(LOS ANGELES) — Police arrested an 18-year-old suspect in a shooting Monday evening at a Northern California library, which left two dead and one injured, according to the Chico Police Department.
Shots were fired soon after 5 p.m. at the Chico branch of the Butte County Library in Chico, California. Law enforcement took the suspect into custody as he fled the library out the back, Chico Police Chief Billy Aldridge said in a news conference on Monday.
The suspect, identified as Bradley Scott Sayer, was arrested and is currently being held in the Butte County Jail on two counts of murder, according to Chico police.
Officers said the suspect wanted a Columbine massacre-style shooting and did not know the victims.
On April 20, 1999, two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, gunning down 12 of their fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.
According to law enforcement officials, Sayer was wearing clothing like that of Columbine killer Eric Harris. And Sayer, the officials tentatively believe, is associated with an online fandom group of mass killers that has been linked to previous shootings. The officials believe he acted alone over his Columbine obsession.
“The incident this evening was obviously very sad, traumatic for a lot of people,” Aldridge said in the news conference. “Very traumatic for our community.”
Police are waiting to notify the victims’ families before releasing their names. In addition to the two dead, a child was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, Aldridge said.
All branches of the Butte County Library are closed on Tuesday.
Law enforcement said they are continuing to investigate the shooting, and there is no current danger to the public. They believe the shooter acted alone. The Chico Police Department is collaborating with the Butte County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI in the investigation, which remains ongoing.
ABC News’ Megan Fahrney contributed to this report.
Fire department ambulance responds to the scene of an emergency.(MattGush/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A mother and her 2-year-old daughter were killed Sunday after being struck by lightning in a neighborhood north of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, according to officials.
Margate Police Department and Margate Fire Rescue responded to a 911 call at about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday that two individuals had been struck by lightning and were found lying on the sidewalk in Margate, Florida, according to a Margate Police Department press release.
It appeared as though the woman and her daughter had just exited their car when lightning hit them, sending their bodies to the ground, witness Prince Moody told ABC Miami.
The mother, identified as 31-year-old Kenya Glasgow, was rushed to North Broward Medical Center in Deerfield Beach, and her daughter to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, accompanied by a police escort, according to police.
Both victims were pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospitals, police said.
First responders and medical personnel immediately provided CPR and other life-saving efforts upon arriving at the scene, according to police.
Moody said he rushed outside to help after seeing an orange glow through his window and being told by his son that a lady had been hit.
“Very traumatic scene,” Moody said. “I offered aid as much as I could, calmed the family down, and I started praying. I called 911 immediately.”
It was very emotional to see two lifeless bodies on the ground, Moody said.
The Margate Police Department is investigating the incident.
Police have not released any additional details at this time.
Leon Black, chairman and chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management LLC, attends the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., April 27, 2015. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Private equity billionaire Leon Black is set to face questions Friday from the House Oversight Committee regarding his decades-long relationship and sprawling financial entanglements with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest in a series of rich and powerful people questioned about their relationship with Epstein as part of the House Oversight panel’s ongoing probe, Black maintained a social relationship with Epstein since the mid-1990s and eventually paid him more than $170 million for “tax and estate planning advice,” according to the Senate Finance Committee.
Black has denied wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, though his financial payments to Epstein served as a lifeline to the convicted sex offender in the years after Epstein’s 2008 prison sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution. Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has argued that Black has so far failed to provide a credible explanation for the payments and may have been “extorted” by Epstein.
“Leon Black was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s primary sources of income, flooding him with cash at a time when he was already a registered sex offender. Black has not yet offered a compelling explanation regarding the origination and execution of Epstein’s extraordinary compensation scheme for alleged tax advice,” Wyden wrote in a letter to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month. The Senate Finance Committee is leading its own investigation of Epstein’s finances.
Black has long been scrutinized over his relationship with the disgraced financier — describing it as a “horrible mistake” — and was forced out of his firm Apollo Global Management following an external investigation that revealed payments to Epstein totaling at least $158 million.
“Knowing all that I have learned in the past two years about Epstein’s reprehensible and despicable conduct, I deeply regret having had any involvement with him,” Black said during a 2020 Apollo earnings call. “With the benefit of hindsight, working with him was a horrible mistake on my part. I am not seeking to excuse that decision, but I do believe it may be helpful to convey some relevant facts.”
While the investigation concluded that Black and others were aware of Epstein’s 2008 conviction, a report summarizing its findings said that Black was not “involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities at any time” or aware of the “scope and details” of Epstein’s sex trafficking. Black has never been charged with a crime.
“When Black first retained Epstein, he believed that Epstein had served his time for the originally charged offenses and believed that it was not inappropriate to give Epstein a second chance, as many other prominent figures in business, science, politics and academia had done,” the report said.
The release of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files earlier this year cast more scrutiny on Black, whose name appears in the files more than 8,000 times. Epstein at one point appeared to serve as a middleman to pay $100,000 to a woman with whom Black allegedly had an affair, according to emails included in the files, and routinely served as a fixer for issues involving his finances.
“Leon, as you are well aware, there is little I won’t do for you or at least try to do as a friend, and a great deal that I have already done (both known and some things that will need to remain unknown),” Epstein wrote to Black in a 2014 email. In another email in 2017, Epstein described his relationship with Black as “saving you from yourself.”
In a statement to ABC News, Black’s attorney Susan Estrich pointed to the external investigation conducted for Apollo that found Black “had no awareness of the criminal activities that led to Epstein’s arrest in 2019” and noted that Black has called for an independent investigation of his relationship with Epstein.
Wyden of the Senate Finance Committee has called on the House Oversight members to scrutinize the $170 million that Black paid Epstein between 2012 and 2017 for purported tax and estate planning. According to Wyden, those payments are sixty times more than what Epstein paid his other tax and estate professionals during the same timeframe.
“Black is a well-advised businessman with access to sophisticated attorneys, yet it appears Epstein was able to shake him down for money that he wasn’t legally owed. This suggests that Epstein may have extorted Black or performed other unseemly tasks on his behalf,” Wyden wrote.
According to the 2021 external report, Epstein was paid proportionally to the amount of money he saved Black and that Epstein “provided advice that conferred more than $1 billion and as much as $2 billion or more in value to Black”; however, the report also acknowledged that Epstein’s advice was often not useful and that he was “generally a disruptive and caustic force.”
The external report said investigators found “no evidence suggesting that Black ever compensated Epstein for any service other than Epstein’s legitimate advice on trust and estate planning” and other issues.
Wyden urged the House Oversight Committee to question Black about the basis for those payments and argued he has seen “no proof” that Epstein’s compensation was tied to a percentage of the Black’s estate tax liability he saved.
“To date, I do not believe Black has provided a credible explanation as to why he paid Epstein amounts that vastly exceeded those paid to other professional advisors involved in his tax and estate planning,” he said.
Black also paid a $62.5 million settlement to the United States Virgin Islands in 2023 after acknowledging that Epstein used the money to “partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands,” where Epstein owned a private island. Wyden urged the House Oversight panel to press Black about whether he was ever under criminal investigation and if that money was used to fund sex trafficking.
Attorneys for Black have pushed back against Wyden’s accusations, accusing him of harassment and saying that the billionaire has cooperated “voluntarily and without compulsion.”
“We are aware of no other private citizen subjected to more written requests from you over the same period,” Black’s attorneys wrote in an April 2026 letter to Wyden. “Your continued attempts to invade into matters pertaining to Mr. Black’s personal life — without the support of any legitimate legislative purpose — appear targeted to unfairly harass Mr. Black in a manner that completely disregards the proper scope of Congress’s investigative powers.”
University Of Washington Campus, The Quad With Flowering Cherry Trees In Spring (Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(SEATTLE)– The transgender University of Washington student who was killed in a student housing building suffered over 40 stab wounds to the head, neck, shoulder, arms and hands, according to the probable cause statement.
Juniper Blessing, 19, was found covered in blood in the laundry room of the Nordheim Court building on Sunday night, according to court documents.
The suspect, 31-year-old Christopher Leahy, surrendered to police on Wednesday and was booked for first-degree murder, documents said.
“Our family has been shattered,” Blessing’s family said in a statement released by the Human Rights Alliance. “Juniper was simply the most amazing human being we have ever known — highly intelligent, extremely talented, and deeply sensitive to the needs of others. Juniper’s loss not only devastates us but diminishes the world.”
“A gifted singer with a transcendent voice, Juniper was admitted to New Mexico School for the Arts, where they studied from 2020 until 2024,” the family said. “Weather was a love of Juniper’s since early childhood, and at the University of Washington they intended to study Atmospheric Science while continuing to study voice and pursuing minors in Music and Philosophy. They loved Seattle and Santa Fe, where they worked as an usher during summers at the Santa Fe Opera.”
“Juniper was courageously living their life as who they were until it was cut tragically short,” the family said.
According to court documents, another Nordeim Court resident told police that shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday, a man followed her when she used her card to access the building and laundry room.
She said the man told her he was waiting for his laundry. Surveillance video shows them in the laundry room and the suspect “appears to be visually searching the room for cameras,” court documents said, before he left the room.
A video from 10 p.m. shows Blessing in the laundry room, and the suspect “comes back into the laundry room and stares directly into the camera,” documents said.
The suspect “appears to follow the path of the cord with his eyes and head from the camera around the wall above the doorway,” documents said. “He then turns to exit the laundry room, something clatters to the ground and he pauses. He continues out of the laundry room at 10:00:27 p.m.”
“Blessing is seen cleaning the lint tray, appears to add more time to the dryer, then stands up and deposits the lint into the garbage at the end of the bank of dryers. … The video stops at 10:01:01 p.m.,” documents said.
Seattle police released the images of the suspect in the laundry room, documents said. A man named Patrick Leahy contacted police saying the suspect in the image was “without a doubt” his brother, Christopher Leahy, according to the documents, and a friend also reached out to police identifying Christopher Leahy as the man in the photo.
Christopher Leahy’s attorney called the Bellevue Police Department on Wednesday night to say he was turning himself in, documents said. Christopher Leahy came to the department with his parents and was taken into custody, the documents said.
Christopher Leahy made his first court appearance on Thursday and is due back in court on Monday, according to ABC Seattle affiliate KOMO. He has not entered a plea.
