(LOS ANGELES) — Charges have been upgraded to murder against a man who allegedly attacked and repeatedly stabbed a social worker last week inside a San Francisco hospital after first allegedly threatening a doctor, according to prosecutors.

The charges against Wilfredo Jose Tortolero Arriechi, 34, were amended from attempted murder to murder on Monday after the victim died on Saturday, two days after he was stabbed repeatedly inside Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office described the victim as a 51-year-old University of California, San Francisco, social worker. The victim’s age was initially reported by police as 31.

Arriechi is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, according to the District Attorney’s Office, which said it will move to have the suspect held without bail pending a trial.

The attack unfolded around 1:39 p.m. local time on Thursday in the hospital’s Ward 86, which, according to the medical facility’s website, is an HIV/AIDS clinic on the facility’s sixth floor.

Before the attack, a sheriff’s deputy was called to the hospital after the suspect, who was at the hospital for a scheduled appointment, allegedly threatened a doctor, according to an earlier sheriff’s department statement.

“While providing security for the doctor, our sheriff’s deputy heard a disturbance unfolding in the hallway involving the suspect, who was attacking a social worker,” according to the sheriff’s office statement. “The deputy intervened immediately, restraining the suspect and securing the scene.”

The District Attorney’s Office released new details about the attack on Monday, alleging Arriechi went to the hospital with a concealed knife.

“Allegedly Mr. Tortolero Arriechi appeared calm and engaged in a in a conversation with a social worker and was advised to leave. Allegedly he and the victim walked to the elevator together when he suddenly grabbed the victim from behind and stabbed him numerous times,” the District Attorney’s Office said in their statement.

The victim, according to he sheriff’s office, suffered multiple stab wounds to the neck and shoulder.

A five-inch kitchen knife believed to have been used in the attack was recovered at the scene, according to the sheriff’s office.

UPTE-CWA 9119, the union representing professional and technical employees at the University of California, released a statement on social media Saturday, demanding a “full investigation and reliable, consistent, and transparent safety protocols that ensure every worker comes home safely at the end of their shift.”

“We at UPTE-CWA 9119 are devastated to learn of the death of a remarkable, compassionate, and dedicated social worker, who was beloved by their family, friends, colleagues, and fellow union members,” Dan Russell, UPTE president, said in the statement.

The San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association union also released a statement, criticizing the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), which runs the hospital, for recently reducing the number of deputy sheriffs assigned to the hospital and shifting to a “response-only” security model.

“This was not a random unforeseeable incident,” Ken Lomba, president of the deputy sheriff’s union, said in a statement.

Lomba added that the hospital’s own data shows “years of serious assaults and weapons on campus.”

In a statement to ABC News on Sunday, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said, “Keeping our staff, patients, and community safe is our highest priority.”

DPH said it has taken steps to bolster security at the hospital, including adding more security officers, limiting access points and speeding up the installation of weapons detection systems.

“We are also conducting a full investigation and are committed to making both immediate and long-term safety improvements at all our facilities,” DPH said. “This tragic event underscores the urgency of our ongoing efforts to strengthen protections for every member of our workforce.”

The agency added, “We are committed to doing everything necessary to ensure that no one fears for their safety while providing care to the people of San Francisco.

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(WASHINGTON) — For several years, as U.S. authorities have struggled to stop online extremist networks like “764” from pushing teens to livestream acts of violence or self-harm, including their own suicide, the Justice Department has faced what authorities and victims both say is a vexing challenge: Such coercion is not a federal crime.

That could change if the Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, have their way. 

Ahead of a committee hearing Tuesday on the evolving threat of online predators, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, introduced a first-of-its-kind piece of legislation that would explicitly criminalize the intentional coercing of minors to physically harm themselves or others, including animals.

Under their proposal, called the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act, some perpetrators could face life in prison.

“When offenders are eventually caught by law enforcement, prosecutors charge them with the most appropriate charges,” Grassley said in the hearing. “However, there are no specific laws to address the terrible and shocking acts conducted by gore groups such as 764 and those engaged in sextortion.”

Grassley and Durbin’s proposed legislation comes in the wake of several recent reports from ABC News about the growing threat of 764, including an extended interview with the parents of Jay Taylor, a 13-year-old from outside Seattle who in 2022 took his own life — and aired it live on social media — after allegedly being manipulated by a member of 764 in Germany.

“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay’s father, Colby Taylor, said in the ABC News interview. “Ten minutes of murder.”

That’s why the U.S. needs “to have something in our actual laws that allows us to prosecute” cases as “digital homicides,” he said.

The FBI has described 764 as one of the greatest current threats to teens online, with members finding vulnerable victims on popular platforms, eliciting private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then using that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves or taking other violent action — all while streaming it on social media so others can watch and then disseminate recordings of it.

According to authorities, Jay Taylor is just one of many victims pushed to suicide.

German law explicitly criminalizes such coercion, so the young man allegedly behind Jay Taylor’s death — calling himself “White Tiger” online — has been charged in Germany with murder, along with 203 other offenses involving more than 30 other victims.

According to former FBI agent Pat McMonigle, who helped uncover “White Tiger” and what he allegedly did, making online coercion a federal crime in the United States “would be very helpful.”

“This is truly a bipartisan thing that … could effect some change,” he recently told ABC News.

According to Grassley’s office, the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act — or “ECCHO Act” — would “specifically go after” networks like 764, creating a penalty of up to life in prison for those who intentionally coerce someone into even just attempting to die by suicide or who coerce someone into taking action that results in the death or killing of another person.

The bill would also create a 30-year maximum penalty for other harmful conduct that does not involve a death, Grassley’s office said.

“Because of modern technology, child predators from anywhere in the world can target American kids online,” Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate as the Democratic whip, said in a statement. “As technology has evolved, so have online child predators.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it received more than 2,000 reports of abuse tied to 764 or similar networks in the first nine months of this year.

As ABC News has previously reported, the FBI is investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks. And the Justice Department has already publicly charged at least 35 such people in recent years.

Their victims have been as young as nine years old, according to authorities.

FBI Director Kash Patel recently called 764 “modern-day terrorism in America.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Tuesday will include testimony from an executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a former federal prosecutor who retired from the Justice Department earlier this year, and the mother of a teenage son who was victimized by sextortion and then took his own life, unrelated to 764.

Some states have enacted laws aimed at helping to protect children online. And in May, President Donald Trump signed into law the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which prohibits the nonconsensual publication of sexually-explicit images and pushes online platforms to remove violative material.

Several lawmakers — from both sides of the aisle — have introduced additional pieces of legislation in both the House and Senate that could help fight online predators.

But those laws and proposals don’t specifically address the coerced self-harm that is emblematic of 764 and similar online networks.

On Tuesday, Grassley and Durbin are expected to introduce two other pieces of legislation to help protect children online, including the Stop Sextortion Act, which would amend existing laws to address offenders who use threats to distribute sexually-explicit material to extort and coerce minors, according to Grassley’s office.

“I’m proud to introduce these bills to protect children from online abuse, hold dangerous criminals accountable and secure much needed justice for victims and their families,” Grassley said in his statement.

Durbin similarly said he was “proud to join” Grassley’s effort.

At least one other top Democrat in the Senate, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, has previously expressed support for such legislation, recently telling ABC News that online coercion is “a total crime,” even if “it’s through a digital connection.”

Still, it’s unclear how successful Grassley and Durbin’s effort will be.

One high-profile piece of legislation aimed at protecting children online, the Kids Online Safety Act, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate last year — by a vote of 93 to 1 — only to languish in the House, largely due to First Amendment concerns.

“This is a problem that is going to continue to morph, and if we don’t do something, potentially could get worse,” Sen. Warner told ABC News.

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(NEW YORK) — One year after his arrest on Dec. 9, 2024, the pretrial hearing in the case of accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione enters its fifth day in a lower Manhattan courtroom.

Attorneys for Mangione, who is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last December, are seeking to exclude from trial critical evidence that they say was illegally seized from his backpack without a warrant after officers apprehended him in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s five days after the shooting.

On a slip of paper police said they pulled from his backpack, Mangione had reminded himself on Dec. 5, 2024, to “pluck eyebrows.”

The McDonalds manager who called 911 said her customers recognized the young man seated in the back corner eating a Steak McMuffin and hash brown because of the distinctive eyebrows, which were visible even as a surgical mask and hood concealed much of his face. 

On the reverse side of the paper is a crudely drawn map and a reminder to “check Pittsburgh red eyes, ideally to Columbus or Cincin (get off early).”  Another reminder said, “keep momentum, FBI slower overnight.”

The piece of paper had not been seen publicly until it was shown during the ongoing hearing at which Mangione’s attorneys are trying to exclude everything taken from the backpack, including the alleged murder weapon, two loaded magazines, a silencer and a cell phone in a Faraday bag designed to conceal its signal.    

They argue that officers from the Altoona Police Department skipped steps and violated Mangione’s constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure because they were eager to help crack a big case. 

The district attorney’s office said the officers legitimately feared the backpack could contain something dangerous and their search complied with Pennsylvania law.

Nine witnesses have testified so far.  Their testimony will help Judge Gregory Carro determine what evidence is allowed at trial and what, if any, evidence should be omitted. 

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