Memphis Grizzlies player Brandon Clarke dead at the age of 29, team says
Brandon Clarke #15 of the Memphis Grizzlies runs up court against the Detroit Pistons in the second half of an NBA game at Little Caesars Arena on January 24, 2020 in Detroit, Michigan. (Dave Reginek/Getty Images)
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Memphis Grizzlies player Brandon Clarke has died, the team confirmed on Tuesday. He was 29.
“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of Brandon Clarke,” the team said in a statement on social media. “Brandon was an outstanding teammate and an even better person whose impact on the organization and the great Memphis community will not be forgotten.”
The circumstances surrounding his death are not known at this time.
The Canadian-American forward began playing in the NBA in 2019. He was selected in the first round of the 2019 NBA draft by the Oklahoma City Thunder and immediately traded to Memphis.
He was named to the NBA’s All-Rookie First Team in his rookie season.
“As one of the longest-tenured members of the Grizzlies, Brandon was a beloved teammate and leader who played the game with enormous passion and grit,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “Our thoughts and sympathies are with Brandon’s family, friends and the Grizzlies organization.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Immigrant woman and children walk across a field as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Enforcement and Removal Operations hosts a media tour at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(DILLEY, Texas) — Olivia Mabiala Andre made her youngest brother, Manuel, a promise.
“We’re going to go to the United States and we’re going to get you a bike,” the 19-year-old said she told him.
The promise of the bike for her brother and stability for her entire family of five, Andre said, kept them focused on their plan to travel from their home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, through South America and toward the United States. But three days into their journey, Manuel drowned while crossing a river in Colombia.
“He was the happiness of my house. He was the cutest boy you can imagine, he was our sunshine,” Andre said, speaking to ABC News from detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
Now more than three years after reaching the U.S., Andre and her family are facing deportation to their home country after the U.S. federal government denied their asylum request.
Andre, who was studying to be a nurse, has been detained since November 2025 and was only briefly reunited with her family. She says it is taking a toll.
According to a habeas petition, an independent expert confirmed Andrew “meets the diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and “has repeatedly expressed suicidal ideation.” Andre also displayed depression symptoms, the court filing claimed.
Their case is receiving national attention, with lawmakers and prominent figures like children’s educator and YouTube star Ms. Rachel calling for Andre’s release.
“It doesn’t make sense to hold this caring, wonderful person who wants to be a nurse who’s been through so much trauma. It’s just cruel to hold her there, especially while she’s having a mental health crisis, and she’s having suicidal thoughts,” said Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Anne Accurso, in an interview Thursday with ABC’s Diane Macedo.
Accurso says she has been keeping in touch with Andre while she remains detained.
“She’s overflowing compassion and faith and strength and it was a privilege to talk with her. I was so in awe of her,” Accurso said.
Attorneys representing the Andre family tell ABC News they fled their home country after Andre’s mother says she faced direct threats by high-level government officials.
“Her mother has suffered brutal abuse and torture, which led both her mother and her family to need to flee for their lives. They took a difficult journey to the United States, and along the way, Olivia witnessed her eight year old brother who she loved so much, drown on the journey, and it has caused devastating sadness for Olivia, her mother and her two siblings,” their attorney Elora Mukherjee said.
According to court documents, the Andre family entered the U.S. in December 2022 and applied for asylum, settling in Portland, Maine. An immigration judge denied their asylum petition, in part, because they believed they couldn’t provide enough corroborating evidence to support their claim and ordered them deported in February 2025.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) later affirmed the immigration judge’s decision, finding that her mother could not provide enough corroborating evidence to support her petition, the documents state.
Todd Pomerleau, who is now representing the family’s asylum case in immigration court, says a language barrier and interpretation issues contributed to the asylum claim being denied.
Days after the BIA denied the family’s appeal, Mukherjee said they attempted to cross into Canada to seek asylum there, but were prevented from doing so, because of a treaty between the two countries called the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. The treaty prevents some immigrants from seeking asylum in Canada if they’ve been denied a U.S. claim.
“Olivia and her family were desperate in their search for safety, because they know they cannot return to the Democratic Republic of Congo, they’re going to be killed there,” Mukherjee said.
Transfer to Dilley Detention Center
After being transferred to the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Nov. 12, 2025, Andre said she was detained apart from the rest of her family, the habeas petition says.
“They just took them away and put me on a different plane,” Andre said.
According to Andre, she was sent to four different facilities over the course of the following two weeks. She said she would ask personnel at the facility where her family was, but claims she never received an answer.
Andre was then sent to the immigration facility in Dilley, but said she did not know where the rest of her family was being held.
Two weeks later, Andre said she and a friend she made at the detention center were walking to the library when she heard her name being called. Her friend encouraged her to see a counselor at the facility who later determined that the rest of the family was also being held there. They were finally reunited, but held in different sections of the facility, according to her attorneys.
Andre’s mother and two siblings were held in areas reserved for family units, while Andre was held with other single adult women, the attorneys said.
Andre said she later found out that her sister would yell her name out into the yard of the facility every day since being detained in hopes that she would end up at the same facility and hear her.
Andre and her family are now challenging their asylum claim denial. In February, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals barred the Trump administration from deporting the family until they rule on the case, which could take several months.
Mukherjee filed a request to temporarily release the family while the court case continues. In March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released Andre’s mother and siblings, but she remains in detention.
Spotlight on the family’s case
Andre’s supporters highlight her accomplishments in the more than three years since coming to the U.S.
According to court documents, Andre graduated from high school in one and a half years. She completed a rigorous training program to become a certified nursing assistant and was in college studying to become a nurse at the time she was detained. She knows multiple languages, which she says can help her treat people from all over the world.
The loss of her brother inspired her to get into the medical field, Andre said.
“When I lost my brother, I was, like, I have to work and do something to help people,” she said.
To date, her attorneys say they have not received a formal reason for why she remains detained despite the government being prohibited from deporting her while her case unfolds in court.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ABC News the Andre family has “received full due process” and the government will continue trying to deport the family.
“The facts are Olivia Mabiala Andre is an adult illegal alien with a final order of removal and no right to remain in the U.S. If we encounter illegal aliens who should have been detained but were instead released into the country by the Biden administration, we will detain them. The Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” the spokesperson said.
At times, Andre worries that she’ll be deported back to the Congo and what that would do to her mother.
“She already lost one child, she cannot lose another one,” she said.
“We are at an hour of desperation, and we need your help,” Savannah Guthrie said in an Instagram video, speaking directly to the camera.
“We believe our mom is still out there. We need your help,” she said. “Law enforcement is working tirelessly, around the clock, trying to bring her home.”
“She was taken, and we don’t know where, and we need your help,” she said. “So I’m coming on just to ask you … no matter where you are … if you see anything, if you hear anything, if there’s anything at all that seems strange to you, that you report to law enforcement.”
Savannah Guthrie thanked everyone for their prayers and love, and said she believes her mom is feeling those prayers, too.
The exact time of her kidnapping is not clear. Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47 a.m., Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said, and then at 2:12 a.m., the camera software detected a person. At 2:28 a.m.,Nancy Guthrie’s pacemaker app disconnected from her phone, which was left behind at her house, Nanos said.
This weekend, faced with a demand for a bitcoin ransom and a Monday deadline by someone claiming to be Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings said they’d pay for their mothers return.
“We received your message and we understand,” Savannah Guthrie said in an Instagram video this weekend. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
The message Savannah Guthrie references in her new Instagram post is the same message the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department said they were studying Friday, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Investigators have not confirmed the authenticity of the latest message, which was received by a Tucson television station, nor any of the other ransom notes mentioning Nancy Guthrie, according to the source.
As the search intensifies, a 5 p.m. Monday deadline set in an initial ransom note from earlier last week is the point of focus for authorities, though investigators are still not certain of the ransom notes’ authenticity and continue to pursue all leads, a source familiar with the investigation told ABC News on Monday.
Investigators have returned repeatedly to the home of Savannah Guthrie’s sister, Annie Guthrie, where Nancy Guthrie enjoyed dinner and a game night before returning to her home a few minutes away on the night of Saturday, Jan. 31.
Investigators have also returned to Nancy Guthrie’s home, where they’ve examined rooftop cameras, towed away a car and made inquiries of neighbors.
The sheriff’s department said it is “an active and ongoing investigation,” but added that “investigators have not identified any suspects, persons of interest, or vehicles connected to this case.”
Anyone with information is urged to call 911 or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900.
Printed documents available at Epstein Library on the U.S. Department of Justice website are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Justice on Thursday released three previously withheld FBI interview reports from 2019 related to a woman who made uncorroborated allegations that she was abused by Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was a minor.
In a statement on social media, the Department of Justice said the interview summaries — known as FBI 302 reports — were initially withheld from the January release of millions of pages of DOJ documents related to Jeffrey Epstein because they were believed to be duplicative of other documents.
“What we found through extensive review is that a published 302 — additionally disclosed in a published spreadsheet — had subsequent 302s that were coded as ‘duplicative.’ After this was brought to our attention, we reviewed the entire batch with the similar coding and discovered 15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicative,” the DOJ account said.
The statement did not appear to explain why, beyond possible human error, the records were marked as duplicative. As of Thursday evening, the DOJ database still does not include the handwritten notes from the interviews themselves.
According to the reports, the FBI interviewed the woman four times between July and October 2019. During each of the interviews with the woman, whose identity is redacted, she made allegations of abuse against Epstein.
In her second interview with federal investigators, she claimed that Epstein once took her to either New York or New Jersey where he introduced to Trump when she was between the ages of 13 and 15 years old. According to the report, she claimed Trump abused her during that trip.
In the fourth interview in October 2019, the woman declined to provide additional details about the alleged interaction with Trump when asked by agents, according to the summary of that interview.
Her statements to the federal agents allege that the incident with Trump took place in the early-to-mid 1980s — a period when Epstein and Trump did not appear to be in contact.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein or any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.
In her initial interview with the FBI, the woman claims she was sexually abused by Epstein after being hired for what she thought was a babysitting job, but she said there were no children present. Similar abuse occurred, she said, on several more occasions, according to the summary of the first report, which was released by the DOJ in January.
The witness said multiple alleged incidents with Epstein took place in South Carolina, a location not known to have been frequented by Epstein. The timing of the allegations would place them two decades before law enforcement in Florida began investigating Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors.
Before the additional records were released Thursday, Congressional Democrats had accused the Justice Department of illegally withholding the documents to protect the president.
“It is unconscionable, it is illegal, and [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and the president need to answer where those files are,” California Democrat Robert Garcia, D-Calif. said last week.
In a statement in January, the Department of Justice said that some investigative files in the massive tranche released would include unsubstantiated claims about Trump.
“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the statement said.
