76-year-old man stabbed, 77-year-old wife severely burned in ‘horrific double homicide’ in NYC: Police
WABC
(NEW YORK) — New York City police are searching for a man on parole who allegedly broke into a Queens home, killed a couple and set their house on fire, authorities said.
Frank Olton, 76, was found on Monday tied to a pole in his basement suffering from multiple stab wounds, and his wife Maureen Olton, 77, was found on the house’s first floor, severely burned, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The Oltons’ son, a New York City Fire Department paramedic, was alerted to the fire by an alarm system and he responded to the house, police said.
There’s no known connection between the victims and the suspect, identified as 42-year-old Jamel McGriff, Tisch said.
Detectives believe the suspect spent five hours in the victims’ house, according to sources, likely searching for property to steal before setting it ablaze. Surveillance video showed the suspect leaving the home around 3 p.m., police said.
Witnesses reported a man knocking on a neighbor’s door on Monday morning, asking to charge his phone, Tisch said, and that neighbor turned the suspect away. Surveillance video showed the suspect going to the victims’ house and Frank Olton letting him in, according to the commissioner.
Tisch called the crime a “horrific double homicide, robbery and arson.”
She said police are asking for the public’s help to find McGriff, warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
McGriff, who is out on parole for first-degree robbery, “has a lengthy violent criminal history stretching back 30 years,” Tisch said. He failed to register as a sex offender in November 2024 “which should have violated his parole,” she said, and he is also wanted for two robberies in Manhattan this summer.
“This suspect’s MO is to go door-to-door asking for some kind of assistance until he can gain entry — so do not allow anyone you don’t know or who you are not expecting into your home,” she stressed.
Flash-flood threat, August 11, 2025, from Florida to the Carolinas. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Residents from the Great Plains to the southern Atlantic Coast are bracing for flash flooding on Monday after up to 14 inches of rain fell in a short amount of time over the weekend in parts of Wisconsin, prompting numerous water rescues in Milwaukee.
Severe thunderstorms early Monday were moving through Kansas and northern Oklahoma, packing 60 mph winds and producing rainfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour.
Heavy rain is also expected along the Atlantic Coast and could produce possible flash flooding in coastal areas of the Carolinas on Monday, including the cities of Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina.
The heavy rain is forecast to extend from the Florida panhandle to the Big Bend area of Florida, possibly bringing flash flooding to the area on Monday afternoon.
On Monday night and into Tuesday, thunderstorms are expected from northern Texas through Oklahoma and southwestern Missouri, possibly producing flash flooding in those areas.
Meanwhile, parts of the Midwest, including Wisconsin, are recovering from storms over the weekend that toppled trees, flooded homes and left numerous drivers stranded on flooded roads.
Between 8 and 14 inches of rain fell in just a few hours in the Milwaukee area on Saturday and into Sunday. The extreme rainfall flooded neighborhoods, made many roads impassable and led to water rescues. The storm that hit Milwaukee was also accompanied by gusts of over 80 mph that toppled numerous trees and power lines.
During a news conference on Sunday, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier “Chevy” Johnson said thousands of people in Milwaukee were affected by the severe flooding. Johnson said parts of the city saw more than a foot of rain in “a short period of time.”
“It’s something that Milwaukee hasn’t seen in perhaps a decade or more,” Johnson said.
Between 8 p.m. on Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday, the Milwaukee Fire Department and neighboring fire departments received 614 separate emergency calls, including 65 that required water rescues, Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said at the news conference.
In the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin, the Root River reached a record level of 11.7 feet, causing it to spill its banks and flood nearby neighborhoods, officials said.
The Franklin Fire Department responded to a 911 call at about 4:27 p.m. local time, reporting that a teenage boy was missing after being swept into the Root River, authorities said.
Police officers and firefighters searched the river and found the teenager holding onto a tree branch and standing on a submerged log in the rapidly moving water about 100 yards downstream from where he was washed into the river, according to the statement from the Franklin Fire Department.
Rescuers made voice contact with the teenager, officials said.
“Although they could not initially see the subject, responders stayed in constant contact, reassuring him to stay calm and continue to hold onto the tree until rescuers arrived,” according to the fire department’s statement.
The Franklin Fire Department divers deployed an inflatable Zodiac boat to rescue the teenager, who was treated at the scene by paramedics, reunited with his family and taken to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin for further medical evaluation, officials said.
“This incident serves as a stark reminder of the dangers posed by flood waters,” the fire department said. “Never walk or drive through flooded roadways or around barricades. Moving water as shallow as 6 inches can knock an adult off their feet, and 2 feet of moving water can sweep away most vehicles.”
(NEW YORK) — The sun was getting ready to rise over a rural lake in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, when a sheriff’s deputy shined his flashlight inside Ryan Borgwardt’s minivan parked just yards away from the water’s edge.
There was no one inside the car.
As the deputy took out his binoculars and gazed over the pier to see if he could spot anyone in the distance that morning in August 2024, he almost certainly could not have imagined that not only would Borgwardt not be found stuck in the lake, but would end up being traced across the world to the country of Georgia.
“I guess everything kind of hinged on me dying in the lake,” Borgwardt told investigators in a December 2024 interview obtained by ABC News this week.
A husband and father of three, Borgwardt gained national attention last year after disappearing following an apparent trip to the lake to kayak and resurfacing months later in a video recorded in an undisclosed location where he maintained he was safe.
Borgwardt, who could not be reached for comment for this report, pleaded no contest last month to obstructing an officer and was sentenced to 89 days in jail. He also agreed to pay $30,000 in restitution to law enforcement to cover what was spent searching for him and apologized for his actions at his sentencing.
According to law enforcement, Borgwardt texted his wife of 22 years on the day he went kayaking that he was getting ready to head back to shore.
He never made it home that night. A team of first responders eventually found Borgwardt’s kayak, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now, hundreds of records released by the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office are shedding light on how Borgwardt made it from that Wisconsin lake all the way to Georgia, where he sought to build a life with a woman he met on the internet, according to prosecutors.
Officials previously declined to release these records to ABC News while the case against Borgwardt was pending.
The newly released documents range from receipts for Borgwardt’s bus tickets –from Madison, Wisconsin, to Canada’s Toronto Pearson International Airport — to footage of Borgwardt crossing the border into Canada, and communications between American law enforcement and the woman he was in contact with while he was overseas.
“It is extremely important to explain why we want to speak with you,” Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Matthew Vande Kolk wrote to the woman, who had written in Russian that Ryan had become a good friend of hers over the previous year when she had been going through problems in her life.
“When is the last time that you spoke with Ryan,” Vande Kolk asked in one email. “We need to know he is ok.”
The communications show that Vande Kolk was ultimately able to get in touch with Borgwardt over email and Telegram, a messaging app.
“I realize I created this mess and now everyone is trying to put the pieces together,” Borgwardt wrote in one email to Vande Kolk. “I am really sorry about that. It would have just been much easier if no one looked for me.”
In another email, Borgwardt explained how, back in Wisconsin, he made it from the edge of the lake all the way to the bus station in Madison.
“I kayaked out there with my small fishing net,” he wrote. “I tossed the phone. I inflated a small child inflatable raft good for about 250 lbs. After flipping the kayak, I spent the next 1 – 2 hours trying to paddle back to shore. (seemed like forever) But the winds, waves and the short “toy” paddles didn’t work well that night, but worked enough. I got to shore somewhere across from the area that I parked.”
Borgwardt wrote that he then rode an electric bike he had left in the brush for 66 miles.
“No one will truly ever forgot [sic] what I did, even if they somehow forgive me,” Borgwardt wrote to Vande Kolk. “I can possibly come back to try and clean up as much as possible.”
Borgwardt ultimately made the choice to fly from Batumi, Georgia, back to the United States, where he was ultimately brought in for questioning by the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
“I think the only thing I was keeping secret was where I was at,” Borgwardt told investigators, according to a video of the interview. “I was adamant not to lie … so I really don’t think there’s anything that was a lie. I think I just didn’t say too much.”
Two men are being charged by the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles for possession of an unregistered destructive device for their roles in the Los Angeles protest violence. U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles
(LOS ANGELES) — Two men are being charged by the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles for possession of an unregistered destructive device for their alleged roles in the LA protest violence, federal prosecutors will announce Wednesday.
Emiliano Galvez and Wrackkie Quiogue are both accused of trying to throw Molotov cocktails at police, according to federal prosecutors.
When the LAPD approached Quiogue — who officials said was armed with a Molotov cocktail at Sunday’s protest in downtown LA — he allegedly “threw the Molotov cocktail into the air and attempted to flee,” the complaint said. The confrontation was caught on officer body camera.
LAPD officers subdued Quiogue and arrested him, prosecutors said.
Galvez is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail over a wall toward LA sheriff’s deputies who were “engaging in crowd control activities” during a protest in Paramount, a city in south LA County , on Saturday, federal prosecutors said. The incident was caught on officer body camera.
Galvez was arrested after a foot chase, officials said.
The protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to grip LA; Mayor Karen Bass issued an overnight curfew for about 1 square mile of downtown.
The protests have also spread to other cities including New York City, Seattle, Chicago San Francisco, Boston, and Austin, Texas.
