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(CHICAGO) — An investigation is underway after a Chicago police officer shot a 13-year-old boy during a foot pursuit who authorities allege was involved in two recent carjackings.

The incident occurred Wednesday night on the city’s West Side. Police tracked the license plate of a vehicle stolen two days earlier in Chicago to the area shortly after 10 p.m., according to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.

As officers attempted to stop the vehicle, the teenager got out of the car and fled, as several officers pursued him on foot, Brown said.

“The subject flees to a gas station parking lot … and turns toward the officer,” Brown told reporters during a briefing Thursday. “The officer then discharges his weapon, striking the individual once.”

Officers rendered first aid and moved the boy away from the nearby gas pumps due to concerns over a possible explosion following the gunfire, Brown said.

He was transported to an area hospital in serious but stable condition, according to the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, an independent agency that is investigating the shooting. He was also placed in custody for the stolen car, Brown said.

No weapon was recovered from the scene, Eaddy said.

The officer’s body-worn camera was on at the time of the shooting, according to Brown and COPA spokesperson Ephraim Eaddy. COPA also has third-party footage of the incident, Eaddy said.

COPA is unable to release any video of the shooting because it involves a juvenile, the office said. In the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo last year, it released the body camera footage at the request of Toledo’s family.

Brown said he was limited in what he could discuss around Wednesday’s shooting, including the contents of the body-worn camera footage, amid the investigation.

“We cannot draw conclusions to an investigation that just started last night,” he said Thursday. “We’re not going to answer how many shots were fired. The ballistics evidence will say that. We’re not going to answer anything else about the shooting.”

It is not clear at this time where the teen was shot, said Brown, who added he would defer to medical personnel’s findings for that.

“We’re not going to speculate. This investigation will reveal the facts,” he said, adding that COPA has his department’s full support.

The driver of the stolen vehicle fled the scene in the car and has not been apprehended, police said. The car was found abandoned a couple of miles from the scene of the shooting and was being processed for evidence, Brown said.

Several witnesses told Chicago ABC station WLS that the teen had his hands up before he was shot.

When asked by a reporter whether the shooting was justified, Brown said it was too soon to jump to conclusions, and that the officer and suspect had yet to provide a statement.

“There’s a lot of evidence, a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said. “Jumping to conclusions is just not fair to any of the people involved because you might jump to the conclusion that is wrong.”

At the same time, Alderperson Emma Mitts, who represents the 37th Ward where the shooting occurred, was left questioning the use of force.

“Why would you want to shoot if you can easily go and chase him?” Mitts told WLS. “The 13-year-old did not have a weapon that was recovered from the scene. So now that brings up concern to why and what happened. Certainly we don’t want an officer out here shooting our children for no reason, that’s insane.”

In a statement, COPA said it was “committed to a full and thorough investigation into the officer’s use of force to determine if their actions were in accordance with Department policy and training.”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she has been in contact with Brown and COPA regarding Wednesday’s shooting.

“I have full confidence that COPA will investigate this incident expeditiously with the full cooperation of the Chicago Police Department,” she said in a statement.

No information on the officer who discharged his weapon has been released at this time. The officers involved will be placed on routine administrative duties for 30 days, the police department said.

Police believe the 13-year-old boy was involved in the carjacking of that vehicle, as well as a second carjacking that occurred on Tuesday in Oak Park, Brown said. In that incident, a car left running with a 3-year-old girl in the back seat was stolen, and the mother was dragged after grabbing onto the car before falling and breaking her clavicle, the superintendent said.

The car was soon recovered with the child still safely inside, he said.

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(NEW YORK) — When Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old white man charged in connection with the murders of 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, was a senior in high school, he allegedly wrote a paper saying that he wanted to commit murder-suicide, according to authorities.

That prompted the assistant principal of Gendron’s high school to call New York State Police and report Gendron, according to law enforcement. After a day-and-a-half mental health evaluation a year ago, Gendron was released and his behavior wasn’t flagged to authorities before he allegedly carried out the mass shooting last Saturday.

Gendron has pleaded not guilty.

Law enforcement sources tell ABC News how they handle mental health evaluations and police investigations regarding disturbed people and their access to firearms is very much a work in progress.

They point to how easily Gendron allegedly sidestepped an investigation to see if he was dangerous following the incident at his high school.

Buffalo suspect had made references to murder-suicide, sources say

A review by ABC News of the 589-page document allegedly containing messages first posted on the social media platform Discord appears to show that Gendron simply misled law enforcement and mental health officials when confronted after writing that senior class paper that he had thoughts of murder-suicide.

In the document, Gendron writes of landing in a hospital emergency room in May 2021 for 20 hours because he referenced murder-suicide in terms of how he planned to mark his graduation from high school — as part of an economics assignment.

He told law enforcement and mental health officials he been joking. According to the social media messages, that was a lie. He allegedly wrote in Discord that the murder-suicide reference was specifically about his developing plans to murder minorities whom he believed were replacing white people in American society.

Gendron said the murder-suicide quote in his school assignment may have even been a cry for help but he lied so he could keep his plan in motion, because killing, he said, was precisely what he was planning.

Ohio shooter made hit-list in high school

Previous mass shooters have often left clues or raised concerns with others and, in some cases, authorities have missed signals that could have otherwise prevented an attack.

On a summer night in August 2019, Connor Betts opened fire at the entrance of Ned Peppers Bar in downtown Dayton, Ohio, killing nine, including his brother, and wounding 17 before responding officers shot him to death.

Betts, according to the U.S. Secret Service, “had a history of concerning communications, including harassing female students in middle and high school, making a hit list and a rape list in high school, telling others he had attempted suicide, and showing footage of a mass shooting to his girlfriend.”

Betts had an “enduring fascination with mass violence,” the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded in a report released in November.

“The FBI’s BAU assessed the attacker’s enduring fascination with mass violence and his inability to cope with a convergence of personal factors, to include a decade-long struggle with multiple mental health stressors and the successive loss of significant stabilizing anchors experienced prior to August 4, 2019, likely were the primary contributors to the timing and finality of his decision to commit a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio,” the report stated.

One reason that family and friends did not alert authorities about Betts was potentially because of “bystander fatigue,” according to the report.

Bystander fatigue occurs when people around the suspect don’t pay attention or take any action “due to their prolonged exposure to the person’s erratic or otherwise troubling behavior over time,” according to the Behavioral Analysis Unit.

FBI warned about accused Parkland high school shooter

Nikolas Cruz has pleaded guilty to walking into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 18, 2018, and opening fire inside the school killing 17 and wounding 17 more.

More than a month before the shooting, the FBI was warned about Cruz by a person close to him through the FBI’s public access tip line, according to an FBI statement in 2018.

“The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” the FBI statement says.

The information, the FBI admitted, should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office and assessed as a “threat to life,” where it would’ve been investigated.

The school shooting was one of the deadliest in American history.

The FBI was later sued by the families of the Parkland shooting for not appropriately assigning the call to the Miami Field Office. In March, the Justice Department, while not admitting the full guilt of missing the signals Cruz exhibited, settled with the families for $127 million.

A jury will decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without chance of parole.

Synagogue shooting suspect posted antisemitic images

In October of that same year, Robert Bowers is accused of walking into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and killing 11 people. Bowers, according to a criminal complaint charging him with the crime, made comments shortly after he was arrested to investigators about wanting to kill people who are Jewish.

Bowers, according to authorities, made posts on the social media site gab and early as July 2018 posted and reposted photos with antisemitic tropes, as well as a photo of a target that he reportedly shot by with a handgun, according to authorities.

Bowers was not known to law enforcement before October 2018, the then FBI Special Agent in Charge told reporters at the time. Moments before he carried out the shooting, Bowers posted antisemitic statements on the platform.

Bowers is facing trial for the 2018 shooting and has pleaded not guilty.

Charleston church shooter reportedly went on bigoted rant

Three years earlier, in 2015, Dylann Roof walked into the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine African-American parishioners attending Bible study.

Friends told the New York Daily News that two weeks before the shooting, Roof went on a bigoted rant while drunk about “segregation and killing people.”

“He said he was planning for about six months to do something crazy,” said Joseph Meek, a friend of Roof. “He wanted it to be segregated. He wanted it to be white with the white, Black with the Black. All the races segregated.”

Meek, according to the Daily News, took a gun away from Roof two weeks before the shooting unfolded.

“I only took it away because he was drunk. I didn’t take him seriously,” Meek said. “I do feel a little guilty because I could have let someone know,” Meek told the Daily News.

Roof is appealing his capital punishment sentence.

Signals before mass shootings common

Alerting someone or giving a warning sign before a mass shooting is common, according to the U.S. Secret Service, which published a report in 2020 titled Mass Attacks in Public Spaces. The report found that nearly 65% of the mass attacks they studied in 2019 the attacker had threatened someone in the past, and 57% of attackers made some form of communication prior to the attack that should’ve elicited concern but didn’t.

“These concerning communications included making paranoid statements, sharing videos of previous mass attacks, vague statements about their imminent death, and one attacker telling his school counselor that he had a dream about killing his classmates,” the report says.

Javed Ali, former senior counterterrorism director at the National Security Council, told ABC News the shooting in Buffalo underscores the challenges law enforcement has in identifying shooters.

“The horrific attack in Buffalo underscores the challenges for law enforcement in identifying and preventing mass-casualty lone wolf terrorist attacks, with this being the latest in a string of similar ones committed by other white supremacists in the United States,” Ali, now an associate professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said.

“In these attacks, white supremacist lone wolves focused on different victims — including African Americans, Latinos, Jews — based on their belief in anti-immigrant and racist tropes found in conspiracies like the “great replacement theory” or other sources like manifestos written by infamous attackers such as Anders Brevik and Brentan Tarrarent that fuel white supremacy across the globe,” Ali said.

Breivik is a Norwegian who killed 77 people in 2011 and Brenton Tarrant carried out the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, shootings at two mosques, murdering 51 people.

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(NEW YORK) — Mothers across the U.S. are banding together to respond to the baby formula shortage emergency and execute short-term solutions in local communities while corporations and the federal government scramble to address the crisis on a national level.

Kerissa Miller, a mom from Kennewick, Washington, started the Find My Formula, Tri Cities WA Facebook group on May 11 to pay it forward after another mom helped her by donating much-needed formula for her 6-month-old son.

Miller’s son MJ was born two months early and needs to be fed a special baby formula made specifically for premature babies. Similac’s NeoSure is one of the formulas impacted by the Abbott Nutrition recall in February. Miller said she isn’t able to breastfeed her son and her son’s pediatrician also told her there weren’t any other formula substitutes that would work for him.

The Facebook group helps parents and caregivers like her in southeastern Washington ask for formula, share information on formula stock at local stores and facilitate formula donations for each other.

“Moms message us and call us crying. They’re on their last can of formula so the need is extremely urgent,” Miller told “Good Morning America.” “When these moms go on Facebook looking for formula, they’re at such a desperate state that delivery is really the only option to help that baby get fed right away.”

Miller and a team of several moderators as well as three delivery drivers, including Mac Jaehnert, set out every day to respond to Facebook posts from parents in need and coordinate formula pickups and drop-offs.

“We’ve fed hundreds of babies just by gifted formula to us. There’s no other option,” Miller said. “Pediatricians can’t supply the need. There’s just no formula to go around so we’re just depending on moms to donate formula to us to feed each other’s babies. It’s a crazy world we live in where Facebook feeds our babies.”

In just nine days, the public Find My Formula, Tri Cities WA group has ballooned to over 560 members. Some days, Miller said she drives up to six hours with her son to make formula deliveries after she gets off her eight-hour night shift as an environmental wastewater operator simply to help.

“All we have right now is community so we’re just doing everything that we can to help the babies because this has affected the wealthy, the middle class and the poor,” Miller, who is also currently four months pregnant, said.

“I’ve delivered formula to mansions and those moms can purchase it but they can’t because it’s just not available. And the moms that are suffering the hardest are the moms on WIC,” she added, referencing the federal benefits program for low-income Americans. “It’s just a crisis that you never knew existed in America.”

“All I can do is just go pick up a can of formula and go drop it off before I go to bed.”

Marcela Young has also been dedicating her time to ease the formula crisis. Young is a mom to an 8-month-old and although her son doesn’t need baby formula, seeing stories of other families impacted by the shortage resonated with her.

“I don’t formula feed personally, but I do know a lot of moms that do and just the feeling of not being able to help your child is just very close to home,” Young told “Good Morning America.”

Young, a consultant in the Houston area, remembered that one of her former classmates had started a company that lets people create interactive maps online and quickly realized the map tool could be one way for her to help others.

That’s how the 29-year-old launched her “Fighting the Formula Shortage” map last week. The map, hosted by Proxi, is viewable on a computer, phone or tablet, and lets anyone add any point to a global map and organize it under several categories: “need formula,” “can donate formula,” “need breast milk,” “can donate breast milk,” “formula in-store” and “milk bank.”

“The way the map works is you add a point anywhere in your country. You don’t have to put your actual address,” Young explained, adding that anyone who adds a new point will also receive a welcome email afterward.

But Young also tries to help arrange connections whenever possible.

“People do reach out and say, ‘Hey, I have this pin that I’m looking at near my area. They need formula. I see formula at my store, I would like to ship it to them or I’d like to take it to their house or wherever to meet up,’” Young said. “Then I, as the admin of the map, can see their information if they decided not to share it, and then put them in contact with each other. I make sure that the person receiving it knows who’s going to contact them and I try to make sure that the other one knows who needs it.”

Young has spread the word about her map through her friend network and on social media on the Fighting Formula Shortage Facebook and Instagram pages. As with many groups online, Young also warns others to stay vigilant about potential scammers.

“First and foremost, be careful, be safe,” Young said. “If you’re going to do something virtually with someone, ask a lot of questions. If you’re going to meet with someone locally, please do it in a public place. That way, you’re avoiding different issues out there.”

“There’s a lot of good in humanity still,” she added. “And it’s been really nice to see people stepping up and willing to spread [the] word, spread resources.”

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(CHICAGO) — Nine people were shot, two of whom died, in a chaotic scene outside a McDonald’s on Chicago’s Near North Side Thursday. Police said they have arrested a suspect.

A dispute broke out between two groups at approximately 10:41 p.m. eventually leading one individual to fire shots into the crowd, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters at a press conference Friday.

Police do not know what caused the fight, Brown said.

Officers pursued the suspect into a Chicago Transit Authority train stop and arrested a suspect as well as a person who Brown said obstructed the officers.

A woman fleeing in a group along with the alleged shooter came in contact with the third rail at the train stop and has been hospitalized, Brown said.

Police said surveillance footage showed that an individual had handed the shooter the gun, but they have not yet been able to identify that person, according to Brown. A gun was recovered from the scene, police said.

“If the person who did this doesn’t have a gun, this is just a personal conflict that may or may not lead to fights, [but] no one being killed,” Brown said.

Brown said police have installed two fixed posts of officers and a revolving post of officers in the area. The shooting took place in a crowded downtown area near Loyola University Chicago and the city’s so-called Magnificent Mile home to upscale shops and historic buildings.

Brown said there is an ongoing “gun crime crisis” in Chicago and across the country.

“Our officers have taken more guns that are illegally possessed off the streets of Chicago than we have in our history,” Brown said.

Police recovered 11,400 guns in 2020, and over 12,000 in 2021, both record-breaking years. Police are on pace to surpass last year’s record, Brown said.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the shooting “an outrageous act of violence.”

“It is simply awful, and unacceptable that once again another tragedy occurs because firearms are in the hands of people who simply do not care about themselves or the value of another’s life,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

She added, “Our police department is hard at work to make sure those responsible for last night’s incident are held accountable, for the safety and well-being of us all.”

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(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The funerals for several victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, are starting to take place.

Ten people, all of whom were Black, were killed in a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in an attack authorities are calling a “racially motivated hate crime.”

The victims included four grocery store employees as well as six customers, several of them regulars at the store, according to the Buffalo Police Department and those who knew them.

Heyward Patterson

Deacon Heyward Patterson’s funeral will begin at 12 p.m. on Friday at Lincoln Memorial United Methodist Church. Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and other community leaders are expected to make an appearance at the service.

Patterson’s family described him as a loving person.

“An honorable man. A family man. A working man. A community man. An honest man that was at a grocery store in a parking lot,” a relative of Patterson in an interview with ABC-affiliate WKBW-TV.

He leaves behind a wife and daughter.

Roberta Drury

The family of Roberta Drury will hold her funeral on Saturday at the Church of the Assumption in Syracuse.

Her sister Amanda Drury described her as a “vibrant and outgoing” woman who could “talk to anyone” in an interview with ABC News.

An online obituary says Drury “couldn’t walk a few steps without meeting a new friend. She made sure every single person in the room was having a great time, ready to laugh and hug at a moment’s notice.”

Katherine “Kat” Massey

The funeral for Katherine “Kat” Massey will be held on Monday, May 23, at the Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church.

Massey was a civil rights activist who worked tirelessly to improve Buffalo’s Black community.

“She’s in a true sense of the word, a warrior,” Betty Jean Grant, a friend and fellow community activist, told WKBW. “She loved working and she loved helping people.”

Sharon Belton-Cottman, a Buffalo school board member and a community activist who worked with Massey in the community group We are Women Warriors, told ABC News that she is dedicated to renaming Massey’s street after her late friend.

Celestine Chaney

Celestine Chaney, a mother and grandmother of six, will be laid to rest on Tuesday, May 24, at Elim Christian Fellowship.

Chaney’s son, Wayne Jones, told the Buffalo News, “If people’s moms are still around, just don’t be too caught up in social media and the world to pick up the phone and talk to your mom or your dad.”

Aaron W. Salter

Services for Aaron W. Salter Jr. will begin on Tuesday at the Amigone Funeral Home.

Salter, a retired Buffalo Police officer, was killed after he confronted the gunman, who entered the store wearing military fatigues, body armor and a tactical helmet.

He has been hailed as a hero for his actions against the alleged Buffalo shooter.

Salter retired from the police department several years ago and had been a “beloved” member of Tops as a security guard, according to Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia.

“He took on a responsibility to protect the customers and the employees in the store,” Gramaglia said. “And he did exactly what he signed up for.”

Pearl L. Young

Pearl L. Young’s funeral will be held on Wednesday at the Elim Christian Fellowship.

In a phone interview with ABC News, her sister, Mary Craig, said Young “was such a beautiful, sweet woman.”

Young raised three children — two sons and a daughter — and was a long-term substitute teacher with the Buffalo Public School District and Emerson School of Hospitality.

“She loved her children, her family, and her Good-Samaritan COGIC church family. She was a true pillar in the community,” the family said in a statement to ABC News.

Margus D. Morrison

Services will be held for Margus D. Morgan on Friday, May 27, at True Bethel Baptist Church, at 11 a.m.

In a text message, Cassandra Demps, his stepdaughter, told ABC News that he was “a great father, wonderful partner” who was “funny” and “always willing to help his family.”

Morrison is “a soul that will always be missed,” she added.

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(NEW YORK) — Billy McFarland, who pleaded guilty to scheming thousands of people out of money from his Fyre Festival, was moved to a halfway house this week, according to Bureau of Prison records.

McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison for defrauding investors. Customers and investors lost over $26 million in two separate fraud schemes, according to the Department of Justice. The festival was supposed to take place in the Bahamas in 2017.

He was moved to a halfway house in Brooklyn, New York and is scheduled to be released in August.

McFarland unsuccessfully tried to get released from an Ohio prison in August of 2020 due to COVID-19 conditions in the facility.

In a court filing, DOJ prosecutors argued that McFarland had a disciplinary violation, which counts against his release.

According to court documents, McFarland had a pen with a USB recording device inside the prison that he initially denied knowing about.

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(AUSTIN, Texas) — As many school districts across the country continue to ban books, students are beginning to fight back by organizing protests and creating their own spaces to read and discuss these books.

Sophomores Ella Scott and Alyssa Hoy of Austin, Texas, are two of many students leading the charge with The Vandergrift High School Banned Book Club.

“We started this club so that we can learn because high school is a place of learning,” Scott told GMA. “And that’s why these books were here in the first place.”

At Vandergrift High School — where Scott and Hoy are students and which is under the Leander Independent School District — nearly two dozen books were removed from certain grades, libraries and book clubs last spring.

Many of the books on the list deal with race, sexuality and finding yourself.

Across the country, nearly 1,600 books were pulled from shelves in 26 states in the last year, according to nonprofit organization Pen America.

“It’s somebody’s story and people need to learn about it and be OK talking about it,” Hoy said.

School officials told ABC News that Leander Independent School District “has not banned books,” and that, instead, books go through a “process” if they are submitted for a review. District officials can then decide if a book should be returned to the shelves and in what capacity.

The school district also said it “believes in allowing students to have the opportunity to voice their thoughts.”

Hoy and Scott aren’t the only ones on a mission to bring back certain books to school libraries.

In Missouri, two students recently filed a class-action lawsuit against their district for banning books they say contain “the perspective of an author or protagonist who is non-white, LGBTQ+ or otherwise identifies as a minority.” Some of the books have since been put back on shelves.

“I think [it] scares them,” Scott said about officials banning certain books. “I think just because it doesn’t happen to you, it has happened to others.”

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(LOS ANGELES) — The suspect who allegedly rushed and tackled comedian Dave Chappelle on stage last month has been charged with attempted murder in a separate incident after the victim identified the man from media coverage surrounding the Chappelle case, prosecutors said.

Isaiah Lee, 23, faces one count of attempted murder, a felony, for allegedly stabbing his roommate in December, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday.

Prosecutors allege that Lee stabbed his roommate during a fight at a transitional housing apartment on Dec. 2. The victim reported the incident to police and recently identified Lee as the perpetrator following news of the Chappelle attack, according to the district attorney’s office.

“The publicity generated by the attack on Mr. Chappelle helped police solve this crime,” Gascón, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a statement.

Lee pleaded not guilty to the charge on Thursday in Los Angeles criminal court, the district attorney’s office said. His next court appearance is scheduled for June 2.

Attorney information for Lee in the felony case wasn’t immediately available.

The case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Lee has pleaded not guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges stemming from the Chappelle incident, which occurred during the Netflix Is A Joke Fest at the Hollywood Bowl on May 3.

He was arrested and booked at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood station following the show and was initially held on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney decided not to move forward with felony charges because Lee was not brandishing the knife that looked like the gun, court records show.

The case was referred to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, which charged Lee with four misdemeanor counts — battery, possession of a weapon with intent to assault, unauthorized access to the stage area during a performance and commission of an act that delays the event or interferes with the performer.

During an arraignment hearing on May 6, a judge ordered that Lee not come within 100 yards of Chappelle or the Hollywood Bowl.

In the wake of the attack, Gascón said he’s creating a “roundtable” made up of venues, event security and law enforcement to improve safety and security at events.

ABC News’ Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The production of firearms in the U.S. has ramped up exponentially in recent decades with domestic manufacturing more than doubling and imports more than quadrupling, according to a new study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The increases between the years 2000 and 2020 were fueled by the mass proliferation of the pistol as the most widespread firearm type and a 24,080% percent increase in manufacturing of short-barreled rifles, according to the ATF report. The number of firearms made in the U.S. increased by 187% and the number imported increased by 350% over the same period.

The report comes as the nation is still reeling from a mass shooting that left 10 Black people dead in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket last weekend. The suspected gunman legally purchased the Bushmaster rifle used to carry out the shooting with some modifications currently illegal in the state of New York, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.

The nation’s patchwork of gun laws has been largely relaxed by Supreme Court decisions as well as state and federal legislation over the time period studied. Two Supreme Court cases that struck down local gun control ordinances in Chicago and Washington, D.C, paved the way for fewer restrictions on individual firearm purchases.

The report also looked at the more recent adoption of untraceable firearms called “ghost guns” — often assembled from parts bought online or made at a private residence.

“One of the most significant developments affecting lawful firearm commerce and law enforcement’s ability to reduce illegal access to guns in this period has been the proliferation of privately made firearms also known as “ghost guns,” the ATF Los Angeles Field Office said in a statement on the report.

The number of firearms recovered by law enforcement believed to be privately made increased 1,000% between 2016 and 2021, according to the report.

The U.S. ranks first in the world for the number of firearms in the hands of civilians, according to a 2018 report by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey. Yemen, Montenegro, Serbia and Canada round out the top five when adjusted for population size, although all have less than half the number of firearms per capita than the U.S.

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(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) — The family of the man who had previously been named a suspect in the 2009 disappearance of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said the investigation had ruined their lives for years.

Timothy Taylor was named by the FBI as a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance in 2016, ABC Charleston affiliate WCIV reported. An informant told FBI agents that he saw Taylor, who was 16 at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, and others sexually abusing Drexel at a home in McClellanville, South Carolina, about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

Drexel had been on a spring break trip when she disappeared.

On Monday, authorities announced that Raymond Moody, 62, had been arrested for Drexel’s murder after her remains were found in a wooded area in Georgetown County, South Carolina, last week.

Timothy Taylor’s mother, the Rev. Joanne Taylor, for years insisted her son was innocent, saying the teen spent time in church, had a strict bedtime and could not have been involved in Drexel’s murder.

When federal agents named Timothy Taylor a suspect, he was in federal court on unrelated charges stemming from a 2011 robbery at a McDonald’s.

He was convicted on state and federal armed robbery charges and was sentenced in 2019 to three years of probation.

The FBI told WCIV Monday that Taylor was no longer a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance after a man who had been named a person of interest as early as 2012 was arrested. The portion that included the investigation into Taylor’s alleged involvement “has been concluded,” the FBI spokesperson said.

“We are confident that with Moody’s arrest we have the man responsible for Brittanee’s murder,” the FBI spokesperson told the station.

During a press conference on Thursday, Taylor’s family and friends expressed how devastating the investigation had been.

“Following investigations is one thing, but deliberately and intentionally making them strange fruit that is hung before the court system at the hand of a gavel, and unjust investigators is definitely unfair,” said the Rev. Lawrence Bratton. “This family has been devastated, ruined for the last 15 years, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and in every way that you can imagine down to the next generation.”

An FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment on the family’s statement.

Bratton said that even as the criminal justice system abandoned them, the community, as well as groups such as the National Action Network, the NAACP and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance stood firmly beside the Taylor family.

“How do you do that? How do you take a family, devastate them and walk away and say no harm, no foul,” Bratton said in response to the FBI’s announcement that Timothy Taylor had been cleared.

The Rev. Joanne Taylor said that while the family’s heart goes out to the loved ones of Drexel, her son was “suspected without any credible evidence of a crime he did not commit” and “maintained his innocence in the face of relentless pursuit by local and federal law enforcement, investigators and the media.”

“The years long fight against accusations, false accusations, and the media frenzy that shoot us has traumatized us, affecting every aspect of our lives,” she said. “It has publicly questioned without reason our family, our families character, and it has shaken us to the core.”

Timothy Taylor did not appear at the press conference with his family.

Drexel traveled to Myrtle Beach from her parents’ home in the Rochester, New York, area in April 2009, despite her mother denying her permission to go, Melissa Drexel told ABC News. She was last seen on April 25, 2009, on a hotel surveillance camera as she was leaving a friend’s room at the Blue Water Resort to walk back to the hotel where she was staying — about a mile-and-a-half walk down the busy Myrtle Beach strip, ABC Rochester station WHAM reported.

Her remains were found less than 3 miles from a motel where Moody had been living at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver said.

Authorities said that Moody buried Drexel’s body, but did not answer questions on how Drexel’s remains were found.

Moody is being held without bond at the Georgetown County jail and is expected to be charged with rape, murder and kidnapping, said Jimmy Richardson, solicitor for Horry and Georgetown Counties, on Monday.

“In the last week, we’ve confirmed that Brittanee lost her life in a tragic way, at the hands of a horrible criminal who was walking our streets,” said FBI special agent in charge Susan Ferensic during a press conference on Monday.

In 2012, Moody had been identified as a person of interest in the disappearance but there was not enough evidence to name him as a suspect, officials said.

Even though Timothy Taylor’s name has been cleared, his “name and face will forever be linked to Brittanee Drexel,” his mother said.

“I call for law enforcement to halt the practice of disclosing unfounded leads and names of potential suspects without credible evidence,” she said. “Doing this has real life consequences and a lasting dispersion effect on so many, particularly us Black families.”

ABC News’ Ben Stein contributed to this report.

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