(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wisc.) — Police said Tuesday they’ve arrested a suspect in connection with the death of a 10-year-old girl whose body was found on a Wisconsin walking trail.
Lily Peters, a fourth grader, was reported missing by her father on Sunday night, said police in Chippewa Falls, a city about 100 miles east of Minneapolis.
Lily had been at her aunt’s house on Sunday and never made it home that night, police said.
On Sunday night officers found Lily’s bike in the woods by a walking trail near her aunt’s house, police said.
Around 9:15 a.m. Monday, Lily’s body was found in a wooded area near the walking trail, Chippewa Falls Police Chief Matthew Kelm said at a news conference.
On Tuesday evening, Kelm said the police arrested an unidentified juvenile suspect who was not a stranger to the girl. Kelm said that the suspect was known to the family.
“While nothing will bring back Lily Peters, we are grateful to deliver the news of an arrest to the family,” he said at a news conference.
The chief said the police received over 200 tips, and some were critical to the arrest.
The investigation was ongoing. Kelm had earlier said police are considering this a homicide investigation.
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — Attorneys for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in a court filing Monday asked an appeals court to overturn his conviction in the killing of George Floyd.
Chauvin’s lawyers in the filing asked the court to do one of three things: reverse his conviction, reverse his conviction and grant him a new trial in a different venue, or return the case to a lower court for resentencing.
In April 2021, Chauvin was found guilty in the death of Floyd on counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
He was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison last June.
In a 72-page court filing, Chauvin’s lawyers said that pretrial publicity, jurors’ concerns for their safety, the potential for riots to break out if Chauvin was acquitted and physical threats to the courthouse prevented Chauvin from getting a fair trial.
“The overwhelming media coverage exposed the jurors — literally every day — to news demonizing Chauvin and glorifying Floyd, which was more than sufficient to presume prejudice,” the court filing said.
The lawyers added, “However, the real problem is the jurors expressed concern for (i) they and their families’ personal safety and (ii) riots breaking out in the event they acquitted Chauvin.”
The court filing argued that a change of venue, which was previously denied by the lower court, was necessary in this case.
“There are few cases involving such violent threats by the community in the event the jury finds the defendant not guilty. Those cases — which all involved defendant police officers — required transfer of venue,” the attorneys said in the filing.
The threat of violence was “extreme,” and because jurors were not sequestered, they saw this every day during trial, Chauvin’s lawyers said in the filing.
“The courthouse was surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers during the trial. Prior to jury deliberations, National Guard troops were deployed throughout Minneapolis, businesses boarded up their buildings and schools were closed ‘bracing for a riot’ in the event Chauvin’s acquittal,” the filing said.
Lawyers for Chauvin also argued that his sentence should be reduced, as the presumptive sentence for someone without a criminal history is 150 months, while he received 270 months. They argued that “abuse of a position of authority” is not an aggravating factor that would allow for his upward sentencing.
Chauvin’s lawyers also claimed that a police officer cannot be convicted for felony murder under Minnesota law and that Chauvin was authorized to “touch” Floyd when Floyd resisted arrest.
“Chauvin is a police officer statutorily authorized to commit ‘assaults’ to effect an arrest,” they stated in the filing.
Later, the attorneys claimed that “in order for a police officer to be convicted of murder, Minnesota statutes require the officer to be using ‘deadly force’ — force one knows will cause either death or ‘great bodily harm.’ Putting your knees on the back of a suspect does not create a ‘substantial risk of causing, death or great bodily harm.'”
The court telling the jury that “it is not necessary for the State to prove that [Chauvin] intended to inflict substantial bodily harm” is a “material misstatement of the law,” Chauvin’s attorneys argued.
In the filing, the lawyers claimed this statement invited the jury to apply strict liability, a standard of liability that means the defendant could be responsible for the consequences of an action even in the absence of criminal intent.
Lawyers also claimed there was “prosecutorial misconduct,” including discovery violations and failures to disclose, starting with the state “largely ignoring the Court’s initial discovery deadline.”
“The State’s pervasive, intentional discovery violations, alone, were sufficiently prejudicial as to require a new trial,” the filing stated.
(WASHINGTON) — Speaking publicly about his visit to Ukraine for the first time since returning home, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday asserted “the Ukrainians have won the battle for Kyiv,” while calling for additional aid to help the country weather the war as the fighting shifts eastward and to the south.
“As we took the train across the border and rode westward into Ukraine, we saw mile after mile of Ukrainian countryside, territory that just a couple of months ago, the Russian government thought that it could seize in a matter of weeks. Today — firmly Ukraine’s,” he recounted, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his secretive visit to heart of the war-torn country with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Blinken said that on the trip, the highest-level visit to Ukraine’s capital by U.S. officials since the invasion, evidence of its military success abounded.
“In Kyiv we saw the signs of a vibrant city coming back to life. People eating outside sitting on benches, strolling. It was right in front of us,” he said. “For all the suffering that they’ve endured, for all the carnage that Russia’s brutal invasion continues to inflict, Ukraine was and will continue to be a free and independent country.”
During the hearing, convened to review the State Department’s budget for the coming fiscal year, Blinken argued that fulfilling the funding requests would prove critical to Ukraine’s defense and curbing Russian aggression.
“I felt some pride in what the United States has done to support the Ukrainian government and its people and an even firmer conviction that we must not let up. Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine has underscored the power and purpose of American diplomacy,” he said. “We have to continue to drive that diplomacy forward to seize what I believe are strategic opportunities, as well as address risks presented by Russia’s overreach.”
Blinken argued support from the U.S. and its allies had already played a decisive role.
“[The Ukrainian people’s] success is primarily because of their incredible courage and determination, but it’s also because we were able to equip them with what they needed,” Blinken said. “For every tank that the Russians have had in Ukraine, we’ve managed with 30 allies and partners, in one way or another, to provide about 10 anti-armor systems. For every plane that the Russians have flown in the skies, there have been about 10 anti-aircraft munitions of one kind or another.”
But Blinken acknowledged that as the battleground shifted to other regions of the country, the Ukrainians’ strategy needed to evolve well.
“The nature of this battle is changing, to eastern and southern Ukraine. They’re adapting to that. We’re adapting to that.”
The secretary said while in Kyiv, he discussed what assistance Ukraine required for the next phase of the fighting with its President Zelensky and top military leader.
“I think we’re largely aligned in what they say they need and what we think we’re able to provide,” he said.
While the committee largely projected bipartisan support for Ukraine, the most contentious round of the hearing came during Sen. Rand Paul’s line of questioning on what he called the “reasons” behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Paul, a Republican more aligned with former President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance than the other members of his party on the committee, blamed the attack in part on President Joe Biden’s and other officials’ public support for Ukraine’s eventual NATO membership.
“Russia said it was a red line,” Paul stated. “Had they been, or are they to become part of NATO, that means U.S. troops will be fighting in Ukraine and that’s something I very much oppose.”
“My judgment is different,” Blinken countered, pointing out the countries Russia had targeted — like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine — were not part of NATO.
“You could also argue the countries they’ve attacked were part of Russia … well, we’re part of the Soviet Union,” Paul replied.
“That does not give Russia the right to attack them,” Blinken responded. “It is the fundamental right of these countries to decide their own future and their own destiny.”
Blinken also said that in the eyes of the department, the alliance was not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chief concern ahead of the attack.
“This was never about Ukraine being potentially part of NATO,” he said. “It was always about his belief that Ukraine does not deserve to be a sovereign independent country that it must be re reassumed into Russia in one form or another.”
Blinken was also pressed on the State Department’s relatively slow-moving approach to repopulating the U.S. embassy in Kyiv after it was temporarily relocated in February, a step many of its allies have already taken.
“We are sending diplomats back to Ukraine this week, and they will begin to assess how we can most effectively and securely reopen the embassy in Kyiv. I anticipate that we will be in Lviv and then and then head to head to Kyiv, subject to the President’s final decision on that,” he said. “We want to have our embassy reopened and we’re working to do that.”
(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — Nearly three weeks after Patrick Lyoya was killed, the Grand Rapids police chief on Monday identified the officer who fatally shot Lyoya as Christopher Schurr.
Lyoya, a native of Congo, was shot in the head on April 4 after Schurr pulled him over for an unregistered license plate. Video footage of the incident shows Schurr struggling with Lyoya, eventually forcing him to the ground and shouting, “stop resisting,” “let go” and “drop the Taser,” before shooting Lyoya.
While Grand Rapids attorney Ven Johnson and civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who are representing the Lyoya family, have been calling for the name of the officer to be released since the day Lyoya was killed, now that it’s happened, Johnson said knowing the name does little to console the family.
“Our clients literally buried their son Friday. … This doesn’t do a whole lot, and it’s something that should have been done at the time when they released the videos,” Johnson told ABC News, adding that Lyoya’s parents “feel like they’re getting red tape after red tape after red tape.”
Chief Eric Winstrom had refrained from releasing the name of the officer as the investigation was ongoing, arguing the city has a long-standing policy not to release the names of employees under investigation.
“How dare you hold the name of a man who killed this man?” civil rights activist Al Sharpton said at Lyoya’s funeral in Grand Rapids on Friday. “Every time a young Black man or woman is arrested in this town, you put their name all over the news. Every time we’re suspected of something, you put our name out there.”
Winstrom released a statement Monday saying he decided to identify Schurr “in the interest of transparency, to reduce ongoing speculation and to avoid any further confusion.”
While the name has been released, Johnson said it’s “too little, too late.”
“They hid the name of this officer who killed my client for three weeks, and yet as part of their press release, they say this is in the spirit of transparency,” Johnson told ABC News. “Well, if I said to you, I’m gonna be transparent with you, but I’m gonna hide material facts … for three weeks, they will look at me and say, just, that’s not fair.”
After Schurr’s name was released, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released a statement saying the investigation should be wrapping up “quickly” and said her “heart is with the Grand Rapids community.”
While no charges have been filed against Schurr, Johnson said his team is prepared but hopes the state will do better in the future for preventing these events.
“In Michigan, we have a lot of hard work we need to do,” Johnson said.
Schurr is currently on administrative leave and has been stripped of all his police power as the investigation continues. ABC News was not able to reach an attorney for Schurr.
(WASHINGTON) — Madison Cawthorn, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, was caught trying to go through security with a loaded gun at Charlotte Douglas International Airport Tuesday morning, according to multiple sources.
This was the second time the controversial congressman has been stopped trying to bring a weapon through airport security.
TSA officers spotted the gun at the checkpoint and called airport police.
Individuals can face fines up to $13,000 for a second offense, according to TSA.
It was not immediately clear if Cawthorn faces any charges. The congressman’s office did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — While Democrats raise alarms and Republicans celebrate Twitter’s announcement Monday that Elon Musk was buying the platform for $44 billion, experts weigh what political impact the world’s richest man will have on the social media giant and whether his private ownership once the sale completes later this year could include clearing the way for Donald Trump’s return.
Some Democrats are already painting a dire picture of the platform’s future, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., calling the sale “dangerous for our democracy,” while Republicans have declared it a victory for “free speech” — with Musk having described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur has long been critical of how Twitter manages its content, pushing for looser moderation, and Republicans have blasted the platform for booting former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, arguing it’s become too heavy-handed against conservatives voices.
“This is a great day to be conservative on Twitter,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tweeted Monday. “Elon Musk buying Twitter terrifies the left because they don’t want their power to censor conservatives threatened,” she added.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., also touted the news, tweeting, “Elon Musk now literally owns the libs,” and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted, “Free speech is making a comeback.”
Since Musk announced his proposal to buy Twitter via a tweet just 11 days ago, Republicans have largely rallied behind him. He told a TED conference one day after submitting his bid that his takeover plan is about free speech.
“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously, in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”
Musk has argued that Twitter’s content moderators intervene too much on the platform, calling it the internet’s “de facto town square.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a release announcing the deal Monday. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” he added.
But experts warn against what the social media giant’s landscape would look like without current misinformation policies in place and if all users who have been kicked off were allowed back on — while voices to fact check them might leave the site in defiance.
Angelo Carusone, president of watchdog media nonprofit Media Matters, said to expect to see Trump’s account to be restored along with a host of other accounts that had previously violated Twitter’s rules.
“Elon Musk will unwind a whole range of very basic protections against harassment, abuse, and disinformation that Twitter has spent years putting into practice — effectively opening the floodgates of hate and lies and using Twitter’s position as a market leader to pressure other social media companies to backslide,” Carusone said in a statement Monday.
“The race to the bottom begins,” he added.
The American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns similar to Warren — with one person, Musk, in this case, also the world’s richest man, obtaining “so much control over the boundaries of our political speech online.”
Musk hasn’t said whether he will allow banned users back on, and Tump has claimed that even if he’s reinstated, he intends to stay off the platform in favor of his own platform.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News Monday. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was permanently suspended in January for “repeated violations” of Twitter’s COVID misinformation policy, reactedto the sale from her government account, saying Twitter violated her freedom of speech “along with an unknown number of Americans.”
“I want everyone else to have theirs back too, if they choose it,” she said.
(CHICAGO) — Life expectancy in Chicago fell by nearly two years during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with national trends, a new report finds.
The data, released Monday by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s Department of Public Health, showed Chicagoans had a life expectancy of 75.4 years in 2020, down from 77.3 years in 2019.
The figure is one of the steepest declines in life expectancy recorded in a single year for Chicago. What’s more, the sharpest drops were seen among communities of color, particularly Black and Hispanic residents.
“COVID has taken a terrible toll on the health and well-being of our city’s residents, particularly those who are Black and Latinx,” Lightfoot said in a statement. “Without formally acknowledging this detrimental impact, and its roots in structural racism, we will never be able to move forward as a city.”
The data showed that life expectancy for Black residents fell below 70 years for the first time in decades, with a drop from 71.8 years to 69.8 years. Additionally, the life expectancy gap between Black and white Chicagoans widened to 10 years, up from 8.8 years in 2017.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant driver of the Black-white life expectancy gap in 2020, it was only the second leading cause of death. According to officials, the main driver was chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
The city also saw sharp increases in deaths caused by homicides and accidents, including drug overdoses and car crashes.
Meanwhile, Hispanic residents saw the steepest drop of any racial/ethnic group from 79.1 years to 75.9 — a decrease of 3.2 years. The data also found that Asian/Pacific Islanders saw a life expectancy decline of two years while white residents saw a decrease of one year.
In addition, death rates increased from 2019 to 2020 for all races and ethnicities, with people of color making up a disproportionate number of deaths. Black residents only represent one-third of Chicago’s population but accounted for half of the city’s deaths.
Overall deaths in Chicago rose by 30%, according to the report. Officials recorded about 6,000 more deaths than predicted and approximately 4,000 of those were due to COVID-19.
CDPH said it is working to narrow the racial life expectancy gap through a program called Healthy Chicago 2025 to address the root causes of these disparities such as structural racism.
Among the top priorities is increasing access to health care. The department’s Health Chicago Survey found that in 2020, 35% of Black residents lost health care coverage compared to 19% of white residents and 27% of Hispanic residents were unable to access health care compared to 8% of white residents.
What’s more, 27% of Hispanic residents and 26% of Black residents said they missed urgent medical appointments while only 9% of white Chicagoans reported similar circumstances.
The action plan also includes investing money to increase access to housing, food and childcare for minorities.
“The life expectancy gap isn’t just about the causes that show up on the death certificate most often, but what drives those causes,” CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said in a statement. “There is no miracle cure, no shortcut to closing the life expectancy gap.”
The statement continued, “Collectively, the City and its partners must do the work to fundamentally transform the conditions in which people live — by ending the pandemic and by addressing its impacts on access to services, housing, education, and economic opportunities, as well as people’s mental health.”
Neither the mayor’s office nor the CDPH immediately replied to ABC News’ request for comment.
(ATLANTA) — A new CDC analysis estimates that at least three out of every five Americans have antibodies that indicate a prior COVID-19 infection. Prior to the omicron-fueled surge in cases from December 2021 to February 2022, only an estimated one-third of people in the U.S. were estimated to have a prior infection.
“This is the first time that population seroprevalence is over 50%,” Dr. Kristie Clarke, co-lead for the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology & Surveillance Taskforce Seroprevalence Team, told reporters on a press call this afternoon.
Clarke said she had expected a post-omicron increase in seroprevalence — antibodies that show previous COVID-19 infection — but not this much of an increase.
About 58% of adults had detectable antibodies as of February — but that rose to nearly 75% among children and teens under 17.
“We had 43% in January and I did expect it to increase. I didn’t expect it to increase quite this much, but we follow the data and we look at the data and this is what the evidence is showing us and so this is why we want to get this message out to the U.S. population as soon as possible,” Clarke said.
The jump in antibody protection, both from infection and from vaccines and boosters, is part of the reason why the CDC went ahead with its recent decision to use new metrics for masking and community warnings, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
“We do believe that there’s a lot of protection in the community both from vaccination as well as from boosting and from prior infection,” she said.
But Walensky and Clarke repeatedly emphasized how important vaccination still is. There’s very little information on how long immunity from a case of COVID lasts, but a lot more data on how long immunity from vaccines and boosters lasts.
“I can’t underscore enough what Dr. Clark said, which is those who have detectable antibody from prior infection, we still continue to encourage them to get vaccinated,” Walensky said.
“We don’t know … when that infection was, we don’t know whether that protection has waned. We don’t know as much about that level of protection than we do about the protection we get from both vaccines and boosters,” Walensky said.
Clarke said this study cannot be interpreted to mean 60% of Americans have protection against reinfection.
“Reinfection happens and infection after vaccination can happen,” Clarke said.
Nor does the percentage mean we’ve reached some kind of herd immunity.
“There’s also no known threshold of the population where once you get above X percentage will completely stop community transmission of COVID. So all of that is really important to know,” Clarke said.
Still, there is continued good news on the BA.2 variant, which has yet to cause a significant jump in severe illness or death, Walensky said, though there are a few counties in the Northeast that the CDC now categorizes as orange.
“There are some areas of the country, particularly in the Northeast, where we’re seeing higher number of cases and we’re starting to see some hospitalizations tick up. You know, we’re watching this carefully,” Walensky said.
But she noted: “We haven’t seen them tick up as much as we might have expected in prior times during this pandemic, thanks to, I believe, a large amount of protection in the community both from disease and infection, as Dr. Clark has articulated, as well as vaccine protection.”
The hospital stays that the CDC is monitoring have also not been as severe as in the past, she said.
“We’re seeing less oxygen, use less ICU stays. And we haven’t, fortunately, seen any increase in deaths associated with them. So we are hopeful that positive trends will continue that we will not see as a result of these increasing cases, any further severity of disease,” Walensky said.
(NEW YORK) — West Virginia had the highest opioid overdose death rate per capita in the country last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
OxyContin, a prescription drug that helped fuel the crisis, was heavily marketed in towns across the state and its use spread among residents of all ages, experts said.
“Nobody was prepared. Nobody knew that they were going to get a drug that was supposed to help alleviate pain,” Maegan Malcomb, a woman recovering from addiction in West Virginia, told ABC News.
While first responders and doctors in the state scramble to save people from these decades of danger, they also are fighting a new phase of the crisis as fentanyl overdoses have jumped in the area.
Doctors and medical experts said there is a straight timeline from the rise in opioid prescriptions to fentanyl overdoses in places like West Virginia.
When OxyContin was first introduced into the market, Purdue Pharmaceuticals misled medical professionals contending the company’s pain killer drug was far less addictive than other opioids. In 2007, the company paid $600 million in criminal penalties after admitting to misbranding OxyContin.
Two years ago, Purdue admitted that it marketed dangerous opioids to health care providers despite having reason to believe those providers were diverting drugs and that often led to abuse, according to the Department of Justice.
Lou Ortenzio, a former West Virginia doctor, told ABC News he has been feeling guilt for the years that he prescribed OxyContin.
“I never envisioned prescribing somebody with pain would have this catastrophic tidal wave effect,” he said.
Ortenzio himself became addicted to prescription pain pills, taking as many as 30 pills a day before he got help. Today, he helps run a recovery clinic in West Virginia for other people living with addiction or in recovery.
Malcomb told ABC News that she got addicted to opioids by the time she was 16. The mother of three said by the time she was 18, she didn’t know one person who wasn’t addicted to opioids.
“All I’ve ever known is addiction. And most of the people that I love, the people that I grew up with, that’s all they’ve known, too,” she said.
Even though OxyContin and other related pills are harder to prescribe, there is a population of West Virginians who are still suffering from addiction and have found an alternative to those prescription pain pills – primarily heroin, health experts said.
But by substituting a new drug, those suffering from addiction are putting themselves at a bigger risk, the experts warned.
Fentanyl has been found in as much as 70% of the nation’s heroin supply, according to the CDC. In many cases, those who use heroin have no idea that fentanyl has been added until it’s too late.
First responders in the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia, told ABC News that they respond to calls related to fentanyl-related overdoses daily. In one day they responded to three overdose calls.
“It’s poison, it’s pure poison. You don’t know what it is, ” Michael Veltri, a Clarksburg EMS, told ABC News.
Last year, fentanyl was the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the CDC. And some fear it’s only going to get worse.
Dr. Stephen Loyd, also developed an opioid addiction, but is currently in recovery. He runs a recovery center in Nashville, and told ABC News that his facility loses several patients a week due to fentanyl.
“There are not weeks that go by that we don’t,” he told ABC News.
Loyd said there is a direct link between the rise of OxyContin prescriptions in the 1990s and 2000s and the current fentanyl crisis in the country.
“These folks that are coming in with fentanyl, 98% of them got started with pain pills,” he said.
Loyd and other experts said that the country will have to work harder to help those living with addiction , particularly in places like West Virginia that were the hardest hit during the crisis.
Malcomb told ABC News that the only way to deal with a drug problem is to deal with people directly and persevere.
“I have no choice if I don’t want to die,” she responded when asked if she’d continue her recovery. “[I’m] surprised I’m not dead now.”
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — A 3-month-old baby boy has been found safe Tuesday after he was taken from his Northern California home in what police believe was a premeditated kidnapping.
One suspect is in custody, police said.
Brandon Cuellar’s kidnapping was reported around 1 p.m. Monday by his grandmother, who was watching the baby while the mother was at work, San Jose Police Sgt. Christian Camarillo said at a news conference.
The grandmother said she came home, took Brandon inside the apartment and went back to the car to unload groceries, Camarillo said.
In that “short amount of time,” a man went into the apartment and took the little boy, he said. Police released footage of the man they say was seen on surveillance video leaving with the 3-month-old.
Camarillo said the suspect brought a baby carrier with him to the home.
“We believe this was planned. It’s not some random act,” he said.
Camarillo said Tuesday that police are speaking with a female person of interest, but added that she’s not been “formally charged yet.”
“This is a person that was with the grandmother yesterday when they went shopping. She was present at the apartment complex when this happened,” Camarillo said.
“That person has changed their story a couple of times — a lot of inconsistencies,” Camarillo said.
ABC News’ Bonnie McLean contributed to this report.
