(WASHINGTON) — An alleged “intruder” at the Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C., was shot and killed by Secret Service Wednesday morning, according to authorities.
The suspect was found smashing windows of the Peruvian ambassador’s residence, D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee told reporters.
The ambassador’s relatives were inside and called the police just after 8 a.m., Contee said.
The suspect was shot “following a confrontation” in the backyard of the residence, the Secret Service said. Contee said the suspect allegedly pulled a metal stake on police. Officers used lethal force when Tasers didn’t work, he said.
Contee said a motive remains under investigation, adding that it’s unclear if the suspect knew it was an ambassador’s residence.
The Peruvian ambassador’s residence was damaged by the break-in but the ambassador, his family and staff, along with Secret Service agents, are all safe, the embassy said in a statement.
Two officers are being evaluated for injuries, Contee said.
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Brooke Tansley and her husband Scott Herrmann were aboard a Delta flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles on Monday with their two young children when the pilot told passengers over the loudspeaker that masks were now optional.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I think you’re going to want to hear this. I have some really exciting news,” Tansley remembers the pilot saying. “The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) has lifted the mask mandate. You can all take off your masks.”
Tansley could hear scattered cheers and applause. She was stunned, then scared.
The couple had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect their kids who at ages 4 years old and 8 months old still don’t qualify for a vaccine. Her youngest also can’t wear a mask, and she had planned during her trip to meet up with a coworker who was immunocompromised. It was their first flight since the pandemic began.
“I don’t begrudge him his excitement,” she told ABC News of the pilot. “I just wish that he would have taken a minute to consider people in different circumstances and the decision he was making on behalf of everyone on that plane.”
Delta Air Lines, responding to the family’s experience, encouraged patience.
“We empathize with all who are navigating this sudden change in federal policy. As we work to provide our customers and people the most up-to-date information for their travels, we continue to encourage everyone to be patient and understanding with one another. Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people,” the airline said in a statement to ABC News.
For a pandemic that seems never-ending, the federal government’s 15-month travel mask mandate came to a surprisingly abrupt end Monday after a Trump-appointed federal judge declared the mandate unlawful. Major airlines swiftly dropped the mandate they had grown to loathe, along with Amtrak, Uber and Lyft.
But airports in New York and Philadelphia kept their mask mandates intact — creating the confusing situation that people could fly maskless from one airport but have to put it back on depending upon where they land.
The Biden administration, which had recently renewed the mandate until May 3, seemed to be caught off guard by the judge’s decision, scrambling in the hours that followed to respond to questions. On Monday evening, an administration official told reporters that the TSA would no longer enforce the rule, even though federal health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would still recommended masks while traveling.
“This was deeply disappointing,” tweeted Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coordinator for COVID-19. “CDC scientists had asked for 15 days to make a more data-driven durable decision. We should have given it to them.”
As of late Tuesday, though, it remained unclear how hard President Joe Biden might fight the ruling. The Justice Department said in a statement it would appeal the recent ruling if the CDC deemed it necessary. The CDC was noncommittal.
“CDC continues to recommend that people wear masks in all indoor public transportation settings. We will continue to assess the need for a mask requirement in those settings, based on several factors, including the U.S. COVID-19 community levels, risk of circulating and novel variants, and trends in cases and disease severity,” the agency said in a statement.
The biggest hint though came from Biden himself. With the clock ticking toward the May 3 deadline, Biden suggested to reporters that a legal fight on masks wasn’t his priority.
When asked if people should continue to wear masks on planes, Biden responded tersely: “That’s up to them.”
Several legal experts told ABC that the Biden administration might not want to pursue a legal challenge for both pragmatic and political reasons. For one, by the time any kind of legal wrangling takes place, the administration might be willing to let the mask mandate expire anyway.
Another factor is that the case would likely have to go before the U.S. Supreme Court, where a favorable ruling isn’t a sure bet. The high court’s conservative majority has ruled against federal powers on other pandemic-era restrictions related to housing evictions and vaccine mandates for private industry.
Also, many Americans simply don’t like the mandate.
“Politically and legally, the administration is not going to have a lot of incentive to pursue this,” said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News contributor and former Justice Department official during the Trump administration.
Jeffrey Lubbers, a professor of administrative law at American University’s Washington College of Law, said he thinks the Florida judge’s ruling was “highly questionable” and that there’s ample room to challenge it. But whether the administration fights to defend the mandate would probably have more to do with preserving the federal government’s power to prevent the spread of communicable diseases — a power that could be useful in the future.
“This mandate is supposed to expire in two weeks, and it’s also an unpopular mandate. So, it it worth going to court?” he said. But on the flip side, “what happens in two or three months if there’s a new variant and we have a ruling on the books that says CDC can’t regulate this? The government has a political calculation here too.”
Isgur said it’s possible the administration also is considering the upside of having a court ruling to blame if COVID cases increase as a result of the mandate being lifted.
“At some point, the pandemic restrictions had to end, and no one wants to be left holding the bag,” she said.
As for Tansley, she said she hopes people will be compassionate and consider the immunocompromised and families like hers whose kids remain unprotected. She also doesn’t know how her family will get home next week and whether they’ll make the decision to fly again.
“It made me sad and upset to know that my family and my coworker’s safety have been put at risk because of one powerful person in a position and then a pilot who made a call to change the policy in mid-flight. It was something that could have easily waited,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — Lori Vallow pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder charges related to the deaths of her two children in 2019. Her husband Chad Daybell had previously pleaded not guilty on similar charges.
Vallow and Daybell appeared in court in Fremont County, Idaho. Last week, a judge ruled that Vallow was fit to stand trial after she was recently released from an Idaho mental health facility.
Nearly two years ago, authorities discovered the remains of Lori Vallow’s children on property belonging to Chad Daybell, Vallow’s husband and the children’s stepfather.
Since then, authorities said Vallow and Daybell’s story has publicly unraveled and both face charges in connection to multiple murders.
Daybell appeared in court Tuesday morning for a hearing on whether his trial should be moved from Fremont County to Ada County after the defense argued that the jury in Fremont County may be swayed by extensive media coverage in the area.
After hearing multiple arguments and witness testimony, the judge announced that a written ruling would be released at a later date.
Following Daybell’s court appearance, Vallow appeared in court for arraignment and pleaded not guilty to all charges. She’s charged with three counts of first-degree murder: her children, J.J. Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and her husband’s first wife, Tammy Daybell.
The couple is scheduled to face trial starting in January 2023. Daybell and Vallow could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted on multiple first-degree murder charges.
(STOCKTON, Calif.) — A suspect has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old girl at a high school in Stockton, California, in what officials said appears to be a random attack.
The student was killed when a trespasser, initially described as a man in his 40s, entered Stagg High School on Monday and stabbed her multiple times. Responders immediately began lifesaving measures, but she was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Stockton police said.
“A trespasser entered the front of our school today, stabbed one of our students multiple times,” Stockton Unified School District Superintendent John Ramirez Jr. said at a press conference Monday. “Unfortunately, she did not make it. The assailant was taken, was detained, and taken into custody immediately.”
“The school was also put on lockdown to assure the safety of the rest of our students,” he added. “We began to work with local law enforcement immediately and they’ve taken over the investigation.”
Anthony Gray, 52, was arrested in connection with the stabbing and booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on murder, police said late Monday.
“Detectives believe this appears to be a random act and they are trying to determine why this student was targeted,” the Stockton Police Department said on Facebook.
Gray is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
Officials had said Monday they did not have a motive for the attack but said the man was not a parent.
Ramirez praised the school’s resource officer for acting quickly to apprehend the suspect, saying it helped to prevent the stabbing from continuing.
“When the incident happened, there were staff immediately there,” he said. “It had been so quick that they weren’t able to stop it, but they were there immediately.”
(PONTIAC, Mich.) — The parents of the accused Michigan school shooter were denied a request to reduce their bond on Tuesday.
Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said the events leading to the arrest of Jennifer and James Crumbley make the bond currently set appropriate, as their actions were “premeditated to conceal their whereabouts.”
The two are charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly failing to recognize warning signs about their son in the months before their son allegedly shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021.
Prosecutors have accused the parents of giving their son a gun that was later used in the school shooting and allege the parents hid in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and had concealed their car by hiding their license plates instead of turning themselves in the day they were charged.
Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is facing 24 counts, including four counts of murder and a terrorism charge
A judge ruled that Ethan Crumbley must remain in adult jail. His lawyers said in January they will claim an insanity defense. He is being held in isolation, under behavior watch, and must be checked on every 15 minutes.
The Crumbleys’ bond is set at $500,000 each, which they were attempting to get reduced to $100,000 each.
A lower court denied a similar motion to reduce their bond in January.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A man who has spent 32 years in prison for being wrongly convicted of murder was exonerated by San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin on Monday.
Joaquin Ciria was arrested in 1990 and convicted of shooting and killing his friend, Felix Bastarrica, in San Francisco. His conviction was based on false witness testimony and police misconduct, according to Boudin.
“Our office is proud of and grateful for the work of the Innocence Commission in rectifying the wrongful conviction of Mr. Ciria,” Boudin said in a press release.
He added, “Although we cannot give him back the decades of his life lost we are thankful that the court has corrected this miscarriage of justice.”
Boudin dismissed the case against Ciria after a judge overturned his conviction.
According to Boudin, no physical evidence linked Ciria to the crime, but San Francisco police believed Ciria to be the shooter based on street rumors and statements from the alleged getaway driver, George Varela.
Varela testified in exchange for complete immunity that he drove Ciria to and from the scene. Boudin states that Varela, who was then a teenager, was pressured by police to name Ciria as the perpetrator.
The commission found that Varela has admitted to Ciria’s family members that he had falsely testified.
The jury heard from three eyewitnesses in Ciria’s trial, two of whom Boudin’s office says were “cross-racial identifications by strangers whose views were compromised by distance and poor lighting during the late-night shooting.”
An alternate suspect was not mentioned to the jury, and evidence of Ciria’s alibi was not given on trial despite two available alibi witnesses.
The Innocence Commission also found that another eyewitness, the victim’s best friend, identified another person as the shooter, and that other witnesses confirmed details to corroborate this new eyewitness’ story, including the description of the shooter provided by the stranger eyewitnesses, which more closely matches another suspect.
Ciria’s case was the first one reviewed by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office’s Innocence Commission since its formation in 2020. The commission was created to review potential wrongful convictions and present findings to Boudin’s office.
“When a conviction is a perversion of justice because it deprives an innocent person of his freedom while robbing the victim and his family of justice, the District Attorney has a duty to correct that intolerable violation,” said Lara Bazelon, the chair of the Innocence Commission.
Ciria has long maintained his innocence. His release date is not yet known, but could be within the next few days, the DA’s office said.
“Joaquin’s case highlights so many issues with our system, including how long it takes to undo a wrongful conviction, the problems with using incentivized testimony, the unreliability of cross-racial identifications, and the ways people of color aren’t afforded the presumption of innocence,” said Paige Kaneb, supervising attorney at the Northern California Innocence Project, who represented Ciria.
There have been more than 270 known wrongful convictions in California alone since the National Registry of Exonerations began tracking wrongful convictions in 1989. Ciria will be added to that registry.
“Studies on the causes of wrongful convictions demonstrate that key contributing factors include mistaken eyewitness identification, false testimony, and official misconduct,” Boudin’s office said in a press release. “All three of those factors were present in Mr. Ciria’s case and led to his wrongful conviction in this case.”
(PONTIAC, Mich.) — The parents of the accused Michigan school shooter were denied a request to reduce their bond on Tuesday.
Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said the events leading to the arrest of Jennifer and James Crumbley make the bond currently set appropriate, as their actions were “premeditated to conceal their whereabouts.”
The two are charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly failing to recognize warning signs about their son in the months before their son allegedly shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021.
Prosecutors have accused the parents of giving their son a gun that was later used in the school shooting and allege the parents hid in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and had concealed their car by hiding their license plates instead of turning themselves in the day they were charged.
Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, is facing 24 counts, including four counts of murder and a terrorism charge
A judge ruled that Ethan Crumbley must remain in adult jail. His lawyers said in January they will claim an insanity defense. He is being held in isolation, under behavior watch, and must be checked on every 15 minutes.
The Crumbleys’ bond is set at $500,000 each, which they were attempting to get reduced to $100,000 each.
A lower court denied a similar motion to reduce their bond in January.
(COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz.) — A woman died after she was caught on a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a local sheriff’s office.
On April 11, Cochise County, Arizona, deputies were dispatched to a section of the border where they found a 32-year-old woman hanging upside down, the sheriff’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook.
“The woman reportedly climbed onto the top of the International Border wall and when attempting to maneuver down on the US side via a harness similar to rappelling, her foot/leg became entangled and she was trapped upside down for a significant amount of time,” the statement said.
An autopsy was being conducted to figure out exactly how the woman died.
“These types of incidents are not political, they are humanitarian realities that someone has lost a loved one in a senseless tragedy,” Sheriff Mark Daniels said. “We have to do better in finding solutions to the challenges facing our border, and we have to do it for the right reasons. Regardless of opinions, it is the facts that should direct our progress and we will keep working towards a shared goal of border safety and security.”
In a statement, Customs and Border Protection told ABC News the incident is under investigation.
“On April 11, 2022, Tucson Sector Agents received information from the emergency services dispatch in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico of an incident approximately 10 miles west of the Douglas Port of Entry at the International Boundary Barrier,” a CBP spokesman told ABC News.
“Border Patrol Agents and local emergency services responded to the scene and located an individual who was transported to a local hospital. Personnel from the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office and CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility are investigating; more information will be shared as it becomes available,” the spokesman said.
The incident comes as Customs and Border Protection had over 220,000 encounters with migrants along the southwest border in March, the third-highest on record.
Lauren Owens Lambert/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(BOSTON) — It was a triumphant and emotional moment for Henry Richard as he threw his arms up in the air and crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon Monday.
Nine years ago, Henry’s younger brother, Martin Richard, was one of three people who were killed when two bombs detonated near the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Martin was 8 years old at the time.
Henry told ABC Boston affiliate WCVB-TV that he thought about his brother while running the course’s 26.2 miles.
“I know if he was here, either this year or the next coming years, he would have been doing it with me. So that’s all I could think about,” Henry said.
Henry had his brother’s name written in black marker on his right arm and his sister’s name on his left arm for the occasion, he said. He also wore a yellow jersey with the word “Peace” written on it, underneath “Team MR8,” the logo for the Martin Richard Foundation. The organization was launched in 2014 in Martin’s honor, to promote the values of “inclusion, kindness, justice and peace,” according to its website.
Before he reached the finish line, Henry also paused at the marathon’s memorial with a teammate and after he crossed the finish line, he shared an embrace with his parents, Denise and Bill Richard, and his sister, Jane Richard.
“So many people were out there for me. All my friends, my family. Motivation was the least of my worries. There was so many people there to support me. It was wonderful and I couldn’t believe it,” Henry told WCVB.
Henry added that he would definitely run another Boston Marathon in the years to come.
“I loved every second of it and this feels so great, I can’t wait to do it again,” he said.
Monday’s race was the 126th running of the Boston Marathon and passed through eight Massachusetts towns: Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton and Brookline, before finishing on Boylston Street in Boston. The top finishers this year were Evans Chebet for the men’s division, who clocked in at 2 hours, 6 minutes, 51 seconds, and Peres Jepchirchir for the women’s division, who finished in 2 hours, 21 minutes, 1 second, ESPN reported.
(NEW YORK) — Over the holiday weekend, 12 people were shot at a Columbia, South Carolina, mall. In nearby Hampton County, nine people were shot outside a nightclub. And in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, two juveniles were killed and eight were injured after a shooting at a birthday party.
The recent incidents are just the latest examples of mass shootings that have been occurring at a sustained pace across the United States for the past two years and counting and which coincide with an increase in fatal shootings overall. Fatal shootings, not including suicides, jumped by more than 4,000 from 2019 to 2020 — a 26% increase in one year, according to statistics compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit which identifies mass shootings as cases in which four or more people are shot and tracks them through public data, news reports and other sources.
“These two devastating shootings will leave permanent scars on survivors and entire communities, and unfortunately, they represent only a fraction of the gun violence that impacts South Carolinians on a daily basis,” said the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety in a statement responding to the South Carolina shootings. “Just weeks ago, a twelve-year old was killed in a shooting at Greenville’s Tanglewood Middle School. Days after that, five people were wounded in a shooting along a rural road in Colleton County.”
While the rate of increase in fatal shootings slowed last year, the total number of fatal shootings still grew — to nearly 21,000, according to the GVA. And as the overall number of fatal shootings has increased, there has also been a rise in mass shootings. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings, and just two years later, there were 693. Through April 17, the pace of mass shootings has slowed, but there have already been 139 such incidents (compared to 148 by the same date last year). Meanwhile, the number of non-mass shootings is on the rise from 5,445 through April 17 last year to 5,451 for the same period this year.
In an effort to address gun violence, President Joe Biden announced earlier this month an initiative to combat ghost guns — a firearm that comes packaged in parts, can be bought online and assembled without much of a trace.
“Anyone could order it in the mail, anyone … Terrorists and domestic abusers can go from a gun kit to a gun in as little as 30 minutes. Buyers aren’t required to pass background checks because guns have no serial numbers,” Biden said.
The new rule essentially expands the definition of a “firearm,” as established by the Gun Control Act, to cover “buy build shoot” kits that people can purchase online or from a firearm dealer and assemble themselves. It will make these kits subject to the same federal laws that currently apply to other firearms.
The goal, officials said, is to keep untraceable guns off the streets and out of the hands of those prohibited from possession.
Biden also nominated former U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach to become the next director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a role that includes enforcing and implementing gun laws.
The White House and gun control advocates, however, have argued that substantive gun control measures will require legislative action through Congress, but that is unlikely given Republican opposition.
“The United States is not the only country with mental illness, domestic violence, video games, or hate-fueled ideologies, but our gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than our peer countries. The difference is easy access to guns,” according Everytown for Gun Safety, which applauded and had called for the recent moves by the Biden administration.
