Air traffic control room fight at Reagan National Airport leads to arrest
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(WASHINGTON) — A fight in the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport, or DCA, in the Washington, D.C., area led to an employee being arrested and charged with assault.
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said in a statement to ABC News that police arrested Damon Marsalis Gaines last week after reports of a fight breaking out in the airport’s control tower.
Gaines, 40, was ultimately charged with assault and battery, officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement that Gaines was put on administrative leave while the agency investigates the incident.
Further details about what led to the fight have yet to be released.
The arrest at DCA comes months after the deadly mid-air collision between a regional jet and an Army Blackhawk Helicopter that left 70 dead.
Sixty-seven people were on the American Airlines plane, which departed from Wichita, Kansas on Jan. 29 and three Army soldiers were aboard the helicopter, which was on a training flight at the time, officials said.
ABC News’ Clara McMichael contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Monday he’s asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney’s motion for resentencing for the Menendez brothers, calling the brothers’ claims of self-defense “lies.”
“We are prepared to go forward” with the hearing regarding their resentencing case, Hochman said at a news conference Monday. “However, we are asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney’s motion for resentencing, because we believe there are legitimate reasons and the interests of justice justifies that withdrawal.”
The resentencing hearing is set for March 20 and 21.
The request to withdraw the resentencing motion is “based on the current state of the record and the Menendez brothers’ current and continual failure to show full insight and accept full responsibility for their murders,” Hochman said in a statement. “If they were to finally come forward and unequivocally and sincerely admit and completely accept responsibility for their lies of self-defense and the attempted suborning of perjury they engaged in, then the Court should weigh such new insight into the analysis of rehabilitation and resentencing — as will the People.”
Lyle and Erik Menendez are serving life without the possibility of parole.
In October, then-LA County District Attorney George Gascón announced he supported resentencing for the brothers. Gascón recommended their sentences of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and said they should instead be sentenced for murder, which would be a sentence of 50 years to life. Because both brothers were under 26 at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately with the new sentence.
The DA’s office said its resentencing recommendations take into account many factors, including rehabilitation in prison and abuse or trauma that contributed to the crime. Gascón praised the work Lyle and Erik Menendez did behind bars to rehabilitate themselves and help other inmates.
Weeks after Gascón’s announcement, he lost his race for reelection to Hochman.
When Hochman came into office on Dec. 3, he promised to review all the facts before reaching his own decision. He said that effort included speaking to all the prosecutors and defense attorneys involved as well as reviewing thousands of pages of court filings, trial transcripts and confidential prison records.
Hochman’s announcement on Monday comes days after one of the brothers’ cousins, Tamara Goodell, slammed the DA in a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Civil Rights Division.
Goodell accused Hochman of being “hostile, dismissive and patronizing” during two meetings in January with family members who want the brothers released. She said the “lack of compassion was palpable, and the family left feeling not only ignored but further intimidated and revictimized.”
Goodell wants Hochman removed and the case turned over to the attorney general’s office.
This case dates back to 1989, when Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, shot and killed their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home.
The defense claimed the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father. Prosecutors alleged they killed for money.
Their first trial ended in a mistrial. Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted in 1996 following their second trial.
The brothers were sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
Besides resentencing, the brothers have been pursuing two other paths to freedom.
One is their habeas corpus petition, which they filed in 2023 for a review of two new pieces of evidence not presented at trial: a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father, and allegations from a former boy band member who revealed in 2023 that he was raped by Jose Menendez.
Hochman announced in February that he’s asked the court to deny the habeas corpus petition, arguing the new evidence isn’t credible or admissible.
The third path to freedom is through the brothers’ request for clemency, which has been submitted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
On Feb. 26, Newsom announced that he’s ordering the parole board to conduct a 90-day “comprehensive risk assessment” investigation into whether the brothers pose “an unreasonable risk to the public” if they’re granted clemency and released.
“There’s no guarantee of outcome here,” Newsom said. “But this process simply provides more transparency … as well as provides us more due diligence before I make any determination for clemency.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Alex Segre/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — At least 98 people were arrested Thursday at a protest in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan that called for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week.
Protesters are facing charges of trespass and resisting arrest, according to the New York Police Department.
Hundreds of Jewish protesters wearing “Not in Our Name” t-shirts staged a sit-in in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan. Protesters entered the lobby in two groups, including many who entered the public lobby area in civilian clothes hiding their protest gear underneath, according to police.
The NYPD said it is familiar with this protest group and its tactics. As in other Trump Tower incidents, police were only called to the public lobby area once Trump’s security deemed it necessary
The protesters carried banners in support of Khalil, who was a leader of protests against the war in Gaza at Columbia University, that said “Jews say Free Mahmoud & Free Palestine” and “Fight Nazis Not Students.”
“As Jews of conscience, we know our history and we know where this leads. This is what fascists do as they cement control. This moment requires all people of conscience to take bold action to resist state violence and repression. Free Mahmoud now,” Jane Hirschmann, a Jewish New Yorker whose grandfather and uncle were abducted by the Nazis during Hitler’s rise to power, said in a statement.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations also announced it is filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of Khalil and other students against Columbia University and the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce over the committee’s request to disclose thousands of student records.
Khalil, who has not been charged with a crime, is currently being held in Louisiana after being detained in New York earlier this week.
His wife, who is 8 months pregnant, said the couple have been preparing for the arrival of their baby.
“Mahmoud has been ripped away from me for no reason at all. I am pleading with the world to continue to speak up against his unjust and horrific detention by the Trump administration,” she said in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump’s administration has alleged that Khalil — who was a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment protests on Columbia’s campus — was a supporter of Hamas. Baher Azmy, one of Khalil’s lawyers, called his client’s alleged alignment with Hamas “false and preposterous.”
“Setting aside the false and preposterous premise that advocating on behalf of Palestinian human rights and to plead with public officials to stop an ongoing genocide constitutes alignment with Hamas, his speech is absolutely protected by the Constitution, and it should be chilling to everyone that the United States government could punish or try to deport someone because they disapprove of the speech they’re engaged in,” Azmy told ABC News on Monday.
The administration has not provided any evidence showing Khalil’s alleged support for the militant group.
(NEW YORK) — The government has claimed that Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil intentionally misrepresented information on his green card application and therefore is inadmissible to the United States.
According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump’s administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut went “beyond 2022” and that he was a “political affairs officer” for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from June to November 2023.
“Khalil is now charged as inadmissible at the time of his adjustment of status because he sought to procure an immigration benefit by fraud of willful misrepresentation of a material fact,” attorneys for the administration said in the filing.
The administration also claimed that Khalil did not tell the government that he was a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group.
The government arrested Khalil on March 8 after invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law that they said allows the secretary of state to revoke the legal status of people whose presence in the country could have “adverse foreign policy consequences.” The new accusations seem to represent an attempt to strengthen the administration’s justification for detaining Khalil and denying his release.
“Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim,” the filing says.
“The additional charges the government filed last week are completely meritless,” Marc Van Der Hout, whose legal firm represents Khalil, told ABC News in response to a request for comment. “They show that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences. This case is purely about First Amendment protected activity and speech, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents alike are free to say what they wish about what is going on in the world.”
“Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application. It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech,” the government said in the filing.
During a State Department briefing Monday, spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked multiple times about whether the department now viewed prior work for UNRWA as grounds for disqualification for visa applicants — but she repeatedly declined to answer.
“If you lie in your efforts to come to the United States to get a visa for any reason, or for a green card, maybe there haven’t been repercussions, or we haven’t done things properly in the past. A lot of things have changed with the election of Donald Trump,” Bruce said in a general statement during the briefing.
Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was taken upon his initial detention from his student apartment building to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, according to his legal team.
ABC News’ Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
