Ballots damaged after USPS mailbox lit on fire in Phoenix: Police
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(PHOENIX) — A number of ballots were damaged after a United States Post Office collection mailbox was lit on fire in Phoenix, police said.
An unknown individual lit a fire inside a drive-up collection mailbox at a USPS station early Thursday morning, according to the Phoenix Police Department, which said it responded to the scene at 1:20 a.m.
The Phoenix Fire Department was able to open the mailbox and extinguish the fire and the Postal Inspector took possession of the damaged ballots and miscellaneous mail, police said.
Phoenix police initially said that approximately 20 electoral ballots were damaged, though the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office later said it believes the fire only destroyed five ballots while warning that the final figure could still change.
The Phoenix Fire Investigations Task Force — which includes police detectives and fire investigators — is working with U.S. Postal Inspectors on the investigation, police said.
“I’m deeply troubled by the arson attack on a USPS collection box in Phoenix,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement. “This deliberate act of vandalism undermines the integrity of our democratic process.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said in a statement Thursday that officials are “waiting for details from law enforcement” regarding the incident.
Voters who used that mailbox in the last 36 hours can check the status of their ballots here, with an update on successful delivery usually reflected within 72 hours, he said.
The last day for registered voters to request an early ballot for the election in the battleground state is Friday.
“If a voter believes they were impacted by this incident they can learn more about how to make that request at Request.Maricopa.Vote,” Richer said.
Unlike USPS mailboxes, county ballot drop boxes across Arizona have fire suppression equipment, according to Fontes.
“One of the things that we have done in my office, for the drop boxes across the counties, is make sure that they have fire suppression equipment inside of those drop boxes,” Fontes said during a Zoom call with election officials on Thursday. “Unfortunately, the United States Postal Service doesn’t have that.”
Mark Brown, president and CEO of Tuskegee University in Alabama, speaks at a news conference on Nov. 11, 2024, to announce changes being made at the school to tighten security in the wake of a mass shooting that left a teenager dead and 16 other people injured. Image via ABC News.
(TUSKEGEE, Ala.) — The president of Tuskegee University in Alabama announced Monday that the school is being closed to outsiders and that its security chief has been fired in the wake of a mass shooting Sunday on campus.
The barrage of gunfire left a teenager dead and injured 16 other people attending an unsanctioned homecoming event, officials said.
Mark Brown, president and CEO of the historically black university, announced the changes as the investigation of the mass shooting continued Monday and the local sheriff warned those responsible for the shooting that “we are going to find you.”
“The Tuskegee University community is heartbroken by what happened on our campus Sunday morning,” Brown said during a news conference Monday afternoon.
Moving forward, no one will be allowed on the Tuskegee campus without authorized permission or a school-issued identification badge, he said.
“Tuskegee University is no longer an open campus,” Brown said. “Effective immediately, we require IDs for everyone to be displayed to enter campus and worn at all times while on campus.”
Earlier Monday, the university hired a new campus security leader “and relieved our previous security chief of his duties,” Brown said. He did not take questions or elaborate on why the security chief was being replaced.
“Our new campus security chief and ultimately his team will complete a full review, including all implementations of new security procedures,” Brown said.
He said Sunday’s shooting erupted at the event that was “not approved in advance and in no way was sanctioned by the university.”
“Nonetheless, it happened on our campus and we take full responsibility,” Brown said.
The deadly barrage of gunfire erupted between 11:30 p.m. Saturday and midnight Sunday in a parking lot that was packed with people on campus to celebrate the university’s 100th homecoming, Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson told ABC News.
The person killed in the shooting was identified as 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson by the Macon County Coroner’s Office. University officials said Johnson was not a Tuskegee University student.
At least 16 other people, including students, were injured during the shooting, including 12 who suffered gunshot wounds, according to police.
Several videos posted on social media and verified by ABC News captured what sounded like automatic gunfire and showed people diving to the ground or taking cover in vehicles.
Brunson said numerous shots were fired during the incident.
“I would say that with the amount of shots that were fired, there’s going to be multiple shooters,” Brunson said.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, which is leading the investigation, announced Sunday evening that one person had been arrested. Authorities said Jaquez Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, Alabama, was taken into custody while trying to leave the campus after the shooting and faces federal charges of possession of a handgun with a machine gun conversion device.
State police have yet to determine if Myrick was one of the gunmen who opened fire.
No suspect has been charged directly with the shooting.
“I want to say one thing to the people that were shooting: We’re going to make sure we find you. We’re not going to let them disrupt what we do here in Tuskegee.”
Brown said the shooting occurred despite numerous steps the university took before homecoming week to make the festivities safe, including hiring 70 additional law enforcement officers from throughout Alabama and Georgia to help campus and local law enforcement with crowd control.
Brown said efforts were made through social media and advertising to advise visitors that weapons and drugs are prohibited on campus and that visitors could only use clear bags to carry their possessions.
“We did entry checks at all officially sponsored events, some random and some 100% checks,” Brown said. “However, the general campus remained open and we did not, nor could we, have planned for security at an event that was not approved in advance or officially sanctioned by the university.”
Brunson said he and deputies from his department had been at the campus all day and into the night Saturday, assisting university police and the Tuskegee Police Department with security.
He said he was driving back to the school after taking a break when the shooting occurred.
“First of all, it was just chaotic,” Brunson said of what he observed when he arrived at the campus.
He said officers were told an active shooter was held up in a dorm and raced there, running past injured victims, only to learn there was no shooter at the dorm.
“We had to immediately go there. You have to take out the threat first and we found out that it wasn’t that case at that time,” Brunson said. “As we were running to that dorm, trying to get to the active shooter, we saw people hurt, we saw people laying down, people asking for help. But we had to tell them, we’ll be back.”
Brown said he eventually went back to help give first aid to injured victims, including those suffering from gunshot wounds.
“Being there and seeing the faces of the students, seeing the anger and the hurt, being afraid and all of that all into one, it was just a horrific scene,” Brunson said. “I sympathize with the students because you shouldn’t have seen anything like this.”
ABC News’ Faith Abubey and Matt Foster contributed to this report.
An ABC News graphic shows the expected path of a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. — ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Francine is churning in the Gulf and is set to strengthen to a hurricane before making landfall in Louisiana.
Francine is forecast to be a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds by Wednesday. Landfall is forecast in western Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon.
A hurricane watch has been issued in Louisiana, from Cameron to Grand Isle.
A storm surge watch is in effect from Texas to the Mississippi-Alabama border.
By Tuesday morning, Francine’s outer bands will bring heavy rain and gusty winds to Texas. The rough weather will last through the day along the coast, including Houston.
By Wednesday morning, conditions will deteriorate rapidly in southwestern Louisiana. Heavy rain and flooding is expected throughout the day.
About 5 to 8 inches of rain, with locally up to 1 foot, is forecast from Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle through Thursday morning.
(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.
