(NEW YORK) — For the second time in a little over a month, multiple people were shot, one fatally, at one of New York City’s most popular summer destinations — the Coney Island boardwalk in Brooklyn, authorities said.
The latest shooting occurred Saturday night and left a man dead from a bullet to the back, and four other people wounded, according to the New York City Police Department.
The shooting happened at 11:57 p.m. on the boardwalk at West 29th Street near the Coney Island Houses — a city public housing complex, authorities said. The incident occurred next to a playground and several blocks southeast of the Luna Park amusement park.
No arrests were immediately reported and police said a motive for the shooting was under investigation. It remained unclear if any of the people shot were targeted.
Bystanders told ABC New York City station WABC they heard several shots ring out and initially mistook them for fireworks.
“I heard about seven shots, one after the other,” one witness told WABC. “It was very quick. I was like, someone is having a celebration of some sorts probably. I didn’t see any fireworks though. So, I was like, it might be gunfire, but I wish it was the fireworks.”
Police said a 42-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, was shot in the back and taken to New York University Langone Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The gunfire also left a 49-year-old woman hospitalized with a bullet wound to the leg and a 34-year-old woman shot in the foot, police said. A 46-year-old man and another man, whose age was not immediately released, were both shot in the leg, according to police.
The episode comes a little over a month since a shooting on the Coney Island boardwalk left five people wounded, one critically. That shooting unfolded around 2 a.m. on July 10 at West 21st Street, just southeast of the iconic former Parachute Jump Tower, a historic landmark. Police said one person pulled a gun and shot two women and three men who were among a large crowd gathered for a pop-up party.
No arrests were announced in the July boardwalk shooting, which remains under investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday pushed back on Republicans who called President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan unfair — with Sanders arguing the GOP turned a blind eye to government assistance in other sectors.
“I don’t hear any of these Republicans squawking when we give massive tax breaks to billionaires,” Sanders, I-Vt., told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“Suddenly when we do something for working people, it is a terrible idea,” he said.
While Sanders agreed with Biden’s decision to forgive some federal loans — up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 for individual federal loan recipients, both with a $125,000 income cap — the lawmaker also said he would go a step further by making public colleges and universities tuition-free to keep the U.S. “competitive in the global economy.” Sanders has long lobbied for such a move.
Biden on Wednesday announced a three-part student loan relief plan, which he had been considering in some form since before he took office. The program also continues the COVID-19 pause on federal student loans repayments, pushing it through December, with payments resuming in January.
On “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Sanders on the arguments of fairness and scope.
“Several of your Democratic colleagues who are up for reelection this year have criticized [the policy] as well,” he said, citing those who say Biden’s plan isn’t clearly funded, doesn’t address larger school affordability issues and left out people without loans who could still use relief.
Sanders agreed that while not everyone who needs help will benefit from the loan forgiveness, those in need of assistance with student debt should not be ignored.
“Maybe, just maybe, we want to have a government that works for all working people and not just the people on top,” he said.
He renewed his longstanding calls to raise the minimum wage, provide free health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs.
On “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Sanders on the arguments of fairness and scope.
“Several of your Democratic colleagues who are up for reelection this year have criticized [the policy] as well,” he said, citing those who say Biden’s plan isn’t clearly funded, doesn’t address larger school affordability issues and left out people without loans who could still use relief.
Sanders agreed that while not everyone who needs help will benefit from the loan forgiveness, those in need of assistance with student debt should not be ignored.
“Maybe, just maybe, we want to have a government that works for all working people and not just the people on top,” he said.
He renewed his longstanding calls to raise the minimum wage, provide free health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Stephanopoulos also asked about the affidavit used to justify the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month in relation to sensitive and classified documents that the government says he took with him when he left the White House. (Trump denies wrongdoing; many Republicans say it is a political attack.)
A redacted copy of the affidavit was released late last week and shows that at least 180 classified documents were recovered from Trump’s estate by the National Archives and Records Administration in February, some of which were labeled as “top secret.”
“It’s just incomprehensible to me,” Sanders said in response. “But then again, when we talk about President Trump, there’s a lot of incomprehensible things.”
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., conceded on Sunday that former President Donald Trump should have returned the sensitive and classified documents that the government says he took home with him after leaving office, which led the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Blunt was repeatedly pressed by anchor George Stephanopoulos before he answered a question about how he felt about what the Department of Justice said Trump did.
Initially responding to Stephanopoulos’ question, Blunt drew comparisons to Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey for their past conduct related to records.
But Stephanopoulos pushed back, noting that it wasn’t the same.
“You’re still not answering the question. You are critical of Secretary Clinton, who actually turned over what she had … what we have here is a situation where the president did not turn over these documents,” Stephanopoulos said. “Can you say whether this was right or wrong?”
“He should have turned the documents over,” said Blunt. “I’ve had access to documents like that for a long time. I’m incredibly careful,” he said.
But he took issue with the timing of the probe.
“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election [and] suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program you and I were going to talk about today?” he said.
“Well, it went on because the president didn’t turn over the documents, correct? He was asked several times,” Stephanopoulos said. “He didn’t turn them over. He was subpoenaed, he didn’t respond to the subpoena.”
“I understand he turned over a lot of documents,” Blunt claimed of Trump, seemingly referring to classified papers that were returned to the government in the months before the FBI search, after a protracted back-and-forth.
“He should have turned over all of them,” Blunt said. “I imagine he knows that very well now.”
But the Missouri lawmaker also said that the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which he sits, had questions that needed answers from federal investigators — such as why they weren’t aware of this case.
“Why haven’t we heard anything about this if there was a national security problem?” Blunt said, adding, “The oversight committee should have been told.” He said that the committee expects to soon hear from the director of national intelligence.
Blunt was also asked to react to President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan for borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year in 2020 or 2021. White House officials told reporters last week that they believe “43 million federal student loan borrowers will benefit, and of those, 20 million will have their debt completely canceled.”
“I just thought it was monumentally unfair,” Blunt said. “Unfair to people who didn’t go to college because they didn’t think they could afford it, unfair to people who have paid their loans back.”
“It’s just bad economics, with long-term devastating effects on the student loan program,” he added.
The White House’s loan forgiveness program has faced vocal opposition from Republican lawmakers who argue, in part, that it will exacerbate historically high inflation.
But “most economists said it’s not going to increase inflation,” Stephanopoulos said. An analysis last week by Goldman Sachs reached such a conclusion, finding that the restart of other loan payments would likely offset the money forgiven.
“Most economists are wrong,” Blunt responded. “We’ve got to do everything we can to slow the economy down. You don’t slow the economy down by forgiving debt and giving people another $24 billion to spend that they would have spent paying off the student debt.”
(RIO DE JANEIRO) — Fabiana*, 24, was pregnant with her second child in Rio de Janeiro, and, like thousands of other Brazilian women, knew she could not rely on the health care system.
“It was just too much for me,” she told ABC News. “I just couldn’t handle that. I don’t want to become like many women with many kids.”
Her mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family who offered to pay for a doctor, but, not wanting to incur any debt, she said she instead found a cheaper option where she could buy abortion medication on the black market.
“I was not scared to take it,” she said. “I wanted to be released from this pregnancy. I couldn’t afford [a baby]. It was impossible.”
“Of course, I would have preferred to go to a hospital but this option was not even possible for me. I didn’t even think of it,” she added.
Fabiana’s story plays out across the continent every year, though she admits she was lucky not to have any complications. Brazil’s old penal code has remained untouched since 1940, prohibiting abortion in all cases except when the pregnancy is a result of rape or endangers a mother’s life, and activists fear that the country could — like in parts of the U.S. — move to enact stricter laws.
As a region, South America has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, yet, according to one study in the Lancet, ranks among the highest estimated frequency of abortions administered. Despite Brazil’s restrictive legislation, around 500,000 illegal abortions are believed to take place annually for women between the ages of 18 and 39, according to one 2019 study.
That pattern has played out across the continent, highlighting a trend that activists in the U.S. have long observed — criminalizing abortion does not lower the number of abortions, it merely makes them more unsafe for women.
Yet, while the continent has long been known for its restrictive reproductive rights practices, human rights groups and lawyers point to a number of crucial developments that may be turning the tide, and, in an unfriendly political environment, may provide lessons for their counterparts in the U.S.
‘A system of guilt for pregnant women’
The severity of abortion laws varies from place to place in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in six countries — El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname — abortion in any instance carries a criminal penalty.
While that does not mean abortions do not happen there, criminalization has led to women turning to underground means to get abortions and has disproportionately impacted the poorest in society, activists say.
In the case of El Salvador, abortion was decriminalized for a brief period between 1973 and 1975, but a penal code instituted in 1978 engendered a total ban — including in the case of incest or rape.
“I had no other choice than turning activist,” Mariana Moisa, a campaigner in El Salvador, told ABC News. “And now that the U.S. has reversed Roe v. Wade, most conservative groups in Salvador and other countries who always denied women’s rights do see it as a validation of continuing women’s rights violations.”
Doctors run a huge risk in providing abortions in secret, and the criminalization of the procedure has led to cases where non-induced miscarriages have led to convictions, Mariana Moisa, a campaigner in El Salvador, told ABC News.
This year, a woman known as “Elsy” was finally released after a decade in prison, having been sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide after she suffered a miscarriage.
“There is a system of guilt for pregnant women. Women are constantly afraid,” she said. “Most women do not have the economic means to find a doctor to get a safe abortion. But for rich women this is not an issue.”
While El Salvador’s policies are stricter than those faced by the likes of Fabiana in Brazil, the risk women face of running into the judicial system when seeking an abortion are just as real.
“Very often, in hospitals woman cannot have an abortion without entering into the judicial system,” Gustavo Scandelari, a criminal law professor at the Federal University of Paraná. “We need so many improvements in our legal system. It has not changed since 1940. We are so backward.”
In the 2020 case of one 10-year-old girl in Espíro Santo State, Scandelari said, a judge initially denied her request for abortion before a media campaign helped overturn the decision. A similar ordeal faced an 11-year-old rape victim this year, who was initially refused an abortion because she was in the 22nd week of her pregnancy.
“There is no improvement in the abortion discussion in Brazil,” Luciana Temer, president of the human rights organization Institute Liberta, told ABC News. Even worse than that, what happened in the U.S. could happen here sooner than we think. It would be even worse than in America as the Law would be national, states could not make individual exceptions.”
“Now that the U.S. has reversed Roe v. Wade, most conservative groups in Salvador and other countries who always denied women’s rights do see it as a validation of continuing women’s rights violation,” Moisa said.
The ‘green wave’ movement
Catalina Martínez Coral, the regional director for the U.S. based Center for Reproductive Rights, said that while the continent is home to strict abortion laws, there is cause for optimism.
“I think in Latin America, the Caribbean, we have been seeing very important victories in the last couple of years, even though this continent has some of the most restrictive abortion laws,” she told ABC News. “In the last couple of years we have been seeing how a movement has grown across the region, this green wave movement of women mobilizing for reproductive rights.”
This started in Argentina, she said, which after years of grassroots pressure legalized abortion up to 14 weeks in 2020, and has been followed up by the Supreme Court in Mexico’s decision to recognize the right to abortion in 2021, and the constitutional court of Colombia decriminalizing abortion up to 21 weeks, the continent’s most progressive ruling to date.
That, Coral said, has been followed up in Chile. While the country’s Congress has moved to restrict reproductive rights in recent years, keeping them on par with Brazil, the election of progressive Gabriel Boric, and his proposals for a new constitution, recently saw the right to abortion added to a draft text that is set to go to a public vote in September.
“Judges and lawmakers have played a very important role in Argentina, Congress in Mexico, Colombian Judges,” Coral said. “We cannot deny that was important, but I think that the most important role was played by civil society organization and feminist movements as these movements have understood that, in Latin America, a legal win is not enough, that we really need to create a public conversation around these matters so that we can really implement these decisions. The strategy of the movement in Latin America has been to be able to socially decriminalize abortion.”
The lessons to be learned from Latin America, Coral said, is that a combination of legal and grassroots pressure is required to improve, as well as uphold, reproductive rights.
Even with those successes, 97% of women of reproductive age in Latin America live in countries with restrictive abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
And both Temer and Moisa fear the overturning of Roe v Wade has helped embolden conservative feeling in the region, and could lead to even more restrictive practices.
*’Fabiana’ is a pseudonym given to protect her identity
ABC News’ Jamie Dorrington contributed to this report
(UVALDE, Texas) — March For Our Lives held a rally in front of the state capitol in Austin Saturday with parents who lost their children in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, families and survivors from a 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School, and youth activists, to demand action on gun safety from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“Three months since the horrifying and preventable tragedy at Robb Elementary School, Governor Abbott still hasn’t taken action to keep kids safe and prevent gun violence. With kids across Texas going back to school in the coming weeks, Abbott’s inaction is unconscionable,” March For Our Lives said in a statement Friday.
Victims and families of those killed in shootings demanded Abbott call a special session to raise the minimum age to purchase an assault weapon in Texas from 18 to 21.
“These weapons belong in the military, they belong in the war, not in the classroom,” said Maggie Mireles, the sister of elementary school teacher Eva Mireles, who was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.
Many speakers, including Mireles, called for Texans to vote Abbott out of office.
Mireles said when her family met with Abbott they asked him to change gun laws. “He said he would be hard at work to do that and that has not happened,” she said.
The crowd could be heard chanting “vote him out,” referring to Abbott, and “raise the age,” between speakers.
Speakers included parents of children killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School, families of teachers killed, and families and survivors from mass shootings across the country.
“It is time to stop using mental issues as an excuse for these mass shootings. When in reality it’s making easy access for teens to purchase ARs,” said Belinda Arriola, whose granddaughter Amory Garza was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting in May.
Arriola criticized Abbott for his lack of action on gun control and called on him to call a special session to raise the age limit for assault weapon purchases, saying it should have been done three months ago.
“You disgracefully, disrespectfully uttered these words: ‘the tragedy in Uvalde could have been worse.’ No governor, the tragedy in Uvalde should have never happened in the first place,”Arriola said.
Families impacted by the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018 also gathered, echoing promises of change made by lawmakers that were never fulfilled.
“We were promised a lot of things. We asked for a lot of things and nothing ever changed,” a speaker whose son was killed in the Santa Fe shooting and was only identified as Rosie said. “Greg Abbott, I am asking you to do something. You sat us at a round table, you promised a bunch of things to us and you failed us.”
Rosie added, “We’re never going to stop a school shooting, we cannot fool ourselves that that we can do that. But we can make it harder. And we need the people that empower to make it harder.”
(BETHESDA, Md.) — A State Department employee was killed this week while riding her bike in Maryland.
The Montgomery County Police Department confirmed Sarah Joan Langenkamp, 42, was struck by a flatbed truck on the afternoon of Aug. 25 while riding a bicycle at the 5200 block of River Road in Bethesda.
Langenkamp was a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. Numerous offices have cited her as the head of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Section at the embassy.
“We can confirm the death of Foreign Service Officer Sarah J. Langenkamp,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News on Saturday. “The Department of State extends its deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Ms. Langenkamp.”
“We cannot provide further comments due to privacy and law enforcement sensitivity considerations. We refer you to the Bethesda Police Department for additional information,” the spokesperson said.
Langenkamp’s husband Daniel served at the Kyiv embassy as spokesperson. A CBS News report published earlier this year documented how the Langenkamp’s sons were able to reconnect with them after the family was separated due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Police say they were called to the scene of the accident just after 4 p.m. on Thursday. A preliminary investigation by the Collision Reconstruction Unit found the driver of the vehicle, which was a red 2014 Volvo flatbed truck, and Lagenkamp were both traveling in the same direction when the collision occurred.
The driver, who remains unidentified, was heading east and was turning right into a parking lot at 5244 River Road when they struck Langenkamp, authorities said. Langenkamp was run over by the truck and was pronounced dead at the scene.
River Road was closed as law enforcement, including Montgomery Fire Rescue, responded to the crash.
The investigation remains ongoing, according to the Montgomery County Police Department. The department did not immediately respond to ABC News’s request for additional comment.
Langenkamp is the second State Department employee to be killed in a biking accident this year.
Shawn O’Donnell, a 40-year-old foreign service worker for the agency, was killed after being struck by a Mack cement truck on July 20 in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom in Washington, D.C.
O’Donnell was one of three people killed in bike crashes in the city in July. Community members gathered outside city hall to demand change, calling on Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser to make her plan for zero traffic deaths by 2024 a reality, ABC News affiliate WJLA reported.
(SAN MATEO COUNTY, Calif.) — A man is lucky to be alive after he fell about 100 feet off of a cliff edge when it reportedly crumbled beneath him as he walked on it.
The incident occurred at around dawn when the unnamed man was walking along cliffs in Moss Beach in San Mateo County, California — approximately 22 miles south of San Francisco — and the cliff edge gave way beneath his feet causing him to fall an estimated 100 feet, according to CAL FIRE San Mateo.
But at 8:30 a.m., a woman who was walking nearby heard the man’s calls for help and was able to alert authorities.
Coastside Fire subsequently arrived and were able to pull the man to safety within 22 minutes of their arrival, CAL FIRE San Mateo said in a tweet along with a short video of the miraculous rescue.
CLIFF RESCUE: The cliff crumbled beneath a man who was walking at dawn in Moss Beach. He fell est. 100 feet & yelled for help. At 8:30am a woman nearby heard his calls. Coastside Fire pulled him to safety within 22 minutes of their arrival. Avoid cliff edges as they are unstable. pic.twitter.com/OCz7W84dra
In the video, about a dozen officers can be seen pulling a series of ropes anchored by a fire engine as the victim, who is accompanied by another officer, are hoisted up the side of the cliff. As they approach the top of the cliff, the unidentified man who fell can be heard communicating with authorities about his condition but appears unsteady on his feet as he is pulled to safety. Authorities did not disclose his current condition.
While the man appeared to be okay at the end of the rescue, CAL FIRE San Mateo had one piece of advice following the incident: “Avoid cliff edges as they are unstable.”
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA on Monday will send an unmanned space capsule into the moon’s orbit, marking the initial launch in an ambitious plan to establish a long term presence on the moon for scientific discovery and economic development.
The space capsule, called Artemis 1, will travel for roughly 40 days — reaching as close as 60 miles from the moon, and then 40,000 miles above the moon when orbiting over its dark side — before landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
Vice President Kamala Harris will attend the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, the White House said on Friday. At least 100,000 people will also watch on the beaches along Cape Canaveral as the shuttle takes off, Florida tourism officials estimated.
If the launch proves successful, NASA will send a crew to the moon’s orbit on Artemis 2 in 2024. Eventually, the Artemis expedition as a whole could lead to the first crewed space trip to Mars, NASA says.
Here’s everything you need to know about the launch on Monday:
When is the launch?
A two-hour launch window begins on Monday at 8:33 a.m. ET, meaning the launch could take place anytime over the ensuing two-hour period. But the launch may not take place on Monday morning, as NASA abides by a strict set of weather criteria that determine whether a flight can proceed.
Meteorologists with the U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 45 predicted a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for the launch window on Monday morning, according to a NASA blog post on Thursday.
The launch will be postponed, for instance, if the temperature at both 132.5 feet and 257.5 feet exceeds 94.5 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 consecutive minutes. NASA imposes additional weather restrictions, some of which depend on wind and humidity conditions.
If the launch does not take place on Monday, a second two-hour launch wind will begin on Friday, Sept. 2 at 12:38 a.m. ET. If NASA postpones the second launch, a third two-hour window will begin on Monday Sept. 5 at 5:12 p.m. ET.
How do you watch the launch?
ABC News will broadcast the launch live on Monday. Coverage will start at about 8:30 a.m. ET, just as the time window begins. ABC News may not broadcast from the launch if the take off is postponed before the time window starts.
In addition, NASA will broadcast the launch on its website . Eager viewers can watch an ongoing livestream of the launch site on YouTube.
What will the launch event entail?
NASA’s live broadcast of the launch will include celebrity appearances by Jack Black, Chris Evans, and Keke Palmer, as well as a special performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock.
The event will also feature a performance of “America the Beautiful” by The Philadelphia Orchestra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
When is the shuttle coming back?
If the capsule takes off on Monday morning, the mission will last for 42 days, after which the capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Oct. 10 at 11:53 a.m. ET.
If the capsule takes off during the second launch window, on Sept. 2, the mission will last 39 days with a splashdown in the Pacific on Oct. 11; while a launch during the third window, on Sept. 5, would last 42 days and end on Oct. 17.
What’s next for the Artemis expedition?
On the whole, the Artemis expedition includes four missions, each of which will cost roughly $4.1 billion. In all, the project will cost up to $93 billion by 2025, according to an audit from the NASA Office of the Inspector General.
If Artemis 1 is successful, Artemis 2 will take four astronauts near the moon in 2024. After that, Artemis 3 will take a crewed shuttle for a moon landing. Finally, Artemis 4 will fly to a space station near the moon.
NASA hopes that the Artemis expedition will enable a crewed trip to Mars in the ensuing years.
(TULSA, Okla.) — Descendants of the 1921 Tula Race Massacre are being urged to avoid submitting DNA samples to the city’s investigation project amid privacy concerns which would delay efforts to identify remains found in a mass grave many believe is linked to the tragedy.
Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was an affluent area known as “Black Wall Street” and was home to 1,200 Black residents and hundreds of Black-owned businesses in the early 1900s. A confrontation between groups of white and Black residents following the arrest of a young Black man named Dick Rowland, who was accused of assaulting a white girl, ended with 35 city blocks being burned to the ground on the evening of May 31, 1921.
Historians believe as many as 300 people were killed as white mobs destroyed homes, businesses, churches, schools, hospitals and other buildings. More than 100 years later, many of the massacre victims’ bodies have never been found.
Experts discovered a mass grave at Oaklawn Cemetery in October 2020. Archaeologists exhumed 19 burials and identified 14 individuals to be used for DNA analysis. Descendants and relatives of massacre victims are being asked to submit their own DNA to help identify the bodies.
The city of Tulsa is working with Utah-based lab Intermountain Forensics to examine the remains. Scientists have been able to extract DNA from two of the 14 individuals so far.
Mayor G.T. Bynum apologized for the Tulsa’s role in the 1921 massacre in May 2021 and his spokesperson Michelle Brooks told ABC News his office is working with the lab to determine if the samples they have will be good enough to take more DNA from or if they will need to re-exhume the bodies.
Justice for Greenwood, a group working to secure reparations on behalf of survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has cautioned against submitting DNA. They hosted a public town hall Thursday to discuss concerns and answer questions over the DNA testing.
“The city is trying to encourage descendants to feel a sense of buy-in by donating their DNA,” said Eric Miller, an attorney with Justice for Greenwood, during the town hall.
Miller and other members of the group are concerned descendants could be opening themselves or their relatives up to potential criminal prosecution by providing DNA.
“This is information that doesn’t just impact an individual, but impacts whole families. You give your DNA up and you’re dragging your whole family and perhaps your whole community into this mess,” Miller said.
UC Davis law professor Elizabeth Joh, who has written extensively and teaches courses on criminal law and procedure, policing, and surveillance, spoke during the meeting. “What Tulsa does is going to be followed by other communities. States are only beginning to start to look at this issue,” Joh said at the townhall.
Intermountain Forensics Executive Director Deborah Dilley told ABC News she was surprised by the pushback. “We had at least two conversations with Justice for Greenwood,” Dilley said. “They asked a lot of questions about how genetic databases work. But they didn’t ask specifically about our project and how our methodology was on that.”
The lab is asking descendants to upload their DNA profiles to GEDmatch, a genetic genealogy research site. GEDmatch is free and open to the public and match results vary based on which DNA test was used, but typically include the name, email, and degree of relatedness shared between relatives. A “PRO” version of GEDmatch is available to law enforcement agencies working to find DNA matches in criminal cases.
Dilley says anyone participating in the project can choose the level of confidentiality they want. Researchers at Intermountain Forensics will be able to see any genetic matches but will not have access to any raw data or individual genetic profiles.
“We wanted to make sure that everybody understood the different categories,” said Dilley. “And we have some people who said ‘Nope, I want to be absolutely private’ and so we will process those separately.”
Miller says the current privacy options are not enough.
“There’s a high bar of trust to be overcome here and the city has done nothing to assure us of the privacy and security of that information. There’s so many things they could have done,” Miller told ABC News. “When the 9/11 Commission did DNA matching to identify the remains of people killed in the terrorist attack, it created a secure DNA database that was not generally accessible.”
Tulsa officials say the GEDmatch database was the best choice for this project.
“GEDmatch is one of the only two databases that allow comparisons to unidentified human remains. Of those two, GEDmatch is the only one which allows users to opt out of law enforcement searches involving crime scene DNA,” Tulsa Communications Director Michelle Brooks told ABC News.
A spokesperson for GEDmatch says law enforcement is not allowed to use the consumer version of the site per the Terms of Service, but conceded that it could happen.
“We cannot prevent users from choosing to circumvent the Terms of Service,” Brett Williams wrote in an email to ABC News. “However, these violations would almost certainly be discovered during court proceedings by the defense councils in their discovery process.”
Greg Robinson is a member of the city’s Mass Graves Public Oversight Committee and spoke during the town hall.
“Process matters, it matters deeply,” Robinson said at the townhall. “It’s not simply what we’re doing, it’s the way we go about it that will give the confidence that’s needed for us to move forward. How are we supposed to trust that we can actually move toward justice and reparation then reconciliation if we can’t do the investigation part right?”
(FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.) — At least one person has been shot in what police say was a targeted shooting at the Washington County Fair in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The incident occurred at approximately 10:30 p.m. when Fayetteville Police Officers responded to a report of a shooting at the annual Washington County Fair that is taking place this year From August 23 to 27.
“Upon the officers arrival they located one victim, and immediately began to render first aid,” said the Fayetteville Police Department in a statement published on social media. “The victim was then transported to a local medical facility.”
Local media was initially reporting that several other injuries were reported due to a stampede following the shooting but authorities have not yet confirmed this.
The Fayetteville Police Department said that their initial investigation has led them to believe that this was a targeted incident and not a random act of violence but did not elaborate further.
Authorities did confirm, however, that the suspect involved in the shooting was able to flee the scene of the crime and is currently on the loose. It is not clear if police know the identity of the suspect or not.
Officers are currently on the scene and investigating the incident and their investigation is ongoing.
The Washington County Fair was founded in 1857 and is the largest and most established county fair in Arkansas, according to the Washington County Fair Association.
