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(NEW YORK) — A New York City police officer has been arrested for allegedly shooting another driver in an apparent road rage incident, prosecutors said.

Officer Hieu Tran, 27, was taken into custody at the New York City Police Department on Thursday in connection with last month’s shooting in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said.

Tran allegedly shot a 30-year old-man on the night of May 17, and the victim remains in the hospital, prosecutors said Friday.

Tran’s NYPD-issued gun was linked to the shooting scene, prosecutors said.

Police also used surveillance video and cellphone records to identify Tran as the suspect, prosecutors said.

Tran is charged with first-degree attempted murder, second-degree aggravated assault and second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, according to prosecutors.

Tran is a member of the NYPD’s public information unit and was off duty at the time of the shooting, according to New York ABC station WABC.

He’s been suspended without pay per department policy, WABC said.

ABC News’ Matt Foster and Ben Stein contributed to this report.

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(SEATTLE) — A 17-year-old boy was shot and killed when he apparently tried to break up a fight outside his Seattle high school, according to authorities.

The teen was shot multiple times in the Garfield High School parking lot at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, and he died later on Thursday at a hospital, Seattle police said.

The incident began as an altercation “between some high school-aged students,” Seattle police Deputy Chief Eric Barden told reporters Thursday. “Our victim, it appears, tried to intervene and break up that fight.”

“One of the original combatants approached the victim and an additional altercation broke out,” and the suspect fired multiple rounds, Barden said.

The suspect has not been identified, Barden said. He fled the scene and has not been found, police said.

Barden called the teen’s death an “extraordinary tragedy.”

Garfield High School is closed Friday and Monday, Seattle Public Schools said.

Police ask anyone with information to call the Seattle Police Department Violent Crime Tip Line at 206-233-5000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

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(NEW YORK) — For a decade, Carl Lentz was the lead pastor for the flagship New York City branch of the famous Australian megachurch, Hillsong. The brand was one of the fastest-growing religious movements on Earth.

Lentz was a hip pastor with a youthful congregation and a following that included actress Vanessa Hudgens, basketball player Kevin Durant and pop star Justin Bieber.

But nearly four years ago it all came crashing down, when Lentz was fired as pastor of Hillsong NYC for “moral failings” when his extramarital affairs made headlines and he admitted he had cheated on his wife, Laura. Now, the couple is opening up about how Carl Lentz’s infidelity shattered their marriage and ministry and the work they have done and continue to do to recover.

“It wasn’t a sexual thing,” Lentz told “Nightline” about the infidelity. “It’s not like I was out, you know, looking to have sex or looking to commit adultery. I had deep brokenness that manifests itself in a lot of different ways.”

When Laura first heard the news, she said she felt “confused and then, sad, broken and shattered.” The lowest point of her life, Laura says, was when she heard the depth of her husband’s acts for the first time during a call with staff. “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.

Laura was close to leaving Lentz and taking care of her children on her own. She spoke with a betrayal therapist, who helped guide her through the next steps to a divorce. Lentz and his wife Laura agreed to tell their three children about what Lentz had done before the scandal ignited headlines across the country.

Lentz said he “was digging my own grave” and is working on changing. He went to rehab to address his mental health. Through therapy, he opened up for the first time about his childhood trauma. When he was a young boy, he says he was molested. “The molestation that happened to me when I was a little boy, about 5 or 6 years old, altered my brain chemistry, altered my habits, altered my view of sex,” Lentz said. “And from that age till as long as I can remember, I had habits of secrecy and hiding and high risk taking that I could never explain.”

Laura says learning this gave her a reason not to end the couple’s 20-plus-year marriage and to fight for it. She ultimately decided to stay by his side.

“I stayed because I loved him,” Laura said. “We’re on the phone with a therapist, and she was asking him some questions about his childhood and some of that pain, and he started to talk and try to go through what happened. And he got to a point where he just stopped and his whole body started convulsing.”

Through Lentz’s breakdown, Laura realized there was so much more brokenness than she had known. While Laura was working toward forgiving her husband, more and more stories about Lentz allegedly abusing his power as lead pastor surfaced.

In 2022, the Christian Post obtained an internal review of Hillsong conducted by an outside firm. The review included interviews with staffers who claimed Lentz had been emotionally abusive. “I don’t know those people, and it’s hard for me to speak to those situations,” Lentz said. “If I were to sit down and talk to these people, and if my actions and leadership hurt them in any way, I’d love to apologize for it.”

In a different situation, a woman who worked for the family alleged that Lentz sexually abused and manipulated her. Lentz denies the allegations. Due to public and private backlash, Lentz and Laura went into seclusion for three years. Their family is rebuilding and restoring their foundation away from the fast pace of New York City in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They say their family needed to be in a place where they could all grow and stay at a consistent, sober, calm, patient pace.

Laura says she changed after Lentz’s rehab process, too, and is working on speaking up for herself and asserting her needs in her marriage. Lentz has accountability partners who keep tabs on his actions; if he messes up again, he says, Laura will be out the door.

Laura said she now trusts her husband again. She said he talks to her about everything — she hears everything — and he’s done the work to build trust in their relationship again. His children have also forgiven him for his mistakes.

“I think sometimes you might have to go through some really dark, deep days or seasons or chapters,” Laura Lentz said. “And you can either flick that page and start again or you just shut the book, you know? And I think we chose to flick the page and see what’s next.”

Carl Lentz told ABC News he has no desire to rejoin the pulpit for now. He wants to put that in the past and is looking forward to what’s ahead. He’s now working on a new podcast.

“I think I realized early that I had a gift to be able to explain things in a way that people who don’t typically love church or love faith could understand, and I figured that out early,” Lentz said. “I didn’t know if it was like a pulpit calling. As much as it is, I’m able to explain this in a way where you can drop your guard and listen, and I’m not going to judge you, and I’m not going to try to make excuses or talk around theology. I’m going to like, speak what I believe to be true.”
 

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(NEW YORK) — Leo Schofield has spent the last 35 years behind bars, convicted of the 1987 murder of his wife Michelle. Schofield filed four appeals while in prison, amidst new forensic evidence and a confession from a convicted killer. Each time he was denied.

But in April Leo Schofield was granted parole by the Florida State Commission on Offender Review.

Leo Schofield spoke with ABC News’ John Quiñones following his release on parole, saying he is now learning to “be in the moment and just enjoy” the time he is living outside prison.

“It doesn’t take long in prison before you realize that you were taking a lot of things for granted,” Leo Schofield said to Quiñones, “and then you’re fighting for the next 36 years to get them back.”

A new “20/20” airing Friday, June 7, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC Network and streaming the next day on Hulu, features the latest details of Leo Schofield’s case and examines what happened to Michelle Schofield.

Leo Schofield, now 58, has maintained his innocence from the very beginning.

“I love Michelle with all my heart to this day,” Leo Schofield said in a prison interview with “20/20” in 2022. “She was a victim of a cruel and heinous crime, but not one committed by her husband.”

On Feb. 24, 1987, 21-year-old Leo Schofield was waiting to get picked up by his then 18-year-old wife, Michelle Schofield. Hours passed without any sign of Michelle. Two days and a massive search later, police found her car, abandoned and missing its stereo speakers, along a highway exit ramp. The following day, her body was found underneath a plank of plywood in a drainage canal. She had been stabbed 26 times.

Leo Schofield recalled the flood of emotions he felt in the moments after Michelle’s body was recovered.

“I was so angry at God at that moment,” Leo Schofield said. “I ripped my shirt off. I punched a tree, punched the ground. I was pulling grass out of the ground.”

Leo Schofield was arrested fifteen months later, in June 1988.

During his trial in 1989, the prosecution argued that Leo regularly acted violently towards Michelle throughout their relationship. They brought in 21 character witnesses who testified about incidents of physical abuse by Leo towards Michelle, including slapping her and pulling her by the hair.

While on the stand, Schofield denied the claims made by the witnesses but admitted to slapping his wife twice.

Despite there being no forensic evidence linking Leo Schofield to the crime, the jury returned their verdict in two hours. Leo Schofield was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

About four years into his life sentence, Leo Schofield met Crissie Carter, a former state probation officer. The two married in 1995.

While researching Leo Schofield’s case, Crissie Schofield couldn’t stop thinking about the discrepancies in timelines presented at trial and the set of unidentified fingerprints found in Michelle Schofield’s car, both of which Leo Schofield’s defense attorney raised in court. Due to a lack of forensic technology, the fingerprints couldn’t be matched… until 2004.

The prints belonged to Jeremy Scott, a convicted murderer who was serving prison time for an unrelated crime. Scott lived less than 2 miles from where Michelle Schofield’s body was recovered.

Leo’s appellate attorney made a request for a new hearing based on this evidence. The court denied their request, arguing that Jeremy Scott’s fingerprints alone would not likely have led to an acquittal on retrial, and ruled there were no issues with the trial evidence that would have led to Leo’s exoneration.

In 2005, two detectives from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office interviewed Jeremy Scott. He denied any role in the murder of Michelle Schofield.

In 2017, Leo Schofield’s defense attorney, Andrew Crawford, enlisted an investigator to interview Scott again.

It was during this interview that Scott claimed that Michelle Schofield offered him a ride, and there was a struggle after a knife fell out of his pocket. The details recorded during this conversation led Leo Schofield’s legal team to request a retrial, which led to an evidentiary hearing.

At a 2017 evidentiary hearing, Jeremy Scott testified to the court that he murdered Michelle Schofield.

During cross-examination, the prosecution pointed out multiple times over the years where Scott denied any role in Michelle Schofield’s murder, as well as certain details that he could not recall or got wrong in his testimony, such as the clothes she wore that night.

Ultimately, Leo Schofield was again denied a new trial. The court ruled that the evidence did not meet the legal threshold for a new trial and made a finding that the testimony of Jeremy Scott was not credible.

In 2023, Leo Schofield became eligible for parole again. He was denied but was given an extension for his case to be reviewed again in 2024.

In the year leading up to his review, Leo Schofield was transitioned to a minimum-security facility in South Florida, one with a transitional program that helps prepare inmates for a life outside of prison walls.

“We’ve been walking in a tunnel in utter darkness for 35 years,” Leo Schofield told Gilbert King, a Pulitzer-prize winning author who is the host of a podcast about the case, “Bone Valley,” after the 2023 parole hearing. “We have never had a light at the end of this tunnel, ever… Yesterday, a big, bright light was lit.”

In April 2024, a parole board voted to release Leo Schofield. Now, more than three decades later, he’s being given a taste of freedom.

Leo Schofield was released on parole from a medium security correctional facility in the Everglades on April 30, 2024.

“I saw him come around the building,” Crissie Schofield told “20/20” about the day Leo Schofield was paroled. “After all these years and dreaming and hoping and waiting, it was just the most glorious, magical experience of my life.”

Leo Schofield’s legal team said he must reside in a halfway house for a year, enter a community outreach program and undergo mandatory mental health, substance abuse, anger and stress evaluations. He also has 18 months of curfew restrictions and is not allowed to contact Michelle Schofield’s family.

Leo Schofield told John Quiñones that he still thinks about his first wife Michelle Schofield “every single day.”

“This is not yet complete justice for her, and she deserves justice. She deserves better than this,” Leo Schofield said.

According to Crissie Schofield, the next step for her husband is exoneration. He is still technically a guilty man in the eyes of the law. The members of his legal team, many of whom come from the Florida Innocence Project, are fighting for full exoneration.”It’s wonderful that he’s out, but he’s not free. This isn’t over,” Crissie Schofield said.

Former Florida Judge Scott Cupp is another of Leo’s many supporters. Cupp made headlines after he stepped down from the bench in 2023 to focus on Leo’s fight for freedom.

“I finally made the decision that I’m going to step off and go back to being his lawyer and represent him at the parole hearing,” Scott Cupp told John Quiñones. “… because this guy’s innocent.”

Leo Schofield recently celebrated his 29th wedding anniversary to Crissie Schofield, played guitar for her at her birthday party and held one of his grandsons, the son of his daughter Ashley Schofield, for the very first time. Quiñones asked Leo Schofield how the future looks to him, to which he replied, “very bright.”

“I’m not going to ever take that for granted again,” Leo Schofield told Quiñones. “I’m missing 36 years’ worth of moments. I’m not going to miss another 36 years.”

ABC News’ Kaitlin Amoroso, Gail Deutsch, Jonathan Leach, Brian Mezerski, Emily Moffet, Lydia Noone, Jeff Schneider, and Brooke Stangeland contributed to this report.
 

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(NEW YORK) — The LGBTQ+ community is growing, with an increasing number of people openly identifying as something other than heterosexual or cisgender, according to data reviewed by ABC News.

Despite this, official data on the demographics under the LGBTQ+ umbrella is lacking. In 2020, for the first time, the Census gave respondents an option to identify a relationship as same-sex. However, the Census has since begun to include sexual orientation and gender identity in recent Household Pulse Surveys about social and economic trends.

The current data, however, shows this is a small but expanding mosaic of identities, cultures, and backgrounds.

Kylan Durant, a Black and queer Oklahoman, is focused on creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ residents to thrive in his Southern community.

Ayanna Johnson, a bisexual woman of color in New York City, said she’s constantly faced with stereotypes and misconceptions about what bisexuality is.

Ted Lewis, a nonbinary Virginian, hopes to dismantle preconceived notions about what it means to be gender nonconforming among the limitations placed on self-expression.

These are just some of the at least ​​13.9 million openly LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. – making up 7.6% of the adult population – as recorded by a recent Gallup survey.

When Gallup first measured sexual orientation and transgender identity, that population was estimated to be 3.5% of the adult population in 2012. Gallup found that each new generation is twice as likely as the generation that preceded it to identify as LGBTQ+.

Researchers said this is because of the increased acceptance and visibility of the community. More people have the language to describe how they feel and feel more safe living more openly, HRC’s Director of Public Education & Research Program Shoshana Goldberg said.

Kerith Conron, a co-principal investigator at the Williams Institute research organization, adds that people are also challenging strict ideas of the gender and sexual binary – with a rise in people identifying as bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, genderqueer and other identities.

“They understand that that’s who they are and are able to use that label to identify what they’ve been feeling inside all of this time,” said Goldberg.

She continued, “Whereas before, maybe people felt they had to stay in the closet, particularly when they were younger, because of fear of parental rejection or bullying at school … even though they knew from when they were 11, when they were five, when they were however old.”

As the LGBTQ+ population grows, Conron said it’s important to have clear data so government resources can be properly allocated. However, organizations have still not provided enough data.

“When you have a group of people who are sort of invisible at multiple levels, it means that you’re going to see people who have needs like everybody else, and sometimes more severe, more pronounced needs, not knowing about local resources, not being covered by outreach activities … and needing even more from the public safety net than other populations might,” Conron said.

The South: Where most LGBTQ+ people live
More LGBTQ+ adults live in the South than in any other region in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute, which Durant says creates an interesting dynamic.

The LGBTQ+ community has been the target of a growing wave of discriminatory legislation across the country, and particularly in some parts of the South.

More than 500 bills nationwide – including drag bans, gender-affirming health care bans, and Pride flag restrictions – have targetted the LGBTQ+ community this year, according to the ACLU. Legislators behind the legislation largely claim they are protecting children by implementing such restrictions.

“It’s devastating to the community to have the government and folks who are supposed to be leading our communities do and say things that are very harmful to the community,” said Durant, referring in part to a recent incident in which a local lawmaker called the LGBTQ+ community “filth.” State Republican leadership distanced themselves from those remarks.

Durant grew up in a conservative community that he said didn’t speak about LGBTQ+ identities, making it harder for him to understand or put into words what he was feeling. It wasn’t until he was older that he found safe spaces to learn more about himself.

“These delays in understanding who you are in the South is just – for me, it took a toll, especially having that conflict within yourself,” Durant said.

Despite the ongoing fight against discrimination and equality, some LGBTQ+ Southerners have learned how to flourish as an act of resistance, Durant said.

“It forces us to create spaces for ourselves, because those spaces are not guaranteed by anybody from any official capacity,” said Durant, who is the president of the Oklahoma Pride Alliance.

Bisexuality: the largest demographic
Bisexual adults make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ population, according to Gallup; about 4.4% of U.S. adults and 57.3% of LGBTQ+ adults self-identify as bisexual.

And yet, despite this, some say that there’s little understanding of what bisexuality means.

Bisexuality, as defined by GLAAD, refers to a person who has the potential to be physically, romantically or emotionally attracted to people of more than one gender, “not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.”

“I think it has so much to do with people’s lack of nuance in their thinking of sexuality,” Johnson said. “You can either love the opposite sex, or you can love the same sex like that. They can’t wrap their heads around being attracted to both.”

She said there are false perceptions in the media and general population that bisexual people are inherently more likely to cheat, that if they date someone of the same sex then they’re actually just gay or lesbian, or that they’re not really queer if they are dating someone of the opposite sex.

Johnson argues that efforts to target and misrepresent the LGBTQ+ community won’t change the growing presence in the U.S.: “We’re here. We’ve always been here. We’re going to be here until the end of time.”

Youth: The next generation
LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults are coming out earlier than those before them, according to data from the Williams Institute.

Xiel Michels, a 16-year-old who identifies as transgender and non-binary, said that growing up he always felt that he was his “own kind of ‘odd’ in a world of ‘evens,'” he said.

His family was a safe space for him, showing him that “being queer isn’t different or bad, but that it’s just another way to love yourself and the people you care for,” Michel told ABC News.

However, a growing wave of legislation is particularly targeting LGBTQ+ youth, experts said.

These bills aim to remove certain books and discussions about LGBTQ+ identities from schools, ban the use of students’ preferred pronouns or names, and in some cases potentially out students.

Students like Michels, who is part of the activist group Queer Youth Assemble, said they won’t stand down without a fight: “The legislation that our government has been using to target LGBTQ+ people has heavily affected the community in a way that will never be forgotten.”

He continued, “In a country where the well-being of the youth is supposed to be a priority, legislators seem to forget queer youth need to be protected the same as anyone else.”

Transgender and nonbinary: challenging strict gender ideas
According to the Williams Institute, 1.6 million people aged 13 or older identify as transgender in the U.S. and 1.2 million LGBTQ+ people identify as nonbinary – making up less than .5% and .4% of the U.S. population. The research group has found that the percentage and number of adults who identify as transgender in the U.S. in recent years has remained steady.

Lewis said they’ve been nonbinary throughout their life, they just didn’t have the term to describe themselves: “TikTok wasn’t around, Facebook wasn’t – we didn’t even have the internet. So the idea that I would somehow be influenced by social media is just not true.”

Growing up, their parents let them play around with gender — what they played with and how they dressed. For them, gender became “a beautiful wonderful place to explore” with their family’s support.

“I didn’t really want to be a girl. But I also didn’t feel like I was a boy. And I wasn’t sure what that meant when I was a kid,” said Lewis.

Lewis, now the Director of Youth Wellbeing at the Human Rights Campaign, loves when people are confused about whether to call them a ma’am and sir — its hard to put Lewis in a box.

“The concept of people blurring gender lines, or being out of the binary of man, woman or boy girl, is absolutely not new,” said Lewis. “What we require of men and women is based on stereotypes, is based on culture, is based on class, and race and all these other parts of our identity. And those expectations change and evolve.”

People of color: Growing intersectionality
People of color make up roughly 42% percent of the LGBTQ+ community, according to data from the Williams Institute. Out of that, 21% of the population is Latino, 12% is Black, and 2% is Asian.

David Johns, executive director and CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition, said intersectionality is at the root of the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, calling it “impossible” to disentangle one part of his identity from another. This means that ones race, disability, class, gender, sexuality and more collectively impact how different people experience the world.

He points to recent legislation that not only targets the LGBTQ+ community, but also targets anti-racism efforts, reproductive rights, and more. He believes these efforts are all connected, their fates tied.

“There are so many important parts of who make me whole,” Johns told ABC News. “What’s most important is people having an appreciation for the fact that they are all at play, at the same time, that I don’t have the ability to choose one identity before another. I often don’t have the ability to manage the impressions that people have when they experience my multiple identities and the expression of them.”

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(NEW YORK) — The sun was yet to rise over the beaches of Normandy when, on June 6, 1944 — 80 years ago this week — thousands of American sons and Allied troops began what would become the largest amphibious assault in history.

Their bravery and their sacrifice would turn the tide of World War II and push Nazi Germany to defeat.

For the last five years, ABC News’ “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and his team have traveled around the country documenting the stories of World War II veterans who landed on those beaches on D-Day and the days that followed.

For the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion, Muir met these quiet heroes as they journeyed back to Normandy, many of them for the first time since landing there as young soldiers fighting for freedom.

Out of the 16.4 million Americans who served in the armed forces during WWII, less than 1% of them were still alive at the end of 2023, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The country loses an average of 131 WWII veterans every day.

Irving Locker is 99 years old, but in 1944 he was a 19-year-old staff sergeant in charge of 65 men. Drafted right out of high school in 1943, he went on to be in the First Army, 4th Infantry Div., 116th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion.

And he was with his battalion that fateful day in June. His orders: land and run through the beach and start setting up your guns.

He remembers the moment when — at 5 feet tall — he jumped into the frigid waters as German forces attacked the beaches.

“I’ve never seen as many dead men on the beaches as I’ve seen,” he told ABC News of the invasion.

“Everybody was scared,” Locker said. “The long life we figured we’re gonna have could be ended with one bullet, or one bomb, or one mine.”

Reflecting on his acts of service and those who paid the ultimate price with their lives, Locker said, “People have to know that freedom is not free.”

“So I’m doing that now with my full heart and conscience,” he said of returning to Normandy.

Jack Claiborne of Dyersburg, Tennessee, drove the troops to Omaha Beach on LCI 492. He was a helmsman and gunner.

“Seeing all of these boys that was killed, and just layin’ there on the beach,” Claiborne told ABC News in 2019. “It was just … tough for a little old kid to handle.”

“We were all young,” he said.

Claiborne died on September 28, 2023. His family told ABC News this year, he was proud to have served, and to have spent his last years talking about the war to younger generations.

At 102 years old, WWII veteran Andrew “Tim” Kiniry was just 22 when he landed on Omaha beach in the days after the invasion.

With no time to think and there to help the injured as a medic with the 45th Evacuation Hospital, Kiniry said soldiers had to keep moving.

As a young man at war, Kiniry kept a list of his outfit’s movements. Under June 1944, that list had two words: “bloody beach.”

Kiniry, who has lived in Vineland, New Jersey since 1964, fears the sacrifices of D-Day will be forgotten if veterans don’t share what they went through during the war.

Not a day goes by he doesn’t think about the men lost during the invasion. Now 80 years later, he’s going back to Normandy for the first time since he first landed there.

“Eighty years, and the people of Normandy are still honoring us,” Kiniry told Muir. “That’s somethin’ that gets – gets to me.”

‘It was just, take care of your friend. And that’s what we all did.’
Harold Himmelsbach landed in Normandy on D-Day at age 18, and called it “the most dramatic time” in his life.

Himmelsbach, who’s now 98, said in an interview with Muir commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day that he remembers seeing “things that very few people would ever see” in their lifetime. “I would see other guys die within feet of me.”

“You knew you had to do these things,” he continued. “It was just take care of your friend. And that’s what we all did.”

He remembers the letter he wrote to his mother.

“Dear mom I suppose I should begin by telling you I’m somewhere in France,” Himmelsbach wrote.

Born and raised in Dora, Alabama, Harold McMurran served with the 546th Ord as a FA, Instrument Fire Control Repairman, on June 6, 1944, on Utah Beach and faced 300,000 Germans.

Like many soldiers, McMurran kept a diary. On D-Day, he wrote, “June 6, 1944. Invasion started.” He wouldn’t write in his diary for the next five days.

In 2019, McMurran told ABC News he watched the medics trying to save his friends. “Sometimes they would be in worse shape than the men they were trying to take care of,” he said.

“People say, ‘How did you get off that boat and go in on that beach?’ There was a job had to be done,” he said, holding back tears. “Somebody had to do it. We did it.”

McMurran, who received the French Legion of Honor Medal, died on Dec. 25, 2022.

Jake Ruser was a combat medic in Normandy with the 4th Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade Medical Detachment, 12 Inf. Reg.

“For 67 years, I never talked about it,” he told Muir in the hallways of a high school in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, where he went to speak to a high school history class about the sacrifices made for freedom.

Those students were nearly the same age that Ruser was when he was sent off to war.

“You always went with the idea you were gonna make it through,” he told the students.

In Gainesville, Georgia, Alan Kinder prepared for his first trip back to Normandy since the invasion.

He remembers how the country came together when word got out that American troops had landed in France. And the scene when he got to Utah beach in the middle of the night.

“We knew the people had to be killed,” he told ABC News. “You grow up in a hurry.”

Kinder now grateful he gets to share his story, saying talking about it with his grandson, Justin, a history teacher, has brought them closer.

They traveled together to Normandy.

“Being able to come here and experience this with him, it’s – words can’t describe it,” Justin said. “It’s amazing.”

Onofrio Zicari, 96, of Las Vegas, fought with the 5th Amphibious Brigade, 5th Wave on D-Day.

“Man I was scared,” Zicari told ABC News. “I didn’t realize what war was until that day; it was awful.”

Now, 80 years after answering the call, Ruser, Kimora, Locker, Kinder and Zicari return to Normandy with help from the nonprofit, “Forever Young Veterans.”

Just before the anniversary commemorations, the five brave heroes journeyed back to Utah beach, where Muir met them.

Kinder, who has not set foot back on that beach until now, said he is grateful to be here. This is also the first time he has seen Utah Beach in the daylight.

“When they told me there was a chance to come here, I’ve kinda lived my life over again,” he said. “I’ve really, really enjoyed that.”

Locker told Muir that returning to Normandy meant that he came back because he’s determined to honor the sacrifices of D-Day, and hopes to connect with the next generation.

“I thank God every single day that I’m alive and well,” he said. “And people have to know that. People have to know that.”

Kiniry told Muir being back in Utah Beach reminded him of the brave men, his brothers, who were lost.

“It means a great deal to me to be here today to honor … the ones that lost their lives in particular,” he told Muir.

Ruser also took notice of the large number of people honoring the sacrifices WWII veterans made in Normandy. And as strangers approached them to shake their hands, he was moved by their gratitude.

“We’re meeting people from all over the world,” he said. “It’s really – something when you’re remembering what happened 80 years ago here.”

Zicari, who Muir first met five years ago, returned to Normandy again, thinking of the future.

“We fought for freedom,” he said. “We gotta have the younger generation help us now.”

“We’re depending on them. They depended on us. We’re gonna depend on them now,” Zicari added.

Diane Hight, the founder of “Forever Young Veterans,” told Muir about the mission they hope to achieve.

“We must never forget,” she said. “A lot of people think, ‘Oh. Well, how nice that you take these vets on trips.’ These are not vacations.”

“Do you know why they really wanna come back?” she continued. “They want to say to their friends that did not come home, ‘I haven’t forgotten you. And I hope I’ve lived my life where you’re proud of me.'”

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(NEW YORK) — Kate Ranta was in the process of divorcing her husband, U.S. Air Force Major Thomas Maffei, when he came to her home on November 2, 2012. The couple’s son, William, who was 4 years old at the time, watched as his father pointed a gun at Ranta, according to police records.

“All of a sudden Will screamed out and again, he had just turned 4,” Ranta said in an interview with ABC News. “He screamed out, ‘don’t do it, daddy. Don’t shoot mommy!’”

Maffei shot Ranta twice, once in the breast and once in the hand. He was later found guilty and convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder, burglary of a dwelling, aggravated assault with a firearm and shooting into an occupied dwelling. He is now serving a 60-year prison sentence.

A case pending before the United States Supreme Court, U.S. v, Rahimi, will decide whether people with domestic violence restraining orders against them will be allowed to own guns. The court will decide whether the current law violates the Second Amendment, which states that American citizens have the individual right to “keep and bear arms.”

MORE: Shot 5 times, domestic abuse survivor implores Supreme Court to uphold gun ban
Two months before she was shot, Ranta says she stopped pursuing a restraining order against Maffei. She told ABC News that she had a temporary restraining order for about eight months and went back to court several times to try to get a permanent order, but the judge kept extending the temporary one. The police collected all the firearms that Ranta knew Maffei had in the house. She told ABC News she was still worried for her and her family’s safety.

Then, according to Ranta she briefly reconciled with Maffei, and that’s when she allowed the restraining order to expire.

According to police reports, on the day of the shooting Ranta and her father were leaning against the front door to keep Maffei out when he shot through the door, injuring both of them. In her 911 call, obtained by ABC News, between long bouts of screaming, Ranta can be heard telling the operator that she was dying.

“It wasn’t like in the movies and on TV. The police didn’t come kick the door in and shoot and kill the bad guy,” Ranta said. “Nobody was coming in to save us. Nothing. We were just in there.”

Bleeding profusely on the ground, Ranta and her father were taken to a nearby hospital in serious condition. Still, they both made it out alive. William was not injured in the shooting.

Angela Gabriel, a mother of four in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has a similar story. On February 22, 2017, Carl Thompson, the father of two of her children, was supposed to be watching their youngest son, Grayson.

Thompson left then-1-year-old Grayson, who has autism and Down syndrome, alone downstairs while he went upstairs and shot Gabriel nine times while she was in the bathtub, according to court documents.

“One of the last things I remember him saying is, ‘I wish you would just shut up sometimes,’” Gabriel said in an interview with ABC News’ Linsey Davis. “Next thing I know he’s standing in the bathroom door and I see the last two gunshots.”

As a result of her injuries, Gabriel is now partially paralyzed and must rely on use of a wheelchair. Two bullets are still lodged in her body, and she still has shrapnel in her back.

She knew that Thompson kept a gun in their home and, despite his history of violence toward her, she was never afraid that he would use it.

Gabriel told ABC News about an instance when she says Thompson grabbed her by the hoodie and threw her out the back door, proceeding to choke her. At the time, she didn’t think it was domestic violence, so she never reported it.

According to Gabriel, a few months before the shooting, Thompson called to threaten her while she was in Florida, telling her he would “empty [his] clip in [her] face.” Gabriel never believed he would do it.

In 2018, Thompson was convicted of second-degree attempted murder and is now serving 45 years in prison.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) affects women across all racial and ethnic groups. According to the CDC, historically marginalized women are at a greater risk: 56.6% of multiracial women, 45.1% of Black women, 47.5% of Native women, and 54% of disabled women experience this type of violence in their lifetimes.

More than half of female homicide victims are also victims of IPV, killed by either a former or current male intimate partner. These types of cases are officially counted as femicides in many countries. In more than half of these cases, the weapon used is a firearm, according to research by the Epidemiological Review.

Rosalind Page, a nurse in Little Rock, Arkansas, is the founder of Black Femicide US, an organization dedicated to shining light on the murders of Black women and girls. Page wants to raise awareness about the stigma and silence that often surrounds domestic violence and its high death toll, especially in the African American community.

“I noticed that many of my patients, in particular Black women and girls, when they would come in, we do certain screening, screening questions. And some of those questions involve abuse, whether it’s sexual, physical, emotional,” Page said. “I noticed a great deal of my patients, they either knew someone or were victims of abuse themselves.”

For victims of domestic abuse, the likelihood of lethal violence and the fear of their partner intensifies when an abusive partner has access to a gun.

“If your abuser has a firearm, there’s really, there’s almost nothing you can do,” said Chitra Raghavan, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice whose expertise is in intimate partner violence. “So it really increases realistically the fear, but also the lethality. Women often stay because they’re too afraid to leave the abuser.”

Federal laws prohibit those with restraining orders against them from possessing a gun, but sometimes fear outweighs the idea of protection. This was the case for Gabriel, who told ABC News that she didn’t file a restraining order against Thompson, not because she was afraid of him, but because she was afraid of how others would look at her.

Looking back, she says she regrets her decision.

“I regret it. I regret it because there was really no fear of him. I just wanted to be free. I didn’t know how to be free.” Gabriel said. “I didn’t want to bring in other people because I didn’t want to be judged. And the type of work that I do, people look up to me. And they expect to see like a strong Angela. And I didn’t want anybody to know that there was another her.”

On a global scale, 1 in 3 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. Years after surviving their shootings, Gabriel and Ranta have become advocates for victims of domestic violence.

Ranta has written a book about her experiences and spoken on the steps of the Supreme Court multiple times about gun legislation. Gabriel regularly speaks at local events and sits on panels about domestic violence in Baton Rouge and recently held a blood drive in honor of the first responders who saved her life. They both share their stories in hopes that others will feel less alone.

ABC News’ Davi Merchan, Emily Lippiello and Jessica Velmans contributed to this report.
 

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