(NEW YORK) — For the second time in a little over a month, multiple people were shot, one fatally, at one of New York City’s most popular summer destinations — the Coney Island boardwalk in Brooklyn, authorities said.
The latest shooting occurred Saturday night and left a man dead from a bullet to the back, and four other people wounded, according to the New York City Police Department.
The shooting happened at 11:57 p.m. on the boardwalk at West 29th Street near the Coney Island Houses — a city public housing complex, authorities said. The incident occurred next to a playground and several blocks southeast of the Luna Park amusement park.
No arrests were immediately reported and police said a motive for the shooting was under investigation. It remained unclear if any of the people shot were targeted.
Bystanders told ABC New York City station WABC they heard several shots ring out and initially mistook them for fireworks.
“I heard about seven shots, one after the other,” one witness told WABC. “It was very quick. I was like, someone is having a celebration of some sorts probably. I didn’t see any fireworks though. So, I was like, it might be gunfire, but I wish it was the fireworks.”
Police said a 42-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, was shot in the back and taken to New York University Langone Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The gunfire also left a 49-year-old woman hospitalized with a bullet wound to the leg and a 34-year-old woman shot in the foot, police said. A 46-year-old man and another man, whose age was not immediately released, were both shot in the leg, according to police.
The episode comes a little over a month since a shooting on the Coney Island boardwalk left five people wounded, one critically. That shooting unfolded around 2 a.m. on July 10 at West 21st Street, just southeast of the iconic former Parachute Jump Tower, a historic landmark. Police said one person pulled a gun and shot two women and three men who were among a large crowd gathered for a pop-up party.
No arrests were announced in the July boardwalk shooting, which remains under investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday pushed back on Republicans who called President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan unfair — with Sanders arguing the GOP turned a blind eye to government assistance in other sectors.
“I don’t hear any of these Republicans squawking when we give massive tax breaks to billionaires,” Sanders, I-Vt., told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“Suddenly when we do something for working people, it is a terrible idea,” he said.
While Sanders agreed with Biden’s decision to forgive some federal loans — up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 for individual federal loan recipients, both with a $125,000 income cap — the lawmaker also said he would go a step further by making public colleges and universities tuition-free to keep the U.S. “competitive in the global economy.” Sanders has long lobbied for such a move.
Biden on Wednesday announced a three-part student loan relief plan, which he had been considering in some form since before he took office. The program also continues the COVID-19 pause on federal student loans repayments, pushing it through December, with payments resuming in January.
On “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Sanders on the arguments of fairness and scope.
“Several of your Democratic colleagues who are up for reelection this year have criticized [the policy] as well,” he said, citing those who say Biden’s plan isn’t clearly funded, doesn’t address larger school affordability issues and left out people without loans who could still use relief.
Sanders agreed that while not everyone who needs help will benefit from the loan forgiveness, those in need of assistance with student debt should not be ignored.
“Maybe, just maybe, we want to have a government that works for all working people and not just the people on top,” he said.
He renewed his longstanding calls to raise the minimum wage, provide free health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs.
On “This Week,” Stephanopoulos pressed Sanders on the arguments of fairness and scope.
“Several of your Democratic colleagues who are up for reelection this year have criticized [the policy] as well,” he said, citing those who say Biden’s plan isn’t clearly funded, doesn’t address larger school affordability issues and left out people without loans who could still use relief.
Sanders agreed that while not everyone who needs help will benefit from the loan forgiveness, those in need of assistance with student debt should not be ignored.
“Maybe, just maybe, we want to have a government that works for all working people and not just the people on top,” he said.
He renewed his longstanding calls to raise the minimum wage, provide free health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Stephanopoulos also asked about the affidavit used to justify the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month in relation to sensitive and classified documents that the government says he took with him when he left the White House. (Trump denies wrongdoing; many Republicans say it is a political attack.)
A redacted copy of the affidavit was released late last week and shows that at least 180 classified documents were recovered from Trump’s estate by the National Archives and Records Administration in February, some of which were labeled as “top secret.”
“It’s just incomprehensible to me,” Sanders said in response. “But then again, when we talk about President Trump, there’s a lot of incomprehensible things.”
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., conceded on Sunday that former President Donald Trump should have returned the sensitive and classified documents that the government says he took home with him after leaving office, which led the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Blunt was repeatedly pressed by anchor George Stephanopoulos before he answered a question about how he felt about what the Department of Justice said Trump did.
Initially responding to Stephanopoulos’ question, Blunt drew comparisons to Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey for their past conduct related to records.
But Stephanopoulos pushed back, noting that it wasn’t the same.
“You’re still not answering the question. You are critical of Secretary Clinton, who actually turned over what she had … what we have here is a situation where the president did not turn over these documents,” Stephanopoulos said. “Can you say whether this was right or wrong?”
“He should have turned the documents over,” said Blunt. “I’ve had access to documents like that for a long time. I’m incredibly careful,” he said.
But he took issue with the timing of the probe.
“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election [and] suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program you and I were going to talk about today?” he said.
“Well, it went on because the president didn’t turn over the documents, correct? He was asked several times,” Stephanopoulos said. “He didn’t turn them over. He was subpoenaed, he didn’t respond to the subpoena.”
“I understand he turned over a lot of documents,” Blunt claimed of Trump, seemingly referring to classified papers that were returned to the government in the months before the FBI search, after a protracted back-and-forth.
“He should have turned over all of them,” Blunt said. “I imagine he knows that very well now.”
But the Missouri lawmaker also said that the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which he sits, had questions that needed answers from federal investigators — such as why they weren’t aware of this case.
“Why haven’t we heard anything about this if there was a national security problem?” Blunt said, adding, “The oversight committee should have been told.” He said that the committee expects to soon hear from the director of national intelligence.
Blunt was also asked to react to President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan for borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year in 2020 or 2021. White House officials told reporters last week that they believe “43 million federal student loan borrowers will benefit, and of those, 20 million will have their debt completely canceled.”
“I just thought it was monumentally unfair,” Blunt said. “Unfair to people who didn’t go to college because they didn’t think they could afford it, unfair to people who have paid their loans back.”
“It’s just bad economics, with long-term devastating effects on the student loan program,” he added.
The White House’s loan forgiveness program has faced vocal opposition from Republican lawmakers who argue, in part, that it will exacerbate historically high inflation.
But “most economists said it’s not going to increase inflation,” Stephanopoulos said. An analysis last week by Goldman Sachs reached such a conclusion, finding that the restart of other loan payments would likely offset the money forgiven.
“Most economists are wrong,” Blunt responded. “We’ve got to do everything we can to slow the economy down. You don’t slow the economy down by forgiving debt and giving people another $24 billion to spend that they would have spent paying off the student debt.”
(RIO DE JANEIRO) — Fabiana*, 24, was pregnant with her second child in Rio de Janeiro, and, like thousands of other Brazilian women, knew she could not rely on the health care system.
“It was just too much for me,” she told ABC News. “I just couldn’t handle that. I don’t want to become like many women with many kids.”
Her mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family who offered to pay for a doctor, but, not wanting to incur any debt, she said she instead found a cheaper option where she could buy abortion medication on the black market.
“I was not scared to take it,” she said. “I wanted to be released from this pregnancy. I couldn’t afford [a baby]. It was impossible.”
“Of course, I would have preferred to go to a hospital but this option was not even possible for me. I didn’t even think of it,” she added.
Fabiana’s story plays out across the continent every year, though she admits she was lucky not to have any complications. Brazil’s old penal code has remained untouched since 1940, prohibiting abortion in all cases except when the pregnancy is a result of rape or endangers a mother’s life, and activists fear that the country could — like in parts of the U.S. — move to enact stricter laws.
As a region, South America has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, yet, according to one study in the Lancet, ranks among the highest estimated frequency of abortions administered. Despite Brazil’s restrictive legislation, around 500,000 illegal abortions are believed to take place annually for women between the ages of 18 and 39, according to one 2019 study.
That pattern has played out across the continent, highlighting a trend that activists in the U.S. have long observed — criminalizing abortion does not lower the number of abortions, it merely makes them more unsafe for women.
Yet, while the continent has long been known for its restrictive reproductive rights practices, human rights groups and lawyers point to a number of crucial developments that may be turning the tide, and, in an unfriendly political environment, may provide lessons for their counterparts in the U.S.
‘A system of guilt for pregnant women’
The severity of abortion laws varies from place to place in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in six countries — El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname — abortion in any instance carries a criminal penalty.
While that does not mean abortions do not happen there, criminalization has led to women turning to underground means to get abortions and has disproportionately impacted the poorest in society, activists say.
In the case of El Salvador, abortion was decriminalized for a brief period between 1973 and 1975, but a penal code instituted in 1978 engendered a total ban — including in the case of incest or rape.
“I had no other choice than turning activist,” Mariana Moisa, a campaigner in El Salvador, told ABC News. “And now that the U.S. has reversed Roe v. Wade, most conservative groups in Salvador and other countries who always denied women’s rights do see it as a validation of continuing women’s rights violations.”
Doctors run a huge risk in providing abortions in secret, and the criminalization of the procedure has led to cases where non-induced miscarriages have led to convictions, Mariana Moisa, a campaigner in El Salvador, told ABC News.
This year, a woman known as “Elsy” was finally released after a decade in prison, having been sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide after she suffered a miscarriage.
“There is a system of guilt for pregnant women. Women are constantly afraid,” she said. “Most women do not have the economic means to find a doctor to get a safe abortion. But for rich women this is not an issue.”
While El Salvador’s policies are stricter than those faced by the likes of Fabiana in Brazil, the risk women face of running into the judicial system when seeking an abortion are just as real.
“Very often, in hospitals woman cannot have an abortion without entering into the judicial system,” Gustavo Scandelari, a criminal law professor at the Federal University of Paraná. “We need so many improvements in our legal system. It has not changed since 1940. We are so backward.”
In the 2020 case of one 10-year-old girl in Espíro Santo State, Scandelari said, a judge initially denied her request for abortion before a media campaign helped overturn the decision. A similar ordeal faced an 11-year-old rape victim this year, who was initially refused an abortion because she was in the 22nd week of her pregnancy.
“There is no improvement in the abortion discussion in Brazil,” Luciana Temer, president of the human rights organization Institute Liberta, told ABC News. Even worse than that, what happened in the U.S. could happen here sooner than we think. It would be even worse than in America as the Law would be national, states could not make individual exceptions.”
“Now that the U.S. has reversed Roe v. Wade, most conservative groups in Salvador and other countries who always denied women’s rights do see it as a validation of continuing women’s rights violation,” Moisa said.
The ‘green wave’ movement
Catalina Martínez Coral, the regional director for the U.S. based Center for Reproductive Rights, said that while the continent is home to strict abortion laws, there is cause for optimism.
“I think in Latin America, the Caribbean, we have been seeing very important victories in the last couple of years, even though this continent has some of the most restrictive abortion laws,” she told ABC News. “In the last couple of years we have been seeing how a movement has grown across the region, this green wave movement of women mobilizing for reproductive rights.”
This started in Argentina, she said, which after years of grassroots pressure legalized abortion up to 14 weeks in 2020, and has been followed up by the Supreme Court in Mexico’s decision to recognize the right to abortion in 2021, and the constitutional court of Colombia decriminalizing abortion up to 21 weeks, the continent’s most progressive ruling to date.
That, Coral said, has been followed up in Chile. While the country’s Congress has moved to restrict reproductive rights in recent years, keeping them on par with Brazil, the election of progressive Gabriel Boric, and his proposals for a new constitution, recently saw the right to abortion added to a draft text that is set to go to a public vote in September.
“Judges and lawmakers have played a very important role in Argentina, Congress in Mexico, Colombian Judges,” Coral said. “We cannot deny that was important, but I think that the most important role was played by civil society organization and feminist movements as these movements have understood that, in Latin America, a legal win is not enough, that we really need to create a public conversation around these matters so that we can really implement these decisions. The strategy of the movement in Latin America has been to be able to socially decriminalize abortion.”
The lessons to be learned from Latin America, Coral said, is that a combination of legal and grassroots pressure is required to improve, as well as uphold, reproductive rights.
Even with those successes, 97% of women of reproductive age in Latin America live in countries with restrictive abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
And both Temer and Moisa fear the overturning of Roe v Wade has helped embolden conservative feeling in the region, and could lead to even more restrictive practices.
*’Fabiana’ is a pseudonym given to protect her identity
ABC News’ Jamie Dorrington contributed to this report
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The Buffalo Bills released rookie punter Matt Araiza Saturday after he was named in a lawsuit that accused him and two others of gang rape.
“We have released Punter Matt Araiza,” the NFL team said in a statement Saturday.
An additional post attributed to GM Brandon Beane expanded as to why the decision was made to release Araiza, a 22-year-old NFL rookie nicknamed the “Punt God” who has denied the accusations.
“This afternoon, we decided that releasing Matt Araiza was the best thing to do. Our culture in Buffalo is more important than winning football games,” the post read.
Beane, who was joined by Coach Sean McDermott, also spoke at a press conference and said it was a “tough” situation for all the parties involved.
“It’s been tough. And you know, we sympathize with this whole situation all the parties involved this young woman, what she went through, you know, you really feel bad for that whole situation. And, you know, ultimately this is a legal situation. We don’t know You know, all the facts,” he said.
Beane added that the team had spoken to the accuser’s lawyer and that “we tried to be thorough, and thoughtful and not rush to judgment.”
“With the serious nature of allegations and we just can’t, we don’t have the means to put all the facts together. And there’s multiple versions of of what happened and you know, he’s a football coach. I’m a GM like we don’t have access to everything. And so that’s more important than playing football. And so we want Matt to focus on that,” he said.
Beane also said that the team’s investigation into the allegations were ongoing after previously stating that the team “conducted a thorough examination of this matter.”
“This was about not a football move about letting Matt go handle the situation,” he said.
Araiza’s lawyer, Kerry L. Armstrong, released a statement Saturday following his release.
“I have not talked to Matt about this yet, but I sent him a text. I am sure he is very upset and disappointed that his career with the Bills ended not because he played poorly, but because of false allegations leveled against him by a young lady and her attorney. I hope he is back in the NFL soon. He deserves to be, as he is the hardest-working twenty-two-year-old I know,” the statement read.
On Thursday, Araiza and two of his San Diego State University teammates, where they played college football, were accused in a lawsuit of raping a 17-year-old girl last October at a Halloween party.
“The facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or in the press,” Araiza said in a statement following the announcement of the lawsuit. “I look forward to quickly setting the record straight.”
The alleged victim’s attorney, Dan Gilleon, released a statement Friday and said the primary reason why a civil suit was filed was to obtain evidence and information.
“Now that a civil case has been filed, I have the power as an attorney to issue subpoenas and force entities and people to talk under oath and to hand over documents, photos, videos, records, and other information to us—and they have to do it now. This is very important because “time is the defendant’s best witness,” the statement read. “Memories fade and documents disappear. There is every reason and right in the world for a victim to file a civil case early on, especially when the authorities like San Diego Police Department are thumbing in their nose at the victim’s “Bill of Rights.”
Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler has been accused of sexual misconduct by four people interviewed in a piece published Saturday by Pitchfork.
Three different women, all of whom use pseudonyms in the piece, allege that Butler engaged in inappropriate sexual interactions with them between 2016 and 2020, when they were between 18 and 23 years old and he was between 36 and 39.
One woman, referred to as Stella, says that Butler sent her unwanted sexually explicit photos of himself, and asked for nude photos of her. The two other women, referred to as Sarah and Fiona, claim that Butler demanded that they send him sexually explicit videos of themselves. In Fiona’s case, the interactions led to an in-person sexual encounter.
Sarah and Fiona share that Butler took advantage of the power dynamic inherent in being a famous musician in convincing them to take part in the interactions.
The fourth person interviewed, who uses they/them pronouns and is referred to as Lily, alleges that they were sexually assaulted by Butler twice in 2015. Lily says they were 21 at the time, while Butler was 34.
In a statement to Pitchfork, Butler acknowledges that he had relationships with all four people, which took place during his marriage to longtime partner and Arcade Fire bandmate Régine Chassagne. However, he describes every relationship as being “mutual and always between consenting adults.”
“It is deeply revisionist, and frankly just wrong, for anyone to suggest otherwise,” Butler says. “I have never touched a woman against her will, and any implication that I have is simply false. I vehemently deny any suggestion that I forced myself on a woman or demanded sexual favors. That simply, and unequivocally, never happened.”
He adds, “While these relationships were all consensual, I am very sorry to anyone who I have hurt with my behavior.”
If you are affected by abuse and needing support, or know someone who is, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also chat online at thehotline.org or online.rainn.org, respectively.
(UVALDE, Texas) — March For Our Lives held a rally in front of the state capitol in Austin Saturday with parents who lost their children in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, families and survivors from a 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School, and youth activists, to demand action on gun safety from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“Three months since the horrifying and preventable tragedy at Robb Elementary School, Governor Abbott still hasn’t taken action to keep kids safe and prevent gun violence. With kids across Texas going back to school in the coming weeks, Abbott’s inaction is unconscionable,” March For Our Lives said in a statement Friday.
Victims and families of those killed in shootings demanded Abbott call a special session to raise the minimum age to purchase an assault weapon in Texas from 18 to 21.
“These weapons belong in the military, they belong in the war, not in the classroom,” said Maggie Mireles, the sister of elementary school teacher Eva Mireles, who was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.
Many speakers, including Mireles, called for Texans to vote Abbott out of office.
Mireles said when her family met with Abbott they asked him to change gun laws. “He said he would be hard at work to do that and that has not happened,” she said.
The crowd could be heard chanting “vote him out,” referring to Abbott, and “raise the age,” between speakers.
Speakers included parents of children killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School, families of teachers killed, and families and survivors from mass shootings across the country.
“It is time to stop using mental issues as an excuse for these mass shootings. When in reality it’s making easy access for teens to purchase ARs,” said Belinda Arriola, whose granddaughter Amory Garza was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting in May.
Arriola criticized Abbott for his lack of action on gun control and called on him to call a special session to raise the age limit for assault weapon purchases, saying it should have been done three months ago.
“You disgracefully, disrespectfully uttered these words: ‘the tragedy in Uvalde could have been worse.’ No governor, the tragedy in Uvalde should have never happened in the first place,”Arriola said.
Families impacted by the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018 also gathered, echoing promises of change made by lawmakers that were never fulfilled.
“We were promised a lot of things. We asked for a lot of things and nothing ever changed,” a speaker whose son was killed in the Santa Fe shooting and was only identified as Rosie said. “Greg Abbott, I am asking you to do something. You sat us at a round table, you promised a bunch of things to us and you failed us.”
Rosie added, “We’re never going to stop a school shooting, we cannot fool ourselves that that we can do that. But we can make it harder. And we need the people that empower to make it harder.”
(BETHESDA, Md.) — A State Department employee was killed this week while riding her bike in Maryland.
The Montgomery County Police Department confirmed Sarah Joan Langenkamp, 42, was struck by a flatbed truck on the afternoon of Aug. 25 while riding a bicycle at the 5200 block of River Road in Bethesda.
Langenkamp was a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. Numerous offices have cited her as the head of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Section at the embassy.
“We can confirm the death of Foreign Service Officer Sarah J. Langenkamp,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News on Saturday. “The Department of State extends its deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Ms. Langenkamp.”
“We cannot provide further comments due to privacy and law enforcement sensitivity considerations. We refer you to the Bethesda Police Department for additional information,” the spokesperson said.
Langenkamp’s husband Daniel served at the Kyiv embassy as spokesperson. A CBS News report published earlier this year documented how the Langenkamp’s sons were able to reconnect with them after the family was separated due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Police say they were called to the scene of the accident just after 4 p.m. on Thursday. A preliminary investigation by the Collision Reconstruction Unit found the driver of the vehicle, which was a red 2014 Volvo flatbed truck, and Lagenkamp were both traveling in the same direction when the collision occurred.
The driver, who remains unidentified, was heading east and was turning right into a parking lot at 5244 River Road when they struck Langenkamp, authorities said. Langenkamp was run over by the truck and was pronounced dead at the scene.
River Road was closed as law enforcement, including Montgomery Fire Rescue, responded to the crash.
The investigation remains ongoing, according to the Montgomery County Police Department. The department did not immediately respond to ABC News’s request for additional comment.
Langenkamp is the second State Department employee to be killed in a biking accident this year.
Shawn O’Donnell, a 40-year-old foreign service worker for the agency, was killed after being struck by a Mack cement truck on July 20 in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom in Washington, D.C.
O’Donnell was one of three people killed in bike crashes in the city in July. Community members gathered outside city hall to demand change, calling on Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser to make her plan for zero traffic deaths by 2024 a reality, ABC News affiliate WJLA reported.
(SAN MATEO COUNTY, Calif.) — A man is lucky to be alive after he fell about 100 feet off of a cliff edge when it reportedly crumbled beneath him as he walked on it.
The incident occurred at around dawn when the unnamed man was walking along cliffs in Moss Beach in San Mateo County, California — approximately 22 miles south of San Francisco — and the cliff edge gave way beneath his feet causing him to fall an estimated 100 feet, according to CAL FIRE San Mateo.
But at 8:30 a.m., a woman who was walking nearby heard the man’s calls for help and was able to alert authorities.
Coastside Fire subsequently arrived and were able to pull the man to safety within 22 minutes of their arrival, CAL FIRE San Mateo said in a tweet along with a short video of the miraculous rescue.
CLIFF RESCUE: The cliff crumbled beneath a man who was walking at dawn in Moss Beach. He fell est. 100 feet & yelled for help. At 8:30am a woman nearby heard his calls. Coastside Fire pulled him to safety within 22 minutes of their arrival. Avoid cliff edges as they are unstable. pic.twitter.com/OCz7W84dra
In the video, about a dozen officers can be seen pulling a series of ropes anchored by a fire engine as the victim, who is accompanied by another officer, are hoisted up the side of the cliff. As they approach the top of the cliff, the unidentified man who fell can be heard communicating with authorities about his condition but appears unsteady on his feet as he is pulled to safety. Authorities did not disclose his current condition.
While the man appeared to be okay at the end of the rescue, CAL FIRE San Mateo had one piece of advice following the incident: “Avoid cliff edges as they are unstable.”
