s decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remands the case to the district court for further consideration.

The decision follows an indeterminate opinion from the D.C. Court of Appeals, which last week declined to shield Trump from accountability but did not fully resolve the question of whether denying allegations of misconduct that occurred prior to his term fell within the scope of his employment as president of the United States.

If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in Carroll’s defamation lawsuit — which means the case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.

The presiding district court judge, Lewis Kaplan, previously denied the government’s motion to substitute for Trump, ruling that the president is not an employee of the government and that Trump did not act within the scope of his employment when he allegedly defamed Carroll.

The case, which has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth since then-Attorney General William Barr sought to substitute the government for Trump as the defendant in 2000, is one of two lawsuits Carrol has brought against Trump in connection with his alleged defamatory remarks.

She filed a second lawsuit against him in November, related to the same rape accusation, that alleged additional instances of defamation and added a claim of battery under a New York law that allows adult victims to sue even if the alleged sexual assault occurred long ago.

That case is scheduled for trial in New York City next week. Carroll’s attorneys said they do not plan to call Trump as a witness but do plan to play excerpts of a deposition he sat for as part of the case.

Trump’s attorneys have said he has not decided whether to attend the trial, despite a Thursday deadline Judge Kaplan set for Trump to inform him of his plans.

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