(MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif.) — A series of mega-storms throughout March has brought snow to Mammoth Mountain in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, burying homes, cars and businesses.
Earlier this week, 20.7 inches fell in 24 hours at Mammoth Mountain, surpassing the all-time season snowfall record, according to the UC Berkeley Snow Lab, with more than 700 inches for the season. The previous record, set in the 2010-2011 season was 668 inches.
People were out shoveling snow off roofs and trying to keep roads passable with windy conditions. Wind gusts at the ski resort were reported to be as high as 98 mph.
That will stretch the ski season through at least July at Mammoth Mountain ski resort, which has recorded 870 inches at the base of the Main Lodge.
Another 30 inches fell in the last 24 hours and the forecast is for snow this weekend and early next week.
(TRIGG COUNTY, Ky.) — All nine service members on board have died after two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters crashed during a training mission in Trigg County, Kentucky, an Army official announced, calling it a “truly tragic loss.”
The Black Hawk helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division — one with five on board and another with four on board — were on a “routine training mission” when they crashed at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, Army officials said. The helicopters were “flying a multi-ship formation under night vision goggles,” officials said.
Brigadier General Lubas said the helicopters “have something very similar to the black boxes that we see on the larger aircraft, and we’re hopeful that that will provide quite a bit of information on what occurred.”
Trigg County, where the crash occurred, is about 25 miles northwest of Fort Campbell, a military installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
Kentucky State Police troopers found the wreckage in a location described as either a field or a semi-wooded area, said Sarah Burgess, a police spokesperson.
No one else was hurt, Army officials said.
The service members’ names have not been released. Officials said they are in the process of notifying the families.
“We’re gonna wrap our arms around these families and we’re gonna be there with them,” Kentucky Gov. Andy. Beshear said at a news conference Thursday.
ABC New’s Ahmad Hemingway, Emily Shapiro, Jaclyn Lee and Matt Seyler contributed to this story.
(RAYMOND, Minn.) — A freight train derailed in a fiery crash near a small town in Minnesota early Thursday, forcing residents to evacuate as a precaution, officials said.
The incident was reported at around 1 a.m. CT. Multiple tankers of a train operated by BNSF Railway derailed and caught fire on the western edge of Raymond, a town in Minnesota’s southwestern Kandiyohi County that has a population of less than 800. The tankers were carrying “a form of ethanol” and “a corn syrup liquid,” according to a press release from the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office.
BNSF spokesperson Lena Kent confirmed to ABC News that “approximately 22 cars” of a train “carrying mixed freight including ethanol and corn syrup” derailed near Raymond at 1:02 a.m. The company, one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America, is investigating the cause of the incident and, so far, there were no reported casualties, according to Kent.
“BNSF field personnel are responding to assess the derailment site and will be working closely with local first responders,” Kent told ABC News in a statement Thursday. “The main track is blocked and an estimated time for reopening the line is not available.”
Approximately 13 rail cars were carrying ethanol. Four train cars that are on fire contain ethanol, FEMA officials said Thursday.
A half-mile evacuation radius was established around the derailment site. Residents within the designated area “were instructed to leave their homes,” while those “with nowhere to go” were sent to a school in the nearby town of Prinsburg, according to the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office.
The total number of evacuees is unknown, according to FEMA.
The fire at the derailment site “is being contained,” and members of the public are advised against traveling to Raymond in the meantime, the sheriff’s office said.
The Raymond Fire Department, which deployed firefighters to the scene, said in a Facebook post that the evacuation is “for precautionary measures.”
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg confirmed in a Twitter post that the Federal Railroad Administration “is on the ground after a BNSF train carrying ethanol derailed early this morning, leading to an evacuation in the area of Raymond, MN.”
“At present no injuries or fatalities have been reported,” Buttigieg added. “We are tracking closely as more details emerge and will be involved in the investigation.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said it is launching a team to conduct a safety investigation into Thursday’s derailment. The team was expected to arrive on scene in Raymond on Thursday afternoon.
The Homeland Security and Emergency Management is actively monitoring the situation and communicating with local officials in Raymond, officials said. It will be deploying liaisons to the incident area.
(NEW YORK) — All nine service members on board have died after two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters crashed during a training mission in Trigg County, Kentucky, an Army official confirms to ABC News.
The Black Hawk helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division were on a “routine training mission” when they crashed at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, Army officials said.
“The command is currently focused on caring for the servicemembers and their families,” Nondice Thurman, a spokesperson for the Fort Campbell Public Affairs Office, said in a statement.
“Please pray for all those affected,” Kentucky Gov. Andy. Beshear said.
Trigg County, where the crash occurred, is about 25 miles northwest of Fort Cambell, a military installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
Kentucky State Police troopers found the wreckage in a location described as either a field or a semi-wooded area, said Sarah Burgess, a police spokesperson. There were no reports of damage to residential buildings, but residents within the debris field were asked to leave the area.
“I can’t speak on behalf of the residents other than we are doing everything we can to assess the situation and make sure that our community is as safe as it can be,” Burgess said.
(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — Hundreds of people gathered at a candlelight vigil in Nashville, Tennessee on Wednesday evening to mourn and honor the six victims of a mass shooting at an elementary school.
Local, state and federal officials along with dignitaries, religious leaders and community figureheads attended the somber ceremony at One Square Park in the downtown section of Tennessee’s capital city. First lady Jill Biden and singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow were among those in attendance, though Biden did not address the crowd.
Various speakers took turns reading aloud the names of the victims and expressing condolences to the grieving families.
“Just two days ago was our city’s worst day,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper told the crowd. “I so wish we weren’t here, but we need to be here.”
A shooter gunned down three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville on Monday morning. Responding officers shot and killed the suspect about 14 minutes after the initial 911 call came in, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
Police have identified the slain children as 9-year-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs. The adult victims were identified as 61-year-old custodian Mike Hill, 60-year-old head of school Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old substitute teacher Cynthia Peak.
During Wednesday’s vigil, local school administrator Tricia Drake said she couldn’t stop thinking about her last conversation with Koonce, who she said had advised her on how to best prepare for an active shooter scenario.
“My last conversation with her, in August, was about who she used for her active shooter training because I know that she would have researched somebody,” Drake tearfully told ABC News. “We ended up using the same active shooter training at the school where I was also a head. I can’t believe that was my last conversation with her.”
Drake said she knew Koonce had made her mark when she saw the footage that police released from two of the responding officers’ body-worn cameras. One of the videos shows a Covenant School staff member meeting Officer Rex Engelbert at the school’s main entrance, telling him: “The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are.” She then is seen using a key to unlock the door so officers could go inside.
“Students were in their classrooms, locked up, the professional outdoors to lead the Metro policeman. She had a key, what her headcount was, she knew exactly where the students would be, she was prepared,” Drake told ABC News. “I’m sure they had run those drills, and it’s because of Katherine and the foresight she had to make sure her staffers were prepared.”
Drake, who declined to say the name of the school she works for, said she underwent the same active shooter training that Koonce used and that the key is to adopt a “warrior mentality,” accepting injury rather than death. Part of the training, she said, is to throw students out of windows and run away as far as possible. Drake said she believes Koonce’s preparation saved lives on Monday.
Drake recalled the moment she realized something might be seriously wrong when news about the shooting at the Covenant School began to spread.
“I texted my sister and friends of mine to say: That’s Katherine’s school. I know she’s going to come out. She’s going to come out anytime now and tell everybody that it’s under control, that everything’s ok,” Drake recounted. “And I waited like everyone else for Katherine to come out and I thought it was so strange that she was not visible. She was so professional, so prepared, so committed to her faculty and those sweet children of hers, and it’s just such a loss. It is unthinkable that this has happened in our little town.”
The suspect — identified as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville — was a former student of the Covenant School, according to police. Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters on Tuesday that it appears the school was likely targeted, but “students were randomly targeted.”
The police chief had told reporters on Monday that Hale was female and identified as transgender but didn’t immediately provide more details. A police spokesperson later told ABC News that the suspect was assigned female at birth but pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included the use of the pronouns he/him.
The suspect was armed with two assault-style rifles, a handgun and “significant ammunition” at the time of the attack, according to police. Investigators have since searched Hale’s home in Nashville, where they seized “a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence,” police said in a press release on Monday.
The police chief said the suspect had legally purchased seven guns from five different local stores and hid some of those weapons at home. Hale was under a “doctor’s care for an emotional disorder,” the police chief said, and Hale’s parents “were under the impression that was when she sold the one weapon” they believed Hale owned.
Hale also had a detailed map of the school as well as “writings and a book we consider to be like a manifesto,” the police chief told ABC News in an interview Tuesday on Good Morning America.
“We have not been able to determine a motive as of yet,” he added. “The investigation is very much still ongoing.”
Video from the school’s surveillance cameras shows the suspect arriving in a vehicle and parking in the parking lot at 9:54 a.m. ET. Minutes later, the suspect is seen shooting through a door on the side of the school and entering the building. Hale allegedly went from the first floor to the second floor, firing multiple shots, according to police.
Police received a 911 call about an active shooter at the school at 10:13 a.m. ET. As officers responded to the scene, the suspect fired on police cars from a second-floor window, police said.
Video from two of the responding officers’ body-worn cameras shows them entering the school, following the sound of gunfire to the second floor and finding the suspect in a lobby area near a window. After an officer shouts “reloading,” officers Rex Engelbert, a four-year veteran, and Michael Collazo, a nine-year veteran, both fire at the suspect.
The Covenant School, a private Christian school for children in preschool through sixth grade, has about 209 students and 40 to 50 staff members. It does not have a school resource officer, according to police.
In a statement released Monday night, the Covenant School said its community “is heartbroken.”
“We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our church and school,” the school said. “We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing.”
(NEW YORK) — A train derailed near Raymond, Minnesota, on Thursday, prompting a local evacuation order, officials said.
Residents nearby were told to evacuate after a BNSF train derailed and caught fire, Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release overnight.
(NEW YORK) — Two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters crashed during a training mission on Wednesday night in Trigg County, Kentucky, officials said in a statement.
The Black Hawk helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division were on a “routine training mission” when they crashed at about 10 p.m. local time, Army officials said.
The crash resulted “in several casualties,” officials from the division, which is also known as the “Screaming Eagles,” said on Twitter.
“The command is currently focused on caring for the servicemembers and their families,” Nondice Thurman, a spokesperson for the Fort Campbell Public Affairs Office, said in a statement.
Gov. Andy. Beshear of Kentucky said he received “early reports of a helicopter crash and fatalities are expected.” The Kentucky State Police and Division of Emergency Management were responding, he said in a statement.
“We will share more information as available,” Beshear said. “Please pray for all those affected.”
Trigg County, where the crash occurred, is about 25 miles northwest of Fort Campell, a military installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
Kentucky State Police troopers found the wreckage in a location described as either a field or a semi-wooded area, said Sarah Burgess, a police spokesperson. There were no reports of damage to residential buildings, but residents within the debris field were asked to leave the area.
“I can’t speak on behalf of the residents other than we are doing everything we can to assess the situation and make sure that our community is as safe as it can be,” Burgess said.
(EAGLE PASS, Texas) — One man has been arrested in connection with the smuggling incident that led to 17 migrants becoming trapped on a train on Friday in Uvalde County, Texas.
Denniso Carranza Gonzales, a Honduran national, was allegedly a foot guide for a group of 12 Honduran migrants that day, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and obtained by ABC News.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), 15 men and two women were discovered on the Union Pacific train.
Gonzales stated that he had been guiding groups of undocumented immigrants from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico into Eagle Pass, Texas, for three months “as a way to pay for his own smuggling costs,” according to the criminal complaint. He said the smugglers told him he would be “taken care of” for continuing to smuggle groups, the complaint says.
The groups would be guided onto train cars on the way to San Antonio, he said, according to the complaint.
The initial 911 call came in at 3:50 p.m. local time on Friday from an “unknown third-party caller” advising there were numerous immigrants “suffocating” inside of a Union Pacific train, Uvalde police said in a statement posted on Facebook.
U.S. Border Patrol was able to stop the train two to three miles outside of Knippa, Texas.
“We are heartbroken to learn of yet another tragic incident of migrants taking the dangerous journey,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Saturday.
Court records allege that Gonzales says he brought the group to a designated train where another man arrived and told him they would be placed in a Conex box on a rail car. The doors were closed once Gonzales and the group boarded the train.
According to the complaint, he told investigators that the group became worried once the train started moving.
He added he “told the people to remain calm and breathe deep” and that the doors would be opened once the train arrived in San Antonio, the complaint says.
Gonzales said he called the man who placed them in the Conex box when “the box became extremely hot and the air was getting harder to breathe,” the complaint alleges. When the man did not answer, Gonzales told the group to start calling 911, he told investigators.
He says he did not know a person had died in the incident, according to the complaint.
HSI is still investigating the second fatal train incident that happened over the weekend in Eagle Pass, Texas.
The Eagle Pass incident occurred about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at a Union Pacific rail yard, when someone from inside a boxcar parked at the yard called 911, a Union Pacific spokesperson said.
Law enforcement found 12 migrants trapped inside a stifling boxcar, including one who was pronounced dead at the scene and three others in need of hospitalization, officials said.
Homeland Security has launched a human smuggling investigation into the incident. No arrests have been announced.
It’s unclear if the Uvalde County and the Eagle pass incidents are connected.
Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(BOISE, Idaho) — A new Idaho bill would make it illegal to aid minors in traveling across state lines for abortion care while concealing it from their parents. The proposed bill is set to be voted on by the state Senate.
The proposed bill names a crime called “abortion trafficking,” which criminalizes any adult who aids or obtains abortion pills for a minor in another state while seeking to conceal it from their parents or legal guardians.
Nearly all abortions have been banned in Idaho, with exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest. However, women are required to file a police report and show it to the medical provider before they can get abortion care in cases of rape or incest. The state also requires parental consent or notification for minors seeking abortion care, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The bill makes it a crime for any adult to procure or obtain abortion pills for a pregnant minor “by recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state” while intending to conceal the abortion from the pregnant minor’s parents or guardians, according to the bill.
Anyone found guilty of committing abortion trafficking could face from two to five years in state prison.
The proposed bill passed through the Idaho House of Representatives earlier this month with a 57 -12 vote. If approved by the state Senate, it heads to Gov. Brad Little’s desk for approval before it can become law. A representative for Little declined to comment on the bill or if Little would sign it into law.
The bill would also allow civil lawsuits to be brought by the family of the minor who sought the abortion care or the father of the fetus. Civil suits could also be brought against medical professionals who provide abortion care, asking for at least $20,000 in damages.
Last week, an Idaho hospital announced it will end labor and delivery services in part due to the “political climate.”
Last June, Little celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion rights.
“I join many in Idaho and across the country today in welcoming the high court’s long-awaited decision upholding state sovereignty and protecting pre-born lives. The decision provides clarity around landmark cases at the center of passionate debate in our country for nearly five decades. This is now clear – the ‘right’ to an abortion was a judicial creation,” Little said at the time.
The high court’s decision paved the way for an anti-abortion trigger law approved by Little to go into effect last summer.
“Abortion is not a right expressed in the U.S. Constitution, and abortion will be entrusted to the states and their people to regulate,” he said.
Idaho’s six-week abortion ban is one of the strictest in the country. As part of a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, a judge blocked part of the ban in August that would have prohibited providers from providing abortions in medical emergencies.
Little criticized the lawsuit, which he claimed is “interference with Idaho’s pro-life law and another example of Biden overreaching yet again,” he said in a statement in August.
“Here in Idaho, we are proud that we have led the country in protecting pre-born lives. I will continue to work with Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to vigorously uphold state sovereignty and defend Idaho’s laws in the face of federal meddling,” Little said.
(NASHVILLE. Tenn.) — When the suspected shooter drove into the parking lot of Nashville’s Covenant School at 9:53 a.m. local time on Monday, a maintenance worker was standing outside with a leaf blower and a group of children were at a playground, some enjoying the sunny spring morning on a swing set, according to security video from the hilltop campus.
The suspect, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, circled the nearly empty parking lot in a four-door Honda Fit, driving by the playground before parking.
Hale sat in the car composing an Instagram message to Averianna Patton, a former middle school basketball teammate, and sent the message at 9:57 a.m., writing, “I’m planning to die today. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!”
“You’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die,” Hale wrote, according to the message Patton shared with ABC News. “This is my last goodbye. I love you,” Hale wrote, adding a heart emoji. “See you again in another life.”
A police spokesperson told ABC News that Hale was assigned female at birth, identified as transgender, and pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included use of the pronouns he/him.
Hale once attended the Covenant School, a preschool to sixth-grade institution run by the Presbyterian church, and did not have a criminal record. But law enforcement officials said medical professionals treated Hale for an emotional disorder.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale left home on Monday morning with a red bag. Before walking out the door, Hale’s mother asked what was in the bag, Drake said.
“I think she just dismissed it because it was a motherly thing and didn’t look in the bag because, at the time, she didn’t know (the suspect) had any weapons and didn’t think any differently,” said Drake, adding that the investigation revealed Hale had purchased seven weapons, including two assault-type rifles and a pistol Hale was armed with during the rampage that left three adults and three 9-year-old children dead.
School surveillance video captured the suspect at 10:10 a.m. using one of the high-powered rifles to blast through the locked glass doors on the side of the school and stepping through the broken glass to enter the main school building.
Drake said the school custodian, 61-year-old Mike Hall, a father of seven children and a grandfather to 14, was standing in the hallway and was fatally struck by at least one of the shots the suspect fired through the glass entrance doors.
Other security video clips from inside the school showed the suspect walking by the church office before circling back and briefly entering the apparently empty office through an unlocked door and emerging, pointing the barrel of a gun down the hallway and then going through a set of unlocked double doors.
Drake said the suspect encountered Katherine Koonce, the head of the Covenant School, outside of Koonce’s office. The chief said Koonce was fatally shot in a hallway after possibly getting into a confrontation with the shooter.
Police said that at 10:13 a.m. someone from inside the school called 911, reporting shots fired.
The hallways, offices and classrooms, according to the videos, appeared empty as the suspect — wearing a red ball cap turned backward, camouflage pants, sneakers, black gloves and wielding two assault-type rifles, one being held and the other slung over a shoulder — walked around, entering doors.
At 10:20 a.m., a security video showed Hale walking down a hall, passing an office with a sign reading “Children’s ministry.”
“Based on what I know about the school and the neighborhood around it, those that fled would have been able to flee into some pretty serious cover and concealment areas pretty quick based on the terrain. But those that were not able to do that and locked down the building, from what I understand, did that correctly as well,” Brink Fidler, president of Defend System, an active shooter training company that performed drills with staff at Covenant School last year, told ABC News.
While teachers hid with students in rooms and closets, others fled the campus on foot, according to witnesses.
Actress Melissa Joan Hart told ABC News she was driving near the school with her husband when they noticed children coming out of a wooded area and stopped to help.
“We helped a class of kindergarteners cross a busy highway. They were climbing out of the woods,” Hart said. “They were trying to escape the shooter situation at their school. So, we helped all these tiny little kids cross the road and get their teachers over there. And we helped a mom reunite with her children.”
Katie Robbins, who lives near the school, told ABC News she watched the chaos unfold from her window.
“My heart almost exploded,” Robbins said. “Like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening here.”
Robbins said she saw a group of children and their teacher sprinting from the school, crossing the street and huddling at the gate outside her home.
“A little boy said, ‘Help me get inside. How can I get inside?'” Robbins recalled. “I just wanted to help him and help all of them get inside, get away.”
She said she and a neighbor helped them get out of harm’s way.
The first officers arrived on the scene at 10:21 a.m. and entered the school two minutes later. Drake said 14 minutes elapsed between officers getting the first 911 call and when the suspect was killed.
Officer Rex Englebert, one of the first officers to arrive on the scene, immediately went to the rear of his police SUV cruiser and retrieved an assault-type rifle from a bag, according to footage from his body-worn camera that was made public on Tuesday.
“The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are,” a school staff member is heard in the body-camera footage telling Englebert, as he approached the front door of the school.
The staffer relayed to Englebert a report she received over her cellphone from inside the school and instructed the officer how to get to the stairwell leading to the second floor, saying, “all the way down this hall. At the end of this hall is Scholarship Hall. They just heard gunshots down there, and then up the stairs are a bunch of kids.”
Englebert went to the front door and was handed a key by another school staffer standing there, according to the body-camera video. Englebert called out for three officers to join him as he used the key to open the door, yelling, “Let’s go!”
As Englebert and other officers entered the school, sirens were going off, according to the body camera footage. As the officers went classroom-to-classroom searching for the suspect and victims, one was heard yelling about the suspect, “We don’t know where he is.”
Then the officers heard gunshots. “Sounds like it’s upstairs,” Englebert is heard saying.
At least five officers are then seen going up a stairwell to the second floor at 10:24 a.m. as the gunshots grew louder. Englebert appeared to take the lead, followed by several officers, including officer Michael Collazo, who was armed with a handgun, according to his body camera video.
When they reached an open area, the officers spotted and engaged the suspect, who was standing near a broken window, at 10:25 a.m. Someone yelled, “Reloading” as Englebert shot the suspect and Collazo also opened fire. According to law enforcement sources, the suspect was killed at 10:27 a.m.
