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(MOORE COUNTY, N.C.) — More than 30,000 customers in a North Carolina county awoke for the third day Tuesday without electricity as a search for those responsible for sabotaging two key power substations continued and crews scrambled to repair what authorities described as “millions of dollars” in damages.

The crisis in Moore County has prompted local law enforcement to call in the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to help in the probe of what has been deemed a criminal act. The White House is also closely monitoring the situation, officials said.

“This kind of attack raises a new level of threat,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

Asked whether the attacks are being investigated as a act of domestic terrorism, Cooper said, “I think investigators are leaving no stone unturned as to what this is as they are looking at every motivation that could possibly occur.”

Residents throughout Moore County remained under curfew Monday night and into Tuesday morning, as area schools were canceled for the second day.

Duke Energy, the local utility, said crews are working around the clock to restore energy, but conceded it will likely take until Thursday to repair the damage.

Freezing temperatures in the county about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh forced many resident to seek warmth and food at a shelter opened in Carthage.

“It’s better to have warmth and comfort than make sure your belongings are safe,” Gunner Scevertson, one of the resident who left his home to seek warmth at the shelter, told Charlotte ABC affiliate WSOC.

Carthage business owner Rachel Haviley used her portable generator to serve up coffee and food to neighbors in need.

“My kids are home, they’re not in school. My husband was supposed to go to DC, now he’s in daddy day care,” Haviley told WSOC. “I have a friend that was supposed to be at the hospital for class, now she’s not there. There are elderly people who rely on things that help keep them alive, so people’s lives and families have been impacted by this.”

Vandals wielding firearms are suspected of causing major damage to two electrical distribution substations, initially knocking out power to around 45,000 homes and businesses across the county, officials said. As of Tuesday morning, power had been restored to more than 7,000 customers, said Jeff Brooks, spokesman for Duke Energy.

As of Tuesday at noon, 35,304 customers in Moore County were still without electricity.

Brooks said while some of the damaged equipment could be repaired, other pieces had to be replaced.

The attacks occurred just after 7 p.m. Saturday, said Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields.

Fields said the perpetrator or perpetrators shot up two key substations in the area, adding, they “knew exactly what they were doing.”

Fields told ABC News that murder charges could be filed against those responsible if anyone dies as a result of the power outage.

“What was done was an intentional act. It was not a random act,” Fields said.

No arrests have been announced in the probe.

The attacks came amid protests over a Downtown Divas drag show in the Moore County city of Southern Pines. The drag show had been scheduled for Saturday night and was disrupted due to the blackout.

Fields said no evidence has yet been uncovered linking the power outage to the drag show.

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(MOSCOW, Idaho) — Moscow, Idaho, police are looking for more information on the movements of University of Idaho students Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were at the Sigma Chi fraternity house in the hours before they were killed along with two other Idaho students last month.

Police said the couple, both 20 years old, was believed to be at Chapin’s frat house from 9 p.m. on Nov. 12 to 1:45 a.m. on Nov. 13.

Chapin and Kernodle’s timeline “seems to be one of the larger areas that we don’t have a lot of information in,” Idaho State Police spokesman Aaron Snell told ABC News. “So, being able to locate what they did that night, and maybe who they contacted, maybe any routes that they took home, that would be important for the investigation.”

Police are also looking for any details that could be relevant in the case overall, saying in a statement Monday: “We believe someone has information that will add context to the picture investigators are creating of what occurred. … Your information, whether you believe it is significant or not, might be one of the puzzle pieces that help solve these murders.”

Chapin, Kernodle and two of Kernodle’s roommates, 21-year-old Kaylee Goncalves and 21-year-old Madison Mogen, were all stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus house on Nov. 13. Officials believe the attacks were between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m.

No suspects have been identified.

Two surviving roommates — who police said are not suspects — were home at the time and likely slept through the attacks, according to authorities. They were on the ground floor while the four students killed were on the second and third floors.

Police said Monday it’s not clear where Goncalves’ dog was during the killings, but when officers arrived there was no indication the animal had been in the rooms where the victims were attacked.

“We have not determined if the dog was inside the residence during the murders or not,” Snell said. “What we do know is that the dog was inside when officers arrived. The dog did not appear to have any evidence on it.”

“We don’t believe that there was any appearance of forced entering into the home,” Snell added.

Authorities also said Monday that they’re still “looking into information about Kaylee having a stalker.”

Police said they’ve spoken to two men who may have been the “stalker” Goncalves mentioned to friends and family. In October, the men were seen at a local business, and one of the men appeared to follow Goncalves into the store and then follow her as she headed to her car, according to police. The man never made contact with the college student, police said.

These men have since told police they were trying to meet women at the business, police said.

The authorities said there’s no evidence these men were involved in the murders.

Police said “information about a potential stalker or unusual occurrences should go through the Tip Line.”

Police urge anyone with information to upload digital media to fbi.gov/moscowidaho or contact the tip line at tipline@ci.moscow.id.us or 208-883-7180.

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(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — The suspect accused of killing five people after opening fire in an LGBTQ nightclub last month in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

A hearing is scheduled for Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, at 8:30 a.m. local time at the El Paso County Judicial Building, according to the court.

Aldrich was arrested and held on charges that included five counts of first-degree murder, according to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office booking report.

The charges against Aldrich may change. The suspect was also being held on five counts of ethnic intimidation causing bodily injury, as the mass shooting was being investigated as a hate crime.

A judge ordered Aldrich held without bond during a first court appearance on Nov. 23.

Public defenders assigned to Aldrich said in a court filing that the suspect identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns they/them.

Investigators and witnesses said the suspect allegedly opened fire as soon as they walked into Club Q in Colorado Springs at about midnight on Nov. 19. Patrons at the venue tackled Aldrich, subduing them until police arrived, according to witnesses.

Five people were killed in the mass shooting and 17 others were injured, police said.

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(RACINE, Wisc.) — Prosecutors in Wisconsin charged a man, who’s a person of interest in two deaths, with kidnapping an elderly woman and stealing her identity.

The state of Wisconsin has charged Timothy Luther Olson Jr., on multiple charges, including kidnapping, identity theft, burglary and obstructing an officer, according to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News.

Prosecutors allege that officers responded to a call from a bystander who saw a 79-year-old woman waving her hand from her car.

When an officer arrived on the scene, he said that the woman seemed confused and told him that her belongings were stolen by the person who allegedly kidnapped her from an Italian restaurant in Milwaukee County.

The woman said before the alleged abduction, she was having her monthly glass of wine and reading on her tablet when a man, Olson, sat next to her and began talking to her at the bar, according to the complaint.

After their conversation, she left the restaurant and got into her vehicle, ready to go, when Olson reportedly opened her passenger door and told her, “I have a gun, drive.”

Police in Franklin, Wisconsin, arrested Olson, 56, on Nov. 29. According to the complaint, the suspect had the woman’s credit card in his possession.

Olson is also a person of interest in the death of a woman in the city of Racine and a woman in South Milwaukee, according to ABC News Milwaukee affiliate WISN.

In a press release, the Racine Police Department said that at least three women, whom he targeted on dating apps, have allegedly become unconscious while on dates with Olson, where he allegedly steals from them.

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(NEW YORK) — A convicted serial killer pleaded guilty Monday to murdering a dance teacher in 1968 outside a Long Island, New York, mall and admitted to killing four other women in the early 1970s.

DNA testing led to Richard Cottingham’s March indictment in the killing of Diane Cusick, a 23-year-old mother who went to buy dance shoes at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York.

Cottingham, 76, currently an inmate at a Bridgeton, New Jersey, prison, is known as the “Torso Killer” because he dismembered some of his victims.

The South Woods State Prison inmate pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life by a judge, the Nassau County district attorney’s office said in a news release.

Cottingham also admitted to the deaths of four other women — Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves — but won’t be prosecuted for their deaths since he’s already spending the rest of his life in prison because of prior murder convictions in New York and New Jersey, according to Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly.

“Serial killer Richard Cottingham has caused irreparable harm to so many people and so many families,” Donnelly said. “Today, he took responsibility for the murder of five young women here in Nassau County between 1968 and 1973. He overpowered, assaulted and brutally murdered them to satisfy his craven desires. Thankfully he will spend the rest of his life in prison where he belongs.”

Cusick’s parents discovered her body in the backseat of her car in the Green Acres Mall parking lot after growing concerned about why she hadn’t returned home after leaving earlier in the evening of Feb. 15, 1968, to buy shoes, according to Donnelly.

A medical examiner determined Cusick was strangled to death, officials said.

The Nassau County Office of the Medical Examiner retested evidence related to the case in 2021. Earlier this year, DNA evidence matched Cottingham’s profile, according to the district attorney.

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti was sentenced on Monday to 14 years in federal prison for defrauding his clients and for obstructing IRS efforts to collect payroll taxes from his coffee business.

He was also ordered to pay $7 million in restitution.

The sentence will run consecutively with his combined five-year sentence in New York for stealing from Stormy Daniels and for extorting Nike.

The punishment, imposed by a federal judge in Los Angeles, is a few years shy of what prosecutors sought.

Avenatti pleaded guilty in June to stealing money from clients, including one who is a paraplegic, and one count of obstructing collection of federal payroll taxes from his coffee business.

Avenatti skyrocketed to celebrity status in 2018 alongside Daniels, his then-client and an adult film star, who filed multiple lawsuits — unsuccessfully — against then-President Donald Trump.

For a time, the brash lawyer was a fixture on cable news shows and the topic of flattering magazine pieces. Reporters asked him about his skin-care routine and Tom Ford suits while he and Daniels posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Avenatti also briefly dipped his toe into the presidential candidacy pool, dining with potential donors and forming a political action group to accept donations.

Then a series of charges revealed a series of crimes — derailing his career and resulting in lengthy prison terms.

In the federal case carrying the 14-year sentence, “Mr. Avenatti received money on behalf of clients into client trust accounts, misappropriated the money and lied to the clients about receiving the money,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said in 2019.

An indictment against Avenatti stated that he stole millions of dollars from clients after they received settlements in various cases. Those funds were supposed to only flow through Avenatti but stayed with him instead, according to prosecutors.

One of the clients who said he was never paid was Geoffrey Johnson, who is paraplegic. Johnson won a $4 million settlement against Los Angeles County in 2015. Prosecutors said that money was paid to Avenatti but was never given to Johnson.

Authorities said that Avenatti told Johnson the money was not yet available and that he was “advancing” Johnson money to pay rent. Yet the entire time, according to prosecutors, Avenatti had the $4 million and was using it for personal and business expenses.

“Mr. Johnson is the victim of an appalling fraud perpetrated by the one person who owned him loyalty and honest most of all: his own lawyer,” Johnson’s attorney Josh Robbins told ABC News in 2019.

ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman, Stacy Chen, Kaitlyn Folmer, Josh Margolin and Alex Stone contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A Manhattan jury began deliberations Monday on whether to convict former President Donald Trump’s namesake real estate company of criminal tax fraud.

The deliberations began Monday morning following lengthy instructions on the law by Judge Juan Merchan, who reminded jurors that they pledged to set aside their personal opinions about Trump himself.

“You promised the attorneys for the defendants, the prosecution, and this court that you would set aside any personal opinions you may have about Donald Trump and his family,” Merchan said. “You also stated that you understood that Donald Trump and his family are not on trial here.”

Two entities of the Trump Organization — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation — are on trial for paying the personal expenses of some executives without reporting them as income, and for compensating them as independent contractors instead of full-time employees.

The jury sent one note to the judge asking about the elements required to prove conspiracy, before deliberations ended for the day. The jury is scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday.

Although Trump is not a defendant, his name came up repeatedly during the trial, and the jury saw checks he signed and memos he endorsed. The former president has publicly denied any wrongdoing.

Defense attorneys asked witnesses roughly 60 times about Trump’s knowledge of the tax scheme that his company is charged with, as they sought to show that Trump was in the dark about the fraud being committed by his top executives, primarily Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer who pleaded guilty in August to charges that he skirted taxes on nearly $2 million in company-provided perks that included the rent on his Manhattan apartment, the leases on cars for himself and his wife, and tuition for his grandchildren.

Defense attorney Michael van der Veen said in his closing statement Friday that jurors “heard no evidence in this case that Mr. Trump or any of his children were aware of anything improper.”

But prosecutors contended that Trump explicitly sanctioned tax fraud when he signed off on part of the scheme.

“This whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not true,” assistant district attorney Josh Steinglass said during his closing statement.

Prosecutors believe the Trump Organization is guilty because the arrangements that Weisselberg and other company executives made to evade taxes included some intent to help the company pay less in salaries, bonuses and payroll taxes.

The defense argued the executives never intended to benefit the company and that the scheme the executives hatched was motivated solely by personal greed.

The distinction is important because the judge told jurors that the Trump Organization is only guilty if a high managerial agent of the company acted in behalf of the company and within the scope of his employment.

“An agent’s acts are not in behalf of the corporation if they were undertaken solely to advance the agent’s own interests,” Merchan said. “If the agent’s acts were taken merely for personal gain, they were not in behalf of the corporation.”

The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation are each charged with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.

A conviction would carry fines of up to $1.7 million. But collateral consequences of a conviction may be more significant to Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House. Banks could call in loans and business partners could cancel contracts if their internal policies prevent them from doing business with felons.

Even absent a conviction, the trial revealed potentially embarrassing details about Trump, including that he reported nearly $1 billion in operating losses over a two-year period in 2009 and 2010.

Trump’s outside accountant also testified that Trump reported losses each year for eight years from 2009 to 2018, some of the same years Trump was touting his business acumen on reality television and on the campaign trail.

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(NEW YORK) — A North Carolina couple are calling a state trooper their “angel” and a hero for helping save their daughter’s life when she stopped breathing due to RSV.

Victoria O’Neal told “Good Morning America” her 9-week-old triplet daughters first started to get sick last Sunday, and by Tuesday, her daughter Amelia’s condition had grown worse.

“At 1:00 when I went to feed them, she just sounded so weak and sick and it freaked me out,” O’Neal recounted. “So I called [my fiancé] Derrick, told him to come home, asked him to take her to the hospital.”

O’Neal said she asked her fiancé Derrick Stroud to take Amelia to the children’s hospital in Greenville, North Carolina, about 34 miles northeast of their home in Kinston. “It’s where they were born,” O’Neal said.

When Stroud got the call at work, he rushed home and wasted no time getting his daughter out the door. However, he was stopped on the way to the hospital after being pulled over for speeding.

Stroud described that moment as divine intervention.

“As I’m rushing to the hospital, it’s almost like God placed the trooper and the ambulance within 2 miles of us when we got pulled because as I was going to the hospital, the trooper pulled me at about 100 miles an hour,” Stroud told “GMA.” “When he pulled me over, I was frantically hanging out the window, letting him know that my baby was having problems at that time breathing.”

That person who pulled Stroud over was Trooper Matthew Brown of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, who recounted the unusual sight to “GMA.”

“I had an SUV coming up behind me at a really high rate of speed, four-way flashers going, which I knew was kind of odd because most folks, if they’re gonna be speeding like that are trying not to get attention rather than having their four ways on,” Brown recalled. “When I got up to the driver … he was visibly distraught and upset. He said he was on his way to the hospital, which confused me because he had already passed the exit to go to the local hospital, which would be the hospital in Kinston. And when I asked him that, he said his daughter was having trouble breathing and he was taking her to the hospital in Greenville, which was about another 30 minutes away from where we were at.”

Brown, a state trooper since 2017 and a twin himself, told “GMA” he was previously a firefighter EMT and trained in emergency medical services.

“I opened the door and turned her towards me, I realized that she was having extreme difficulty breathing, had paradoxical breathing going on, which is basically where the chest and the stomach are actually going off each other. It’s just the obvious sign of infants struggling to breathe and her lips and face were starting to get some cyanosis, which is that blue color,” Brown said.

Brown said he got Amelia out of her car seat, started taking her vital signs and patting her on the back to wake her back up, which Stroud said he observed.

“I was just trying to get something out of her and she finally did come out and open her eyes and start interacting and I could tell whenever she started breathing more normally that she was still having some kind of, something going on with her lungs because her lung sounds weren’t very clear,” Brown said. “I knew RSV has been a really prevalent thing going on and actually told the father … ‘I would be surprised if she doesn’t have RSV.’ “

Brown then called in a medical unit backup and an ambulance quickly arrived on scene to transport Amelia to the local hospital in Kinston.

According to her parents, Amelia was later transferred to Maynard Children’s Hospital in Greenville. Doctors confirmed Amelia did have RSV and treated her with additional oxygen. After three days, Amelia was well enough to be discharged while her sisters took their turns getting checked out at the hospital for their RSV symptoms as well.

O’Neal and Stroud told “GMA” they’re grateful for Brown’s quick actions and help.

“It’s very crazy how everything works because like I say, for him to pull us over with triplets, and he’s a twin himself expecting twins and everybody was just in the right spot at the right time. It’s just really a blessing and I just wanted everybody to know that he is the reason that [we] still have Amelia,” Stroud said.

“He was an angel or a hero,” O’Neal added. “I don’t want to imagine the level of panic I would have had if that had been me, if I had been the trooper and I had pulled someone over and there was a little baby turning blue in the backseat, like to have been able to keep a level head and do what he needed to do to help her, it’s just amazing and I’m so grateful to him.”

Brown said he was just doing his job that day. “Part of the reason that I joined the highway patrol was so I would be able to be out there and have access to do this kind of stuff and help people,” he said.

“I’m a father myself and I can understand what he was trying to do. He was just not going about it necessarily the right way. But I mean, anybody who has a kid is going to do what they think they need to do to try to get it taken care of,” Brown added. “So I wasn’t going to penalize him for that. Plus, I wanted him to go to the hospital with the baby so I had him go with the medical unit.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security has delayed the deadline for air travelers to have a REAL ID another two years, the agency announced Monday.

The program, which was to begin in May 2023, will now not go into effect until May 7, 2025.

This is the third time the deadline has been extended.

Story developing…

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(MOSCOW, Idaho) — The two University of Idaho roommates who survived a mysterious quadruple homicide in their off-campus house are speaking out for the first time.

Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus house in the early hours of Nov. 13. No suspects have been identified.

“They all lit up any room they walked into and were gifts to this world. I wish every day that I could give them all one last hug and say how much I loved them,” one of the roommates said in a statement read by a pastor at a memorial service over the weekend.

She said Mogen, who was her “big sister” in the Pi Beta Phi sorority, was the older sister she “always wanted.”

“You always gave me the best advice,” she said.

The second surviving roommate said “Maddie and Kaylee were like second moms to me” and “changed the way I look at life.”

Goncalves and Mogen were “the inseparable duo,” she said, describing Mogen as compassionate and happy-go-lucky and Goncalves as strong and driven.

Chapin and Kernodle were the “perfect pair” who had an “unstoppable, loving relationship,” she said.

“They both would look at each other with so much love,” she said.

She added, “I know somewhere Xana and Ethan are together keeping each other company watching us and telling us it’s OK.”

The two surviving roommates — who police said are not suspects — likely slept through the attacks, according to authorities. They were on the ground floor while the four students killed were on the second and third floors. Police have not identified the surviving roommates.

The murders likely took place around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., according to officials. In the morning, the two roommates called friends over because they thought one of the victims on the second floor had passed out and wasn’t waking up, police said.

At 11:58 a.m., a 911 call from one of the roommate’s phones requested help for an unconscious person, police said. The 911 caller’s identity has not been released but police said “multiple people talked with the 911 dispatcher.”

Responding officers found the four victims on the second and third floors, police said.

Police said they do not believe anyone at the house at the time of the 911 call was involved.

Police urge anyone with information to upload digital media to fbi.gov/moscowidaho or contact the tip line at tipline@ci.moscow.id.us or 208-883-7180.

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