(NEW YORK) — Three suspects have been arrested for allegedly throwing large landscaping rocks toward at least seven cars on Colorado roads last week, authorities said. The last of the seven incidents claimed the life of 20-year-old driver Alexa Bartell.
The suspects, all 18-year-old men, were taken into custody at their homes in Arvada overnight and are all facing charges of first-degree murder, with extreme indifference, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced. Additional charges are expected, authorities said.
It’s not clear which suspect or suspects — identified as Joseph Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak — were driving during the spree, authorities said.
Around 10:45 p.m. on April 19, Bartell was driving when someone threw a large rock through her windshield, hitting and killing her, the sheriff’s office said.
In the hour before Bartell was killed, six other cars in the area had rocks thrown at them, according to the sheriff’s office. In two of those incidents, the drivers suffered minor injuries.
Nathan Tipton, a Lyft and Uber driver, was one of the four uninjured victims.
“When I found out that this series of events actually took a young lady’s life, I feel for Alexa and her family. It put me in a bit of a shock. My wife, it really got to her,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“Nobody should lose their child for a random act. … It’s heartbreaking,” said Tipton, a dad of three.
The sheriff’s office said phone forensics and information from the public helped lead to the arrests.
(NEW YORK) — At a movie theatre in central Moscow this month, people had come to watch an illicit film. It wasn’t a documentary about the war in Ukraine or political persecution under Vladimir Putin’s regime; it was Avatar: Way of Water.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Russian cinemas were supposed to have been left without most of the Hollywood blockbusters that had been the core of the country’s movie fare pre-war.
Within the first month of the war, the U.S.’ major movie studios announced they were pausing theatrical releases of their new movies in Russia, as Western governments imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. Disney which produced the new Avatar, said it was doing so in response to “unprovoked invasion and tragic humanitarian crisis.” Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony Pictures, and Universal also stopped their releases.
But more than a year on, most major U.S. blockbusters are widely available in Russian movie theaters, which are circumventing the defacto boycott by illegally screening high quality pirated copies. With authorities doing little to stop and at times even encouraging the practice, it means Russian movie-goers are still able to watch most of the same movies as the rest of the world.
The theaters showing them are not underground pirate cinemas, but the country’s largest chains. Showings of Avatar: Way of Water, the second film in James Cameron’s Avatar series, were easy to find in theatres in Moscow and across Russia. As is the newly released live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. The versions shown are not shaky videos filmed from inside theaters but full-quality copies, including in 3D.
At the Kinomax cinema in Moscow’s Riga Mall, the scheme for showing Avatar: Way of Water was simple. Customers buy a ticket nominally for a different, Russian film, but that also includes a “preview” screening. In this case, the “preview” was the over three-hour Avatar sequel.
“It’s like you buy a ticket to one movie, and you’re getting another,” said Nikita, who came to watch the film and like most people ABC News spoke with at the cinema gave only their first name. “It’s a somewhat surprising situation but what can you do.”
Most outside the cinema also shrugged at the irregular showing, saying they were glad they still had the chance to watch foreign movies.
“We live in Russia. Nothing ever bothers us,” said Maria. “So, we have to look for some loopholes, tricks.”
The practice of presenting Avatar and other Hollywood films as “previews” is widespread in Russian theaters. The reason is an attempt to avoid fines under Russian laws, which still prohibit it.
To be released in cinemas, movies require a distribution certificate from the Russian ministry of culture. But by listing a licensed Russian film as the main billing with the Avatar “preview” tagged on, cinemas can write down the screening as legitimate, according to the Russian state newspaper Izvestia. An upshot of that is the little known Russian films are assigned the massive viewing figures and takings that in fact come from Avatar.
In reality, by showing Avatar as a preview, cinemas are still violating the culture ministry regulations, which carry a fine of roughly $1,200 to $2,450, according to Izvestia. But because of the high takings from films like it, many companies prefer just to risk the fine, the newspaper wrote, citing industry sources. And in any case, the ministry is hardly enforcing the rules, Izvestia wrote.
Russian authorities have done little to stop the screenings. In fact, former president, Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally and now deputy head of Russia’s security council, encouraged Russians to illegally download Western films and series no longer released in the country.
“Find the right pirates and download them,” Medvedev told Russian news agencies in March. “If they’ve left us, all these ‘Netflix’ and so on, it means we will download it all, we will use it for free. And I would that it was spread all round the internet, so as to cause them maximum losses. So that they go bankrupt.”
State television has also told people openly about the opportunity to watch the movies as previews in cinemas.
The Walt Disney Company declined to comment on the screenings of its movies in Russia. (Disney is the parent company of ABC News).
The studio boycott was initially catastrophic for Russia’s cinema industry. Movies released by Sony, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros accounted for 80% of the Russian market pre-war, according to a leading Russian industry magazine. Too few major domestically produced Russian features are made to fill the gap.
The Russian cinema industry has lobbied the government to legalize the unlicensed screenings and Russia’s parliament has moved towards doing so. The parliament now is reportedly close to completing a bill that would allow Russian companies to license films, series and music against the wishes of owners from “unfriendly countries,” which includes most Western countries. The bill would give Russian courts the right to re-assign the licenses to Russian companies in certain circumstances, according to the business paper, Vedomosti.
Some experts warn that would violate international trade agreements Russia is party to.
Movies are just one area where Russia is trying to adapt to its new isolation. Kremlin friendly businessmen bought some high-profile western brands and reopened them under new names: McDonalds’ is now “Tasty. Full Stop”; Starbucks has been reopened as “Stars”. Products from most well-known brands are still widely available via the gray market, imported by resellers from countries like Turkey or Kazakhstan.
Only a small percentage of the hundreds of foreign companies that announced they were leaving Russia have done so. The Kremlin has used hardball tactics to try to block the exit, creating bureaucratic hurdles that have made the process to leave complicated and expensive. Companies have to receive permission from a government commission to exit the market, selling at a below market price and now must make a direct donation from the sale to the Russian state.
Some companies decided to continue operating, but many are currently trapped, struggling to complete the exit process. The Kyiv School of Economics, which has been tracking over 3,100 foreign companies in Russia through its Leave Russia project, says only 216 have fully exited and 474 have announced a decision to leave.
“There were so many announcements when the war started by companies that they were going to leave. But in practical terms, it turned out to be very difficult unless you were prepared to just leave your business,” Tatiana Orlova, a lead economist at Oxford Economics told ABC.
(NEW YORK) — Active shooter incidents in the United States in 2022 decreased, while the number of people shot increased, according to statistics released by the FBI on Wednesday.
The FBI, which defines an active shooter as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” noted that it is not an all-encompassing gun report. Incidents related to self-defense, gang violence, drug violence, domestic disputes, hostage situations or other criminal acts were excluded, according to the bureau.
“While we see a decrease from 2021 to 2022, we see over time over the past 20 years since we’ve been reporting on active shooter incidents and certainly in the last five years, there’s been an overall increase in this number,” an FBI official told reporters on a call Tuesday.
Statistics released by the FBI on Wednesday show that in 2022, there were 18% fewer active shooter incidents than in 2021, but the number of casualties rose from 243 to 313. The number of people killed, however, decreased by three.
The rate of wounded law enforcement officers jumped dramatically, jumping from five in 2021 to 21 in 2022, according to statistics.
The month of May saw the highest number of incidents at nine, while Sunday was the day on which the most shootings were carried out.
The deadliest incident in 2022 was the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvdale, Texas — and the largest number of incidents occurred in Texas. The July 4th shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, saw the most injuries, with 55 people wounded when a shooter opened fire on a parade.
Nearly half of the incidents occurred in open spaces, like the Independence Day parade, while 14 took place at a business and four took place at a school.
All but three of the 50 shooters were male, the youngest was 15 and the oldest was 70, according to the report. In nearly 50% of the incidents, shooters had a connection to the target of the shooting, whether it be the physical location or someone inside, the bureau said.
In 50 incidents, 61 firearms were used — 29 of them handguns, 26 rifles, three shotguns and three unknown.
(NEW YORK) — Mohamed Ahmed went back to Sudan for the first time in 13 years for his father’s funeral earlier this month. He was scheduled to come back to his family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on April 19 — but clashes between Sudan’s warring parties left him stranded and unable to immediately return.
His wife Jacy Ahmed said she’s anxious to see her husband again, as he’s now en route home via a 50-hour journey back to the U.S.
The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted on April 15. More than 420 people have been killed and 3,700 people injured, the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office said Sunday.
Jacy Ahmed recalled when Mohamed told her that morning that he wouldn’t be coming home to his family when planned.
“He said, ‘Honey war broke out,'” she told ABC News. “‘I might have to stay in this country a little bit longer.’ And I just I flipped, I flipped out.”
She said they were able to communicate despite weak internet in Mohamed’s area.
“We typically speak daily or at least text,” Jacy Ahmed said.
Her husband had been staying in Omdurman, Sudan, with family, she said.
The couple met at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, where Mohamed was learning English and Jacy was an adjunct, she said. Mohamed came to the United States as an immigration lottery selection, she continued, and they both spent a lot of time together before marrying. The couple is just months away from their nine-year anniversary; they run a local cleaning service and have three daughters who are 6, 10 and 13 years old.
“They would just say, ‘When is he going to be back; and he would say, ‘Well, soon we’re working on it soon,'” Jacy Ahmed said.
Mohamed Ahmed had a scary encounter when he was on the phone with Jacy and an aircraft was heard flying over the house in Omdurman, she said.
Jacy Ahmed said she could hear how loud it was, and her husband said it was causing the house to shake and doors to open.
“That was pretty scary,” Jacy Ahmed said, recalling when he told her.
Shortly after, Mohamed Ahmed planned a way home.
In order to leave Sudan, he’s taking an alternate route: A 40-hour bus from Omdurman to Aswan, Egypt; an 11-hour train ride to Cairo, and then a flight to Chicago, which is a three-hour, 40-minute drive from Iowa.
He waited hours for the bus in Omdurman on Sunday and, according to Jacy Ahmed, the ticket prices increased from $500 to $2,000.
“Every time a new bus comes, they raise it,” she said of the ticket prices. “It’s horrible.”
Jacy Ahmed said she couldn’t reach her husband after finding out about the increasing prices, and he didn’t have enough to pay for the ride. But Jacy Ahmed said a stranger miraculously lent him the rest of the money needed to board after explaining to the person who he was.
Minutes before speaking to ABC News on Tuesday, Jacy Ahmed received a text from her husband saying he’s reached Egypt as he continues his long journey home.
When asked what she will do when she first sees her husband again, Jacy Ahmed said she will run and jump at him.
(NEW YORK) — Communities in California are bracing for substantial flooding as near-record high temperatures threaten to melt record amounts of heavy snowpack.
Surface levels in bodies of water all over California are the highest they have been in decades since the start of the mega drought due to several rounds of atmospheric rivers that walloped the West Coast during the wet season.
The influx of rainfall has already saturated reservoirs and rivers, but a rampant rise in temperatures will quickly melt the incredible amount of snowpack that accumulated along the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
As many of the reservoirs are at capacity, the melting will have no where to go, experts say.
There is 221% more snowpack than average in some areas in California, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources. The National Weather Service has forecast spring inflow to be 90% of the average in several waterways in California.
In the San Joaquin Valley, heavy thawing is expected to start Wednesday and will rapidly increase over the next seven to 10 days, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Monday during the “office hours” session he streams on YouTube.
Several rivers are already at high surface levels and will likely exceed the flood stage this week, Swain said. There is particular concern for the level of inundation in the Tulare Lake Basin, which is already overflowing.
“There problem is, again, there’s no where else for this water to go in the Tulare Lake Basin,” Swain said. “It’s just going to fill up like a bathtub.
Days before the substantial warming began on Wednesday. thousands of acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley were under several feet of water, with farmers racing to install new levees.
“The big melt is here,” Swain said.
By Friday, temperatures are expected to reach record highs from California to Washington, with temperatures near Sacramento reaching 92 degrees and 105 degrees in Palm Springs by the start of the weekend. The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada from Thursday into Monday in anticipation of the rapid melting.
As the heat wave continues, temperatures are expected to stay warm even at night.
A cooldown is expected in early to mid-May, so there may not be a sustained period of above average temperatures, Swain said. However, once the heat is ignited this week, the region will continue to head toward rising temperatures through the summer, he added.
Earlier this month, the Department of Water Resources advised those living in snow melt areas to take steps to prepare for heavy flooding.
“Be aware of your flood risks, know where you’re headed, know where your house or your business sits within or around potential for flooding,” DWR officials said.
(WASHINGTON) — The United States on Wednesday will announce steps designed to deter North Korea from launching a nuclear attack on South Korea, according to Biden administration officials.
The commitments, which the officials said will be called the “Washington Declaration,” coincide with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to Washington, D.C. as U.S. President Joe Biden will host Yoon for a bilateral meeting and a state dinner at the White House on Wednesday.
The U.S. plans to “to make our deterrence more visible, through the regular deployment of strategic assets,” an official said. The steps include a visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine to South Korea for the first time in four decades; the strengthening of joint U.S.-South Korean military training and simulations; and creating a “Nuclear Consultative Group,” defined as “a regular bilateral consultation mechanism that will focus on nuclear and strategic planning issues,” according to the official.
Meanwhile, South Korea will pledge to not go nuclear, the officials said. This comes amid growing calls from the South Korean public for the country to have nuclear capabilities of its own.
In addition to commitments on nuclear deterrence, the U.S. and South Korea on Wednesday will highlight their security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region; the need for diplomacy to address North Korea’s “profoundly destabilizing” rhetoric and actions; Seoul’s improved relations with Japan; their support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion; substantial South Korean investment in the U.S.; educational initiatives; cultural connections; and cooperation on issues regarding green technology, according to the officials.
The two countries will also announce a new student exchange program that will increase the number of Korean students coming to the U.S. and Americans studying abroad in South Korea, an official said, as well as a new volunteer initiative and an executive training program in technology for mid-career professionals.
(BENTONVILLE, Ark.) — Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who says his party should not be looking in the rearview mirror, is taking a little bit of a look back this week as he formally kicks off his campaign for the White House on Wednesday from his hometown.
“It’s really exciting to have it in Bentonville,” Hutchinson said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday. “First of all, it reflects me.”
It was 37 years ago, outside the same county courthouse where Hutchinson had tried his earliest cases as an attorney, that he announced his first campaign for statewide office. It’s where, in the 1970s, he put in the town’s first FM radio station, and where the now 72-year-old raised his four children.
To mark the campaign kickoff, Hutchinson has sprinkled bits of his heritage in the program.
A marching band from Springdale High School, Hutchinson’s alma mater, will supply music, while cheerleaders from Gravette, a small town where he went to grade school, will provide extra pep. His wife of 50 years, Susan, is expected to introduce him.
“It reflects the rural roots that are a part of me,” Hutchinson said. “The other part of the story, about Bentonville, is that it tells the story of America, from entrepreneurs that didn’t rely upon the government.”
Naming Sam Walton, Don Tyson and J.B. Hunt, Hutchinson recalled an era that was “just simply America, and now you see the growth, but you still have the same small-town values that made it special.”
Attendees on the town square, and those watching Hutchinson take on a national stage, can expect him to talk more about his background, but he’s also promised new policy initiatives.
Don’t expect to hear ‘Trump’
While Hutchinson has cast himself as a Republican foil to former President Donald Trump, even calling for Trump to drop out of the race following his indictment, don’t expect to hear the name “Trump” in his speech.
A source familiar said to expect, instead, a focus on looking forward — as opposed to leaders on both sides looking in the rearview mirror.
“It was a very backward look that Joe Biden gave in his announcement,” Hutchinson said Tuesday, reacting to President Joe Biden’s video announcing his reelection campaign. “It was more about the past and 2020, and I was disappointed there wasn’t more of a forward-looking.”
“We don’t need a replay of 2020. We don’t need a Biden-Trump contest again. It didn’t look pretty in 2020. It will look even worse in 2024. We’ve seen that movie. We don’t need to see it again,” he added. “That’s why President Biden is really focusing on Trump because he would love to have a replay of that.”
For Hutchinson, looking ahead includes a trip to Washington this weekend for the White House Correspondents Dinner before returning to Iowa for several small-scale campaign events.
The race for enthusiasm
Hutchinson made his 2024 bid official earlier this month in an exclusive sit-down interview with ABC This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl — but Wednesday marks his formal launch with supporters in his home state.
The term-limited governor was succeeded after eight years by former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Hutchinson’s campaign pointed out that all three of his Republican predecessors had Democrats succeed them in office, until him.
That executive experience bookended decades of public service including three consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving in the George W. Bush administration as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and later as the nation’s first Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Border Protection.
But his career in public service began in Bentonville, as a city attorney, before President Ronald Reagan appointed him as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas in 1982. He was the youngest U.S. attorney in the nation at the time and notably, prosecuted a white supremacist militia group, the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord.
In his interview with Karl, Hutchinson acknowledged it would take “a lot of hard work and good messaging” to raise his national profile and break through a crowded field.
He’s currently polling in the single digits, well behind some of his other official competitors in the race — Trump, former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — and some thought to be running like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But Hutchinson isn’t fazed by what may be a brutal primary season. He feels called to serve.
“I think the Republican base will see that our best chance of moving forward with conservative principles is through new ideas and new leadership,” he said. “That’s what’s beautiful about our democracy is that you can go retail politics, you can do policy, and that’s what wins votes.”
(NEW YORK) — Family members of two U.S. citizens who were trapped in Sudan and had to endure major obstacles to leave the country are grateful they’re now in Egypt.
Imad, a Bay area resident who asked ABC News not to disclose his full name, said his parents Ahmed, 74, and Nafisa, 66, who are dual U.S.-Sudanese citizens, were in the country for the last few months trying to sell a property before retiring fully in America.
On Tuesday evening, Imad told ABC News his parents just crossed the Egyptian border and are out of Sudan.
Imad said last week he spoke to his father after he was missing for a few hours, when the fighting was getting more ferocious in a mall in Khartoum.
“He had to quickly find the escape plan,” Imad told ABC News.
Ahmed was able to stay in a hotel for two days while Nafisa hid in another part of the city, according to Imad.
“So when we speak to him on the phone, you would hear the bombs going off[ and] you would hear the heavy artillery,” Imad said, adding that he and his family felt helpless trying to help their parents thousands of miles away.
“I don’t think anyone would imagine their parents in a war zone and out of nowhere,” he said.
Imad’s family told Ahmed to make a run for it before the fighting got worse, and through the help of some other family members and other Sudanese families, made it to a borough north of the country.
After two days of hiding in the burrow, in territory controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, Ahmed walked for more than three hours to reunite with Nafisa, according to Imad.
“It was over 100 [degrees]. He got stopped a couple of times [at] checkpoints along the way. The RSF stopped them but he was able to cross the bridge… and safely make it to my mom in one piece,” Imad said.
The National Security Council has urged Americans stuck in Sudan to stay in place and diplomats were evacuated out of the country over the weekend.
“They don’t have any food. They just had to make a run for it,” Imad said.
(NEW YORK) — What happens when a social media company succeeds at building a community, then threatens to destroy what its users spent years building?
Devoted users of TikTok face that very question, as the app faces bipartisan criticism and a potential ban stemming from its political and national security issues.
Having built niche followings on the short-form video site, content creators told ABC News that their communities might be unable to migrate to another platform if TikTok were banned, shattering the rare progress of a social media company accomplishing part of their community-building mission.
“If we lose this, I lose a very large community,” Rayne Loucks told ABC News.
With about 52,000 followers for his account @StarTrekGuy, Loucks is a part of the Star Trek community on the platform, though he is far from the archetype of a TikTok influencer. Lacking the hallmarks of TikTok — millions of followers, lucrative brand deals, prolific dance videos — Loucks posts in his spare time between working as an assistant teacher and delivering food for Pizza Hut.
“An important thing to know about me is that I am autistic. I do not have very many friends in real life,” he said. “Most of my friends are there, so I would be devastated.”
Though the timeline and potential for a nationwide ban of the platform are uncertain, the threat of a ban lingers for creators like Loucks, who worries he would lose his community, friends and support system that has allowed him to come out of his “shell.”
As TikTok grew to have over 200 million downloads in the United States, its initial success was primarily built on viral videos created by the slim minority of app users. More similar to YouTube than platforms like Facebook and Instagram, users grew accustomed to a steady feed of targeted content, according to Ted Murphy, the founder and CEO of social media marketing firm IZEA.
“The majority of people are there to be entertained, and they’re not being entertained necessarily by their cousin or their co-worker,” he told ABC News. “They’re being entertained by other people who are producing content that they’re interested in.”
Rick Mason, who posts to his 9,000 followers with the username @randomgotham, described that he initially thought the platform was “just a bunch of dancing videos” that didn’t appeal to him. Jimmy Shoffman, with about 1,000 followers for his account @TREKNOPOD, shared that initial view of the app. Another user Mary Faulds, who posts to her 15,000 followers under the username @flutemusik, told ABC News that she joined the platform to embarrass her kids.
As dance videos made normal teenagers into megastars, TikTok also began to foster niche communities with devoted content creators making videos for smaller, albeit committed, viewers.
All four creators eventually gravitated toward theStar Trek community on the platform, where they found a strong group of friends and collaborators.
“Star Trek is about people coming together from many different backgrounds and finding a sense of self, a sense of family, community, a place where you can be accepted and be yourself,” Mason said. “And I think that’s pretty much how I feel about the people I meet online. They really have become my family.”
Faulds, 33, added that finding friends in her small town of Galion, Ohio, a community she shares with her ex-husband, can be difficult.
“People will say, ‘Oh, I like Star Trek,’ but then when you start talking about like cosplay and conventions and stuff, suddenly you’re just a little too weird,” she told ABC News. “And I found people on TikTok who did not think that I was too weird.”
They attribute the company’s success to the platform’s approach to curating content on a “For You” page, which aggregates videos the platform believes users prefer based on their scrolling patterns and likes. The app also pushes users into niche communities, such as TrekTok, DatingTok, or PowerToolsTok.
“It’s like going to a party where you don’t know anybody,” Mason said to describe the way TikTok curates content. “I feel like TikTok tends to be like [the] host who tends to say, ‘Hey, so and so likes this, you guys should talk.'”
Despite these redeeming qualities, TikTok and its parent company ByteDance appear constantly embroiled in controversies, with critics accusing the company of giving Chinese government officials access to sensitive user data, including the specific profile that TikTok uses to curate its successful and individualized “For You” page.
“I don’t think that spying is the right way to describe it,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told members of Congress when asked if his company spies on US users.
ByteDance has denied this allegation multiple times, yet the company faces a ban in Montana and a threat of a federal prohibition.
Despite the national security risk articulated by politicians and federal law enforcement officials, some users see the risk as menial compared to other social media platforms.
“Google steals our data, Facebook steals our data,” Loucks noted. “Stealing data is the price of having a free online. I am willing to pay that price.”
Other users recognized that a foreign company might collect their data. Still, they opted to accept that risk considering the benefits that the platform brings to their lives — not just enjoying videos, but the feeling of finding a community at a time of overwhelming loneliness. Research from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education found that Americans’ mental health during the pandemic suggests that 36 percent of Americans, including 61 percent of young adults, experience serious loneliness.
“All of the sudden, I had friends, and it’s really difficult where I am to make friends,” Faulds said of the niche community on the platform.
However, the political headwinds TikTok faces in the U.S. threaten to damage or remove that community and others. Other platforms like YouTube and Instagram have embraced the short-form video platform that drove TikTok’s growth, but some users expressed doubt if the community they built could successfully migrate.
“A TikTok ban would result in me really feeling isolated because the community is so close,” Faulds added. “The loneliness would be real, whether or not they are ‘just virtual friends.'”
(NEW YORK) — One of at least seven victims of rock-throwing incidents in Colorado, the last of which took the life of a 20-year-old woman, is sharing his story.
Nathan Tipton, a Lyft and Uber driver, had just finished driving a customer when, around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, he was driving southbound on Highway 93 and heard what “sounded like a shotgun blast,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The sound “scared the heck out of me,” Tipton said.
He pulled over, but then “thought it was just wind damage, so I continued on home,” Tipton said.
As Tipton drove, he said he spoke on the phone to his wife, and she mentioned that the news was reporting that a woman was killed by a rock that struck her car.
Tipton then took a closer look at the driver’s side sliding glass door of his Chrysler minivan and said he saw “both those windows got shattered out — from what I imagine was a rock hitting my window.”
Tipton said he reported it to police and officers responded and took photos.
Tipton said no one was on the side of the road at the time his car was struck and he believes the object was thrown from a car driving in the other direction.
“When I found out that this series of events actually took a young lady’s life, I feel for Alexa and her family. It put me in a bit of a shock. My wife, it really got to her,” he said.
“Nobody should lose their child for a random act. … It’s heartbreaking,” said Tipton, a dad of three.
About 30 minutes after Tipton’s car was struck, around 10:45 p.m., 20-year-old Alexa Bartell was driving when someone threw a large rock through her windshield, hitting and killing her, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
In the hour before Bartell was killed, six other cars in the area had rocks thrown at them, according to the sheriff’s office. In two of those incidents the drivers suffered minor injuries.
Tipton said he’s grateful that he didn’t have an Uber or Lyft customer in his car at the time his minivan was hit.
To the suspect or suspects, Tipton said his message is: “Grow up … turn yourself in. Give this family some closure on what happened to their daughter. They didn’t deserve to have their daughter taken away from them.”
“I hope Alexa and her family can get some type of justice,” he added.
The suspect’s car may have been a light-colored pickup truck or SUV, the sheriff’s office said. A $17,000 reward has been offered, according to the sheriff’s office.
Anyone with possible information is asked to call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-STOP (7867).
