Month: May 2023

Police in Hollywood, Florida said that two people have been arrested, while three suspects are still being sought in connection with Monday’s mass shooting on the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk in Hollywood, Florida that left nine people including several children hospitalized.  Hollywood Police have not released the identities of the injured, but said four of the nine victims are minors ranging in ages from 1 to 17, and the 5 adults are between the ages of 25 – 65. All of the victims were taken to either Memorial Regional Hospital or Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital; as of Tuesday morning, three adults had been treated and released from the hospital, while the other victims were in stable condition.

The shooting on Memorial Day happened shortly before 7 p.m. near Johnson Street, as the Broadwalk was crowded with Memorial Day beachgoers. Police said the incident started with an altercation between two groups of people that resulted in gunfire, and video from the city of Hollywood’s live feed of Hollywood Beach show people running or seeking cover when the gunshots were fired. What appears to be two guns can also be seen on the ground in the video. Officers responded and detained multiple people at or near the scene.

Police said Tuesday that while the people detained weren’t identified as the shooters, two were arrested on firearms charges; five handguns had been recovered, police said. Two of the handguns had been reported stolen, including one from Miami-Dade and one from Texas. Officials also released photos of three people who they believe were involved in the shooting, and are asking for the public’s help in identifying them. At a news conference Tuesday, Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy was the two people arrested were not from Hollywood but were from elsewhere in South Florida. Said Levy: “I’m very confident that we will apprehend those three persons. When you do something like this in broad daylight, with CCTV cameras up and down our Broadwalk, you will be identified and you will be caught and brought to justice. We’re not gonna tolerate this kind of behavior in a beautiful beach setting. We’re a very peaceful city and we will not tolerate people coming into our city and behaving in this way with no regard to people that are in harm’s way with iinocent bystanders injured like they were yesterday.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the Hollywood Police Department at 954-764-4357(HELP) or 954-967-4567.

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In a statement issued by the Carter Center on Tuesday, the family of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter announced that Mrs. Carter has dementia. The statement read: “The Carter family is sharing that former first lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia. She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones. Mrs. Carter has been the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life. First in the Georgia governor’s mansion, then in the White House, and later at The Carter Center, she urged improved access to care and decreased stigma about issues surrounding mental health.”

The former first lady is 95, and the statement did not say when she was given the diagnosis. The statement continued: “One in 10 older Americans have dementia, a condition that affects overall mental health. We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much-needed support. We hope sharing our family’s news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor’s offices around the country. The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey. We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

In February, it was announced that former President Jimmy Carter, 98, was suspending medical care and receiving only end-of-life hospice care, tweeting at the time: “After a series of short hospital stays, former President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

The Carters have been married since 1946. They have four children and more than two dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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Authorities confirmed on Monday that a man has been arrested and charged with killing four people and injuring another during a shooting spree over the holiday weekend.

Police announced in a statement that Iren Byers, a 20-year-old Arizona man, was located on Sunday afternoon and took him into custody in Mesa, Ariz.  Court documents show Byers is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder. Mesa Police Detective Brandi George said that Byers admitted to the shootings during questioning, and is cooperating while in police custody. He told them that in each of the five slayings he did not call for medical help because he believed his victims “did not deserve it;” adding that most of the victims were homeless and that Byers was “angry toward people who used drugs.”

Police first responded to a 911 call of shots fired around 3:40 p.m. Friday in downtown Phoenix, where they discovered a 41-year-old man dead at the scene. A second call came in around 10:30 p.m. in the Beverly Park neighborhood in northwest Mesa, where officers located a second 41-year-old victim who had died from gunshot wounds. While still at that scene, police located a 36-year-old woman nearby who had also been shot shortly after midnight. The woman was taken to the hospital to undergo surgery, and was listed in stable condition early Sunday.  At around 1 a.m. another call to police was made, where they found another 41-year-old man that had died from his injuries. Nearly one hour later, investigators found the final victim, a 40-year-old man also killed by gunfire, located in Mesa around 2 a.m. on Saturday.

Investigators said they identified Byers using surveillance video collected from public transit, as well as a home and businesses. Later, investigators preliminarily matched the same 9mm handgun to all five shootings using shell casings, and they later recovered the gun at Byers’ residence along with other evidence.

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After 24 hours, the search and rescue effort taking place after part of an apartment building collapsed in Davenport, Iowa will transition to its recovery phase. A section of the red brick building on the city’s Main Street came down at around 5pm on Sunday, with at least one-fourth of the structure’s units destroyed. The cause of the collapse has not been determined but some residents described the sound it created as an “explosion”. Residents living in the area reported that the building was known to have problems, including visible water damage.

As of Monday morning, a total of eight people had been rescued from the wreckage and the number of people missing remains unclear. K-9 units left the scene on Monday afternoon after authorities said there was no sign of residents trapped under the rubble. However, at least one resident of the apartment complex is unaccounted for.

In an update on Monday evening, municipal council member Kyle Gripp said that the building is not salvageable and will be torn down on Tuesday. No residents will be allowed back into the building before demolition begins due to its unstable condition. The Davenport Development and Neighborhood Services Department will oversee demolition operations.

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A federal judge sentenced Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison Thursday for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The 57-year-old Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, received the longest sentence of any defendant to date. Before pronouncing the sentence in Washington, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said: “you, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the republic and to the very fabric of this democracy.”

Prosecutors said Rhodes was in contact with Trump between his election loss and Jan. 6, calling on him to invoke the Insurrection Act with the intent of creating an armed militia to act on his behalf. Judge Mehta accepted the government’s recommendation to apply an enhancement for terrorism in Rhodes’ sentencing for the first time in a Jan. 6 case, . Mehta agreed with prosecutors that Rhodes “inspired the use of violence” in his followers to disrupt the certification and that his conduct met the legal definition of terrorism intended to influence the actions of government; and cited the stockpile of weapons the Oath Keepers had amassed just outside of Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, as well as Rhodes’ orders for members to delete incriminating messages after the Capitol assault.

Rhodes called himself a “political prisoner” before his sentencing. He addressed Judge Mehta in defiant remarks maintaining his innocence, saying: “like President Trump, my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country.”  In November he was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, along with co-conspirator Kelly Meggs. A jury found he and other members of the group played a principal role in disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

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On Thursday, the White House released a comprehensive plan to counter antisemitism across the U.S. In a video clip at an event announcing the plan, President Joe Biden said the strategy is “most ambitious and comprehensive U.S. government-led effort to fight antisemitism in American history, adding “we must say clearly and forcefully that antisemitism and all forms of hate and violence have no place in America.” 

The plan includes addressing the lack of education about the Holocaust, security at Jewish institutions, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories on the Internet. The strategy features four pillars: increasing awareness and understanding of antisemitism; improving safety for Jewish communities; reversing the normalization of antisemitism and building solidarity among religious groups.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris and the first Jewish spouse of a vice president, said at the event that antisemitism has divided American society: “It threatens our democracy while undermining our American values of freedom, community and decency. And antisemitism delivers simplistic, false and dangerous narratives that have led to extremists perpetrating deadly violence against Jews.”

Outgoing White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice said that to increase awareness about antisemitism, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. will launch the first U.S.-based Holocaust education research center.  In addition, the National Endowment for the Humanities will expand its investment in K-12 education on Jewish history, adding that federal agencies have “committed to incorporating information about antisemitic bias and discrimination into their diversity, equity inclusion and accessibility training programs.”

The White House said that the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center will conduct an annual threat assessment “on antisemitic drivers of transnational violent extremism that can be shared with technology companies and other nongovernmental partners.”  The center released a declassified version of its first assessment on Thursday.

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