Truck crash kills 4, injures 17 on Michigan interstate
Footage of a vehicle explosion taken by a driver on I-96 in Webberville, Mich., Nov. 2, 2024. (Simon Schuster)
(LANSING, MI) — A semitractor-trailer crashed into backed-up traffic on a Michigan interstate, killing four people and injuring 17 others just before midnight on Saturday, police said.
Troopers with the Michigan State Police had been stationed on Interstate 96, controlling traffic as workers installed power lines across the road, the department said in a statement.
Prior to the crash, “numerous” cars had come to a halt in the expressway’s westbound lane near the intersection with M-52, police said. The work, which was being done by Consumers Energy, required the road to be completely shut down for a short period, police.
Those vehicles had just begun moving again when the truck crashed into them, police said.
“It appears the driver of the semi-truck did not see the backup and could not stop his vehicle in time,” police said. “The semi-truck was in the left lane of travel and struck numerous vehicles.”
The truck and more than a dozen other vehicles caught fire after the crash, police said.
“Seventeen vehicle occupants have been transported to UM Sparrow Hospital and McLaren Hospital in Lansing for serious injuries,” police said.
(ERWIN, Tenn.) — At least 54 people were trapped on the roof of a hospital in Tennessee on Friday after floodwaters due to Hurricane Helene quickly surrounded the medical center.
Everyone was rescued safely, Sen. Bill Hagerty said in a statement.
Unicoi County Hospital — located in the northeastern part of the state on the border with North Carolina — took on so much flooding that those inside could no longer be safely evacuated and had to relocate to the roof.
In addition to the people trapped on the roof, seven people were in rescue boats. The National Guard and the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) are currently engaged in “a dangerous rescue operation,” according to Ballad Health, a health care company that runs a chain of hospitals.
“I don’t think very many people have seen something like this before,” Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine said while speaking at Unicoi County High School. “The most important thing is the safety of our employees and patients. Thank God, thanks to the great work of Tennessee and Virginia partnering to help us get this rescue underway, they’re all safe.”
Rep. Diana Harshbarger posted on the social platform X on Friday afternoon that helicopters had arrived to help evacuate people off the roof.
Ballad Health said in a statement on X on Friday that it received notice a little after 9:30 a.m. ET from the Unicoi County Emergency Management Agency that the hospital needed to be evacuated to the water from a nearby river rising quickly.
Although ambulances were quick to help evacuate patients, the hospital became flooded so quickly that the ambulances could not safely approach the hospital.
TEMA coordinated with local emergency management agencies so boats could be deployed to assist with the evacuation. However, water began flooding the hospital building causing an “extremely dangerous and impassable” that prevented boats from reaching the hospital.
What’s more, high winds had previously prevented helicopters from evacuating the hospital.
“We ask everyone to please pray for the people at Unicoi County Hospital, the first responders on-scene, the military leaders who are actively working to help, and our state leaders,” Ballad Health said in a statement. “Ballad Health appreciates the support and effort of Mayors Garland Evely, Patty Woodby and Joe Grandy, each of whom has offered assistance and have maintained ongoing contact with Ballad Health leadership.”
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul and Mike Noble contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory is already beginning to elicit requests from his supporters charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol for delays in their cases due to the potential they could be pardoned after Trump’s inauguration.
Attorneys for Christopher Carnell, a 21-year-old defendant from North Carolina who was found guilty earlier this year of felony and misdemeanor charges over his participation in the Capitol assault, requested Wednesday morning that D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell delay a status hearing in his case scheduled for later this week, citing Trump’s past promises to pardon his supporters.
“Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump made multiple clemency promises to the January 6 defendants, particularly to those who were nonviolent participants,” their filing said. “Mr. Carnell, who was an 18 year old nonviolent entrant into the Capitol on January 6, is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”
Judge Howell denied Carnell’s request to delay his status hearing in an order on Wednesday.
The filing had stated that Carnell’s attorneys reached out to Trump’s office to get further information “regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,500 people across the country in the last four years over their roles in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, part of what the Justice Department has described as one of the largest criminal investigations in its history.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office has continued to arrest individuals on a near-daily basis, many of whom have been charged with carrying out violent assaults on police protecting the building.
In addition to Trump’s promises to pardon many of those who participated in the attack, it’s widely expected the ongoing criminal investigation will be shuttered once Trump takes office.
(DELPHI, Ind.) — Delphi, Indiana, double murder suspect Richard Allen self-reported being at the crime scene in the days after the killings, but the tip sheet “fell in the cracks,” leaving him “hiding in plain sight” in the small town for years, the sheriff told the jury at Allen’s trial.
Best friends Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, were walking along a Delphi hiking trail when they were killed on the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2017. Allen, a Delphi resident, was arrested in October 2022 and has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Kathy Shank, a volunteer file clerk who arranged boxes of information and tips in the case, testified Thursday that on Sept. 21, 2022 — weeks before Allen’s arrest — she came across a file folder that was not with the others she was managing.
The sheet said that on Feb. 16, 2017 — three days after the murders — a person listed as “Richard Allen Whiteman” self-reported being on the trails between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on the day of the crime. According to Shank, the self-reporter listed seeing three girls.
Shank testified that she wrote a lead sheet and changed the name to Richard Allen. Allen lived on Whiteman Drive, so she said she believed the names were transposed and it was misfiled.
She said she notified the sheriff after finding Allen’s tip sheet.
Allen’s defense attorney asked Shank, “There was no other tip, to your knowledge, that involved Richard Allen?” Shank replied, “To my knowledge, no.”
Carroll County Sheriff Tony Liggett acknowledged on the stand that Allen was never a suspect from 2017 to 2022 and said the tip sheet generated about him was marked “clear.” When pressed by Allen’s defense on how that could have happened, Liggett responded, Allen “got lost” and “fell in the cracks.”
The sheriff also conceded that Allen came forward on his own and never left town. “He was hiding in plain sight,” Liggett said to defense attorney Andrew Baldwin.
When Allen was arrested, Liggett was running for sheriff, which Allen’s attorneys argued was good timing for his campaign. Liggett denied the two were linked.
“This was about the murders of two little girls,” he said.Indiana State Police investigator Jerry Holeman testified about his conversation with Allen during the search of Allen’s home in the fall of 2022.
Holeman said, as the two sat in his police car, he told Allen that once the search was done he could file a claim for any damage to his house.
Holeman claimed that Allen replied, “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
Holeman said he didn’t record that conversation even though Allen was considered a suspect at the time. Defense attorneys pushed back on Holeman’s story, saying the jury could only take his word for it.
Indiana State Police trooper David Vido, who helped administer the search warrant at Allen’s home, testified there was no physical evidence in Allen’s car or on his jacket that linked him to the crime scene.
Prosecutors said police analysis of Allen’s gun determined that the .40-caliber unspent round discovered by the girls’ bodies was cycled through Allen’s gun.
