11-year-old among 3 arrested in string of armed robberies: Seattle police
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
(SEATTLE) — An 11-year-old is among three suspects who’ve been arrested in connection with a string of armed robberies at convenience stores and gas stations in the Seattle area, police said.
The 11-year-old, a 21-year-old and a 19-year-old are accused of four robberies committed within two hours early Friday morning and a fifth robbery Friday night, Seattle police said.
The suspects, who wore face masks and were armed with guns, demanded merchandise and cash before fleeing in stolen cars, police said.
No one was hurt, police said.
After the fifth robbery on Friday night, the suspects led several law enforcement agencies on a car chase that spanned multiple jurisdictions, police said.
The suspects eventually stopped the car and fled on foot, and were then taken into custody without incident, police said Saturday.
The adults were booked into King County Jail and the 11-year-old was taken to the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children & Family Justice Center, police said.
(NEW ORLEANS, LA) — The suspect in a deadly attack on New Year’s revelers in New Orleans has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, according to the FBI.
At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured after a man drove a Ford pickup truck through a crowd on Bourbon Street at a high rate of speed early Wednesday, authorities said.
Authorities are working to determine whether the deceased suspect had any affiliation with terrorist organizations after an ISIS flag was located in the vehicle, the FBI said.
After barreling through the crowd over a three-block stretch, the suspect allegedly got out of the truck wielding an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement officials briefed on the incident told ABC News. Officers returned fire, killing the suspect, police said. At least two police officers were shot and wounded, authorities said.
“This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could,” New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said at a press briefing on Wednesday. “It was not a DUI situation. This is more complex and more serious.”
She said the driver was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
Weapons and a “potential IED” were located in the subject’s vehicle, according to the FBI, which is leading the investigation.
“Other potential IEDs were also located in the French Quarter,” the FBI said in a statement. “The FBI’s Special Agent Bomb Technicians are working with our law enforcement partners to determine if any of these devices are viable and they will work to render those devices safe.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the horrific incident as a “terrorist attack” and the FBI said it was being investigated as an act of terror.
Investigators are probing whether the suspect acted alone or had help from others in planning and executing the attack, Jason Williams, the district attorney of Orleans Parish, which includes New Orleans, told ABC News.
The truck used in the attack appeared to be a Ford F-150 Lightning, an electric vehicle. It appears the truck was rented through the Turo app — a carsharing company, according to Rodrigo Diaz, the owner of the truck.
Diaz told ABC News he rented the truck to an individual through the app and is currently talking to the FBI. He declined further comment.
Diaz’s wife, Dora Diaz, told ABC News that she and her husband are devastated by the incident.
“My husband rents cars through the Turo app. I can’t tell you anything else. I’m here with my kids, and this is devastating,” Dora Diaz said.
(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors leading the case against Bryan Kohberger are pushing back against his attorneys’ claims that investigators improperly obtained potentially key evidence — and are asking the judge to deny requests to exclude that evidence from trial.
In a series of highly-technical filings posted late Thursday, prosecutors said that the searches of Kohberger’s person and belongings, including his car, phone records, Apple accounts and homes, were appropriate. They noted the “burden of proof is on the defendant to show that the search was invalid.”
Kohberger, a former criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, in connection with the fatal stabbing of four University of Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20 — in an off-campus house in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf. The trial is scheduled for August 2025.
Lawyers for Kohberger have accused investigators of an overbroad attempt to build their case, arguing their search warrants cast too wide a net. But prosecutors, responding on Thursday to the defense’s lengthy series of motions posted Nov. 15, contend that taken together with other elements of the case, their probe for evidence was “sufficiently particular and valid” and “considering the information available” at the time, the Moscow detective seeking the information “could not reasonably narrow the scope further.”
The “warrant must allow the searcher to reasonably ascertain and identify the things which are authorized to be seized,” wrote Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ashley Jennings, citing legal precedent. She added, “broad language may be permissible where the warrant constrains the search to evidence of a specific crime.”
“The rationale is that ‘criminals don’t advertise where they keep evidence,'” prosecutors wrote. And since the potential evidence they sought “could be located in multiple formats and areas,” particularly electronic data, prosecutors here said, a wide enough investigative aperture is necessary.
“Applied to electronic devices ‘criminals can — and often do — hide, mislabel, or manipulate files to conceal criminal activity [such that] a broad, expansive search of the [device] may be required,'” prosecutors wrote, again citing legal precedent.
Jennings said the “seizure of items was limited to” the crime Kohberger is accused of committing — the killings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in their off-campus home.
And though Kohberger has a right to privacy, that right does not shield criminal conduct, prosecutors said. In fact, it is because he had that right that they sought, and obtained, search warrants, they said.
Though the man accused of stabbing to death four college students in Nov. 2022 indeed “had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his vehicle located at his parents’ residence,” there was “substantial probable cause” to search it, prosecutors said. And Kohberger also had a “privacy interest” in his AT&T account and phone records — and “as such, the State sought and was granted a search warrant to review those records.”
The Thursday filings were accompanied by a series of requests to seal corresponding exhibits meant to bolster prosecutors’ argument.
Prosecutors didn’t include in Thursday’s filings an extensive address of Kohberger’s challenge to DNA evidence, or the search of his Amazon account.
Judge Steven Hippler, who is now overseeing the case in Boise, has not yet scheduled a public hearing on the matter.
(WILMINGTON, Del.) — Two days after President Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon to his son Hunter Biden, the younger Biden’s federal gun case in Delaware was terminated Tuesday by the judge overseeing the case.
“In the absence of binding precedent” for a case that had yet to reach sentencing, “all proceedings in this case are hereby terminated,” U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika wrote in a brief docket entry Tuesday.
In a court filing Monday, prosecutors had urged Noreika to terminate the case instead of dismissing the indictment, in order to allow the record of the case to continue to exist.
Prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’ office, who brought both the gun case and separate tax-related charges against Hunter Biden, on Monday made a similar filing to the federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax case in California.
President Biden on Sunday issued a blanket pardoned to his son, who earlier this year was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax-related charges, and was scheduled to be sentenced in both cases later this month.
