(BEXAR COUNTY, Texas) — A Texas court dismissed a lawsuit Thursday against a doctor accused of providing an abortion to a woman despite the state’s strict ban on the procedure.
Dr. Alan Braid performed the abortion for a patient in early September 2021, just five days after S.B.8 went into effect, which bans abortion after six weeks’ gestation. The patient’s pregnancy was further along than six weeks.
However, Bexar County Judge Aaron Haas said he was throwing out the case, dealing a major blow to the Texas law that allows citizens to sue anyone who aids a patient in receiving abortion care, including physicians. Federal courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — had previously declined to block S.B. 8, saying they were powerless to block the law.
Several overlapping Texas laws ban nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest. The only exception is if the mother’s life or health is in danger.
S.B.8 allows any private citizen to sue anyone who performs an abortion or assists a pregnant person in obtaining the procedure. The law awards a minimum of $10,000 to any citizen who successfully sues an abortion provider, healthcare worker or anyone who helps someone get access to abortion care.
In an op-ed written for The Washington Post last year, Braid said he acted despite the ban because had a “duty to care.”
“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” he wrote.
Braid had three lawsuits filed against him — one by disbarred Illinois attorney Felipe Gomez in Texas, one in Arkansas and a third in Illinois — but only the Texas case was taken up.
On Thursday, the court announced it was dismissing the suit and ruled that Gomez does not have the legal right to sue because he was not been directly affected by the abortion care being provided. A written order is expected to come within a week.
It is the first and only active lawsuit against a provider to be resolved by a court since S.B.8 went into effect.
Additionally, the court said it would make a ruling in the next week about whether the part of the law that allows citizens to sue violates the state’s constitution.
“This is a significant win against S.B. 8’s bounty-hunting scheme because the court rejected the notion that Texas can allow a person with no connection to an abortion to sue,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is co-representing Braid, said in a statement.
“But this dismissal did not provide the opportunity to strike down S.B. 8 overall, and in the wake of the Dobbs decision, Texas is enforcing multiple abortion bans. As a result, pregnant Texans with life-threatening obstetric emergencies are being turned away from hospitals. No one should have to be near death just to get the health care they need,” the statement continued.
In a press call on Thursday, the Center’s senior counsel, Mark Hearron, told reporters that Braid has been forced to close his practices in Texas and Oklahoma and is providing care in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Illinois.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe, at least 12 states have ceased nearly all abortion services.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Texans face the longest travel times in the country to get access to abortion care. They are forced to travel over seven hours each way for access.
“When I provided my patient with the care she needed last year, I was doing my duty as a physician,” Braid said in a statement. “It is heartbreaking that Texans still can’t get essential health care in their home state and that providers are left afraid to do their jobs. Though we were forced to close our Texas clinic, I will continue serving patients across the region with the care they deserve at new clinics in Illinois and New Mexico.”
(MARENGO, Iowa) — Multiple people were injured in an explosion at a plant in Iowa on Thursday, hospital officials said, as crews continue to battle a massive blaze in the incident.
No fatalities were reported following the explosion at the facility in Marengo, located about 25 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids, Iowa State Trooper Bob Conrad confirmed to ABC News. All 30 people who were in the building at the time have also been accounted for, he said.
Ten to 15 people were injured in the incident, with most in the “mild to moderate injury category,” Dr. Theresa Brennan, chief medical officer for University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, told reporters.
Only one of the patients was in what they consider to be the most serious injury category for a mass casualty incident, Brennan said.
Drone footage showed emergency responders battling a large fire with black billowing smoke at the plant, which based on property records is a soybean crushing facility, according to ABC Cedar Rapids affiliate KCRG.
The local sheriff’s office advised anyone who had been evacuated due to the fire to go to the Iowa County Transportation building, or otherwise stay indoors.
“A large fire is being fought,” the Iowa County Sheriff’s Office said on social media. “PLEASE, NO SIGHT SEEING!”
City officials also urged residents to avoid the 800 block of East South Street amid the fire.
Residents in the area reported hearing a loud “boom” Thursday morning.
“I’d seen all the ambulances and stuff going, and the fire trucks, and I’d seen the smoke right away,” Sam Murphy told KCRG. “So I went down to the Big G and got some water and stuff for them.”
Anthony Schropp told KCRG he was among those in the immediate area of the plant ordered to evacuate. He was working three blocks from the plant at the time.
“It shook our building. We heard the explosion,” he told the station. “We thought someone drove into our garage door at the shop.”
Trooper Conrad said Thursday evening that the fire is not yet out, but is “down” from where it was. Once the fire is extinguished, the state fire marshal can begin an investigation into the cause.
ABC News’ Victoria J. Arancio and Matt Foster contributed to this report.
Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — For the first time since 2019, the northern giant hornet hasn’t been found in Washington State.
The Washington State Department of Agriculture’s (WSDA) Pest Program announced on Wednesday that it hasn’t trapped or confirmed any sightings of the hornets this year.
The hornets, once known as the “murder hornets,” are an invasive species that can ravage honeybee populations.
It’s not known how the killer hornets, native to Asian countries including China and Japan, arrived in the Pacific Northwest — but a plausible theory is that they came in via international cargo.
“While not detecting any hornets this year is promising, the work to ensure they are eradicated is not over yet,” Sven Spichiger, WSDA managing entomologist, said in a press release. “Research to develop a better trap continues and public reports – which account for half of all confirmed detections – remain critical.”
WSDA etymologists discovered and destroyed the first northern giant hornet nest in the U.S. in 2020 in Blaine, Washington, located north of Seattle, near the Canadian border, collecting over 500 hornets.
After eradicating the nest, during which the crew vacuumed out nearly 100 hornets, the entomologists removed the portion of the tree with the nest and opened it the following week to collect any hornets that had remained. The crew had pumped carbon dioxide into the tree during the nest removal to kill or anesthetize any remaining hornets, and many were still alive, officials said at the time. Last year, state officials found and destroyed three additional nests.
Federal guidelines demand three consecutive years without the hornets being detected to declare they’re eliminated, according to WSDA.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
(DALLAS) — The prosecution rested its case late Wednesday, three days into the trial of now-former police officer Aaron Dean in the 2019 fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson.
Dean is charged with murder in the death of Jefferson, a Black woman who was allegedly fatally shot by Dean inside her Fort Worth, Texas, home on Oct. 12, 2019.
His trial began on Monday, Dec. 5. Court will resume Monday, Dec. 12.
Opening statements
Prosecutors began their opening statements Monday by telling jurors about who Jefferson was. She was a 28-year-old woman who was living with her mother to take care of her, as well as address her own “severe health issues with her heart,” according to prosecutors. In that house, she helped raise Zion Carr, her then-8-year-old nephew who was present when she was fatally shot by police. She was “helping raise Zion, teaching him the responsibilities, day-to-day chores,” prosecutors said.
On that night, “[Zion] sees his aunt Tay — which is what he calls her — still playing video games and she’s up so, 8-year-old says ‘I want to play too.’ So, he gets up and he starts playing video games with her so they’re laughing, having a good time. Tatianna and Zion had no idea what was coming,” prosecutor Ashlea Deener said.
The defense began Monday’s hearing arguing for a motion to change the venue in which the trial is held because almost all of the potential jurors during jury selection had heard of the case. Judge George Gallagher denied the motion.
During opening statements, the defense focused on the gun in Jefferson’s hand in the moments before she was shot. The prosecution argued that Dean shot Jefferson before Dean could see a gun and before Jefferson could follow his commands.
“As soon as Aaron enters into the backyard, he sees a silhouette at the window,” Dean’s defense attorney Miles Brissette said. “Aaron sees that silhouette in the window and that silhouette has a firearm. That silhouette has a firearm with a green laser mounted on the front rail of that firearm pointed directly at Aaron, closer than me to you to the window.”
“The evidence will support he did not see the gun in her hand,” Deener said. “This is not a justification. This is not a self-defense case. This is murder.”
There were concerns the trial would be delayed after Dean’s lead attorney, Jim Lane, died on Nov. 27, according to Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA, just one day before the jury selection in the case began. Lane had been ill and two other lawyers took over as lead attorneys in May, according to WFAA.
Monday’s court proceedings only lasted half a day because of Lane’s funeral.
Jefferson’s nephew testifies
On the stand, now-11-year-old Zion told the court that he and Jefferson burned the hamburgers they were making that night, which is why they opened the door. They left the screen door open to let the smoke out, according to Zion and prosecutors.
He was the first and only witness to take the stand on the first day of the trial.
Police said they received a call just before 2:30 a.m. to respond to Jefferson’s home on East Allen Avenue after a neighbor called to say the front door was open.
Two officers arrived at the house shortly after and parked near Jefferson’s home, but not in front of the residence, according to officials.
The front door appears open in the body-camera footage, but a screen door looks to be closed in front of it. The officer doesn’t appear to knock.
Officials said the officers walked around the back of the house and that one of the officers observed a person through the rear window of the home and opened fire.
Zion said his aunt heard a noise, asked him about it and went to get a handgun from her purse. She walked toward the window, and then he said he saw her fall to the ground.
“She started crying and then two police officers came and got me,” Zion said.
Zion said his aunt did not raise her gun when she approached the window, however the defense attorney kept asking Zion questions about his recollection of an interview he did the night after his aunt was shot.
Zion had allegedly said during that interview that Jefferson had at one point raised the gun from her side, but Zion said he didn’t remember the details of what he did or said during the interview in response to the questions, visibly frustrated on the stand.
Other officer on the scene testifies
Officer Carol Darch, Dean’s former partner in the Fort Worth Police Department, took the stand Tuesday for cross-examination.
In her testimony, Darch said messiness inside the home made it look like there had been a home invasion of some sort, “like someone had methodically gone through that house looking for something.”
She said she and Dean didn’t announce themselves because of their own safety, as well as based on “open structure” procedure that trains officers to reduce the possibility that they might give an intruder into the home a chance to escape by alerting them of their presence.
Darch described the call as an “open structure” call, which refers to a call about a structure with an open door or window.
She later was asked to describe the “pyramid” style “Use-of-Force Continuum,” which calls for deadly force to be the last resort in addressing a threat. However, training does not require officers to take all steps before using deadly force if met with a deadly force.
“Deadly force is always met with deadly force,” Darch said. “We’re trained to stop the threat.”
Darch told the jury that she never saw Jefferson’s gun on the scene and never heard Dean announce that he saw a gun on Jefferson himself.
“I heard him give commands, I started turning. I was halfway through my turn and I heard the shot,” Darch said.
She later added, “The only thing I could see [through the window] was eyes, really. I couldn’t make out if it was a male or a female. I just saw someone in the window and I saw their eyes — as big as saucers.”
Darch got emotional on the stand when Zion came up in questioning. She said she was concerned about his well-being, as she said she tended to Zion’s care following the shooting.
Body camera footage released by the department shows the officer approaching a rear window of the home with his gun drawn. The officer shouts, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” and fires one shot through the window.
The video seems to confirm the officer never identified himself as police before he opened fire.
Police officials said Jefferson was within her rights to protect herself and her nephew when she heard noises in her backyard and went to the window to investigate.
The 911 call
Abriel Talbert, the call center employee who took the 911 call from Jefferson’s neighbor, told the jury that she included details about the house for police answering the call.
In her description to police, she included information that the caller shared that “both neighbors’ vehicles are in the driveway … and neighbors are usually home but never have a door open.”
She included those details “so the officer knows what’s supposed to be at the address, nothing out of the ordinary, other than the open door.”
She classified the call as an open structure call because of the open doors.
James Smith, who made the call to the city’s non-emergency line, had asked responders for a “welfare check” on Jefferson’s home because he was concerned about his neighbors with whom he’s friends with. However, they responded to the call instead as an open structure call.
3rd day of testimony
Richard Fries, the deputy medical examiner in Tarrant County, took the stand to describe the process of examining Jefferson’s body at the scene. He described the gunshot wound to her chest and the glass fragments that had embedded in her skin from the window she was shot through.
He said the bullet pierced Jefferson’s heart and that he would not “expect somebody to survive” her wounds.
On the third day of witness testimony, jurors also heard from Fort Worth officer James Van Gorkom, Fort Worth major case unit detective Doug Rohloff and another Fort Worth police officer to describe the aftermath of the shooting and their analysis of the scene.
(NEW YORK) — “I’m very disgusted,” Derek Maltz, who oversaw the Drug Enforcement Administration’s investigation of Viktor Bout, told ABC News after Bout was traded for Brittney Griner. “It’s really upsetting to me.”
On Thursday, the WNBA star was swapped for Bout — a Russian convicted arms dealer who spend 15 years in U.S. prison — in an international prisoner exchange. Griner was serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian prison for possession of vaping cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in Russia, before the exchange.
Maltz, in 2008, was the special agent in charge of the DEA’s special operations division which took down Bout in a sting operation in Thailand.
“DEA was asked to help take this guy down because he was such a national security threat,” Maltz said. “We at the DEA were just trying to step up to the plate and do the right thing for national security.”
In November 2007, Bout agreed to sell DEA informants posing as FARC rebels in Colombia millions of dollars in weapons, including: 800 surface-to air-missiles; 30,000 AK-47s; 10 million rounds of ammunition; 5 tons of C4 plastic explosives; and ultra light airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers to attack U.S. helicopters in Columbia, according to Maltz.
“Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of any small country,” Maltz said.
Maltz said he has no issue with bringing home Americans and called this “a great day for Brittney Griner and for America” but he said the exchange for Bout would make things less safe for Americans traveling internationally.
“To make that exchange, all Americans are at greater risk with international travel,” Maltz said, fearing it would promote taking American citizens captive.
(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) — The student accused of opening fire on a loaded charter bus, killing three University of Virginia football players and wounding two other classmates, made a brief appearance in court on Thursday.
The suspect, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, appeared in court in Charlottesville for a status conference in the triple-murder case. It was his second court appearance since his arrest in the deadly November attacks.
Jones was represented at the hearing by a public defender.
A judge scheduled a preliminary hearing in the case for March 30, according to ABC affiliate station WSET in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Jones is charged with three felony counts of second-degree murder, two felony counts of malicious wounding and five felony counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. He has yet to enter a plea to the charges.f
The shooting unfolded on Nov. 13 when Jones allegedly opened fire with a handgun on a charter bus packed with students returning to the UVA campus in Charlottesville from a field trip to Washington, D.C., officials said.
Killed in the attack were UVA Cavaliers football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry. The shooting also wounded students Mike Hoins and Marlee Morgan.
Jones was a walk-on member of the school’s football team in 2018, but never played in a game, UVA officials said.
A possible motive for the shooting has not been disclosed by prosecutors or investigators.
As law enforcement continues to investigate the killings, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is conducting an external review of the circumstances leading up to the attack. Miyares has yet to announce any findings in his probe.
Prosecutors said a witness told police Jones targeted specific students on the bus and that one of the victims, Chandler, was shot to death as he slept on the bus.
Jones was arrested a day after the attack following a massive search for him.
Virginia State Police confirmed that multiple guns and ammunition were seized from Jones’ home.
(NEW YORK)– Federal authorities are investigating a number of recent reported acts of sabotage on utility companies, a senior law enforcement source told ABC News.
The move comes in the wake of substations being riddled with bullets in North Carolina, leaving tens of thousands without power for days.
After the incident, the utility companies reached out to federal authorities in recent days to investigate, the source said.
The most recent potential case of sabotage occurred in South Carolina.
According to multiple law enforcement sources, an individual opened fire near a Duke Energy facility at the Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway.
The individual used what appeared to be a long gun and then sped away. No one was injured and there has been no reported damage to the station at this time.
A $75,000 reward has been offered in the North Carolina case, in Moore County, where two electrical substations were shot at.
“This was a malicious attack on an entire community, and it plunged tens of thousands of people into darkness. They knew what to do to disable this substation … But we know that people are very frustrated here, and that’s very understandable,” said the state’s governor, Roy Cooper.
No arrests have been made and no motive has been announced in that case.
(PHILADELPHIA) — A little boy killed more than 60 years ago has finally been identified thanks to police work and DNA analysis, the Philadelphia Police Department said.
On Feb. 25, 1957, a young boy was found dead in a box in northeast Philadelphia.
The case, known as “the boy in the box,” is Philadelphia’s oldest unsolved homicide.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw will be joined by officials including Philadelphia County Medical Examiner Dr. Constance DiAngelo and Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International to announce the boy’s identity at an 11 a.m. news conference Thursday.
(NEW YORK) — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday urged a federal judge in Florida to reject a lawsuit against her by a “disgruntled” Donald Trump.
Trump, in the suit, is seeking emergency protection for the revocable trust in which he parked his ownership of the Trump Organization. He accused James of seeking to invade his privacy by asking for documents about the trust as part of her $250 million civil lawsuit filed in September against the former president and his family.
The state attorney general’s office, in a new court filing Wednesday, said Trump deserves no relief from the court.
“There is no emergency requiring the Court to grant the extraordinary relief of a temporary injunction,” James’ filing said. “Instead, there is a just a disgruntled litigant, Donald J. Trump, who impermissibly seeks to evade the jurisdiction of a New York state court that is presiding over an enforcement action alleging pervasive fraud and illegality by him and others in the conduct of his New York-based business and has issued a number of rulings that he considers unfavorable.”
James has alleged Trump improperly adjusted the values of his real estate holdings to suit his business interests of the moment. His counterclaim in Florida, she said, is an attempted “end-run around the jurisdiction of the New York state court” where her lawsuit is filed.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
James defended her pursuit of information about the trust because, her filing said, it owns all of the assets that are valued in Trump’s financial disclosures. James has alleged those disclosures were fraudulent because they inflated Trump’s net worth and tricked banks into giving the former president more favorable loan terms than he deserved.
Fearing the alleged fraud was still going on, James last month convinced a judge to impose an independent monitor to oversee aspects of the Trump Organization’s business, including the preparation of Trump’s financial disclosures.
Trump argued the details of his trust should remain shielded from James because she would “widely publish” them, violating his right to privacy.
“Such a conclusory allegation is legally insufficient to support a motion for a preliminary injunction and belied by the documentary record,” James’ filing said. “Moreover, Mr. Trump fails to acknowledge that appropriate reasonable redactions are available to him in order to mitigate against any purported, albeit speculative, harm related to his estate planning information.”
The case, originally filed in Florida state court, was removed to federal court last month and assigned to a judge who has previously sanctioned Trump’s legal team for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — The family of Patrick Lyoya, who was fatally shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids, Michigan, police officer in April, has filed a $100 million civil lawsuit against the officer and the city.
Their attorneys, Ben Crump and Ven Johnson, announced the lawsuit at a Wednesday press conference, alongside Lyoya’s father Peter Lyoya.
The complaint against the now-former officer Christopher Schurr and the city of Grand Rapids includes both state and federal counts, Johnson said. The first claim alleges that Schurr used “unnecessary illegal excessive force.” The second claim alleges the city’s policies, practices, and training “led to Schurr utilizing excessive force.”
The attorneys played three videos of the April 4 incident at the press conference, including footage from the dashcam of Schurr’s car, his body camera, and cellphone footage taken by the passenger in Lyoya’s vehicle. Lyoya’s lawyers also allege they have the Ring home security camera video from the house across the street. They said they are also hoping to obtain the camera footage from the stun gun Schurr deployed during his confrontation with Lyoya.
Body camera and dashcam footage showed Schurr pulling Lyoya, a 26-year-old native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over because his license plate allegedly didn’t match his car. After Schurr asked for his driver’s license, Lyoya started to run.
Schurr then pursued and tackled him to the ground. Both were struggling on the ground and then Lyoya grabbed the officer’s stun gun. Lyoya was allegedly attempting to deflect the stun gun away from himself, not to wrestle it from Schurr to use against him, the attorneys said at the press conference Tuesday.
After restraining Lyoya by pressing his knee to his back, Schurr shot Lyoya while he was face down, the bodycamera and cellphone footage show.The Kent County medical examiner confirmed Lyoya died from a gunshot to the back of his head.
Lyoya’s family lawyers said the video footage and their consultations with police misconduct experts and taser experts will prove Schurr had racially profiled Lyoya when pulling him over and used excessive force, resulting in his death. The incident prompted protests throughout Grand Rapids.
Lyoya’s attorneys said Lyoya’s death was not an isolated incident, claiming there is a pattern of behavior in the police department that involves allegations of excessive force. Johnson said they found that between June 2015 and May 2020, 79 citizen complaints for excessive use of force were lodged against Grand Rapids police officers. All but two officers were “exonerated or otherwise cleared.”
The Michigan Department of Civil Rights is also investigating complaints of racial profiling and discrimination from Grand Rapids police officers, Johnson said.
An April 2017 study concluded that Black drivers in Grand Rapids were more than twice as likely compared to white drivers to be stopped by police despite constituting only 14 percent of the city’s population.
“You have this pattern and practice of excessive force, so when you take ‘driving while Black’ plus excessive force, you end up with Patrick Lyoya being unjustly executed by this Grand Rapids police officer,” Crump said at the press conference.
A Grand Rapids spokesperson said in a statement that the city has not yet received the lawsuit and cannot address the specifics.
“Upon receipt, we will review the lawsuit and respond appropriately in court,” the spokesperson said.
Schurr’s attorneys did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
Schurr’s legal team previously wrote in a statement to Grand Rapids ABC affiliate WZZM-TV that Lyoya’s death was “not murder but an unfortunate tragedy, resulting from a highly volatile situation.”
“Mr. Lyoya continually refused to obey lawful commands and ultimately disarmed a police officer,” they wrote. “Mr. Lyoya gained full control of a police officer’s weapon while resisting arrest, placing Officer Schurr in fear of great bodily harm or death.”
Schurr, a seven-year veteran of the Grand Rapids Police Department, has also been criminally charged with second-degree murder in the case and will stand trial. He pleaded not guilty.
Schurr was fired from the police force in June.
Peter Lyoya, who says he watched the footage of the April 4 confrontation for the first time at the press conference, said he continues to have nightmares about his son getting shot. But he said he hopes the lawsuit will help prevent other parents from experiencing the loss he did.
“The pain is so deep,” he said in his native language Swahili through an interpreter. “The bitterness is so deep to the point that I can even lose my life every time when I think about my son leaving us.”
“I don’t want else to happen to other parent because if Patrick gets his justice today, it will stop a lot of things to happen to a lot of young men out there, Black or white, their parents don’t go through what I’m going through,” he said.
