2 baby boys die in hot cars in separate states on same day
(PHOENIX) — A 6-month-old boy has died after he was left in a hot car in Arizona for about seven hours, authorities said.
The incident unfolded after the mom asked a neighbor to drive her to Prescott Valley on Tuesday, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said.
The baby was in his car seat in the back of the neighbor’s car and he fell asleep on the neighbor’s way home to Cordes Lakes, the sheriff’s office said.
The neighbor was asked to drop the baby off with his father, who lives next door and “would be home shortly,” according to the sheriff’s office.
The neighbor got home at about 2 p.m., parked the car in the sun and went inside, “claiming to forget about the baby in the car,” the sheriff’s office said.
Around 8:45 p.m., the baby’s dad reached out to the mom, asking when the neighbor was bringing the little boy over, according to the sheriff’s office.
The mother, who was at work, called the neighbor, at which point the neighbor realized the 6-month-old was still in the car, the sheriff’s office said.
The neighbor and the dad pulled the baby out of the car and called 911, authorities said.
Cordes Lakes — which is about 65 miles north of Phoenix — reached 98 degrees on Tuesday.
On the same day as the Arizona fatality, another 6-month-old boy died after being left in a hot car in Louisiana, authorities said. When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning and had left him in the car, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office said.
These two babies are among at least 17 children who have died in hot cars across the U.S. so far this year, according to national nonprofit KidsAndCars.org.
A total of 29 children died in hot cars last year. A record high of 54 children died in hot cars in 2018, according to KidsAndCars.org.
Since 1990, at least 1,101 children have died in hot cars — and about 88% of those kids were 3 years old or younger, according to KidsAndCars.org.
Click here for hot car safety tips to keep in mind this summer.
(NEW YORK) — Ernesto has become a Category 1 hurricane Wednesday after hitting Puerto Rico overnight and leaving power outages and flooding in its wake.
The center of then-Tropical Storm Ernesto passed within 40 miles of San Juan, Puerto Rico, early Wednesday, producing strong winds and heavy rain.
More than 728,000 customers are without power in Puerto Rico, just shy of half the island, according to LUMA, a service provider. The island’s eastern and central regions are the most impacted.
LUMA said only power lines are down, not the infrastructure that delivers power. It will need 24 to 48 hours to assess damage before providing any time frame for repairing the lines.
The primary cause of the outages were high winds, which have been recorded at speeds of 50 mph or more, according to Juan Saca, the president and CEO of LUMA Energy.
“In Puerto Rico, vegetation under the power lines is a major issue. The movement of trees between the lines can easily cause outages,” Saca said.
Despite the challenges, Saca said LUMA is better prepared than ever to restore power.
Additionally, 235,000 customers are without water and over 400 people are in shelters, according to Puerto Rican officials.
Hurricane Ernesto will continue to strengthen as it approaches Bermuda in the next few days. ABC News
Officials are asking people to leave their homes only if absolutely necessary. Many villages are completely isolated because of the river levels and multiple routes are closed.
Officials asked people to donate blood due to low resources. Twenty-three hospitals are using electric generators and 80 flights have been canceled.
The highest rainfall total recorded Wednesday midday was 9.6 inches in Naguabo, Puerto Rico.
All tropical storm warnings have been canceled for Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands, but flash flooding still remains a concern in Puerto Rico due to heavy rain. Rain was ending late Wednesday afternoon.
A hurricane watch has now been issued for Bermuda.
On Culebra island, east of Puerto Rico, sustained winds of 68 mph were reported with a gust up to 86 mph. A METAR Observation Station at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico reported sustained winds of 48 mph and a gust of 74 mph.
On the forecast track, Ernesto will continue to strengthen Thursday into Friday. It may become a Category 3 hurricane by Friday morning with winds up to 115 mph.
Friday night into early Saturday, Ernesto will be making its approach to Bermuda as either a low-end Category 3 hurricane or high-end Category 2 hurricane. Wind and rain is expected there.
The East Coast will see high surf and rip currents through this weekend as Ernesto moves parallel, but well away from, the coast.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Tuesday night.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi had warned residents to stay home starting on Tuesday evening, when the tropical storm-force winds are forecast to reach the island. Total rainfall could reach up to 10 inches in some spots.
ABC News’ Jessica Gorman and Josh Hoyos contributed to this report.
(LONDON, Ky.) — Joseph A. Couch, the man authorities have named as a suspect in a Kentucky freeway shooting that left seven people injured, bought the weapon used in the incident legally on the morning of the shooting, authorities said Sunday night.
Laurel County Sheriff’s Commander Richard Dalrymple said at Sunday night’s news briefing that Couch purchased about a thousand rounds of ammunition, most of which has been recovered.
The suspect remains at large despite a massive search in the area of Saturday’s shooting north of London, Kentucky.
The shooting unfolded around 5:30 p.m. local time on Saturday evening, officials said. Arriving deputies initially found nine vehicles had been shot in both the north and southbound lanes of I-75, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said at a news conference late Saturday night. By Sunday night, that number had jumped to 12 vehicles, according to officials.
Root said deputies found five people with serious gunshot wounds, including one who was shot in the face. He said one vehicle contained two people who were shot.
Laurel County Sheriff’s Deputy Gilbert Acciardo said Sunday that none of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries and were all in stable condition.
“A couple of our deputies, because of the severity of the injuries, loaded the people up, the injured persons, and transported them to London Hospital,” Root said.
Two additional people were injured in a car crash that occurred during the shooting, authorities said.
Root said I-75 was immediately shut down in both directions, saying that at the time, deputies didn’t know where the bullets came from.
“We couldn’t risk somebody else being shot,” Root said.
Authorities previously said they found an AR-15 rifle in the woods near the crime scene on Interstate 75, about eight miles north of London, Kentucky. Couch’s vehicle was also found abandoned in the same area Saturday night, officials said Sunday afternoon.
Couch was first named as a person of interest in the incident but upgraded to a suspect on Sunday. Root said the decision to name Couch a suspect was based on evidence collected in the investigation. Asked to elaborate, Root said that the recovery of the weapon and Couch’s vehicle, as well as “some information” he could not share, prompted investigators to elevate Couch to a suspect in the shooting.
The sheriff’s office earlier released a photo of Couch, who allegedly fled the freeway shooting and was believed to still be in the area, Root said.
Root said Couch has an address in Woodbine, Kentucky, and the sheriff’s office described him as about 5-foot-10-inches tall and 154 pounds.
Dalrymple said Sunday night that the suspect allegedly fired from a ledge about 30 feet down from a cliff by Exit 49. To find the location, Dalrymple said he had to hold onto a tree and look down to see the site to find the location.
Earlier, Acciardo described the shooting as “sniper-like” and said it was not the result of road rage. He said investigators do not believe the shooter knew any of the victims or had contact with them before the shooting.
Up to 60 members of law enforcement searched the area of the shooting until 3 a.m. Sunday before halting the search due to safety concerns, saying it was pitch black on the highway and describing the terrain where the search was being conducted as very rugged.
More than 150 individuals were involved in the search for Couch on Sunday, with efforts set to resume on Monday morning, according to Root.
The FBI, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are assisting local authorities in the investigation, officials said.
A motive for the shooting remained under investigation.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement on X on Saturday that he was monitoring the situation.
In an interview Sunday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Christina Dinoto said she was driving with a friend southbound on I-75, heading to Tennessee, when the shooting erupted.
“All of a sudden, we just heard this loud, deafening sound,” Dinoto said. “And my ear, my right ear, started ringing, and we didn’t know what the sound was, but we both looked at each other and said, was that a gunshot?”
Dinoto said that when she pulled off the interstate in Knoxville, she discovered damage to her vehicle that she suspects was caused by a bullet that may have ricocheted off another car.
The Kentucky shooting came less than a week after six people were injured in six shootings that occurred on Sept. 2 on Interstate 5 in Washington state between 8:26 p.m. and 11:01 p.m. local time, officials previously said. A suspect whose vehicle was sought in connection with several of the shootings was arrested in the Tacoma area on Sept. 3, police said.
(NEW YORK) — Five months after a New York judge held Donald Trump liable for committing business fraud, the former president on Monday appealed his $454 million civil fraud case.
Trump and his co-defendants asked New York’s Appellate Division to overturn February’s ruling from Judge Arthur Engoron that found that the former president fraudulently inflated his net worth to secure better business deals.
“It violates centuries of New York case law holding that NYAG cannot sue to vindicate alleged violations that are purely private in nature — and, in this case, do not exist at all,” defense lawyers wrote in a 95-page filing.
Defense lawyers argued that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case focused on transactions outside the court’s statute of limitations, misapplied the relevant law, and resulted in an excessive financial penalty. Repeating a frequent defense argument from the lengthy trial, defense lawyers argued that the case focuses on profitable transactions without any victims.
“There were no victims and no losses,” defense lawyers wrote. “If Appellants’ conduct constituted ‘fraud’ under § 63(12), then that word has no meaning, and NYAG’s power to seize and destroy private businesses is boundless — and standardless.”
A spokesperson for James said her office is confident the ruling will be upheld on appeal.
“Once again, the defendants are raising arguments that they were already sanctioned and fined for. We won this case based on the facts and the law, and we are confident we will prevail on appeal,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement following the filing, Trump attorney Christopher Kise said, “Such an outrageous miscarriage of justice is profoundly un-American, and a complete reversal is the only means available to restore public confidence in the integrity of the New York judicial system.”
Following an 11-week trial last year, Judge Engoron determined that Trump and his co-defendants — including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and two top Trump Organization executives — lied about Trump’s net worth on his financial statements by exaggerating the value of properties and other assets to score better business deals.
“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Engoron wrote in his 92-page decision.
The judge ordered the defendants to pay $464 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, and temporarily banned Trump and his sons from running any New York business.
The massive financial penalty put Trump’s prized properties at risk after defense lawyers warned that securing a $464 million bond was a “practical impossibility” — but New York’s Appellate Division granted a last-minute request to reduce the bond to $175 million, which Trump secured with the help of a California-based insurance company.
In addition to that decision, New York’s Appellate Division has granted Trump’s legal team some favorable rulings, including dismissing claims against his daughter Ivanka Trump last June and delaying some of the penalties imposed in Engoron’s summary judgment decision last fall. However, the Appellate Division also upheld Engoron’s limited gag order against Trump and ultimately denied Trump’s last-minute attempt to further delay the trial last year.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ response to Trump’s appeal is due on Aug. 21, followed by Trump’s reply on Aug. 30.
The court is scheduled to consider arguments in the appeal during the last week of September.