1 dead, 5 suspects in custody in shooting at Mall of Louisiana: Police
Crime scene barrier tape (Getty Images/Tetra Images)
(BATON ROUGE, La.) — Five suspects are in custody in a shooting at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge that killed one person and injured multiple others, police said.
The shots were fired in the food court, police said, describing it as a targeted incident during a fight between two groups, and not a random act of violence.
Baton Rouge Police Chief T.J. Morse said during a press conference Thursday night that officials are looking for more suspects believed to be involved. “In no way is this investigation over, and we do believe that there’s more people involved,” he said.
Morse said one handgun has been recovered from the scene.
Five people injured in the shooting were being treated at area hospitals, according to Baton Rouge police. The nature of their injuries is unclear. Police had initially said 10 people were injured before updating the total number of casualties to six.
All shoppers have been evacuated from the mall, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sid Edwards said.
The scene has been secured, police said.
“I heard a loud ‘pop’ and then another ‘pop,'” a mall employee told ABC Baton Rouge affiliate WBRZ. “… I turn around and I see people dropping to the floor and then I saw the gun. … And he was turning around, shooting randomly.”
“I called security and said, ‘Shots fired in the food court, people are down, people are hit.’ And then the cops came and it was just total chaos … blood was everywhere,” she said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” she said.
Police Chief Morse said that officials believe the violence began after some kind of disagreement. “It looks like guns were pulled afterwards, exchanged right in front of some of the food counters in the food court,” he said.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said he’s aware of the shooting and is coordinating with law enforcement.
“Please keep the victims and their families in your prayers,” Edwards said in a statement.
Mayor Sid Edwards said during the press conference Thursday night that “Baton Rouge has a history of pulling together in tragedy, and that’s tragic unto itself.”
The Mall of Louisiana confirmed in a statement that it would be closed all day on Friday “out of respect for the victims.”
“Our deepest sympathies are with everyone who was impacted by the senseless act of violence that took place here today,” the statement read.
Todd Blanche, acting US attorney general, during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 27, 2026. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center asked a federal judge Tuesday to demand that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issue a correction to allegedly “false” statements he made in the aftermath of the indictment of the organization last week, according to a legal filing.
In a motion to the judge presiding over their criminal case in the Middle District of Alabama, attorneys for the SPLC accuse Blanche of lying in an interview he gave to Fox News last Tuesday when he claimed the government did not have information showing the organization has shared information it learned from informants with law enforcement.
“Those statements are false,” attorneys for the SPLC wrote. “Weeks before the indictment, undersigned counsel provided information to the government demonstrating unequivocally that the SPLC had shared information from its informants with law enforcement.”
Blanche, who earlier this month replaced Pam Bondi as attorney general, announced last week that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging the group with wire, bank fraud and money laundering offenses related to its paying of informants to infiltrate hate groups.
The attorneys write that they previously requested Blanche issue a correction to the statements but that counsel for the government refused.
They specifically cite an April 6 meeting that SPLC attorneys had with prosecutors in Alabama in which they explained in detail how some of their past cooperation with the government had resulted in an indictment of a member of a well-known extremist group.
The SPLC then sent a letter to the DOJ, which they requested it share with the grand jury, detailing six categories that they argued showed the organization using informants to dismantle white supremacist organizations, which they said undercut the core of the government’s case that argues SPLC used the informants to boost such groups.
The organization is asking the judge overseeing the case to order the disclosure of grand jury transcripts and issue a separate order restricting the government from making further “prejudicial” statements that could taint a possible jury pool.
Les Wexner speaks onstage at the 2016 Fragrance Foundation Awards presented by Hearst Magazines – Show on June 7, 2016 in New York City. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Fragrance Foundation)
(WASHINGTON) — Members of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday are set to depose retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, whose wealth fueled Jeffrey Epstein’s fortune before an alleged multimillion dollar theft ended their relationship, newly revealed documents suggest.
After learning that Epstein stole hundreds of millions from him in 2007, Wexner opted to quietly resolve the issue with Epstein, who at the time was being investigated by federal prosecutors for both sex crimes and money laundering, according to emails and a memo later drafted by prosecutors.
A vitally important person in the transformation of Epstein from college dropout to multimillionaire adviser to the ultra-wealthy, Wexner — a businessman behind brands like Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works — has received substantial scrutiny over his association with Epstein since Epstein’s arrest and death by suicide in 2019.
Years after the two severed ties, prosecutors in New York initially included Wexner in a group of potential co-conspirators to be investigated after Epstein was arrested in July 2019, though they later determined there was “limited evidence regarding his involvement,” according to a recently-released 2019 email from an FBI agent who was part of the sex crimes investigation.
“The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect,” a spokesperson for Wexner told ABC News in a statement following the release of Epstein files by the Department of Justice last month. “Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”
Lawyers for Wexner, in a meeting with federal prosecutors about two weeks after Epstein’s arrest, claimed that Wexner “had no knowledge of any inappropriate or unlawful activity with young women by Epstein” and that Wexner’s dealings with Epstein were “more professional than social,” according to a December 2019 prosecution memo summarizing the investigation into Epstein’s potential collaborators.
Wexner’s attorneys said the two ended their relationship after Wexner learned that “Epstein had stolen or otherwise misappropriated several hundred million dollars” from him, according to the memo. The memo stated that Epstein personally profited by repeatedly purchasing properties for the Wexners before buying them for himself at a fraction of the cost.
“The Wexners then decided to cut off Epstein,” prosecutors wrote in the memo summarizing their discussion with Wexner’s counsel.
‘All I can say is I feel sorry’ Epstein was — throughout 2007 — the subject of an ongoing investigation in Florida into sex crimes involving minors that had expanded to probe potential financial crimes and money laundering. The Wexners did not report the alleged theft of their funds to law enforcement and instead resolved the matter privately, according to prosecutors.
Wexner was contacted by federal prosecutors in Florida as early as August 2007 regarding the Epstein investigation, according to handwritten notes released last month by the Department of Justice. Notes from an August 2007 call between an attorney for Wexner and a DOJ representative suggest that prosecutors inquired about Wexner’s interactions with his “money manager,” documentation of their meetings, and whether Wexner ever visited Epstein’s home.
At the time, prosecutors had begun to broaden their investigation to not only cover sex crimes but also potential money laundering and wire fraud, documents suggest.
“She just wanted to know if Les has been to my house,” Epstein emailed his associate Ghislaine Maxwell in August 2007, in an apparent reference to the prosecutor’s contact with Wexner’s lawyer, according to emails obtained by DDOSecrets, a transparency website that received a cache of Epstein emails that were not included in the DOJ’s disclosures.
“That’s odd?? Why” Maxwell responded.
“It’s bulls—, she just wanted to let him know about an investigation is my guess,” Epstein wrote back.
It is unclear if Wexner was aware of the investigation into financial crimes when his attorney was contacted, but in the following months, Wexner began the process of ending Epstein’s role as his money manager, according to emails in the DDOSecrets collection between lawyers for Epstein and Wexner.
“All I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule … Always be careful,” Wexler emailed Epstein in 2008 days before Epstein reported to prison for soliciting underage sex, according to documents included in DDOSecrets collection.
“No excuse,” Epstein replied.
‘She pretty much wants everything’ According to a 2019 prosecution memo, Wexner’s wife began to look into Epstein’s management of their money after Epstein claimed he was “having legal problems involving an overly aggressive police chief and some sort of massage.”
According to the memo, Abigail Wexner discovered Epstein “misappropriated a significant amount of the family’s funds,” including by purchasing property on the Wexners’ behalf before selling it to himself at a fraction of the cost.
“When confronted, Epstein tried to convince Wexner’s wife that she did not understand the financials and insisted that he had the Wexners’ best interests at heart,” the memo said. “The Wexners did not want to bring unnecessary public attention to the issue, so they withdrew the power of attorney, and hired counsel to negotiate a private settlement with Epstein.”
Epstein resigned from the foundation and all of his roles with Wexner in September 2007, according to an independent review conducted in 2020 of Epstein’s involvement with the Wexner Foundation.
“Mr. Wexner terminated Epstein as his financial advisor, revoked his power of attorney, and directed that he be removed from all bank accounts,” a spokesperson for Wexner said in a statement to ABC News.
As early as October 2007, emails indicate that Epstein began transferring assets back to Wexner.
“When speaking with [Abigail Wexner], she pretty much wants everything,” Wexner’s financial controller told an attorney for Epstein.
Later that year, an attorney for Wexner pushed the process along, telling an attorney for Epstein that his client “is eager to execute documents,” according to the DDOSecrets cache.
Prosecutors wrote in a 2019 memo that Epstein returned $100 million to Wexner by January 2008.
Though the dispute with Wexner was privately resolved by January 2008, Epstein’s attorneys appeared to have mounted a pressure campaign to discredit the prosecutor pursuing a money laundering investigation into Epstein, according to emails in the DDOSECRETS collection. Epstein had signed a non-prosecution agreement in September 2007, but his lawyers continued to negotiate with the government over its terms for several more months.
“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate Mr. Epstein, Ms. Villafana [an assistant U.S. Attorney] then added money-laundering and unlicensed wire-transmittal to the list of violations under investigation even though there was no evidence against Mr. Epstein concerning these charges,” attorneys for Epstein wrote in a letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility dated Feb. 11, 2008.
By June 2008, Epstein began his jail sentence in Palm Beach after reaching the controversial plea deal that allowed him to avoid federal charges.
‘You and I had gang stuff for over 15 years’ Although Epstein and Wexner appear to have severed ties following Epstein’s plea deal, documents released by the DOJ suggest that Epstein may have attempted to rekindle their relationship in subsequent years by drafting a letter reminding Wexner of shared experiences and alleged secrets. In the letter, Epstein wrote that he protected him when he was questioned by Wexner’s wife about his management of their money.
“You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years. A great deal of it, that she was unaware of. I had no intention of divulging any confidence of ours, no matter what accusations she made. And she made quite a few,” Epstein wrote in the draft note. Based on publicly available documents, it is unclear whether Epstein ever sent the note to Wexner.
Wexner publicly addressed his relationship with Epstein in August 2019 amid mounting public pressure, saying in a letter to his charitable foundation that he was “deceived” by Epstein.
“As the allegations against Mr. Epstein in Florida were emerging, he vehemently denied them. But by early fall 2007, it was agreed that he should step back from the management of our personal finances. In that process, we discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family. This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now,” Wexner wrote.
Epstein and Maxwell in one of the images released by the US Department of State . (Photo by The US Justice Department / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Bank of America has reached a proposed, non-binding settlement in a lawsuit that alleged the bank helped facilitate Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking operation, according to court records.
The proposed class-action complaint, filed in October 2025, alleged that Bank of America “knowingly provided the financial support and the veneer of institutional legitimacy” to Epstein and ignored suspicious transactions by the late disgraced financier.
A notice on the case’s docket said that lawyers for the bank and the victims “reached a settlement in principle.” The terms of the settlement were not immediately disclosed and would need to be approved by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff had previously scheduled the case to go to trial on May 11.
A court hearing to consider the settlement proposal is scheduled for April 2 in federal court in New York, according to the docket.
Bank of America declined to comment on the proposed settlement to ABC News. An attorney for the victims called the proposed settlement “one more step on the road to much-deserved justice.”
“The women entrapped and abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell started a monumental reckoning with their brave voices and fearlessness. The road to justice for these women has been long and trying,” attorney Sigrid McCawley said in a statement.
Though the terms of the settlement are unknown, a proposed resolution of the case would likely scuttle an upcoming deposition of Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, who was scheduled to sit for questioning on March 26. Black resigned from his role at Apollo in 2021 after an inquiry into his relationship with Epstein, which found that Black paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning advice.
In a statement from January, Black’s attorney said that his client “had no awareness of Epstein’s criminal activities” and that there is “absolutely no truth to any of the allegations against Mr. Black.”
The lawsuit against Bank of America alleged that those payments from Black and other transactions by Epstein should have raised concern by the bank, which “failed to alert law enforcement as to Epstein’s crimes before it was far too late.”
“Epstein committed these crimes by means of not only his own extraordinary wealth and power, but through access to funding and financial support from both individuals and institutions, including Bank of America. Egregiously, Bank of America had a plethora of information regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking operation but chose profit over protecting the victims,” the lawsuit alleged.
Bank of America had unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the court to dismiss the case by arguing that the suit was “based on nothing more than allegations that it provided routine services to customers who at the time had no known connection to Epstein’s sex trafficking.”
“Bank of America opposes trafficking in all its forms. But this suit attempts to radically expand liability for banks, holding them liable for providing ordinary banking services to individuals one or more steps removed from a trafficker,” a November 2025 filing from the bank’s lawyers said.
