Police are searching for three male suspects in the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old with a walker in Harlem, New York, on Aug. 27, 2025. WABC
(NEW YORK) — Police are searching for three male suspects in the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old with a walker in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, according to the New York Police Department.
Robin Wright, 69, was shot in the face once by an unidentified person, the NYPD said.
Police responded to the report of a person shot in the vicinity of East 110 Street and Madison Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, according to police.
Wright was found with a gunshot to the face and was transported to Mount Sinai Morningside in critical condition, where she was later pronounced dead, authorities said.
Police have not made any arrests in the shooting and have not released any further description of the suspects, police said.
Police told WABC that a man who had just been mugged by two other men chased after them and started shooting. One of those bullets struck the victim, who never saw it coming, officials said.
The investigation into the shooting is ongoing, according to police.
Rescuers work at the site of a residential building hit by a Russian missile on August 28, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine came under a major combined missile and drone attack overnight into Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, with at least 19 people — four of them children — killed in the capital.
“Kyiv is under massive attack,” Timur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said in a post on Telegram. At least 63 people were injured across the city, including 11 children, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 598 drones and 31 missiles into the country overnight, of which 563 drones and 26 missiles were shot down or suppressed. Impacts were reported across 13 locations, the air force said, with falling debris reported in 26 locations.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post to Telegram that it was “a terrible night” for the capital. He reported “many damaged buildings” across five city districts.
“These include both non-residential buildings and high-rise apartments,” Klitschko said. “Educational institutions, transport infrastructure. Emergency services are working on site everywhere.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there were strikes on “a Turkish enterprise, the Embassy of Azerbaijan, the EU Delegation, the British Council, and residential areas.”
He said the strikes represented “a clear response to everyone in the world who for weeks and months has been calling for a ceasefire and real diplomacy. Russia chooses ballistics over the negotiating table. It chooses to continue the killings rather than end the war.”
“This means that Russia still does not fear the consequences,” Zelenskyy added. “Russia still takes advantage of the fact that at least part of the world closes its eyes to the killed children and looks for excuses for Putin.”
Zelenskyy called for pressure, such as sanctions and tariffs, and said Ukraine is “counting on strong steps.” He urged a response from nations like China and Hungary, which have expressed sympathy with Russia’s position. “It is definitely time for new tough sanctions against Russia for everything it is doing,” he added.
“All deadlines have already been missed, dozens of opportunities for diplomacy have been spoiled. Russia must feel its responsibility for every strike, for every day of this war,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the overnight strikes also damaged damaged the building housing the European Union mission to Ukraine in Kyiv. “We insist on strong international reactions to Russia’s brutal strike on Kyiv and other cities,” Sybiha wrote in a post to X.
European Council President Antonio Costa confirmed the damage to the building in a post to social media, describing the attack as a “Russian deliberate strike.” No injuries were reported at the building.
“Horrified by yet another night of deadly Russian missile attacks on Ukraine,” Costa wrote. “The EU will not be intimidated. Russia’s aggression only strengthens our resolve to stand with Ukraine and its people,” he added.
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said the attack served as “another grim reminder of what is at stake.” She added, “It shows that the Kremlin will stop at nothing to terrorize Ukraine.”
U.S. Ukraine Envoy General Keith Kellogg, who was in Kyiv earlier this week for meetings, said the “egregious attacks threaten the peace” that President Donald Trump is pursuing.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who confirmed that a building used by the British Council in Kyiv was damaged in the overnight bombardment, said, “Putin is killing children and civilians, and sabotaging hopes of peace. This bloodshed must end.”
The latest barrage continued the nightly tempo of Russian strikes, though the scale of the attacks through August have so far been smaller than in July and June. In August so far, Russia has launched a daily average of around 118 drones and four missiles into Ukraine, according to Ukrainian air force data analyzed by ABC News.
The daily averages for July were around 201 drones and six missiles, and in June there were 181 drones and eight missiles.
Wednesday night’s strike was the largest on Ukraine since Aug. 21 and the first major strike on Kyiv for several weeks.
Earlier this week, Trump expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the strikes, which continue despite White House efforts to broker a peace deal.
Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Ukrainian officials will meet with members of the Trump administration in New York on Friday. On the agenda are security guarantees for Ukraine to prevent future Russian aggression — a key element of the negotiations that took center stage when Zelenskyy and a slate of European leaders visited the White House last week.
“The task is to accelerate as much as possible so that this too becomes a lever – a lever of influence: the Russians must see how seriously the world is determined and how dire the consequences will be for Russia if the war continues,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down at least 102 Ukrainian drones overnight.
ABC News’ Nataliia Popova, Natalia Kushniir, Oleksiy Phemyskiy and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Contributor/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — On NATO’s eastern edge, leaders of the Baltic nations have long considered themselves more awake to the threat from Moscow than their allies to the west, a collective memory of Russian and Soviet occupation seared into their national narratives.
“We know that Russia is going to move forward,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News during her visit to Kyiv last weekend. “We in Lithuania, we remember very well. So, that means that we have to prepare ourselves.”
“This terrible threat is also an opportunity for us to grow the muscle where we need it to be,” Sakaliene added.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 served as vindication for NATO’s eastern-most nations, who for years had been warning their Western allies that Moscow could not be a reliable partner.
With President Donald Trump now seeking to press Moscow and Ukraine into a peace deal, Sakaliene said the West should focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions rather than his words.
“I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but this is an ongoing process, which, again, in my opinion, is severely complicated by the fact that Putin keeps bombing, that Putin keeps annihilating Ukraine,” Sakaliene said.
“When he talks about peace, it’s not even funny — it’s just absurd,” she continued. “He is now playing the game of pretending to be participating in talks, of having a dialogue, while at the same time he’s moving full speed forward.”
“This stalling of our additional sanctions, of additional pressure, simply gives him room for further military actions in Ukraine,” Sakaliene said.
Trump presses Putin on peace
Putin and his top officials have claimed willingness to make a deal, though have demanded the freezing of the current front lines and Ukraine’s withdrawal from key battlefields including those in Donetsk Oblast in the east of the country.
Moscow also wants Ukraine permanently barred from NATO membership, opposes the deployment of any Western troops to the country as part of any future security guarantees and wants all international sanctions lifted.
The shape of the intended security guarantees is still being forged. Trump has committed some level of American involvement, though also this month ruled out deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine.
Following the Aug. 15 summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska, Trump appeared to have dropped his demand for a full ceasefire before peace negotiations. Ukraine and its European backers maintain that no terms can be agreed to while the fighting is ongoing.
“I think that we are moving forward, but slowly,” Sakaliene said.
“The killing has not stopped and it doesn’t really matter what term we use, the war is actively ongoing,” Sakaliene said when asked about the shape of any peace deal. “That means that talking about any security guarantees during the full-scale invasion — which is going on in a full-blown capacity — is not possible.”
Sakaliene said she was encouraged by Trump’s recent social media post suggesting that his predecessor, President Joe Biden, should have allowed Ukraine “to play offensive” by striking deep within Russia. “I agree wholeheartedly,” she said.
When asked if she thought Trump would greenlight such strikes, the minister replied, “We may hope.”
“All the patience and wish for diplomacy” so far demonstrated by Trump, she continued, “was not met with any goodwill from the other side. Russia has not demonstrated a single millimeter of goodwill.”
Trump this week again expressed his frustration with Russia’s continued long-range strikes on Ukraine, and again hinted at consequences “over the next week or two” if Moscow failed to make moves towards peace.
The president did not say what those consequences might be, though he has previously threatened more sanctions and secondary tariffs on customers of Russian energy exports. The White House has imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods related to New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian military equipment and energy goods.
“The United States has very powerful leverage,” Sakaliene said. Secondary sanctions, she added, could have “nuclear effects and we’d love to see them,” along with permission to “use whatever weapons to whatever targets” necessary to help Ukraine on the battlefield.
Those two measures are “the only tangible motivation for Putin to sit at the negotiation table,” Sakaliene said.
‘America First’
The Trump administration has made clear that Europeans — not Americans — will be expected to shoulder most of the burden of any future security guarantees for Ukraine. More broadly, Trump has long demanded that Europeans do, and pay, more to protect their own continent.
“We are going to do even more,” Sakaliene said, noting the recent agreement of NATO nations to raise the collective defense spending target to 5% of GDP. But the U.S., she said, will remain a key security partner and guarantor, regardless of Europe’s efforts to achieve greater self-reliance.
“When we talk about certain capabilities, let’s be honest, for at least a decade in certain areas, the United States is going to remain the ‘influencer,’ the main capability guarantor,” she said.
“Do you really want to lose the United States as the dominant power in security architecture globally?” Sakaliene asked. Without “a very clear dominance of the United States, then we have a dogfight,” she said.
“Then we have probably a very dangerous shift, a very dangerous shakedown of this current structure of power,” Sakaliene said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to like it. China is already trying to become number one.”
Europeans have already committed to buying more weapons from the U.S., both for themselves and for Ukraine. Indeed, arms sales have become a key metric of success for Trump.
Sakaliene said that both sides of the Atlantic will need each other in a coming era of great power competition.
“Regretfully, the level of our need is so much higher than the current level of supply,” she said of military resources. “And regretfully, this decade of wars is not over.”
Sakaliene traveled to Washington, D.C., in July with other Baltic defense ministers to meet with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There, she said, the Baltic officials were assured that American forces are not about to abandon their allies.
“The United States is not leaving,” she said. “As they said, ‘The United States first, but the United States not alone’.”
For all the talk of America’s pivot to face down the China challenge in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene — who was sanctioned by Beijing after the European Union imposed sanctions on China over its policies in Xinjiang — suggested that different theaters cannot be so easily separated.
“Even though sometimes it seems that we can draw red lines on the map — this is the Indo-Pacific, this is Europe, this is the Middle East — that’s not how it works,” she said.
A secure and peaceful Europe would be a vital ally for the U.S. in any future conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, Sakaliene said. Continued conflict with Russia on the continent, though, may hamstring Europeans and undermine a united Western front in Asia.
“This world has become as small as ever,” she said. “Joint coordinated actions by Russia and China and their smaller evil allies — this is what we are facing right now, and this is the main challenge of this decade, in my opinion.”
On the Baltic front
The Baltic region, Sakaliene suggested, can offer valuable lessons to the U.S. and its fellow NATO allies for the conflicts of the future.
“See the bigger picture,” she said when asked what lessons she wants to impart to her NATO counterparts. “I’ve had some very useful meetings with my colleagues from the Indo-Pacific and the problems that we see in the Baltics are very similar to what the Philippines, or Singapore, or Japan — or of course, Taiwan — see.”
The use of shadow fleets to evade sanctions, attacks on underwater critical infrastructure, cyber attacks and electronic warfare — most prominently the use of GPS jamming and spoofing technologies — have all become commonplace in the Baltic Sea. Such tactics could also become more visible and common in the waters of the Indo-Pacific in years to come, Sakaliene said.
For now, she suggested, the capacity of Europe’s military industry still lags far behind its civil industry. Western allies need to produce quality technology at great speed and in greater mass, Sakaliene said, potentially aided by combining civil and military capacities.
“Technologies do evolve,” she said. “We really have to speed it up.”
Susan Monarez, nominee to be the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, June 25, 2025 in Washington. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez said Wednesday evening that she would not leave her post as a top public health official, despite attempts by White House officials and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oust her for “protecting the public” over “a political agenda.”
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” Monarez’s lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
The showdown began as a disagreement over demands from Kennedy and Stefanie Spear, his principal deputy chief of staff, for Monarez to support changes to COVID vaccine policy and the firings of high-level staff, a source familiar with the conversations told ABC News, which Monarez would not commit to.
HHS then announced that Monarez was “no longer director” of the CDC, which touched off a wave of high-level resignations from CDC officials in protest and, ultimately, a fiery response later Wednesday evening from Monarez’s lawyers, who said she wouldn’t resign.
Kennedy, on Fox News on Thursday morning, would not comment on Monarez and argued that the priorities at the CDC need to be re-examined.
“It would be inappropriate for me to comment on a personnel issue,” Kennedy said. “What I will say is President Trump has very, very ambitious hopes for what for CDC right now. CDC has problems. You know, we saw the misinformation coming out of covid. They got the testing wrong. They got the social distancing, the masks, the school closures that did so much harm to the American people.”
Asked about Monarez’s lawyer statement saying that she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts,” and the resignations that followed, Kennedy said he was not caught off guard by what happened and continued to claim that the CDC is “in trouble.”
“And we are fixing it, and it may be that some people should not be working there anymore,” Kennedy said.
The White House, which has the authority to dismiss Monarez, followed up late Wednesday night with a statement from spokesperson Kush Desai, who said Monarez was indeed “terminated.”
“As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again. Since Susan Monarez refused to resign despite informing HHS leadership of her intent to do so, the White House has terminated Monarez from her position with the CDC,” Desai said.
But Monarez’s lawyers again pushed back, arguing that because Monarez was appointed by President Donald Trump to the post — the first CDC director to go through a Senate confirmation process — Trump had to personally dismiss her.
“For this reason, we reject the notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director. We have notified the White House Counsel of our position,” Zaid and Lowell said in a statement.
Monarez, the recently sworn-in director of the CDC, was confirmed by the Senate just four weeks ago.
Monarez was the second nominee for the position, after Trump’s first nominee, Dave Weldon, didn’t appear to have the votes for a Senate confirmation, in part because of his history of vaccine skepticism.
Monarez, during her confirmation hearing, was clear about her support for vaccines: “I think vaccines save lives. I think that we need to continue to support the promotion of utilization of vaccines,” she said in July.
But over the last few months, her boss, Kennedy, has made significant changes to vaccine policy, particularly for COVID vaccines, that have the potential to limit access to the shot.
Earlier Wednesday, Kennedy’s FDA narrowed the scope for who will be approved to get the updated vaccines available this fall and winter.
The latest vaccines were only approved for elderly people — adults aged 65 and older — and for younger people if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at higher risk for severe illness, departing from the prior guidance that everyone 6 months and older should get vaccinated.
The FDA decision will come before the CDC later this month, where Monarez and a committee of advisers, recently all replaced with handpicked choices by Kennedy, would’ve had the chance to weigh in — and Monarez would’ve ultimately needed to sign off.
In March, Kennedy also oversaw a change to the pediatric vaccine schedule, shifting to a “shared clinical decision making” model that leaves the decision to vaccinate children against COVID to parents, alongside advice from a doctor.
Kennedy has defended the vaccine policy changes as advancing “science, safety, and common sense.”
Following HHS’s statement about Monarez’s departure, four other senior career officials at the CDC also resigned, according to emails obtained by ABC News.
Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at CDC, Dan Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, sent emails to colleagues on Wednesday night informing them that they’d submitted their resignations, each mentioning changing policies at CDC.
Jennifer Layden, Director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, resigned as well.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health,” Daskalakis wrote in his departure email to colleagues.
“You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession,” he said.
Houry, who has worked at CDC through Democrat and Republican administrations, said “the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations.”
“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency. This is a heartbreaking decision that I make with a heavy heart,” Houry wrote.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who has oversight of HHS as chair of the Senate committee focused on health, committed Wednesday night to looking into the high-profile departures.
The wave of departures comes during a tumultuous time for the CDC, just a few weeks after a shooting on the main campus in Atlanta that hit multiple buildings. Authorities said they found the alleged shooter had been harboring years-long grievances with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Monarez’s departure was first reported by the Washington Post.
Dozens of first responders crowd the street in front of Annunciation Catholic Church that was the scene of a shooting that killed two children and wounded seventeen other people on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minn. (Renee Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — As police search for a motive in the deadly mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP obtained a yearbook entry from the school describing suspected shooter Robin Westman as a member of the class of 2017.
“We believe he had been a student here,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told KSTP, adding, “His mom had worked here in the past.”
Westman, 23, who was born Robert Westman, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Driver’s license information reviewed by ABC News described Westman as a female, born on June 17, 2002. A name change application for a minor born on the same date, June 17, 2002, was approved by a district court in Minnesota in 2020, changing the name of a Robert Westman to Robin Westman, explaining the minor child “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
Two children — an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old — were killed and 17 people were injured when the shooter opened fire through the windows of the Minneapolis school’s church on Wednesday morning.
Fourteen of the injured victims were children ages 6 to 15, and the three adults who were shot were parishioners in their 80s, police said.
All injured victims are expected to survive and some victims have already been released from the hospital, O’Hara said late Wednesday.
Officers recovered three guns — one rifle, one shotgun and one handgun — at the scene, all of which are believed to have been fired in the attack, police said. All were purchased legally by Westman, police said.
Electronics related to Westman have been recovered, but no other firearms, the chief said.
The suspect had no criminal history, police added.
O’Hara said additional police patrols will be provided as children return to school across the Minneapolis area.
ABC News’ Mariama Jalloh, Pierre Thomas, Jack Date, Luke Barr, Aaron Katersky, Sasha Pezenik and Michael Pappano contributed to this report.
Rescuers work at the site of a residential building hit by a Russian missile on August 28, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine came under a major combined missile and drone attack overnight into Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, with at least 18 people — four of them children — killed in the capital.
“Kyiv is under massive attack,” the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration Timur Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram. At least 48 people were injured across the city, the military administration said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 598 drones and 31 missiles into the country overnight, of which 563 drones and 26 missiles were shot down or suppressed. Impacts were reported across 13 locations, the air force said, with falling debris reported in 26 locations.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post to Telegram that it was “a terrible night” for the capital. He reported “many damaged buildings” across five city districts.
“These include both non-residential buildings and high-rise apartments,” Klitschko said. “Educational institutions, transport infrastructure. Emergency services are working on site everywhere.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes represented “a clear response to everyone in the world who for weeks and months has been calling for a ceasefire and real diplomacy. Russia chooses ballistics over the negotiating table. It chooses to continue the killings rather than end the war.”
“This means that Russia still does not fear the consequences,” Zelenskyy added. “Russia still takes advantage of the fact that at least part of the world closes its eyes to the killed children and looks for excuses for Putin.”
Zelenskyy urged a response from nations like China and Hungary, which have expressed sympathy with Russia’s position. “It is definitely time for new tough sanctions against Russia for everything it is doing,” he added.
“All deadlines have already been missed, dozens of opportunities for diplomacy have been spoiled. Russia must feel its responsibility for every strike, for every day of this war,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the overnight strikes also damaged damaged the building housing the European Union mission to Ukraine in Kyiv. “We insist on strong international reactions to Russia’s brutal strike on Kyiv and other cities,” Sybiha wrote in a post to X.
European Council President Antonio Costa confirmed the damage to the building in a post to social media, describing the attack as a “Russian deliberate strike.” No injuries were reported at the building.
“Horrified by yet another night of deadly Russian missile attacks on Ukraine,” Costa wrote. “The EU will not be intimidated. Russia’s aggression only strengthens our resolve to stand with Ukraine and its people,” he added.
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said the attack served as “another grim reminder of what is at stake.” She added, “It shows that the Kremlin will stop at nothing to terrorize Ukraine.”
The latest barrage continued the nightly tempo of Russian strikes, though the scale of the attacks through August have so far been smaller than in July and June. In August so far, Russia has launched a daily average of around 118 drones and four missiles into Ukraine, according to Ukrainian air force data analyzed by ABC News.
The daily averages for July were around 201 drones and six missiles, and in June 181 drones and eight missiles.
Wednesday night’s strike was the largest on Ukraine since Aug. 21 and the first major strike on Kyiv for several weeks.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the strikes, which continue despite White House efforts to broker a peace deal.
Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Ukrainian officials will meet with members of the Trump administration in New York on Friday. On the agenda are security guarantees for Ukraine to prevent future Russian aggression — a key element of the negotiations that took center stage when Zelenskyy and a slate of European leaders visited the White House last week.
“The task is to accelerate as much as possible so that this too becomes a lever – a lever of influence: the Russians must see how seriously the world is determined and how dire the consequences will be for Russia if the war continues,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down at least 102 Ukrainian drones overnight.
ABC News’ Nataliia Popova, Natalia Kushniir, Oleksiy Phemyskiy and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
Police work the scene following a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School on August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — When Pat Scallen heard gunshots around the corner from his Minneapolis home, “I didn’t know exactly what it was at first, but after about the 10th shot, I knew something was wrong,” he recalled.
Scallen raced to the Annunciation Catholic School, where he said he saw a magazine on the ground by the church.
“It was eerily quiet. And then I immediately turned and ran to the front of the church, and right at that time everyone was coming out. And it was chaotic,” Scallen told “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
Streaming from the church were children suffering emotional and physical wounds, he said, adding that he saw a boy and a girl who had been shot in the head as well as a girl shot in the neck.
“They were very frightened. They wanted their mom and dad,” he said. “And I just, I sat them down and just tried to keep them calm, and I was watching them close to see if there’d be any change in their status.”
Scallen said the girl shot in the head asked him, “Please just hold my hand.”
“I did,” he said.
An 8-year-old and 10-year-old who were sitting in pews were killed and 17 others were injured in the Wednesday morning mass shooting, police said. The shooter opened fire through a church window during a Mass that marked the first week of school.
Fourteen of the injured victims were children ages 6 to 15, and the three adults who were shot were parishioners in their 80s, police said. All of those injured are expected to survive, police said.
The shooter, identified by the FBI as 23-year-old Robin Westman, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. A motive remains under investigation.
Scallen said the Annunciation Catholic School is “one of the premiere schools in the city and state” and is “integral to the neighborhood.”
“There’s a spirit here, and I know they’ll be grieving for awhile, but this place, they’ll come back,” he said.
A general view shows the skyline of Philadelphia at sunset from South Street Bridge on Schuylkill river. (Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(PHILADELPHIA) — More than 26 years after a man was gunned down outside his Philadelphia home in what police described as a mob-style killing, a suspect was arrested this week, a block from the crime scene, authorities said.
Federal prosecutors announced on Tuesday the arrest of 60-year-old Richard Leidy in the 1999 ambush that left Guerino “Gino” Marconi dead and his 31-year-old girlfriend, Patricia Miley, wounded.
According to documents filed in Philadelphia federal court, Leidy is charged with murder, attempted murder and possession of a prohibited firearm. Leidy is also charged with simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, possession of an instrument of crime with intent and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
Leidy was arrested on Monday at his home in South Philadelphia, which is about a block from where the fatal shooting of Marconi unfolded on South 20th Street in South Philadelphia, authorities said. It was unclear if Leidy was living at the same residence when Marconi was killed.
Leidy was arraigned on the charges on Tuesday, but did not enter a plea, according to court records. A preliminary hearing in the case has been scheduled for Sept. 15, which, according to court documents, will be Leidy’s 61st birthday.
Details of what led investigators to arrest Leidy in the cold-case killing were not immediately disclosed.
Leidy is being held in federal custody without bail.
At the time of the killing, 42-year-old Marconi was described in media reports as a low-level associate of Joseph Salvatore “Skinny Joey” Merlino, then reputed boss of the Philadelphia crime family.
On the night of April 10, 1999, Marconi and Miley were both shot by an assailant wielding a rifle, who confronted them outside Marconi’s home, the Philadelphia Police Department said at the time.
Marconi was shot once in the head and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time. Marconi’s girlfriend, Miley, was shot three times in the attack and critically injured, but survived the shooting, the Daily News reported.
Before fleeing the scene, the gunman torched a van that was parked in front of Marconi’s home and set other vehicles on fire, according to police.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately disclosed.
Marconi, who grew up in South Philadelphia, owned an auto body shop in South Philly at the time of his death, the Daily News reported, citing property records.
The newspaper said Miley worked as a billing clerk for a Philadelphia law firm.
Sign for “Alligator Alcatraz” at the entrance to the detention center in the Everglades, Florida, United States, on August 24, 2025. (Jesus Olarte/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(OCHOPEE, Fla.) — The controversial immigration facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will soon have no detainees in it, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
The email was sent by Kevin Guthrie, the head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, to the interfaith community.
“We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote.
The detention center was the subject of lawsuits, one of which halted new detainees from being transported to the facility.
President Donald Trump and top Homeland Security brass visited the facility, which they have testified in court is expected to cost about $400 million.
The South Florida Interfaith Community wrote to the FDEM about allowing access to faith services at the facility in recent days.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced that his administration is opening a new immigration detention facility in the state dubbed “Deportation Depot.”
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., Jensen Huang attends the 9th edition of the VivaTech trade show at the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles on June 11, 2025, in Paris. (Chesnot/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Chip giant Nvidia delivered more revenue than expected over a recent three-month period, the company said on Wednesday, defying concern among some prominent figures about a possible bubble in the artificial intelligence industry.
The California-based company recorded $46.7 billion in sales over three months ending in July, which exceeded analyst expectations of $46.2 billion. The jump in revenue marked 56% growth compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
The fresh data offered the latest window into the health of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, which in recent years has become a key engine for stock market gains and economic growth.
Nvidia, the $4 trillion company behind many of the chips fueling AI products, has expanded at a breakneck pace since an AI boom set off by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. The California-based company saw its stock price soar nearly 700% over the ensuing two years.
Alongside continued growth, the company is weathering new challenges. President Donald Trump barred the sale of chips to China earlier this year, before revoking the ban in July. A month later, Trump struck an agreement with Nvidia allowing the company to sell chips in China if the firm hands over 15% of revenue generated by the exports to the U.S.
Speaking at the White House earlier this month, the president recounted the agreement with Nvidia.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said.
In May, the company said it expected to suffer an $8 billion loss as result of restrictions imposed upon chip exports. Earnings released on Wednesday said the company did not sell any H20 chips in China over the most recent quarter, but the firm did not mention any losses related to the policy.
In recent weeks, some prominent figures have warned of an AI bubble, casting doubt on the sustainability of the sector’s gangbusters growth. Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, said last month that the AI bubble may exceed the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, suggesting that the top firms are overvalued.
In an interview earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said the AI industry had become a bubble.
“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes,” Altman told tech publication The Verge.
Still, the AI sector remains a bright spot for the U.S. economy. AI-related spending added a 0.5 percentage point boost to annualized gross domestic product growth over the first half of 2025, Pantheon Macroeconomics found.
