Kellie Pickler and Kyle Jacobs in 2017; Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Kyle Jacobs, producer, songwriter and husband of Kellie Pickler, was found dead in their home in Nashville on Friday. He was 49.
According to a report from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, the fire department went to Kellie’s home on Friday afternoon and found Jacobs dead “from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in an upstairs bedroom/office.” His death is being investigated as a suicide.
The MNPD’s report says Kellie’s assistant called 911 after she and Kellie tried and failed to open the door to their upstairs bedroom.
Jacobs and Kellie, an American Idol alumna who’s scored hits like “Best Days of Your Life” and “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You,” married in 2011 after dating for two and a half years. The two co-starred in the 2015 CMT reality show I Love Kellie Pickler.
Jacobs was a songwriter and producer who co-wrote Garth Brooks‘ “More Than a Memory” and Tim McGraw’s “Still.” He also produced Lee Brice‘s number-one hits “Hard to Love,” “I Drive Your Truck,” “Drinking Class” and “Rumor,” and in 2014, he won an ACM Award as the producer of “I Drive Your Truck.” In addition, he worked with Kelly Clarkson, Scotty McCreery and Darius Rucker.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or by visiting 988lifeline.org. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
(TATE COUNTY, Miss.) — Six people are dead after a “series of shootings” in Tate County, Mississippi, on Friday, authorities said.
A suspect has been taken into custody, the governor said.
The shootings occurred at three different locations in Arkabutla — outside a convenience store and in two homes — according to Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance.
The gunman first entered the store, then fatally shot a man in a vehicle outside in what appears to be a random attack, Lance said.
A woman was fatally shot inside a home about two to three miles away from the store, Lance said. Her husband was struck with a weapon but survived, the sheriff said.
The third scene was behind the suspect’s house, at a home down an access road, according to Lance. Two people were found dead in the house and two more were found dead on the access road outside the residence, Lance said.
The suspect — identified as Richard Dale Crum, 52, of Arkabutla — was arrested outside his home without incident, Lance said. He allegedly had two handguns and a shotgun.
Crum has been charged with one count of first-degree murder, with additional charges for the other victims expected to be filed in the coming days, the sheriff’s office said.
Crum is being held without bond in the Tate County Jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
The sheriff’s office said it is in the “very early stages” of the investigation.
Investigators believe the suspect has no connection to the victim at the convenience store and are working to determine if he was related to or knew any of the other five victims, Lance said.
(New York) — The Labor Department has detailed an investigation that found one of the nation’s largest food safety sanitation services providers illegally employed more than 100 children in hazardous work conditions across 13 facilities in eight states.
DOL said its investigation into Packers Sanitation Services Inc., based in Wisconsin, found that at least 102 children ages 13-17 were illegally employed using hazardous chemicals and equipment such back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters — often on overnight shifts.
The department said investigators learned that three minors suffered injuries while working for PSSI, including one 13-year-old who suffered chemical burns.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department fined the company $15,138 for each minor illegally employed.
The total penalty paid by the company totaled $1,544,076 and is the maximum civil penalty allowed by federal law, DOL said.
Overall, the company paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for the employment of 102 children in 13 facilities across Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas.
“Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” Lazzeri said.
DOL spokesperson Rhonda Burke told ABC News that company managers directed department investigators to not take pictures or video, sat across from employees while they were being interviewed, remained in the area of interviews even after being asked to leave, instructed one minor to only stay for five minutes, and moved an item into the recycle bin of their computer after being asked for access to it.
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” Principal Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division Jessica Looman said in a statement. “These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do not take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed the 100th judicial appointment by President Joe Biden and as of Thursday the chamber had confirmed 105 of his nominees, exceeding the pace set by predecessors George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Since the Trump administration, confirming judges has been a major focus of the Senate’s Democratic majority — who can now move even more quickly with an outright majority on the Judiciary Committee — and Biden’s choices will alter the demographic and professional makeup of the judiciary branch.
He and Democrats have celebrated this, saying it increases representation. Conservatives take a different view, arguing personal backgrounds shouldn’t be emphasized in judges because it risks tainting how their decisions are viewed.
Biden’s appointees include the Supreme Court’s first Black justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as 23 people of color to U.S. circuit — or appellate — courts, including 17 women of color, Democrats said earlier this week.
More than three-quarters of Biden’s confirmed nominees are women and more than two-thirds of them are non-white, according to Senate Democrats, who also tout how Biden’s choices for the judiciary stretch beyond prosecutors to include public defenders, civil rights attorneys and more.
Before the Biden administration, nine Black female judges total had been confirmed to a U.S. circuit court and no president had ever successfully appointed more than three, Senate Democrats said. As of February 2022, 70 of the 3,843 federal judges in U.S. history had ever been Black women, according to data cited by the Pew Research Center.
DeAndrea Benjamin, confirmed on Tuesday to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, is the 12th Black woman to be confirmed to a federal appellate court under Biden.
Judge Gina Méndez-Miró became the 100th confirmation, on Tuesday, and joined the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. Democrats said Méndez-Miró is the first openly LGBTQ judge on the court, and her confirmation flips the makeup of active judges on the court to a majority of Democratic appointees.
In U.S. district courts, analogous to federal trial courts, the Senate has confirmed more than 60 judges under Biden, more than 50 of whom have been women and more than 10 of whom have been men of color, Democrats said.
How Biden’s pace of judges compares
While Biden is currently pacing ahead of his three immediate predecessors — and tied with Reagan for the fastest first-year confirmations in four decades — he is not on track to outpace President Trump’s overall rate.
Trump confirmed 234 federal judges by the end of his term. And both he and former President Obama appointed multiple Supreme Court justices — Trump, three; Obama, two — though Obama also sought to appoint a third justice but was blocked by Senate Republicans in the final year of his term, drawing outcry from Democrats.
According to the Heritage Foundation, which tracks presidential judiciary appointments, Bush had 103 judges confirmed at this point in his administration, Obama had 67 and Trump had 88. Before them, President Bill Clinton had 128 by this point.
“Comparisons can be tricky since the factors that affect the confirmation pace can vary greatly from period to period,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Jipping pointed to the “number and location of current vacancies, competing legislative priorities, the pace of nominations being sent to the Senate, etc.”
“Since vacancies have been much lower under Biden than under Trump, the fact that Biden’s appointment pace is faster means that his nominations team, and Senate Democrats on and off the Judiciary Committee, have been prioritizing judicial appointments,” Jipping told ABC News.
He said that, so far and “since 1981, presidents appoint an average of just under four judges per month and Biden is just over that average.”
Because Democrats expanded their Senate majority to 51 seats in the 2022 midterms, they also now hold an outright majority on the Judiciary Committee rather than an even split with Republicans, which will make it easier for them to vote on and approve nominees.
Changing the makeup of the courts
Biden and leading Democratic lawmakers have described their goal for judicial appointments in terms of representation as well as qualifications.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday that “our effort to bring balance to the courts has been one of this Senate’s truly great successes. … We will continue to build on our success and help ensure the confirmation of highly qualified, demographically and professionally diverse judges.”
Biden echoed that when announcing he was nominating Jackson as a justice: “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America.”
Schumer told ABC News in a statement after the 100th confirmation that “when Americans can look at our courts and see people who look like them and come from their backgrounds and share similar experiences, the better off our judicial system is.”
Jipping, with the Heritage Foundation, disagreed with this argument, contending that it distorts the goal of good jurists.
“The Biden administration is pushing people to think of the judiciary as a ‘representative’ branch of government, which is the opposite of the impartial, independent judiciary that has been so important and distinctive in America,” he said. “It encourages people to believe that cases are decided by judges and their personal views rather than the law. It politicizes people’s expectations.”
“The most important factor in appointing judges should be the kind of judge a nominee will be, how he or she understands the power and proper role of the judiciary, not the race or sexual orientation,” he said.
(BURLINGTON COUNTY, N.J.) — A man accused of holding a woman hostage for nearly a year was arrested and charged with kidnapping after the alleged victim managed to flee their residence to a gas station, authorities said.
James Parrillo Jr., 57, was arrested on Feb. 7 in Burlington County after the woman he allegedly kidnapped escaped from the residence they shared, according to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and New Jersey State Police.
The woman reportedly told police she first met Parrillo — whom she knew by the name Brett Parker — at a gas station in New Mexico in February 2022 and agreed to give him a ride to Arizona, prosecutors said. She reportedly said she was in a voluntary relationship with the man for about a month when he allegedly physically assaulted her while they were in California, “at which point she felt unable to leave the relationship,” the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
Parrillo allegedly took the woman’s phone and debit cards and “isolated her from her family,” the attorney general’s office said.
The two arrived in New Jersey sometime in December and were staying in a rented room in Bass River for about two weeks when she managed to escape following an argument with Parrillo, during which he allegedly beat and choked her, authorities said.
The woman bolted the door to the gas station and reportedly told the gas station attendant she had been kidnapped for approximately a year, authorities said.
“Footage from the station’s security camera shows Parrillo following the woman to the gas station and attempting to open the door, then leaving when he found it locked,” the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said.
The gas station attendant called state police, who apprehended Parrillo a short time later as he walked down County Road 542, authorities said.
Parrillo has been charged with first-degree kidnapping, second-degree strangulation and aggravated assault and third-degree criminal restraint, authorities said. He also faces charges of third-degree hindering apprehension, fourth-degree obstruction and refusing to provide a DNA sample.
He was ordered detained at the Burlington County Jail while awaiting trial during a hearing on Wednesday. ABC News was unable to reach his attorney for comment.
Information provided by the alleged victim and found on social media indicate that Parrillo “may have engaged in similar predatory conduct with individuals in other states,” prosecutors said.
“We are reaching out to law enforcement across jurisdictions to identify other people who may have additional information on the defendant,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement, calling the case “deeply disturbing.”
A spokesperson for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said they have no further comment when asked about Parrillo’s history.
Parrillo is known to go by different names, authorities said. New Jersey State Police are leading the ongoing investigation and have urged anyone with information to call 855-363-6548.
Fire from the Gods has released a new version of “Thousand Lifetimes,” a track off the group’s 2022 album, Soul Revolution.
The updated recording features guest vocals by Living Colour frontman Corey Glover.
“Linking up with Corey Glover is one of those once in a lifetime opportunities the brother is a rock legend,” Fire from the Gods said of the collaboration. “Living Colour were trail blazers. His voice compliments the track in a big way.”
You can listen to the new “Thousand Lifetimes” now via digital outlets.
Fire from the Gods is currently on a U.S. tour, which wraps up in March.
The band’s new album, This Is Why, has debuted atop the United Kingdom’s Official Albums Chart. It’s the third release from Hayley Williams and company to achieve that feat, following 2009’s Brand New Eyes and 2013’s self-titled album.
In a statement to OfficialCharts.com, Paramore says, “For [This Is Why], which was so inspired and influenced by some of our favorite British bands over the last couple decades, to debut at Number 1 in the U.K. is so ridiculously cool and surreal.”
Williams previously shared that Bloc Party, who hail from London, was a big influence on This Is Why.
This Is Why also debuted at #1 in Australia. Its bow on the Billboard 200 has yet to be announced.
Paramore will launch a U.S. headlining tour in support of This Is Why in May. They’re also opening for two dates on Taylor Swift‘s tour in March.
Halsey has “a little surprise coming” on Friday. They teased on Twitter, “Some of you guys know there’s a demo of ‘Die For Me’ with just me on it. I performed my verse on the tour all summer long & since so many people have asked for it, I decided to put my full version out.” Fans can hear it next Friday, February 24.
Taylor Swift released more merchandise ahead of her Eras Tour, which you can buy now on her online store. Merch includes hoodies, crop-top pullovers, T-shirts, bracelets, slip mats and posters. Items range in price from $20 to $75.
Harry Styles was a big winner at the BRIT Awards, the United Kingdom’s version of the Grammys, and is also enjoying a sales boom from that, per Official Charts. “As It Was” jumped back into the top 10, up to #7, on the British charts after winning Song of the Year. His album Harry’s House rose to #2 after winning British Album of the Year.
Fans are loving Lizzo‘s take on Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ “Unholy,” which she performed for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, where she got to unleash her breathy singing voice and toy with harmonies. Of course, she also used her flute to enhance her cover.
Kelly Clarkson is heading into the three-day weekend feeling “Strong Enough,” as seen by her cover of Cher‘s powerhouse anthem. Kelly belted out the hit during her daytime talk show’s “Kellyoke” segment, where she took a few liberties with the melody and infused some rock elements.
Taylor Swift released more merchandise ahead of her Eras Tour, which you can buy now on her online store. Merch includes hoodies, crop-top pullovers, T-shirts, bracelets, slip mats and posters. Items range in price from $20 to $75.
Harry Styles was a big winner at the BRIT Awards, the United Kingdom’s version of the Grammys, and is also enjoying a sales boom from that, per Official Charts. “As It Was” jumped back into the top 10, up to #7, on the British charts after winning Song of the Year. His album Harry’s House rose to #2 after winning British Album of the Year.
Fans are loving Lizzo‘s take on Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ “Unholy,” which she performed for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, where she got to unleash her breathy singing voice and toy with harmonies. Of course, she also used her flute to enhance her cover.
Kelly Clarkson is heading into the three-day weekend feeling “Strong Enough,” as seen by her cover of Cher‘s powerhouse anthem. Kelly belted out the hit during her daytime talk show’s “Kellyoke” segment, where she took a few liberties with the melody and infused some rock elements.
