18-year-old charged with killing, robbing man during meeting to buy PlayStation 5
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(HOUSTON, Texas) — An 18-year-old was arrested and charged in Houston, Texas, after allegedly killing a man during an meetup to purchase a PlayStation 5.
The Houston Police Department charged Zavion Joshua Pabon, 18, with capital murder and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in the shooting death of 37-year-old Tyler McGinty, who was selling the video game console.
Patrol officers responded on Nov. 24 to a report of a shooting at a hotel room at 3850 Wilcrest Drive, according to the HPD. The victim was later identified as McGinty.
McGinty was taken to an area hospital in critical condition and was pronounced dead on Nov. 28, the HPD said.
Pabon was later identified as a person of interest in the case and was arrested Thursday and charged with McGinty’s murder, according to the HPD.
According to McGinty’s mother, Tammy Smith, her son was selling a PlayStation 5 online for $350 and went to the hotel to meet with a potential buyer.
“He got his head blown off for a PlayStation 5,” Smith told ABC affiliate station KTRK in Houston.
McGinty had sold several items online, his mother said, adding that she never expected something like this to happen.
“You don’t think like that,” Smith said. “Normal people don’t do this. This isn’t a normal person. This is a very, very bad individual.”
Smith said she finds solace in knowing her son was an organ donor and that his heart continues to beat.
“It just makes me happy, and it comforts me in my time of need as a mom going through grief,” Smith said.
Pabon is currently in jail and has been denied bond, according to the Harris County Clerk’s Office. His next hearing is set for Dec. 12.
(NEW YORK) — As Florida struggles to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Milton, and the lingering effects from Helene two weeks earlier, the long-term health consequences could be devastating, studies suggest.
A recent study published in the journal Nature examining nearly 500 tropical cyclones from 1930 to 2015 in the U.S. suggested that big storms lead to thousands of extra deaths after the storms, and leave lasting impacts on public health.
The reasons for the extra deaths aren’t yet clear, but studies speculate that they may be related to socioeconomics, infectious diseases, and exacerbating effects on chronic health conditions like heart disease and mental stress.
“We find that there are elevated rates of mortality that extend far beyond that immediate aftermath of a storm, and it persists for up to 15 years,” Rachel Young, an environmental economist at University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the study, told ABC News.
“We estimate that these indirect deaths that occur through a number of channels over many, many years are equal to between 7,000 to 11,000 deaths per storm, which is 300 times greater than the official death count,” she continued.
That translates to between 55,280 and 88,080 excess deaths every year. The study also found that hurricanes and their aftereffects are estimated to have caused more deaths in the U.S. than all recorded car accidents, infectious diseases and war fatalities combined, totaling between 3.6 million and 5.2 million deaths.
A 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria and noted 1,139 additional deaths reported, compared to the official count of 64 deaths officially attributed to the storm.
Other studies have shown that tropical cyclones can increase hospitalizations by up to 10% for older adults, primarily for respiratory and infectious diseases.
Some studies also suggest that people with lower incomes often have less access to healthcare, and communities of color are more likely to be exposed to harmful pollution, making them more vulnerable to a storm’s immediate effects and aftereffects.
Infants and Black communities are particularly at risk after a storm, the Nature study revealed. About 99% of infant deaths happen more than 21 months later, meaning even babies born after the storm are affected. Additionally, those in Black communities face about three times the risk of death compared to white communities.
Although the Nature study doesn’t specifically explore why these differences exist, researchers are still working to better understand the phenomenon.
“We know that the Southeastern portion of the United States has elevated rates of mortality for infant and young populations compared to the rest of the country,” Young said. “And we find that tropical cyclones – that these states are being impacted by tropical cyclones a lot – [are] a major driver of this sort of difference in the mortality rates between the Southeast and the country.”
Storm surges are another phenomenon that could harm health long after a major a weather event is over. After Hurricane Milton, the water surged as high six feet in some areas of Florida. The risk of waterborne diseases can increase as much as 50% after such surges, which in turn can trigger respiratory illnesses due to mold, allergens and contaminated water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to Young, the public health challenges that last far beyond clean-up and recovery are something that needs to be evaluated and considered when determining how to respond to natural disasters.
“We don’t want to see people having significant delays in getting aid,” Young added. “There’s been a push for a more proactive disaster policy and less just responding in the aftermath of the event.”
Dr. Faizah Shareef is an internal medicine resident physician and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — The contentious debate surrounding New York City’s struggle to address homelessness and mental illness has clouded the memory of who Jordan Neely was.
But to some who cared for him, Neely is remembered for breaking out into dance and singing along with the hits on the radio as a joyous child.
He’s remembered as a teen who struggled to cope with the loss of his best friend — his mother — who was violently murdered.
He’s remembered for entertaining commuters, tourists, and locals alike with moonwalks and side glides that rivaled Michael Jackson on the NYC subways.
Neely’s family had imagined a great future ahead for him: “I said, ‘Jordan, one day you might be famous,” Neely’s great aunt Mildred Mahazu told ABC News. “And he said, ‘Really, Aunt Mildred?'”
But by the age of 30, Neely was homeless and appeared to be experiencing a mental illness crisis when he was killed after a subway passenger named Daniel Penny held him in a six-minute-long chokehold, officials said.
Penny, a former Marine, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. He pleaded not guilty, arguing that Neely had been threatening to passengers on the train. Other witnesses reportedly told police that Neely had been yelling and harassing passengers. Penny’s trial begins on Oct. 21 with jury selection.
Neely’s death sparked citywide protests, demanding answers about city resources after reports showed dozens of interactions between Neely and both police and homeless services in the years leading up to his death.
Two of Neely’s loved ones reflected on the life and death in interviews with ABC News ahead of Penny’s trial.
Neely’s life
Neely’s childhood was rocky, according to Mahazu. He and his mother, Christie Neely, were housing insecure — sometimes living in homeless shelters — and his mother’s tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend filled some days with arguments. But amid the instability, Neely’s relationship with his mother blossomed.
The two were inseparable. Everywhere Christie went, Neely followed: “You see one, you see the other,” Mahazu said.
Before heading off to school each morning, Neely would knock at his mother’s door, wake her up and tell her goodbye.
On April 3, 2007, then-14-year-old Neely tried to go about his routine and say goodbye to his mother before school, but her boyfriend, Shawn Southerland, had blocked him from entering their bedroom, according to local news outlet NJ.com.
It was later discovered that Christie had been violently murdered at the hands of now-convicted-murderer Southerland and he dumped her body in a suitcase on a Bronx parkway, according to local reports.
Mahazu believes the tragedy changed the trajectory of Neely’s life. He was a teen, heartbroken and unable to grasp the loss.
Mahazu said she would catch Neely sitting with a far-off look in his eye, sometimes rocking side to side. She’d ask him what was wrong and recalled him once saying, “I miss my mama. I want my mama.”
“They loved each other dearly. They were crazy about each other,” Mahazu said. “From there on, he started going down, down, down, because he and his mother were extremely close, very close,” Mahazu said.
In the years after her death, Neely found solace in his love of dancing and made the NYC MTA subway system his stage, busking for money as a Michael Jackson impersonator.
New Yorker Moses Harper first remembers meeting Neely in August 2009, when she followed the sound of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits in the halls of the Times Square subway station.
Harper, a Michael Jackson tribute artist herself, remembers finding Neely mid-performance, surrounded by a crowd of tourists clapping to the rhythm and following Neely’s encouragement to dance alongside him.
Neely spotted and called on Harper, who was watching from the back of the crowd: “Show me something. Come on. Don’t be scared,” Harper recalls that he yelled out to her. Armed with a single glove in her back pocket on her way home from her dance studio, she surprised Neely with Jackson moves of her own.
“When it was all over, I gave him his hat back and he hugged me. He’s like, ‘You got to teach me, you got to show me.’ And I did,” said Harper.
It was the beginning of a friendship that would last years: “We wouldn’t just talk about Michael Jackson and dancing. We talked about other things, you know, and I missed that. I missed that. That was my little brother.”
She remembers when Neely first told her about his mother: “What was the one person in the world that really got him. And I had never seen him that sad.”
During those years, it was hard for Mahazu to keep track of him riding through the subway system. But he’d come and visit her often, and she’d fix up a big country dinner, and they’d sit and talk over their meal.
Homelessness and mental illness in New York One day, when Harper was riding the D train into the Bronx, she spotted Neely walking through the train cars. She recalled him looking noticeably homeless and asking for food or money.
She said his face lit up when he saw her, but he kept walking past, which Harper speculates was because of embarrassment. Harper said she stopped him, escorted him off the train, hugged him and asked him what was going on.
She bought him Chinese food, and something to drink, gave him cash and one of the shirts she had layered on.
“I said, ‘Listen to me: When you’re ready to get clean, this is where I am. Come and see me. I want you to come see me,'” she said. “It wasn’t what he needed at the time. And it just wasn’t. It just wasn’t enough. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
A community of Michael Jackson fans and tribute artists in NYC continued to search for Neely over the years after he stopped arriving at events and meetups. But local health officials and law enforcement said they knew him well.
According to police sources, Neely had a documented mental health history and had been previously arrested for several incidents, including assault, disorderly conduct and fare evasion.
The New York Times reported that Neely was on a list of the top 50 sheltered or homeless “high need individuals” to be reached by NYC outreach workers at the time of his death. According to New York Magazine, he bounced around shelters that have been criticized for their poor conditions and had also been hospitalized several times.
The Department of Social Services, the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the NYPD declined to comment further on Neely’s case and why the efforts to contact or address Neely’s needs did not work.
Those who knew Neely have demanded answers.
“If you had had the background that Jordan nearly had, how would you fare in life? Where would you be? Where would your mental state be if you had the same kind of struggles that he had?” Harper said. “How would you be doing right now? Do you think that you would deserve the same? The same treatment that he received on the last day of his life? “
The Adams administration criticized “the system” Jordan went through: “That was a real textbook case of how if you ignore the problem over and over and over again, it could turn out to be a tragic outcome.”
Adams condemned Neely’s killing in the days following the death: “Jordan Neely did not deserve to die,” Adams said in prepared remarks amid growing calls for Penny’s arrest. He was not immediately arrested following Neely’s death.
“Jordan Neely’s life mattered. He was suffering from severe mental illness, but that was not the cause of his death. His death is a tragedy that never should have happened,” the mayor said, referring to Neely as “a Black man like me.”
In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression, according to city officials.
Neely’s death took place following an announcement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that individuals who appear “to be mentally ill” and “a danger to themselves” may be taken into custody involuntarily for psychiatric evaluations if they may be of harm, even if they are not considered to be an imminent threat to the public. The city has yet to release data about the outcomes of these programs and their effectiveness.
However, in a recent Department of Homeless Services announcement, city officials say 7,800 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter and 640 of them have been connected to permanent affordable housing since the city began an intensified approach to homelessness.
“They failed Jordan, they fail so many of the vulnerable members of a vulnerable population,” said Harper, calling for systemic reforms to fix the criminal justice and health care systems.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has recommended resentencing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are each serving two life prison terms without parole.
“We are going to recommend to the court [on Friday] that the life without the possibility of parole be removed and they would be sentenced for murder,” which would be a sentence of 50 years to life, Gascón said at a news conference Thursday. But because of their age — they both were under 26 at the time of the crimes — they would be eligible for parole immediately, he said.
“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.
“The final decision will be made by the judge,” he stressed.
Gascón told ABC News this month that any recommendation for resentencing would take into account the decades that the brothers already served and their behavior in prison. The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, called them model prisoners who worked tirelessly to reform themselves with no expectation they’d be released.
The decades-old case began on Aug. 20, 1989, when Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, used shotguns they bought days earlier.
Prosecutors alleged the brothers killed their wealthy parents for financial gain.
The defense argued the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father.
Their first trials — which captured the nation’s attention with cameras in the courtroom — ended in mistrials.
In 1996, at the end of a second trial — in which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
The sensational case gained new attention this fall with the release of the Netflix drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”
Gascón said this month that his office was evaluating new evidence: allegations from a member of the boy band Menudo who said he was molested by Jose Menendez, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse.
Erik Menendez’s cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but Erik Menendez’s letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to Geragos.
“Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, said. “As their aunt, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered.”
“It’s time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past,” she said.
Behind bars, the siblings “sought to better themselves and serve as a support and inspiration for survivors all over the world,” added Jose Menendez’s niece, Anamaria Baralt. “Their continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.”
The brothers “deserve a chance to heal, and our family deserves a chance to heal with them,” Baralt said.
Despite the massive show of support, one relative — the brothers’ uncle, Milton Andersen — is adamant about keeping them behind bars. He said in a statement he firmly believes his nephews were not sexually assaulted and were motivated by greed.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
