4-year-old boy dies after accidentally shooting himself in head: ‘Heartbreaking tragedy’
An undated photo of 4-year-old Chosen Morris who died after accidentally shooting himself in Davenport, Florida. Davenport Police Department
(DAVENPORT, Fla.) — A 4-year-old boy named Chosen Morris has died after accidentally shooting himself in the head with a handgun he found in his parents’ car, according to authorities in Florida.
The “tragic accident” unfolded Friday evening as the Morris family prepared to go out for pizza, the Davenport Police Department said.
Chosen’s dad, Robert Morris, was in the bathroom getting ready and his mom, Quinta Morris, was on the computer in her bedroom, police said.
Quinta Morris said she heard a “pop” and assumed her children broke something, according to police. She went to the living room to talk to them, but only her 7-year-old and 11-year-old were there, police said.
Quinta Morris started looking for Chosen and noticed the door to the garage was open, police said. In the garage, she found Chosen in the driver’s seat of the car with a gunshot wound to his head, police said.
Chosen’s parents rushed him to the hospital where he died on Saturday afternoon, police said.
Authorities believe Chosen was excited about the outing and went to the car to wait for his family, and then found the handgun under the driver’s seat, police said. Robert Morris owns the Smith & Wesson M&P .40 caliber gun, police said.
“This is a tragic accident,” Davenport Police Chief Steve Parker said in a statement. “As a father and grandfather, I can’t imagine what Mr. and Mrs. Morris are going through right now. Our prayers are certainly with the Morris family as they endure this heartbreaking tragedy.”
“It is important that gun owners know where their firearms are at all times, and when not in possession of their firearm, ensure it is properly secured with some type of lock, whether it is a trigger lock or stored in a locked cabinet or box,” Parker told ABC News via email.
There were at least 411 unintentional shootings by children in 2023, marking the worst year on record since Everytown’s tracking started in 2015. There were at least 360 unintentional shootings by children last year, causing 136 fatalities, according to Everytown.
There have been at least 21 unintentional shootings so far this year, resulting in 11 deaths, Everytown said.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel David Weiss slammed President Joe Biden’s characterization of his probe as being infected with “raw politics” in his final report detailing his investigations into the president’s son Hunter Biden, which was released Monday by the Justice Department.
Weiss’ work culminated in two separate criminal convictions of Hunter Biden that his father wiped clean with a sweeping pardon in early December, just weeks after Election Day. In July 2024, Weiss’ office secured a guilty verdict from a Delaware jury on three felony gun charges, and months later, on the eve of trial, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to numerous tax crimes, including six felonies.
Weiss’ report — 27 pages in length plus hundreds of pages of public filings — caps a yearslong and politically fraught probe that remained a source of seemingly endless fodder for President Biden’s political opponents in Congress and elsewhere. Weiss’ prosecutors examined Hunter Biden’s years of drug and alcohol abuse, his controversial foreign business dealings, and his procurement of a gun in 2018.
When President Biden issued a pardon for Hunter Biden in early December, he claimed that “raw politics has infected” the investigation into his son.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden wrote.
Weiss, in the report, criticized the president’s assertion.
“Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations,” Weiss wrote.
Weiss defended his work as “thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics.”
“Eight judges across numerous courts have rejected claims that they were the result of selective or vindictive motives,” Weiss wrote. “Calling those rulings into question and injecting partisanship into the independent administration of the law undermines the very foundation of what makes America’s justice system fair and equitable. It erodes public confidence in an institution that essential to preserving the rule of law.”
“These prosecutions were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics. Eight judges across numerous courts have rejected claims that they were the result of selective or vindictive motives,” Weiss wrote.
“Calling those rulings into question and injecting partisanship into the independent administration of the law undermines the very foundation of what makes America’s justice system fair and equitable. It erodes public confidence in an institution that is essential to preserving the rule of law,” wrote Weiss. “These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole.”
Weiss says because of the pardon, he was prevented from making “additional charging decision” regarding Hunter Biden’s ‘s conduct over an 11-year span, suggesting there were other cases he could have pursued against the president’s son. However, because of the pardon, “it would thus be inappropriate to discuss whether additional charges are warranted,” he wrote.
Hunter Biden’s legal team said they were not given an opportunity to read Weiss’ report prior to its release.
Federal investigators began looking into the younger Biden’s taxes in 2018, before his father launched his successful presidential bid. That probe grew to include scrutiny of his overseas business dealings in China, Ukraine, and elsewhere, ABC News previously reported.
In the summer of 2023, prosecutors in Weiss’ office struck a plea deal with Hunter Biden that would have allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of tax-related misdemeanors and avoid prosecution on one felony gun charge.
But that deal fell apart under questioning by a federal judge — and within months, Weiss secured special counsel status from Attorney General Merrick Garland and filed charges in both cases.
Over the course of his probe, Weiss emerged as one of those rare figures in politics who attracted scrutiny from across the political spectrum. Republicans loyal to Donald Trump accused him of failing to bring more serious and substantial charges against the Biden family, while Democrats complained that a GOP-led pressure campaign influenced Weiss’ prosecutorial decisions.
Sentencing in both cases had been scheduled to take place just weeks after President Biden issued his pardon, with Hunter Biden facing the possibility of years in prison and more than a million dollars in fines.
Weiss also brought a third successful case against a former FBI informant who pleaded guilty to spreading lies about the Bidens’ business dealings. Last week a federal judge sentenced the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, to six years in prison.
(NEW YORK) — Sean “Diddy” Combs “abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires” over a longer period of time than first alleged, federal prosecutors in New York said in a superseding indictment filed Thursday.
The indictment contains no new charged crimes but includes additional conduct as part of the alleged racketeering conspiracy, which prosecutors now say spanned a longer time frame of about 20 years, from 2004-2024.
Prosecutors also included additional victims of Combs’ alleged sex trafficking.
The superseding indictment said Combs assaulted not only women but also “his employees, witnesses to his abuse and others.”
That alleged violence was most vivid in a video of Combs kicking, dragging and throwing a vase at his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura inside a Los Angeles hotel. The superseding indictment said Combs, with the assistance of several close associates, paid hotel security staff $100,000 for the footage.
The superseding indictment alleged Combs used force, coercion and threats to cause at least three female victims, identified only by number, “to engage in commercial sex acts.” Something he referred to as “Freak Offs” but others “involved only Combs and a female victim,” according to the indictment.
“Like the Freak Offs, these commercial sex acts involving Combs and a female victim were prearranged, sometimes lasted multiple days, were sometimes electronically recorded by Combs and often involved Combs distributing a variety of controlled substances to the victim, in part to keep the victim obedient and compliant,” the new indictment said.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the new indictment and is scheduled for trial on May 5. Prosecutors said the new indictment should not affect the timing of the trial.
“The latest Indictment contains no new offenses. The prosecution’s theory remains flawed. The government has added the ridiculous theory that two of Mr. Combs’ former girlfriends were not girlfriends at all but were prostitutes. Mr. Combs is as committed as ever to fighting these charges and winning at trial,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said in a statement to ABC News.
Last month Combs abandoned an attempt to be released on bail. Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since he was arrested in September.
Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/ U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Hundreds of families are in mourning after an American Airlines regional jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday night, with both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
No one survived.
Sixty-four people were on board the plane, which departed from Wichita, Kansas. Three soldiers were on the helicopter.
