The event will be on Sunday, March 2, at 3 p.m. at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Olympians Tara Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Scott Hamilton and Johnny Weir are among those participating. The show will raise funds to support victims’ families, first responders and aviation professionals, U.S. Figure Skating said.
More than a dozen of the victims killed in the Jan. 29 plane crash were young skaters, their parents and coaches returning home from a national figure skating development camp in Wichita, Kansas.
The plane, which departed from Wichita, was about to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, sending both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River.
Sixty-four people were on board the plane and three soldiers were on the helicopter. No one survived.
“As we begin to heal from this devastating loss, we look forward to honoring the enduring memories of these athletes, coaches and family members who represented the best of the figure skating community,” U.S. Figure Skating interim-CEO Samuel Auxier said in a Wednesday statement announcing the tribute show.
“We can think of no better way of celebrating their legacies than through the sport they loved,” Auxier said.
Tickets will go on sale on Monday, Feb. 10, on Ticketmaster.
(LOS ANGELES) — Two kindergarteners were seriously wounded in a shooting at a small Christian grammar school in Northern California on Wednesday, authorities said.
After entering the school and opening fire on the students, the suspected gunman died from what is believed by officials to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Two boys, ages 5 and 6, were promptly taken to a hospital and were in “extremely critical condition” as of Wednesday evening, according to Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea.
Authorities in Butte County responded to 911 calls for reports of an active shooter at the Feather River Adventist School just outside of Oroville, California, shortly after 1 p.m. local time, Honea told reporters. A trooper with the California Highway Patrol was the first to arrive on the scene and found the two wounded students and the suspect’s body with a handgun nearby.
The sheriff said the suspected shooter had met with a school administrator earlier in the day to discuss enrolling a student at the school, which teaches kindergarten to 8th grade and has a total of 35 students, according to Honea.
It’s unclear if the meeting was legitimate or a ruse for the suspected gunman to get inside, the sheriff said.
The meeting was described as “cordial” and did not set off any alarm bells with the school administrator, the sheriff said.
A few minutes after that meeting, the shots rang out, he explained.
The sheriff told reporters that authorities have identified the shooter and said that he may have targeted the school because of its affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we sent an alert out to law enforcement agencies throughout the state of California, advising them of this shooting and advising them that the subject may have targeted this school because of its affiliation with that particular religious organization,” Honea said.
“Our request of those law enforcement agencies was to be vigilant and make sure that those schools are safe and the students are still safe,” he added.
The sheriff said authorities are not ready to publicly release the suspect’s identity.
The suspect was dropped off at the school by an Uber driver who had been located in the aftermath of the shooting and undergone interviews with police.
Otherwise, authorities are still looking to piece together a timeline of his whereabouts leading up to the shooting.
“We’re working to essentially reconstruct this individual’s activities over the course of today as well as into the past to determine why … he did the things that he did,” Honea said.
The sheriff’s office is leading the investigation into the shooting. The FBI is helping to process the crime scene and also to dig into the suspect’s background.
Butte County is located about 65 miles north of Sacramento.
(WASHINGTON) — When the Office of Management and Budget issued a sweeping order this week freezing trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, senior White House officials had not reviewed it beforehand, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The order was rescinded following legal challenges and intense backlash amid widespread confusion and disruptions to critical services like Medicaid.
And now, amid the fallout, finger pointing has begun inside the administration, sources said, with the attention turning to Mark Paoletta, OMB’s general counsel, who played a key role in drafting the order.
Top White House policy adviser Stephen Miller and staff secretary Will Scharf were among those who had been left out of the review process, sources said.
The fallout has already led to discussions about reassigning Paoletta away from his position as OMB’s general counsel, though no final decision has been made, according to multiple sources.
Sources said senior advisers were caught off guard and frustrated that they had not reviewed the memo before its release, seeing its rollout as a stain on what had otherwise been smooth messaging around President Donald Trump’s rapid rollout of executive orders.
Meanwhile, some rank-and-file officials at OMB were themselves left confused both when the memo was issued and after it was rescinded, sources said.
OMB officials did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
On Wednesday, a federal judge signaled he would issue a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from freezing federal loans and grants. That’s now raised concerns that the White House will try to enact the same policy described in the now-rescinded memo.
District Judge John McConnell Jr. had harsh words for the Trump administration following a social media post by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in which Leavitt said it was the memo that was being rescinded, not the freeze itself.
“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” Leavitt posted on X, defending the policy after the memo was rescinded. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented.”
Despite the Office of Management rescinding their directive, Judge McConnell said he believed there was “sufficient evidence” that the government still plans to carry out the policy based on Leavitt’s social media post.
“That’s my read of the tweet. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but that’s my read of the tweet,” Judge McConnell said.
(WALDORF, Md.) — The Charles County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland is investigating an incident where an elementary school student was allegedly found hanging on a hook in a school bathroom, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told ABC News on Monday. The injuries to the student were described by his parents as severe bruising on his neck and face.
The alleged incident took place on Friday afternoon at C. Paul Barnhart Elementary School in Waldorf, Maryland.
The parents of the student, whose identity has not been disclosed because he is a minor, spoke out about the incident on the condition of anonymity to protect their son’s identity in an interview with the ABC affiliate in Washington D.C., WJLA.
They said that their son is a second grader in Charles County, Maryland, and is recovering from his injuries.
“[School officials] said that he was choking, so we’re thinking that he was at lunch and he’s choking off of food,” the boy’s mother told WJLA.
In her interview with WJLA, the mother also said that the principal told the family their son was “horseplaying” with a fourth grader in the bathroom and that his jacket accidentally got caught on a hook.
C. Paul Barnhart Elementary School Principal Carrie Burke said in a letter to the community that was obtained by ABC News that the incident occurred while two students were “reportedly horseplaying” in the bathroom when one student’s jacket “got caught on a stall door hook,” and “the student was not able to free themselves and the other student involved was also not able to help them.”
“This student left the bathroom to seek help from staff and reported the incident to administrators. Administrators responded and were able to assist, but staff called 911 for additional precautionary medical support,” Burke added.
Burke claimed misinformation was shared in the community amid confusion over the incident but said that “due to privacy reasons,” she is “not able to share any additional details.”
In her interview with WJLA, the boy’s mother cast doubt on the principal’s statement and is demanding more answers from the school.
“[The principal] said before she got him down, he was foaming out the mouth, unconscious, and it was from horse playing … That doesn’t make sense to me,” she told WJLA.
“I want someone to be held accountable for what happened to our child,” she added.
In a letter to the community, Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) Superintendent Maria Navarro said the school district is investigating the incident.
Navarro pushed back against claims that the school district is “covering up” the circumstances surrounding this incident.
“I have seen comments online stating that the school and CCPS are covering up what happened. This is not true. The principal nor the school system are hiding anything. Rather, we are sharing what information we can while we conduct a full investigation,” Navarro wrote in the letter.
“The investigation is ongoing; speculation about what did or did not happen as well as the circulation of misinformation impedes the investigation process,” Navarro said, adding that on Friday the school resource officer filed a preliminary report with the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.
Navarro said in the letter that “any student who is found to violate the CCPS Code of Student Conduct faces disciplinary consequences, and it is imperative that we have all the information so that we can adequately address consequences.”
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
