(NEW YORK) — Revlon has officially filed for bankruptcy.
The 90-year-old cosmetics giant announced on Thursday that the company voluntarily petitioned for reorganization under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
Like many other companies, the company has been faced with ongoing global challenges that specifically point to supply chain and rising inflation issues, in addition to the brand’s continued obligations to its lenders.
This legal proceeding was filed with the intention to allow Revlon to strategically reorganize its legacy capital structure and improve its long-term outlook.
“Today’s filing will allow Revlon to offer our consumers the iconic products we have delivered for decades, while providing a clearer path for our future growth,” said Debra Perelman, Revlon’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement. “Consumer demand for our products remains strong — people love our brands, and we continue to have a healthy market position. But our challenging capital structure has limited our ability to navigate macro-economic issues in order to meet this demand.”
With court approval, the company said it could receive $575 million in debtor-in-possession financing from its existing lender base. In addition to its existing working capital, this will provide the company with more financial support for day-to-day operations, it said.
“By addressing these complex legacy debt constraints, we expect to be able to simplify our capital structure and significantly reduce our debt, enabling us to unlock the full potential of our globally recognized brand,” said Perelman.
Revlon was founded in New York City in 1932 by brothers Charles and Joseph Revson and chemist Charles Lachman. In 2016, it was acquired by Elizabeth Arden and its portfolio brands.
Today, Revlon has grown to include cosmetics, skincare, fragrance and personal care. Some of the company’s sister brands include Almay, Creme of Nature, celebrity fragrances from Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and more.
(VESTAVIA HILLS, Ala.) — An 84-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman were shot dead at a small church group meeting in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, Thursday night, authorities said.
The suspect — a 71-year-old man who occasionally attended Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church — is in custody, Vestavia Hills Police said at a news conference Friday.
The gunman also wounded an 84-year-old woman, police said.
The suspect was at the church event when he took out a handgun and opened fire, police said. A motive is not clear, police said.
An event attendee subdued the suspect until police arrived, which authorities said helped save lives.
The suspect acted alone, police said.
Vestavia Hills Mayor Ashley Curry said the community, located about 7 miles outside of Birmingham, is “close-knit, resilient” and “loving.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for kids as young as six months old, finding them both safe and effective.
“Many parents, caregivers and clinicians have been waiting for a vaccine for younger children and this action will help protect those down to 6 months of age. As we have seen with older age groups, we expect that the vaccines for younger children will provide protection from the most severe outcomes of COVID-19, such as hospitalization and death,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a press release Friday.
This comes after the FDA’s committee of independent experts voted to recommend the Moderna vaccine for kids under 6, which is a two-dose vaccine, and the Pfizer vaccine for kids under 5, which is a three-dose vaccine, on Wednesday. Both votes were unanimous.
The final step in the process is a recommendation from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, after which shots can be administered in doctors’ offices, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and other locations.
The FDA authorization means the federal government can begin shipping doses out to states to get ready to go in arms.
“Those trusted with the care of children can have confidence in the safety and effectiveness of these COVID-19 vaccines and can be assured that the agency was thorough in its evaluation of the data,” Califf said in the Friday statement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kierra Coles is seen on surveillance video making a withdrawal from an ATM just before she went missing in Oct. 2018. – Chicago PD
(CHICAGO) — Chicago authorities have released new information in the unsolved disappearance of postal worker Kierra Coles, including footage of a “person of interest” in Coles’ car, who police say gave “varying accounts of the last time he saw her.”
Coles vanished without a trace on Oct. 2, 2018. The 26-year-old was about three months pregnant and was eager to meet her first child, according to her mother, Karen Phillips.
Her case remains a “high-risk missing person investigation with potential foul play suspected,” Chicago police told ABC News on Thursday.
A video produced by police and published by the department on Tuesday sheds new light on the mystery.
The video revealed surveillance footage of Coles entering her home on Oct. 2, 2018.
“A man, who detectives identified as a person of interest, also arrived and entered the residence,” Lt. William Svilar said in the video. “Kierra and the man later got into her car and drove off — with Kierra in the driver’s seat.”
At about 10:43 p.m. that night, Coles was spotted on surveillance video making ATM withdrawals — the last known images of her, according to Svilar.
“Less than an hour later, [Coles’] vehicle was seen arriving and parking in another area of the city,” Svilar said. “The person of interest exits the passenger side of the vehicle, but nobody exits the driver’s side.”
The next day, on Oct. 3, “The person of interest is seen parking Kierra’s vehicle near her residence before entering the building and exiting with unknown items,” Svilar said.
The person of interest “then drives away in his personal vehicle that was parked on the block overnight,” Svilar said.
Svilar said in the video, “When officers questioned the person of interest after Kierra was reported missing, he gave varying accounts of the last time he saw her.”
Police won’t identify their person of interest. But Phillips told ABC News that Coles’ boyfriend lied to her about when he last texted the 26-year-old. The boyfriend could not be reached by ABC News for comment.
Phillips said she always knew the ATM and car surveillance footage existed, but hadn’t seen it until now.
“Just seeing her walking, in person, was heartbreaking,” Phillips said Thursday.
Police said this video showing newly made public footage from Coles’ case is part of a “series launched last month to tell the stories of homicide victims in hopes of solving their cases.” The department said “each episode focuses on a different case, with the goal of generating tips that could possibly lead to a break in the case, and in turn, an arrest.”
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said it’s also still investigating Coles’ disappearance.
“We continue to urge the public to contact the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s hotline at (877) 876-2455, if they have any information related to her disappearance,” a spokesperson said.
For Phillips, the daily pain of not knowing what happened to her daughter is unbearable.
“Not even my worst enemy would I wish this type of pain on,” she said.
Phillips urges anyone with information to come forward.
“I just hope somebody just has a heart and calls in, or gives a tip. Anything they may know, even if they don’t think it’s important enough — any small thing could lead to breaking this whole case,” she said.
Phillips vowed, “I’m not gonna let up until my daughter is found.”
(WASHINGTON) — It’s been more than a month since a dozen civil rights and religious groups say they sent a letter to the White House calling on President Joe Biden sign an executive order to study reparations by Juneteenth, or this Sunday, June 19, marking the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
So, this week, because Biden hasn’t yet done so, activists began staging a first-of-its-kind visual installation on the Ellipse, near the White House, to get Biden’s and the public’s attention leading into America’s newest federal holiday, being observed on Monday.
The study activists wants comes after a decades-long push to establish a 13-person reparations commission in Congress.
The installation on the Ellipse includes a giant Pan-African flag, made of red, black, and green flowers alongside mulch provided by Black farmers — what activists say is a visual reminder of the need for reparations.
Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Union leaders promised formerly enslaved families “40 acres and a mule” — a promise never fulfilled.
However, a reminder of the centuries-old promise has languished in Congress for decades. H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989.
The measure seeks to establish a commission to study “and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, legal and other racial and economic discrimination, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies …”
In recent years, the bill has gained some political traction.
In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hundreds of members of Congress and over 350 organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, NAACP and ACLU publicly announced support for reparations.
At the Tribeca Film Festival, “The Big Payback,” a documentary examining reparations, directed by “Living Single” actress Erika Alexander, premiered at the legendary festival in early June.
H.R. 40 passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 but has failed to come to a vote in the House or Senate.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated in 2021 that President Biden supported the study of reparations. However, when asked if he would support a bill on reparations Psaki said, “We’ll see what happens through the legislative process.”
Asked if Biden supports an executive order on the study of reparations, Psaki said at the time, “it would be up to him, he has executive order authority, he would certainly support a study, and we’ll see where Congress moves on that issue.”
A White House official told ABC News on Thursday, President Biden still “supports a study of reparations and the continued impacts of slavery but he is very clear that we don’t need a study to advance racial equity.”
The official added, “he is taking comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today, including an executive order on his first day in office establishing a whole-of-government approach to addressing racial inequality and making sure equity is a part of his entire policy agenda.”
Nkechi Taifa is director of the Reparation Education Project, and has been calling for reparations for moire than 50 years. In 1987, she was one of the founders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), an organization that worked closely with Democratic Rep. John Conyers to draft the introduction of H.R. 40 in 1989. She says now is the time for Biden to sign an executive order so the commission can be up and running before the end of Biden’s presidency.
Taifa says she hopes the display at the ellipse sends a message that reparations advocates need to be paid attention to, and Black people should not be taken for granted.
She told ABC News, “If they think they’re gonna rest on Juneteenth because it’s a holiday and a watered down policing reform bill — that’s not enough. Black people have been run roughshod over, you know, for centuries, and it just, it just cannot continue.”
Joan Neal, deputy executive director and chief equity officer at NETWORK, a social justice advocacy group founded by U.S. religious sisters tells ABC News, that “Slavery was a sin, that was the original sin of this country, and we believe that unless you acknowledge your sin and you make a firm determination to never do it again, and then make restitution for what was lost. You still have not been forgiven.”
She added, “All parties have to be willing to stand up and face the sin in order for the sin to be forgiven and in order for things to be whole again.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — The principal of the Texas elementary school that was the site of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history was among the witnesses who appeared before state lawmakers Thursday when they held the first hearing in a special investigation into the massacre.
The state committee is investigating the circumstances surrounding last month’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
Police officers, lawyers and a few community members joined state lawmakers at the Uvalde City Hall building on Thursday for the first day of hearings.
In her first public comments following the shooting, Robb Elementary principal Mandy Gutierrez told San Antonio ABC affiliate KSAT she didn’t have much to say at this time.
“It was just an information session. They’re going to compile a report. And when that comes out, I may have more comment at that time,” she told the station outside city hall Thursday evening.
Gutierrez met with President Joe Biden when he traveled to Uvalde in the days after the shooting.
When asked how she was personally doing following Thursday’s hearing, she said, “I’m just concerned for [the] families and my kids.”
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed after a gunman entered the building through an unlocked door and opened fire in a classroom, the deadliest shooting at a public school in Texas history and the second-deadliest nationwide.
After 77 minutes, a tactical unit breached the classroom door and killed the gunman. Law enforcement has come under intense scrutiny for failing to act faster.
The probe will be an “objective and nonpartisan examination” of what happened, Texas state Rep. Dustin Burrows, chairman of the committee investigating the shooting, has said.
“I would say that the most respectful thing I think we can do is to try to get some of those lingering questions answered, for the people in this city,” Burrows said Thursday.
Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman emphasized the committee’s commitment to their task “to gather the facts…to know the truth about the story.” These facts, she said, “cannot be ignored, enhanced, or diminished.”
Guzman continued that it is her “hope and prayer” that the committee “will produce the information the legislature needs to protect our children.”
Following public remarks, the executive session began, where witnesses were interviewed in private.
Witnesses testifying Thursday included Gutierrez and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell, among other school staff. The hearings are scheduled to continue on Friday, Monday and Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials are also expected to testify, Burrows said last week.
The committee might produce a preliminary report for the public ahead of completing its full investigation, he said.
ABC News’ Laura Romero, Gina Sunseri and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In its third hearing Thursday, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack outlined former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence — and demonstrated just how close he came to danger in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The committee detailed what it calls just one part in a “sophisticated seven-part plan” then-President Donald Trump and his allies to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election — with Thursday’s focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Pence as a desperate last effort to accomplish their goal.
Members focused on a theory espoused by Trump’s White House attorney John Eastman — though they said Eastman never believed the theory was lawful himself — that Pence could unilaterally reject electors on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results, as well as the “relentless pressure campaign” against Pence by Trump in private and public — even as White House aides were telling Trump the scheme was illegal.
The committee argued, “that pressure campaign directly contributed to the attack on the Capitol” and put Pence’s life at serious risk, and one witness, a former federal judge and respected conservative, warned against the ongoing threat to democracy saying Trump allies are “executing a blueprint” to overturn 2024 election.
Here are some of the key arguments from the committee Thursday’s hearing:
40 FEET FROM THE MOB
The committee released never-before-seen photos of Pence on Jan. 6 showing the vice president and his family just steps from angry rioters who entered the Capitol to disrupt the electoral vote count.
“Vice President Pence and his team ultimately were led to a secure location where they stayed for the next 4 1/2 hours,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who led the hearing.
“Approximately 40 feet, that’s all there was, 40 feet between the vice president and the mob,” he said.
Greg Jacob, the vice president’s lawyer who was with him that day, told the committee he could “hear the din of rioters in the building” but was not “aware that they were as close as that.”
In a photo reported by ABC News Wednesday night, Pence and his family are seen hiding from rioters in his ceremonial Senate office just steps from the Senate chamber. Second lady Karen Pence was captured closing the window curtains — presumably afraid rioters outside the building could see her and her family.
“When Mike pence made it clear that he wouldn’t give in to Donald Trump’s scheme, Donald Trump turned the mob on him,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Thursday. “A mob that was chanting ‘hang Mike pence.’ A mob that had built a hanging gallows just outside the Capitol.”
PENCE REPEATEDLY TOLD TRUMP THE PLAN WAS ILLEGAL
The committee revealed evidence that Trump was repeatedly told that his demand for Pence to reject the certified slates of electors from key states won by Biden to block his victory was illegal — but that he and his allies continued to pressure Pence to do so on Jan. 6.
Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short told the panel that Pence had told Trump that “many times” and that he had been “very consistent.”
Short also told the committee in a videotaped interview that he believed Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, also understood that Pence lacked the power to overturn the election results.
“I believe that Mark did agree,” Short said. “I believe that’s what he told me. But as I mentioned, I think Mark told so many people so many different things that it was not something that I would necessarily accept as … resolved.”
Other figures around Trump — including White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and campaign adviser Jason Miller — told the committee that people around the president at the time believed the plan to stop the counting of Biden electors was “nuts” and “crazy.”
“You’re going to turn around and tell 78-plus million people in this country that your theory is this is how you’re going to invalidate their votes?” Herschmann said in videotaped testimony, recalling his conversation with Trump lawyer Eastman.
Herschmann said he told Eastman, “You’re going to cause riots in the streets.”
“They thought he was crazy,” Miller told the committee when asked what Trump’s lawyers thought of Eastman’s idea.
Jacob told the committee there was “no way” Pence had the authority to determine who would be the president of the United States, laying out how his team examined 230 years of history and found no such instance of this happening “since the beginning of the country.”
‘I REMEMBER THE WORD WIMP’
During Thursday’s hearing, the committee played a video of Trump aides recounting what they overheard in the Oval Office of Trump’s Jan. 6 phone call with Pence ahead of his rally on the National Mall — his last-ditch attempt to pressure Pence to block the electoral results.
The recollections confirmed contemporaneous reporting on the tenor of the heated phone call and of Trump’s anger with Pence.
“I remember the word ‘wimp,'” Trump aide Nick Luna testified to the committee. “Wimp is the word I remember.”
“The conversation was pretty heated,” Ivanka Trump told the committee in her interview. “It was a different tone than I’d heard him take with the vice president before.”
“It was something like … ‘you’re not tough enough to make that call,'” Pence national security adviser Keith Kellogg testified.
Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford, told the committee that the president’s eldest daughter told her Trump called Pence “the p-word.”
EASTMAN KNEW THE LEGAL EFFORT WOULD FAIL
In one exchange with the committee, Pence counsel Jacob said Eastman acknowledged “his theory [about Pence’s power] didn’t hold water,” in the words of Aguilar.
“We had an extended discussion an hour and a half to two hours on January 5 … When I pressed him on the play, I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you’re asking him to do, he would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court.'”
“Initially, he started, ‘Well, I think he would lose only 7 to 2.’ After some further discussion, he acknowledged, ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, we would lose nine to zero,'” Jacob recalled Thursday.
Jacob also said he told Eastman his theory was “just wrong,” and that if the shoe was on the other foot, he would not want Al Gore or Vice President Kamala Harris to have the power to reject slates of electors.
Jacob said Eastman replied by saying “Absolutely — Al Gore did not have a basis to do it in 2000, Kamala Harris shouldn’t be able to do it in 2024, but I think you should do it today.”
EASTMAN ASKED FOR A PARDON
The committee revealed Thursday that Eastman was still pushing Pence’s team to delay the counting of electoral votes even after rioters had been cleared from the Capitol.
But days after the attack, he emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani saying he would be interested in a pardon — which the committee has said could suggest he believed he may have acted illegally.
“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works,” Eastman said in his email.
Eastman also pleaded the Fifth 100 times in his interview with the committee, for which he appeared under subpoena after repeated delays.
ABC News’ Libby Cathey contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A number of forces are putting pressure on the economy right now and that has Wall Street betting on a recession sometime in the next 12 to 18 months.
Consumer prices are at a 40-year high, the ongoing global health crisis continues to disrupt supply chains and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to create a world food crisis.
The war has also helped to push gasoline prices to record levels, taking an even bigger bite out of household budgets.
Add to the mix a tight labor market and a volatile stock market and those recessionary warning signs are starting to flash yellow.
The Federal Reserve is responding by hiking interest rates to combat stubbornly high inflation. The Fed is making it more expensive for businesses and consumers to borrow money in the hopes that it will reduce consumer demand and push prices lower.
But the Fed is walking a tightrope. It wants to slow the economy just enough to bring down inflation, but not so much that it tips the economy into a recession.
The textbook definition of a recession is a significant decline in economic growth that lasts months, even years. During a recession, a country’s overall economic output declines, the unemployment rate goes up, retail sales fall, businesses cut their spending and manufacturers produce less goods.
There is a self-fulfilling aspect to recessionary psychology. If everyone believes a recession is coming, then consumers and businesses will drastically cut back their spending, sending the economy into a tailspin.
Economists say the best way to prepare for a recession is not to retrench, but instead build resilience to protect your finances from an economic shock.
You can do that by ensuring a steady stream of income. Lock in a new job or ask for that raise now. With unemployment at its lowest level in nearly half a century, it’s a job seeker’s market. A recession could quickly change all that.
Build up your cash cushion. Try to have at least six months of living expenses covered in case you lose your job or for unexpected emergencies or anticipated expenses like college tuition.
That may mean changing your buying habits and spending more on the things you “need” versus the things you “want.”
If you’re invested in the stock market, now may be a good time to rebalance your portfolio. If you need your money in the next one to three years, you might want to consider moving some of your investments into cash or the relative safety of the bond market, a money market fund, or dividend paying stocks.
If your time horizon is three years or longer and you have a diversified portfolio, experts agree that the best thing you can do is ride it out.
They say the most effective way to meet your long-term financial goals is to stay invested, stay disciplined and don’t let your emotions get the best of you.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that recessions don’t last forever and they’re usually followed by a period of strong growth. The so-called Great Recession, which was triggered by the housing collapse in 2007, lasted 18 months. It was followed by the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.
(WASHINGTON) — Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia testified on Capitol Hill this month that the recent domestic terror attack at the Tops supermarket in his city was even more deadly because the shooter was wearing military-style body armor and a ballistic helmet.
Gramaglia described how retired police officer Aaron Salter, Jr. confronted the shooter, got off multiple shots — even struck the shooter — but was unable to stop him. Salter was one of the 10 people killed in the mass shooting on May 14.
“[Salter’s] service weapon was no match for the military-style weapons and armor the perpetrator was equipped with,” he wrote to lawmakers.
Those details have renewed a debate among local elected officials and law enforcement about whether tactical body armor, which is largely unregulated across the country, has an appropriate place in civilian society.
Right after the shooting, New York signed into a law a new policy aiming to ban such gear. Gramaglia said he supports it and thinks it could be a model.
“Why do you need tactical body armor?” he told ABC News in an interview on Capitol Hill after testifying. “Unless you’re in a profession that requires the use of it. And I think the law still leaves it open that if you have a job that requires it, then you can still obtain it. But why does the average citizen need to have body armor?”
Some experts worry the new law in New York could have caused a spike in the sale of such gear and also may have been written too narrowly to actually include the type of armor the Buffalo shooter used.
At the federal level, it is against the law for felons convicted of violent crimes to tactical gear like military-style, bullet proof vest. The City of Chicago has a ban on the books too, and in Connecticut it is illegal to purchase tactical gear online. Sales in that state have to be done in person.
In reality, there are few checks and a huge range available online, that can be purchased and delivered to almost anyone in days.
The Violence Project, a non-partisan research center that studies gun violence in America, found that at least 21 times in the last 40 years a mass shooter has worn body armor during their attacks, including in Sutherland Springs, Texas; San Bernardino, California; and Aurora, Colorado.
And there is evidence the trend is growing more frequent.
“Shooters understand if they go into a public place and open fire, that this [gear] could, in a sense, help them continue to shoot and to make more of a deadly impact. But it is also a point of emulation behavior — shooters looking to previous attackers for inspiration and wanting to be like them. So there’s some imitation going on here, too,” author Mark Follman, who has covered mass shootings for more than a decade, told ABC News in a zoom interview.
“The purchase of tactical gear in and of itself tells you nothing. But if a person of concern is going out and doing this, that could be significant. In other words, a person who is already on the radar for disturbing behaviors, as we see in virtually all of these cases, they’re preceded by a long pattern, often of disturbing behavior. So in that context, if a person is then going out to purchase tactical gear or large quantities of ammunition or new weapons, that could be a warning sign,” Follman added, saying that armor in theory, could also be easier to regulate than some guns as there is no mention in the constitution about any right to anything around tactical gear.
Former counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security, John Cohen, agreed some state and even federal lawmakers might look to the new New York law as an example for writing new bills.
“We need to think very hard about whether we should be regulating the sales of body armor unless one is in a profession that requires its use. I see very little reason why a member of the public should be allowed to go out and buy a bulletproof vest or a ballistic shield,” Cohen, who is also an ABC News contributor, said in an interview.
Experts worry about an increase in hyper-militarized advertising both online and at gun shows focused on a need to be “combat” or “warrior” ready.
Keith Barrett runs one of the largest body armor retailer companies on the East Coast. Online and at gun shows his company sells a range of gear from ballistic helmets to concealable armor to military-style vests that are able to take several hits from riffle rounds. They sell bulletproof, removable plates designed to sit inside a vest and are made from various metals or ceramics, ranging in cost and efficacy.
At a gun show outside Philadelphia last weekend, he had one pink camouflage vest on display as well as smaller plates designed for kids’ vests.
“It’s a piece of defensive equipment that somebody can buy just in case. And that’s just a regular layperson. Now, if you’re talking about people who are active sports shooters, go to range handle weapons on a regular basis – that would be no different than ear protection or eye protection. It’s extremely common and prudent to have that piece of safety equipment,” he told ABC News during an interview outside the gun show.
Barrett, a retired Maryland State Police officer, bristled when asked about whether body armor could make it harder for law enforcement to respond to active shooter situations and said he has seen a wider range in ages and demographics of people at shows looking for armor in the last few years.
“Tell the average lawmaker who lives in his $500,000 house to go down to the inner city and live in the environment where they’re shooting at each other every day and tell them they don’t need body armor,” he added.
He concedes that as there are no federal regulations requiring background checks for the sale of body armor; at gun shows, he is taking customers at their word in terms of their criminal record.
(VESTAVIA HILLS, Ala.) — Two people were shot and killed and one injured Thursday evening at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, The Vestavia Hills Police Department said.
Police were alerted to the incident at 3775 Crosshaven Drive around 6:22 p.m.
Capt. Shane Ware said during a briefing that a lone suspect entered the church meeting and began shooting. Three people were shot and two died. Another person is receiving treatment at a hospital, Ware added.
