(MANHEIM TOWNSHIP, PA) — A Beechcraft Bonanza crashed in Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon with five people aboard, according to the Federal Aviation Authority.
The small aircraft went down near a retirement village south of Lancaster Airport, the Manheim Borough Police Department told ABC News.
The plane had just departed from the airport shortly before it crashed, authorities said during a briefing on Sunday evening, adding that the plane might have skidded about 100 feet after it first made contact with the ground.
No one was hurt on the ground, officials confirmed.
All five passengers were transported to Lancaster General Hospital, where trauma and emergency teams were at the ready to provide care, according to hospital spokesperson.
Two of the patients were later transported to Lehigh Valley Health Network’s burn center by PennSTAR flight crews, the spokesperson said, and one patient was transported there by ground ambulance. Two patients remain hospitalized at Lancaster General as of Sunday night, they added.
The plane crash occurred around 3 p.m., according to the FAA, which said it will investigate. The National Transportation Safety Board is also monitoring the situation
According to audio from Air Traffic Control, the pilot told the Lancaster Airport control tower that his plane “has an open door we need to return for landing.”
ATC then cleared the plane to return, but a few seconds later the controller told the plane to “pull up,” the audio revealed.
Images taken by witnesses and shared with ABC News showed flames and smoke billowing from the crash site in Lititz, Manheim Township.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro posted a statement on X.com saying, “Our team at @PAStatePolice is on the ground assisting local first responders following the small private plane crash near Lancaster Airport in Manheim Township. All Commonwealth resources are available as the response continues, and more information will be provided as it becomes available.”
Information will be released as it becomes available, the NTSB said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW ORLEANS) — The man suspected of carrying out the New Year’s attack in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had a checkered marital history punctuated by multiple divorces and financial difficulty, according to court records reviewed by ABC News.
The records also show that after his military service, Jabbar worked for two of the nation’s largest professional services firms, Ernst & Young and Deloitte, as he aimed to grow his own fledgling real estate business.
Jabbar has been identified by the FBI as the suspect in the deadly attack on New Year’s revelers. At least 15 people were killed and over two dozen injured after a rented Ford pickup truck was driven through a crowd on Bourbon Street at a high rate of speed early Wednesday, officials said.
Jabbar, who police said was killed during the attack, was a 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen and U.S. Army veteran from Texas, according to the FBI.
As of 2022, while employed by Deloitte, documents show Jabbar was making close to $125,000 a year — a salary which was chipped away at by court-ordered payments for his children from a past marriage and weighed down by credit card and mortgage debt.
In 2012 in Harris County, Texas, ex-wife Nakedra Charrlle Jabbar successfully sued him for child support payments for the couple’s two girls, who were eight and three years old at the time, according to court records.
Four years later, in 2016, Jabbar filed for divorce from another wife, Tiera Symone Jabbar, in Dekalb County, Georgia. The complaint form, filled out in handwriting, says the two married in Sept. 2013 but separated less than two and a half years later in Feb. 2016. Under grounds for divorce, Jabbar checked the box on the form that read “our marriage is irretrievably broken,” adding that the pair “can no longer live together and there is no hope that we will get back together.”
In July 2020, in Fort Bend County, Texas, Jabbar filed for divorce from wife Shaneen Chantil Jabbar, whom he married in Nov. 2017, according to court filings. But the pair jointly sought to dismiss the suit only a month after it was filed, saying they “both no longer desire[d] to prosecute his/her respective suits against the other party” — a request that the court granted.
However, when Jabbar again filed for divorce a year later, his then-wife responded with a counterclaim that sparked a lengthy battle of briefs indicating apparent bad blood between them that may have at least in part stemmed from financial difficulties.
In one filing, Shaneen’s lawyer accused Jabbar of “flagrant disregard” of his financial duties to their household — alleging that during their marriage, Jabbar “was entrusted with the management, control, and disposition of substantially all community estate funds.”
Though Shaneen “trusted and believed” her husband “would faithfully execute” his management, he violated their “fiduciary relationship,” his soon-to-be ex’s lawyer alleged.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar “has intentionally and in flagrant disregard of the duties as manager and trustee of the community funds mismanaged the community estate, all in fraud of” his wife’s financial interest, she said.
Shaneen’s filings also claimed that Jabbar withheld important information from the court about his retirement savings, with one record from July 2022 alleging Jabbar had failed to produce statements showing his participation in the retirement plan at Ernst & Young, where the filing indicates Jabbar worked prior to joining Deloitte.
The acrimonious split from Shaneen also featured Jabbar breaking with his own laywer. Attorney Robert Tsai — who represented Jabbar in his 2012 divorce — withdrew from the case in Sept. 2021, citing an inability to “effectively communicate” with his client “in a manner consistent with good attorney-client relations.” Court records indicate Jabbar represented himself through the remainder of the divorce proceedings.
In court records Jabbar laid out some of his financial difficulties as he explained why he sought a divorce settlement that would have the couple selling their house and splitting the proceeds. The property management firm Jabbar founded, Blue Meadow Properties, was failing to produce any revenue and was in fact losing money, per his submissions to the court.
“Time is of the essence,” he wrote in an email to his wife’s lawyer on Jan 6, 2022. “l can not afford the house payment. It is past due in excess of $27,000 and in danger of foreclosure if we delay settling the divorce. The home was not in default at the time we agreed to the temporary orders. l misunderstood the terms of the loan modification I had applied for at the time.”
Jabbar’s filings in the 2022 divorce from Shaneen show he was already responsible for paying $2,200 in child support per month following his divorce from Nakedra. Ultimately, Jabbar was ordered to pay an additional $1,353 a month in child support to help care for the son he shared with Shaneen, according to the documents.
The court ordered Deloitte to withhold the extra child support from his paychecks.
His ex-wife Shaneen got the house, despite Jabbar’s asking that the asset be sold and the proceeds split, court records show. She received primary custody of their son, though Jabbar got visitation rights, the records said.
During their divorce, court records show both Jabbard and Shaneen took four hours’ instruction on parenting from the “Texas Cooperative Parenting Course,” and each received a certificate indicating they had “successfully completed” the course and were “hereby committed to working with the other parent in the best interest of their child/children.” Jabbar’s is dated Aug. 20, 2021. Shaneen’s is dated Aug. 30, 2021.
ABC News attempted on Wednesday to contact Nakedra, Tiera and Shaneen. Phone calls or text messages were not returned.
At least two people are dead and several others injured as the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Woodley fires burned through thousands of acres and prompted sweeping evacuations around Los Angeles County.
The dry landscape in the region heavily contributed to fire’s ability to spread quickly. Only 0.16 inches of rain has fallen in the region since May 6, according to the National Weather Service.
But without the low humidity and extreme winds, the dry landscape wouldn’t present as big of a threat.
On Monday, the National Weather Service began warning of a “life-threatening” Santa Ana windstorm that could spark severe wildfires in Southern California — more than 24 hours in advance of the first wildfire.
What made the Santa Ana wind event so severe is the upper-level support lining up with the surface gradient, Curt Kaplan, a retired operational forecaster for the National Weather Service in Oxford, California, told ABC News. The upper low that moved over Baja California caused a strong colder air subsidence, or sinking, north-northeast over the region.
The sinking air associated with the colder dense air aloft was able to descend, bringing damaging mountain waves across the Los Angeles and Ventura County mountains that then crashed into the foothills and some coastal communities.
As the upper support relaxes later on Wednesday, with the upper low pushing east, the strong winds should taper off to moderate, typical Santa Ana winds late morning into the afternoon hours, Kaplan said.
Many of the cities — like Burbank, Pasadena and Beverly Hills — as well as the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, are not usually affected by typical Santa Ana northeast winds, Kaplan said.
Four wildfires were burning in Southern California on Wednesday afternoon: the Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, Hurst Fire and Woodley Fire.
The earlier-than-normal warning from the NWS allowed for ample time to prep for the fire threat.
On Monday evening, California Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state departments to position fire engines, handcrews, aircraft and additional support in areas that could be impacted.
The region remained under a state of emergency on Wednesday as the fires continued.
More than 30,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes, and fires ripped through the Pacific Palisades, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Los Angeles County.
Celebrities such as Josh Gad, Steve Guttenberg, Chris Pratt, Mandy Moore and Eugene Levy have documented how the fire was impacting their homes.
Some of the regions under elevated fire risk this week, such as Malibu, were impacted by a raging wildfire last month that spread to more than 4,000 acres and forced 20,000 residents into evacuation.
(NEW YORK) — Presidential immunity does not protect Donald Trump from having to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages after being held liable for defaming magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, a lawyer for Carroll told a federal appeals court in a filing Monday.
After being awarded an $83.3 million defamation judgment from a jury last year, Carroll on Monday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to uphold the judgment against Trump, after Trump asked the court to toss out the verdict because he had immunity as president.
“Dissatisfied with the outcome of the judicial process, Trump now asks this Court to set aside that jury verdict on the theory that he was actually immune from judicial review all along,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in the filing.
In 2023, a jury held Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages. A year later, a different jury in a separate trial ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83 million in damages for defaming her in a 2022 social media post in which he called her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and said “This woman is not my type!”
A federal appeals court upheld the $5 million judgment in December, and Trump’s appeal of the $83 million judgement is ongoing.
In September, Trump attorney D. John Sauer — who Trump nominated in November to serve as the new solicitor general — told a federal appeals court that the $83 million judgment should be thrown out based on a flawed jury instruction, a series of “highly prejudicial errors” during the trial, and because presidential immunity protects Trump from liability for public statements made as president.
“Presidential immunity forecloses any liability here and requires the complete dismissal of all claims,” Sauer wrote.
In her reply brief filed Monday, Kaplan pushed back against Trump’s assertion of immunity, arguing that statements Trump made about Carroll as president would clearly fall outside of his official responsibilities.
“If there were ever a case where immunity does not shield a President’s speech, this one is it,” Kaplan wrote. “Donald Trump was not speaking here about a governmental policy or a function of his responsibilities as President. He was defaming Carroll because of her revelation that many years before he assumed office, he sexually assaulted her.”
Carroll’s attorney argued that the $83 million judgement was justified to deter Trump from further defamatory statements, a risk that Kaplan said the jury saw firsthand. Trump attended most days of the 2024 trial, criticizing Carroll as a liar from his seat in the courtroom and sparring with the judge who oversaw the case.
“Throughout the trial, the jury had a front-row seat to Trump’s relentless campaign of malice, including his repeated defamation of Carroll at press conferences he held and in statements he posted on social media while the trial was ongoing,” Kaplan wrote.
