10 men at large after escape from New Orleans jail, considered armed and dangerous: Sheriff’s office
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(NEW ORLEANS) — Eleven adult men escaped from a New Orleans jail on Friday and should be considered armed and dangerous, officials with the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office warned.
One of the inmates has been apprehended; 10 remain at large, the sheriff’s office said.
The men were unaccounted for during a routine headcount at the Orleans Justice Center at 8:30 a.m. Friday, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson told reporters.
Hutson asked the public to remain alert, adding the sheriff’s department is working with local, state and federal law enforcement on a “full-scale search operation.”
The sheriff called the escape “very serious and unacceptable.”
“We are launching a full investigation to determine how this escape occurred, including reviewing facility protocols, staff performance and physical security measures,” she said.
Anyone who helped the inmates escape will be held accountable, the sheriff vowed.
The Orleans Justice Center is less than 3 miles from the French Quarter, a tourist hot spot.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — The walls were closing in on Sean “Diddy” Combs, his former girlfriend testified Monday, and the rap mogul turned fashion tastemaker was allegedly lashing out.
“I remember we were sleeping and one of the sons knocked on the door and said that something happened, and then I was just by myself,” the former girlfriend told a hushed Manhattan courtroom. “I went downstairs and could see everyone speaking amongst each other.”
Combs was huddling with his team and his family. They needed a response — urgently. A hotel security video obtained by CNN was being played repeatedly on national television, and it showed Combs kicking and beating another of his former romantic partners, the singer Cassie Ventura.
“They were trying to come up with some kind of sincere apology post or something regarding the video,” she said.
Testifying under the pseudonym “Jane,” the woman offered jurors a window into the last two years of Combs’s life, as legal troubles and bad publicity threatened to unravel his music empire and fiercely protected reputation.
Until that point, she said that Combs had not resorted to the type of violence Ventura said she suffered at Combs’ hands. But she told the jury she was subjected to the same coerced and degrading sex on demand with male prostitutes to satisfy Combs’ urges — just as Ventura has testified in her own account.
“I just couldn’t sleep. I was just reading these pages and going through a nightmare,” Jane testified, explaining her first reaction after reading Ventura’s 2023 lawsuit in which Ventura narrated a story that Jane said was painfully similar to the life she had been forced to lead. “I can’t believe I am reading my own story.”
Ventura’s lawsuit, settled only hours after it was filed for $20 million, was the first domino to fall, as Combs faced a wave of public criticism, a federal investigation, and criminal indictment. He is accused of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all counts. He denies all charges.
The emotional and graphic testimony from Jane comes as jurors are entering the fifth week of testimony in Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial. His lawyers have told jurors that Combs is a flawed and violent man who has abused drugs and his romantic partners, but they insist he did not commit the crimes he is being tried for.
“Jane” testified that Ventura’s lawsuit was like “reading my own sexual trauma.”
Jane testified that she reached her breaking point with Combs by October 2023, after three years of what she believed was unrequited love. She told jurors how nearly every one of their dates or romantic getaways would become an opportunity for Combs to push her to have sex with male escorts during marathon sex parties she called “hotel nights” that could last days and were often fueled by drugs and booze.
“I’m not a porn star. I’m not an animal. I need a break. I don’t want to do anything. I’ve hit a wall,” Ventura texted Combs after he asked her to arrange a marathon evening of sex with a male prostitute while Combs watched and masturbated. “It’s been three years of me having f— strangers. I’m tired.”
Her testimony grew more emotional as she read aloud texts she sent Combs in 2023 in which she tried to salvage a relationship with the rapper without having to participate in the alleged prolonged orgies.
“My spirit and my soul is tired. I need a break,” she wrote in one message. “I can’t be used like this anymore. I wanted to make you happy but it’s creating a war inside me.”
As their relationship deteriorated, Jane told jurors that learning of Ventura’s lawsuit in November 2023 prompted her to look at her own relationship with Combs in a new light. She testified she nearly fainted when she recognized her own relationship with Combs in the pages of Ventura’s retelling.
“I can’t believe I am reading my own story,” Jane told jurors about learning about Ventura’s allegations.
In one of her messages to Combs, Jane wrote, “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma.”
Jurors hear recording of Combs allegedly pressuring her into silence about sexual encounters
Three days after the lawsuit was filed, Combs and Jane spoke on the phone about the allegations. The jury heard a recording of the phone call taken from the phone of Combs’ top assistant after it was seized at the airport in Miami. Jane testified she did not know she was being recorded.
“This is when I need you to be there for me,” Combs is heard saying, as the recording echoed through the hushed courtroom. “You know we did all that s— together.”
“You know, I have been feeling so manipulated. What am I to do with that feeling? Who is there for me?” Jane is heard saying back.
Prosecutors then played for the jury a second recording of a call Combs made to Jane 22 minutes later.
“I need your friendship right now,” Combs is heard saying. “I can’t even talk on the phone. Please don’t send no texts.”
“I just needed to tell you that I need your friendship,” Combs is heard saying. “You know you ain’t got to worry about nothing else, you feel me?”
Jane testified she believed Combs was offering to continue paying her $10,000 monthly rent. Prosecutors have argued the recording is proof that Combs tried to tamper with Jane’s testimony by attempting to pressure her into saying their sexual interactions were consensual.
“Jane” said Combs threatened to release her sex tapes
As her relationship with Combs deteriorated in the days after Ventura’s lawsuit was filed, Jane testified that Combs escalated his threats. For the first time, she told jurors that Combs threatened to release videos he recorded of her having sex with male prostitutes.
She told the jury that Combs’ first threatened to release the tapes after he offered her money to end their relationship quietly.
“I remember he said, ‘Charge me, charge me, charge me for your resentment. I don’t want any loose ends,'” she alleged Combs said over a video call.
But after Jane requested hundreds of thousands of dollars to end the relationship — saying she deserved compensation for the three years she lost during their relationship — she testified that Combs erupted.
“F—- you. I am blocking you,” Combs texted Jane. “Leave me alone. Con artist.”
“You keep describing yourself. You conned me into…having strangers run trains on me,” she wrote back.
As their fight escalated — and Jane texted Combs that she would kill herself — Jane testified that Combs began to threaten to release the recordings of her having sex with other men.
“At the height of this anger, he said I am just going to show your child’s father these tapes. I have nothing to lose,” Jane testified.
She told the jury that she tried to contact Combs’ chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, to defuse the situation and stop Combs from releasing any of the tapes.
“Why did you reach out to [Khorram] after Sean threatened to release your tapes?” prosecutor Maureen Comey asked.
“Because [Khorram] is like his right brain – she is one of the people he listens to,” Jane testified.
Despite the threats to release her sex tapes and her concerns about the allegations in Ventura’s civil lawsuit, Jane told jurors that she reconciled with Combs by February 2024. She testified that she resumed participating in hotel nights — now hosted in private residences instead of hotel rooms — and spending time with Combs, even as negative publicity stemming from Ventura’s lawsuit was growing.
On the day in 2024 that federal agents raided Combs’ residences, she said an agent from Homeland Security Investigations left a card at her home. Jane testified she contacted Combs, who got her a lawyer, and that the rap mogul continues to pay for her legal expenses, even as her testimony is being used by prosecutors trying to lock Combs up for life.
“Jane” testified Combs attacked her, forced her to participate in sex with male escort
After the hotel video was broadcast, Jane testified she watched Sean Combs pledge in an Instagram post to become a “better man,” and next saw Combs in person on June 18, 2024.
“It was a very terrible day,” Jane testified.
She told the jury she had been “bottling up a lot of resentment and anger towards him” and confronted him about a younger woman who had accompanied him on a recent trip.
“I said, ‘You’re a pedophile,'” Jane testified. The woman he had been with was over 18, but “I felt like he was 25 or 27 years her senior,” Jane explained.
Jane told jurors that she initiated the fight, pushing Combs’ head into a counter and throwing candles at him. She said she retreated to her bedroom, shouting “just leave, just leave,” when he kicked open the door. She went into the bathroom, where, she said, Combs then kicked the bathroom door “literally off the hinges.”
Jane testified that Combs “kicked me on the back of my thigh,” causing her to fall. “He put me in a chokehold on the ground, and I couldn’t breathe,” she said.
Jane testified she managed to escape, hide for about two hours and return, thinking he would be gone. But, she testified, Combs once again found her and chased her to the backyard of the residence, where she balled herself up to protect her face from Combs’ attack.
Jane testified that Combs punched and kicked her while she was on the ground, grabbed her by the hair and arm and dragged her toward the house. Inside the house, Jane said she noticed Combs’ phone and tried to call the woman she believed Combs had travelled with.
“I took his phone, and I ended up calling the girl I assumed he was with,” Jane testified. “Sean was holding me down and making me listen to her insults.”
In the bathroom later, Jane testified she noticed two welts on her forehead and a black eye forming. She went to take a shower, where she testified that Combs slapped her face three times, causing her to lose balance.
“Sean said just put some ice on it and put an outfit on,” Jane testified, saying that she covered her bruises with makeup before a male escort, Anton, arrived.
In the bathroom preparing for the evening, Jane said she remembered Combs telling her, “Take this f—— pill. You’re not going to ruin my f—— night. Get out there and suck his d—.. F— him. I don’t care.”
“I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to,” Jane said she responded. She told the jury that Combs got right in her face and asked, “Is this coercion?” before forcing her to take ecstasy and perform oral sex on Anton.
“For how long?” Comey asked.
“It just felt like forever,” Jane answered.
She said she received about $12,000 in cash from Combs’ bodyguard the next day to cover the damage to her home and the cost of the male escort. The jury saw multiple photos of the doors damaged by what she testified was “Sean’s kick,” which Jane said she sent to a repair company.
Jane testified she saw Combs a few days later at his home. The jury saw a video she took that captured her alleged injuries through the foundation and concealer she told the jury she had put on. The jury saw a second selfie video that also briefly captured the injuries she testified Combs inflicted.
“Jane” tells jury about her final interactions with Combs before his arrest
At the end of July 2024, Jane testified she visited Combs in Miami where she said he gave her the drug “liquid molly” and she had “high octane” sex with a male escort named Paul.
She said the final trip to see Combs in Miami occurred in August 2024, when she testified she had sex with a male escort named Don.
She told the jury that she originally planned to visit Combs in New York in September 2024, as Combs was staying at a hotel, on the verge of being arrested by federal authorities.
Their plans were cut short by agents who took him into custody.
“I guess he got arrested,” she told the jury.
She said she hasn’t seen Combs since August 2024 but has met with his defense attorneys as recently as April of this year. She testified that his lawyers were the first people she told about the violent incident in June 2024.
Jane said she has been in therapy for about three months and hired her own lawyer, though Combs still pays her legal bills and rent.
To conclude the direct questioning, a prosecutor asked Jane the pointed question: “Sitting here today, how do you feel about Sean now?”
“I just pray,” Jane testified, “for his continued healing and I pray for peace for him.”
(NEW YORK) — A Mexican Navy sailboat with 277 people on board crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening, killing two people and injuring more than a dozen others who were on board in a dramatic scene along the New York City waterfront, according to authorities.
The crash occurred at 8:30 p.m., resulting in at least 19 people injured, according to the New York Police Department. Four people were left with serious injuries, according to city officials, who gave a press briefing late Saturday evening.
Mayor Eric Adams said early Sunday that two people were dead following the crash. Two others remained in critical condition, he said in a statement posted to social media.
On Sunday, Mexican Sen. Manuel Huerta identified the two sailors killed in the crash as América Yamilet Sánchez and Adal Jair Marcos.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a go-team to New York City to investigate the crash, the federal agency said Sunday. They began arriving that same day. The multidisciplinary investigative team is comprised of experts in nautical operations, marine and bridge engineering and survival factors, the NTSB said.
The captain, who was maneuvering the ship, lost power and mechanical function, and the current caused the ship to go right into the pillar of the bridge, hitting the mast of the ship where there was a couple of sailors,” NYPD Chief Wilson Aramboles said during a press briefing.
The sailors were injured as a result of the mast striking the bridge, according to Aramboles.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which responded to the incident, described the vessel, called the Cuauhtémoc, as a 297-foot-long training ship. The Coast Guard said all three of the tall ship’s masts were damaged as a result of the collision with the bridge.
Numerous cellphone videos from nearby onlookers captured the moment the ship’s masts, decorated with lights, collided with the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge. Members of the ship’s crew were seen dangling from the masts after the collision.
No one fell into the water, according to officials. Officials said they did not believe the bridge sustained any structural damage. The bridge has since been reopened to traffic, Adams said just after midnight, adding that “we can confirm that the bridge sustained no damage” after a preliminary inspection.
“We are praying for everyone on board and their families and are grateful to our first responders who quickly jumped into action, ensuring this accident wasn’t much worse,” he said.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a statement on Sunday evening that the Mexican government is coordinating with local authorities and the U.S.
“The injured are being attended to first and foremost and our solidarity always goes out to a cadet and a sailor who died, and we are going to be attending to them,” Sheinbaum said.
She also said that the cause of the accident is “being reviewed” by the Mexican naval secretary and the relevant authorities.
The ship was disembarking from Pier 17 and heading to Iceland, officials said.
The NTSB was on site immediately after the crash and said it will begin its investigation into the cause, but preliminary information shows it was likely a mechanical issue with the sailboat, according to officials.
ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson, Josh Margolin, Clara McMichael and Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A jury has found Nadine Menendez guilty in her federal bribery trial, following the conviction of her husband, former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, on similar crimes.
Prosecutors argued the two were “partners in crime” while accusing them of accepting cash, gold bars and a luxury car in exchange for political favors.
The defense argued there was no proof Nadine Menendez was involved in the scheme her husband was found guilty of perpetrating.
Jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon before reaching their verdict Monday afternoon.
She will be sentenced in June, the same month her husband is due to report to prison to begin serving an 11-year sentence.
She pleaded not guilty to 15 charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. Several of the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison in January after being convicted on all 16 counts last year in his federal corruption trial, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent.
A jury found him guilty of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes — including gold, cash, a luxury convertible, payments toward Nadine Menendez’s home mortgage and compensation for her no-show job — from three New Jersey businessmen, who have also been convicted.
“Nadine Menendez and Senator Menendez were partners in crime,” acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said in a statement following the verdict in the corruption and foreign influence scheme. “Over the span of five years, Nadine Menendez agreed to accept and accepted all sorts of bribes — including gold bars, cash, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and a no-show job — all in exchange for the Senator’s corrupt official acts. Together, Nadine Menendez and the Senator placed their own interests and greed ahead of the interests of the citizens the Senator was elected to serve.”
“Today’s verdict sends the clear message that the power of government officials may not be put up for sale, and that all those who facilitate corruption will be held accountable for their actions,” he added.
The FBI said it found $70,000 in cash in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box and the rest inside congressional jackets bearing Bob Menendez’s name.
Shortly after the two began dating in 2018, Nadine Menendez introduced Egyptian intelligence and military officials to then-Sen. Bob Menendez, according to federal prosecutors, who alleged those introductions helped establish a corrupt agreement in which they accepted bribes in exchange for her husband’s actions to benefit Egypt.
Witnesses in the trial included Jose Uribe, a New Jersey businessman who pleaded guilty last year and testified for the government. Prosecutors said Uribe paid for Menendez’s $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for helping disrupt a criminal investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office related to Uribe.
Nadine Menendez was supposed to stand trial alongside her husband, but the judge allowed her to stand trial separately to accommodate her breast cancer diagnosis. Her trial was postponed several times while she underwent treatment.
The trial itself was also suspended for several days because she was ill.
On March 17, on the eve of jury selection in Nadine Menendez’s trial, the former senator posted on X that his wife was being “forced by the government to go to trial” despite having recent reconstructive surgery for breast cancer.
“Only the arrogance of the SDNY can be so cruel and inhumane,” Bob Menendez said in the post, which tagged President Donald Trump. “They should let her fully recover.”
Following his sentencing, Bob Menendez called the prosecution a “political witch hunt” and that he hopes Trump “cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
In issuing Bob Menendez’s sentence, Judge Sidney Stein said the former senator would not have to report to prison until June 6 so that he could be available during his wife’s trial.
