(BROOKLYN, N.Y.) — When Yusuf Hawkins, a Black 16-year-old, was shot and killed in Brooklyn in 1989 as he went to purchase a car, the crime set off months of angry protests.

Now, the man convicted in Hawkins’ murder, who has been behind bars for nearly 35 years, will get a chance Thursday to prove his innocence with what his defense attorney says is new evidence.

Joseph Fama, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was part of a white mob that chased down Hawkins and three other unarmed Black youths in August 1989 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, according to court documents.

Fama, who is white, was convicted in May 1990 of second-degree murder, first-degree riot, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, menacing and discrimination. All counts were ordered to run concurrently, giving Fama 25 years to life in prison, according to court documents.

“Unfortunately, terribly, Yusuf Hawkins, innocent, innocent man, was killed — let’s just start with that — because he’s Black,” Justin Bonus, Fama’s attorney, told ABC News in a phone interview last week. “My client was not involved with this whole group of kids sitting there waiting for Black guys to come.”

The murder sparked protests against racial violence around New York City at a time when tensions were high. Months earlier, the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers, were wrongfully convicted of rape and assault of a white female jogger.

Five witnesses testified that they saw Fama shoot Hawkins, and four more witnesses placed Fama at the scene the night that the teenager was shot three times, according to court documents. Two jailhouse informants testified that Fama admitted to them that he shot Hawkins because he was Black, according to court documents.

“First of all, jailhouse informants, are we going to go by that?” Bonus said to ABC News.

The judge in Fama’s original trial did not allow the father of one of the informants to testify that he believed his son was lying about his claim that Fama confessed that he killed Hawkins. The courts made that decision because the defense failed to lay a foundation for the admission of the evidence during cross-examination of the informant, according to court documents.

According to a motion by Fama’s defense, two of the witnesses, who previously said that they saw Fama kill Hawkins, recanted their testimonies and claimed that they were coerced by investigators to pin the shooting on the defendant.

During the original trial, the court denied the defense’s request to call Frankie Tighe, one of the witnesses who recanted his testimony, to the stand because defense attorneys had already rested their case four days before their request, according to court documents.

Keith Mondello, one of the alleged leaders of the mob that chased Hawkins and who was convicted, provided new evidence that also claimed Fama was not the killer, according to court documents.

Five additional witnesses originally claimed that, after the shooting, Tighe ran around the corner to their location and they heard him say, “Joe Fama just shot a Black kid,” according to court documents.

The defense says they have new evidence that one of those witnesses later recanted their testimony and stated that detectives spoke to him many times and pressured him to accuse Fama, according to the defense’s motion.

On Aug. 23, 1989, at about 9:00 p.m. Hawkins and three of his peers took a subway train from their Brooklyn neighborhood in East New York to Bensonhurst to look at a used car for sale, according to court documents.

The four peers became lost in Bensonhurst and, as they searched for the address of where the used car would be, they came across a group of 20 to 40 white individuals who, coincidentally, were expecting Black and Hispanic men to attend a birthday party in the neighborhood that night, according to court documents.

The party was hosted by an 18-year-old white woman who the men in the neighborhood believed invited Black and Hispanic men to the birthday celebration, according to Bonus. The men gathered in the vicinity of her home, allegedly voiced racist threats and armed themselves with bats, golf clubs and handguns as they allegedly waited for the men of color to come to the party, according to court documents.

The group of men chased Hawkins and his peers when they saw them, according to court documents. The confrontation ended with Hawkins shot. He died a short time later. Fama was sentenced for 25 years to life in prison on June 11, 1990.

The defense claims to have twelve new affidavits from witnesses that allege that Fama did not shoot Hawkins. Some of those witnesses say police pressured them to accuse Fama.

The defense motion focuses on one investigator, former Detective Louis Scarcella, claiming he was “significantly involved with the investigation and procuring witnesses.”

A complaint against Scarcella alleges that nearly 20 homicide convictions associated with the former detective have been vacated and in at least nine of those convictions, Scarcella coerced false confessions or fabricated written confessions from innocent individuals, according to court records.

Joel Cohen, Scarcella’s attorney, told ABC News over the phone that some judges found that Scarcella was involved in improper tactics which led to the convictions of several individuals, but the court only found innocence in one of the overturned cases.

Scarcella didn’t file a response to any of the complaints, according to his attorney.

“Joseph Fama’s motion to vacate his conviction for the racially motivated murder of Yusef Hawkings 32 years ago is flatly contradicted by the overwhelming evidence of his guilt,” Cohen told ABC News in part through a statement. “His lawyer’s claims that the that the “…”murder investigation was led by Detective Louis Scarcella ,” and that Scarcella was “all over the investigation” are reckless and provably false and based in part by the lawyer’s “surmise.”

The DA’s office told ABC News that Scarcella only played a minor role in the investigation and was one of more than 65 investigators working on the case. The defense believes Scarcella was “significantly involved in” the investigation, according to court documents.

The NYPD did not reply to ABC News’ request for a statement.

The DA’s office claims witnesses testified that they saw Fama receive a gun from the individual who Bonus alleges was the actual shooter just before Hawkins’ death.

In Tighe’s recanted statement, he claimed that Fama used a silver handgun in the shooting, but Claude Stanford, one of Hawkins’ peers who was with him the night he was shot, said that the shooter used a black gun and was about 6 feet tall, according to the defense’s motion. Fama was about 5 feet, 8 inches tall at the time, according to court documents.

Fama has already tried twice to appeal his conviction and was denied by the court both times, according to legal documents. This is his third attempt to vacate his conviction.

Fama’s court conference hearing is set for Nov. 21, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

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(GREEN LAKE, Wis.) — Ryan Borgwardt, the husband and father of three who authorities said faked his own death at a Wisconsin lake and fled the country, is speaking to police but isn’t revealing where he is, the local sheriff said.

When authorities reached Borgwardt on Nov. 11, they asked him questions only he would know and asked him to film a video of himself, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference Thursday.

In the selfie-style video, which was played at the news conference, Borgwardt appears to be in an apartment. He said the date was Nov. 11 and he was safe.

Authorities believe he in Eastern Europe, Podoll said, adding that he doesn’t appear to be in danger.

“We do not know where Ryan exactly is,” the sheriff said. “He has not yet decided to return home.”

“We’ve had nearly daily communications with Ryan,” the sheriff said.

Borgwardt has not spoken to his wife or children, Podoll said.

The mysterious case began on the night of Aug. 11, when Borgwardt last texted his wife. He told her he was turning his kayak around on Green Lake and was heading to shore soon, Podoll said.

The 45-year-old was reported missing the next day.

After Borgwardt’s overturned kayak and life jacket were discovered in the lake, responders believed the missing dad drowned, officials said.

Crews scoured the lake for weeks using divers, drones, sonar and cadaver K-9s, officials said.

The case took a turn in October when investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada on Aug. 13, the sheriff said.

Authorities also learned Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan, the sheriff said.

Other behavior included clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, getting a new life insurance policy, obtaining a new passport and replacing his laptop hard drive, the sheriff said.

Podoll said Borgwardt revealed to authorities how he faked his death at the lake and fled the country.

“He stashed an e-bike near the boat launch. He paddled his kayak in a child-sized floating boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake,” the sheriff said. “He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and road through the night to Madison, [Wisconsin]. In Madison, he boarded a bus and went to Detroit, and then the Canadian border. He continued on the bus to an airport and got on a plane.”

“We are continuing to verify this information,” the sheriff added.

One of the reasons Borgwardt picked Green Lake is because it’s one of the deepest lakes in the state, Podoll said.

Borgwardt told authorities he didn’t think responders would spend more than two weeks searching for him, the sheriff said.

“He feels bad about the amount of hours we’ve put in,” Podoll noted.

The family wants Borgwardt home, and Podoll said he wants Borgwardt back to “clean up the mess that he has created.”

The sheriff said authorities will keep “pulling at his heartstrings.”

“He needs to come home to his kids,” Podoll said.

The sheriff, appearing emotional, ended the news conference by saying, “Christmas is coming, and what better gift he could give his kids is to be there for Christmas with them?”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Important bodies of water that supply water to populated regions in the Northeast have dried up due to drought conditions in recent months, according to experts.

Water levels at reservoirs in the region have decreased to the point of concern for water supply managers, hydrologists told ABC News.

Over the past three months, there has been a significant lack of precipitation all over the Northeast, Elizabeth Carter, an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Syracuse University, told ABC News.

Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows rivers and channels throughout the Northeast region are at extremely low levels. Fall is the time of year when rivers and streams are typically near full capacity, refilling from the summer months when usage is at the all-time high, said Brian Rahm, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.

“This would be a low level that we would expect to see less than once every 100 years,” Carter said.

The heavy rain soaking the Northeast on Thursday will help ease the drought but will not be enough to refill the reservoirs to normal levels, experts say.

Current water data from the USGS show extremely low streamflow conditions, which indicate that the groundwater table has dropped in tandem to the lack of precipitation — as the groundwater continues to flow out of perennial streams without any replenishment, Carter said.

Water levels in the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey, the second-largest in the state with a capacity of 29 billion gallons, is currently at just 44% capacity, according to the USGS. Before-and-after satellite images show how much the body of water has shrunk since November 2023. Surface levels are currently at 16 feet below where it was at this time last year.

In New York City, the water system was at 63% capacity as of Monday, according to the city.

But the Northeast is home to many small towns that manage their own water. Water levels in smaller reservoirs have likely decreased at much more dramatic rates than the larger ones, Anita Milman, a professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told ABC News. Smaller reservoirs are more severely impacted by the drought, Gardner Bent, information specialist at the USGS New England Water Science Center, told ABC News.

The Cambridge Reservoir in Massachusetts, which has a capacity of 1.5 billion gallons, is below 50% capacity, Bent said.

“Those are the places that I would be the most concerned about, because they have a limited amount of water and storage, and they need that water,” she said.

Reservoirs all over the U.S. are experiencing declines, according to a paper published in August in Geophysical Research Letters. Major reservoirs — including the Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest in the U.S. — are experiencing longer, more severe and more variable periods of low storage than several decades ago, the study, led by the USGS, found.

The Northeast has been in a rain deficit since September. Since last week, drought conditions have continued to worsen across New Jersey, with 100% of the state now in a severe drought, and extreme drought conditions expanding across parts of South Jersey, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The state of New Jersey issued a drought warning for the first time since 2016. This is also the first time a drought warning has been issued for New York City since 2002, according to officials.

Will the Northeast receive more rain in the coming weeks?

Looking ahead, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says that odds favor above average precipitation for a large swath of the nation through the end of November, including much of the Plains, the Midwest, and East Coast.

In the Northeast, a much-needed stretch of wet weather began impacting the region on Wednesday night and is expected to continue through Friday.

A large swath of the region, including northern New Jersey, New York City, and New York’s Hudson Valley, is expected to receive more than 2 inches of rain over that time.

The soaking rain will effectively end the elevated wildfire danger that has been plaguing much of the region in recent weeks.

For cities like New York and Newark, New Jersey, more than 2 inches of rain would completely erase the rainfall deficit for November and cut the current fall season deficit by around 25%.

However, even after this drenching rainfall, much of the Northeast, including the I-95 corridor, would still need to receive several inches of rain in the coming weeks to significantly improve drought conditions. More than a half-foot of rain would need to fall to completely wipe out the current rainfall deficit that many large cities have been experiencing since September.

Recent rounds of significant precipitation have been alleviating drought conditions across portions of the Plains, Midwest and South over the past seven days. For the contiguous U.S., overall drought coverage decreased from 49.84% to 45.48% week over week, according to an update released on Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor. The soaking rain currently sweeping across the Northeast will not be factored into the drought monitor until next week’s update.

But it will take months for dry conditions to recuperate, the experts said.

“We’re really looking for sustained seasonal precipitation to slowly bring these systems back to, you know, to where we expect them to be,” Rahm said.

The current drought situation took months to evolve, and it will likely take several more rounds of significant rainfall over the span of weeks or even months to completely eliminate the widespread drought in the region, Bent said.

What will happen if drought conditions don’t improve?

Every state in the U.S. has a drought contingency plan in the event that water levels dwindle to alarming levels, which include steps to deal with increasingly restricted supply availability, the experts said. Once drought conditions worsen to a “warning,” water managers begin to implement actions that wouldn’t necessarily be triggered by a “watch,” Rahm said.

If dry conditions persist in the Northeast, the first step will be voluntary restrictions, Milman said. Then, legal mandates would be issued to reduce water use, she added.

One saving grace for the extremely dry conditions in the Northeast is that the fall is not the time of year when water usage is at its highest, the experts said. During the summer, people are often expending a lot of water for their lawns and gardens, but those plants will soon go into dormant mode, Milman said.

Conversely, it means that drought protection measures that are intended to be implemented during the summer, when all levels are low, may not make as much of a difference, Milman said. Outdoor water and the times people are permitted to water their lawns — when sunlight isn’t at its highest — are typically targeted first.

“We recognize that indoor water use is essential for most human needs,” Milman said.

The Northeast is typically considered a “water rich” region, and the infrastructure is set up based on expectations of average seasonal precipitation, Rahm said.

“The infrastructure that we have established to use that water is reliant — in some ways — on our expectations of how that water will fall,” he said.

In other countries with arid climates, cutbacks can involve rationing, such as differing segments of a town getting a certain amount of water pressure during certain times a week, which has proved successful, Milman said.

“I’ve never seen this in the eastern United States,” she said. “… But this is what other countries do all the time when they don’t have enough supply.”

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