(NEW YORK) — New York City dog owners are being warned after several pets may have been sickened by leptospirosis, a disease commonly associated with rats.
A city council member said this week his office had received “reports of multiple dog fatalities” in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg.
“The reports to our office indicate that dogs played at McCarren [Park] Dog Run before becoming sick,” council member Lincoln Restler said in a social media post Wednesday, which advised dog owners about the potentially deadly bacterial disease that is spread through the urine of infected animals.
In an update Friday, Restler said his office had received a report about potential cases of leptospirosis “allegedly causing the death of four dogs” that had been to the park’s dog run.
The city’s health department told ABC News Saturday it has not confirmed reports of canine leptospirosis related to McCarren Park, but it is working with the city’s parks department to inspect rat activity there.
“Dog owners who are concerned should consult their veterinarian about vaccination and seek vet care early if their dog is ill,” the health department said in a statement. “We urge veterinarians who receive positive results of leptospirosis to report it to the Health Department as required by the NYC Health Code.”
The parks department also said an “outbreak” of reported cases has been unconfirmed.
“We like our four-legged friends happy and healthy, and are sad to learn that some pups may have recently been impacted by leptospirosis,” the parks department said in a statement to ABC News. “We are actively engaged with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and exploring options to mitigate any related risks.”
On Friday, workers replaced trash cans with rat-resistant ones in the area and an exterminator conducted an inspection. Starting Monday, the park will also “work to refresh this area” including replacing wood chips.
An exterminator last treated the area for rats three weeks ago, the parks department said.
“We understand the cause for concern and urge dog owners to be vigilant and cautious when walking their pets,” it added.
Restler said the concerns highlight the need to address “the rat infestation and underlying conditions to make sure dogs & our whole community are safe.”
Dakarrie Garcia, a local dog trainer, told ABC New York station WABC he was concerned about conditions at the park.
“It’s disgusting. If you look around the park, there’s rat holes everywhere around the dog park,” Garcia said.
NYC Parks said it received two complaints regarding rodents in McCarren Park in the past year.
The health department said it investigates about 15 cases of canine leptospirosis each year and that “clusters” of the disease are “very rare.”
Symptoms of leptospirosis may include fever, chills, vomiting, muscle aches or diarrhea and usually appear one to two weeks after exposure. In some cases the disease may cause kidney or liver failure.
“Owners should not let their pets drink from puddles or other sources of water that may be contaminated with rat urine,” the health department said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of State is preparing to approve the evacuation of some U.S. diplomats and diplomats’ families from the embassy in Ukraine, sources confirmed to ABC News.
The final authorization has not been approved, the sources said, so the scope of the evacuation is not yet clear.
A State Department spokesperson told ABC News, “We have nothing to announce at this time. We conduct rigorous contingency planning, as we always do, in the event the security situation deteriorates.”
That contingency planning has been underway for weeks now, as ABC News first reported last month that the embassy was preparing for an authorized or ordered departure.
An authorized departure allows families and non-emergency staff to evacuate, usually on commercial flights, while an ordered departure requires them to do so.
In either case, the State Department will warn U.S. citizens to depart the country, too. Ukraine is already a Level 4: Do Not Travel on the department’s travel advisory, with an explicit warning that “Russia is planning significant military action against Ukraine.”
But while Americans will be warned to depart this week, the State Department is making clear that they will not be evacuated on government aircraft, like in Afghanistan — an evacuation that the department continues to say is not a precedent.
“If there is a decision to change our posture with respect to American diplomats and their families, American citizens should not anticipate that there will be U.S. government-sponsored evacuations,” the State Department’s spokesperson said. “Currently commercial flights are available to support departures.”
The decision to evacuate some staff and families from the embassy has upset the Ukrainian government, according to one source, who said they were “p—– off.”
Ukrainians on the ground in Kyiv and at the front lines in the war between Ukraine and Russian-led forces in eastern provinces have told ABC News they are less convinced that a full-scale Russian attack is imminent. Some have suggested that the pressure from Moscow is a bluff — and one they see the U.S. as buying into with moves like this.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hinted at that during his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Wednesday, telling him during a photo-op beforehand, “Your intelligence is excellent, but you are far overseas, and we are here, and I think we know some things a little bit deeper.”
(NEW YORK) — The southeastern United States is weathering snow and ice yet again a week after the region was slammed with hazardous winter conditions.
Two to 4.5 inches of snow have been reported from South Carolina to east Virginia, as winter weather alerts were in effect Saturday morning from Georgia to Maryland as the storm moved out of the region.
Cold temperatures throughout the weekend will continue to make for hazardous road conditions.
In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper urged people to stay at home due to dangerous road conditions and widespread power outages. The governor had issued a state of emergency ahead of the winter storm.
North Carolina Highway Patrol troopers had responded to more than 1,500 calls for service and 945 collisions in affected areas since Friday afternoon, the governor’s office said midday Saturday. Most were related to cars sliding off the roadway and becoming stuck or single-car collisions, the office said.
The best way to stay safe is to stay home unless you absolutely must travel. Nearly 16k power outages were reported around 4 a.m., mostly in coastal counties. Utility crews are working to quickly restore power – as of 10 a.m. about 4k outages remained.https://t.co/Pqeub3OqLrpic.twitter.com/zqUiNdPw5y
“With limited improvement and lows plummeting into the teens Saturday night, black ice will become a large hazard for the eastern half of the state,” North Carolina Emergency Management said. “Additional melting is expected Sunday, but below normal temperatures [will] keep the potential for black ice into early next week.”
Runways were also impacted by sleet and snow. At Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a Delta flight arriving from Washington, D.C., Friday night was taxiing off the runway when it slid into mud around 9 p.m. local time, airport officials said. There were no reported injuries, and the airfield reopened shortly following snow removal at an alternate runway.
Nearly 16,000 power outages were initially reported early Saturday in North Carolina, mostly in coastal counties, Cooper said, as utility crews were working to restore power. As of 10 a.m. some 4,000 outages remained, the governor said.
Authorities in South Carolina and Virginia also urged drivers to avoid impacted areas due to snow and ice conditions.
ABC News’ Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has faced persistent challenges as his administration worked to reform U.S. immigration policy during his first year in office.
Some efforts over the past 12 months have succeeded in reversing hardline measures from the Trump era while other promises have stalled, generating harsh criticism from immigrant advocates.
Despite setbacks, Biden in sheer numbers has made more changes than Trump to federal immigrationpolicy with many reversals to the way the U.S. enforces immigration law.
Biden issued 296 executive actions during his first year compared to 86 in Trump’s first year and 472 over his four-year term, according to analysts from the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.
Perhaps the most sweeping impact of the Biden presidency in immigration policy can be seen in the new approaches to interior immigration enforcement or the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes arrests.
Last September, ICE leadership moved to implement enforcement guidelines that once again made violent criminal offenders a top priority for deportation.
“This is a huge change in the way we approach enforcement writ large,” MPI Senior Fellow Muzaffar Chishti said during a policy conference this week.
While the prior administration openly justified an enforcement crackdown as a necessary means of deterrence, Biden’s security officials have ended long-term family detention and discontinued workplace raids.
Advocates decry the continued use of private ICE facilities and many have called for the end of civil immigration detention altogether.
“In the United States everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect,” Detention Watch Network Executive Director Silky Shah said Friday. “ICE enforcement and detention is inhumane, morally and financially costly, and completely unnecessary.”
Nonetheless, ICE arrests have been cut in half compared to the final year of the Trump presidency and the detained immigrant population is the lowest since 1999, according to MPI.
But at the border, it’s how the administration has handled new waves of unauthorized migration where the administration has faced immense challenges and criticism from a wide range of political perspectives.
Left-leaning advocacy groups point to the continued use of the rapid deportation protocols known as “Title 42,” which limits access to U.S. legal resources for unauthorized immigrants. The administration has engaged in legal battles to preserve the policy and, as recently as this week, continued the argument originally from Trump officials that the protocols are strictly a public health measure necessary to curb the global pandemic.
“It has been frustrating to all of us inside and personally to me I wish we there was more that we we — there’s more that — much more than we need to be doing and could be doing and — building blocks for that are also underway,” outgoing White House Deputy Director for Immigration Esther Olavarria said this week.
From the right, Biden faced strong opposition this year to his attempts at rolling back Trump-era practices including the “Remain in Mexico” policy which forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait for their U.S. immigration court hearings in Mexico. After the states of Texas and Missouri launched a lawsuit against the repeal of “Remain in Mexico,” the Biden administration was forced to reinstate the practice while it continues an appeal.
“He completely dismantled the successful policies of the previous administration,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said at a press conference Thursday.
The year was marked with a historic level of unauthorized border crossing attempts which hit a peak of 213,000 in the month of July, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. More than a quarter of those encounters with immigration authorities involved repeat offenders.
The easing of enforcement measures against immigrants in the country without legal documentation, Republicans say, has signaled to prospective migrants that attempting an illegitimate asylum claim might succeed.
The need to strengthen the immigration legal process is another spoke in the wheel of challenges for Biden’s immigration agenda. For migrants who avoid the “Title 42” rapid expulsion process and are directed to the typical “Title 8” route, cases are brought before an administrative judge and can take months or years to resolve. This past year, the immigration court case backlog surpassed 1.5 million for the first time, according to researchers at Syracuse University.
For those on the pathway to obtaining a green card, also known as legal permanent residency, the administration made a significant change with with reversal of the Trump administration “public charge” rule, which imposed new income and education requirements on immigrant applicants.
Biden has also sought to boost refugee admissions as well as preserve DACA — the Obama-era policy that shields from deportation those brought to the country illegally as children. The administration was forced to draft a new rule implementing the program after a federal judge ordered all new applications halted.
On the legislative front, Biden’s promise to provide a pathway to citizenship for about 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants has faced major headwinds in the Senate. Multiple attempts to get some version of the proposal included in the “Build Back Better” spending package were shot down by the Senate parliamentarian last year. And this week, Biden said the agenda items in the Build Back Better Act may need to be split up anyway to get enough support.
Politically, views of Biden’s approach to immigration have dragged down his overall approval ratings over the past year. A Gallup poll released last November found just 31 percent of Americans approve of his handling of immigration issues.
(NEW YORK) — A rookie New York City officer is dead and another officer was in critical condition after they were shot responding to a domestic violence call in Harlem Friday night, police said.
Three officers responded to the scene of the call, West 135 Street, around 6:30 p.m., where a mother and her adult son, Lashawn McNeil, were fighting in a first-floor apartment, according to police.
The mother met police in the front of the apartment and when they went to a rear room to talk to McNeil, shots suddenly rang out, police said.
Officer Jason Rivera, 22, a rookie entered a hallway and was struck first, police officials with knowledge of the investigation told ABC News. Rivera, who was married, died from his injuries.
His partner, Officer Wilbert Mora, 27, tried to duck into the kitchen during the shooting, but was struck. Mora was listed in critical condition as of Saturday morning.
The third officer, a rookie who stayed with the mother in the front of the apartment, fired on McNeil, who was struck in the neck and shoulder, according to police sources.
The suspect was listed in critical condition as of Saturday morning.
A police body camera captured some of the shooting, police sources said.
“I am struggling to find the word to express the tragedy we are enduring,” NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a press conference Friday night. “We are mourning and we are angry. … Our department is hurting, our city is hurting. it is beyond comprehension.”
McNeil is believed to have had behavioral problems and posted anti-government and anti-police material on social media, according to police sources.
The suspect has five previous arrests, including one in New York City for felony narcotics possession in 2003. He was currently on probation for that arrest, police said.
Outside the city, McNeil was arrested for unlawful possession of a weapon in 1998, assaulting a police officer in 2002 and two other drug arrests in subsequent years.
He was staying with his mother to help her take care of her other son who has special needs, possibly a learning disability, the sources said.
When McNeil came up from Maryland in November, his mother ordered him not to bring guns into the house, because of his history with firearms, according to the source. She later told police she didn’t know he had the weapon, the sources said.
The mother called police Friday night asking for help with McNeil, saying that, “We’ve been having problems,” according to sources. Officers believed they were responding to a verbal domestic dispute since no weapons were mentioned, sources said.
The Glock. 45 used in the incident was reported stolen in Baltimore in 2017, police said. A licensed security guard said it was taken by her 13-year-old son, who sold it for money, according to investigators.
The teen was later arrested for the theft, but the gun was never recovered, police said.
Mayor Eric Adams called on the federal government to do more to stop the proliferation of guns in the city.
“We don’t make guns here,” Adams said Friday night. “How are we removing thousands of guns off the street and they are still finding their way into New York City?”
This has been a particularly violent week for the New York Police Department. Four NYPD officers have been shot in three incidents this week. The officers in the other shootings, which took place in the Bronx and Staten Island, did not suffer life-threatening injuries.
“It is our city against the killers,” Adams said. “This was not just an attack on three brave officers, this was an attack on the city of New York. it is an attack on the children and families of New York. We are not going to win this battle by dividing lives. We must save this city together.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland also spoke to Sewell Friday night and offered assistance from the Department of Justice or FBI if needed, according to DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley.
“I am horrified by tonight’s tragedy in Harlem,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement. “My thoughts are with the family who answered the phone to receive the news they’ve always dreaded: that their loved one, who had sworn to protect and serve New Yorkers by joining @NYPDnews will not be coming home.”
President Joe Biden tweeted condolences to the NYPD officers and their families Saturday afternoon.
“We’re keeping them and their families in our prayers. Officers put on the badge and head into harm’s way every day. We’re grateful to them and their families for their extraordinary sacrifice,” he tweeted.
(NEW YORK) — Rebeca Andrade had been waiting days for a shipment of COVID-19 rapid tests to help keep her school open. The superintendent of a school in Salinas, California, Andrade said she wanted to be testing kids once a week to slow the spread of the omicron variant and protect the community.
But even as rapid testing to keep schools open was being pushed at the highest levels of government, Andrade was coming up short.
That’s because 350 miles away, some 17 million tests — including some earmarked by the California Department of Public Health for schools like Andrade’s, plus nursing homes, homeless shelters and childcare centers — sat backlogged on giant pallets for days.
Like so many other vital goods, precious at-home rapid tests have been caught in the supply-chain snare, caused by a combination of workers calling out sick with omicron and bottlenecked warehouses that are already operating over capacity to handle the massive demand for tests.
The impacted tests are some of the test kits produced by iHealth, which are manufactured in China and have been purchased by at least 15 states.
“The delays that we’ve experienced during this time, I know that sometimes it’s out of our control, but this is something that I would say is really critical and a priority for us to continue to offer in-person learning for each and every one of our students,” Andrade told ABC News.
As of Thursday, the distribution company that handles the iHealth shipments from China, XChange Logistics, had worked through the millions of backlogged tests, only to face delays on three of iHealth’s charter planes carrying roughly 25 million tests, the company told ABC News.
At the same time, the distribution company said it’s still sending out 20 truckloads of tests per day from its Los Angeles warehouse, which is the biggest distributor of iHealth tests.
For iHealth, which received authorization for its at-home rapid tests from the Food and Drug Administration in December and can manufacture up to 200 million tests per month, producing the tests has turned out to be the easy part.
Getting them to customers is the challenge.
“I hope that one day the American people can get the test the same day,” said iHealth COO Jack Feng, referring to the timeline of shipment from China and delivery in the U.S.
XChange Logistics said their warehouses were struggling at 200-300% over capacity last week.
And the stress of moving so many goods has been compounded by workers testing positive for COVID-19 — which usually means that an additional 8-10 workers have to quarantine due to exposure, said Frank Filimaua, the company’s general manager.
Over the past month, up to 30% of XChange Logistics’ workforce has been out with COVID-19, Filimaua said.
“That certainly is impacting the lack of manpower and the shortage of the ground-handling agents,” he said.
Under normal circumstances, without worker shortages and such a high-demand product, it would take 24-48 hours to get the tests from the planes onto trucks and on their way to customers.
But it was instead taking an average of five days, said Filimaua.
He estimated that it would take the company two more weeks to get back up to speed.
The supply chain backlog is the “biggest key factor as to why there’s challenges in getting these kits to schools, to medical offices, hospitals, and to consumers,” he said.
“Everybody has just been highlighting and showcasing the congestion at the ports and the container congestion,” said Filimaua. “Nobody’s really focusing on what’s happening at the international airports. It’s the same effect, but I would even say to a higher degree of challenges and impact to the supply chain and to the consumers.”
After ABC News reached out this week to the White House about the millions of backlogged tests, iHealth said the Biden administration had stepped up its efforts to help the company, which has now also contracted with the government to supply 250 million tests to Biden’s efforts to give out 1 billion free tests to the public, Feng said.
Agencies like Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense have begun to help iHealth get its tests through customs faster using priority labels, and will help charter flights full of the tests from China beginning in the first week of February, Feng said.
“They are helping us a lot,” said Feng.
Feng also said some states have also mobilized resources by sending ground teams to the warehouses to help move tests.
A Biden administration official told ABC News that the White House “continues to actively engage with manufacturers and distributors to help them expedite their timelines and help get tests to the American people.”
The official said the government was coordinating chartered aircraft for the 250 million iHealth rapid tests it had contracted for Biden’s plan, and was also working on “breaking through bottlenecks” at Los Angeles International Airport, where most shipments from China arrive, by working with the airport and with Customs and Border Protection to get each shipment “trucked out of the airport as soon as it lands.”
The official also noted that the Biden administration had increased the monthly supply of overall at-home rapid tests in the U.S. four times over from fall through December.
Experts note that the supply chain issues facing iHealth are not unique to that testing company.
Some of the issues stem from “general supply challenges,” said Mara Aspinall, head of the National Testing Action Program at the Rockefeller Foundation, which connects testing companies with state governments.
“But increasingly we’re hearing that — like all other essential businesses — manufacturers, shipping companies and others have so many people out with COVID that they can’t fully take advantage of the technological capacity, and therefore supplies are being slowed,” she said.
While iHealth is one of the most prolific producers of rapid tests for the U.S., other companies are also critical to meeting the enormous demand. ABC News reached out to several other large suppliers of rapid tests, including Roche, Siemens, Abbott and Ellume, and those that responded said they were doing everything possible to meet demand, including opening new production lines to scale up production by tens of millions of tests per month.
“There are currently tens of millions of tests in various settings and supply chains,” said Abbott spokesperson John Koval. “We build BinaxNOW in the U.S. because it hedges against unpredictable supply chains and is what enables us to produce at massive and reliable scale, which is what we’re doing.” As a result, Koval said, the company is aiming to be able to produce 100 million tests per month.
With more and more rapid testing products on the market, there’s also more competition for distributors. That’s been a particular challenge for iHealth, a new company that didn’t have the connections of bigger pharmaceutical companies that had been around for years.
“I think it’s hard to guarantee a consistent freight supplier for so many of these companies, because there’s not a program where when you receive an EUA [emergency use authorization from the FDA], you receive immediate distribution assistance,” said Andrew Sweet, managing director of COVID-19 Response and Recovery at the Rockefeller Foundation.
“That’s in part why we’re at where we’re at,” said Sweet. “It is really dependent on the individual manufacturer to have those relationships in order to get their product to market as quickly as possible.” As a result, said Sweet, the companies that have existing relationships can “hustle.”
(WASHINGTON) — The anti-abortion rights movement is at a critical moment, motivated in large part by conservative justices on the Supreme Court who seem poised to rule in favor of states’ stringent abortion laws. Now, with the majority of the highest court seemingly on their side, anti-abortion rights supporters are publicly preparing for a post-Roe v. Wade America.
“I know in my heart that the tide has turned for the pro-life movement” said former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday morning. Pence’s rallying remarks mark one of several public appearances related to the Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade he’s given in the past several months.
“The pro-life generation has never been stronger. And thanks to all of you, life is winning in America again. And I believe the majority of the highest court in the land is on our side as well.”
At the summit, the rallying cry was clear: abortion rights opponents believe the post-Roe world is imminent. Kristan Hawkins, the president of the Students of Life America, roused crowds to “launch the next phase of the anti-abortion movement from Washington, D.C,. to every one of your state’s capitols.”
“The final fight for freedom is here. It’s today, it’s now,” said Hawkins.
And that mantra was echoed across the anti-abortion rights movement in recent days.
“Next year will be a new era, because Roe will be gone,” Daniel Lipinski, a former member of Congress from Illinois, told a crowd of anti-abortion advocates at Friday’s March for Life on the National Mall.
For the last 49 years, throngs of activists have poured into Washington on the anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade to evangelize their message, lobby Congress and march down Independence Avenue for their beliefs. Some high-level proponents hope this year’s gathering will be their last.
“We had a dream that we wouldn’t have to go back on a cold day in January every year,” said Cardinal Sean O’Malley in a homily mass on Friday at the National Prayer Vigil for Life.
“Perhaps this will be the year of Herod’s death,” O’Malley added, likening the biblical tale of King Herod to Roe’s potential demise, “when legal protection for unborn children will be enshrined in our laws.”
Members at all ranks of the anti-abortion rights movement show new confidence in a Supreme Court, outfitted by three appointees from then-President Donald Trump — appointees specifically chosen to overturn Roe, according to the former president. For the first time in decades, the justices are taking up one of the largest threats to abortion protections guaranteed by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey with their consideration of Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. While a final decision isn’t expected until June, the justices’ response to oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson gave anti-abortion rights advocates new vigor.
“The energy from the pro-life movement today is palpable,” said Prudence Robertson, host of EWTN’s Pro-Life Weekly.
“We expect this year’s March for Life to be historic with even higher levels of enthusiasm from participants,” Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, told ABC News in a statement. “We are all hopeful that, with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case before the Supreme Court, this year will bring us much closer to building the culture of life we have all marched for since Roe v. Wade was imposed on our nation nearly 50 years ago.”
Jeff Hunt, vice president of public policy at Colorado Christian University, who was previously affiliated with both Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney’s presidential bids, told ABC News that this year’s March for Life comes at a “historic moment.”
“We are the precipice of weakening the stranglehold Roe v. Wade has had on American citizens’ rights to address abortion policy,” said Hunt.
Such weakening is not new. Over the past several years, states have been highlighting and passing anti-abortion rights policies, aided heavily by the Trump administration appointing conservative judges at near breakneck speed. In 2019 alone, 18 states enacted laws to prohibit or restrict abortion, with nine of them enacting pre-viability bans, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion rights advocacy group.
Last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into a law that bans all abortions once cardiac activity is detected, while newly installed Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has freshly tasked his new chief diversity officer to serve as an “ambassador for unborn children.”
(NEW YORK) — The FBI said on Friday that it’s treating the recent hostage situation at a Texas synagogue as a terrorist act and hate crime.
An international federal investigation is ongoing after a rabbi and three members of his Dallas-Fort Worth-area congregation were taken hostage Saturday by an allegedly armed man who authorities said was demanding the release of a convicted terrorist.
The incident “underscores the continued threat violent extremists pose to religious institutions, particularly Jewish institutions and other Jewish targets,” Matthew DeSarno, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office, said during a press briefing.
“The FBI is and has been treating Saturday’s events as an act of terrorism targeting the Jewish community,” DeSarno continued. “It was committed by a terrorist exposing an antisemitic worldview.”
The suspect “repeatedly demanded the United States release a convicted al-Qaida terrorist in exchange for the safe return of the hostages,” which met the definition of terrorism under federal law, said DeSarno, adding that forcibly holding hostage the victims as they exercised their right to worship was a federal hate crime.
“We recognize that the Jewish community in particular has suffered violence and faces very real threats from across the hate spectrum, from domestic violent extremists to foreign terrorist organizations. And because of that, the FBI considers the enduring threats to the community to be among our very highest priorities,” DeSarno said.
The suspect, who died in the incident when an FBI hostage rescue team breached the synagogue, was identified by authorities as Malik Faisal Akram, 44, a British citizen.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker was leading Shabbat services at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville on Saturday morning when, according to law enforcement officials, Akram interrupted the service and allegedly claimed he’d planted bombs in the synagogue.
Authorities believe the location was intentionally targeted because it was the closest synagogue to Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth, where the convicted terrorist is being held.
DeSarno did not identify the prisoner by name, though multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News the armed suspect was demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, who was convicted of assault and attempted murder of a U.S. soldier in 2010 and sentenced to 86 years in prison.
DeSarno said the suspect was aware that foreign terrorist organizations previously had tried to negotiate the release of the prisoner by exchanging American hostages. DeSarno said he doesn’t know of any personal connection between the suspect and the convicted terrorist.
In the days since the incident, law enforcement officials have received a “high volume of leads” and have interviewed all those they believe Akram had interacted with since arriving in the U.S. on Dec. 29, according to DeSarno, who did not elaborate if any were considered accomplices. Authorities have not detained anyone locally in connection with the incident.
Investigators have been digging into the suspect’s social media and personal devices to try and find out more about his travel and associates, as well as determine how he allegedly acquired a firearm, DeSarno said. No explosives were recovered at the scene.
The FBI is also working with international partners, including the U.K., as part of the investigation. Two men were arrested in England on Thursday morning as part of the investigation, British authorities said.
The 10-hour standoff ended with all four hostages safely escaping as the situation had gone from “bad to significantly worse,” said DeSarno.
“The professionalism and expertise in the negotiation team combined with the composure and judgment of the hostages set the conditions for a successful resolution,” he said.
Cytron-Walker said he had the cellphone number of Colleyville Police Department Chief Michael Miller and was able to text and communicate with him about the hostage situation as it unfolded.
“We were constantly looking for an opportunity to leave, and it was very, very hard to find an opportunity where we all could leave,” Cytron-Walker told reporters Friday.
Hostage negotiators successfully negotiated the release of one of the hostages. As three remained, Cytron-Walker said he threw a chair at the hostage-taker so they could make their escape.
“I stand up here before you with great gratitude just to be alive,” Cytron-Walker said. “With gratitude to God, with gratitude for all of those individual human efforts that allow us to be here today, I’m just overflowing with gratitude.”
Cytron-Walker invited all those interested to pray with the congregation Friday night and Saturday morning through its Facebook Live program as the community tries to find a “sense of peace” after the harrowing incident.
“We all desperately, desperately need that sense of peace,” he said. “And I would extend that not only to the Jewish community but extend that to all communities.”
ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles community members gathered for a vigil outside the furniture store where a 24-year-old employee was killed in the middle of the afternoon.
Brianna Kupfer was attacked with a knife while she worked alone at the store on Jan. 13. Kupfer had texted a friend that afternoon saying someone in the store was giving her a “bad vibe,” Los Angeles Police Department Lt. John Radke said at a Tuesday news conference.
Community members brought flowers, candles and posters to a Thursday vigil for the slain 24-year-old, who, when not working at the Croft House furniture store, was taking design courses through UCLA Extension, a continuing education program.
“I’m the parent of a girl two years younger than her. It’s shocking to me that this happened here or anywhere in our city,” resident Sherry Gonzalez told Los Angeles ABC station KABC.
The suspect, 31-year-old Shawn Laval Smith, was apprehended in Pasadena on Wednesday. Police said the crime appeared to be random.
Smith was charged Friday afternoon with murder.
“Those who show no compassion for human life will face serious consequences,” LA District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement. “The murder of Brianna Kupfer has left Los Angeles County devastated and my office is reaching out to her family to provide any services they may need.”
(NEW YORK) — As the recent COVID-19 wave begins to ebb on the East Coast and in the Midwest, Los Angeles County is still being battered by the virus.
The county reported 102 new COVID deaths Thursday, the highest number recorded in a single day since March 10, 2021, and more than double the 45 fatalities reported one week ago.
The majority of deaths occurred in people aged 50 and older, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
More than 90% of the deaths reported Thursday were among residents who contracted the virus after Christmas Eve, indicating a high likelihood they were infected with the omicron variant, the department said.
Dr. Jeffrey Smith, executive vice president of hospital operations and chief operating officer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the rise in the total number of deaths is not because omicron is more deadly than previous variants.
“We’re still seeing a mortality rate of about 1.4%. It’s just the sheer number of people who are infected is extremely high so 1.4% of a very, very large number gives you a higher number of absolute deaths,” he told ABC News.
COVID hospitalizations are also on the rise, with 4,814 recorded Thursday, a figure not seen since Feb. 2, 2021. Of those patients, nearly one-third are in intensive care units, an increase from the week before.
Smith said Cedars-Sinai currently has about 220 COVID-19 patients, making up 25% of total patients.
“That had dropped as low as probably 5% to 10% prior to this most recent peak,” he told ABC News.
Smith added that, of the people in the ICU, almost all of them are unvaccinated or have not yet been fully vaccinated, meaning two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The surge has caused many hospitals in Los Angeles to face staffing shortages, either because there are not enough health care workers to take care of patients or because so many workers have gotten sick and need to stay home.
“It’s a dual crisis because staff have been furloughed or told to stay home because of positive tests, and then you have people who are unvaccinated, who have succumbed to infection and need hospitalization,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, told ABC News.
He continued, “And then you have this third piece of people coming in for a stroke or heart attack or something and then they test positive. But, because of the staffing crisis, the hospital is unable to see as many people as it typically would.”
According to LA Public Health, about 50% of patients statewide were admitted for non-COVID reasons and only found out they were infected while undergoing routine testing.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer noted during a virtual media briefing Thursday that whether originally admitted due to the virus or not, the high number of COVID patients puts a strain on hospital staff and resources.
“It limits where people can be housed, what room they can be in, it limits some staffing, it changes the kind of medical and doctor interventions because people still have to practice infection control for an airborne pathogen,” Klausner explained.
Meanwhile, the seven-day rolling average of COVID-19 cases sits at 33,000.
While the daily test-positivity rate declined from more than 20% in late December to 18.5% Thursday, it still means about 1 in 6 people in LA County are testing positive for COVID-19.
The figure is also eightfold higher than the positivity rate of 2% that was being recorded a little over one month ago.
Klausner said until LA County and California come out of this wave, people with COVID symptoms should get tested and, if they do test positive, seek early treatment.
“We actually just did a survey of 10,000 people who tested positive and 25% of people stopped treatment and, of the treatments they stopped, the overwhelming majority were getting vitamins,” he said. “That’s really disappointing when we have known, proven interventions that can reduce people’s risk of going to the hospital.”
Smith also stressed the importance of testing — but urged people not to visit already overcrowded emergency rooms — as well boosting and mask-wearing.
He said he’s been encouraged by declining COVID-19 rates in places such as New York City and hopes Los Angeles isn’t far behind.
“We’ve seen rates declining in some parts of the country and we’re hoping that our experience will be similar to what was seen in South Africa or the U.K., where the rates dropped almost as quickly as they rose,” Smith said.
