Month: October 2022

Police confirm that 20-year-old man is in custody as of Sunday on suspicion of shooting eight people at an outdoor gathering near the campus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. According to a statement Sunday afternoon from the Harrisonburg Police Department, the suspect, identified as Tyreaf Isaiah Fleming of Harrisonburg, was arrested about 15 hours after gunfire erupted at a gathering outside an off-campus apartment complex. Fleming faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated malicious wounding, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and the use of a firearm during the commission of a felony, according to police. Additional charges are expected as the investigation continues.

Gunfire broke out approximately 2:20 a.m. on Sunday in a neighborhood southwest of the James Madison University campus, with police saying ‘at least one gunman fired multiple times into a crowd at an outdoor gathering’. Police are also investigating if more suspects were involved in the shooting. All of the victims suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds; five of the victims were taken to nearby Sentara RMH Medical Center and three others were treated at the University of Virginia Medical Center, authorities said. The victims ranged in age from 18 to 27. It was not immediately clear if any students from James Madison University were among those injured.

Police officials said it appeared that the shooting was an isolated incident and said, “there is not believed to be any threat to the greater community at this time.” Anyone with information about the shooting can call the agency’s tip line at (540) 574-5050.

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According to the U.S. Coast Guard, nearly 100 migrants who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for two days. A Coast Guard helicopter spotted the 96 Haitians, as well as a passenger each from Uganda and the Bahamas, about 20 miles east of Boca Raton, Florida, last week. They were transferred to Bahamian authorities on Sunday. No one was injured.

The 40-foot cabin cruiser was overloaded with 53 men, 35 woman and 10 children, the Coast Guard said in a statement. The passengers told Coast Guard crew members that they had been at sea for a week and lacked food and water during the last two days.

Capt. Robert Kinsey of the Coast Guard’s District Seven noted the danger of a lack of sustenance and the overloaded vessel: “Smugglers do not care whether you live or die. These people are lucky to be alive.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/98-migrants-rescued-boat-off-florida-coast-lacked-91591437

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During Thursday’s public hearing, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot unanimously voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump about his actions surrounding the insurrection. The committee has been tasked with probing the facts and causes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee their chambers for safety. Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that his victory was stolen through widespread voter fraud, and never officially conceded the election to Biden.

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said before the vote that “It is our obligation to seek Donald Trump’s testimony,” and Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. said it is a “key task” of the committee to compel the testimony of “January 6th’s central player.” Cheney noted that out of roughly 30 witnesses who have invoked the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination during their testimony,  many did so directly in response to questions about their dealings with Trump. Those witnesses include former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and Republican political operative Roger Stone.

Just before the hearing adjourned, the nine-member panel voted unanimously to direct Thompson to issue the subpoena for Trump. The bipartisan panel has so far issued more than 100 subpoenas and interviewed more than 1,000 people over the course of its investigation, and most of those witnesses have complied with the committee’s requests. However, it is expected that Trump may be unlikely to willingly cooperate with the panel, which he has repeatedly decried as a politically motivated witch hunt.

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On Thursday, a Florida jury recommended life in prison without parole for 24-year-old Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who pleaded guilty to carrying out the murders of 14 students and three staff members on Valentine’s Day 2018 at Marjory Stone Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  While jurors found Cruz was guilty of aggravating factors that warranted a possible death sentence, they said that they did not outweigh the mitigating factors. A unanimous decision would have been required to issue a death sentence under Florida law.

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz said in his closing statements that “the appropriate sentence” for Cruz would have been the death penalty.  Judge Elizabeth Scherer will make a final ruling on the life sentence for Cruz following a hearing on Nov. 1, at which point relatives of victims and those he wounded during the shooting will have the opportunity to speak.

The defense abruptly rested their case Sept. 14, at which time Judge Scherer lambasted them for “the most uncalled for, unprofessional way to try a case.” Prosecutors for weeks told the jurors how Cruz came to the school armed with a rifle and killed 17 people, calling him “cold, calculative, manipulative and deadly.”

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A Connecticut jury said on Wednesday that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $965 million in damages to numerous families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting for falsely claiming they were actors who faked the tragedy. The ruling marks the second multimillion-dollar verdict against Jones in just over two months. In August, another jury found that Jones and his company must pay $49.3 million to Sandy Hook parents in a similar case in Austin, Texas, where the headquarters of Jones’ Infowars conspiracy theory website is located.

The verdict came after three weeks of testimony in a state court in Waterbury, Connecticut; which is near the location where a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT in December 2012. Jones claimed for years that the massacre was staged as part of a government plot to take away Americans’ guns.

During closing arguments last week, attorneys for the families of eight Sandy Hook victims said Jones cashed in for years on lies about the shooting, which drove traffic to his Infowars website and boosted sales of its various products. Meanwhile the families suffered a decade-long campaign of harassment and death threats by Jones’ followers.

Jones’ attorney, Norman Pattis, countered during his closing arguments that the plaintiffs had shown scant evidence of quantifiable losses. Pattis urged jurors to ignore the political undercurrents in the case. Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting occurred, also testified and briefly threw the trial into chaos as he railed against his “liberal” critics and refused to apologize to the families.

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Three SWAT officers serving a homicide warrant on early Wednesday were shot and wounded, and a suspect was killed after gunfire erupted Wednesday morning in North Philadelphia. Philadelphia police said
one officer was struck in the chest, one in the leg and one in the hip while serving the warrant in North Philadelphia’s Poplar section just after 6 a.m.

Officers were serving a warrant on the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Raheem Lee, who was wanted for homicide and multiple armed robberies.  According to Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford, police took on gunfire through the door and window of the home as they attempted to knock and announce their presence. One officer was shot in the hip and another officer was shot in the leg. A third officer was hit in the upper chest after a bullet ricocheted off his vest. He suffered a serious contusion but, the bullet did not penetrate. The shooter then ran through the home and tried to flee out the back, Stanford said. Officers there then exchanged gunfire with the suspect, hitting him. Police said Lee was shot in the head and pronounced dead just after 7:30 a.m.

Police Deputy Commissioner John Stanford Stanford called the level of gun violence in Philadelphia “ridiculous ... “there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t either have a child that is shot, or multiple people shot, because there are too many people out here carrying guns and they don’t have consequences. Some people need to be in jail.”

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