(MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md.) — Two people have been rescued from a small private plane after it struck and got lodged in a high-tension power line tower in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service Chief Scott Goldstein confirmed both the pilot and passenger were transported to local area trauma centers with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
“There’s some hypothermia issues,” Goldstein said. “They’ve been out there very anxious, but very happy to be down. They were communicating with us the entire time.”
The plane struck the tower at about 5:30 Sunday evening, Goldstein said.
However, rescue work was being delayed until the plane could be secured to the tower and the tower was confirmed to be grounded, according to Goldstein.
The plane, which was stuck about 100 feet off the ground, is “not going to be stable until it’s chained and strapped in place,” said Goldstein, adding that heavy fog in the area could make the task difficult.
About 85,000 Montgomery County customers were without power as a result of the crash, officials with the local power company said on Twitter.
Goldstein said that most of the power in the county has been restored by Pepco.
FAA officials said the plane had departed from Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board said they will investigate the incident.
Montgomery County Public Schools announced earlier that MCPS schools and offices will be closed Monday, Nov. 28 “due to a widespread power outage and its impact on safety and school operations.” There has been no update since most of the power has been restored.
(BENSALEM, Penn.) — A Pennsylvania teen has been charged with murder after he allegedly confessed over Instagram to fatally shooting another child, according to police.
The Bensalem Police Department received a 911 call Friday afternoon about a possible homicide, with the caller detailing an Instagram video chat she received from a friend, according to a police press release.
In the chat, the teen stated that he “had just killed someone” before flipping the camera around and showing the legs and feet of someone covered in blood, police said. He then asked for assistance with disposing the body, according to police.
The caller told police that the teen who sent the message lived at the Top of the Ridge trailer park in Bensalem, the release states. When officers arrived, the teen ran out of the back of a trailer, and he was later arrested about a mile away on Newport Mews Drive and Groton Drive, police said.
Officers who entered the trailer observed a girl on the floor of the bathroom dead from an apparent gunshot wound, according to authorities. There were also “substantial steps” taken to clean up the crime scene, investigators said.
The victim’s identity and age have not been released, other than that she is a juvenile.
The suspect, 16-year-old Joshua Cooper, is being charged as an adult for criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, police said.
He attended a preliminary arraignment Friday night where he was denied bail, online court records show. It is unclear whether he entered a plea.
Cooper is being held at the Edison Juvenile Detention Center, police said. His arraignment has been scheduled for Dec. 7, according to online records.
An attorney for the teen was not listed on online court records. Instagram did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Investigators are asking anyone with more information on the case to call the Bensalem Police Department.
(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — One of the two men credited as heroes for stopping the Colorado Springs gunman as he searched for more victims, has spoken from his hospital bed.
U.S. Navy Petty Officer, Second Class, Thomas James helped U.S. Army veteran Richard Fierro subdue the alleged gunman, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, after Aldrich stormed LGBTQ nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19. The mass shooting claimed the lives of five people and injured more than a dozen, according to law enforcement.
After Fierro confronted Aldrich, yanking him from behind and causing him to fall, James aided in fighting with Aldrich to make sure he could not reach the firearms he had dropped, Fierro told ABC News last week.
“At that moment, me, Thomas, … we’re all trying to keep everybody alive,” Fierro said. “… everybody was a hero that day.”
As of Sunday, James was still recovering from his injures at the Centura Penrose Hospital in stable condition.
In a statement released from the hospital, James said during the chaos of the shooting he “simply wanted to save the family I found.”
“If I had my way, I would shield everyone I could from the nonsensical acts of hate in the world, but I am only one person,” he said.
James continued, saying that he and his community have come “a long way from Stonewall,” the New York City bar that was the site of the 1969 riots that launched the Gay Rights Movement.
“Bullies aren’t invincible,” James said.
James said his thoughts are with those who were killed and injured at Club Q, adding that “pain and loss have been all too common these past few years.”
“To the youth I say be brave,” he said. “Your family is out there. You are loved and valued. So when you come out of the closet, come out swinging.”
One of the club’s regulars who was injured in the shooting, Ed Sanders, told ABC News from his hospital bed last week that he looks forward to returning to the club after he recovers, describing it as a place he called home for a long time.
Another club regular who was near the DJ booth when he heard the gunshots and subsequent screams, told ABC News that Club Q is a “safe space” for the LGBTQ community.
“Coming here, this is one of the first places that I felt accepted to be who I am,” he said. “…It’s supposed to be a safe space and the community shouldn’t have to go through something like this.”
(DENVER) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Sunday that he is considering reforms to his state’s “red flag” law after this month’s mass shooting in Colorado Springs at Club Q, an LGBTQ venue.
The alleged shooter’s access to an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle has been thrust into the spotlight after it was revealed that the suspect, who is 22, was arrested last year and accused of threatening their mother with explosives.
Still, the state’s red flag law, which allows for family or law enforcement to petition a judge to revoke an individual’s access to firearms, was not used, Polis said.
“We’re certainly going to take a hard look at why [the] red flag law wasn’t used … what can be used to better publicize, make available, add different parties to make sure that it’s used when it should be used,” Polis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The governor, a Democrat, defended the legislation, which some conservatives have criticized as ineffective and vulnerable to abuse by the government.
“That law was successfully used several 100 times. And I know that it’s prevented self-harm and violence in our state. And we need to make sure more people are aware of what it can do,” Polis added on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Among the changes being considered is expanding who can petition a judge under the law, Polis said.
“What I think we’re going to look at in Colorado is potentially expanding that, for instance, so [district attorneys] can also seek extreme risk protection orders,” Polis said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
He said that in last year’s case, involving the suspect’s mother, neither she nor the local sheriff pursued an order under the red flag law.
The suspect in the Nov. 19 shooting, which killed 5 people at the LGBTQ club and injured many others, legally purchased the rifle before the attack, authorities have said.
Patrons of the club tackled the suspected shooter before law enforcement arrived.
Appearing on “Face the Nation,” Polis said there had been some media reports that one of the suspect’s firearms was a so-called “ghost gun,” referring to privately made weapons that aren’t tracked by a serial number.
“All of these facts will emerge in the coming days and weeks. Obviously, right now our heart is with the victims, five people who lost their lives, their families, dozens of others injured and, of course, many traumatized,” Polis said.
The suspect is facing five counts of murder and five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, which is Colorado’s hate crime law. The suspect has not yet entered a plea.
The mass shooting has reignited calls for stricter gun laws, including President Joe Biden’s push for what he called an assault weapons ban, which faces an uphill climb in gaining the necessary support to pass through Congress.
Polis said Sunday that the response to the shooting needs to be “national,” noting fewer laws in neighboring states, and indicated he’s open to measures beyond gun legislation.
“Of course it’s about mental health. Of course it’s about gun policy. Of course it’s about anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. It’s about all these things,” he said on “Meet the Press.”
Asked directly on “Face the Nation” if he would back Biden’s latest call for a ban, Polis said there needed to be a wide-ranging discussion — on mental health, discrimination, red flag and ghost gun laws and more.
(HONG KONG) — Chinese President Xi Jinping is facing the greatest challenge to his signature zero-COVID strategy as unprecedented anti-lockdown protests have spread across the country over the weekend, popping up in major cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and even the capital Beijing.
Anger stemming from a deadly apartment fire Thursday night in the far western city of Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang region that killed 10, including a 3-year-old child, have brought Chinese citizens out to the streets calling for an end to lockdowns. Some are even crying for the Communist Party and Xi himself to step down.
According to local officials, the deadly fire was caused by a faulty power strip that caught fire on the 15th floor of a high-rise apartment, but it took the fire department over three hours to put out the flames.
Videos of the blaze went viral on Chinese social media, showing firetrucks unable to get close to the flames. Many across the city questioned whether COVID restrictions had gotten in the way of first responders and left people trapped inside unable to flee.
The authorities denied this, but anger was already brewing as much of Xinjiang, including its regional capital Urumqi, had been under lockdown for over 100 days, since August.
On Friday night, videos emerged of hundreds Urumqi citizens pushing through the lockdowns around their residential compounds and marching towards the local government, demanding them to lift the lockdown. Social media videos showed crowds, wrapping themselves in patriotism as protection, marching through the frigid night alternatively singing the Chinese national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” and the socialist hymn “The Internationale.”
Hours after the crowds confronted the city officials, the Urumqi city government suddenly announced they would finally lift lockdowns in “low-risk” neighborhoods and restart public transportation Monday.
While Urumqi residents may have gotten some of their demands met, the deadly fire set something off across China, becoming a focal point of public anger towards the harsh COVID restrictions.
The late-Chinese leader Mao Zedong famously said, “a single spark can start a prairie fire.” The “spark” of the Urumqi fire spread beyond the Chinese internet faster than censors could catch up, and by Saturday night, spontaneous protests and vigils popped up across the countries in college campuses and major cities.
This was prominent in Shanghai, where many residents still harbor fresh memories of their messy two-month lockdown earlier this year.
Hundreds of angry Shanghai residents gathered on consecutive nights over the weekend symbolically on Middle Urumqi Road in the tony former French Concession neighborhood, lighting candles and cursing zero-tolerance COVID measures with some openly daring to chant, “Communist Party step down” and “Step down, Xi Jinping, step down.”
Police officers mostly let the crowd disperse Saturday night but made arrests in early morning hours of some of the remaining protesters.
On Sunday, the protests spread to more cities including Beijing, which was entering a de-facto lockdown dealing with a fresh outbreak.
Hundreds of students gathered outside the main dining hall of Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, which happens to be Xi’s alma mater, raising blank sheets of paper to decry the growing censorship and calling for “freedom of speech.” It was scene unseen on college campuses in China since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
The blank-sheet protests were seen again near the Liangmaqiao diplomatic district, close to the U.S. and South Korean embassies in Beijing Sunday night, accompanied with cries of “no PCR tests, only freedom.”
The scenes were repeated across the country from the first COVID epicenter of Wuhan to the tech center of Hangzhou to the far-flung and usually laidback backpacker hub of Dali in southwestern China.
Adding to the national frustration, many across the country have been glued to the Qatar World Cup games on China’s state broadcaster, complete with cutaways of the raucous maskless crowds, leading to sarcastic discussions online whether China was “not the same planet” as Qatar.
By Sunday’s game between Japan and Costa Rica, CCTV Sports stayed on close-up shots of the players, referees and coaches when the ball was not in play instead of showing the maskless fans in the stands.
On Nov. 11, Beijing had issued new guidelines to improve COVID measures, promising to lessen the impact of their restrictions. It was initially taken to be a signal that Beijing was laying the groundwork to open up.
Record outbreaks across the country, however, have snapped many cities shut again. Most local jurisdictions are in charge of their own COVID enforcement and the officials’ jobs are on the line if they mismanage an outbreak, leading them to err on the side of harsher measures no matter the effect on residents.
For nearly three full years, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” strategy meant one infection is too much.
By Sunday night, some city governments were tweaking their restrictions in real time. As the protesters gathered in Liangmaqiao, Beijing officials said they lifted lockdowns on 75 neighborhoods and announced new guidelines for enforcement that included no snap-lockdown lasting more than 24 hours.
While China’s record daily case numbers are not high by international standards, running 39,906 cases Sunday with no new deaths, the Japanese investment bank Nomura estimates that more than 21.1% of China’s total GDP is under lockdown, on par with the economic impact of Shanghai’s lockdown in the spring.
China, in a way, is a victim of its own success. The zero-COVID policy undoubtedly saved lives during the pandemic, with only 5,232 official COVID deaths over nearly three years, but has also isolated much of the Chinese population from any type of natural immunity.
For Xi Jinping and the Chinese government, it remains a question of which would cause more instability: loosening up and letting a COVID “exit wave” quickly cause up to hundreds of thousands of deaths and overwhelm the national health system in the very best-case scenario presented by some health officials, or tolerate the whack-a-mole of still-sporadic and unorganized protests across the country.
For a country that spends more on public domestic security than on their military, the answer is still on the side of zero-COVID. But as the anger spreads, many believe time may not be on zero-COVID’s side.
(WASHINGTON) — A spokesman for President Joe Biden is sharply criticizing former President Donald Trump for having dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago club last week.
“Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America – including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Trump met with Fuentes while hosting rapper and designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at his resort last Tuesday, ABC News previously reported.
Fuentes has a history of racist, sexist and antisemitic comments, including apparent skepticism about the Holocaust, and has been banned on all major social media platforms.
Tuesday’s dinner lasted about two hours and was attended by Fuentes, Ye — who recently lost major business deals over his own antisemitic remarks — and Florida Republican political operative Karen Giorno.
The White House’s denunciation of the Mar-a-Lago dinner adds to a growing chorus of critics, including some Republicans.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an erstwhile Trump ally, told The New York Times it was “another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024.”
Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemingly distanced himself from figures like Fuentes when he tweeted on Saturday that “anti-Semitism is a cancer. … We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.” (He didn’t reference Trump by name.)
And in a statement to The Washington Post, the Republican Jewish Coalition called on “all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with” Ye and Fuentes.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, spoke even more bluntly.
“For Donald Trump to dine with notorious white supremacists and unrepentant bigots, I think at a minimum it’s clarifying. He is trying to make America hate again and running arguably the most unapologetic white nationalist presidential campaign we’ve ever seen,” Greenblatt said on CNN.
In a series of statements, Trump played down Fuentes’ involvement, insisting he didn’t know who Fuentes was before they met and that he was unaware Fuentes would be joining the meal.
“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” Trump said in one statement on Friday.
In a subsequent statement, he said that Ye had asked for the meeting for “very much needed ‘advice'” and brought “3 people, two of which I didn’t know.”
Trump recently announced he is running for president in 2024. Ye, who launched a longshot third-party bid of his own in the 2020 race, has also claimed he is running in 2024.
A source at the dinner previously told ABC News that during the meeting, Ye asked Trump to be his vice president. The rapper has often voiced support for Trump and met with him in the Oval Office while Trump was president.
In a video released on Twitter, Ye said their dinner became heated when he and Trump discussed politics. He contended that Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.”
In his social media statements, Trump said he and Ye “got along great” and that Ye “expressed no anti-Semitism.”
Biden has refrained from commenting on the dinner but suggested he had strong feelings. He was asked about it while out shopping in Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon.
“You don’t want to hear what I think,” he replied.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway, Olivia Rubin and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(ATLANTA) — One person is dead and five others are injured after a shooting that took place near Atlantic Station on Saturday evening in Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Department said.
One male was pronounced deceased on the scene and five other victims were shot and later transported to nearby hospitals, Atlanta Police Lt. Germain Dearlove said in a press conference Saturday night. The extent of their conditions was not specified.
A group of people were escorted off of Atlantic Station property by off-duty Atlanta police officers and station personnel at about 8 p.m., police said. They were juveniles, said Dearlove, and were removed for “unruly behavior” along with curfew violations. Police believe that the victims were between the ages of 15 and 21.
Once the group was escorted off the property, a dispute occurred near Atlantic Station, which led to the shooting, said Dearlove. The reason for the dispute is currently under investigation.
Atlantic Station is a major retail and recreation area in midtown Atlanta and includes a sprawling mixed-use development. The neighborhood has seen periodic incidents of gun violence.
Police are looking to identify the parties involved, as preliminary information suggests this dispute was between two groups, with two possible shooters, said Dearlove.
Authorities are not sure how many shots were fired at this time.
(WASHINGTON) — Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, on Sunday insisted that the incoming House Republican majority would continue to support funding and arming Ukraine in its war against Russia, downplaying critics inside the GOP’s conference who have vowed to oppose future aid packages.
McCaul and Turner, the likely next chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees, respectively, said on ABC’s “This Week” that Ukraine could win if it gets adequate support from the West.
They also backed House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s past statement that Congress shouldn’t provide a “blank check” and said Republicans planned to push for greater oversight and “accountability” over how American support is being used overseas.
“This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz cited objections to Ukraine aid from some conservatives — like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — and asked, “Are you really certain that Republicans will bring this to the floor?”
“I think the majorities on both sides of the aisle support this effort,” McCaul said. “I think everybody has a voice in Congress. And the fact is, we are going to provide more oversight, transparency and accountability. We’re not going to write a blank check.”
“Does that diminish our will to help the Ukraine people fight? No. But we’re going to do it in a responsible way,” McCaul said. Otherwise, he said, authoritarian countries like China and Iran could become emboldened by Russia’s success.
“The issue, obviously, is we don’t need to pass $40 billion, large Democrat bills that have been passed to send $8 billion to Ukraine,” Turner told Raddatz, who recently returned from a reporting trip in Ukraine.
Raddatz pushed back on Turner, noting that beyond the immediate funds for procurement, that whole aid package was focused on Ukraine including with long-term financial support for rebuilding. Both McCaul and Turner also voted for the $40 billion package in May.
The lawmakers’ comments come ahead of what is expected to be a brutal winter in Ukraine, with Russia, some nine months after its invasion, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — limiting power and heat to major cities.
McCaul and Turner said that providing Ukraine with adequate air defense systems is a top priority, and McCaul contended the federal government had “slow-walked” some of its lethal support.
When Raddatz pressed McCaul on whether providing certain munitions could “incite Russia” after McCaul raised the possibility of extending Ukraine’s range into Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, McCaul said: “Crimea is not part of Russia under international law. So if they can hit into Crimea, I think that’s fair game.”
But, Turner said, simply handing over U.S. equipment might not be the answer given its sophistication and how long it could take to train and ultimately use.
“Our air defense systems are so complex, we need to make certain that we work with partners and pull together an air defense system that they can put together to defend Kyiv, to defend their infrastructure,” he said.
More broadly, McCaul and Turner said that starting in January, their committees will launch investigations into the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Republicans could also scrutinize Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ handling of the southern border and the controversial contents of a laptop that Republicans say was owned by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
“One thing that’s going to be very, very positive about this Congress is we’re going to get back to the committees working again,” Turner said.
McCaul also expressed confidence that McCarthy will have the votes to become speaker in the next Congress despite public criticism from several hard-right lawmakers.
McCarthy will need 218 votes on the House floor on Jan. 3 to be speaker. At least four Republicans in the likely 222-seat majority have vowed to oppose him — complicating his path to winning the gavel in the first round of voting.
The entire House will continue voting for a speaker until a candidate wins a majority. Lawmakers could nominate another compromise candidate if McCarthy fails to secure enough support.
“Do you think he has the votes?” Raddatz asked.
“Kevin has worked harder than any other candidate for speaker I’ve seen. I think he’s got the majority of our conference,” McCaul said. “And the fact is, what’s the alternative here?”
(WASHINGTON) — With the Biden administration urging people to get both a COVID-19 booster and a flu shot as soon as possible, the White House’s Dr. Ashish Jha said Sunday that updated vaccinations will help people “move on” from the pandemic.
“It’s been, obviously, a long two and a half years for Americans, and we understand that people want to move on,” Jha, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz of the virus that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. “The good news is people can move on if they keep their immunity up to date.”
COVID-19 deaths are still averaging more than 2,000 per week and only about 11% of the country has gotten the latest booster compared to 80% of people who completed the primary course of vaccination that was rolled out in 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“We’ve talked about this so many times: People aren’t listening,” Raddatz said of the federal government’s push for vaccinations while low booster rates remain the norm.
“What do you do?” she asked Jha. He reiterated that the vaccines give crucial protection and he said he believes uptake will increase in the coming weeks: “Historically, people tend to get their flu shot in November and December and to January.”
“We think it’s incredibly important as we head into the holidays for people to update their immunity, get the new COVID vaccine, get the flu shot. It’s a great way to stay safe and healthy this holiday season.” he said
About 26% of adults are estimated to have received a flu vaccine as of October, according to the CDC, while an estimated 35% of children received the shots as of early November. Those figures are similar to years past, though the flu vaccine coverage for kids was slightly higher in November 2020.
The results of a study released in June by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that adult flu vaccination rates have declined in states where COVID-19 vaccination rates are also low. Raddatz pointed to that study and asked Jha, “Are you concerned that the controversy and hesitancy over COVID vaccines is carrying over to flu vaccines?”
Jha responded by citing the overall effectiveness of both the COVID-19 and flu vaccinations, making the additional point that many people choose to protect themselves in this way “when they hear it from trusted voices.”
“Our strategy is get out into the community, talk to religious leaders, talk to civil society leaders, community-based organizations, have them get out to the community and talk to people, Jha said.
He also emphasized that the updated COVID-19 booster provides protection from a new subvariant of omicron, which has been rapidly spreading across Massachusetts and, according to experts, accounts for nearly 40% of the current cases there.
Raddatz turned to the so-called “tripledemic” this season, with COVID-19 and the flu circulating and now with high numbers of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in children across the country. Health experts have said RSV is emerging earlier and affecting more kids than typical because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ABC News previously reported.
“We’re seeing hospitals getting close to capacity. What should parents do in particular?” Raddatz asked.
Jha recommended that every family member, no matter their age, get vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu as a first step. “That takes those two and takes them off the table in terms of causing serious illness,” he said.
“RSV, for most people, [is] not a big deal. It’s very mild. For the elderly, and for the youngest kids, it can be a problem,” he said, recommending “basic respiratory hygiene” such as “avoiding sick contacts … washing your hands, cleaning surfaces.”
But “one bit of good news just in the last week, we’ve seen RSV peaked and maybe turn down,” he continued. “I’m obviously hopeful that that trend is going to continue.” Compared to government data collected in the previous year, however, cases are up significantly.
“And what about this shortage of amoxicillin and even ibuprofen in some places?” Raddatz asked of a months-long national shortage facing parents who are scouring drugstore shelves for children’s medicine. “What do they do about that?”
“We have broader supply chain issues with our medications that we’ve had for decades,” Jha said, describing the problems as commonplace. “I often, when I walk into the hospital, find some normal medicine that I’m used to using not available,” he said.
Raddatz also touched on recent protests in China amid its “zero COVID” policy, which includes strict lockdown measures and other rules.
Of the country’s approach to controlling infections and deaths, which differs sharply from the U.S., Raddatz asked Jha: “When you look at what they’re doing, is that effective?”
“We don’t think that’s realistic, certainly not realistic for the American people,” Jha responded.
“I think it’s going to be very, very difficult for China to be able to contain this through their ‘zero COVID’ strategy,” he said. “I would recommend that they pursue the strategy of making sure everybody gets vaccinated, particularly their elderly.”
(UPPER MARLBORO, Md.) — The Jackson Family Rodeo Crew is an Upper Marlboro, Maryland, family of seven epitomizing the rodeo lifestyle and legacy of Black cowboys in the United States.Parents Corey and Robyn Jackson have dedicated themselves to supporting their five kids, four of whom compete, in living that lifestyle to the fullest.
Corey Jackson told “Good Morning America” that from the time he was a young child in his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he had always wanted to be a cowboy.
“It’s really nostalgic, you know, to think back on that time because it was my grandfather and I. He is who got me started watching Westerns [on] Saturday mornings,” he said. “So just from that little, young age, you know, seeing just the mystique of the cowboy you know, riding the Western Range, what have you, I just fell in love with it.”
In some ways, Corey Jackson’s childhood dreams were Robyn Jackson’s norm.
“It’s funny, Corey wanted to be a cowboy — I thought it was normal,” Robyn Jackson said of her generations-long family history in the field that made growing up around horses a reality.
“On my dad’s side, back to the Reconstruction Era, [in] my family, the men were sharecroppers. And so to be a sharecropper, you needed help, and the help came by way of an animal — horse, mule — and they became very skilled in training those horses for work purposes,” she said. “Not until my dad did that skill kind of change into a pleasure activity.”
The pair would eventually meet and hit it off rather fittingly at the famous Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo — which “celebrates and honor Black Cowboys and Cowgirls and their contributions to building the west,” according to its official website — going on to raise their fifth generation wrangler children Dylan, 9, Nic, 14, twins Reagan and Ryan, 12, and Robert,15, on the land that Robyn Jackson’s father Robert Harper purchased and developed, and training in their home arena that he built decades ago.
“It almost brings tears to my eyes because I don’t think we ever, you know, we just never imagined. You don’t know what your future holds,” Robyn Jackson said. “I don’t know that I had ever planned to have little cowboys and cowgirls but that is what has happened. And I’m so thankful because all the decisions that my dad made early on, we had no idea how that was going to impact our lives today.”
As for the kids, when they’re not at a competition or in daily practice with their dad, a former Division I college football player and football coach, or in school with their educator mom, Dylan, Reagan, Ryan and Nic also like to hunt, fish, play various instruments, travel and bake. Though Robert, who has cerebral palsy, does not compete, horses have been and continue to be a big part of his life, as he rides, bonds with the family’s animals, and eagerly attends his sibling’s competitions, including the Bullride Mania Finals Amateur Championship where Nic took the win earlier this month.
Nic was only 7 years old when he got on his first bull. At 13, he was named the 2020 Junior World Bull Riding Champion, making him the first ever in the Northeast to win. With goals of going pro, that was just the beginning for the now-14-year-old, who hopes to take home the title again at this year’s Junior World Finals in December.
“It’s a passion, you know, it’s a lifestyle. It’s just not something that we do. It goes … so far deep, deeper than just the competition,” Corey Jackson told “GMA,” adding that loving and taking care of the land and animals they cultivate is an integral part of their routine. “So when we’re not rodeoing, we’re talking about rodeo, we’re watching rodeo … we’re watching videos of the kids’ performances.”
“Now I can separate from it a little more,” Robyn Jackson added. “But I think the gist of it is we can do just about anything as a family. Whatever the activity is, we’re able to do it as one unit, and I really am thankful for that.”
Raphael Louis Hipos and Ebony Peeples contributed to this report.
