David Barnes appears in court in Russia on Feb. 13, 2024. Via ABC News.
(LONDON) — American David Barnes’ appeal to be released from a Russian detention center has been denied, causing prosecutors in Moscow to celebrate while Barnes’ friends and family in Alabama fear for his future.
In a hearing that lasted roughly three hours on Thursday, a judge at Moscow City Court rejected an effort by Barnes’ attorney Gleb Glinka to free him from custody. Instead, the judge increased Barnes’ sentence by six months, ordering that he be sent to a high-security penal colony and receive psychiatric treatment.
Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but Glinka told ABC News after the hearing that he was astounded by the decision, arguing that the Russian judicial system should not have jurisdiction over this case.
Barnes, 67, was convicted and sentenced to 21 years in a Russian penitentiary in February 2024.
The conviction came after Moscow prosecutors accused Barnes of abusing his two sons in Texas years earlier, despite Texas law enforcement having no involvement in the Russian trial.
Texas prosecutors previously found no basis to charge Barnes with a crime after his Russian ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, alleged during child custody proceedings that he abused their children in suburban Montgomery County.
“I do know that everyone that heard and investigated the child sexual abuse allegations raised by Mrs. Barnes during the child custody proceedings did not find them to be credible,” Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office Trial Bureau Chief Kelly Blackburn previously told ABC News.
“I didn’t do anything,” Barnes told his sister Carol on a phone call earlier this year. “This is a political situation and I need political help.”
Barnes, who was raised in Alabama and lived in Texas prior to his arrest in Moscow, is currently serving the longest prison sentence of any American currently being detained in Russia.
His case is unlike any other foreign detention case involving an American in recent memory, since Russian prosecutors have not accused him of committing crimes on Russian soil.
ABC News has been following the saga of Barnes’ detention since not long after he was taken into custody in Moscow in January 2022.
Barnes’ family members say he went to Russia a few weeks before his arrest in an effort to fight for visitation rights involving his children in Moscow’s family court system.
Although a Texas family court had designated Barnes as the primary guardian of his sons in August 2020, he could not see them since Koptyaeva, his ex-wife, allegedly committed felony interference with child custody in March 2019 by taking the children from the Houston suburbs to Russia and not returning.
A Texas warrant for Koptyaeva’s arrest remains active. Koptyaeva maintains that Barnes abused their two children, telling ABC News that she brought the children from the U.S. to Russia in order to protect them.
When Koptyaeva found out that Barnes had arrived in Moscow years later, she went to Russian law enforcement officials to report the allegations from Texas, according to Barnes’ relatives in Alabama.
Barnes was subsequently incarcerated.
His family and friends are hoping that he will be brought back from Russia to the U.S. through a prisoner exchange like the ones that saw the releases of Ksenia Karelina, Marc Fogel, Evan Gershkovich and Brittney Griner.
“If they have another exchange and he is not included on it, it’s going to devastate him,” Paul Carter, a friend of Barnes, told ABC News in January.
Carter and Barnes’ sisters, along with groups like the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, are calling on the Trump administration and the State Department to declare Barnes as being wrongfully detained.
“Embassy officials continue to closely monitor developments in the case and are in contact with Mr. Barnes, his family, and legal team,” an unnamed State Department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further details to share.”
Glinka told ABC News that he is planning to appeal Thursday’s ruling.
White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan speaks with ABC News while appearing on ‘This Week.’ Via ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — Trump White House border czar Tom Homan stood by the administration’s position on the return to the U.S. of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national the Justice Department said was erroneously deported to a prison in his home country, and waived off responsibility for the migrant’s status in an interview with ABC News.
Homan spoke with “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an interview that will air this Sunday about the case and repeated the Trump administration’s allegations that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member and a violent threat to the public.
“We removed a public safety threat, a national security threat, a violent gang member from the United States,” he alleged.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and family members have denied that he is a member of MS-13, and the gang allegations are being disputed in court.
Watch more of Jonathan Karl’s interview with Tom Homan on “This Week” at 9 a.m. Sunday on ABC.
However, much of the evidence that has been cited by President Donald Trump and his allies, such as clothing they argue symbolizes gang membership, has not been brought up in court since the current administration began litigating this case.
The Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. for a trial. As of Friday, the administration has not taken active steps to do so.
When asked by Karl about the order, Homan claimed the Trump administration does not have the right or ability to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. and argued Abrego Garcia is under the authority of the El Salvador government.
“I understand that ‘facilitate,’ but he’s also in the custody — he’s a citizen and a national of the country of El Salvador. El Salvador would certainly have to cooperate in that,” Homan said.
“But again, I’m out of the loop on that. I’m not an attorney. I’m not litigating this case. We’ll do whatever the law says we have to do, but I think and I stand by the fact [that] I think we did the right thing here,” he said.
Homan also joined Trump and other Republicans in their criticism of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador this week and met with Abrego Garcia.
“You know, what bothers me more than that is a U.S. senator traveled to El Salvador on taxpayer dime to meet with an MS-13 gang member, [a] public safety threat, terrorist,” Homan said, without providing evidence that Van Hollen is using taxpayer money for the trip.
When ABC News reached out to Van Hollen’s office for comment on how the trip was funded, his office replied, “the Senator traveled in his official capacity with bipartisan approval to follow up on the case of a constituent and conduct oversight of U.S. foreign assistance programs. He did fly commercial.”
Abrego Garcia has never been convicted of a crime in the U.S., and his wife, Jennifer Vasquez, told ABC News on Wednesday that her husband has “never been convicted for anything.”
Homan accused the senator of not taking time to meet with victims of MS-13 gang members in his state and inaction under the Biden administration to address border concerns.
“What concerns me is Van Hollen never went to the border the last four years under Joe Biden. … What shocks me is he’s remained silent on the travesty that happened on the southern border. Many people died, thousands of people died,” he said.
Upon returning to the U.S., Van Hollen told reporters his trip was about more than Abrego Garcia’s case.
“This case is not only about one man, as important as that is,” Van Hollen said. “It is about protecting fundamental freedoms and the fundamental principle in the Constitution for due process that protects everybody who resides in America.”
Web page for https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/ on April 18, 2025. Via The White House
(WASHINGTON) — The White House has redirected COVID.gov to a new landing page called “Lab Leak: True Origins of COVID-19,” which makes a five-point argument for the theory that COVID-19 originated from a mistaken lab leak in Wuhan, China.
The new site appears to use theories from the final report of the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released in December 2024. There has never been a consensus or a “smoking gun” to explain what started the pandemic.
The COVID.gov page, as recently as last week, listed resources for testing, treatment, and vaccination against COVID-19, as well as information for Long COVID.
The five pieces of evidence put forth by the White House for the theory include the following assertions: that the “virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature,” that data shows all cases “stem from a single introduction into humans,” that “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab,” that researchers at that research lab “were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019,” and that “if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.”
The page includes claims that government officials, including former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, helped edit and then amplify a research paper on the origins of COVID-19 published in 2020 that supported natural origin theory.
The current page suggests this paper’s explicit intention was to discredit the lab leak theory and remove any doubt that the origins were of natural origin. This is not a new accusation and in the past Fauci and the paper authors disagreed with the accusations that the paper was manipulated or had any specific goal.
The origins of the pandemic have been hotly debated since its start.
The prevailing theories always seemed to focus on two scenarios: either natural exposure to an infected animal or an accidental lab leak.
With no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence.
In October 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report on the intelligence community’s views on the origin conundrum, which also leaned toward a natural spillover, but represented divided views. A subsequent declassified report released in 2023 also noted that most of the intelligence community was split on the origins of the pandemic. In reports, US agencies generally agreed that the virus was most likely not developed as a biological weapon and that China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic.
The new splash page features a photo of Fauci and the pardon that former President Joe Biden granted him, highlighting that it was for “any offenses.” The page also accuses federal agencies, including NIH and HHS, of breaking laws and violating rules about transparency and cooperation with Congressional investigation. The agencies complied with FOIA requests and other regulatory requests from the committee and also appeared before lawmakers when asked to testify.
The web page also calls into question the efficacy of social distancing, masking and lockdown. The White House also criticized the response from New York officials.
Fauci testified about the accusations before lawmakers in 2024, saying that accusations about him covering up or influencing research about the lab leak theory are untrue.
“The accusation being circulated that I influenced the scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money is absolutely false, and simply preposterous. I had no input into the content of the published paper,” Fauci said in June of 2024.
“The second issue is a false accusation that I tried to cover up the possibility that the virus originated from a lab. In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite,” Fauci said during that 2024 hearing.
This is not the first time that the White House has made clear its position on the origins of COVID-19. In January, President Trump said that COVID-19 had “strained” his relationship with President Xi Jinping of China.
“But, I like President Xi very much. I’ve always liked him. We always had a very good relationship. It was very strained with COVID coming out of Wuhan. Obviously, that strained it. I’m sure it strained it with a lot of people, but that strained our relationship,” Trump said in remarks to the World Economic Forum.
ABC News’ Eric Strauss, Sony Salzman and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Three people have died, and their bodies have been recovered after a small plane crash in Nebraska, authorities said.
The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office said that “a small plane was traveling along the Platte River south of Fremont when it crashed into the river” on Friday night.
“The three occupants of the plane have been recovered and are confirmed deceased,” authorities continued. “Those identities will not be released at this time pending next of kin notification.”
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have now taken over the investigation. The cause of the crash is currently unknown.
The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has asked the community to avoid the area until further notice so that they may continue with their investigation.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Hyundai vehicles on display at the New York International Auto Show on April 16, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — This weekend, consumers and auto enthusiasts will poke, prod and pepper brand specialists with questions about the latest vehicles on display at the Javits Center.
The annual New York International Auto Show, which officially opened to the public on Friday, is smaller and more condensed than previous years. There are still plenty of vehicles to check out up close, such as the 2026 Hyundai Palisade, Kia K4 Hatchback and EV4, plus Genesis, Toyota, Subaru and Volkswagen introduced new vehicles and concepts.
Of course, one overarching theme looms large: Will these new vehicles be subject to the Trump’s administration’s 25% industry tariff? Consumers went out in force last month to scoop up available cars, trucks and SUVs before prices inched higher, helping the industry report record sales. In fact, nearly 1.6 million vehicle units were purchased, marking a month-over-month increase of 29.6% and a year-over-year increase of 10.3%, according to Cox Automotive data.
What will happen to new vehicle prices this summer, when temporary pricing pauses announced by automakers disappear? And as uncertainty dominates, how will automakers — from mainstream to ultra luxe — respond?
ABC News spoke to various auto executives and industry watchers about the future of the industry. The conversations below have been edited for clarity and space.
Sean Gilpin, chief marketing officer, Hyundai Motor America
Hyundai is a very customer-centric brand, a people-centric brand. We just launched a campaign reminding customers that we’re not increasing MSRPs for the next 60 days (ending June 2). What we saw in the some of data and surveys is that customers don’t know how a tariff works but they know things will get more expensive potentially, so we wanted to get the message out there.
The June 2 date could be extended. The best medicine for our business is to keep selling cars. We think this message is resonating with customers. We’ve seen a big uptick in our shopping activity, in customers who are new to the brand and visiting the site for the first time. Dealer traffic is up.
We have a plant in Alabama. The Tucson, our best-selling vehicle, is built there. The Santa Fe is also built in the Alabama plant. We had a grand opening of our Metaplant near Savannah, Georgia, two weeks ago, and 300,000 vehicles will come off the line in phase one. Phase two will bring capacity to 500,000 vehicles. We’re continuing to invest here and grow in terms of our footprint. The U.S. is the No. 1 market for Hyundai. We also recently announced a commitment to build a steel plant in Louisiana.
Tony Quiroga, editor-in-chief, Car and Driver
The tariffs make everything a sort of unknown. I’ve been telling anyone who’s in the market in the next year to start shopping now. Inexpensive cars are going to get more expensive because so many are built outside of the U.S. Nissan builds the Kicks, Versa and Sentra in Mexico. Chevy builds the Trax in South Korea, which would be subject to be a big tariff. A lot people could be priced out of the market. If you’re in that market, you should definitely be considering buying a car now.
The tariff situation is unsettling and weird and everybody is just sort of wondering what’s going to happen and hoping for the best I think.
Vinay Shahani, senior vice president of U.S. marketing and sales, Nissan Americas
The market is healthy right now. There’s a lot of shopping, and a lot of cross-shopping, that’s happening. We feel really good about the activity out there.
We have plenty of on-ground inventory that’s protected from tariffs today. We’re very fortunate as a company that we have a very strong industrial footprint here in the U.S. Between Tennessee and Mississippi we produce a lot of vehicles that we sell here in the U.S. There are six models built in the U.S. between Nissan and Infiniti.
The Rogue is currently built at the Smyrna Assembly Plant in Tennessee as well as in Japan. Now we’re saying we’re going to increase the production of the Rogue in the U.S because it makes sense to do that and we can dial up production to deliver more U.S.-built Rogues. We’re also looking at subsequent new vehicles that we’re going to launch and saying, how can we optimize our footprint and bring as much as we can to the U.S.? It’s already happening — we’re moving production of the Rogue from Japan. The supply and manufacturing teams are already all over it.
Starting at the end of March, we started to see increased activity and it’s carried through for the month of April. We have basically said we’re holding our pricing between April and May. Then we will evaluate the situation after June 2. In this dynamic environment, where things are changing constantly, you can’t plan too far out.
Steven Center, chief operating officer, Kia America
Tariffs are a whole different kettle of fish as they say. Product cycles are long — they’re five, six, seven years or longer. Automakers have long planning horizons and you always want to have a shorter supply line as possible. We learned that during the pandemic. And you always want to build things closer to where you’re selling them.
To build a factory takes years of planning and execution. It’s very difficult to find a location for an auto plant. You need a lot of space, you need suppliers nearby, you need rail heads to bring in the materials. Most importantly you need a labor pool. And this country is in a state of zero unemployment. So where are you going to find people?
Erin Keating, executive analyst, Cox Automotive
Automakers have been fairly mute on tariffs — there haven’t been any big reveals on how they’re going to manage the cost. My advice: if you are in the market, and have been looking to buy a car, go to the dealer and buy one. If you’re just worried cars will get more expensive, wait it out. I wouldn’t rush ahead to make a decision — things could change.
There will be a grand redistribution of market share over the next few months. Whoever can capitalize on the frenzy of the consumer will win the day, at least in the second quarter. We’ve seen increased marketing from automakers and increased shopping behavior on Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. The lending environment is looser now than in the past. There is still pent-up demand in the market.
We saw a big sales jump in March and will see another in April. Sales though could peter out in May. Automakers are trying to hold pricing right now … though prices will increase to some degree across the board. At the dealer level, floor planning is not cheap. You don’t want to keep inventory on the lot for a long time. If inventory goes quickly, you will have to replenish.
Ford and Honda have relatively low exposure to the tariffs. Toyota also has a lot of strength in the U.S. market in terms of manufacturing.
Vehicle parts are the bigger component of the tariff challenge. It’s so difficult to move production to the U.S. Brands are impacted separately; it really comes down to specific models. Vehicles built in the U.S. will get hit with tariffs because of the componentry. The 25% steel and aluminum tariffs are also hitting automakers.
I stress to consumers that it’s good to be informed of what’s happening. There are things you can do, like vote with your wallet.
Mike Rocco, president and CEO, Bentley Americas
The U.S. is the largest market in the world for Bentley. In the luxury space your world revolves around building an order bank — making sure you have customers in the system. We’ve told our retailers to communicate to their clients that we will price protect all retail orders that are in the system. If you have a car coming — don’t worry about it, you’re protected. We also announced that in the month of April, any new orders that went into the system would be protected, not just the ones prior to the tariff.
We’re looking at pricing on a month-to-month basis. There’s a lot of fluidity and things are changing. We haven’t had any [vehicle order] cancellations. Our No. 1 priority is to protect our clients and to protect our retailers.
I was recently in Palm Beach and Naples, Florida, talking to 70-80 clients. The feeling I got from customers I spoke to was that they’d have to pay whatever the tariff is … everyone recognized that the tariff would eventually be passed on to the customer.
Andrea Soria, general manager, Maserati North America
We live day by day. We keep monitoring. We are currently not shipping cars from Italy. It’s a very fluid situation. Every day you have different news. If nothing changes we will need to make some decision. We cannot absorb the tariffs entirely. We hope there will be some negotiation coming, some solution, something that will be a little bit more reasonable.
I think everyone in the industry is trying to adjust the sales. My colleagues in Italy ask me every day [about the tariffs]. I say, I wish I had a better answer. Everyone is waiting right now. We protected all the orders that were in the system until April 4. We haven’t seen anyone walking away [from an order] so far.
Tyson Jominy, vice president of data & analytics, J.D. Power
The auto industry is probably uniquely positioned to absorb the tariffs because sourcing time frames in the industry are so long. It takes so long to pivot to new ideas.
It’s a completely global industry. Even companies that assemble the majority of their vehicles in the U.S. have parts coming in from overseas. Therefore, no one really is exempt from tariffs. We’ll likely see some vehicles go away and automakers could cut back on marketing and reduce R&D costs to reserve cash. There’s really little they can do in the short term … and they’re holding cards close to their chest. Everyone is super tight-lipped about their plans.
We saw the industry really take off at the end of March, when the tariffs kicked in the last week. March was one of the strongest months we’ve seen in four or five years. Some automakers may even set sales records in the first half of the year. We expect a very strong Q2 but could see volume losses in Q4 — we know we can’t continue at this pace.
The automakers locking in prices have higher inventory levels. An automaker would normally be skewered for having 100 days of supply on the ground, but that’s a huge asset right now and buys you time. The tariffs may go away and you can see what your competitors are doing.
Our analysis says vehicles will have an 11% additional cost on average, or just shy of $5,000 per unit. But only 5% of the cost will be passed on to the consumer on average, or $2,300 per unit. You can’t raise the price of a Hyundai Sonata by $7,000 for example — that would be the equivalent of pulling out of the segment. Automakers may see negative margins on certain vehicles.
Models like the Porsche 911, Mercedes-Benz G-Class and Range Rover have true pricing power — customers won’t care [about a price increase].
I tell consumers not to rush out and buy a car. Ultimately making the right decision at a slightly more expensive purchase price would be the better decision for the long term.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — A Florida State University graduate student shared with ABC News the harrowing moments she was shot on campus and forced to play dead as the gunman reloaded.
Madison Askins, 23, one of seven people shot near FSU’s student union on Thursday, said she was walking with a friend when she heard gunshots.
Askins and her friend “took off running,” but “unfortunately, I fell,” she said.
Her friend tried to help her up, but Askins said she was then shot in her buttocks. Her friend ran to safety, which she said was “valid.”
As Askins lay wounded, she said she remained calm and thought about what her parents told her to do during active shooter drills: play dead.
“I released all the muscles in my body, closed my eyes and held my breath,” she said. “And I would take short breaths in between when I needed to.”
“At one point I did think [the gunman] had walked away, so I was going to shift over to grab my phone to share my last ‘I love you’s’ with my family,” she said.
“I wanted to call my dad, tell him I loved him,” she said, wiping away tears.
But she said she then heard the gunman approach and reload his weapon. She said she heard him calmly say, “Keep running.”
“I know for certain if I was moving he would’ve shot me again,” she said.
Askins said she “didn’t want to entertain” the thought of dying, adding, “I knew I just needed to stay calm.”
Eventually the gunman left and Askins said she stayed where she was until an officer came to her rescue.
“She packed my wound for me and she kept an eye on the surrounding area,” Askins said. “I knew everything was over when we had multiple officers come over and they tell me they got him. I was able to breathe.”
Two people were killed and six others were wounded in the shooting. All six injured are expected to survive, officials said.
Askins said she’ll likely remain in the hospital for several more days. She still has the bullet lodged in her vertebrae and will have it removed in a later surgery, she said.
But Askins said this won’t slow her down in finishing her studies and pursuing her dreams.
“I’m glad to be with my family, glad to keep moving forward. I’ve got an internship lined up. I’m so ready to go for it,” she said.
“I’m not gonna let it tear me down,” she added. “No, he doesn’t get that.”
The suspected gunman, 20-year-old FSU student Phoenix Ikner, was shot by officers and is also expected to survive, authorities said. A motive is not known.
(NEW YORK) — In a remarkable coincidence, NASA astronaut Don Pettit will mark his 70th birthday with a fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, capping off his fourth mission to space, the agency said in a release.
Pettit, along with Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, will bid farewell to their orbital home of more than seven months when they undock from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft at 5:57 p.m. ET Saturday.
The trio’s journey back to Earth is scheduled to end at 9:20 p.m. ET, NASA noted. It will culminate in a parachute-assisted landing on the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, where recovery teams will be waiting to extract them from their capsule.
During their 220-day mission, the crew circled the Earth an astounding 3,520 times, traveling approximately 93.3 million miles.
The departure marks another milestone for the crew members: Ovchinin concludes his fourth spaceflight with 595 days in orbit. Vagner adds to his impressive record with 416 cumulative days across two missions.
Before their departure, a change of command ceremony will take place on Friday, with Ovchinin transferring leadership of the space station to Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, who will command Expedition 73.
After touchdown, NASA noted that the crew will be transported by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. From there, they’ll part ways — Pettit heading back to Houston while his Russian crewmates return to their training base in Star City, near Moscow.
The mission highlights the continuing international cooperation aboard the ISS, which has maintained continuous human presence for over two decades.
NASA’s release also stated that the ISS remains a crucial platform for scientific research and testing technologies for deep space exploration as the agency shifts its focus toward ambitious Moon and Mars missions under the Artemis program.
NASA will provide live coverage of the crew’s return journey on NASA+, starting with Friday’s change of command ceremony and continuing through Saturday’s landing.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — The Florida State University community is reeling and police are searching for a motive after a gunman opened fire on the Tallahassee campus on Thursday, killing two and injuring six.
Tallahassee police on Friday laid out how the shooting unfolded.
The suspect, 20-year-old FSU student Phoenix Ikner, arrived at a campus parking garage at about 11 a.m. and stayed in the area for around an hour, moving in and out of his car, police said.
Ikner left the garage at 11:51 a.m., police said, and then between 11:56 and 11:57 a.m. he started firing a handgun, police said. The shooting was reported to 911 by 11:58 a.m., police said.
At noon, Ikner was shot by officers and taken into custody, police said. He’s expected to survive.
Police have not identified the two people killed but said they were not students.
Food services company Aramark said one of its employees was killed in the shooting.
“We are absolutely shaken by the news and our deepest sympathies are with the family and our entire Aramark community,” the company said.
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare officials said the hospital received six patients, all in stable condition.
All six are expected to make full recoveries and two of them may be released on Friday, officials said.
McKenzie Heeter, a 20-year-old junior, told ABC News she was just feet away from the gunman when he shot a woman wearing scrubs by the student union.
The shooter was “waving around a bigger rifle … and then he pulled out the handgun and shot that woman,” Heeter said.
“Her back was to him, she was just walking. I don’t even think she registered what happened,” she said. “That’s what I just keep thinking about.”
Heeter described sprinting across campus in sheer panic.
“I did a four-minute mile in sandals. I’ve never run that fast in my life,” she said. “I felt like I have got to leave, or else it could be me next.”
Officials revealed that the suspect’s stepmother, Jessica Ikner, is a current deputy with the local Leon County Sheriff’s Office. While authorities identified Jessica Ikner as the suspect’s mother, court documents indicate she is his stepmother.
Phoenix Ikner had access to one of his stepmother’s personal weapons, which was one of the weapons found at the scene, Sheriff Walter McNeil said.
The suspect was also a “long-standing member” of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office’s Youth Advisory Council, McNeil said.
He was “engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” the sheriff said, adding, “Not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”
In a statement to the Florida State University community, President Richard McCullough called the shooting a “tragic and senseless act of violence.”
FSU has canceled classes and sporting events through the weekend. A vigil is set for Friday at 5 p.m.
President Donald Trump said Thursday he has an “obligation to protect” the Second Amendment when asked by a reporter in the Oval Office if he sees anything “broken” with America’s current gun laws.
“Look, I’m a big advocate of the Second Amendment. I have been from the beginning. I protected it, and these things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting. The people do. It’s a phrase that’s used probably too often,” Trump said.
“I will tell you that it’s a shame,” he said of the shooting.
ABC News’ Alex Faul, Faith Abubey and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — More than 50 million Americans are on alert for severe weather this Easter weekend, as several states in the Heartland have already been slammed with tornadoes, hail and damaging winds.
On Thursday, 15 tornadoes, 86-mph wind gusts and softball and baseball-sized hail were reported across Nebraska and Iowa.
Damage to farm buildings, downed trees and power lines have also been reported across Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.
The severe weather will persist this weekend as this storm system will begin to stall across the Central and Eastern parts of the country.
On Friday, areas stretching from central Texas up to southern Wisconsin and western Indiana will be hit with large hail, damaging winds, along with threats of possible tornadoes, especially in parts of Oklahoma and Texas.
The main window for severe weather will begin on Friday afternoon and continue until Saturday morning local time.
The wet and windy conditions will shift southwest on Saturday, hitting areas of central Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.
The National Weather Service said flash flooding is likely in these areas on Saturday.
On Easter Sunday, the weather will finally break out of its stall across the Central U.S. and move further east, hovering over parts of northwestern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, most of Arkansas and south-central Missouri.
The slow-moving nature of this storm system will also bring an increasing flash flood threat in the coming days as rounds of heavy rain and thunderstorms sweep across many of the same areas of the South and Midwest through the holiday weekend.
Flood watches have been posted across portions of six states, from north Texas to southern Illinois. A widespread 2 to 4 inches of rain is expected through Sunday with locally up to 6 inches where the heaviest rain falls.
Thankfully, the brunt of the heavy rain will fall just west of the areas that were recently hit with extreme rainfall and major flooding. However, much of this rain will eventually still drain down across the lower Mississippi River Valley, keeping the Mississippi and other nearby rivers in the region elevated for at least the next several days.
This system also brings heavy snow to the higher elevations of northern Arizona and New Mexico, extending up across the central Rocky Mountains through Friday evening. Winter storm warnings have been posted for portions of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado through Saturday afternoon. These areas could see 6 to 12 inches of snowfall with locally up to 20 inches at the highest elevations.
(WASHINGTON) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested Friday that a newly released batch of documents related to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy raise “more questions than answers.”
Her comment comes after doubts and conspiracy theories advanced by the late senator’s son and current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On Friday, Gabbard and Kennedy Jr. announced the release of more than 10,000 “previously classified” records related to the 1968 assassination of then-Sen. Kennedy, who was shot moments after delivering a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as part of his campaign for Democratic presidential nomination.
His confessed killer, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence. But Kennedy Jr. has in the past cast doubt on Sirhan’s role in his father’s death and vocally supported his release from prison.
On Friday, Gabbard suggested in an interview with the Daily Wire that the new records, which include previously undisclosed FBI records about Sirhan’s contacts prior to the killing, raise fresh questions about the long-accepted narrative of Kennedy’s assassination.
“There’s no ‘smoking gun,'” Gabbard said. “But there are a lot of interesting things that have not been previously known that really call into question what really happened and who was behind it.”
“There are more questions than answers,” she continued.
Among the newly released documents are several frantic cables distributed in the hours after Kennedy’s assassination by federal investigators, who gave their investigation the code-name “KENSALT.”
Records show that FBI field offices from Birmingham to Boston scrambled to gather information on Sirhan’s background, contacts, and other leads. The records also include interviews with witnesses and responding police officers.
One file includes a hand-written note purportedly penned by Sirhan calling for Kennedy to be “disposed of like his brother was,” referring to President John F. Kennedy, who was killed five years earlier.
Robert Kennedy Jr. said in a statement on Friday that “lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government.”
“I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency,” he continued. “I’m grateful also to Tulsi Gabbard for her dogged efforts to root out and declassify these documents.”
Attorneys for Sirhan have for years attempted to have him released from prison. In 2011, his lawyer told ABC News Sirhan was “set up” and “hypno-programmed.” Those assertions have gone unheeded. Parole boards have repeatedly denied his release.
President Donald Trump commissioned the release of records related to Kennedy’s assassination in an executive order signed in January. Gabbard subsequently launched a task force to facilitate “maximum transparency” in the release of records about the assassinations of Kennedy, his older brother, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Gabbard said Friday that an additional 50,000 records pertinent to the investigation of Kennedy’s death would be processed and made public in short order.
