(TENNESSEE) — Police are responding to a shooting at a Kroger grocery store near Memphis, Tennessee.
Memphis police said its officers are helping secure the scene in Collierville, about 30 miles from Memphis.
Memphis Police Officers are on the scene of a shooting at Kroger located at 240 New Byhalia Road in Collierville, TN to support Collierville PD. MPD is assisting with securing the perimeter and scene.
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 681,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by The Financial Times. Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 23, 3:21 pm
More than 26 million Americans potentially eligible for booster next week
Pending the CDC panel’s recommendations and the CDC director’s sign-off, more than 26 million Americans could soon be eligible for a third Pfizer dose. This includes 13.6 million adults 65 and older and 12.8 million adults ages 18 to 64 who completed their primary series at least six months ago. Of those 18 to 64, anyone who is considered “high risk” could be eligible for an additional dose.
To date, more than 220 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the U.S.
Sep 23, 12:40 pm
CDC advisory panel expected to vote on Pfizer booster within hours
The CDC’s independent advisory panel is set to vote around 3 p.m. ET on which Americans are eligible now for a Pfizer booster.
After the vote, CDC director Rochelle Walensky is expected to weigh in with her official endorsement. The CDC is not bound by the panel’s recommendations but usually follows it. State officials may also implement their own criteria.
The FDA granted authorization Wednesday to the following groups: Anyone 65 or older as well as people as young as 18 if they have a medical condition that puts them at risk of severe COVID-19 or if they work a frontline job that makes it more likely that they would get infected. After authorization Wednesday night, the FDA’s acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said some of the groups that could be classified as front-line workers are health care employees, teachers and grocery store staffers, as well as people in prisons and homeless shelters.
Sep 23, 10:49 am
West Virginia, Montana case rates doubled in last month as Alaska sees record highs
Alaska currently has the country’s highest case rate, followed by West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky, Montana and South Carolina, according to federal data.
West Virginia and Montana have seen their case rates double over the last month. In Alaska, case metrics are at record highs, according to federal data.
Hospital admissions are down by about 12.5% in the last week, with improvements in Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to federal data.
Seven states, however, have less than 10% ICU availability: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas.
Even highly vaccinated states are experiencing shortages. One central Massachusetts health system, UMass Memorial Health, is running low on critical care beds following the admission of an influx of COVID-19 patients in recent weeks.
Sep 23, 8:21 am
Team USA to require COVID-19 vaccination at future Olympic and Paralympic Games
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it will require every member of its delegation to be vaccinated against COVID-19, starting this year.
According to a new policy posted on Team USA’s website, a COVID-19 vaccine mandate will take effect on Nov. 1 for “all employees, athletes, contractors and others,” unless they obtain a medical or religious exemption prior to accessing U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee facilities.
On Dec. 1, that mandate will “extend to all Team USA delegation members or hopefuls for future Games.” Individuals on the long list for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing must submit proof of full COVID-19 vaccination by this date or have received an exemption in order to participate in the upcoming Games, according to the policy, which was dated Sept. 21.
“The health and well-being of our Olympic and Paralympic community continues to be a top priority,” Team USA says on a webpage detailing the new requirement. “This step will increase our ability to create a safe and productive environment for Team USA athletes and staff, and allow us to restore consistency in planning, preparation and optimal service to athletes.”
Sep 23, 6:38 am
COVID-19 hospitalizations reach another all-time high in Iowa for 2021
More people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa than at any other point
this year so far, according to weekly data released by the Iowa Department of Public Health on Wednesday.
The data shows that there are now 638 people hospitalized with the disease statewide, up from 578 last week. Although the figure is nowhere near Iowa’s peak of more than 1,500 in mid-November last year, it’s the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations that the Hawkeye State has recorded since December.
Sep 22, 7:48 pm
FDA authorizes Pfizer booster dose for those who are 65 and up, high-risk
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a third booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for people who are 65 and older or at high risk of severe COVID-19, the agency announced Wednesday.
The dose is authorized to be administered at least six months after the second shot. High-risk recipients must be at least 18 years old.
The announcement comes days after a similar recommendation from FDA advisers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory board is scheduled to vote on booster recommendations Thursday.
Sep 22, 6:04 pm
Florida letting parents choose whether to quarantine asymptomatic, close-contact children
The Florida Department of Health issued an emergency rule Wednesday that lets parents choose whether to quarantine their children if they are deemed a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
In such cases, parents can let their children “attend school, school-sponsored activities, or be on school property, without restrictions or disparate treatment, so long as the student remains asymptomatic,” the emergency rule stated.
The move is the state’s latest to empower parents when it comes to coronavirus measures in schools. In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order giving parents the choice of whether to send their kids to school with masks, setting off an intense back-and-forth between the state and districts that mandated masks in the weeks since.
DeSantis touted the new “symptoms-based approach” during a press briefing Wednesday.
“Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging to their educational advancement,” he said. “It’s also incredibly disruptive for families all throughout the state of Florida.”
At least one superintendent in Florida has spoken out against the new quarantine rule.
“I find it ironic that the new state rule begins with the phrase ‘Because of an increase in COVID-19 infections, largely due to the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant,'” Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said in a statement posted to Twitter Wednesday.
“In fact, this rule is likely to promote the spread of COVID-19 by preventing schools from implementing the common-sense masking and quarantine policies recommended by the vast majority of health care professionals, including those here in Alachua County,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — It’s not easy to do schoolwork on an old laptop with a poor internet connection.
Just ask Sabina Rodriguez, who went through her junior and senior year in online learning classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Her parents were both unemployed and couldn’t afford new devices.
“I was literally on the world’s oldest computer,” Rodriguez said. Her mother is Colombian immigrant who previously worked as a house cleaner. Her father grew up in a low-income household, and chauffeured for a living.
“As a minority, especially in a financial situation, school was like our only way to success,” she said. “Our parents came here so we could go to school.”
That’s when she discovered First Tech Fund, a new nonprofit dedicated to “closing the digital divide” among underserved high school students in New York City.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the burgeoning digital divide among students of different economic backgrounds. About 25% of all school-aged children across the U.S. live without the sufficient technology or access to Wi-Fi at home, according to the National Education Association.
It’s a situation First Tech Fund co-founder Josue De Paz knew well, and when the pandemic forced kids out of school and back into their homes, it was a need he was determined to help solve.
The organization offers high school students a year-long fellowship in which they are supplied with a laptop and a Wi-Fi hotspot, with unlimited internet access. They’re also paired with a mentor and are given weekly virtual workshops on digital skills, career growth and other professional development opportunities.
“I can never repay them for the situation I’m in right now,” Rodriguez said. She said she’s spent hours on Zoom calls with mentors and professionals who’ve helped edit her resume, college essays and more.
In New York City, 14% of students didn’t have a computer or computing device, and 13% didn’t have adequate internet access, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union and New York State Education Department.
The NYSE report showed how students in Black and Latino school districts suffered disproportionately during the pandemic: Compared with students in largely white districts, they were about four times as likely to lack internet access and three times as likely to lack a device that allowed them to complete schoolwork.
De Paz said some students were doing homework from phones or sharing devices with siblings, making it much harder to complete assignments, let alone excel among peers. First Tech Fund targets these marginalized communities.
Rodriguez said students felt more encouraged and supported throughout the school year, especially those on their way to college. One of 52 students chosen from 743 applicants in the first cohort of fellowship winners, Rodriguez is now a freshman at Fordham University, pursuing a career in psychology and medicine.
Some 23 of the 24 college-eligible students in that 2020-2021 cohort are now enrolled at a two- or four-year institution.
In this upcoming school year, outreach was expanded to 86 students out of about 200 applicants. De Paz credited donors, partner organizations and elected officials for helping him help so many.
“There’s more power in the community than we often give ourselves credit for,” De Paz said. “We should be leveraging it — now more than ever — when people need that support.”
De Paz, a DACA recipient, moved to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 5 years old. He thanks his mother for working long hours at several jobs to provide him with a personal laptop and dial-up internet.
“I saw my mom work two to three jobs in order for me to get that access, and then I really saw how that impacted my entire educational career,” De Paz said. “Even before I had a bed, my mom was like, ‘You’re going to have a desk, and you’re gonna have a computer,’ so I was sleeping on the floor, but I still had what I needed for school.”
De Paz is paying forward that gratitude to help students like Rodriguez.
“I’ve always struggled financially, growing up,” she said, “so the fact that Josue, another Hispanic who grew up in the same situation, that he actually has the courage to like be like, ‘I’m going to help, I’m going to give back’ … it really comes from, like, his heart.”
(CA) — Nanette Packard, who was convicted of directing her ex-NFL lover to kill her millionaire fiance, told ABC News in an exclusive interview that she still carries “a lot of guilt over what happened.”
“Had I not been having an affair … Bill would be alive still,” Packard said. “I feel that way.”
She and former NFL linebacker Eric Naposki have spent nearly a decade behind bars as convicted killers serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murder of Bill McLaughlin. Both deny having any involvement in his death.
“I don’t know for sure [who killed McLaughlin],” Packard said. “I never said that Eric did it because I couldn’t say that Eric did it for sure. I don’t know that. He never said that to me.”
Packard met Naposki in the early ‘90s at a gym. Naposki, who had once played for the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, had left professional sports by then, and was living in California, where he worked as a security guard for a nightclub and worked as a bodyguard on the side.
The two eventually started seeing each other romantically even though Packard, who was then a mother of two in her 20s, was already in a relationship with McLaughlin. He was an entrepreneur 30 years her senior who had made millions off of a medical device invention.
Packard was living with McLaughlin in Newport Beach, California, in a luxurious home located in a wealthy, gated community. However, she told Naposki that she and McLaughlin were just business partners.
“Eric knew about Bill and Bill knew that Eric was my friend. [Bill] didn’t know we were having an affair,” Packard said.
She said she met McLaughlin, a father of three, through a personal ad he had posted in the Pennysaver.
“Maybe it wasn’t the most intense [relationship] romantically but I did love him,” Packard said of McLaughlin. “He was a good man and he was good to my children, and I would never have killed him and probably would still be with him today if he were alive, because I had no reason.”
McLaughlin was 55 years old when he was shot six times in the chest by an intruder while he sat at his kitchen table on Dec. 15, 1994.
Authorities did not make any arrests in connection to his death until 15 years later, when investigators re-examined the case.
Packard and Naposki were arrested separately during a bicoastal sting operation in May 2009 on murder charges.
By the time of their arrests, Packard and Naposki had gone their separate ways. Packard had gone on to marry twice more and was still living in California. Naposki, meanwhile, had briefly gone back to playing professional American football overseas before returning to the U.S., where he had a fiancée and was living in Connecticut.
The prosecutor alleged Packard was the suspected mastermind behind McLaughlin’s death and that she convinced Naposki to kill him so they could collect a substantial sum of money.
Prosecutors argued that Packard stood to benefit from McLaughlin’s million-dollar life insurance policy, $150,000 from his will and access to his beach house.
There was reason to suspect Packard. In 1996, she had pleaded guilty to forgery and grand theft after she was accused of forging McLaughlin’s name on checks and stealing from his accounts. She served 180 days behind bars.
Packard denied the murder charges against her, saying she needed McLaughlin to continue her lifestyle.
“I only gained money if Bill was alive,” she said.
According to prosecutors, Naposki’s story evolved during questioning. He initially lied about owning a .9 mm handgun, which was the same kind of weapon used to kill McLaughlin.
“The single most important piece of evidence that we had against Eric Naposki was … the way he lied to the police,” said ABC News consultant and former Orange County prosecutor Matt Murphy, who tried the case.
When asked why he lied to police, Naposki told ABC News, “I just didn’t want to talk about it because, if I wasn’t at the scene, and I wasn’t in Newport, then I couldn’t have killed the guy even if I had a bazooka.”
Naposki went to trial first and was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2011. Afterward, he met with prosecutors and told them Packard had orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot against McLaughlin, and the killer had used his gun.
“[Naposki said] he was there, in the room, when they talked about [the plot],’” said author Caitlin Rother, who wrote a book about the case titled, “I’ll Take Care of You.” “But then he says, ‘But apparently, [the killer] went behind my back and made arrangements with Nanette. So the two of them planned this. It wasn’t me.’”
“The way he describes it, he is a co-conspirator in a murder case,” Murphy added. “Even if it was true, the way he describes that, he is still 100% guilty for exactly what he was convicted of.”
Packard was found guilty in January 2012 of first-degree murder and guilty of the special circumstance of committing murder for financial gain.
Naposki is serving time at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, California. He said he hasn’t spoken to Packard since everything “went down.”
“I didn’t kill anybody. I’m not a killer,” he said.
Packard is serving her sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility, training service dogs through a program called Little Angels.
“These dogs, they just bring so much healing,” she said. “It also helps to make a difference for me, for me to be able to live with the fact that I’m away from my kids.”
McLaughlin’s children, who at one point thought their father’s murder would never be solved, have tried to move forward. They believe justice was served.
“[Packard and Naposki’s lives] have been taken away from them … and hopefully they’re thinking about what they did,” Kim McLaughlin told ABC News. “What I miss most about my father is just having him as a friend … and I know he’d be very proud of us and the choices we’re making. And so, it’s hard not to have him be able to share that here on earth with him… We miss him dearly.”
(NEW YORK) — Prince Harry and Meghan kicked off their visit to New York City Thursday by visiting the city’s highest point.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made an early morning visit to One World Observatory inside the One World Trade Center, the tallest building not only in New York City but also in the United States.
The Sussexes were joined at the observatory, the focal point of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex, by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, along with his wife, Chirlane McCray, and their son, Dante.
Harry and Meghan’s trip to New York City is their first joint public trip since they moved to California last year.
It is also the first live public appearance Meghan has made since giving birth to their second child, daughter Lilibet, in June.
On Saturday, Harry and Meghan are scheduled to take part in Global Citizen Live, an annual concert event held on the Great Lawn in Central Park.
The Sussexes will appear at the concert to promote vaccine equity around the world in the fight against COVID-19.
Harry and Meghan were co-chairs in May of “Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World,” an international COVID-19 vaccination effort organized by Global Citizen.
Earlier this month, Prince Harry gave an impassioned speech at the GQ Men of the Year Awards, pleading with governments and pharmaceutical companies to do more to vaccinate the world.
“Until every community can access the vaccine, and until every community is connected to trustworthy information about the vaccine, then we are all at risk,” he said, while adding about misinformation campaigns that are adding to vaccine hesitancy, “This is a system we need to break if we are to overcome COVID-19 and the rise of new variants.”
The Sussexes were recently featured on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list, in which they were applauded for starting “essential conversations on topics from mental health to misinformation.”
The TIME cover portrait featuring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex marked the first time the couple has formally posed together for a magazine cover shoot.
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 681,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by The Financial Times. Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 23, 6:38 am
COVID-19 hospitalizations reach another all-time high in Iowa for 2021
More people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa than at any other point
this year so far, according to weekly data released by the Iowa Department of Public Health on Wednesday.
The data shows that there are now 638 people hospitalized with the disease statewide, up from 578 last week. Although the figure is nowhere near Iowa’s peak of more than 1,500 in mid-November last year, it’s the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations that the Hawkeye State has recorded since December.
Sep 22, 7:48 pm
FDA authorizes Pfizer booster dose for those who are 65 and up, high-risk
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a third booster dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for people who are 65 and older or at high risk of severe COVID-19, the agency announced Wednesday.
The dose is authorized to be administered at least six months after the second shot. High-risk recipients must be at least 18 years old.
The announcement comes days after a similar recommendation from FDA advisers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory board is scheduled to vote on booster recommendations Thursday.
Sep 22, 6:04 pm
Florida letting parents choose whether to quarantine asymptomatic, close-contact children
The Florida Department of Health issued an emergency rule Wednesday that lets parents choose whether to quarantine their children if they are deemed a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
In such cases, parents can let their children “attend school, school-sponsored activities, or be on school property, without restrictions or disparate treatment, so long as the student remains asymptomatic,” the emergency rule stated.
The move is the state’s latest to empower parents when it comes to coronavirus measures in schools. In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order giving parents the choice of whether to send their kids to school with masks, setting off an intense back-and-forth between the state and districts that mandated masks in the weeks since.
DeSantis touted the new “symptoms-based approach” during a press briefing Wednesday.
“Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging to their educational advancement,” he said. “It’s also incredibly disruptive for families all throughout the state of Florida.”
At least one superintendent in Florida has spoken out against the new quarantine rule.
“I find it ironic that the new state rule begins with the phrase ‘Because of an increase in COVID-19 infections, largely due to the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant,'” Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said in a statement posted to Twitter Wednesday.
“In fact, this rule is likely to promote the spread of COVID-19 by preventing schools from implementing the common-sense masking and quarantine policies recommended by the vast majority of health care professionals, including those here in Alachua County,” she added.
(SALT LAKE CITY) — A massive search is continuing in southern Florida for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman who went missing on a cross-country trip and who authorities confirmed Tuesday as the body discovered on Sunday in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
The search for the 23-year-old Laundrie is centered around North Port, Florida, where investigators said Laundrie returned to his home on September 1 without Petito but driving her 2012 Ford Transit.
Laundrie has been named by police as a “person of interest” in Petito’s disappearance. Laundrie has refused to speak to the police and has not been seen since Tuesday, Sept. 14, according to law enforcement officials.
The search for Laundrie is the latest twist in the case that has grabbed national attention as he and Petito had been traveling across the country since June, documenting the trip on social media.
Petito’s parents, who live in Long Island, New York, reported her missing on Sept. 11 after not hearing from her for two weeks.
Sep 22, 12:44 pm
Underwater recovery team dispatched to Carlton Reserve
The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Twitter Wednesday that its Underwater Recovery Force team has been dispatched to the Carlton Reserve near North Port, where the search for Laundrie is focused.
The sheriff’s office, one of multiple law enforcement agencies involved in the search, did not elaborate on why the team was needed at the search site.
We continue to respond to requests for mutual aid from neighboring law enforcement agencies & federal partners. To confirm, yes, members of our Sheriff’s Underwater Recovery Force have responded to Carlton Reserve. This in addition to our Emergency Response Team, Air-1 & patrol. pic.twitter.com/LcagDcofLL
“We continue to respond to requests for mutual aid from neighboring law enforcement agencies & federal partners. To confirm, yes, members of our Sheriff’s Underwater Recovery Force have responded to Carlton Reserve,” reads the agency’s tweet.
Sep 22, 12:42 pm
2nd witness corroborates domestic dispute between couple
The Moab, Utah, police department has released a report from a second witness claiming he saw Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie engaged in a domestic dispute in Moab on Aug. 12.
The witness told police he observed a man and a woman, later identified Petito and Laundrie, arguing over a cellphone about 4:30 in the afternoon outside a grocery store in Moab, according to a statement from police.
“They were talking aggressively @ each other & something seemed off. At one point they were sort of fighting over a phone — I think the male took the female’s phone. It appeared that he didn’t want her in the white van. He got into the driver’s seat & she followed him. At one point she was punching him in the arm and/or face & trying to get into the van,” the witness wrote in the police report.
The witness, according to the statement, said the woman eventually climbed over the driver to get into the passenger seat and that she was overheard saying, “Why do you have to be so mean”?
“I wasn’t sure how serious this was — it was hard to tell if it was sort of play fighting, but from my point of view something definitely didn’t seem right. It was as if this guy was trying to leave her, and maybe take her phone? Not sure but wanted to help out,” the witness wrote.
Around the same time, a 911 caller told a Grand County, Utah, Sheriff’s Office dispatcher that he witnessed Laundrie allegedly “slapping” Petito and chasing her up and down a sidewalk hitting her, according to a recording released by the sheriff’s office.
Sep 22, 10:54 am
Search for Brian Laundrie presses on as Petito family plans funeral
As a massive search continued Wednesday for Brian Laundrie in south Florida’s Carlton Reserve, the family of Gabby Petito was making arrangements to bring her remains home to her native New York for a funeral.
A large team of law enforcement officers and police K-9 units resumed their search of the roughly 25,000-acre preserve near North Port, Florida, where Laundrie’s relatives told police he claimed he was headed to when they last spoke to him on September 14.
Photos posted on Twitter Wednesday morning by the North Port Police Department showed officers from multiple agencies plotting areas to search, along with other images of high-water vehicles and search dogs.
Sep 21, 11:44 pm
Search ends for another day with ‘nothing of note’ found
The North Port Police Department said it had ended its search of the Carlton Reserve as darkness closed in with nothing found.
“Search of the Carlton & nearby lands concluded for the evening. Nothing of note,” the police department shared in a tweet. “The current plan is to return Wednesday with a similar operation.”
Search of the Carlton & nearby lands concluded for the evening. Nothing of note. The current plan is to return Wednesday with a similar operation. We join the FBI in asking for continued public assistance by sharing any info 1-800-CALL FBI or https://t.co/vlIagGIoHcpic.twitter.com/5DWopahBI8
Police shared a photo of the search operation’s base in the reserve as well as one of the bloodhounds being used to look for the missing person of interest in conjunction with the death of his girlfriend.
Gabby Petito’s body was officially identified on Tuesday evening after it was found near Grand Teton National Park on Sunday. The Teton County coroner said Petito died via homicide, but did not yet announce a cause of death.
Sarasota police also later debunked a rumor that Laundrie had been taken into custody. It said on Twitter that they had received several tips about him being seen, but none of them panned out.
(LOUISVILLE) — A 16-year-old boy was killed and two other children were hurt in a shooting at a school bus stop in Louisville, Kentucky, Wednesday morning, according to local police.
The three children were waiting for a bus when they were shot in a drive-by at about 6:30 a.m. local time, police said.
One of the injured kids, a 14-year-old boy, is in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. The other survivor, a 14-year-old girl, was treated for minor injuries at the scene, police said.
“I had to hold the wound of a little boy and tell him he was going to be OK.” Neighbors enraged over the number of shootings affecting our kids. This one at a bus stop. One student telling me, it’s not a good day to have anxiety. @WHAS11pic.twitter.com/yvvEHCX9jO
Police are looking for the occupants of a grey Jeep they say was in the area at the time of the shooting.
Alert: We’re looking for this vehicle in the area of this morning’s homicide. We need to talk to any occupants who may have information on this.
Grey Jeep license plate with Illinois plate BD91644. Call 574-LMPD. You can remain anonymous. We need your help #LMPD#Louisvillepic.twitter.com/j690CrF2CF
The three victims have not been identified but Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Pollio said they are students at Eastern High School.
The school bus arrived shortly after the “traumatic” slaying, Pollio said, and a bus stop for middle schoolers was close by.
LMPD and JCPS officials are at the scene. Waiting for their response on a bus stop shooting that sent three kids to the hospital around 6:30 this morning. @WHAS11pic.twitter.com/fndpPRI9t4
This is one of our toughest days at @JCPSKY. We have suffered another devastating loss to senseless gun violence. Our hearts go out to the family of the Eastern HS student whose life was ended. We are providing support for the students.
This marked Louisville’s 145th homicide of the year, officials said.
Louisville Metropolitan Police Chief Erika Shields called it a “heinous crime.”
Shields said the city is tackling gun violence and “getting violent felons off the street daily.” However, she added, “the availability of illegal guns is just so widespread.”
Our hearts break this morning with the news of the senseless violence targeting children waiting for a school bus. This is unacceptable. Report those responsible. Contact us (263-6000) or @LMPD (574-LMPD). The safety of our community depends on ALL of us working together. pic.twitter.com/zXPvqcc2oq
(NEW YORK) — In the two weeks sinceGabbyPetitowentmissing while on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, her story has gained national attention.
Petito’s case has made news headlines and gone viral online, with people everywhere trying to find clues and solve the case themselves. Adding to the intrigue in Petito’s case is the largesocial media footprint sheleftbehind as she documented her travels cross-country with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie.
Officials confirmed Tuesday that a body found over the weekend near Grand Teton National Park belongs to 22-year-old Petito, but the national fascination with the case continues, as authorities search for Laundrie, currently a person of interest in the case.
It is a fascination that families of other missing people, particularly women of color, say they wish was turned to their own loved ones’ cases.
“Everybody who is missing loved ones is saying, ‘Why wasn’t my case done that like?'” said Paula Cosey Hill. “It’s very hard because it takes you back to when your child went missing.”
Cosey Hill’s then-16-year-old daughter, Shemika Cosey, disappeared without a trace near her home in St. Louis, Missouri, just a few days after Christmas in 2008.
She described watching the search for Petito unfold as an “emotional rollercoaster,” since she has both grieved for the Petito family and reflected on what did not happen in the aftermath of her daughter’s disappearance.
“All the questions that weren’t answered with my daughter, I’m checking to see if they’re doing in that case,” said Cosey Hill. “When you report your loved one missing, you hear, ‘We’ll try to get someone on this,’ and they act as if they don’t have enough manpower to do it.”
“But as you can see, they can get enough manpower to do it,” she said. “They just choose which cases they want to do.”
Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, Inc., an online search agency that helps search specifically for missing Black and Hispanic children, said minority children who go missing are often classified as runaways, which can lead to less media attention and less help from law enforcement.
Minority adults who go missing are often stereotyped as being involved in crime or violence, poverty and addiction, which takes attention away from their cases too, Wilson said.
“There’s frustration. There’s sadness,” she said of the people she works with who are searching for their missing loved ones. “We are meeting families at the worst points in their lives. They are frustrated because they’re not getting help from law enforcement or they’re frustrated because they’re not getting media coverage.”
“I think oftentimes the media and even law enforcement can show that [minority] lives are not as important,” Wilson said. “We have to remember that these are mothers and daughters and fathers and children that are missing and they are definitely needed and valued in our communities.”
The historic tendency for national attention to gloss over cases of missing people of color was dubbed “missing white woman syndrome” by Gwen Ifill, the late PBS anchor.
Many years later, the term coined by Ifill still applies in the U.S., according to Wilson, who noted the effort to publicize missing persons of color is not meant to divert resources, but to simply “equal the playing field.”
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for close to 14 years that this is an issue and we need to have that conversation, all of us, as to how we can change the narrative,” she said. “We’re not surprised by the publicity or the reaction [to Petito’s disappearance] and we are also hoping and working to keep our missing in the forefront as well.”
Maricris Drouaillet, of Riverside, California, said she too was not surprised by the reaction to Petito’s disappearance, but said it has brought up emotions of “hurt and heartbreak.”
Drouaillet and her family have spent nearly nine months searching for her sister, Maya Millete, a mother of three who disappeared from her home in Chula Vista, California, in January. Millete’s husband was named a person of interest in her disappearance in July.
“Even before Gabby’s case was out there, I felt that maybe if we were white or with money or had names, we probably would have gotten a different approach, more help and support,” said Drouaillet, whose family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when Millete was 12. “That’s how I feel. That hurts a lot.”
Drouaillet said she and her family have led searches on their own since January, and have created a website and social media accounts to organize resources and call attention to their sister’s missing person case.
“Every missing person deserves to be in a headline,” she said. “We have to put awareness out there and seek help from the public, because a lot of times the public are the ones who help solve the case.”
While 21% of Indigenous people, who are mostly girls, remained missing for 30 days or longer, only 11% of white people remained missing that long, according to the report.
The report also found that 30% of Indigenous missing and murdered people made the news, compared to 51% of white people. When coverage was done on Indigenous victims, it was more likely to “contain violent language, portray the victim in a negative light, and provide less information,” according to the report.
Cara Boyle Chambers, director of the division of victim services in Wyoming’s Attorney General office, said the Petito case has echoed the report’s findings.
“It highlighted exactly what we had pointed out, the disproportionate, very positive response to Gabby’s story versus a lot of other families who don’t have that attention and don’t have that closure that came, in the scheme of things, relatively quickly,” Boyle Chambers said. “We have families that are 20, 30 years of no answers and no remains to bury and no sense of closure.”
Boyle Chambers — who pointed out that two men went missing in June in the same area where Petito was last seen — said officials in Wyoming have worked since the report’s release to improve the collection of missing persons and criminal justice data.
The Petito case has also confirmed the importance of galvanizing media attention, including social media, according to Boyle Chambers.
“I think that is the biggest takeaway too from Gabby’s case, just how important the role of social media and people out there were in helping to locate her,” she said. “The more eyes you have on it, the better, which is why we’re having this whole conversation.”
Wilson, of the Black and Missing Foundation, said individual people can make a difference by sharing alerts about missing people and talking about missing person cases, involving minorities, in particular.
“We all have a responsibility, and that is law enforcement, the media and the community,” she said. “If you just have one tip, it can solve a case.”
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 677,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by the Financial Times. Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 22, 7:01 am
UK and South Korea agree to swap COVID-19 vaccine doses
The United Kingdom and South Korea have agreed to share COVID-19 vaccine doses to mutually support the rollout of shots in each nation.
The U.K. will send 1 million of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to South Korea to enhance their vaccination program, with the first batch of shots expected to arrive in the coming weeks. South Korea will return the same volume by the end of the year, as the U.K. presses ahead with its vaccine rollout and booster shot program over the winter months, according to a press release from the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care.
The swapping initiative, similar to the arrangement between the U.K. and Australia, will help South Korea toward hitting its target of administering a second dose to 70% of its population by the end of October.
“The Republic of Korea is a strategic partner for the UK and the sharing of one million vaccines benefits both countries as we help build resistance against COVID-19 and save lives,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement Tuesday.
The deal will have no impact on the U.K.’s ongoing vaccine rollout or booster shot program, nor will it effect the doses the country has already pledged to give to the global vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX. Almost 90% of people over the age of 16 in the U.K. are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses are not immediately required in the U.K. due to robust supply management, according to the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care.
Sep 22, 6:20 am
Brazil’s health minister tests positive for COVID-19 at UNGA
Brazilian Minister of Health Marcelo Queiroga said Tuesday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 while in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
Queiroga, who accompanied Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to the event, announced his diagnosis on Twitter and said he will quarantine.
Sep 22, 6:06 am
US to donate another 500 million vaccine doses abroad: White House
The Biden administration is ordering another 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to donate to countries around the globe, the White House said.
President Joe Biden is set to announce the commitment at a virtual COVID-19 summit on Wednesday, held amid the United Nations General Assembly.
Biden is also poised to call on world leaders, the nonprofit sector and private industry to commit to certain goals, including a 70% global vaccination rate by the end of 2022, during his remarks at the summit, a senior White House administration official told reporters Tuesday.
MORE: Millions of vaccine doses shipped globally, Biden announced, as NGOs call for more
Biden announced an initial 500-million-dose commitment in June. This second purchase, which the president had teased during his remarks to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, would bring the administration’s total donated doses to 1.1 billion.
The new batch of doses will be purchased from Pfizer at a not-for-profit price, manufactured in the U.S. and begin shipping out in January 2022, the White House official said.
The U.S. has so far sent more than 160 million doses to 100 other countries, Biden said.
The latest announcement comes as the World Health Organization has criticized the U.S. for pushing booster doses while much of the world has yet to receive a single shot.
Sep 21, 11:12 pm
US Department of Education investigating Texas schools over mask mandate ban
In a letter to the Texas Education Agency, the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday said it is beginning an investigation into Texas schools’ ban on mask mandates, and how that could potential be an infringement of students’ civil rights.
The investigation will focus on “whether, in light of this policy, students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from COVID-19 are prevented from safely returning to in-person education, in violation of Federal law,” the letter states.
The Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Suzanne Goldberg, laid out the process of the investigation in the letter, but also made clear that it could be resolved at any time if masks in schools are reinstated.
“OCR’s Case Processing Manual provides several ways for this investigation to be resolved, including an option to reach a voluntary resolution agreement prior to the completion of an investigation,” the letter reads. “If TEA expresses an interest in resolving the investigation in this way and OCR determines this form of resolution is appropriate based on the investigation, we will follow the steps set out in Section 302 of the Case Processing Manual.”
Sep 21, 3:35 pm
Texas, Georgia, Alabama account for about one-third of last week’s deaths
The U.S. daily death average has now climbed over 1,400 despite skewed reporting from the weekend, according to federal data.
About one-third of the nearly 9,500 virus-related deaths in the last week came from just three states: Texas, Georgia and Alabama.
About 90,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, compared to more than 100,000 patients about three weeks ago, according to federal data. But in the past month, at least 10 states — Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia — have reported record hospitalizations.
West Virginia is leading the nation in cases, followed by Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Dakota, Tennessee and Ohio, according to federal data.
