(MINNEAPOLIS) — One of two former police officers scheduled to go on trial Monday on charges stemming from the death of George Floyd pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors, a court official told ABC News.
J. Alexander Kueng, 29, pleaded guilty Monday morning to one count of aiding and abetting in manslaughter after prosecutors and Kueng’s defense attorney agreed to recommend a sentence of 42 months in prison, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Courts said.
The plea was announced just as a joint state trial for Kueng and Tou Thao, 34, was to begin with jury selection. The trial comes after the two former Minneapolis police officers reported to separate prisons this month to begin their federal sentences.
Both men had pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting in second-degree unintentional murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter stemming from the Memorial Day 2020 death of Floyd, which ignited massive protests across the nation and world.
The trial in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis begins Monday with jury selection, which is scheduled to take three weeks, a spokesperson for the court told ABC News.
Opening statements in the trial are scheduled to get underway on Nov. 7.
The state trial was initially scheduled for June 2022, but Judge Peter Cahill delayed it over concerns it would be difficult to seat an impartial jury given the pretrial publicity. Earlier his year, Thao, Kueng and a third defendant, former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, were convicted on federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death and Lane later pleaded guilty to state charges.
At the time of his decision, Cahill said postponing the trial should “diminish the impact of this publicity on the defendants’ right and ability to receive a fair trial from an impartial and unbiased jury.”
Lane, 39, pleaded guilty in May to state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for the plea, state prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder. Lane was sentenced in September to three years in prison, which he is serving concurrently with his federal sentence of 2 1/2 years.
Kueng, Thao and Lane were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes.
Kueng, a rookie cop at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to three years in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Thao, who had been a nine-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, also followed by two years of supervised release.
Floyd suffered critical injuries when he was placed in handcuffs and in a prone position on the pavement after being accused of attempting to use a fake $20 bill at a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Videos from security, police body cameras and civilian cell phone cameras showed Floyd begging for his life and complaining he could not breathe as Chauvin held his knee on the back of his neck, rendering him unconscious and without a pulse, according to prosecutors. Floyd was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
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.
While Chauvin’s state trial was livestreamed gavel-to-gavel due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic limiting the public’s access to the courtroom, cameras are not being allowed at the trial for Kueng and Thao. Cahill ruled in April that conditions “are materially different from those the Court confronted from November 2020 through April 2021 with the Chauvin trial.”
The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.
During their federal trial, Lane, Kueng and Thao each took the witness stand and attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd, while Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice” and Thao attested that he “would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out.”
(NEW YORK) — Math scores among fourth and eighth grade students across the country experienced their largest decline in decades, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which conducted the study, said in a statement that the results reflect the “profound toll” the pandemic took on student learning.
“The results also underscore the importance of instruction and the role of schools in both students’ academic growth and their overall well-being,” Carr said. “It’s clear we all need to come together—policymakers and community leaders at every level—as partners in helping our educators, children, and families succeed.”
NCES compared students’ NAEP scores during the COVID-19 pandemic to pre-pandemic performance on the 2019 NAEP assessments. NCES has administered the assessments in math and reading since the early 1990s. About 450,000 students from more than 10,000 schools participated in the 2022 exams.
Compared to 2019, the average fourth grade math assessment scores decreased by 5 points and the average eighth grade assessment scores decreased by 8 points, according to the results.
On average, fourth and eighth grade students’ reading scores also declined but not as sharply as the math assessment scores. Compared to 2019, the average fourth and eighth grade reading scores decreased by three points each.
Fourth grade students of color, specifically, experienced more dramatic declines. For example, the average math score for Black and Hispanic fourth grade students dropped the most compared to other racial and ethnic groups. The average reading score for American Indian/Alaska native fourth grade students plummeted by the largest margin.
The northeast region saw the largest decline in average scores for both math and reading during the pandemic.
For many parents and educators, the recent NAEP results confirm fears of the pandemic’s long-term consequences for students’ academic progress.
Remote learning also laid bare existing racial and class disparities in education caused by lack of access to reliable technology and child care support for full-time working parents. Students of color were also more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time and were also more likely to have lost a parent or caregiver compared to their white peers during the pandemic.
Last month, NCES reported that math and reading test scores among the nation’s 9-year-olds also plummeted during the first two years of the pandemic, with reading scores falling by the largest margin in more than 30 years.
(NEW YORK) — Ethan Crumbley, the teenager accused of gunning down four students and injuring several others at his Michigan high school, pleaded guilty to all charges against him on Monday.
The 24 charges include terrorism and murder.
The thin 16-year-old appeared in court in an orange jumpsuit, white face mask and glasses, calmly answering questions from the judge and prosecutor. Crumbley admitted to them that he asked his father to buy him a specific gun.
David Williams, chief assistant prosecutor in Oakland County, said Friday when the plea was announced that there were “no plea deals, no reductions and no agreements regarding sentencing.”
Crumbley is set to return to court on Feb. 9. A date for sentencing will follow; at the sentencing, victims will have the opportunity to read statements.
Crumbley was 15 at the time of the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School. He allegedly used his father’s semi-automatic handgun to carry out the attack.
A teacher allegedly saw Crumbley researching ammunition in class days before the shooting and school officials contacted his parents but they didn’t respond, according to prosecutors. His mother, Jennifer Crumbley, texted her son, writing, “lol, I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught,” according to prosecutors.
Hours before the shooting, according to prosecutors, a teacher saw a note on Ethan Crumbley’s desk that was “a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, ‘The thoughts won’t stop, help me.’ In another section of the note was a drawing of a bullet with the following words above that bullet, ‘Blood everywhere.'”
Crumbley’s parents were called to the school over the incident, saying they’d get their son counseling but did not take him home.
The teen’s parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly making the gun accessible and failing to recognize warning signs about their son before the shooting. They have pleaded not guilty.
(DALLAS) — A man who was recently paroled after serving a sentence for robbery is now facing capital murder charges stemming from Saturday’s shooting at a Dallas hospital that left two employees dead, including a nurse, officials said.
The suspect in the double homicide at Methodist Dallas Medical Center was identified as 30-year-old Nestor Hernandez, law enforcement officials told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA-TV.
Hernandez was paroled on Oct. 20, 2021, after serving a prison sentence for aggravated robbery, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
“He was on parole with a special condition of electronic monitoring,” the spokesperson told ABC News.
Hernandez was granted permission to be at the hospital to join his significant other during the delivery of their baby, the spokesperson said, adding that the state Office of Inspector General is working with the Dallas Police Department as they investigate.
According to the arrest affidavit obtained by WFAA, Hernandez accused his girlfriend of cheating on him after she gave birth at the hospital. He allegedly pulled out a handgun and hit her multiple times in the head with it while saying, “we are both going to die today” and “whoever comes in this room is going to die with us.” Then Hernandez allegedly made “ominous phone calls and text messages to his family,” the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, the first victim who came into the room was shot and killed by Hernandez. A second victim, along with a Methodist Hospital police officer, were in the hallway and heard the gunshot. The second victim looked into the room and was fatally shot by Hernandez, the affidavit states. The officer then shot Hernandez in the leg. The suspect was detained and taken to a different hospital for treatment, according to the affidavit.
Methodist Health System confirmed the incident in a statement, saying its police force as well as the Dallas Police Department responded to reports of an active shooter at Methodist Dallas Medical Center around 11 a.m. local time on Saturday.
“A Methodist Health System Police Officer arrived on the scene, confronted the suspect, and fired his weapon at the suspect, injuring him,” the hospital said. “The suspect was detained, stabilized, and taken to another local hospital.”
The names of the victims were not immediately released.
Both police and the hospital confirmed that the shooting occurred near the Methodist Dallas Medical Center’s mother/baby unit.
“Out of an abundance of caution, police force staffing has been increased on the Methodist Dallas Medical Center campus, including for mothers and babies,” Methodist Health System said in a statement, describing Saturday’s shooting as an “isolated and tragic event.”
The investigation is ongoing, with the Dallas Police Department assisting the Methodist Health System Police.
“The Methodist Health System family is heartbroken at the loss of two of our beloved team members,” the hospital added. “Our entire organization is grieving this unimaginable tragedy.”
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia slammed the “broken” justice system for allowing the suspect out on the streets, where he could allegedly obtain a gun.
“I’m outraged along with our community, at the lack of accountability, and the travesty of the fact that under this broken system, we give violent criminals more chances than our victims,” Garcia said in a statement posted on Twitter. “The pendulum has swung too far.”
Dr. Serena Bumpus, CEO of the Texas Nurses Association, called the shooting “unacceptable.”
“No person should fear for their life for merely going to work, especially a nurse or healthcare worker whose passion is to help others heal,” Bumpus said in a statement. “We hope our legislators understand that we need to protect our healthcare workers.”
Bumpus also released statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing workplace violence has increased during the pandemic, and the risk to nurses was three times greater than “all other professions.”
(NEW YORK) — The Monday night Powerball prize rose to an estimated $610 million, giving players a chance at winning the eighth largest jackpot in the game’s history. The prize has a cash value of $292.6 million.
The game has had 34 drawings in a row without a winner. Saturday night’s Powerball prize had been an estimated $580 million, with a cash value of $278.2 million.
The Powerball jackpot was last won with a ticket in Pennsylvania, which won a $206.9 million jackpot on Aug. 3.
There have been a total of five Powerball jackpot winners this year.
Three winners in Saturday night’s drawing matched all five white balls to win $1 million, Powerball said. Those tickets were sold in New York, South Carolina and Texas.
The top winners from Wednesday night’s drawing include two tickets sold in Michigan and New Jersey that won $1 million each and a third ticket sold in New Jersey that won $2 million.
The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9 million and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to a statement from Powerball.
The largest Powerball jackpot in the game’s history was $1.586 billion, won on Jan. 13, 2016. The winning tickets were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee.
Powerball tickets are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to a Powerball website.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The 2020 death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer is set to be thrust back into the national spotlight as two former cops already convicted on federal charges of violating the 46-year-old Black man’s civil rights go on trial Monday in Minnesota state court.
The joint state trial for former Minneapolis police officers J. Alexander Kueng, 29, and Tou Thao, 34, comes after they reported to separate prisons this month to begin their federal sentences.
Both men have pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting in second-degree unintentional murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter stemming from the Memorial Day 2020 death of Floyd, which ignited massive protests across the nation and world.
The trial in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis begins Monday with jury selection, which is scheduled to take three weeks, a spokesperson for the court told ABC News.
Opening statements in the trial are scheduled to get underway on Nov. 7.
The state trial was initially scheduled for June 2022, but Judge Peter Cahill delayed it over concerns it would be difficult to seat an impartial jury given the pretrial publicity. Earlier his year, Thao, Kueng and a third defendant, former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, were convicted on federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death and Lane later pleaded guilty to state charges.
At the time of his decision, Cahill said postponing the trial should “diminish the impact of this publicity on the defendants’ right and ability to receive a fair trial from an impartial and unbiased jury.”
Lane, 39, pleaded guilty in May to state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for the plea, state prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder. Lane was sentenced in September to three years in prison, which he is serving concurrently with his federal sentence of 2 1/2 years.
Kueng, Thao and Lane were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes.
Kueng, a rookie cop at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to three years in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Thao, who had been a nine-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, also followed by two years of supervised release.
Floyd suffered critical injuries when he was placed in handcuffs and in a prone position on the pavement after being accused of attempting to use a fake $20 bill at a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Videos from security, police body cameras and civilian cell phone cameras showed Floyd begging for his life and complaining he could not breathe as Chauvin held his knee on the back of his neck, rendering him unconscious and without a pulse, according to prosecutors. Floyd was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
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.
While Chauvin’s state trial was livestreamed gavel-to-gavel due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic limiting the public’s access to the courtroom, cameras are not being allowed at the trial for Kueng and Thao. Cahill ruled in April that conditions “are materially different from those the Court confronted from November 2020 through April 2021 with the Chauvin trial.”
The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.
During their federal trial, Lane, Kueng and Thao each took the witness stand and attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd, while Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice” and Thao attested that he “would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — In the first hours and days after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, officials said they figured out how the gunman got into a building that was supposed to be secure.
“The exterior door,” the top police official in Texas told reporters, “was propped open by a teacher.”
That statement by Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, would be quietly retracted within a few days. Instead, DPS officials said later, the door had been shut by the “teacher” but, for some reason, it didn’t lock even though it was supposed to do that automatically.
For the school staffer McCraw was referring to — the very woman who called 911 to report the gunman was on the way to entering Robb Elementary School — the blame and the events of May 24 still reverberate in a life forever scarred.
Speaking publicly for the first time to ABC News, Emilia “Amy” Marin, a school aide who worked with students after school, said she still struggles through post-traumatic stress from the shooting and its aftermath. She insists that the world know what happened — and what didn’t — on a warm sunny morning that would turn unspeakably ugly in South Texas.
“I died that day,” Marin said in an interview with ABC News correspondent John Quiñones.
“Right now, I’m lost. Sometimes I go into a dark place. And it’s hard when I’m there, but I tell myself, ‘you can’t let him win. You can’t let him win,'” she said, referring to the gunman. “I’m a fighter. I will be okay. I’m going to learn to live with this.”
By now, the casualty count from the Uvalde massacre is well known: 19 students and two of their teachers were killed when an 18-year-old shooter, a former student at the school, attacked in the final days before summer vacation. What sent him to that school on that mission remains under investigation. McCraw is due to update the progress of the probe when he testifies later this week in Austin.
In the months since the rampage, official information from authorities has been limited and much of the focus has fallen on the botched response by police who did not attempt to stop the shooting for more than an hour. For Marin, who said she still cannot work and continues to replay the minutes of May 24 in her head, the struggle now defines her life.
“I am suffering mentally, of course, emotionally,” she said. “I am suffering from post-traumatic arthritis, which is very painful. There are nights when everybody goes to bed and I just stay awake with the pain and my daughter tells me … ‘Mom, soak in the tub.’ And I tell her I can’t because I can’t get out.”
“I sit there at night, replaying that day in my mind,” Marin said as she explained the events of a day that saw one of the worst school shootings in American history.
“And I see those victims’ faces. I pray for them every night,” she said. “But what I go through, McCraw doesn’t know. Nobody knows. But it was very easy for him to point the finger at me. A few weeks ago, I told my counselor ‘It would have been better if he would have shot me, too.’ because the pain is unbearable. And when you have people who are higher up in ranks like McCraw, you would think that they know their job well. He has no idea what his words did.”
“I will never be the person that I was before,” she said. “I did die that day. I see the windows boarded up and the fence around the campus. I tell my counselor, ‘I’m in there. I’m still in there.'”
In a statement to ABC News, DPS spokesman Travis Considine explained: “At the outset of the investigation, DPS reported that an unnamed teacher at Robb Elementary School used a rock to prop open the door that the shooter used to enter the school building. It was later determined that the same teacher removed the rock from the doorway prior to the arrival of the shooter, and closed the door, unaware that the door was unlocked.”
Considine said “DPS corrected this error in public announcements and testimony and apologizes to the teacher and her family for the additional grief this has caused to an already horrific situation.”
Marin worked as a speech pathologist in the special education program at Robb Elementary and coordinated after-school programs, and said she always wanted to work with children.
“I have always loved children and I always wanted to be around them,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you are having a bad day, they will always make it better.”
A native of San Angelo, Texas, about 200 miles north of Uvalde, Marin said she wants the country to know what she did that day, when confronted with the worst-case scenario: a man with a rifle and untold rounds of ammunition heading straight for the door of the elementary school where she worked. This was the first time she detailed those events to anyone outside of her family or law enforcement.
As she prepared for an end-of-school party that morning, Marin heard the crash of a gray Ford pickup outside and called 911, thinking someone was hurt.
“I walked out and then they yelled he had a gun, I ran back in. I ran back to the building and I closed the door,” she said. “I am telling the operator that he is shooting. I could hear the kids screaming.”
Marin said that children were outside on the playground, running for their lives.
“I could hear the kids screaming. I closed the door. I went in and knocked on the teacher’s door across from me. I was banging,” she continued. “She opened it. She said ‘What is going on?’ I said there is a shooter on campus.”
Still on the phone with emergency operators, Marin decided to hide as she heard gunshots firing off.
“There was shooting and it wouldn’t stop. He just kept shooting and shooting,” she said. “I looked around and I hid under the counter. The whole time I am asking the operator, ‘Where are the cops? Where are the cops?'”
But the almost 400 law enforcement officers who would arrive on the scene did not rush in to the classroom where the killer was still confined with his victims until over an hour later. That slow response has led to a wide chorus of criticism for the police and federal agents who responded to Robb that day. The school district’s police chief has been fired, as has one of the first Texas state troopers to arrive. A second trooper who left DPS to go to work for the Uvalde school system has since been terminated by the district. And the superintendent of schools stunned the grieving community this month when he announced his retirement.
Marin said she wonders if her own death in those first few moments could have saved children.
“Every day they tell me, ‘You were there for a reason. God put you there for a reason.’ I want to know why,” she said. “If I had gone out a few seconds later I would’ve met him outside. He would have shot me. With him shooting me, would I have saved all of them? Would I have given those teachers time to save themselves and the kids?”
She says in the days after the shooting, disbelief took hold of many of the staff who survived.
“It was like did it really happen? We always say it is not going to happen here. It is not going to happen in our town,” she said. “Like in Sandy Hook, you see this story and it happened. It can happen anywhere.”
When Marin heard McCraw blame her personally for the shooter’s ability to gain access to the school, she said she became so distraught that her daughter had to take her to the hospital.
“I was shaking from head to toe,” she said. “The nurse walked out and my boss came in and I told her I closed that door.”
After the shooting, Marin said she asked to speak with Uvalde schools Superintendent Hal Harrell. She said she was told Harrell would not come see her in the hospital and he would ultimately never speak to Marin again.
“Administration let us down. They failed us. He could have defended me. He knew who ‘the teacher’ was and chose not to,” Marin said. “It makes no sense when you have dedicated your life to working for the district.”
“I wish he would’ve handled this differently. It doesn’t cost anything to check up on your employees,” she said. “I have not heard from any administration since the incident.”
Harrell this month announced he would be stepping down next week. His spokeswoman has not responded to a request for comment.
Precisely five months since the day of the shooting, Marin said she’s prepared to fight for herself.
“Maybe a lot of people didn’t know that it was me,” she said. “But they’re going to know now and I’ve always been the type. Like, I’ll be respectful, but I’ll speak up. And people don’t like it when you speak up. But you’re defending yourself. And I know that I have to defend myself.”
Marin has filed suit against the manufacturer of the gun used in the Robb shooting and she is considering other legal options.
She said she is also dismayed at the fractures that have developed in her town.
“We are supposed to as a community to be united and work through this and help these families, help everyone involved,” she said. “They say we are ‘Uvalde Strong.’ We are not. We are divided. How can we divide over 19 lives lost? It doesn’t make sense.”
As for McCraw, who pinned the blame for the massacre on her, Marin said she has one message.
“To Mr. McCraw: it is your job to investigate when any incident like that happens. You sit there and you investigate. Your job was to sit there and watch that video to watch from beginning to end. You chose not to,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — There were 2.7 million migrant encounters along the southern border of the United States in the past 12 months, the highest in the nation’s history, data released as part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s fiscal year end show.
The previous record was 1.9 million in fiscal year 2021.
In September, there were 227,547 migrant encounters along the southwest border. CBP says 19% of those encounters were repeat offenders and represents a 12% increase from August.
CPB says they are enforcing not only Title 8, which is standard immigration removal policy, but also Title 42 — the Trump-era policy that allowed migrants seeking asylum along the southern border to be expelled under the public health emergency authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — by a court order.
The highest month in fiscal year 2022 was May, which saw more than 235,000 migrants encountered along the southwest border, according to the data.
Cocaine (-81%) and Fentanyl (-19%) seizures decreased along the border, while meth and heroin seizures increased compared to last fiscal year.
“DHS has been executing a comprehensive and deliberate strategy to secure our borders and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” the Department of Homeland Security said in the statement.
(CHICAGO) — At least five men were shot, three fatally, early Sunday when gunfire erupted at a Chicago intersection taken over by a drag-racing caravan of more than 100 cars, police said.
The shooting erupted about 4 a.m. at an intersection in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the city’s Southwest side, Cmdr. Don Jerome of the Chicago Police Department said at a news conference.
The gun violence in the nation’s third largest city erupted despite a 20% drop in shootings in Chicago through the end of summer, according to Chicago police crime statistics. Homicides have also plummeted 16% from last year.
Jerome said police officers were responding to complaints of a drag-racing caravan in the area with cars peeling rubber and doing doughnuts in the middle of an intersection.
“There was drifting in the middle of the street and approximately 100 cars had gained control of the intersection,” Jerome said.
He said officers at one of the police departments Strategic Decision Support Centers were monitoring the incident via a live video feed when they received a ShotSpotter gunshot detection alert of at least 13 shots at the intersection and “people hitting the ground.”
Upon arriving at the scene, officers learned that five people had been shot and were all taken to hospitals in private vehicles.
Jerome said four men with gunshot wounds were taken to Holy Cross Hospital and one was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.
He said three men were pronounced dead upon arriving at a hospital, and two other men were in serious condition, but expected to survive.
Two 20-year-old men were among those who died, police said. Authorities did not release the age of the third man fatally shot. Their names were not immediately released.
The two men who were wounded were described as a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old.
Investigators recovered multiple shell casings from the crime scene, suggesting that more than one gunman was involved, Jerome said.
No arrests were immediately announced. Jerome said police are investigating if some of the people who were wounded or killed were armed and fired shots during the incident.
“All three of the decedents did have a gang affiliation,” Jerome said.
He said police are searching for “one or two” people police suspect were involved in the shooting, adding, they “are not necessarily those in the hospital.”
Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez, who represents the area where the shooting occurred, called for a police crackdown on the roving drag-racing caravans.
“This is not just fun and games on the street,” Lopez said at Sunday’s news conference with Jerome. “We are seeing gangs and criminality join into the drifting and drag-racing.”
(DALLAS) — A 30-year-old man recently paroled after serving a sentence for robbery, is facing capital murder charges stemming from a shooting at a Dallas medical center on Saturday that left two employees dead, including a nurse, officials said Sunday.
A suspect in the double homicide at Methodist Hospital in Dallas on Saturday was identified as Nestor Hernandez, law enforcement officials told ABC affiliate station WFAA in Dallas.
Hernandez was paroled on Oct. 20, 2021, after serving a prison sentence for aggravated robbery, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice told ABC News.
“He was on parole with a special condition of electronic monitoring,” the spokesperson said.
Hernandez was granted permission to be at the hospital to be with his significant other during the delivery of their baby, the spokesperson said, adding that the state Office of Inspector General is working with Dallas Police as they investigate.
Police with the Methodist Health System and Dallas Police Department responded to reports of an active shooter at Methodist Dallas Medical Center around 11 a.m. Saturday.
A Methodist Health System police officer “confronted the suspect, and fired his weapon at the suspect, injuring him,” the hospital said in a statement. “The suspect was detained, stabilized, and taken to another local hospital.”
The names of the victims were not immediately released.
The shooting occurred near the medical center’s labor and delivery area, according to police.
A motive for the shooting has yet to be disclosed.
“The Methodist Health System family is heartbroken at the loss of two of our beloved team members,” Methodist Health System said in a statement. “Our entire organization is grieving this unimaginable tragedy.”
The investigation is ongoing, with Dallas police assisting the Methodist Health System police, the hospital confirmed.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia slammed the “broken” justice system for allowing the suspect out on the streets, where he could allegedly obtain a gun.
“I’m outraged along with our community, at the lack of accountability, and the travesty of the fact that under this broken system, we give violent criminals more chances than our victims.The pendulum has swung too far,” Garcia said in a statement he posted on Twitter.
Dr. Serena Bumpus, CEO of the Texas Nurses Association, issued a statement calling the shooting “unacceptable.”
“No person should fear for their life for merely going to work, especially a nurse or healthcare worker whose passion is to help others heal,” Bumpus said in statement. “We hope our legislators understand that we need to protect our healthcare workers.”
Bumpus also released statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing workplace violence has increased during the pandemic, and the risk to nurses was three times greater than “all other professions.”
ABC News’ Lisa Sivertsen contributed to this report.
