The special allegations charge claims that Ashlee Buzzard personally and intentionally discharged a firearm causing death and committed the murder by means of lying in wait.
Ashlee Buzzard was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly killing Melodee, who was shot in the head and found dead in a rural area of Utah in early December, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Bill Brown said “cold-blooded and criminally sophisticated premeditation and heartlessness … went into planning” the crime and “ruthlessness … went into actually committing the crime.”
Ashlee Buzzard’s arrest came more than two months after Melodee was reported missing. Authorities said they believe Melodee was killed shortly after she was last seen alive on Oct. 9, near the Colorado-Utah border, during a road trip with her mom.
The examination of a spent shell casing found in Ashlee Buzzard’s home matched what was found at the scene in Utah, and live similar rounds were found in Ashlee Buzzard’s car, officials said.
A motive hasn’t been determined, authorities said.
(NEW YORK) — At least four rivers in Washington state are now at major flood stage — the highest level — and 11 others are forecast to reach the same level in the next day or two as an atmospheric river delivers heavy rain in the Pacific Northwest
The multiday event from Washington to Oregon is swelling rivers to near-record levels.
The event is forecast to bring up to 7 inches of rainfall in parts of Washington.
Stampede Pass, at an elevation of 3,600 feet in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, recorded more than 7 inches of rain on Monday. Usually, this would be snow, but due to the well-above-average temperatures plaguing the West, it’s been all rain so far.
More than 1 inch of rain has fallen at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport and more than 1.5 inches was recorded at Portland International Airport in Oregon.
Some rivers may break records. Already, overnight into Tuesday, the Naselle River near Naselle, Washington, has gone from its normal 5 foot depth to nearly 20 feet deep, growing by 10 feet in 12 hours and coming within less than 1 foot of the historical record.
While Washington was the hardest hit on Monday, the atmospheric river has shifted slightly south on Tuesday and will hit Oregon the hardest.
The atmospheric river is expected to retreat north again Tuesday night and into Wednesday and deliver more rain to Washington state.
The rain will continue Thursday and Friday, but it will be much lighter for western Washington and Oregon.
Total rainfall accumulation through the event is still expected to reach over a foot of rain at high elevations and 3 inches or more at some of the lowest elevations.
Midwest winter storm
The Midwest will see a break in the brutal cold over the next couple days until the next shot of Arctic air plunges into the Midwest by Friday and digs in through the weekend. It will reach the Northeast by Sunday morning.
A strong low pressure system is moving through the Upper Midwest and creating dangerous wind and snow conditions on Tuesday.
A widespread area of damaging wind has led to high wind warnings across at least seven states from Montana to Minnesota to Colorado where gusts up to 65 mph are generally expected Tuesday. Higher elevations in the mountains of Colorado could have gusts up to 90 mph.
This could dislodge even hardened snow on the ground and create ground blizzard conditions.
Anyone driving in these areas should use extreme caution. High-top vehicles like semis can be overturned in these conditions. Power outages are also possible. Plus, there will be low visibility with any blowing snow.
Meanwhile, some areas will see falling snow, too.
A winter storm warning is in place with 2 to 7 inches of snow possible from parts of North Dakota through parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Minneapolis could see 2 to 4 inches of snow and gusts up to 35 mph Tuesday afternoon and overnight.
A winter storm warning is in place for parts of South Dakota, southern Minnesota and central Iowa because gusts up to 60 mph Tuesday night and Wednesday could lead to blizzard conditions by dislodging snow already on the ground, along with minor new snow accumulations.
On Wednesday, this storm will bring rain and snow to the Northeast.
Leslie and Colby Taylor, parents of Jay Taylor, speak to ABC News anchor Juju Chang about their late son and the dangers of 764. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — The parents of a Seattle-area teenager who was allegedly pushed to take his own life by a member of the online extremist network “764” have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Discord, claiming the social media giant “caused” their son’s suicide and “abetted one of the most depraved and dangerous child abuse cults in modern history.”
According to the lawsuit, Discord “supplied 764 with unlimited victims,” including 13-year-old Jay Taylor, who in January 2022 died by suicide outside of a local grocery store in Gig Harbor, Washington.
“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay Taylor’s father, Colby, told ABC News in an exclusive interview in November.
As ABC News has previously reported, 764 members find vulnerable victims on popular platforms, elicit private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then use that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking other violent action.
Members of 764 often host live online chats so others can watch the self-harm and violence in real time. The further they can push their victims, the more stature and respect they will receive within 764, authorities say.
“Discord [provided] 764 access to its platform, failed to take reasonable steps to prevent or disrupt such exploitation, and affirmatively maintained the same product design and defaults that enabled the abuse,” the new 31-page lawsuit alleges.
Colby Taylor previously told ABC News that he and his wife, Leslie, were preparing to file a lawsuit against Discord, hoping that legal action would pressure the platform to do more to stop online predators. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in a Pierce County, Washington, court, seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
As the Taylors described it to ABC News, Jay Taylor was a vulnerable victim. He was “funny” and “sweet,” and he had a knack for drawing and crafts, his mother recalled. But by the start of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had left Jay feeling isolated and lonely. And though he was assigned female at birth, he was in the midst of a gender transition, exacerbating his feelings of loneliness, his parents said.
In January 2022, Jay posted a message to Discord, saying, “I’m looking for friends, preferably LGBTQ for crochet buddies,” Jay’s father recalled.
Someone responded to Jay’s message, bringing him into a live chat with several others. Within an hour or so, the others in the group chat began telling Jay he should kill himself, Jay’s parents recounted.
A Discord user who called himself “White Tiger” online was leading the charge, directing others to push and manipulate Jay, according to Jay’s parents.
“Eventually, the pressure took hold of Jay,” their lawsuit says.
The FBI later identified “White Tiger” as a young German-Iranian medical student from Hamburg, Germany. He is currently on trial in Hamburg, charged with Jay Taylor’s murder and more than 200 other counts for the alleged abuse of dozens of victims. According to the Taylors’ lawsuit, Discord poses “a foreseeable risk of harm to youth users” and is “not reasonably safe as designed.”
“From the outset, Discord designed a platform structurally rife with obvious, risk-amplifying features–and when those risks materialized through 764, Discord housed it, grew it, and meanwhile marketed itself to more child users, guaranteeing their exploitation,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit further alleges that Discord is “refusing to invest in commonsense safety measures” and “deliberately understaffs and under-resources its safety and response team, employing a tiny fraction of what is needed to effectively control abusive conduct.”
764 was started on Discord by a teenager in Stephenville, Texas, who named it after the first three digits of his local ZIP code. Born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when teenagers were stuck inside and flocked to online spaces, 764 was an even more vicious offshoot of other online groups exploiting children through blackmail and self-harm, authorities said.
Since then, 764 has spread around the world, growing into more of an ideology than a singular group, experts say. And other groups, inspired by 764, have formed with different names but identical tactics and goals. As of November, the FBI was investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks.
The number has only increased since then, experts say. On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, James Comer, R-Kentucky, sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, demanding that FBI officials brief committee staff on the agency’s efforts to “track and apprehend” members of 764.
Citing reporting from ABC News, Comer wrote that the “disturbing tactics attributed to this network” warrant “rigorous oversight and an evaluation of whether existing federal countermeasures are effective and adequately resourced to combat these elusive online perpetrators.”
In September, Patel told lawmakers during a public Senate hearing that fighting 764 is now “a priority” for the FBI. He called 764-related crimes a new form of “modern-day terrorism in America.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Discord said the company is reviewing the new lawsuit filed by Colby and Leslie Taylor.
After ABC News interviewed the Taylors several months ago, a Discord representative told ABC News in a statement that the platform is “committed to user safety” and that the “horrific actions of groups like this have no place on Discord or anywhere in society.”
According to a Discord spokesperson, the platform invests “heavily” in specialized teams and newly-developed artificial intelligence tools that can “disrupt these networks, remove violative content, and take action against bad actors on our platform.”
Discord also said it shares intelligence with other platforms, which can help identify bad actors even before Discord has spotted them, and Discord said it cooperates with law enforcement, proactively providing tips and other information to them.
Its tips have led to many arrests, including the arrest of Bradley Cadenhead, the Texas teen who started 764 and is now serving an 80-year sentence in state prison after pleading guilty to child pornography-related charges. And Discord recently announced new tools aimed at giving parents more control and more insight into their children’s accounts.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins speaks with ABC News, Jan. 7, 2026. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said she wants to “get Americans away from the highly processed packaged foods,” saying those foods are driving the obesity epidemic in America, following the release on Wednesday of new federal dietary guidelines.
“This is a whole flipping of the narrative,” Rollins said in an exclusive interview on “Good Morning America” that aired on Thursday. “It’s a flipping of what we’ve known over the last couple of decades.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the new federal dietary guidelines on Wednesday, encouraging Americans to limit highly processed food and reduce refined carbohydrates.
The new recommendations essentially turn the old food pyramid upside down, encouraging Americans to eat whole foods like fruits and vegetables, to incorporate healthy fats, to prioritize protein-rich meals including red meat and to consume full-fat dairy and whole grains with no added sugars.
“Today was a reset of all of that in these dietary guidelines focusing on eating real food, nutrient dense foods, saturated fat, meats, fruits and vegetables, whole milk, all of that now becomes front and center,” said Rollins. “And that’s real, that’s unprecedented.”
Other recommendations include limiting added sugars and highly processed foods like potato chips or cookies, as well as sweetened beverages like energy drinks, soda, and diet sodas due to their artificial sweeteners.
The guidance puts a new focus on what the administration is calling “healthy fats,” such as full-fat dairy like yogurt and cheese, and using olive oil, beef tallow or butter as a cooking oil, a recommendation that Kennedy Jr. has championed This is in contrast to the American Heart Association recommendation to “limit high-fat animal products including red meat, butter, lard and tallow, which are linked to increased cardiovascular risk.”
“Our goal is to get Americans away from the highly processed packaged foods, which is the driver in the obesity epidemic that’s facing our country right now,” Rollins told “GMA” on Thursday.
Some of these choices, however, could be costly for many Americans as they face rising grocery prices, including ground beef, which has risen 16% over the past year, according to officials.
“This is just about a general awareness amongst America on what is healthy and what we should be eating,” Rollins continued.
The guidelines also say Americans should “limit alcoholic beverages.” Previously, the dietary guidelines said adults ages 21 and over should stick to two drinks or fewer per day for men and one drink or fewer per day for women.
“The recommendation is just minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize,” Rollins said. “We’re not saying everyone should stop eating sugar and stop drinking anything. That’s not it. It’s just working to trend away from where we’ve gotten to in the last couple decades.”
The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are updated every five years, come as Kennedy has made nutrition policy a cornerstone of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
“Let’s focus on these good, nutritious foods,” Rollins said. “This will change everything.”
