(KAUAI, Hawaii) — Four people are dead after a civilian-contracted helicopter crashed at a U.S. naval facility, officials said.
The incident occurred at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, a Navy base in Kauai, Hawaii, shortly after 10 a.m. local time Tuesday.
The helicopter was operated by Croman Corporation, which “provides range support services” to the base, a Pacific Missile Range Facility spokesperson said in a statement.
The helicopter was taking part in a range training operation on the base in Kekaha when it crashed on the northern area of the installation, the spokesperson said.
Emergency personnel responded to the crash, the spokesperson said. There were four fatalities. The names of those killed have not yet been released.
All four crew members were Croman employees, Brian Beattie, the company’s director of operations, said in a statement.
“The helicopter was conducting routine training operations under contract to the U.S. Navy,” Beattie said. “No further details are available.”
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the accident, the Pacific Missile Range Facility spokesperson said.
The National Transportation Safety Board also confirmed it is investigating the crash of a Sikorsky S-61N helicopter near Kekaha.
The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating, Beattie said.
Pacific Missile Range Facility is the “world’s largest instrumented, multi-dimensional testing and training missile range,” according to the U.S. Navy. It has over 42,000 square miles of controlled airspace.
(BRIDGEWATER, N.J.) — The 14-year-old who was handcuffed by police as they broke up a fight at a New Jersey mall is speaking out about the incident, which prompted an internal investigation over the police’s apparent treatment of the Black teen.
In a viral video of the incident, police are seen responding to a fight between the teen, Kye, and another teenager at the Bridgewater Commons Mall in New Jersey on Feb. 12, but after breaking up the fight, police only handcuffed Kye, who is Black.
Kye, who is only being identified by his first name at the request of his mother, told GMA3 that the experience has been “stressful” for him and he didn’t expect his story to get national attention.
“It’s been kind of weird thinking about, like, how I was treated differently based on the color of my skin,” he said.
The video, which was taken by a bystander, appears to show the two teens arguing and then they begin to throw punches at each other. Kye told New York ABC station WABC that the fight started after the other teen began picking on Kye’s friend and he stood up to him. Shortly after, two Bridgewater Township police officers arrived at the scene and broke up the altercation.
In the video, the female officer sits the other teen who exchanged punches on the sofa and then proceeds to assist the male officer in handcuffing Kye.
The other teenager involved in the fight sat on a couch watching as both police officers put their knees on Kye’s back, the video showed.
Kye said he was held for about 30 minutes and was released without charges.
Ben Crump, the attorney representing Kye’s family, told GMA3 “there’s no question” that this incident is a case of “biased policing.”
“We have ocular proof. I mean, you see it with your own eyes,” Crump said, referring to the video.
The Bridgewater Township Police Department told ABC News in a statement that police have asked the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office to assist in an internal investigation of the incident.
“We recognize that this video has made members of our community upset and are calling for an internal affairs investigation,” police said, urging anyone with additional videos of the incident to share them with law enforcement.
Asked by ABC News if any action has been taken regarding the officers, police did not return a request for comment.
Frank Roman Jr., deputy chief of the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, told ABC News in a statement that the incident is being investigated by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Internal Affairs Unit.
Asked if there are any updates, the prosecutor’s office said Monday that the investigation is ongoing.
Kye’s mother, Ebone, told GMA3 that the support her son has gotten from the public has been “awesome,” but “he’s had a really hard time” and is seeking counseling.
“We can’t really get him out the house, we’re worried about, you know, the hate that possibly can come to him,” she said.
Crump said that the family wants the officers to be held accountable.
“If there’s no accountability, there’s no deterrent,” he said. “We can’t have two justice systems in America.”
Asked what he wants to see happen, Kye said that he wants the officers to get fired.
“There’s gonna be some type of change so we aren’t treated differently because of the color of our skin,” he said.
ABC News’ William Gretsky and Ben Stein contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Officials are investigating what caused a fire that killed two people and displaced multiple residents at an apartment building in Washington, D.C., early Tuesday.
The two that died, a man and a woman, had been taken to the hospital in critical condition, but succumbed to their injuries, according to D.C. Fire and EMS.
The two-alarm fire began early Tuesday on the third floor of the apartment building in Southwest Washington, D.C., the fire department said.
After arriving at the scene, around 100 firefighters were able to knock down the fire and get all of the residents out of the building, according to the fire department.
Fire officials said Tuesday that there are 40 apartments deemed uninhabitable due to the fire. Residents are being assisted with housing options.
They said they will return to the scene to distribute fire prevention information and test all smoke alarms, replacing or installing new ones as needed.
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — A federal jury is poised to begin deliberating the fates of three former Minneapolis police officers accused of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by not providing medical aid during his fatal arrest and failing to stop their senior officer’s excessive use of force.
The U.S. District Court jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, is expected to get the case Wednesday morning and begin weighing the evidence against Thomas Lane, 38, J. Alexander Kueng, 28, and Tou Thao, 35.
The panel heard closing arguments on Tuesday from prosecutors and defense attorneys, but was sent home before being handed the case due to a snow emergency declared in St. Paul.
In her closing argument, U.S. Assistant Attorney Manda Sertich asked the jury to convict all three defendants, alleging they ignored their duty to intervene as they watched Derek Chauvin “commit a violent crime” by kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, rendering him unconscious and without a detectable pulse.
“No one did a thing to help,” Sertich told the jury.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. He later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s 2020 death and the physical abuse of a handcuffed 14-year-old boy in 2017.
“A human being, someone’s son, father, friend, significant other, George Perry Floyd Jr. died a slow and torturous death … underneath their knees, handcuffed, unarmed, not resisting in broad daylight on a public street,” Sertich said.
Defendants failed to follow ‘plain, old common sense’
Sertich cited the inactions of all three men, starting with Thao, who testified during the trial that he never touched Floyd and was focused on “crowd control” during the Memorial Day 2020 episode. But Sertich said Thao refused to stop Chauvin’s brutality despite witnesses, including an off-duty firefighter, yelling at him to check on Floyd’s well-being.
She said Kueng and Lane, both rookie cops at the time of Floyd’s death, and Thao failed to follow “plain, old common sense.”
“Chauvin’s use of force was obvious and unreasonable to everyone, including bystanders which included juveniles,” Sertich said.
She added that Thao appeared more concerned with arguing and belittling “people trying to make him do what the law — not to mention human decency and common sense — required him to do.”
Turning her attention to Kueng, Sertich said that even as Floyd begged for his life and repeatedly complained he could not breathe, Kueng pressed the handcuffed man’s wrists into his back and laughed when Chauvin told Floyd that talking uses a lot of oxygen.
While Lane questioned Chauvin about whether they should put Floyd on his side to help ease his breathing and went with Floyd in the ambulance to assist paramedics, Sertich said he “did nothing to give George Floyd the medical aid he knew Mr. Floyd so desperately needed.”
All three defendants testified during the trial and each attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out,” Thao testified. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd and Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice.”
Sertich told the jury that Chauvin barely spoke to Lane, Kueng and Thao during the incident and certainly wasn’t “ordering them around.”
‘A tragedy is not a crime’
Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, acknowledged in his closing argument that Floyd’s death was a tragedy.
“However, tragedy is not a crime,” Paule said.
Paule argued that the actions of all three officers showed they did not willfully neglect to help Floyd. Paule said Thao was the officer who radioed for an ambulance to step up its dispatch to the scene and suggested using a hobble device to restrain Floyd.
He also said Thao believed that Floyd was suffering from excited delirium, a syndrome in which a subject displays wild agitation and violent behavior, and the best thing to do was hold him down until paramedics arrived.
“They didn’t do that for a bad purpose,” Paule said. “They did that to get medical people there quickly.”
He asked the jury to review videos of the incident presented at the trial, noting, “Three officers are not able to control a person in handcuffs.”
Kueng’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, said his client’s inadequate training by the Minneapolis Police Department, lack of experience and his “perceived subordinate role to Mr. Chauvin” combined for a perfect storm that cost Floyd his life and disproves the government’s allegations that Kueng willfully deprived Floyd of medical aid and failed to stop Chauvin.
Plunkett said Kueng was “under the influence” of Chauvin, his training officer.
“He respected this person. He looked up to this person. He relied on this person’s experience,” Plunkett said.
He added, “We often hear about the mob mentality. Courts are this country’s protection against the mob and courts depend vitally on you as jurors.”
Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, wrapped up the closing arguments by accusing the government of indicting an “innocent man.”
“In other words, you can do an innocent act and you can end up in a courtroom like this because that’s what happened to Thomas Lane,” Gray told the jury.
Gray left the jury to ponder the question, “Why did the government indict them?”
“We all know why,” Gray said. “Politics, ladies and gentlemen.”
ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd contributed to this report.
(TRENTON, N.J.) — New Jersey announced Thursday it is notifying nearly 200,000 homes and businesses that they are receiving drinking water from service lines contaminated with lead, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The announcement came on the heels of the state’s Lead Service Line Replacement law, which was enacted in July 2021. The law calls for the replacement of these service lines by 2031.
The 186,830 known lead service lines identified by the DEP feed into buildings all over the state, officials said.
A map on the DEP’s website allows residents to enter their addresses and see if they are affected.
Service lines are the portion of a pipe that connect a water main to a building inlet and therefore could be serving multiple units within a property and could be serving both residential and commercial properties, according to the New Jersey DEP. Therefore, the total number of people affected is unknown.
New Jersey alone has almost 3,500 drinking water systems, Shawn LaTourette, the state environmental commissioner, said Thursday.
“There is no safe level of lead in drinking water or elsewhere,” LaTourette said. “We have to eliminate it where we find it, period.”
“It poses a significant threat, particularly to our children” LaTourette added.
Water systems were required by the new law to notify residents no later than Monday if their drinking water was coming from one of the identified lead service lines.
Water systems submit inventories of the lead service lines in their service areas to the DEP, most recently in January.
According to the DEP, homes and buildings constructed before 1988 must determine if interior lead solder or lead pipes are present.
The DEP also said that those notified they have a lead service line need to replace it in full, from main to home.
Until the lines are replaced, residents are encouraged to let the water run from the tap for about 15 to 30 seconds to flush out the lead.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — A federal jury found Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan guilty of several counts in the Ahmaud Arbery hate crimes case.
The U.S. District Court panel of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person received the case on Monday.
The men pleaded not guilty to one count of interference of rights and attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels were each charged with using, carrying and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
The McMichaels and Bryan were already convicted in state court of murdering the 25-year-old Black jogger and are serving life sentences. The McMichaels were not given the possibility of parole.
Wednesday marks two years since Arbery was killed.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 935,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.7% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Feb 22, 10:36 am
Carnival Cruise Line eases mask mandates
Carnival has joined Royal Caribbean and Norwegian in easing mask mandates onboard cruises, announcing that masks will be recommended, but not required beginning March 1.
Norwegian previously announced it will drop its mask requirement for vaccinated passengers starting March 1. Royal Caribbean said it will reopen indoor mask-free areas for fully vaccinated travelers on Feb. 14.
-ABC News’ Mina Kaji
Feb 22, 9:02 am
Moderna researching combination vaccine for COVID booster, flu shot, RSV vaccine
Moderna said it’s in the early stages of research for a combination vaccine that would combine three vaccines into one: a COVID-19 booster, a flu vaccine and an RSV vaccine.
There is no current vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, a virus that causes mild symptoms in most adults but can be deadly for older adults and young children. This new study will only test the vaccine in adults over 60.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates RSV kills 14,000 Americans over 65 each year.
Feb 22, 6:25 am
Queen Elizabeth cancels virtual engagements
Buckingham Palace on Tuesday canceled some of Queen Elizabeth’s virtual engagements, saying the monarch continues to have mild COVID symptoms.
“As Her Majesty is still experiencing mild cold like symptoms she has decided not to undertake her planned virtual engagements today, but will continue with light duties,” palace officials said in a statement.
The palace announced on Sunday that the Queen, 95, tested positive.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — A federal jury has reached a verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery hate crimes case.
The U.S. District Court panel of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person deliberated received the case on Monday.
The panel weighed the evidence against Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan, who were all convicted in state court of murdering the 25-year-old Black jogger.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Two storms are wreaking havoc on roads as they push from the West Coast to the East Coast with heavy snow, ice and rain.
As many as 98 vehicles crashed along a one-mile stretch of snowy Interstate 84 in Oregon on Monday, according to Oregon State Police. The largest crash involved between 15 and 20 cars and trucks, police said.
Blowing snow also shut down roads in North Dakota.
On Tuesday, the first storm will bring another 6 to 12 inches of snow to the upper Midwest and Great Lakes.
Freezing rain is also possible for the Midwest. An ice storm warning has been issued in Michigan, where flooding is ongoing as ice and snow melt.
Heavy rain and flooding could stretch from Alabama to Vermont, while tornadoes and damaging winds are possible in the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys.
Meanwhile, the second storm will move through California and the Southwest Tuesday bringing low elevation snow to the Los Angeles and San Diego areas.
In the Rockies, up to 20 inches of snow is possible.
This second storm will then bring ice to Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Wednesday and Thursday. A winter weather alert has been issued for Dallas.
As this storm moves into the Northeast Thursday night into Friday, heavy snow, ice and rain are expected along the Interstate 95 corridor. Significant snow and ice accumulation could stretch from New York’s Hudson Valley to Boston.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 935,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.7% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Tuesday. All times Eastern:
Feb 22, 6:25 am
Queen Elizabeth cancels virtual engagements
Buckingham Palace on Tuesday canceled some of Queen Elizabeth’s virtual engagements, saying the monarch continues to have mild COVID symptoms.
“As Her Majesty is still experiencing mild cold like symptoms she has decided not to undertake her planned virtual engagements today, but will continue with light duties,” palace officials said in a statement.
The palace announced on Sunday that the Queen, 95, tested positive.
