Bomb cyclone impacts West Coast, 1 dead in Washington state
ABC News
One person was killed and two were injured by falling trees in Washington state as a powerful storm moved into the Pacific Northwest.
In Lynwood, a woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell on a homeless encampment Tuesday night. In Puget Sound, two were transported to hospitals when a tree fell on a trailer, officials said.
The storm exploded into a bomb cyclone off the coast, near Vancouver Island, Canada, where winds gusted near 101 mph.
A bomb cyclone means the pressure in the center of the storm drops 24 millibars within 24 hours.
Wind gusts reached 50 to 84 mph from Northern California to Washington.
As the storm sits and spins over the ocean this week, it will help to push a plume of Pacific moisture called an atmospheric river into Oregon and Northern California.
Alerts are in effect through Friday for flooding, snow, avalanches and high winds.
Some places could see more than 1 foot of rain this week. A flood watch has been issued in Northern California.
(NEW YORK) — A New York judge on Monday vacated the conviction and dismissed the case against Jon-Adrian Velazquez, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a murder prosecutors now say he did not commit.
“Who am I? I’m a very lucky man. I’m lucky that so many people believed in me,” Velazquez, 48, who was formally released in 2021, said outside of the court.
According to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg’s office, two individuals committed a robbery of a gambling parlor on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem on Jan. 27, 1998. During the robbery, retired police detective Albert Ward pulled a gun and a struggle ensued with one of the armed robbers, who identified himself as “Tee.”
“Tee” shot and killed Ward, according to Bragg’s office.
The then-22-year-old Velazquez was arrested, along with Derry Daniels, and convicted for Ward’s murder at trial in 1999. He served more than 23 years in prison until his sentence was commuted in 2021. On Sept. 30, 1999, over 18 months after he was arrested, Daniels pleaded guilty to a single count of robbery in the second degree and was sentenced to 12 years in prison as a repeat felon, according to his attorneys. Daniels was released in 2008.
In 2022, the city’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit compared Velazquez’s DNA to a betting slip that “Tee” handled before shooting Ward. Velazquez’s DNA was not found on the slip. This type of DNA comparison was not available at the time of Velazquez’s trial in 1999.
According to Bragg’s office, the reinvestigation into Ward’s murder found that the DNA testing results could have impacted the jury’s consideration of other trial evidence, including Velazquez’s alibi, the lack of evidence connecting him to the crime and inconsistent witness descriptions.
Velazquez was granted clemency in 2021 by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and spoke with President Joe Biden as an activist for criminal justice reform.
His case is featured in the 2023 movie, “Sing Sing,” named for the prison, about a wrongfully imprisoned man who “finds purpose by acting in a theatre group with other incarcerated men,” according to A24.
“JJ Velazquez has lived in the shadow of his conviction for more than 25 years, and I hope that today brings with it a new chapter for him,” Bragg said in a statement. The reinvestigation was conducted by the Office’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit and defense counsel for Velazquez.
The creation of the Post-Conviction Justice Unit in 2022 has led to 10 vacated convictions, Bragg said.
“These convictions have deep consequences for individuals and their loved ones, compromise public safety and undermine trust in the criminal justice system, which is why this work is of the utmost importance to me,” Bragg said.
(NEW YORK) — Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams was executed by lethal injection Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a former newspaper reporter who was found brutally stabbed in her suburban St. Louis home.
Williams, 55, died after 6:00 p.m. CDT at a Missouri state prison in Bonne Terre in Francois County, approximately 60 miles southwest of St. Louis, Williams’ lawyer confirmed to ABC News.
The capital punishment case saw national attention with Williams maintaining his innocence, the victim’s family opposing the execution and his prosecution submitting motions for appeals at every level.
“Marcellus Williams should be alive today. There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice,” Wesley Bell, chief prosecutor for St. Louis County, said in a statement after the execution.
The United States Supreme Court denied two separate appeals to spare Williams’ life on Tuesday an hour ahead of his execution, despite the objection of Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Williams’ attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell released a statement after SCOTUS’ decision, saying, “Tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams.”
“As dark as today is, we owe it to Khaliifah to build a brighter future. We are thankful to the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney, for his commitment to truth and justice and all he did to try to prevent this unspeakable wrong. And for the millions of people who signed petitions, made calls, and shared Khaliifah’s story,” Bushnell said.
On Monday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and the state’s Supreme Court rejected a bid to halt the execution.
In a statement to ABC News, Parson said, “No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims.”
“At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson added.
Williams was charged with first-degree murder in 1999 for the killing of Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was found guilty in 2001.
Prosecutors in Williams’ original trial alleged he broke into Gayle’s home in August 1998 and stabbed her 43 times with a large butcher knife, according to court documents. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen after the attack.
The kitchen knife used in the killing was left lodged in Gayle’s body, according to court documents. Blood, hair, fingerprints and shoe prints believed to belong to the perpetrator were found around the home.
Williams’ defense claimed that his DNA was never found on the murder weapon and two unidentified sources of DNA would lead investigators to the actual killer.
In DNA evidence discovered in August, it was found that the former prosecutor and investigator who litigated the original trial failed to wear gloves when handling the murder weapon, leaving their DNA on the knife, revealing the sources of the unidentified DNA, which did not belong to an unidentified killer.
In his statement Monday, Parson accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that have previously been rejected by the courts.
“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said.
Williams’ execution marks the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1989.
State of Georgia Chaplain Ronald Clark consoles students as they kneel in front of a makeshift memorial at Apalachee High School, on Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. — Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
(WINDER, Ga.) — The teenager suspected in the shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday that left four dead had an apparent affinity for mass shooters, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Investigators are currently scouring social media posts that mention prior mass shootings and those who carried them out from accounts associated with the suspect, who officials previously identified as 14-year-old Colt Gray, the sources said.
Over a year before Wednesday’s incident — back in May 2023 — the FBI reached out to the local authorities at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office after a Discord user alerted the Bureau about a possible threat of a shooting at a middle school.
The 2023 FBI tip about online threats that were traced to Colt Gray included a user profile written in Russian, sources said. Investigators with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department said at the time that the translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza, the mass shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The 2023 documents released Thursday reflect how Colt Gray’s father, Colin Gray, was very concerned about his son being “picked on” and “ridiculed” day after day at school.
Gray said that was why he repeatedly visited his son’s school in 2023.
When the deputy spoke with Colt Gray, the then-13-year-old told the officer that he had a Discord account but had deleted it months earlier, before they moved to a new home.
“I promise I would never say something [like that],” Colt Gray said of the reported school shooting threat, according to a transcript of his interview with the officer.
The officer then told Colt, “I gotta take you at your word, and I hope you’re being honest with me.”
“Oh yes, sir,” Colt responded.
According to the 2023 interview, his father Colt Gray told the deputy that the family — and Colt Gray in particular — were going through a hard time, with Colt Gray’s mother moving away with two of Colt’s younger siblings after the whole family was evicted from their home.
On Thursday, in a brief exchange ABC News had with Annie Brown, the aunt of Colt Gray, she said that her nephew was “begging for help from everybody around him.”
Colt Gray’s maternal grandfather, Charles Polhamus, told ABC’s Vera Drymon on Thursday that he believes the teenager’s father, Colin Gray, bears some responsibility.
“I put the blame where it belongs. His father should be convicted as well,” he said.
Colin Gray was arrested Thursday and charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. He is currently in custody, and no information on a court date was immediately available.
Colt Gray was taken into custody on Wednesday at the school. He was charged with four counts of felony murder, with additional charges expected, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. He will be in court on Friday.
ABC News couldn’t immediately determine if Colt or Colin Gray had legal representation.
