At least 2 killed, 6 injured in Orlando Halloween night shooting
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(ORLANDO, Fla.) — At least two people are dead and six others have been injured in a Halloween night shooting in downtown Orlando, police said.
Police in Orlando, Florida, first received reports of a shooting at around 1 a.m. and immediately responded to the scene, the Orland Police said in an early morning press conference on Friday morning.
Authorities confirmed that at least two people were killed and six others have been injured in the shooting and that a 17-year-old suspect was taken into custody.
The victims were taken to hospital and range in age from 19 to 39, according to the Orlando Police Department.
Authorities also said there were approximately 100 officers working the downtown area at the time of the shooting.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WINDER, Ga.) — When a gunman opened fire outside Stephanie Reyna’s classroom at Apalachee High School in Georgia, killing math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, she said her classmates jumped into action, shutting and barricading their door.
The chaos began when Reyna, 17, said her class “heard banging on the lockers right outside of the classroom door.”
Brayan Maldonado, also 17, said it sounded like someone had been pushed up against a locker.
“My teacher, Coach Aspinwall, he opened the door, and he ran outside to see what’s going on,” Reyna told ABC News.
“We heard some popping sounds,” Reyna said. “We just stopped, we froze, we didn’t know what was going on. … So we all ran to the back of the classroom. We hid in the corner.”
Reyna said she and her 17 classmates were lying on the ground for several minutes when they heard more popping sounds.
“That’s when we realized that our classroom door was still open,” Reyna said.
Maldonado said he started to hear “a little bit of breathing” and “a little bit of groaning.”
The students then saw Aspinwall on the ground, they said.
“He was just there, in the doorway, just laying there,” Reyna said. “He was trying to crawl back to us … we just think he was trying to get to us.”
“A couple minutes passed by. He’s taking his breaths,” Maldonado said. “And then we hear his final breaths.”
“Then one of my classmates got the courage to stand up from his position of hiding” and drag Aspinwall’s body into their classroom, Maldonado said.
“That encouraged me to stand up,” Maldonado said.
He said he and his classmates closed the door and barricaded it with cabinets, desks and chairs.
“We were just putting anything we possibly could to make sure [the shooter] couldn’t get in,” Maldonado said.
Once the door was secured, Reyna and Maldonado said they tried to console their classmates.
“Some were hyperventilating, some were crying,” Maldonado said. “I was really trying to calm everyone down. Once everyone was calm, I got calm and all the feelings kicked in.”
Reyna said first responders evacuated the students to another classroom before they joined the rest of the school at the football field.
Aspinwall, fellow teacher Christina Irimie, and two students were killed in Wednesday morning’s shooting in Winder. Nine others were injured.
The 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, a student at the school, surrendered at the scene to the school resource officers and was taken into custody, authorities said.
Gray is charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said. A motive is not known.
(GEORGIA) — When 14-year-old Colt Gray rode the bus to his Georgia high school on the morning of Sept. 4, he had a long gun hidden in a poster board that looked like a school project, surveillance video showed, a state agent said in court Wednesday.
Colt Gray is accused of killing two students and two teachers, and injuring several others, at Apalachee High School that day.
A George Bureau of Investigation (GBI) agent who had viewed surveillance footage from the bus and the school appeared in a Barrow County courtroom on Wednesday to describe what the videos captured during a probable cause hearing in the case against Colt Gray’s father, Colin Gray.
On the morning of the shooting, Colt Gray left a notebook on his desk in math class, went to the bathroom with his backpack and came out of the bathroom with gloves on and the poster board in front of him, appearing to hide the AR-15-style rifle, the GBI agent said.
Colt Gray knocked on the door of his math class to go back in, and a classmate went to open the door, the agent said. But the classmate saw Colt Gray through the door window, backed up, put her hand over her mouth and told the teacher, the agent said. The teacher went to the door window, told students to get into the corner and initiated a lockdown, the agent said.
The 14-year-old suspect allegedly entered another classroom and started shooting, the agent said. About six or seven people were shot during the approximately seven seconds the gunman was inside the room.
Colt Gray then ran back toward the bathrooms, and at 10:22 a.m. he allegedly aimed his rifle at a teacher and fired multiple shots, the agent said. The teen then turned toward another hallway and shot two coaches, the agent said. A student then came out of a bathroom and was shot and killed.
Two school resource officers entered the hallway and ordered the 14-year-old to put his rifle down and surrender, the agent said.
The notebook Colt Gray allegedly left on his desk contained a plan on how to execute the shooting, an estimated possible casualty count and sketches of his classroom, according to the agent.
Colt Gray was arrested on murder charges while Colin Gray is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Colin Gray is accused of knowingly allowing his son to possess the weapon used in the shooting, according to the GBI.
The Crew of the next SpaceX private astronaut flight called Polaris Dawn, (Left to Right) Anna Menon, who works to develop astronaut operations for SpaceX, Scott Poteet, who served as the mission director of the Inspiration4 mission SpaceX, Jared Isaacman, who is financing the mission and Sarah Gillis, lead space operations engineer, SpaceX. Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington
(MERRITT ISLAND, Fla.) — Embarking on a new chapter of private space exploration, the Polaris Dawn mission is poised to make history this week by launching four private citizens into ultrahigh orbit and attempting the first civilian spacewalk.
Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and in collaboration with SpaceX, the crew aims to reach as far as 870 miles above Earth, the highest altitude of any human spaceflight mission in more than a half-century since the Apollo program.
SpaceX announced Monday that the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit could launch as early as Wednesday at 3:38 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was delayed 24 hours from the planned pre-dawn Tuesday blast-off.
The delay is due to a ground-side helium leak on the Quick Disconnect umbilical, SpaceX said.
Umbilical systems employ fluid connectors known as quick disconnects to transfer fluids into a vehicle, according to NASA.
“Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew continues to be ready for their multi-day mission to low-Earth orbit,” the company added.
There are two additional launch opportunities within the four-hour window on Wednesday at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m. ET. If needed, backup opportunities are available on Thursday, Aug. 29 at the same times, according to SpaceX.
Isaacman, the CEO of the payment-processing company Shift4, will be joined by former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
During the historic mission, which is set to span five days under normal conditions, two of the crew members will exit the spacecraft in the first commercial spacewalk at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.
During a press briefing last week, Isaacman shared details on the ambitious mission, which will see all four crew members exposed to the vacuum of space due to the absence of an airlock on the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The spacewalk will also serve as a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity spacesuits, an evolution of the intravehicular activity suit.
This new design includes a heads-up display, helmet camera and enhanced joint mobility. It also features thermal insulation, solar protection and a suspension system that allows you to pressurize the suit, put on a harness and actually go through operations as if you are weightless.
The Dragon spacecraft has undergone significant modifications, including upgrades to the life support systems to supply more oxygen during spacewalks, according to the Polaris Program. Environmental sensing has been improved, and a new nitrogen repressurization system has been installed.
The Polaris Dawn mission will be Isaacman’s second journey to space.
In 2021, he funded his first mission to orbit Earth. The project was billed as a childhood cancer fundraiser, garnering $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and marked the first all-civilian mission to orbit.
Looking to the future, Isaacman believes the SpaceX vehicles could unlock a new frontier in commercial space travel.
“It could very well be the 737 for human space flight someday,” he said of the company’s Starship vehicle. “But it’ll certainly be the vehicle that will return humans to the moon and then on to Mars and beyond.”
