Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, FILE
(BUFFALO, NY) — A federal grand jury returned an indictment Thursday charging the alleged Buffalo, New York, mass shooter with federal hate crimes.
Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of storming a Tops grocery store on May 14 and gunning down 10 people, all of whom were Black, in an alleged hate crime.
At one point, Gendron aimed his Bushmaster XM rifle at a white Tops employee, who was shot in the leg and injured, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters last month. Gendron allegedly apologized to him before continuing the attack, Garland said.
The federal hate crime charges were announced last month.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Health and Human Services announced it is investigating reports of women being denied vital medication for chronic medical conditions unrelated to abortion in states that have banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It will also be issuing guidance to 60,000 retail pharmacies, reminding them of their obligations under federal civil rights laws, the agency said.
“We are committed to ensuring that everyone can access health care, free of discrimination,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement Wednesday. “This includes access to prescription medications for reproductive health and other types of care.”
One example of the fallout has been reports of several women diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in states with abortion bans that have reported not being able to obtain a medication called methotrexate from their pharmacies.
“I’m a 48-year-old woman without a uterus,” Jennifer Crow from Tennessee, where there is a six-week abortion ban in place, told ABC News. “I didn’t think the abortion ban would affect me.”
She said she has been taking methotrexate for her inflammatory arthritis since April. On July 1, for the first time since getting her prescription, her pharmacy required her to call her doctor to access a refill she was already prescribed, she said.
Crow said she was without medication for three days until she could speak to her doctor after the long July Fourth holiday weekend. She said, “During those three days, the inflammation returned. I was immediately put back into a flare.”
Crow said she’s spoken to many other people on Twitter with chronic diseases requiring methotrexate treatment with similar experiences to hers. She said that “many of them reached out to their doctor preemptively. Many doctors said that they had a blanket hold on all methotrexate until it gets worked out.”
Becky Schwartz, 28, who suffers from lupus, told Stat News her doctor in Virginia said he had to pause prescribing the medication by orders of the health system he worked for.
She told Stat News the medication was dramatically effective and she feared what would happen without it.
“Before I started taking it, I was not able to do much at all, I was pretty immobile,” she said. “Within a month, I was feeling great. Not perfect, but I could take a shower unassisted.”
“I have gotten some reports where children have been denied methotrexate for their juvenile arthritis until they’ve proven they’re not pregnant,” Dr. Cuoghi Edens, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at University of Chicago Medicine told the Los Angeles Times. That included an 8-year-old, Edens said.
The pharmacy’s reluctance to fill a standing prescription or a doctor’s reluctance to prescribe it may be due to fear of legal retaliation via felony charges on providers for aiding or abetting abortions.
“The concern that physicians and pharmacists are experiencing is, ‘Is there a legal implication based on the SCOTUS ruling for continuing to prescribe or fill prescriptions for methotrexate?'” Dr. Kenneth Saag, president of the American College of Rheumatology, told ABC News.
The American College of Rheumatology, the Arthritis Foundation, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and the advocacy group CreakyJoints have all issued statements since the recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opposing the restriction of methotrexate access and have developed educational materials, as well as offered avenues through helplines and email to help support those who are not able to obtain their treatment.
Methotrexate is no longer used for abortions.
Medication abortion is the use of a combination of hormonally-active drugs to evacuate the contents of the uterus. Before the FDA approval of mifepristone in 2016 for medication abortion, methotrexate was paired with misoprostol. The abortion process on this older regimen was less effective, more prone to causing adverse side effects and took a substantially longer time to complete.
Methotrexate is still used to treat ectopic pregnancies, which occur when the embryo implants outside of the uterus. These pregnancies are not viable in any circumstance and only pose a significant risk to the mother, including future infertility and death, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. A study found that deaths from ectopic pregnancy decreased from 1.15 to 0.50 per 100,000 from 1980 to 2007, presumably due to improved treatment options and guidelines.
The issue of methotrexate access in outpatient pharmacies makes some providers worried about the future of access in other health care settings.
“Methotrexate has been revolutionary in women’s health care for ectopic pregnancies, as most ectopic pregnancies don’t go to the OR anymore. My take-home is, what’s next? Let people die from a ruptured ectopic if methotrexate is restricted? Do women then have to wait until ectopic pregnancies rupture so that they can then get a lifesaving procedure in the OR?” said Dr. Jacques Moritz, a board-certified OB-GYN.
When women who can become pregnant are prescribed methotrexate, there are already safeguards to prevent adverse events related to pregnancy.
The American Academy of Family Physicians strongly recommends that women using this medication must use birth control in the form of hormonal contraceptives, condoms and/or abstinence. If a woman is ready to become pregnant, the American Academy of Rheumatology recommends that methotrexate be stopped at least three months before conception.
For those already using methotrexate, it’s not as simple as finding another medication.
Methotrexate is a drug that also works to suppress the immune system. This treatment can be essential for people diagnosed with cancer as part of a chemotherapy regimen, some autoimmune diseases such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease, or for those who have received an organ transplant.
“These are chronically ill patients who spend oftentimes years from the first date of the onset of the illness through diagnosis through a trial-and-error period to get themselves onto a medication where they’re able to live their lives,” Steven Newmark, chief legal office and director of policy for CreakyJoints, told ABC News. “And to see any kind of impediment put in place is horrific to say the least.”
Without access to this treatment, disease flares are more likely, which can prevent people from maintaining their daily responsibilities and negatively impact their quality of life.
Restricting methotrexate from women could mean that the standard of care will not be met for those experiencing a range of diseases beyond reproductive care in states where abortion is banned.
“In arthritis, women are disproportionately impacted by the disease, so it’s more likely that you’re going to see a woman show up to the pharmacy counter for a methotrexate prescription than a man. So, it’s kind of like this double whammy in that there are a few layers to this particular issue,” Anna Hyde, the vice president of advocacy and access, and Alisa Vidulich, the policy director for the Arthritis Foundation, told ABC News.
Alternative medications are not necessarily the answer.
Newmark told ABC News, “There are concerns that alternative medications, which is not always a proper one-to-one substitute, but even if you look at other medications, they may not be covered in the same manner by insurance and may be more expensive.”
“It’s a shame that other diseases are being affected by this,” Moritz added. “The doctor-patient relationship is sacred and now it’s being desecrated.”
Dr. Jade Cobern contributed to this article and is a resident in preventive medicine and pediatrics in Baltimore, Maryland, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Dr. Erica Jalal is an internal medicine resident physician at George Washington University and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(BUCHANAN COUNTY, Va.) — Everyone has been accounted for in Buchanan County, Virginia, on Thursday after a severe storm struck the area, bringing heavy rain and flooding, officials said.
At the height of the flooding, 44 people were unaccounted for on Wednesday. Floodwaters are now receding, said authorities in Buchanan County, which sits at the borders of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
There are no reports of deaths or injuries, the sheriff’s office said.
The flooding came after 4 to 6 inches of rain pounded the area within hours Tuesday night. Some spots reported 3 inches of rain in just 90 minutes. A frontal system stalled over the region, which can produce copious amounts of rain in a very short period of time.
The damage spreads across about 10 miles, officials said, adding that the worst impact was downstream of where several streams join together.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has declared a state of emergency.
“I want Virginians in Buchanan County to know that we are making every resource available to help those impacted by this storm. As we continue to assess the situation, I want to thank our first responders and the personnel on the ground for providing assistance with our ongoing operations,” he said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — While the Biden administration ramped up outreach to Venezuela in the early months of this year, the Maduro regime imprisoned three Americans who are still behind bars, according to the State Department.
“We can confirm the arrest of U.S. citizens in Venezuela in January and March of this year. We take seriously our commitment to assist U.S. citizens abroad. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” a department spokesperson told ABC News on Wednesday.
While the spate of detentions initially flew under the radar, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Venezuelan security forces had arrested Eyvin Hernandez, 44, and 52-year-old computer programmer Jerrel Kenemore during separate incidents in late March.
The report added that another American was arrested in January but withheld identifying details at the request of their family.
Venezuela separately released two American prisoners in early March, following a visit to Caracas by a high-level U.S. delegation. One of those freed was oil executive Gustavo Cardenas, part of the “Citgo 6” who had been jailed since 2017, when they were called to the country for a meeting and arrested on corruption charges.
On Wednesday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked about President Joe Biden’s engagement on the newly revealed cases, but Sullivan did not directly answer.
“We did get a couple of Americans out and that was a great thing,” he said, referring to the two Americans freed this year. “But it was bittersweet because there’s a lot of Americans still there, and we’ve got to get them home.”
A spokesperson for White House National Security Council also declined to comment.
The U.S. government has since the Trump administration recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader — and has been trying to facilitate talks between his opposition party and President Nicolás Maduro. As part of those efforts, the Biden White House rolled back some energy sanctions targeting the regime in late May, which paved the way for negotiating future economic activity with American companies but stopped short of allowing for oil drilling to resume.
At the time, administration officials said both sides had agreed to swiftly return to the negotiating table.
But Maduro has not agreed to a date, so discussions remain stalled.
At least eight other Americans are considered to be wrongfully detained in Venezuela, including the rest of the “Citgo 6” and two U.S. veterans. One of them is Matthew Heath, who has been jailed in the country since September 2020.
Heath’s family said he attempted suicide in June. At the time, his relatives expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s efforts to bring him home.
“Matthew’s life is in imminent danger, and we don’t detect any urgency at all from the White House,” his aunt said in a statement. “We are frustrated with the pattern of ‘deciding not to decide’ at the White House, endless policy reviews, and empty platitudes about his case being a priority.”
Following the incident, sources said that U.S. officials believed they were making significant progress on Heath’s case but were ultimately left empty-handed.
Last week, one of the five American oil executives still detained in Venezuela, Jorge Toledo, wrote a letter to Biden calling on the president to work to free them and other wrongfully detained Americans, according to a spokesman for Toledo’s family.
A Biden administration official confirmed to ABC News that the White House had received the letter, although the official declined to say whether Biden had read it.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 14, 7:15 AM EDT
Russian missile strike kills at least 17 in Vinnytsia
Russian missiles hit the heart of the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday morning, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 30 others, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
Two children were among the dead, the prosecutor’s office said.
The missiles struck an office building and damaged nearby residential buildings in Vinnytsia, located about 155 miles southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The strike also ignited a massive fire that engulfed 50 cars in an adjacent parking lot, according to the National Police of Ukraine.
The national police said about 90 victims in Vinnytsia sought medical attention, and 50 of them are in serious condition.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “an open act of terrorism” on civilians.
“Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, directing missiles at civilian objects. Where there is no military (targets). What is it if not an open act of terrorism?” Zelenskyy said in a statement via Telegram on Thursday.
Russian missile strikes targeted several other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday and early Thursday, including Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv.
At least 12 people died in the Zaporizhia strike, which hit two industrial workshops on Wednesday, according to local authorities.
At least five civilians were killed and 30 others injured in Mykolaiv on Wednesday after Russian missiles destroyed a hotel and a shopping mall, the local mayor said. The southern Ukrainian city was shelled again on Thursday morning, but no casualties were immediately reported.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Fidel Pavlenko, Max Uzol, and Yulia Drozd
Jul 13, 6:30 PM EDT
State Department aware of reports on another American detained by Russian proxies
The State Department said Wednesday it is aware of unconfirmed reports that another American has been detained by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
The statement follows a [report from the Guardian] () on 35-year-old Suedi Murekezi, who is believed to have gone missing in Ukraine in early June.
According to the Guardian, Murekezi was able to make contact with a family member on July 7 and told them he was being held in the same prison as Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, two American veterans captured while volunteering for Ukrainian forces. Murekezi has lived in Ukraine since 2020 and was falsely accused of participating in pro-Ukraine protests, according to the report.
“We have been in contact with the Ukrainian and Russian authorities regarding U.S. citizens who may have been captured by Russia’s forces or proxies while fighting in Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said Wednesday. “We call on Russia to live up to its international obligations to treat all individuals captured fighting with Ukraine’s armed forces as prisoners of war.”
Another American — Grady Kurpasi — is also missing in Ukraine. A family spokesperson said the veteran was last seen fighting with Ukrainian forces in late April and is feared to have been either killed or captured.
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 13, 8:27 AM EDT
Shelling continues throughout Donbas region
Shelling from both Russian and Ukrainian forces caused damage to the landscape and destroyed structures throughout the Donbas region on Tuesday and Wednesday, local officials said.
Russian strikes reportedly targeted the eastern town of Bakhmut, killing one person and wounding 5 others, the local governor said. Explosions were heard in several nearby towns too, with one missile falling near a kindergarten.
Shelling also continued in Izyum, Mykolayiv and Kharkiv on Tuesday. Russian troops reportedly conducted unsuccessful attacks north of Slovyansk and the town of Siversk on Tuesday, despite repeated rhetoric of an “operational pause” that Russia allegedly maintains, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest report.
Russian forces continue to bomb critical areas in preparation for future ground offensive, with air and artillery strikes reported along the majority of the frontline, the experts added.
Ukrainian forces on Tuesday responded to the Russian attacks and claimed to have destroyed six Russian military facilities on occupied Ukrainian territories. Ukrainian officials claimed to have destroyed several ammunition depots, as well as a larger military unit.
Russian media reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian troops launched a “massive attack” on an air defense unit in the Luhansk region.
Ukrainian military officials also claimed to have killed at least 30 Russian troops on Tuesday, along with destroying a howitzer and a multiple rocket launcher, among other weaponry.
But the U.K. Defense Ministry in its latest intelligence update said it still expects Russian forces to “focus on taking several small towns during the coming weeks” in the Donbas region.
These towns are on the approaches to the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk that likely remain the principal objectives for this phase of the Russian military operation, the ministry said.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Max Uzol, Yulia Drozd and Yuriy Zaliznyak
Jul 12, 10:27 PM EDT
US transfers $1.7 billion in economic assistance to Ukrainian government
The United States transferred $1.7 billion to Ukraine’s government Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced.
It’s the second tranche of money the Treasury transferred to Ukraine’s government as part of $7.5 billion approved for this purpose in the $40 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law in May.
It’ll go, in part, to helping Ukraine’s government provide “essential health care services” and health care workers’ salaries, the Treasury Department said.
The U.S. transferred the first tranche, $1.3 billion, to Ukraine’s government two weeks ago.
-ABC News Benjamin Gittleson
Jul 12, 1:59 AM EDT
Ukraine destroys Russian ammo depot in occupied Kherson region
Ukrainian forces hit and likely destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region on Monday night, local officials said.
The strike resulted in a massive blast, videos of which soon circulated online. According to local reports, more than 40 trucks filled with gasoline were destroyed. Russian media didn’t verify the claims, saying instead that pro-Russian forces had destroyed a series of saltpeter warehouses.
“People’s windows are blown out, but they are still happy … because this means that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are close,” Sergey Khlan, from the Kherson Regional Military Administration, said in the aftermath of the attack.
Monday’s strike marked at least the fourth time Ukrainian forces destroyed ammunition depots in Nova Kakhovka, local media reported.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Tatiana Rymarenko, Max Uzol and Yulia Drozd
(WASHINGTON) — The person whom former President Donald Trump was accused of having contacted following the Jan. 6 hearing when former administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified was a member of the White House support staff, sources told ABC News.
Trump’s alleged contact with the individual was described on Tuesday by the House Jan. 6 committee’s vice chair, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who did not name the person.
“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation — a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” she said at the close of the most recent committee hearing.
Cheney said the witness did not answer the call.
“Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she said.
“Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney added, as the committee continually warns against witness tampering in its ongoing investigation.
This person was not someone Trump would typically call. Many members of the support staff are those who work from administration to administration and would have not necessarily left when Trump left office.
When asked Tuesday night how he knew that the alleged phone call from Trump to a witness amounted to witness tampering, the committee chair, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, said “I don’t” and that’s why they alerted the DOJ.
CNN first reported the new details about the witness.
ABC News’ Libby Cathey contributed to this report.
(BUCHANAN COUNTY, Va.) — Three people remain unaccounted for in Buchanan County, Virginia, on Thursday after a severe storm struck the area, bringing heavy rain and flooding, officials said.
At the height of the flooding, 44 people were unaccounted for on Wednesday. Floodwaters are now receding, said authorities in Buchanan County, which sits at the borders of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
The declining number of unaccounted for is due to a combination of increased cellphone service and access to previously unreachable areas, Buchanan County Emergency Management Coordinator Bart Chambers told ABC News.
There are no reports of deaths or injuries, the sheriff’s office said.
The flooding came after 4 to 6 inches of rain pounded the area within hours Tuesday night. Some spots reported 3 inches of rain in just 90 minutes. A frontal system stalled over the region, which can produce copious amounts of rain in a very short period of time.
The damage spreads across about 10 miles, officials said, adding that the worst impact was downstream of where several streams join together.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has declared a state of emergency.
“I want Virginians in Buchanan County to know that we are making every resource available to help those impacted by this storm. As we continue to assess the situation, I want to thank our first responders and the personnel on the ground for providing assistance with our ongoing operations,” he said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will announce Wednesday his appointees to the President’s Cancer Panel, ABC News can exclusively reveal.
The Cancer Panel is part of Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which was relaunched in February, with a goal of slashing the national cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years.
Biden will appoint Dr. Elizabeth Jaffee, Dr. Mitchel Berger and Dr. Carol Brown to the panel, which will advise him and the White House on how to use resources of the federal government to advance cancer research and reduce the burden of cancer in the United States.
Jaffee, who will serve as chair of the panel, is an expert in cancer immunology and pancreatic cancer, according to the White House. She is currently the deputy director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University and previously led the American Association for Cancer Research.
Berger, a neurological surgeon, directs the University of California, San Francisco Brain Tumor Center and previously spent 23 years at the school as a professor of neurological surgery.
Brown, a gynecologic oncologist, is the senior vice president and chief health equity officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. According to the White House, much of her career has been focused on eliminating cancer care disparities due to racial, ethnic, cultural or socioeconomic factors.
Additionally, First Lady Jill Biden, members of the Cabinet and other administration officials are holding a meeting Wednesday of the Cancer Cabinet, made up of officials across several governmental departments and agencies, the White House said.
The Cabinet will introduce new members and discuss priorities in the battle against cancer including closing the screening gap, addressing potential environmental exposures, reducing the number of preventable cancer and expanding access to cancer research.
It is the second meeting of the cabinet since Biden relaunched the initiative in February, which he originally began in 2016 when he was vice president.
Both Jaffee and Berger were members of the Blue Ribbon Panel for the Cancer Moonshot Initiative led by Biden.
The initiative has personal meaning for Biden, whose son, Beau, died of glioblastoma — one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer — in 2015.
“I committed to this fight when I was vice president,” Biden said at the time, during an event at the White House announcing the relaunch. “It’s one of the reasons why, quite frankly, I ran for president. Let there be no doubt, now that I am president, this is a presidential, White House priority. Period.”
The initiative has several priority actions including diagnosing cancer sooner; preventing cancer; addressing inequities; and supporting patients, caregivers and survivors.
The White House has also issued a call to action to get cancer screenings back to pre-pandemic levels.
More than 9.5 million cancer screenings that would have taken place in 2020 were missed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“We have to get cancer screenings back on track and make sure they’re accessible to all Americans,” Biden said at the time.
Since the first meeting of the Cancer Cabinet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued more than $200 million in grants to cancer prevention programs, the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services implemented a new model to reduce the cost of cancer care, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it will fast-track applications for cancer immunotherapies.
ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Two months after a white teenager allegedly killed 10 Black people in what authorities described as a racially motivated mass shooting, the Buffalo, New York, supermarket where the massacre occurred is set to reopen.
The store will open to the public again on Friday following a prayer service and a moment of silence scheduled on Thursday afternoon to honor the victims, store workers and community members affected by the May shooting, Tops Friendly Markets said in a statement. Tops executives, along with community members, local dignitaries and other guests are expected to be on-hand Thursday, two months to the day of the shooting, and the company said the store “will quietly and respectfully reopen to the public,” in its statement.
Thursday’s ceremony is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m., marking the time the mass shooting began on May 14.
The store has undergone extensive renovations to repair the damage left by the mass shooting, in which the suspected gunman fired more than 60 shots from a high-powered, AR-15-style rifle, killing people inside and outside the Jefferson Avenue store and leaving three wounded.
The store was turned back over to Tops after investigators spent five days combing through it for evidence. FBI officials said investigators used state-of-the-art, scene-scanning tools, spherical and drone photography, conducted a bullet trajectory analysis of the shooting and reconstructed the shooting while the store was declared a crime scene.
During a May 19 news conference, Tops president John Persons promised the community that the store would “open it in a respectful manner for our associates, our employees and for the community at large.”
At the time, Persons said the renovations would include some way to memorialize the victims of the shooting.
“We have been committed to the city of Buffalo since our founding 60 years ago and this event doesn’t stop that commitment,” Persons said. “We will be here. We will be in this store.”
The market has served as a vital part of the east Buffalo neighborhood, local leaders said. In the predominantly Black neighborhood, which has struggled to thrive after years of historic segregation and divestment, residents said the area’s lone grocery store has been a central resource and gathering place providing access to fresh food and medicine. One Buffalo city councilman described the store to ABC News as “an oasis in the middle of a food desert.”
Investigators said the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, allegedly targeted the store after conducting reconnaissance on it for at least two months.
Gendron drove three hours from his home in Conklin, New York, a day before the shooting and allegedly spent time conducting a final reconnaissance on the store before allegedly committing the mass shooting on a Saturday afternoon.
Authorities allege Gendron stormed the store wielding a Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber rifle and dressed in military fatigues, body armor and wearing a tactical helmet with a camera attached. Gendron allegedly livestreamed the attack on the gaming website Twitch before the company took down the live feed two minutes into the shooting.
Among those killed was 55-year-old Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard at the supermarket. Authorities said Salter fired at the gunman, but the bullets had no effect due to the bulletproof vest the suspect wore.
Gendron was indicted on 25 counts, including 10 counts of first-degree murder, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three counts of attempted murder as a hate crime, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon. He is also the first person in New York history charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate, a crime enacted in November 2020.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.
Gendron has also been charged with 26 federal counts, including 10 counts of committing a hate crime resulting in death. He has yet to enter a plea to the federal charges.
Federal prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will seek the death penalty in the case.
(NEW YORK) — Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevailing theory was that if someone was infected with the virus, they were immune — at least for a while.
But a growing number of Americans seem to be contracting the virus more than once.
A recent ABC News analysis of state data found that, as of June 8, there have been more than 1.6 million reinfections across 24 states, but experts say the number is likely much higher.
“These are not the real numbers because many people are not reporting cases,” Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, told ABC News.
The latest variant, BA.5, has become the dominant strain in the U.S., making up more than 65% of all COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What’s more, studies have suggested that vaccines and previous infection do not offer as much protection against BA.5 compared to past variants.
However, there is little evidence to suggest that BA.5 causes more serious disease or is more deadly than previous variants.
Experts say the risk of reinfection has also increased due to the sheer number of Americans who’ve had a first infection and the dropping of mitigation measures, like mask-wearing, across the country.
Risk of reinfection was different pre-omicron
Before the omicron variant arrived in the U.S., experts said reinfection was far less likely.
“I would say that before the omicron variant, it was pretty rare for me to see reinfection,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News. “Sometimes we would see someone who appeared to have reinfection and we’d repeat the test and it turned out that the new test was a false positive.
“And PCR tests can stay positive for months so sometimes clinicians would say a patient had reinfection, but it was a persistent positive from their infection a few months earlier,” Doron said.
In fact, an April 2021 study from England published in The Lancet found that people with a previous history of COVID-19 infection were 84% less likely to be reinfected.
But that changed post-omicron. A March 2022 study from South Africa found an increased risk of reinfection with the emergence of omicron, BA.1, due to the variant’s “marked ability to evade immunity from prior infection.”
This has also rung true for the original omicron variant’s several offshoots, including BA.5.
“There are two things going for BA.5,” Mokdad said. “One is, it evades protection from vaccines and previous infection due to its mutation and it’s a super-spreader.”
“When you look at BA.5 specifically, your antibodies from BA.1 and BA.2 are not great at neutralizing BA.5,” Doron added.
However, she did point to a preprint study from researchers in Qatar, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggesting effectiveness from infection with pre-omicron strains was only about 15.1-28.3% effective against reinfection with omicron.
“I still believe from what I’ve seen that if you were infected with omicron — sure, you can get reinfected — but it’s much less likely you will” than if you were previously infected with delta, Doron said.
More people infected means higher chance of reinfection
Experts told ABC News the risk of reinfection hasn’t just risen because of the emergence of the BA.5 variant. It’s also because the total number of overall infections has increased.
In April, a CDC analysis estimated 58% of all Americans had antibodies indicating a prior COVID infection, meaning people never sickened by the virus are in the minority.
Doron said that by the nature of more people infected, especially two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, it means there will be more reinfections as well.
“In the pre-omicron era, the proportion of people who were infected is smaller than the proportion today, which is the majority of people,” Doron said. “As you increase the proportion of people who have been infected, you’re going to — by definition — increase the proportion of reinfections.”
People have changed their behaviors
Mokdad said another reason that the risk of reinfection is higher is because people’s behaviors have changed.
He said after the initial omicron wave in winter 2021-22, most Americans stopped wearing masks indoors and all states lifted their remaining mitigation measures.
The IHME, where Mokdad works, has tracked mask use over time and as of May 30, 2022 — the latest date for which data is available — found that just 18% of Americans say they always wear a mask in public. At the same time one year ago, that figure was 44%.
“Mask-wearing is the lowest since we started tracking it,” he said. “Even on planes, people don’t wear them. And now you have an invasive and an immune-escape variant and people not wearing a mask indoors.”
He said previous waves from different COVID strains — including alpha, delta and the original omicron variant — were likely mitigated due to a higher percentage of the public wearing masks in indoor spaces.
