1 hospitalized after shooting incident at Southern University
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(BATON ROUGE, LA.) — Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, went into lockdown after a shooting took place on campus Sunday evening.
The incident, which took place in the Ulysses S. Jones Hall dormitory, left at least one person injured and taken to the hospital, according to ABC affiliate WBRZ. Their condition is unknown.
No identities related to the incident have been released.
The school posted a message on its website at 7:24 p.m. local time, stating: “ATTENTION: There has been a shooting incident in U.S. Jones Hall. The possible suspect is a Black male waring a black hoodie with rhinestones and dark pants. The campus is locked down for safety. Please remain in your dorm rooms/offices until an all-clear is given.”
Southern University and A&M College is a Historically Black College and University and, with five locations across Louisiana, it is the only HBCU system in the United States, according to its website.
An all-clear was issued at 9:15 p.m. local time, according to WRBZ. It remains unclear if the alleged suspect described in the school’s previous announcement was located or taken into custody.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — The man charged with setting a woman on fire and killing her as she slept on a New York City subway car is due in court on Friday.
Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, made his first court appearance on Tuesday and was held without bail. He has not entered a plea.
Zapeta-Calil was arrested on Monday and charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder and first-degree arson.
Around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, the unidentified victim was asleep on a stationary F train in Brooklyn when a man approached her and lit her clothes on fire with a lighter, police said.
Authorities do not believe the two knew each other and did not have a previous interaction, police said.
The suspect left the subway car after the incident, but images of him were captured on officers’ body cameras because the suspect stayed at the scene, sitting on a nearby bench, according to police. Those images were released as police requested the public’s assistance in identifying the man.
Three high school students recognized him and contacted police, authorities said.
Zapeta-Calil was taken into custody in a subway car at Manhattan’s Herald Square on Sunday evening. Police said he was found with a lighter in his pocket.
Zapeta-Calil, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He told authorities he does not know what happened, but he identified himself in the surveillance images.
(WASHINGTON) — Senior Justice Department officials serving under Donald Trump’s first administration may have violated federal law in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election by pushing for pandemic-related investigations that targeted states with Democratic governors, and then leaking private information about those investigations to friendly media outlets in a potential attempt to influence the election, according to a previously-undisclosed report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.
The inspector general’s report, obtained by ABC News, concluded that for one of the officials — a senior member of the department’s public affairs team who the report said first hatched the alleged plan to leak investigative information — “the upcoming election was the motivating factor.”
The report specifically pointed to a text message he sent in mid-October 2020, describing a proposed leak to a major New York-area tabloid about reviews of COVID-related deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey as “our last play on them before [the] election” — “but it’s a big one,” he added, according to the report.
The inspector general’s report comes just weeks before Trump takes office again, after winning reelection two months ago in part by promoting questionable claims that the Biden administration had used the Justice Department to further its own political agenda.
Last week, the inspector general’s office released a brief and vague summary of its report, saying only that three former officials had violated Justice Department policies by leaking “non-public DOJ investigative information” to “select reporters, days before an election.”
The summary said the officials may have even violated the Hatch Act, a non-criminal law that prohibits federal employees from using their positions to engage in political activities.
The summary did not say when the alleged violations occurred or which election may have been implicated, but some of Trump’s supporters and at least one major conservative media outlet claimed that it involved the Biden administration trying to harm Trump’s most recent reelection bid.
The partially-redacted report, obtained by ABC News through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows otherwise.
According to the report, in the summer of 2020, leaders of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division at the time pushed for reviews of government-run nursing homes in several states, looking to find any connections between deaths there and orders from governors directing nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients.
In late August 2020, when the Justice Department then sent letters to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York seeking relevant data — “despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states” — the Justice Department’s public affairs office issued a press release about the move, the report said.
Though the inspector general’s office said it did not find evidence that any officials, even career officials, raised concerns at the time, the report said current and former officials more recently described the press release as “unusual and inappropriate.”
The report further details how over the next few months, leadership in the Civil Rights Division pressured officials in the department’s Civil Division to send a letter to New York officials seeking data regarding COVID-19-related deaths in private nursing homes throughout the state, the report said. The Civil Division officials were reluctant to do so, but they ultimately complied because they were “led to believe” that the directive to make the investigative activity public was “coming from Attorney General [Bill] Barr,” the report said.
Then in October 2020, in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, the senior official with the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs proposed his plan to leak information about the letter and other information about an investigation of state-run facilities in New Jersey, according to the report.
On Oct. 17, 2020, the senior public affairs official texted colleagues: “I’m trying to get [them] to do letters to [New Jersey and New York] respectively on nursing homes. Would like to package them together and let [a certain tabloid] break it. Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one,” according to the report.
A week before the election, on Oct. 27, 2020, the investigative information was provided to the New York-area tabloid, which published a story that night, accusing New York authorities of undercounting deaths in nursing homes, the report said. The inspector general’s report noted that official statistics released at the time did in fact undercount the actual number of deaths.
Nevertheless, “the conduct of these senior officials raised serious questions about partisan political motivation for their actions in proximity to the 2020 election,” inspector general Michael Horowitz said in his report.
“[T]he then upcoming 2020 election may have been a factor in the timing and manner of those actions and announcing them to the public,” Horowitz added, concluding that the three officials violated the Justice Department’s media contacts policy.
Horowitz said his office has referred its findings to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which is tasked with investigating potential violations of the Hatch Act.
A spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel confirmed to ABC News that his office received the referral and is now reviewing it.
The inspector general’s report noted that Barr declined to be interviewed in connection with Horowitz’s investigation.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(MISSOURI) — Andrew Lester, the Kansas City man charged with shooting teenager Ralph Yarl in April 2023 after he knocked on the door of the wrong house, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault charges in a 10-minute Missouri court hearing on Friday.
The 86-year-old man had been facing charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of then-16-year-old Yarl, a Black honors student who mistakenly showed up at Lester’s door to pick up his twin brothers.
Second-degree assault, a Class D felony, carries with it the sentencing possibility of one to seven years in prison, Clay County Prosecutor Zach Thompson said at a press conference after Friday’s hearing. The sentencing hearing will happen on March 7, according to Thompson.
Lester, who is white, shot Yarl in the head and right arm, saying he believed someone was trying to break into his house, according to a probable cause statement obtained by ABC News. He initially pleaded not guilty in 2023 and was released on a $200,000 bond.
“Our office has maintained regular and respectful communication with Mr. Yarl and his family, and they support this resolution,” Thompson said Friday.
Thompson was told by a reporter at the news conference that Yarl’s family said they were not satisfied with the outcome of the plea deal, and the county prosecutor said he understood the frustration of the family.
“Based on our communications, both direct and written with Mr. Yarl and his family, we agreed that this would be a just resolution in the case,” Thompson said.
Yarl survived the attack and has since graduated high school, but suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) after the shooting. Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, previously told ABC News that her son has struggled academically in ways he didn’t prior to the injury.
His family reacted to Friday’s hearing in a statement obtained by ABC News.
“While this marks a step toward accountability, true justice requires consequences that reflect the severity of his actions — anything less would be a failure to recognize the harm he has caused,” they wrote. “We remain hopeful that his sentencing will not be merely a slap on the wrist but a decision that upholds the seriousness of his crime.”
Lester’s attorney Steve Salmon previously argued that his client’s mental and physical capacity was a factor in the case, postponing the initial trial date from Oct. 7 to Feb. 18. Salmon said the retired air mechanic had heart and memory issues, a broken hip and had lost over 50 pounds. In November, the judge ruled that Lester was fit to stand trial after reviewing the results of a mental exam.
Yarl’s family filed a civil lawsuit against Lester and the Highland Acres homeowners association nearly a year after the shooting occurred, claiming little progress has been made in the case and the association failed to administer aid after shots were fired.
ABC News contributor Joanne Haner contributed to this report.
