Former Yankee Brett Gardner’s teen son died on family vacation to Costa Rica: Officials
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(COSTA RICA) — The 14-year-old son of former New York Yankees player Brett Gardner was vacationing with his family in Costa Rica when he suddenly fell ill and died in his sleep, according to the U.S. State Department.
Miller Gardner’s death was announced Sunday in a statement by his father and mother, Jessica Gardner, that was released on the Yankees’ X account.
Brett and Jessica Gardner said their son died in his sleep on Friday while on vacation, after falling ill along with several other family members.
The Gardners said their youngest child “has left us far too soon.”
On Monday, the U.S. State Department confirmed to ABC News that Miller Gardner died while he was in Costa Rica.
“We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen in Costa Rica on March 21,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We are closely monitoring local authorities’ investigation into the cause of death. Out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones during this difficult time, we have no further comment at this time.”
The State Department did not say what city the Gardners were staying in at the time of the teen’s death.
“We have so many questions and so few answers at this point, but we do know that he passed away peacefully in his sleep on the morning of Friday, March 21st,” the statement from Gardner and his wife read. “Miller was a beloved son and brother and we cannot yet comprehend our life without his infectious smile. He loved football, baseball, golf, hunting, fishing, his family and his friends. He lived life to the fullest every single day.”
The couple also expressed deep gratitude for the support and encouragement they’ve received.
“We are confident our faith, family, and friends will help us navigate this unimaginable loss,” the Gardners wrote in the statement. “Our prayers go out to Miller’s teammates and friends, as well as to all other families who have lost a child far too soon as we share their grief. Please respect our wishes for privacy as we mourn and search for healing.”
In addition to Miller, Brett and Jessica Gardner also share an older son, Hunter Gardner.
Brett Gardner, a former outfielder, spent his entire 14-season MLB career with the Yankees. He was named an American League All-Star in 2015 and won a Golden Glove Award in 2016, and was part of the team that won the World Series in 2009, just one year after making his major league debut. He retired following the 2021 season.
In the wake of the news of Miller Gardner’s death, the Yankees shared a separate statement on Facebook, offering “unconditional and absolute” love to the Gardner family, while also acknowledging their need for privacy during this difficult time.
“Words feel insignificant and insufficient in trying to describe such an unimaginable loss,” the Yankees’ statement reads. “It wasn’t just Brett who literally grew up in this organization for more than 17 years — so did his wife, Jessica, and their two boys, Hunter and Miller.”
“We grieve with Brett, Jessica, Hunter and their community of family and friends in mourning the loss of Miller, who had a spark in his eyes, an outgoing and feisty personality, and a warm and loving nature,” the statement added.
“May Miller rest in peace,” the statement concludes.
(WASHINGTON) — Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – a freedom from worry that the air you breathe, the food you eat and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could make you sick.
But several of the environmental freedoms Americans experience today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – could soon be in jeopardy from the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulation plans, several experts told ABC News.
On March 12, the EPA announced sweeping moves in its effort to walk back environmental protections and eliminate a host of climate change regulations, changes described by the agency as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced earlier this month that the agency will undertake 31 actions, including rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production. The announcement also said the EPA will reevaluate government findings that determined that greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet and are a threat to public health. In addition, the EPA plans to eliminate its scientific research office and may have plans to fire more than 1,000 employees, The New York Times reported last week.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in the EPA announcement.
The EPA, with its mission to protect human health and the environment, is fundamentally a public health organization, Patrick Simms, vice president for healthy communities at Earthjustice, the nation’s largest public interest environmental law firm, told ABC News.
Revoking these regulations would hamper the EPA’s ability to keep Americans from getting sick from the exposure to environmental pollutants, experts said.
“Any policy changes that may occur under this Administration will continue to protect human health and the environment,” and EPA spokesperson said in response to an ABC News request for comment. ”They will be guided by science and the law, as well as input from the public. They will also be guided by many of the Executive Orders issued by the President and EPA Administrator Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.”
Impacts some experts fear most from EPA deregulation
Environmental impacts such as toxic air, poisoned water and acid rain that killed forests and caused crop failures were all occurring prior to EPA regulations, the experts said.
Bedrock environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act were all established after the EPA was created in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon.
Some of the regulations Zeldin has proposed eliminating could negatively affect the safety of drinking water and the amount of pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, Simms said.
Additionally, the rollbacks having to do with air pollutants means those toxins will be deposited back into the soil, Murray McBride, a soil and crop scientist and retired Cornell University professor, told ABC News. Coal ash, for example, contains heavy metals, which are absorbed especially by crops like leafy greens, McBride said.
Loosening wastewater rules will pollute soil and negatively impact crops even more, McBride said.
Should the EPA cease monitoring environmental pollutants, it would be especially dangerous for people with underlying health conditions, such as asthma or heart illness, Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and former assistant administrator for the EPA, told ABC News.
“People don’t know what they’re breathing when data is not being collected,” Anastas said. “You don’t know whether or not your water is contaminated.”
Deregulation would greatly reduce the country’s momentum in transitioning away from fossil fuels as well, Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia Law School, told ABC News.
“This moves us even further behind, and it inevitably will mean that the extreme weather events we’ve experienced, the floods and the heat waves and the wildfires and so forth, will get worse,” he said.
U.S. environmental issues prior to the EPA
In the late 1960s, there was an “explosion” of public concern about environmental conditions in the country said A. James Barnes, a professor of law and environment and public affairs at Indiana University and former EPA general counsel and deputy administrator.
The year 1970 was monumental for progress in environmental protection, Barnes said. The first Earth Day occurred in April 1970, and when the EPA was established in December of that year, Barnes served as chief of staff to William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator.
“In 1970, when most of the current environmental laws were initially adopted, we lived in a very different and much more hazardous and toxic country,” Simms said.
Smoke pollution and disposal of waste and sewage were at the top of the list of concerns, Barnes said. A significant portion of untreated municipal sewage was still being dumped into rivers and lakes. Hazardous waste was being dumped into landfills along with household garbage and was often incinerated, which in turn sent the toxic materials into the atmosphere. Some rivers were so polluted that they caught fire, as did Ohio’s Cuyahoga River in 1969, Barnes noted.
Lake Erie was considered to be “dying” because it was choking on an uncontrolled growth of algae due to the pollution, according to Barnes, who grew up in industrialized Michigan and recalled fishing in Lake Erie, where he caught carp that had “huge sores” on them.
“You wouldn’t want anything to do with possibly eating it,” Barnes said.
All major U.S. cities had unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide from motor vehicle emissions, before the EPA required that cars manufactured after 1975 be equipped with a catalytic converter to remove pollutants from automotive emissions, said Gerrard.
A chronic smog of air pollutants that hung over Los Angeles was viewed as a “national joke” at the time, Barnes said, while in places that had steel mills, like Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was not unusual to see blackened skies from the heavy amounts of pollution in the air.
“Your eyes burned,” Barnes said. “Your lungs were aggravated by the quality of the air.”
Additionally, exposure to lead and mercury contaminants in the environment was causing brain damage in some people, according to Anastas.
Coal was the dominant source of electricity production, the burning of which reduced air quality due to high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates emitted during production and use, Gerard said.
Atmospheric ozone pollution and acid rain would often damage crops, McBride said.
“In general, the air quality and water quality in 1970 were much, much worse than they are today,” Gerrard said.
History serves as a reminder of what could again happen if actions are not taken to protect health and the environment, experts warned.
“If we don’t understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it,” Simms said.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Kelly Livingston and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Health and Human Services directed recipients of grant funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to immediately halt all programs, personnel and activities related to “gender ideology,” according to an email obtained by ABC News.
“You must immediately terminate, to the maximum extent, all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts promoting or inculcating gender ideology at every level and activity, regardless of your location or the citizenship of employees or contractors, that are supported with funds from this award,” the email stated.
It also said that “any vestige, remnant, or re-named piece of any gender ideology programs funded by the U.S. government under this award are immediately, completely, and permanently terminated.”
The email from HHS follows President Donald Trump’s executive order — Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government — which directed the federal government to recognize only two sexes: male and female.
The latest directive from the HHS impacts any entity that receives CDC funds, such as local health departments and clinics across the country, and it affects any programs supported by the nearly $4.5 billion spent by the CDC last year to aid health departments across all 50 states.
HHS sent a similar memo to recipients specifically receiving foreign assistance funds regarding DEI programs. That memo said, “You must immediately terminate, to the maximum, all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEl) at every level and activity, regardless of your location or the citizenship of employees or contractors, that are supported with funds from this award,” according to a copy obtained by ABC News.
ABC News previously reported a memo that was sent to HHS officials on Wednesday directing sub-agencies such as the CDC to remove “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology” by 5 p.m. on Friday.
As of Friday evening, government webpages on HIV, LGBTQ+ issues and public health were taken down, according to a subsequent report by ABC News.
(ILLINOIS) — An Illinois man has been convicted of murder and hate crime charges in the 2023 fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy.
Wadee Alfayoumi was stabbed 26 times and his mother more than a dozen in the Oct. 14, 2023, attack inside their home in the Chicago suburb of Plainfield.
Their landlord, 73-year-old Joseph Czuba, was indicted on multiple murder charges, as well as attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crime counts. He had pleaded not guilty.
Authorities said he targeted his tenants because they were Muslim and in response to the war between Israel and Hamas that had just ignited after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
A Will County jury found Czuba guilty of all counts.
Jurors began deliberating around noon Friday, before reaching their verdict less than two hours later.
Wadee’s father, Odai Alfyoumi, thanked those who supported him in remarks following the verdict.
“I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset, if I should be crying or laughing,” he said through a translator during a press briefing with the Chicago division of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, the U.S.’ largest Muslim civil rights organization.
“People are telling me to smile. Maybe if I were one of you, I would be smiling. But I’m the father of the child, and I’ve lost the child,” he said.
He also prayed that “this senseless loss is the last that we will see, that no child would suffer what my beloved had to go through.”
CAIR Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab said they are pleased with the verdict, calling it a “very clear-cut case.”
“This is a case that shook up the Muslim community, the Palestinian community, and really Chicago and Illinois and the nation, maybe even the world at large,” Rehab said. “This is one of the worst hate crimes that have been committed in recent memory that targeted an innocent 6-year-old boy, a kindergartner, and his mother.”
The child’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, was the first to take the stand in the weeklong trial.
She said Czuba attacked her first with a knife, stabbing her multiple times, saying, “You devil Muslim, you must die,” as her son watched, according to Chicago ABC station WLS, which was in the courtroom.
She testified that she called 911 from the bathroom when he appeared to leave, but then she started to hear her son screaming, according to WLS.
“I started hearing my son screaming, screaming, screaming, ‘Oh no, stop,'” Shaheen said, according to WLS.
Jurors also listened to the mother’s 911 call from the bathroom, in which she was heard telling the dispatcher, “He’s killing my baby,” WLS reported.
They also watched body camera footage of the officers responding to the bloody scene and were shown the knife used in the attack, which an officer said was still in the boy’s body when they arrived. Jurors additionally heard remarks Czuba made in a law enforcement vehicle following the attack.
“I thought they were going to do jihad on me,” Czuba said, according to WLS.
He also said he was “afraid for my life” and his wife and said the family was “just like infested rats,” according to WLS.
Czuba and his wife rented part of their Plainfield home to the mother and son for two years.
His now-ex-wife testified for prosecutors that Czuba became withdrawn in the days after the war and wanted the family to move out immediately, while she wanted to give them 30 days’ notice, according to The Associated Press.
Czuba did not take the stand, waiving his right to testify.
His defense attorneys told jurors at the start of the trial that there were holes in the state’s case and urged them to “go beyond the emotions to carefully examine the evidence,” according to the AP.
ABC News’ Cheryl Gendron contributed to this report.
