26 people remain unaccounted for in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene
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(ASHEVILLE, N.C.) — Twenty-six people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit North Carolina, weeks after the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene, officials said Monday.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, wreaking havoc across the Southeast from Florida to Virginia. Helene destroyed homes and roads, stranded residents without cellphone service and water, and claimed the lives of nearly 250 people throughout the Southeast.
At least 95 of Helene’s fatalities were in North Carolina, officials said. Gov. Roy Cooper called Helene “the deadliest and most devastating storm” in the state’s history.
“It hurts the very people we are all trying to help,” he said. “It discourages and makes people fearful of signing up for help. It enables scam artists and it hurts the morale of government officials, first responders and soldiers who are on the ground trying to help.”
Former President Donald Trump is set to visit to the hard-hit city of Asheville on Monday to survey damage from the storm.
Cooper said he’s asking the former president to “not share lies or misinformation while he is here.”
Cooper said the White House “responded quickly and positively to our request from FEMA, which has had 1,400 staff on the ground and has registered 206,000 people for individual assistance, and distributed $124 million directly to people who need it.”
“As for long-term recovery, state and local government will be all in, along with the federal government,” Cooper said. “This will take billions of dollars and years of bipartisan focus from everyone working together to make it happen — from new roads and bridges to public building to water supplies to people’s homes.”
FEMA is now launching a “new initiative” to hire community liaisons in North Carolina’s impacted counties, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced Monday.
“We know that so many people have temporarily lost their jobs. We know that others just want to be able to give back, and we want to help keep people in these communities while they recover,” she said. “So these new community liaisons are going to work alongside us at FEMA to make sure that they are the local voice, the trusted voice in their community, and that they can share with us the local considerations and the concerns, so we can include them as part of this recovery. They’re going to be embedded in every county, working directly with county administrators, mayors and community leaders, bridging their concerns with our FEMA staff. And these jobs are available for people to apply right now.”
(NEW YORK) — Meeting an exotic animal at a public attraction can fill us with wonder, but critics say that this can also be dangerous. Dana Garber said she had just such an encounter at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 2021.
She thought their family trip would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get close to the world’s largest living land animals.
“It was my youngest son’s birthday,” she told ABC News. “It seemed like for his birthday, it was a wonderful thing. Something we could do as a family.”
The foundation advertises itself as a sanctuary for retired circus elephants, making them a popular attraction in the state.
“I was under the impression that this was a place that was a good place for these elephants to live out their lives after their circus life,” Garber said.
Their day kicked off with the elephants, along with their handlers, greeting the family by bringing them breakfast, according to Garber. Afterwards, she recalled that they fed the elephants graham crackers over a metal fence.
“We were encouraged to pet them,” she said. “We were encouraged to go up to them.”
She recalled taking photos as she says an elephant grabbed her father-in-law with its trunk. She took more photos as she said her husband distracted the towering animal with graham crackers so it would let go of his father. However, to her horror, she said that the same elephant then grabbed her as she tried to walk past it.
“I can tell you that it felt like an anaconda,” she said, referring to the species of snake that constricts its prey. “I was being squished and held very tightly, after the elephant grabbed me and kind of swung me and thrashed me to the ground.”
Garber isn’t alone in claiming to have been injured by an exotic animal at a public attraction. ABC News reviewed government records, lawsuits and local reports to find at least 150 people over the past decade who have alleged they were injured during exotic animal encounters in the U.S.
After the incident, Garber noted that foundation staffers rushed to her aid, offering her ice. She says no one, including her, realized how seriously she had been injured. However, she said her husband — a radiologist — grew increasingly concerned over time.
“He said I wasn’t speaking coherently,” she said. “And at that point, he decided we have to get her immediately to the emergency room.”
Garber said scans revealed the extent of the damage to her knee.
“It had a lateral and a medial tibial plateau crush injury,” she said. “That along with the head injury.”
She told ABC News it has taken almost two years and multiple surgeries for her to regain function of her leg.
In the process of sorting out some of the medical bills, Garber said she reached out to Endangered Ark Foundation to get in touch with their insurance company. She said the company left a voice message suggesting she fell at their location.
“All kinds of hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” she said. “There is absolutely no way that you can get the kind of injury I sustained just by falling.”
Garber eventually filed a lawsuit, which they settled out of court without any admission of wrongdoing by Endangered Ark Foundation. The company told ABC News that they strongly refute all allegations.
“The family of Mrs. Garber continued to enjoy a full day at the foundation after the alleged incident,” it said in a statement.
Since the day she said she sustained her injuries, Garber claims to have discovered that some of the elephants at the sanctuary aren’t retired at all, and are allegedly still performing under a license for a circus called Carson & Barnes. The founders of that circus opened up the Endangered Ark Foundation in 1993 to serve as a retirement ranch for circus elephants, they say.
The circus didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“I was under the impression that this was a true reserve and that these elephants were retired elephants that we would be seeing,” Garber said.
The Endangered Ark Foundation is one of at least 900 facilities in the U.S. that offers human interactions with wild or exotic animals as part of their business. According to critics, some of these places — known as roadside zoos — are not accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums and many have a bad track record in their treatment of animals.
In 2020, the Netflix series “Tiger King” shined a light on several such locations — particularly the since-shuttered Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, which was founded and owned by Joe Exotic.
In the wake of “Tiger King,” the Big Cat Public Safety Act was enacted in 2022. The law prohibits public contact with big cats and the new breeding of cubs for private possession.
The Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare, investigated Exotic’s Oklahoma roadside zoo years before “Tiger King” made him infamous.
Humane Society CEO Kitty Block said her organization often steps in to investigate these facilities because the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is charged with overseeing them, is either too slow or does too little to act.
The Humane Society highlighted Tiger Safari in Tuttle, Oklahoma, as an example. They first recorded undercover footage of people interacting with tiger cubs there in 2014, after which the USDA filed a complaint and fined the zoo $15,000.
At the time, the founder Bill Meadows told local news outlets that his park was among the cleanest in the state and that the animals were treated well. He claimed the negative publicity came because the Humane Society wanted to cut out private zoo ownership, and that his zoo had corrected the USDA citations.
However, the Humane Society returned in 2021 and discovered that the facility had moved on to promoting interactions with other animals, including otter cubs.
The USDA cited them again for causing “unnecessary discomfort.” In total, the USDA has cited Tiger Safari at least 90 times in the past decade for issues like inadequate vet care and unsanitary conditions.
Tiger Safari did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“The USDA is not even enforcing the meager standards that are there,” Block told ABC News. “They are stretched too thin.”
The USDA told ABC News, in part, that they take enforcement of the federal law seriously, and that they “work with facilities to ensure they comply.”
The agency said that if a facility is consistently unable to achieve compliance, that they are referred for investigation to determine if enforcement actions like “license suspension and revocations” are appropriate.
Advocates said it’s often their responsibility to work to shut such places down. In 2020, Special Memories Zoo in Wisconsin was sued by the Animal Legal Defense Fund for violating the Endangered Species Act. It also alleged that the zoo violated state law by “operating as a public nuisance because it was violating animal cruelty laws.”
A month after the lawsuit was filed, the zoo announced it would close and begin transferring animals to different facilities. However, a fire broke out and allegedly revealed serious neglect of its animals.
Police were dispatched to the property, and footage from their body cameras shows the officers discussing how several of the animals had starved to death before the flames erupted.
Instead of going to roadside zoos to see animals, advocates recommend doing so at locations accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.
The Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C., is one such facility, and it maintains a strict no-touch policy with its Asian elephants. Dana Garber agreed with this approach.
“I could’ve died. I don’t want that to happen to someone else’s family,” she told ABC News. “This is going to be with me forever, I will never be able to fully move on from this.”
ABC News’ Jessica Hopper and Laura Coburn contributed to this report.
(SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) — The Illinois Supreme Court has thrown out former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction for lying about a 2019 hate crime.
Smollett was found guilty in 2021 for faking a racist and homophobic attack and lying to the police. His lawyers said this violated his Fifth Amendment rights because, in 2019, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had already agreed to drop the charges if Smollett paid $10,000 and did community service. A special prosecutor later charged him again, leading to his trial and conviction.
In its decision, filed on Thursday, the court stated they are resolving a “question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants.”
The court stated it did not find that the state could bring a second prosecution against Smollett after the initial charges were dismissed as part of an agreement and the actor performed the terms of the agreement, noting that Illinois case law establishes that it is “fundamentally unfair to allow the prosecution to renege on a deal with a defendant when the defendant has relied on the agreement to his detriment.”
“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust. Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied,” it said.
Among the cases cited in the court’s decision is Bill Cosby’s, whose conviction on sexual assault charges was overturned in 2021 by Pennsylvania’s highest court.
Cosby was sentenced in 2018 to three to 10 years in state prison for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. After hearing Cosby’s appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that his prosecution should never have occurred due to a deal the comedian cut with former Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor, who agreed not to criminally prosecute Cosby if he gave a deposition in a civil case brought against him by Constand.
While citing the Cosby case, the Illinois Supreme Court said the state “reneging on a fully executed agreement” after Smollett forfeited a $10,000 bond “would be arbitrary, unreasonable, fundamentally unfair, and a violation of the defendant’s due process rights.”
The Illinois Supreme Court’s decision cancels earlier rulings by Cook County and appellate courts. The court has now sent the case back to the lower court to officially dismiss the charges.
A jury convicted him in December 2021 on five of six felony counts of disorderly conduct stemming from him filing a false police report and lying to police, who spent more than $130,000 investigating his allegations.
He was sentenced to 150 days in county jail, ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution to the city of Chicago, fined $25,000 and ordered to serve 30 months of felony probation.
The case began after the openly gay actor told police that he was set upon by two men while walking on a street near his Chicago apartment early on Jan. 29, 2019. The attackers allegedly shouted racist and homophobic slurs before hitting him, pouring “an unknown chemical substance” on him and wrapping a rope around his neck.
Chicago police said Smollett’s story of being the victim of an attack began to unravel when investigators tracked down two men, brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who they said were seen in a security video near where Smollett claimed he was assaulted and around the same time it supposedly occurred. The Osundairo brothers told police the actor paid them $3,500 to help him orchestrate and stage the crime.
In March 2019, a grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report. In a stunning move, Foxx’s office dropped the charges later that month despite acknowledging Smollet fabricated the street attack on himself in an attempt to get a pay raise for his role on “Empire.” As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Smollett forfeited 10% of a $100,000 bond and preemptively completed community service prior to the charges being dropped.
The case was reopened in June 2019, when a Cook County judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the decision to dismiss all charges against Smollett. The actor was subsequently indicted again in February 2020 on six felony counts of disorderly conduct for making false reports to police.
Law enforcement officials work at the crime scene outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on September 16, 2024, following Sunday’s attempted assassination on former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was charged on Monday with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number at his initial court appearance. — Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — The man arrested for allegedly trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course is expected to appear before a judge Monday.
Ryan Wesley Routh was ordered to appear in a West Palm Beach federal court for a pre-detention hearing. Routh, 58, has already been charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number for the Sept. 15 incident that took place at Trump International Golf Club.
Trump was playing golf on the course when a Secret Service agent spotted a gun barrel poking out from the tree line near the sixth green, according to investigators.
The agent then fired in the direction of the rifle and saw Routh fleeing the area and entering his Nissan vehicle, according to the criminal complaint.
Routh was allegedly 300 to 500 yards away from the former president and did not fire any shot, according to investigators. Trump was not in Routh’s line of sight, according to the Secret Service.
Witnesses reported the license plate number to authorities, and the suspect was stopped and detained.
In the area of the tree line where the suspect was seen, agents found a digital camera, two bags, including a backpack, and a loaded SKS-style 7.62×39 caliber rifle with a scope, according to the complaint. The serial number on the rifle “was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye,” the complaint states.
Routh did not enter a plea for his initial charges and his arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 30.
The investigation is ongoing and the FBI has been going through Routh’s social media and criminal history and speaking with family members to get more clues.
Routh suggested Iran should feel “free to assassinate Trump” and himself in a self-published book from February 2023.
In the book, which ABC News has unearthed following Sunday’s incident, Routh directed an apology toward Iran, apparently for his previous support for Trump, who withdrew the U.S. in 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.
The suspect was also a booster of a number of causes, including the war in Ukraine, an ABC News analysis of his apparent social media profiles shows.
As authorities try to unravel the motive and details of the case, sources said investigators were looking at whether Routh was frustrated with Trump’s position on Ukraine.
