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(UVALDE, Texas) — Two Texas legislators held a listening session Monday to hear from Robb Elementary School victims’ families, who continue to voice how unheard they feel by their representatives as they plead for gun control statewide and nationally.

Their advocacy was spurred by the school shooting that took place on May 24, when 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Parents spoke about wanting commonsense gun legislation, accountability for police officers and transparency from local officials, as well as voiced their frustrations with overly complex and arduous application processes for relief funds.

“The fact that I have to sit here and tell y’all, the state and federal government, how to do your job, is evidence enough of the massive failure we’ve experienced,” Kimberly Rubio, mother of 10-year-old victim Lexi Rubio, told the legislators.

“This was not the first school shooting and will not be the last until we federally ban these weapons,” Rubio said. “You can’t help us. All we want is a federal ban on assault weapons.”

She also lamented about the process to receive donation funds, referencing the 20-page application document she said was sent by the National Compassion Fund only days after the shooting.

“We couldn’t even get out of bed. Four months later, I can’t even read a chapter of a book. When we finally filled it out, they sent it back with so many documents of things they needed,” Rubio told the legislators. “You know who I am, you know I lost my daughter. It should be easier.”

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told ABC News she asked families to testify so that she could share the recording with fellow lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and said that after the meeting, she plans to find ways to make the federal compensation process more expeditious for families, which she recognized was a glaring issue.

When asked if she will share the footage directly with Republican senators who have come out against H.R. 1808, the upcoming bill in the Senate that proposes federally banning assault weapons — which many Uvalde families have asked for — she told ABC News, “Well, it is available and we’ll go back to Washington and determine how it can be best given.”

Brett Cross, 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia’s uncle and legal guardian, asked the legislators, “How many more damn kids need to die before the government does something?”

He, like others, said he feels Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t care.

“I spoke to Gov. Abbott when I asked him to call a special session to raise the minimum age to 21. He said that wouldn’t have made a difference,” Cross said tearfully, reminding the gathering that the shooter was only 18 years old at the time of the massacre.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, agreed.

“This community was not only failed on that day at Robb Elementary, but by every level of government so far, including the governor of the state of Texas, the Department of Public Safety and local elected officials who refuse to release basic information about what happened and why it happened,” Castro told the families Monday night. “And that is a second kind of assault on the community of Uvalde.”

“We just need something to change because if it doesn’t, we’ll feel like our kids died for nothing,” said Angel Garza, stepfather to victim Amerie Jo Garza.

Earlier Monday, Uvalde County commissioners voted unanimously to approve a letter to Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, asking him to meet with victims’ families who seek to speak with him about raising the minimum age for purchasing assault-style weapons to 21.

This vote came after similar calls on Abbott to convene a special session have gone unanswered.

“It’s not going to happen,” Uvalde County Commissioner Mariano Pargas Jr., who seconded the motion, said of Uvalde’s pleas to Abbott to legislate the age requirement.

“​​We’re hoping we can do something that will make ’em change their minds,” he said of the intent behind the letter to the Texas State House speaker.

Getting families in front of legislators, he believes, is one way to do that.

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(ELMORE, Ala.) — When twins Kassie and Kascie Vaughan visited their brother at the Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama, on Sunday, they said he was unable to walk, had lost a significant amount of weight and was almost unrecognizable.

The family of 32-year-old Kastellio Vaughan, who was convicted on burglary and break-in charges in 2019, now fears for his life, saying the Alabama Department of Corrections is neglecting his health.

“He’s looking terrible. Just one word, terrible. He’s feeling weak in spirit. He’s really just, he’s really feeling low,” Kascie Vaughan told ABC News. “He doesn’t look like Kastellio, the brother that we know.”

Kassie Vaughan told ABC News she received harrowing photos of her older brother earlier this month along with a message to get him help. Photos depicting Kastellio Vaughan slumped over, emaciated, and with a large, undressed wound extending down his abdominal area were allegedly sent by an unidentified inmate at Elmore Correctional Center.

“He said, ‘Your brother’s not gonna make it until Monday. Please get him help.’…[He said] they brought him back to general population at the prison, they didn’t cover up his wounds, and the staples was bursting out of his abdomen,” Kassie Vaughan told ABC News.

The inmate who sent the photos claimed he saw Kastellio Vaughan vomiting and in a weakened state after being released to Elmore’s general population on Aug. 30. That was the same day Kastellio Vaughan had surgery to remove part of his small intestine due to complications from an old gunshot wound, according to his sisters.

They allege they were unaware their brother underwent a procedure until receiving the photos.

Kastellio Vaughan was transferred to Staton Correctional Facility’s Medical Observation Unit last Friday, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Prison officials said Kastellio Vaughan had been in touch with his family and was observed walking and eating after his transfer to Staton Correctional.

“He has been in contact with his family to update them on his situation and ease their concerns,” the department said in a statement about Vaughan’s condition on Friday. “Inmate Vaughan has requested and received medical attention with the ADOC at least 11 times between July 30, 2022, and September 22, 2022. As a result, each time he received appropriate medical treatment and/or care.”

“The ADOC offers a constitutional level care to all inmates,” its statement continued. “However, inmates are not required to undergo care, just as citizens in the civilian world are afforded choice of whether to receive care.”

Following their visit on Sunday, the Vaughan’s said their brother’s appearance and condition have not appeared to improve “at all” since the photos were taken. They also said he was using a wheelchair and unable to walk while they were at the facility. He also now has to use absorbent briefs, which the sisters said another inmate has to help change or he’s forced to try and do it by himself.

The Alabama Department of Corrections has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment on these most recent allegations.

Kassie Vaughan said she shared these photos of her brother on Facebook last week to bring attention to his deteriorating health.

“Even after being incarcerated and us being away from him, it really hurts but it was better because we knew that his health was OK,” Kascie Vaughan said. “But after his health declined, we really just been feeling like we kind of losing our big brother. Like, we don’t have no hope. And he’s always protected us and now we feel like we are trying to protect him.”

Civil rights attorneys Lee Merritt, Harry Daniels, and Ben Crump, who are now representing Vaughan, allege this is a case of medical neglect that points to larger issues in the prison system. Kastellio Vaughan’s legal team alleges he’s lost 75 pounds in less than a month.

“This is horrific,” Crump said in a statement on Sunday. “Let’s be clear, the state of Alabama has tried to deflect any action or responsibility for Mr. Vaughan’s condition at every turn. If it wasn’t for these pictures, the media spotlight and the resulting uproar, we might never have known about the neglect and Mr. Vaughan would have died before the public knew anything was happening.”

Kastellio Vaughan’s legal team and family “are still deeply concerned about his safety in that prison,” Merritt told ABC News. He said they are now pushing for Vaughan to receive a professional medical evaluation, treatment and appropriate accommodations to restore his health.

“It shouldn’t have been prisoners sending emergency text messages and photographs to his family, but it should have been the medical staff who are responsible for the health and safety of everyone who is under their care,” Merritt said. “It is not as if Mr. Kastellio could have gone to see a doctor himself or scheduled an appointment. He is an inmate at that prison and the law requires that they honor their duty to provide for their prisoners’ wellbeing.”

“It doesn’t matter what Kastellio did, why he was in jail, doesn’t matter. As society as a whole, as human beings, we have a duty to one another. It doesn’t matter what that person is imprisoned for,” Daniels told ABC News. “We need this man to get well. Alright, we need him to get help. That’s not asking for a whole lot.”

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(NEW YORK) — The more than 1,200 miles of shores in the southern U.S. that line the Gulf of Mexico are no stranger to strong storms — but that doesn’t make potential damage from an approaching cyclone any less likely.

As Hurricane Ian marches closer to the U.S., its aim toward the Gulf Coast is especially concerning considering how vulnerable the region is to storm surge, experts told ABC News.

The underwater geology of the Gulf of Mexico is what makes the Gulf Coast particularly unguarded against the massive influx of seawater. The shallow waters in the Gulf, combined with the symmetry of its shallow ocean floor, are what allow the storm surge to be pushed even higher onto land, Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist at Weather Tiger, a consulting and risk management firm, told ABC News.

The continental shelf of the Florida Gulf Coast extends quite far offshore — up to 200 miles in some spots, Truchelut said.

“The waters of the Gulf of Mexico just simply aren’t that deep, over a lot of the Florida coastal waters just offshore,” he said. “If there’s wind pushing water toward that direction, it’s shallow, it has nowhere to go. So it kind of amplifies and goes further inland.”

Meteorologists are most concerned about the west coast of Florida, starting in the Florida Keys and north to Tampa Bay, Michael Brennan, acting deputy director for the National Hurricane Center, told ABC News.

The Tampa Bay area is “extremely sensitive” to storm surge, Brennan said, adding that the region could experience 5 to 8 feet of inundation — meaning above ground-level flooding. The Fort Meyers and Charlotte Harbor areas could see 4 to 7 feet and regions farther south could see 3 to 5 feet of inundation, Brennan said.

Another reason why the Gulf of Mexico is especially vulnerable to hurricanes and storm surge is because of its unique U-shaped coastline, which essentially traps a storm system into a populated region, no matter which way it turns, Truchelut said.

“When a hurricane gets into the Gulf of Mexico, it’s hard for it not to hit somebody,” he said.

The same geography conundrum also applies on a smaller scale to Tampa Bay, which is almost shaped like a cul-de-sac and doesn’t have anywhere for the water that’s getting pushed around to go, Truchelut said.

“Right now, the way this storm is coming in, you’d have this sort of push of surge right into Tampa Bay and in regions along the Gulf, western Gulf Coast,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.

Although the models are still uncertain, Ian will almost certainly strike somewhere along the eastern Gulf Coast as a major hurricane, Shepherd said.

Oftentimes, if a hurricane trapped within the Gulf of Mexico changes directions, it exacerbates the threat even more, Truchelut said. The change in direction typically slows down the storm system, allowing more time for waves to get bigger and head toward the shallow continental shelf, he added. Ian will likely stall over the Tampa Bay region, Shepherd said.

Ian does not even need to directly impact the Tampa Bay region to do considerable damage, the experts said. Even without a direct hit, the slow movement at Ian’s intensity will bring intense storm surge, flooding rain and prolonged hurricane-force winds.

In November 2020, Tropical Storm Eta, which had downgraded to a weak tropical storm after making landfall in Central America as a Category 4 hurricane, caused widespread flooding in Tampa. The storm made direct impact about 90 miles north of Tampa, but the 70 mph winds and soaking rain still caused bay waters to top seawalls in the area.

“It’d be 1,000 times worse had it been an actual major hurricane that was well organized,” Truchelut said.

Because of the way Ian is moving, as well as its intensity and the fact that it may stall, it places the Tampa Bay region on what meteorologists call “the dirty side of the hurricane” — the right front quadrant of the storm, just to the right of the eye, that typically has the worst of the winds and storm surge due to the motion and circulation of the system, Shepherd said.

A large concern is that many of the areas that flooded in the Tampa Bay region more than 100 years ago will do so again and at a greater scale — and this time, populated by hundreds of thousands more people from the influx of development that has occurred since, Truchelut said. Much of the coastal infrastructure, including condos and homes along the coast, did not exist the last time a major hurricane directly impacted the region, Shepherd said.

Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science, has calculated the 100-year flood height in the Tampa Bay area at 6.5 feet. There are more than 125,000 homes in the region currently situated below that flood level.

The experts cautioned residents in Florida to heed evacuation warnings and not to be deterred by the category of the storm or “hurricane amnesia,” since it has been a century since the region experienced a major storm.

“We as a society have to get accustomed to or used to planning for the worst, and maybe it doesn’t happen,” Shepherd said. “As good as our weather predictive capability is, if not, it still has some uncertainty with it.”

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(ORLANDO, Fla.) — A student rower who was injured after an apparent lightning strike on a Florida lake last week has died, becoming the second fatality stemming from the weather-related incident.

“It is with broken hearts that we share the passing of a second rower involved in last Thursday’s weather-related tragedy,” North Orlando Rowing wrote on Facebook Saturday. “The NOR community is devastated and continues to focus on supporting our affected families and our entire NOR team during this difficult time. We continue to cooperate with local authorities and USRowing as they investigate the incident.”

The group said it wouldn’t provide further comment until the investigation is complete.

Members of the nonprofit rowing group were practicing at Lake Fairview in Orlando when the incident happened on Sept. 15, the Orlando Fire Department had told ABC News.

The next day, search teams from the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Fire and Rescue Department and Orlando’s dive team discovered the body of another student who had gone missing after the apparent lightning strike.

“Preliminary reports indicate lightning struck the area,” the fire department told ABC News in a statement earlier this month.

“We are incredibly saddened by this incident and appreciate the efforts of the multiple agencies who worked together over the past 24 hours to assist in the rescue,” the fire department said at the time.

Five people were on board a vessel at the time, all believed to be students from various Central Florida schools, Orlando’s fire department said.

Authorities and the United States Rowing Association are investigating the incident, according to North Orlando Rowing.

“We are beyond grateful for the outpouring of love and concern from around the world,” North Orlando Rowing said Saturday. “Please continue to hold our families in your prayers.”

ABC News’ Melissa Gaffney, Meredith Deliso and Gina Sunseri contributed to this report.

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(LOS ANGELES) — The Los Angeles Police Department released dramatic body-camera and surveillance footage over the weekend showing two officers responding to a domestic violence call this month and one of them fatally shooting a 19-year-old man who emerged from a home wielding what turned out to be an airsoft rifle, authorities said.

The incident occurred on Sept. 17 in the Vermont Vista neighborhood of southeast Los Angeles.

“We are still at the very early stages of this investigation, which can often take up to a year to complete,” Capt. Kelly Muniz, a spokesperson for the LAPD, said in a video statement that accompanied the footage of the shooting.

The suspected gunman was identified as Luis Herrera, who had earlier called 911 twice requesting police be sent to his house and complaining that his father was allegedly drunk and beating his mother, police said.

“I tried to get involved and now he is attacking me,” Herrera allegedly told the 911 dispatcher, according to a recording of the call also released by the LAPD.

Two officers arrived at the home at about 1:20 p.m., according to Muniz.

As one of the officers approached the front porch, Herrera allegedly emerged from the home wielding what appeared to be a black assault rifle, according to the body-camera video.

The officers immediately took cover at the side of the home, ordering the man to put down the weapon.

“However, he did not comply with officers commands and shouldered the rifle and pointed directly at the officers resulting in an officer-involved shooting,” Muniz said in a narration of the body-camera video.

Police immediately called for backup as family members came out of the house and the officers ordered them to get back inside, according to the video.

“That’s my son,” a woman is heard screaming on the video as the mortally wounded Herrera laid on the ground outside his home, still clutching the rifle in his hands.

At one point, Herrera’s father emerged from the home and told police the gun was an airsoft rifle that fires plastic projectiles, according to the video.

Following the shooting, the video showed police officers standing back from Herrera for several minutes, ordering him to let go of the gun as he appeared to continue moving, the video shows. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics eventually pronounced Herrera dead at the scene, authorities said.

The officer who fatally shot Herrera was identified as Luis Navarrete, who has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Once completed, the investigation is expected to be reviewed by Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore, the city’s Board of Police Commissioners and the Office of Inspector General to determine if Navarrete’s use of deadly force complied with the LAPD’s policies and procedures.

Muniz said investigators are collecting and analyzing additional evidence and added that an “understanding of the incident may change” depending on the review.

“We also do not draw any conclusions about whether the officers acted consistent with our policies and the law until all the facts are known and the investigation is complete,” Muniz said.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge last week ordered Ruby Montoya, a 32-year-old climate activist, to serve six years in prison for her role in damaging the Dakota Access Pipeline — a sentence that federal prosecutors said they hope will deter others who plan to engage in what they characterized as “domestic terrorism.”

Montoya, who pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to damage an energy facility, and 42-year-old activist Jessica Reznicek snuck through security fences, set fire to equipment and used chemicals to burn holes in the pipeline itself from 2016 to 2017, according to their plea agreements.

On Thursday, in addition to Montoya’s prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Ebinger ordered the pair to pay more than $3 million in restitution.

In 2021, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in prison. Notably, both women faced sentencing enhancements under a criminal statute designed to penalize acts of domestic terrorism.

“The sentence imposed today demonstrates that any crime of domestic terrorism will be aggressively investigated and prosecuted by the federal government,” U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal said Thursday in a statement responding to Montoya’s sentencing.

The terrorism enhancement traces back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, after which Congress enacted tougher penalties to deter acts of “intimidation or coercion” aimed at the government or civilian population.

Terrorism sentences have since been applied almost exclusively to defendants with ties to overseas extremist groups like the Islamic State group or al-Qaida or to domestic extremists like Cesar Sayoc, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to mailing pipe bombs to members of Congress.

In the wake of Reznicek’s sentencing last year, critics argued that the law has been too broadly and inconsistently applied — especially to so-called “ecoterrorists” like Reznicek and Montoya.

“I believe 100% that this is an overreach of power,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “And it is absolutely imperative that we put guidelines in place.”

Last month, those concerns attracted renewed attention after a federal judge declined to apply it to one of the most high-profile defendants in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Guy Wesley Reffitt, a 49-year-old Texas militiaman who was convicted in March of obstruction and other crimes, brought a weapon to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and threatened to “physically attack, remove and replace” lawmakers, making him a “quintessential” case for the enhancement, prosecutors wrote in a July sentencing memorandum.

Even so, before handing down an 87-month prison sentence in August, U.S. Judge Dabney Friedrich declined prosecutors’ request to consider Reffitt’s offence as domestic terrorism. In rejecting the enhancement, Friedrich sided with Reffitt’s defense counsel, who accused prosecutors of utilizing the tool as retribution for Reffitt taking the case to trial rather than accepting a plea agreement.

Reznicek appealed her sentencing in the pipeline case, citing the district court’s application of the terrorism sentencing enhancement. In June, a circuit court upheld her prison term.

Attorneys for Montoya did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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