National

(NEW YORK) — Nearly four years after he allegedly shot and killed an unarmed Black man who was dropping off Christmas money to a friend, the murder trial of former police officer Adam Coy was getting underway on Monday.

Coy, who is white, was fired from the Columbus Police Department about a week after the 2020 fatal shooting of 47-year-old Andre Hill.

About a month after the shooting, the 46-year-old Coy was arrested and indicted on charges of murder, reckless homicide, felonious assault and two counts of dereliction of duty. Coy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has not made any public comments on the case.

If convicted, Coy, who is free on $1 million bail, could face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The trial was scheduled to begin Monday in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Columbus with the start of jury selection.

Opening statements in the long-awaited trial, which was postponed indefinitely in April 2023 after Coy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment, could get underway as early as Tuesday.

The shooting unfolded around 2 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2020, when Coy and another officer, Amy Detweiler, were called to a home in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Columbus to investigate a nonemergency noise complaint from a neighbor reporting a man sitting for a prolonged amount of time in an SUV outside the residence with the engine running, according to police officials and prosecutors.

Coy allegedly drew his gun and shined a flashlight into the open garage as Hill emerged from the garage holding a cellphone, according to police body camera footage released by the Columbus Police Department.

An autopsy determined that Hill was shot four times, suffering wounds to his chest and legs.

Neither Coy nor Detweiler turned their body-worn cameras on until after the shooting, but Coy’s camera had a “look-back” function that automatically activated and recorded 60 seconds of the episode without sound, including capturing the shooting.

The body camera footage also showed that as Hill lay dying on the floor of the garage, none of the officers who responded to the incident immediately provided first aid.

National civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump, who is representing Hill’s family, alleged that the officers waited up to 15 minutes before before they started giving Hill first aid.

After officers on the scene turned their body cameras on, a woman came out of the house and told officers that Hill was a guest.

“He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything,” she was heard telling the officers, who ordered her back inside.

Officer Detweiler, who is expected to testify in Coy’s trial, told investigators that before the shooting she and Coy were standing outside the house attempting to determine why Hill was at the location, according to records in the case released to the public on Dec. 29, 2020. Detweiler told investigators, according to the records, that she and Coy had their weapons drawn when Hill emerged from the garage, but that Hill did not appear to pose any threat before he was shot.

“Officer Detweiler stated Mr. Hill was walking towards her with a cell phone raised in his left hand,” according to the investigation records. “Officer Detweiler stated she did not observe any threats from Mr. Hill.”

Detweiler told investigators that Hill didn’t say a word as he approached her and Coy. She told investigators that Coy suddenly yelled out, “There’s a gun in his other hands, there’s a gun in his other hand” before opening fire, according to investigators.

Detweiler said she did not see a weapon in Hill’s hands and no firearms were found in Hill’s possession after the shooting, according to records.

Coy told investigators he thought he saw a firearm on Hill before shooting the man, officials said.

As protesters took to the streets of Columbus in the days following the shooting demanding Coy be fired and charged with murder, Columbus Public Safety Director Ned Pettus Jr. announced he had terminated Coy, a 19-year veteran of the police force, writing in his ruling that “known facts do not establish that this use of deadly force was objectively reasonable.”

Pettus found that Coy didn’t try to deescalate the situation before shooting Hill. After the shooting, Coy didn’t render aid or ensure that others did, according to Pettus.

The dereliction of duty charges Coy is facing at trial stems from him not turning on his body camera before the shooting and not warning Detweiler of the potential danger he believed Hill posed, prosecutors said.

After Coy was indicted, his attorney, Mark Collins, told ABC Columbus affiliate WSYX-TV that the charges against Coy, particularly the murder charge, did not make sense, saying it suggests his client knowingly intended to kill Hill.

“The knowing element, to cause serious physical harm with a deadly weapon, and someone died, that’s the concept, however, police officers are trained a certain way to take an action and to stop a threat,” Collins said at the time. “So that kind of doesn’t make sense.”

In May 2021, the City of Columbus agreed to a $10 million wrongful death settlement with Hill’s family, the highest amount ever paid by the city.

The indictment of Coy came just days after the Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which was named after Hill and requires Columbus police officers to turn on their body cameras when responding to calls and to immediately render first aid after a use-of-force incident.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(PHILADELPHIA) — Members of the “Central Park Five” filed a defamation suit against former President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of spreading “false, misleading and defamatory” statements about their 1989 case during the Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate, according to a new court filing.

Attorneys representing the five men — Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise — filed their civil suit against Trump in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking monetary damages over his statements, which they say have caused them “severe emotional distress and reputational damage.”

The five men, then teenagers, were accused of the violent rape of a female jogger in Central Park in April 1989. The five, who always maintained their innocence, were convicted and served years in prison. A decade after the attack, a different man confessed to the crime, which was confirmed through DNA analysis.

During the debate, Trump was responding to a statement from Vice President Kamala Harris in which she revisited his full-page ad in The New York Times in the wake of the incident that called for the execution of the Central Park Five when he said the following: “[T]hey come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five. They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”

The lawsuit points out that Trump’s statements were false in multiple respects — noting none of the members of the Central Park Five ever entered guilty pleas in the case, none of the victims of the Central Park assaults were killed, and the mayor at the time of the assaults was Ed Koch — who did not agree with Trump’s position in the full-page ad.

“Defendant Trump’s conduct at the September 10 debate was extreme and outrageous, and it was intended to cause severe emotional distress to Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit stated.

Trump’s attorneys have not yet entered an appearance on the court docket as of Monday morning. 

“This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in response to an inquiry about the lawsuit.

According to the court filing, one of the Central Park Five members, Salaam, was actually present at the debate and sought to confront Trump over his statements in the spin room afterward.

Salaam says he repeatedly shouted questions to Trump, saying, “Will you apologize to the Exonerated Five?” and, “Sir, what do you say to a member of the Central Park Five, sir?”

Trump reportedly responded to him at one point, “Ah, you’re on my side then,” to which Salaam responded, “No, no, no, I’m not on your side.”

“Plaintiff Salaam was attempting to politely dialogue with Defendant Trump about the false and defamatory statements that Defendant Trump had made about Plaintiffs less than an hour earlier, but Defendant Trump refused to engage with him in dialogue,” the lawsuit stated.

The five men’s convictions were vacated in 2002 and Wise, who was still in prison at the time, was released early. The group sued New York City in 2003 and after a decadelong standstill, the lawsuit was settled for $41 million. The city did not admit to any misconduct by its police department or prosecutors.

Salaam was elected to the New York City Council last year, representing northern Manhattan, including Harlem, East Harlem, parts of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(ASHEVILLE, N.C.) — Twenty-six people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit North Carolina, weeks after the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene, officials said Monday.

Last week, 92 people were unaccounted for, officials said.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, wreaking havoc across the Southeast from Florida to Virginia. Helene destroyed homes and roads, stranded residents without cellphone service and water, and claimed the lives of nearly 250 people throughout the Southeast.

At least 95 of Helene’s fatalities were in North Carolina, officials said. Gov. Roy Cooper called Helene “the deadliest and most devastating storm” in the state’s history.

After misinformation spread about recovery efforts and the availability of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds in North Carolina, Cooper stressed at Monday’s news conference that the “deliberate disinformation and misinformation … needs to stop.”

“It hurts the very people we are all trying to help,” he said. “It discourages and makes people fearful of signing up for help. It enables scam artists and it hurts the morale of government officials, first responders and soldiers who are on the ground trying to help.”

Former President Donald Trump is set to visit to the hard-hit city of Asheville on Monday to survey damage from the storm.

Cooper said he’s asking the former president to “not share lies or misinformation while he is here.”

Cooper said the White House “responded quickly and positively to our request from FEMA, which has had 1,400 staff on the ground and has registered 206,000 people for individual assistance, and distributed $124 million directly to people who need it.”

“As for long-term recovery, state and local government will be all in, along with the federal government,” Cooper said. “This will take billions of dollars and years of bipartisan focus from everyone working together to make it happen — from new roads and bridges to public building to water supplies to people’s homes.”

FEMA is now launching a “new initiative” to hire community liaisons in North Carolina’s impacted counties, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced Monday.

“We know that so many people have temporarily lost their jobs. We know that others just want to be able to give back, and we want to help keep people in these communities while they recover,” she said. “So these new community liaisons are going to work alongside us at FEMA to make sure that they are the local voice, the trusted voice in their community, and that they can share with us the local considerations and the concerns, so we can include them as part of this recovery. They’re going to be embedded in every county, working directly with county administrators, mayors and community leaders, bridging their concerns with our FEMA staff. And these jobs are available for people to apply right now.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(HOUSTON) — Four people, including a child, were killed when a helicopter crashed into a radio tower in Houston, officials said.

The crash happened just before 8 p.m. Sunday when a private aircraft struck a radio tower in Houston’s Second Ward, Houston police said.

All four people on the helicopter were killed. No one on the ground was injured, officials said.

No homes or structures were impacted except for the radio tower, police said, but a fire that erupted from the crash spanned two to three blocks.

Houston Fire Department officials extinguished the fire after the crash.

The crash is being investigated by Houston authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The helicopter was operating as an air tour flight, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

 

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SAPELO ISLAND, G.A.) — The “catastrophic failure” of an aluminum ferry gangway caused the deaths Saturday of seven people who were attending an annual cultural event on historic Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia, officials said Sunday.

Three other people were critically injured and remained hospitalized Sunday afternoon, Commissioner Walter Rabon of the Georgia Department of Natural Resouces said during a news conference.

Among those killed was 77-year-old Charles Houston of Darien, Georgia, the chaplain for both the DNR and the Georgia State Patrol, Rabon said.

Rabon said the aluminum gangway, which was installed at the Marsh Landing Dock on Sapelo Island in November 2021, gave way in the middle under the weight of people boarding the ferry to leave the island.

“One end of the gangway was in the water. One end of the gangway on the landward side was still attached,” Rabon said, adding that the gangway was supported by two standing platforms, and that at the time of the incident, the ferry Annemarie was moored to a stationary dock next to one of the platforms.

In addition to Houston, those who perished were identified Sunday by McIntosh County Coroner Melvin Amerson as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; and Isaiah Thomas, 79. They were all from Jacksonville, Georgia. Also killed, according to Amerson, were William Johnson, Jr., 73, and Queen Welch, 76, both of Atlanta.

Rabon said it remains under investigation how many people were on the gangway when it collapsed. He said at least 20 people ended up in the water and another 20, including DNR staff and good Samaritans, jumped in to try to save people.

“Their quick response and action saved additional lives yesterday afternoon,” Rabon said.

Rabon said that while the gangway was routinely inspected, “I can’t say that we get up under it and inspect it daily.”

“The initial findings of our investigation at this point show the catastrophic failure of the gangway causing it to collapse,” Rabon said.

In a statement Sunday, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources confirmed that the gangway was inspected less than a year ago, in December 2023, by Crescent Equipment Company.

On Saturday, the number of visitors to the island swelled to more than 700 from a normal daily average of less than 100, Rabon said. He said the Gullah Geechee people, descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to the southeastern United States, were holding an annual cultural day on the Island on Saturday when tragedy struck.

Rabon said a second ferry and additional runs were added on Saturday to accommodate the large crowd.

When asked by reporters if the extra stress from the added ferry runs could have been a factor in the collapse, Rabon said, “At this time, I would not rule out anything as being a possibility.”

As part of the investigation, officials were reviewing the maintenance records of the gangway, he said.

“What I can say is that it is a structure failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds,” Rabon said.

During Sunday’s news conference, J.R. Grovner, a Sapelo Island resident and tour guide, spoke up, claiming that four months ago he complained to one of the ferry captains about the condition of the gangway.

“I brought it up to one of the ferry captains that the gangway wasn’t stable. I brought up concerns about the railing on the boat, that the railing is not locking properly down in the slot,” Grovner said, adding that he also complained to the U.S. Coast Guard about ferries being over capacity.

Rabon said, “At this time, I’m not aware of any complaints.”

Authorities received the first 911 call about the gangway collapse at the visitor’s landing dock at about 3:50 p.m., officials said. The incident sparked a large emergency response that included local authorities, the Georgia State Patrol, the U.S. Coast Guard, and sheriff’s deputies from McIntosh County and neighboring Camden County, as well as the McIntosh County Fire Department.

Emergency crews used boats equipped with sonar and helicopters to attempt to find and rescue people who fell into the water.

Everyone who went into the water has been accounted for, Rabon said Sunday.

An engineering and construction team was expected to help in the investigation.

The White House released a statement late Saturday from President Joe Biden.

“We are heartbroken to learn about the ferry dock walkway collapse on Georgia’s Sapelo Island,” Biden said in the statement. “What should have been a joyous celebration of Gullah-Geechee culture and history instead turned into tragedy and devastation. Jill and I mourn those who lost their lives, and we pray for the injured and anyone still missing. We are also grateful to the first responders at the scene. My team is in touch with state and local officials, and we stand ready to provide any assistance that would be helpful to the community.”

Vice President Kamala Harris is also “praying for all those who were killed or injured in the collapse of the ferry dock walkway on Georgia’s Sapelo Island,” she said in a statement Saturday.

“Our administration is in close touch with state and local officials, and we have offered any federal support the community might need. As always, we are deeply grateful for the heroism of our first responders,” Harris said in the statement.

She added that in the face of this tragedy, they will “continue to celebrate and honor the history, culture and resilience of the Gullah Geechee.”

In a statement posted on X, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he was heartbroken by the tragedy and asked for prayers.

Sapelo Island is located about 70 miles south of Savannah, Georgia.

The Georgia Department of National Resources manages Sapelo Island, which is home to a research reserve and the Hog Hammock community, a small enclave made up of a few dozen full-time residents who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans.

The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to the southeastern U.S., primarily in coastal areas and who, because of their relative isolation, preserved many of their indigenous African traditions, according to the National Park Service.

Husband and wife Beverly and Irvin Jones told ABC News they were among those on the gangway when it collapsed. Irvin Jones said he felt the gangway slipping and made a split decision to jump onto the floating dock.

“We got almost to the boat and I felt it start to slide, like going backward,” Irvin Jones said. “So, I leaped and jumped. The two girls behind me, they fell in. The whole ramp fell in and collapsed.”

Irvin Jones added, “It happened so fast, people couldn’t react. It was sad. It was so sad. It was horrible. Not even 8 feet from me, I see one guy already drowned. One lady just jumped in to try to save a baby.”

Beverly Jones said she saw people in the water trying to hold on to their children.

“It was just horrific,” Beverly Jones said. “They were trying to hold on. There was nothing to hold on to.”

ABC News’ Laryssa Demkiw, Michelle Stoddart and Faith Abubéy contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(HOUSTON) — A helicopter that crashed into a radio tower in Houston, Texas, Sunday left four people killed, including a child, officials said.

The crash happened at approximately 7:54 p.m. local time, when a private aircraft struck a radio tower in Houston’s Second Ward, Houston police said in a press conference Sunday night.

All four of the individuals killed were aboard the helicopter and no one on the ground was injured in the crash, officials said.

No residences and structures were impacted except for the radio tower, police said, but noted the fire that erupted from the crash spanned two to three blocks.

The location of the crash was cited as the intersection of Engelke Street and N. Ennis Street, just five minutes away from Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.

Houston Fire Department officials extinguished the fire after the crash.

The crash is being investigated by Houston authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

 

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Rick Singer, the man convicted of orchestrating the so-called “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, has continued to advise prospective undergraduates on their college applications while serving his sentence in federal prison in Florida, and now from a California halfway house.

Singer, 64, a one-time college admissions consultant who pleaded guilty in 2019 to facilitating bribes between wealthy parents and elite universities in exchange for their children’s enrollment, told ABC News that he began to counsel students — pro bono — after he was sentenced last year.

Then, this past admissions season, while he was at a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, Singer said, “The coolest thing ever happened.”

“I had a young man send me an email saying, ‘Could you help me with my applications and tell me if I could get into these schools?'” Singer told ABC News during a sit-down interview.

The applicant sent Singer his high school transcript and a list of his credentials. Singer, whose advice was once sought by higher-powered executives and Hollywood actors, wrote back, offering a few pointers. The student was accepted to his top school in March, Singer said. 

This summer, Singer launched a new venture called ID Future Stars, a consulting business that boasts an 80% to 96% acceptance rate into first-choice schools. According to the site, “Our success speaks for itself.”

But his return to the college admissions world could be a challenge. Singer’s reputation unraveled after he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, money laundering and obstruction of justice charges in the decades-long scheme that federal investigators dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.” 

Federal prosecutors in Boston said Singer facilitated $25 million changing hands from families to college administrators and athletic coaches, who would dole out spots on their rosters to fulfill their fundraising goals. Singer transferred, spent or otherwise used more than $15 million for his own benefit, they said.

“Everything that the U.S. attorney said, and the FBI said, and everybody else said that I did do, I did it,” Singer told ABC.

Yet even four years later, Singer said the conspiracy amounted to a “victimless crime.” 

News of the admissions scandal broke in 2019, when Andrew Lelling, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced the charges against Singer and over 50 others, including college coaches, testing administrators and actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

The charges led to about 50 convictions and became the subject of at least four books, a Lifetime movie and a Netflix documentary.

In January 2023, a judge sentenced Singer to 42 months in federal prison. This August, he was released to a halfway house near Los Angeles.

For years, Singer said, he had operated a lucrative and legitimate college consulting business. But that changed around 2011, when he realized he could not push some clients through what he called the “front door.” He had become close with the students and their families, and wanted to do whatever he could to help them, so he developed a new admissions scheme: the “side door.”

While Singer said that a majority of his consulting has always been legitimate, he explained that the new scheme began with one student and soon expanded. 

“There was a young man who was super talented, worked his tail off,” Singer said. But the student would always perform poorly on practice SAT or ACT exams.

So he found a way to get the student’s application to the top of the pile: He began to bribe standardized testing proctors to turn a blind eye to permit cheating on the exams, prosecutors said.  

I knew “it was wrong, and I did it anyways,” Singer said. “What’s 10, 12, 13 kids who are good students, quality people, and this one score may screw them out of an opportunity to go to a decent school? I rationalized that to myself.”

Soon after, the stakes grew. Singer was well-known in the world of higher education, and he said presidents of several prestigious universities had contacted him, hoping his clients would donate millions of dollars to their schools.

He said that he began to set up meetings between the presidents and parents to discuss their children enrolling in the university. “The negotiations would go from whether the school was a good fit for the student to, ‘What does the president need? What does the family need? Would there be a chit involved?'” he said, referring to a monetary favor. 

Singer, a former basketball coach, said he was sympathetic to coaches and the pressure they faced to fundraise ahead of their sports seasons. So he said that he began to set up similar meetings between them and his clients. At times, he faked the students’ athletic credentials to push their applications through.

“First I went to three, four coaches. Then the word got out to all the coaches, and coaches started calling me every year,” Singer said.

“If they needed to raise $250,000 or $500,000 for the program, they would call me and say, ‘Hey, I have a spot. Do you have a family that would like to come here?'” he said.

When asked if he thought his scheme may have prevented legitimate recruits from earning their way on a collegiate team, Singer said: “All I’m doing is being the facilitator and providing the coach this choice.”

On March 12, 2019, the day he was charged, Singer said he left John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in Boston and looked down at his phone.

He said he had received 93 text messages in less than an hour. Most, Singer said, were from clients looking for above-board advice and wondering whether he would still be able to meet with them for a consultation. 

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The contentious debate surrounding New York City’s struggle to address homelessness and mental illness has clouded the memory of who Jordan Neely was.

But to some who cared for him, Neely is remembered for breaking out into dance and singing along with the hits on the radio as a joyous child.

He’s remembered as a teen who struggled to cope with the loss of his best friend — his mother — who was violently murdered.

He’s remembered for entertaining commuters, tourists, and locals alike with moonwalks and side glides that rivaled Michael Jackson on the NYC subways.

Neely’s family had imagined a great future ahead for him: “I said, ‘Jordan, one day you might be famous,” Neely’s great aunt Mildred Mahazu told ABC News. “And he said, ‘Really, Aunt Mildred?'”

But by the age of 30, Neely was homeless and appeared to be experiencing a mental illness crisis when he was killed after a subway passenger named Daniel Penny held him in a six-minute-long chokehold, officials said.

Penny, a former Marine, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. He pleaded not guilty, arguing that Neely had been threatening to passengers on the train. Other witnesses reportedly told police that Neely had been yelling and harassing passengers. Penny’s trial begins on Oct. 21 with jury selection.

Neely’s death sparked citywide protests, demanding answers about city resources after reports showed dozens of interactions between Neely and both police and homeless services in the years leading up to his death.

Two of Neely’s loved ones reflected on the life and death in interviews with ABC News ahead of Penny’s trial.

Neely’s life

Neely’s childhood was rocky, according to Mahazu. He and his mother, Christie Neely, were housing insecure — sometimes living in homeless shelters — and his mother’s tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend filled some days with arguments. But amid the instability, Neely’s relationship with his mother blossomed.

The two were inseparable. Everywhere Christie went, Neely followed: “You see one, you see the other,” Mahazu said.

Before heading off to school each morning, Neely would knock at his mother’s door, wake her up and tell her goodbye.

On April 3, 2007, then-14-year-old Neely tried to go about his routine and say goodbye to his mother before school, but her boyfriend, Shawn Southerland, had blocked him from entering their bedroom, according to local news outlet NJ.com.

It was later discovered that Christie had been violently murdered at the hands of now-convicted-murderer Southerland and he dumped her body in a suitcase on a Bronx parkway, according to local reports.

Mahazu believes the tragedy changed the trajectory of Neely’s life. He was a teen, heartbroken and unable to grasp the loss.

Mahazu said she would catch Neely sitting with a far-off look in his eye, sometimes rocking side to side. She’d ask him what was wrong and recalled him once saying, “I miss my mama. I want my mama.”

“They loved each other dearly. They were crazy about each other,” Mahazu said. “From there on, he started going down, down, down, because he and his mother were extremely close, very close,” Mahazu said.

In the years after her death, Neely found solace in his love of dancing and made the NYC MTA subway system his stage, busking for money as a Michael Jackson impersonator.

New Yorker Moses Harper first remembers meeting Neely in August 2009, when she followed the sound of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits in the halls of the Times Square subway station.

Harper, a Michael Jackson tribute artist herself, remembers finding Neely mid-performance, surrounded by a crowd of tourists clapping to the rhythm and following Neely’s encouragement to dance alongside him.

Neely spotted and called on Harper, who was watching from the back of the crowd: “Show me something. Come on. Don’t be scared,” Harper recalls that he yelled out to her. Armed with a single glove in her back pocket on her way home from her dance studio, she surprised Neely with Jackson moves of her own.

“When it was all over, I gave him his hat back and he hugged me. He’s like, ‘You got to teach me, you got to show me.’ And I did,” said Harper.

It was the beginning of a friendship that would last years: “We wouldn’t just talk about Michael Jackson and dancing. We talked about other things, you know, and I missed that. I missed that. That was my little brother.”

She remembers when Neely first told her about his mother: “What was the one person in the world that really got him. And I had never seen him that sad.”

During those years, it was hard for Mahazu to keep track of him riding through the subway system. But he’d come and visit her often, and she’d fix up a big country dinner, and they’d sit and talk over their meal.

Homelessness and mental illness in New York
One day, when Harper was riding the D train into the Bronx, she spotted Neely walking through the train cars. She recalled him looking noticeably homeless and asking for food or money.

She said his face lit up when he saw her, but he kept walking past, which Harper speculates was because of embarrassment. Harper said she stopped him, escorted him off the train, hugged him and asked him what was going on.

She bought him Chinese food, and something to drink, gave him cash and one of the shirts she had layered on.

“I said, ‘Listen to me: When you’re ready to get clean, this is where I am. Come and see me. I want you to come see me,'” she said. “It wasn’t what he needed at the time. And it just wasn’t. It just wasn’t enough. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

A community of Michael Jackson fans and tribute artists in NYC continued to search for Neely over the years after he stopped arriving at events and meetups. But local health officials and law enforcement said they knew him well.

According to police sources, Neely had a documented mental health history and had been previously arrested for several incidents, including assault, disorderly conduct and fare evasion.

The New York Times reported that Neely was on a list of the top 50 sheltered or homeless “high need individuals” to be reached by NYC outreach workers at the time of his death. According to New York Magazine, he bounced around shelters that have been criticized for their poor conditions and had also been hospitalized several times.

The Department of Social Services, the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the NYPD declined to comment further on Neely’s case and why the efforts to contact or address Neely’s needs did not work.

Those who knew Neely have demanded answers.

“If you had had the background that Jordan nearly had, how would you fare in life? Where would you be? Where would your mental state be if you had the same kind of struggles that he had?” Harper said. “How would you be doing right now? Do you think that you would deserve the same? The same treatment that he received on the last day of his life? “

The Adams administration criticized “the system” Jordan went through: “That was a real textbook case of how if you ignore the problem over and over and over again, it could turn out to be a tragic outcome.”

Adams condemned Neely’s killing in the days following the death: “Jordan Neely did not deserve to die,” Adams said in prepared remarks amid growing calls for Penny’s arrest. He was not immediately arrested following Neely’s death.

“Jordan Neely’s life mattered. He was suffering from severe mental illness, but that was not the cause of his death. His death is a tragedy that never should have happened,” the mayor said, referring to Neely as “a Black man like me.”

In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression, according to city officials.

Neely’s death took place following an announcement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that individuals who appear “to be mentally ill” and “a danger to themselves” may be taken into custody involuntarily for psychiatric evaluations if they may be of harm, even if they are not considered to be an imminent threat to the public. The city has yet to release data about the outcomes of these programs and their effectiveness.

However, in a recent Department of Homeless Services announcement, city officials say 7,800 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter and 640 of them have been connected to permanent affordable housing since the city began an intensified approach to homelessness.

“They failed Jordan, they fail so many of the vulnerable members of a vulnerable population,” said Harper, calling for systemic reforms to fix the criminal justice and health care systems.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LOUISVILLE, KY) — Opening statements are set to begin Monday in the federal retrial of Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police officer accused of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend and their neighbors in 2020, when Taylor was shot and killed in a botched police raid.

The initial trial ended in a mistrial last year when the jury reached an impasse because they were not able to reach a unanimous decision.

Hankison was charged in a two-count indictment in August 2022 for deprivation of rights under color of law, both of which are civil rights offenses. According to court documents, he was charged with willfully depriving Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, of their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures, which includes the right to be free from a police officer’s use of unreasonable force during a seizure.

According to court transcripts, he was also charged with willfully depriving Taylor’s three neighbors of their right to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law, which includes the right to be free from a police officer’s use of unjustified force that shocks the conscience.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial marks the third trial for Hankison, following the initial mistrial as well as a state trial in 2022, in which he was acquitted of multiple wanton endangerment charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Jennings last week granted the prosecution’s motion to exclude references to Hankison’s prior court proceedings in the retrial, according to WHAS, the ABC affiliate in Louisville covering the case in the courtroom.

The judge denied the prosecution’s request to introduce evidence of his prior alleged wrongdoing while employed as a Louisville police officer, according to WHAS.

Hankison was one of three officers involved in the raid.

The plainclothes officers were serving a warrant searching for Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who they alleged was dealing drugs. He was not at the residence, but her current boyfriend, Walker, thought someone was breaking into the home and fired one shot from a 9 mm pistol at the officers.

The three officers opened fire, shooting 32 bullets into the apartment, several of which struck Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was in bed at the time.

Hankison fired 10 rounds, none of which hit anyone. He was fired for violating department procedure when he “wantonly and blindly” fired into the apartment. Several of the rounds entered a neighboring apartment where a man, child and pregnant woman were living, according to prosecutors. The neighbors — Cody Etherton, Chelsey Napper, and her son, Zayden — were all sleeping at the time of the shooting, prosecutors said.

The other two officers involved in the raid, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, were not charged in the incident. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron called Taylor’s death a “tragedy” but said the two officers were justified in their use of force after having been fired upon by Walker.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran charged in the May 2023 choking death of a homeless man in a New York City subway car, is set to begin Monday with jury selection.

The trial is expected to last between four and six weeks, according to Judge Max Wiley.

Penny, 25, has pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with Jordan Neely’s death.

Wiley denied Penny’s bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter case in January.

Penny put Neely, 30, in a fatal chokehold “that lasted approximately 6 minutes and continued well past the point at which Mr. Neely had stopped purposeful movement,” prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have said.

Penny’s attorneys have said that they were “saddened at the loss of human life” but that Penny saw “a genuine threat and took action to protect the lives of others,” arguing that Neely was “insanely threatening” to passengers aboard the F train in Manhattan.

Witness accounts differ on Neely’s behavior in the train, prosecutors say.

They note that many witnesses relayed that Neely expressed that he was homeless, hungry and thirsty, and most of the witnesses recount that Neely indicated a willingness to go to jail or prison.

Some witnesses report that Neely threatened to hurt people on the train, while others did not report hearing those threats.

Some witnesses told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train; however, others have said though Neely had exhibited erratic behavior, he had not been threatening anyone in particular and had not become violent.

Some passengers on the train that day said they didn’t feel threatened — one “wasn’t really worried about what was going on” and another called it “like another day typically in New York. That’s what I’m used to seeing. I wasn’t really looking at it if I was going to be threatened or anything to that nature, but it was a little different because, you know, you don’t really hear anybody saying anything like that,” according to court filings by the prosecution.

Other passengers described their fear in court filings. One passenger said they “have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.” Another said Neely was making “half-lunge movements” and coming within a “half a foot of people.”

Neely, who was homeless at the time of his death, had a documented mental health history and a history of arrests, including alleged instances of disorderly conduct, fare evasion and assault, according to police sources.

Less than 30 seconds after Penny allegedly put Neely into a chokehold, the train arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette Station: “Passengers who had felt fearful on account of being trapped on the train were now free to exit the train. The defendant continued holding Mr. Neely around the neck,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass in a court filing against Penny’s dismissal request. Wiley denied all motions to suppress evidence on Oct. 4.

Footage of the interaction, which began about 2 minutes after the incident started, captures Penny holding Neely for about 4 minutes and 57 seconds on a relatively empty train with a couple of male passengers nearby.

Prosecutors said that about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into the video, Neely ceases all purposeful movement.

“After that moment, Mr. Neely’s movements are best described as ‘twitching and the kind of agonal movement that you see around death,'” the prosecutor said.

The defense argued Penny had no intent to kill, but Steinglass noted that the second-degree manslaughter charge only requires prosecutors to prove Penny acted recklessly, not intentionally.

“We are confident that a jury, aware of Danny’s actions in putting aside his own safety to protect the lives of his fellow riders, will deliver a just verdict,” said Penny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, after Penny’s request to dismiss the charge was denied.

“Danny is grateful for the continued prayers and support through this difficult process.”

Penny has raised more than $3 million for his legal defense fund ahead of the trial.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.