Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The 18-year-old suspect accused of shooting 13 people, 10 fatally, in what authorities described as a racially-motivated rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket is scheduled to appear in court Thursday for a felony hearing.
The suspect, Payton Gendron, was initially charged with one count of murder following Saturday afternoon’s massacre at a Tops Friendly Market in which police officials alleged he intentionally targeted Black people in the attack he planned for months. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered to be held without bail.
Gendron is expected to face additional murder and attempted murder counts and state hate crime charges as early as Thursday. The FBI is also conducting a parallel investigation, which the Department of Justice said could lead to federal hate crime charges.
During a visit to Buffalo on Tuesday, President Joe Biden called the mass shooting an act of “domestic terrorism.”
All 10 of the people killed in the attack were Black, six women and four men. Three other people were wounded in the shooting, including one Black victim and two white victims.
Gendron is scheduled to appear in Buffalo City Court at 9:30 a.m. EST.
Investigators said Gendron drove three hours from his home in Conklin, New York, and alleged he spent Friday conducting a final reconnaissance on the store before committing the mass shooting Saturday afternoon.
Authorities allege Gendron was wielding an AR-15-style rifle, dressed in military fatigues, body armor and wearing a tactical helmet with a camera attached when he stormed the store around 2:30 p.m., shooting four people outside the business and nine others inside. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said the suspect fired a barrage of 50 shots during the rampage.
Police said 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.
Buffalo police officers arrived at the store one minute after getting the first calls of an active shooter and confronted the suspect, who responded by placing the barrel of the rifle to his chin and threatening to kill himself, according to Gramaglia. He said the officers de-escalated the situation and talked Gendron into surrendering.
(WASHINGTON) — With much of the Biden administration’s attention this year focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden turns his attention to Asia Thursday as he embarks on a visit to South Korea and Japan — a trip that the White House says “comes at a pivotal moment” for his foreign policy agenda.
The trip will mark the president’s first trip to the region since taking office and will feature a heavy focus on North Korea and China. While the president campaigned heavily on making China a main focus of his foreign policy, the war in Ukraine has occupied Biden’s foreign agenda of late.
While the White House may hope that the trip shows that the president has not taken his eye off the challenge China poses, Ukraine will still loom large over the trip.
“President Biden has rallied the free world in defense of Ukraine and in opposition to Russian aggression,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday. “He remains focused on ensuring that our efforts in those missions are successful, but he also intends to seize this moment, this pivotal moment, to assert bold and confident American leadership in another vital region of the world — the Indo-Pacific.”
Biden will begin his journey in Seoul and wrap the visit in Tokyo. Sullivan said this will be an “opportunity to reaffirm and reinforce two vital security alliances” and to “deepen two vibrant economic partnerships.”
“The message we’re trying to send on this trip is a message of an affirmative vision of what the world can look like if the democracies and open societies of the world stand together to shape the rules of the road, to define the security architecture of the region, to reinforce strong, powerful, historic alliances, and we think putting that on display over four days bilaterally with the ROK and Japan, through the Quad, through the Indo-Pacific economic framework, it will send a powerful message. We think that message will be heard everywhere,” he said.
Asked to what extent is the message of this trip a cautionary tale delivered to China and their aggression towards Taiwan, Sullivan said the message “will be heard in Beijing, but it is not a negative message, and it’s not targeted at any one country.”
While in South Korea, President Biden is expected to meet with President Yoon Seok-youl, “engage with technology and manufacturing leaders” who are “mobilizing billions of dollars in investment here in the United States,” and he will visit American and South Korean troops who are “standing shoulder-to-shoulder in defense” of threats posed by North Korea, Sullivan said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will not be visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) this trip. He visited the area as vice president in 2013 and while serving in the Senate.
Sullivan, though, continued to repeat that U.S. intelligence continues to show that North Korean leader Kim Jon Un, who ramped up missile launches in 2002, could launch a long-range missile test, nuclear test, or both in the days leading into, on, or after the president’s trip to the region.
“We are preparing for all contingencies, including the possibility that such a provocation would occur while we are in Korea or in Japan,” Sullivan told reporters.
He said that the U.S. is coordinating with allies in South Korea and Japan, as well as counterparts in China.
“We are prepared obviously to make both short and longer-term adjustments to our military posture as necessary to ensure that we are providing both defense and deterrence to our allies in the region and then we’re responding to any North Korean provocation,” Sullivan said.
In Japan, Biden will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to discuss economic relations and global security issues, including North Korea, and they will launch a new economic initiative for the region.
“The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, IPEF, as we affectionately call it, is a 21st century economic arrangement, a new model designed to tackle new economic challenges,” Sullivan said. “From setting the rules of the digital economy, to ensuring secure and resilient supply chains, to managing the energy transition, to investing in clean modern high standards infrastructure.”
And while in Tokyo, Biden will also participate in a second in-person Quad summit with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan. They last met in September at the White House.
(WASHINGTON) — Many across the country — and certainly former President Donald Trump — are watching Pennsylvania.
Ballots are still being counted in the GOP Senate primary race, where razor-thin margins separate hedge fund manager David McCormick and celebrity TV Dr. Mehmet Oz. Meanwhile, a late Trump endorsement in the Republican gubernatorial primary helped boost election denier and state Sen. Doug Mastriano to a win. Both races offer insight — and raise tough questions — about the conservative electorate in the Keystone State.
As of Wednesday afternoon, with 98% of votes counted, both McCormick and Oz had roughly 31% — separated by just about 2,000 votes. Pennsylvania law triggers a recount if a candidate’s margin of victory is 0.5% or less, as seems all but certain.
Here’s what happening in the Senate contest and what to know about the gubernatorial win.
What’s next for Oz and McCormick?
Only about 2% of ballots in the GOP Senate primary remain to be counted. But in a squeaker like this, those 2% are key.
Many counties in Pennsylvania don’t start counting mail-in ballots until Election Day, so there are still enough outstanding votes across the state’s 67 counties to be tabulated and counted that a result cannot yet be projected.
Raising another issue, in Lancaster County, “about 22,000 mail ballots were printed by the print vendor with the incorrect code and could not be read by the county’s scanners,” the secretary of state’s office told ABC News on Tuesday night. County election officials were in the process of re-marking and scanning the ballots by hand, which will likely take a few days.
If the margin demands a recount when all votes are in, the secretary of state will initiate that process.
Trump, taking a page out of his own playbook and refusing to wait for every vote to be counted, on Wednesday publicly urged Oz to “declare victory.” Trump continued to sow doubt in the election results to come, using his social media app, Truth Social, to again attack mail-in ballots.
Republicans have been reluctant to rely on that voting method in the last two years — repeatedly criticizing and undercutting an option that millions of Americans relied on at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite any evidence of widespread fraud. But a key race still counting them is forcing patience within the party.
The combination of mail-in ballots trailing in and printing errors is, in part, what’s causing the delayed result on the McCormick-Oz contest. But another factor was the ascendance of far-right conservative commentator Kathy Barnette — over Trump’s objections.
Barnette — who was at Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and was seen walking with others to the U.S. Capitol before the deadly rioting (in which she has denied participating) — saw a surge in support in the last few weeks and appeared to split votes among Trump’s base and away from Oz and McCormick. As of Wednesday afternoon, she had about 25% of the votes compared to the others’ 31% each, highlighting how unusually fractured GOP primary voters were.
In the days leading up to the primary, Trump came after Barnette, saying that she would not be able to win the general election against the Democratic nominee (who ended up being Lt. Gov. John Fetterman). He also swiped at her background, saying that “she has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted.” Barnette told NBC News Trump had to say that because “he’s going to stick with that endorsement.”
But during Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, intended to bolster Oz, voters on the ground expressed skepticism, citing Oz’s changing stances on COVID vaccines, abortion access and the Second Amendment. Instead, many told ABC News, they would prefer Barnette, calling her a true conservative.
“MAGA [“Make America Great Again”] does not belong to President Trump,” Barnette said at a debate last month. “MAGA — although he coined the word — MAGA is actually, it belongs to the people.”
Without Barnette’s success, it’s likely that either McCormick or Oz would have more decisively won the race, avoiding the potential for a recall while Republicans would prefer to be able to turn toward the upcoming general against Fetterman.
The Senate seat that Oz and McCormick are vying for is currently held by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. It would be a significant loss to the GOP — and a critical gain for Democrats who hope to maintain their slim control in the 50-50 Senate.
Trump announced his endorsement of Oz in April, citing the latter’s popularity and past compliments on Trump’s health. He argued that Oz would be the one most likely able to win in November’s midterms. But McCormick, the hedge fund owner from Connecticut endorsed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and whose wife worked in the Trump administration, drew many votes even without Trump’s coveted support.
In a call with ABC News on Tuesday, McCormick struck a delicate balance of complimenting Trump while arguing his endorsement didn’t matter in the race.
Both McCormick and Oz spoke at their respective election night parties and acknowledged that their race was too close to call.
“We’re not going to have resolution tonight, but we can see the path ahead,” McCormick said.
Oz, appearing minutes after, first thanked Trump for his endorsement and then Fox News host Sean Hannity for his “behind-the-scenes” advice.
“We’re not going to have a result tonight. When all the votes are tallied, I am confident we will win,” Oz said.
Whoever wins the Republican primary will face Fetterman, who has campaigned with a distinctly blue-collar bent and an everyman affect — tall, bald and tattooed, more often in a shirt and shorts than a suit. He soared to a wide victory in the Democratic race over the more moderate Rep. Conor Lamb, even as he underwent surgery on primary day to get a pacemaker with defibrillator after he suffered a stroke last Friday. His campaign said Tuesday that the procedure was successful and he was recovering in the hospital.
Trump vaults Mastriano to victory, with a Democratic assist
Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial primary shifted dramatically in the final days of the election after Trump interjected and endorsed Doug Mastriano, who had attracted conservative grassroots support for his efforts to try to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential result. Mastriano’s win has raised concerns about the state’s future election integrity, since Pennsylvania’s governor appoints the secretary of state, the chief officer in charge with overseeing elections.
The state senator and retired Army colonel organized buses to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 and was seen on camera walking past barricades at the Capitol ahead of the rioting later that day. The House’s Jan. 6 committee has subpoenaed him, given that he was in communication with Trump, but neither he nor the committee has confirmed whether he complied with the order. He has denied participating in any violence.
Establishment Republicans worried about Mastriano getting the nomination, given how his baseless claims about the 2020 election might play with the wider electorate. Two GOP candidates in the governor’s race, Melissa Hart and Jake Corman, dropped out in the last stretch in an effort to consolidate votes around Rep. Lou Barletta instead of Mastriano.
Democrats, however, hoped for Mastriano’s win, believing him easier to beat in November.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination, branded Mastriano as Trump’s pick so that he could stand out from the GOP crowd. But Republican political strategist Amanda Carpenter, who condemned Mastriano as “an insurrectionist” in a column for the website The Bulwark, also said his win should provide a lesson to Democrats, especially those who wanted Trump to face Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election for similar reasons.
“Hoping that Democrats will solve the problems of the Republican party has been a grave mistake. It’s not often countries get second chances,” she wrote. “But if the GOP now gets behind insurrectionists like Mastriano, it’s January 6th forever.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie, Oren Oppenheim and Alisa Wiersema ontributed to this report.
Libby March for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — On the east side of Buffalo, New York, community is the neighborhood’s greatest asset and the local Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Ave. serves as a vital hub, according to area leaders.
In this predominantly Black community, which has struggled to thrive after years of historic segregation and divestment, residents say the area’s lone grocery store is a central resource and gathering place providing access to fresh food and medicine.
“We don’t got the YMCA no more in the community, so Tops is it for us,” Jeffrey Watkins, a 64-year-old long-time resident of East Buffalo, told ABC News’ “Nightline.” “It’s like a community center. We meet there every day. We’re in Tops every single day. That’s where we live.”
But on Saturday, May 14, all of that changed when an 18-year-old white male allegedly opened fire in what authorities say was a racially motivated attack, shooting and killing 10 people and injuring 3 others. Eleven of the victims are Black.
“It was a planned attack. He took away a food source. Now there’s nowhere people can eat right now,” Julien Guy, an East Buffalo resident, said.
Buffalo Councilman Ulysees Wingo said the shooting suspect “attacked an oasis in the middle of a food desert,” telling ABC News that he “wasn’t just trying to kill Black people, he was trying to starve them.”“With this store being closed – it has completely disrupted the lives of residents; it has completely interrupted the flow of how people fellowship and how we come together,” the councilman told ABC News.
An assault on the disenfranchised
Nearly 20 years ago, residents living in East Buffalo lacked access to healthy, affordable food within walking distance. The nearest grocery store was more than 3 miles away.
“Years ago, some of us worked very hard to bring this supermarket to Buffalo’s east side,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told ABC News. “This was a food desert previously,” he added.
Community leaders and city officials advocated and lobbied for a supermarket and won, opening Tops Friendly Market with much fanfare in 2003.
Since then, the grocery store has been a pinnacle of pride for the food equality and resources for which residents long fought.
“It was a really big thing about us even getting a Tops in an inner-city neighborhood,” said Roberto Archie, a resident. “It was something we really needed. We finally got it; now it’s gone again.”
Wingo said the systemic racism that ultimately perpetuated years of divestment is a major factor that makes Saturday’s deadly rampage even more devastating to a community that has struggled with historic disenfranchisement.
“This country was founded on principles that suggested Black folks were lesser than other folks. We have these nationalists and these white supremacists who think that they’re entitled to this country when the fact of the matter is this country was built on the backs of my ancestors,” Wingo said.
Banding together in the face of tragedy
In the aftermath of this tragedy, city officials have collaborated with corporations to help residents get the resources they need.
Tops Supermarket offered ongoing transportation to neighboring store chains, saying in a statement, “While the Tops location at Jefferson Avenue will remain closed until further notice, we are steadfast in our commitment to serving every corner of our community as we have for the past 60 years. Knowing the importance of this location and serving families on the east side of the city, we have taken immediate steps to ensure our neighbors are able to meet their grocery and pharmacy needs by providing free bus shuttle service starting today [May 15].”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a partnership with Uber and Lyft to provide residents free rides.
“They have offered to take people from the [local] ZIP codes, and they need to go to a grocery store in another area because a lot of people in this neighborhood walk to the grocery store. They don’t have transportation,” Hochul said on Sunday, May 15.
Resident Dayna Overton-Burns, 53, has been working around the clock to gather donations and deliver food and resources to people in need, one of several city residents who are rallying together to ensure that the community’s most vulnerable are fed.
“This is my city. This is my community. These are my people. I don’t care if you’re Black, white, or purple,” Overton-Burns told ABC News. “It’s important for me to help where I live and build community. We should be one, and not just wait for tragedy to happen in order to come together. We should be doing that work every single day.”
(LEON COUNTY, Texas) — An inmate serving a life sentence for murder managed to free himself of restraints and cut through a caged area of a bus transporting him before overpowering a bus driver and escaping, Texas authorities said as the search for the inmate continued.
Gonzalo Lopez, 46, was on a transport bus en route from Gatesville to Huntsville for a medical appointment when he escaped in Leon County on May 12, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
“Due to his criminal history and restrictive housing status, inmate Lopez was being transported in a separate, caged area of the bus, designated for high-risk inmates,” the department said in an update Wednesday. “During the transport, inmate Lopez defeated his restraints, cut through the expanded metal, crawled out through the bottom of the cage, and attacked the driver.”
During the altercation with Lopez, the officer driving the bus was stabbed in the hand and punctured in the chest, suffering non-life-threatening injuries, officials said last week. Lopez allegedly tried to grab the driver’s service weapon but couldn’t remove it from the holster, officials said.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not provide any updates on what Lopez allegedly used to cut through the cage.
“He used some type of device, we don’t know what some type of device, to cut out the bottom of the door,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Robert Hurst told reporters last week.
The driver, Lopez and a second officer at the rear of the bus exited the vehicle, the department said Wednesday. As the second officer approached Lopez, the inmate got back on the bus and started driving away, it said.
Both officers fired at the bus, striking the rear tire. Lopez continued to drive for about a mile before crashing, officials said. Lopez then jumped off the bus and fled into the woods off Highway 7 in Leon County, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
As the search for Lopez continues, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice also released new photos Wednesday of the inmate taken from surveillance footage on the morning of the escape as he was being escorted to the prison bus.
Visitation at more than 40 Texas Department of Criminal Justice units, including prisons, will be canceled until further notice starting Thursday “due to the ongoing efforts in the apprehension of escaped inmate Gonzalo Lopez,” the department announced Wednesday.
Lopez is serving a life sentence for a capital murder in Hidalgo County and an attempted capital murder in Webb County, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said. The murder was committed with a pickaxe, according to Hurst.
Several local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have been involved in the search, including horse and K9 teams.
A reward for information leading to Lopez’s arrest has grown to $50,000.
ABC News’ Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As the fentanyl crisis continues to sweep across the United States, lawmakers are focused on trying to stop the flow of fentanyl into their communities, but many are saying that curbing the supply from dealers is only part of the larger problem. There’s demand.
After five decades since the start of the war on drugs, critics say these efforts haven’t helped curb drug use.
One in 14 Americans are suffering from some form of addiction to legal or illegal substances, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some say the rise in fentanyl deaths has been exacerbated by ignoring the opioid crisis and the millions of people who are already suffering from addiction who continue to seek available opioids – in many cases, fentanyl.
Ryan, who wished to be identified by first name only, said he has been living with an opioid addiction for decades. He said he just recently started using fentanyl.
“I stopped for many years. I just relapsed three months ago and I hadn’t used in 10 years,” said Ryan. “Fentanyl is in everything now.”
According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Despite the risk, for many people like Ryan, despite how addictive it is, fentanyl quickly becomes their drug of choice because it is so potent.
Sam Rivera runs the nation’s first overdose prevention clinic in Harlem, New York. The aim is to not stop people from using drugs, but to supervise them when they do by offering medical support and safety.
Rivera said that goal is harm reduction and preventing overdose deaths.
“We’ve had a number of overdoses today. It seems like a potential bad batch [of fentanyl],” said Rivera. “We’re there when the overdose happens, and we’re there immediately.”
Rivera added that not a single person has ever died at his clinic.
Studies show that similar programs in other countries have successfully reduced fatal overdoses and increased access to health services, according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
Rivera said by giving people living with addiction a safe space to use drugs, it gets them into a supervised facility that can help them stay alive until they are ready to try to quit.
“Beautiful, hurting people are coming in with those drugs, to use them safely and stay alive,” said Rivera.
Other approaches include a clinic named Rock to Recovery In Nashville, Tennessee. They are using the power of music as therapy.
Phil Bogard, a former rock musician, is the program administrator at Rock to Recovery. He said he struggled with addiction and has been “clean and sober” for almost 14 years.
“We’ve got people playing keyboard parts, and I’m on a guitar. We’re going to write a chorus together that we can all sing along to. An hour and a half passes by and we lived in the moment,” said Bogard, who adds that music fosters a sense of belonging and community. “And hopefully we got some people to get on the other side of ‘I can’t, I won’t, I’m not able to.’”
Activists say there is no easy answer to stopping both the enduring opioid crisis and the growing fentanyl crisis, those who are struggling with an addiction and need more resources and help now.
“They’re going to use,” said Rivera. “I have people in that room right now who want to stop, they’re right there saying, ‘I want to stop.’ But at least now they’re talking about it.”
(NEW YORK) — As the nation continues to grapple with mass shootings in New York and California this past weekend, a new analysis by ABC News and ABC’s owned stations shows a startling rise in gun violence along interstate highways across the country over the last few years.
The analysis, which examined nearly 3,000 shootings that occurred on or near U.S. interstates from January 2018 through March 2022, found that interstate highway shootings across the country spiked alongside the overall surge in gun violence over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with New Orleans, Chicago and Memphis seeing some of the biggest spikes.
Interstate highway shootings rose from 540 incidents in 2019 to 846 incidents in 2021 — in increase of 57% — according to the data, which was collected by the Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group.
In just the first three months of this year, at least 149 shooting incidents occurred along or near interstate highways, the data shows.
In all, the incidents resulted in 680 people killed and more than 1,600 people injured over the last four years and three months, according to the data.
The full report by ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas, “Highway Gunplay: An ABC News Investigation,” will stream on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The data collected by the Gun Violence Archive helps shed light on some of the nation’s most dangerous stretches of highway out of the more than 47,000 miles of interstates across the country.
According to the data, I-10 in the New Orleans area has been the single most violent stretch of interstate in terms of gun incidents between 2019 and 2021. It’s followed by I-94 in the Chicago area, I-240 in the Memphis area, I-35 in the Austin area and I-70 in the St. Louis area.
Courtney Bradford, a young man who was about to be married, was shot and killed late last year while riding as a passenger in a car on I-240 in Memphis. He and his fiancé had just bought a new home to share with their 5-year-old daughter.
“I’ve called him by mistake. It’s very hard,” Bradford’s fiancé, Latoya Henley, told ABC News’ Thomas about dealing with Bradford’s death seven months ago.
The shooting that took Bradford’s life was one of 121 interstate shootings Memphis Police responded to in 2021, according to data provided by the police department.
“What’s even more unsettling is the fact that they’re so reckless,” Bradford’s mother Tonja Rounds told ABC News. “You could be aiming at one particular individual — but you’re shooting on the expressway and people are driving by, so you could shoot anybody.”
“It’s very insane,” Henley said. “I get antsy when I’m on the expressway.”
Seven months after the shooting, Henley and Rounds say police don’t appear to be any closer to determining who took Bradford’s life. The shooting occurred at night, and surveillance cameras were unable to provide any details about the car that the shots came from.
“We just keep trusting and believing that someone is going to come forward,” Rounds said.
Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago and Detroit are among the cities that have been hit hardest by the surge in highway shootings over the last few years, with the number of shootings increasing even more as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the U.S.
Eight of the 10 stretches of interstates with the highest number of gun incidents between 2019 and 2021 are in those four cities, according to the Gun Violence Archive data. Shooting incidents on or near interstates in those cities alone killed at least 63 people and injured at least 284 others during that time, accounting for nearly 12% of all deaths and 23% of all injuries reported from interstate gun violence nationwide during those years.
I-10, which runs across the southern U.S. from Florida to California, had the highest number of interstate highway shootings during the pandemic period, including at least 79 incidents in Louisiana — many of them occurring around New Orleans.
“You’ve got what police chiefs are calling the pandemic impact on crime,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told ABC News. “It cannot be underestimated.”
“Traffic stops have decreased, so now a small altercation — someone cuts someone off on the road — that can quickly escalate,” Wexler said. “And that altercation becomes a shooting, becomes a homicide.”
During the pandemic years, between 2020 and 2021, the Gun Violence Archive data showed at least 121 interstate shootings in the Chicago area, averaging out to one incident every six days. The group found 73 incidents in the New Orleans area, 58 incidents in the Detroit area, 57 incidents in the Memphis are and 38 incidents in the St. Louis area.
The spike in highway shootings during the pandemic mirrors a surge in overall gun violence.
According to data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun homicides increased 35% across the country during the pandemic, to the highest level in 25 years.
Firearm murders increased most markedly among youths and young adults, with the number of victims age 10-24 rising by 40%. People of color experienced the highest increase, as the number of Black male shooting victims age 10-24 years — already 21 times higher than the number of white male victims of the same age — increased even further in 2020.
An analysis of data provided by the Houston Police Department by ABC13 showed that homicides along the city’s highways and streets doubled during the pandemic, driving a surge in the overall number of homicides in the city during the two pandemic years. Among those killed in Houston road rage incidents was 17-year-old David Castro, who was fatally shot last summer on I-10 while leaving an Astros baseball game, and Tyler Mitchell, who died earlier this month after being shot along the same interstate just before his 22nd birthday.
In California, the Gun Violence Archive identified more than 200 interstate highway shootings between January 2018 and March of 2022, with many of them occurring on I-5, I-80 and I-580. And additional shootings occurred on Southern California freeways that aren’t part of the interstate system; last year, the California Highway Patrol reported at least 80 incidents of cars being shot at while traveling on SoCal freeways in just the one-month span between late April and late May, with the majority of them occurring along the 91 Freeway that runs from east of the 15 Freeway west toward the 605 Freeway.
Law enforcement officials say the nature of highway shootings typically makes them more difficult to track and solve that other types of shootings.
“The evidence and the crime scene is moving, sometimes 70, 80, 90 miles an hour,” said Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly.
As a result, said Kelly, the Illinois State Police are adding patrols and increasing searches to identify people with illegal weapons in their cars. They’ve also added new cameras along interstates to try to better track suspects.
“We will use license plate readers, we will use our air operations, we will use our patrol officers that are out there, we will use canines, we will use all the tools at our disposal to be able to pursue the people that are responsible for this violence,” Kelly said.
In the Detroit area, where the Detroit Police Department says they’ve seen an average of five freeway shootings a month over the past three years, the city has teamed up with more than three dozen other law enforcement agencies to launch “Operation Brison,” a multi-city effort to crack down on freeway shootings after two-year-old Brison Christian was killed last year when someone opened fire on his family’s vehicle on I-17 in what the police say was a case of mistaken identity.
Two alleged gang members have been charged with murder in the case.
But in Memphis, Latoya Henley is still waiting for resolution to her fiancé’s murder.
“We don’t know what happened at all,” Henley told ABC News. “We don’t know who’s involved.”
“I don’t want anyone to ever feel what I feel,” she said. “I pray a lot, ’cause the one thing I don’t want to be is angry. Because that’s what I was at first — I was angry. I was confused. And I was in disbelief. And you know, some days, I’m still in disbelief.”
ABC News’ Jack Date, Luke Barr and Alexandra Myers contributed to this report, along with Ross Weidner of WLS in Chicago, Courtney Carpenter of KTRK in Houston and Lindsey Feingold of KGO in San Francisco.
Watch “Highway Gunplay: An ABC News Investigation” on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act to address the widespread shortage of baby formula, the White House announced Wednesday evening.
The move will get ingredients to manufacturers to help speed up production, the administration said.
“The President is requiring suppliers to direct needed resources to infant formula manufacturers before any other customer who may have ordered that good,” the White House said in a statement. “Directing firms to prioritize and allocate the production of key infant formula inputs will help increase production and speed up in supply chains.”
The president has also directed the use of Department of Defense commercial aircraft to pick up infant formula overseas to get on U.S. shelves faster while U.S. manufacturers ramp up production, the White House said.
The ongoing baby formula crisis has triggered a public outcry from parents and lawmakers, as well as an investigation by the House Oversight Committee.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The 18-year-old suspect who allegedly gunned down 10 people in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday had, authorities say, an assault-style rifle, body armor, a tactical helmet — and a small camera.
The horror that followed became the latest mass shooting simultaneously broadcast online. Twitch, the Amazon-owned platform on which the video appeared, said it took down the broadcast after less than two minutes.
But that duration gave enough time for individuals to download and repost copies of the video, one of which was viewed more than 3 million times, after a link to the video on Facebook garnered more than 500 comments and 46,000 shares before its removal, the Washington Post reported.
Plus, a 180-page document believed to have been published by the alleged shooter that included a litany of bigoted views said the writer had seen hateful messages on 4chan and other sites known for the appearance of white supremacist content, raising the possibility that he had been radicalized online. An additional 589-page document believed to be tied to the alleged shooter included postings by the alleged shooter on Discord, a social media platform.
The suspected shooter is now facing murder charges to which he entered a not guilty plea.
The episode drew renewed criticism of tech platforms and urgent calls for scrutiny over the moderation of videos and messages posted online, which can quickly spread to a wide audience and possibly fuel copycat attacks. The uproar arrives at a moment of public reckoning over content moderation, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has used his $44 billion bid for Twitter to voice his skepticism of platforms taking a broad role in removing posts.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that social media companies must balance free speech with concerns over public safety. During the same show, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul criticized how hateful ideas spread on social media “like a virus” and called for accountability from the CEOs of social media companies.
Experts in online extremism told ABC News they hope the mass shooting on Saturday serves as a wake-up call to bolster the push for more rigorous moderation of online posts. But livestreams pose a particularly difficult task for those who police content on tech platforms, experts told ABC News, noting the challenge of monitoring and removing the posts in real time.
Further, online message boards that foment bigotry, such as 4chan, traffic in odious ideas that often stop short of violating the law, leaving the door open to such platforms with a more lax approach to monitoring content, Jared Holt, a resident fellow at Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told ABC News.
The mass shooting in Buffalo, which saw 10 people killed — all of whom were Black — and three others injured, comes three years after a self-identified white supremacist livestreamed a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which resulted in 51 people dead. Live video on Facebook of that massacre remained online for 17 minutes, far longer than the less than two minutes it took Twitch to take down the video from Buffalo on Saturday.
“It’s an improvement, but needless to say, obviously it’s not a perfect answer,” Holt told ABC News. “Moderating live content has proven to be a massive challenge to tech platforms.”
In general, tech platforms police content through both automated systems and manual decisions made by individuals, Alice Marwick, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in the study of social media, told ABC News. Livestreams pose such difficulty because they can evade the automated systems, forcing platforms to rely on human moderators who sometimes cannot handle the overwhelming volume of incoming content, she said.
“The size and scale of the number of livestreams that there are on a daily basis make it impossible to moderate them completely,” she said.
More than 8 million users broadcast live on Twitch each month, and the site features an average of more than 2.5 million hours of video every day, Twitch Global Head of Trust and Safety Angela Hession told ABC News in a statement.
“We’ve invested heavily in our sitewide safety operations and in the people and technologies who drive them, and will continue to do so,” she said.
Platforms could further limit livestream incidents like what happened in Buffalo by implementing a time-delay for live footage, like television stations do, Marwick and Holt said. The companies could also ensure that users must be verified before gaining the ability to livestream, as YouTube does.
But livestreaming will not be removed from the platforms altogether, Holt said, citing companies like Twitch that depend on livestreaming for their business. “The cat is out of the proverbial bag,” he said.
Even a brief livestream can end up reaching a large audience. As noted, in the case of the video of the shooting in Buffalo, a copy of the livestreamed video received millions of views after a link on Facebook helped drive traffic to it, the Washington Post reported.
A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, told ABC News that the company on Saturday quickly designated the event as a “violating terrorist attack,” which prompted an internal process to identify and remove the account of the identified suspect, as well as copies of his alleged document and any copy of or link to video of his alleged attack.
The move ensures that any copies of or links to the video, writing or other content that praises, supports or represents the suspect will be removed, the spokesperson added.
In a statement, Twitch told ABC News: “We are devastated to hear about the shooting that took place in Buffalo, New York. Our hearts go out to the community impacted by this tragedy. Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents.”
“The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content,” the statement added.
Content monitors also face a challenge from message boards and other sites that feature white supremacist ideology and can radicalize users. Since such content is offensive and dangerous but oftentimes legal, the onus falls on platforms to take an aggressive approach to remove it, Holt told ABC News. Not all platforms bring the same level of rigor to the task, he added.
The anonymous imageboard website 4chan is known for the appearance of hateful content. The alleged shooter in Buffalo named 4chan as a site he had visited. The website has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Hateful content can migrate from alternative platforms to more mainstream ones, allowing such messages to reach a wider audience before they are addressed, Holt said.
“There may be awful things on seedier internet platforms like 4chan,” he said. “The internet doesn’t exist as perfectly siloed platforms.”
The alleged shooter also posted messages online in a private group on Discord, a social media platform. It’s unclear who had access to the group. According to ABC News consultant and former Department of Homeland Security official John Cohen, Discord is a popular platform mostly with high school-aged teenagers and has been used to spread conspiracy theories.
“We extend our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families. Hate and violence have no place on Discord. We are doing everything we can to assist law enforcement in the investigation,” a spokesperson for Discord told ABC News in a statement.
Online radicalization takes place over a prolonged period, affording multiple opportunities for platforms to step in, said Marwick, the professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“When people do get radicalized online, it’s not something that happens in an instant,” she said. “Sometimes people like to think about this as a flash of lightning — that’s not how this works”
“It takes place over a period of time,” she adds. “There are possible points of intervention before it gets to this point.”
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A Massachusetts resident has tested positive for monkeypox, health officials confirmed Wednesday, making it the first case of the rare virus detected in the United States this year.
According to a release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the patient is an adult male who recently traveled to Canada. The department completed initial testing Tuesday and was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The case poses no risk to the public, and the individual is hospitalized and in good condition,” MDPH stated in a press release. “DPH is working closely with the CDC, relevant local boards of health, and the patient’s health care providers to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient while he was infectious.”
It comes after four more cases of monkeypox were identified in the U.K recently, bringing the nationwide total to nine since the beginning of May.
Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The first case among humans was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and the illness has since spread to several other nations, mostly in central and western Africa.
It can transmit from animals to humans when an infected animal — such as a rodent or a primate — bites or scratches a person. The CDC said humans can also be infected when hunting wild animals or preparing bush meat for consumption.
The disease can also spread from person to person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet, so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.
The most common symptoms are fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
Very few cases of monkeypox have been identified among Americans.
According to the CDC, the disease does not naturally occur in the U.S. Infections are usually identified among people who recently traveled to countries where monkeypox is more commonly found.
In 2003, 47 confirmed and probable cases were reported in six U.S. states, the first human cases reported outside of Africa.
All the infections occurred after coming into contact with pet prairie dogs, which in turn became infected “after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana,” the CDC stated.
Since then, just two other cases have been detected in the U.S., both associated with travel.
In July 2021, a case was confirmed in a Texas resident who had recently returned from Nigeria and in November 2021, another case was found in a Maryland resident who had also traveled to Nigeria.
ABC News’ William Gretsky contributed to this report.
