Bomb cyclone impacts West Coast, 2 dead in Washington state
ABC News
(BELLEVUE, Wash.) — Two people have been killed by falling trees in Washington state as a powerful storm hits the Pacific Northwest.
In Bellevue, a tree fell into a home, hitting and killing a woman while she was in the shower Tuesday night, Bellevue fire officials said.
In Lynwood, a woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell on a homeless encampment, officials said.
More than 500,000 customers are without power in Washington state on Wednesday.
The storm exploded into a bomb cyclone off the coast, near Vancouver Island, Canada, where winds gusted near 101 mph.
A bomb cyclone means the pressure in the center of the storm drops 24 millibars within 24 hours.
Wind gusts reached 50 to 84 mph from Northern California to Washington.
As the storm sits and spins over the ocean this week, it will help to push a plume of Pacific moisture called an atmospheric river into Oregon and Northern California.
Alerts are in effect through Friday for flooding, snow, avalanches and high winds.
Some places could see more than 1 foot of rain this week. A flood watch has been issued in Northern California.
(NEW YORK) — A man who went missing for more than five weeks deep in the Canadian wilderness has been found alive, authorities have confirmed.
Sam Benastick was reported missing on Oct. 19 after not returning from a trip to the back country of British Columbia in Canada, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia.
But on Tuesday at approximately 11:30 a.m. — more than five weeks after Benastick was initially reported missing — Northern Rockies RCMP were notified that he had been located by two people who were headed to the Redfern Lake trail for work when they saw a man walking toward them and recognized him to be Sam Benastick when they approached him, officials said.
The two men immediately took Benastick to the hospital where police attended and confirmed him to be the man reported missing, authorities said.
“Sam told police that he stayed in his car for a couple of days and then walked to a creek, mountain side where he camped out for 10-15 days,” according to the British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Benastick then reportedly moved down into the valley and built a camp and shelter in a dried-out creek bed before he was fortunate enough to find the two men he flagged down and taken to safety, officials said.
“Finding Sam alive is the absolute best outcome. After all the time he was missing, it was feared that this was would not be the outcome,” said Cpl Madonna Saunderson of British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police Communications.
“The RCMP would like to sincerely thank the Fort Nelson and North Peace and Search and Rescue teams including other Search and Rescue jurisdictions that provided mutual aid support, the Canadian Rangers along with many local volunteers with extensive back country knowledge of the area,” authorities said. “The time, effort and resources put in to locate Sam from the time of notification he was missing was beyond measure. We are thankful for the great outcome.”
(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors leading the case against Bryan Kohberger are pushing back against his attorneys’ claims that investigators improperly obtained potentially key evidence — and are asking the judge to deny requests to exclude that evidence from trial.
In a series of highly-technical filings posted late Thursday, prosecutors said that the searches of Kohberger’s person and belongings, including his car, phone records, Apple accounts and homes, were appropriate. They noted the “burden of proof is on the defendant to show that the search was invalid.”
Kohberger, a former criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, in connection with the fatal stabbing of four University of Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20 — in an off-campus house in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf. The trial is scheduled for August 2025.
Lawyers for Kohberger have accused investigators of an overbroad attempt to build their case, arguing their search warrants cast too wide a net. But prosecutors, responding on Thursday to the defense’s lengthy series of motions posted Nov. 15, contend that taken together with other elements of the case, their probe for evidence was “sufficiently particular and valid” and “considering the information available” at the time, the Moscow detective seeking the information “could not reasonably narrow the scope further.”
The “warrant must allow the searcher to reasonably ascertain and identify the things which are authorized to be seized,” wrote Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ashley Jennings, citing legal precedent. She added, “broad language may be permissible where the warrant constrains the search to evidence of a specific crime.”
“The rationale is that ‘criminals don’t advertise where they keep evidence,'” prosecutors wrote. And since the potential evidence they sought “could be located in multiple formats and areas,” particularly electronic data, prosecutors here said, a wide enough investigative aperture is necessary.
“Applied to electronic devices ‘criminals can — and often do — hide, mislabel, or manipulate files to conceal criminal activity [such that] a broad, expansive search of the [device] may be required,'” prosecutors wrote, again citing legal precedent.
Jennings said the “seizure of items was limited to” the crime Kohberger is accused of committing — the killings of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in their off-campus home.
And though Kohberger has a right to privacy, that right does not shield criminal conduct, prosecutors said. In fact, it is because he had that right that they sought, and obtained, search warrants, they said.
Though the man accused of stabbing to death four college students in Nov. 2022 indeed “had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his vehicle located at his parents’ residence,” there was “substantial probable cause” to search it, prosecutors said. And Kohberger also had a “privacy interest” in his AT&T account and phone records — and “as such, the State sought and was granted a search warrant to review those records.”
The Thursday filings were accompanied by a series of requests to seal corresponding exhibits meant to bolster prosecutors’ argument.
Prosecutors didn’t include in Thursday’s filings an extensive address of Kohberger’s challenge to DNA evidence, or the search of his Amazon account.
Judge Steven Hippler, who is now overseeing the case in Boise, has not yet scheduled a public hearing on the matter.
(NEW YORK) — The FBI has interviewed multiple individuals about Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s personal life as part of its background check investigation, asking questions about alleged extramarital affairs, his relationship with alcohol and his character, according to sources familiar with the matter.
As part of the background investigation, the FBI reached out to people in Hegseth’s past, including individuals Hegseth has known much of his adult life, according to multiple sources familiar with the FBI’s outreach and other sources briefed on the process.
Sources tell ABC News that Hegseth sat for an interview with the FBI in recent weeks. The Armed Services Committee is expected to hold Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, ahead of President-elect Trump’s inauguration.
On Friday, the top Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., were briefed on the results of Hegseth’s FBI background investigation by a representative from Trump’s transition team, according to sources familiar with the matter. The background investigation materials were also made available for Wicker and Reed to review if they chose to do so. At this point, the FBI’s findings are only being shared with Wicker and Reed, according to sources familiar with discussions between the committee and Trump’s representatives.
A spokesperson for Reed declined to comment to ABC News, and a spokesperson for Wicker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extent of the traditionally thorough FBI background check is an indication that the Senate could be provided with more information about Hegseth’s personal life, amid reports, disputed by Hegseth, about alleged infidelity and personal behavior that some senators have found concerning.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who described her December meeting with Hegseth as a “good, substantive discussion,” told reporters last month that she “pressed” Hegseth “on both his position on military issues as well as the allegations against him.”
The Maine Republican said she would wait for the FBI review to help her determine how to vote.
“I, obviously, always wait until we have an FBI background check, and one is underway in the case of Mr. Hegseth, and I wait to see the committee hearing before reaching a final decision,” Collins, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in December.
Other Republican senators have downplayed some of the reports as “anonymous” allegations.
“If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview on “Meet the Press” on Dec. 15. “We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible.”
As part of the process, the FBI has spoken to individuals in Minnesota, Hegseth’s home state, according to sources familiar with the outreach.
The FBI declined to comment on the details and focus of its inquiry. A spokesperson for Hegseth declined to comment. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York Times has also published a 2018 email from Hegseth’ s mother, Penelope Hegseth, to her son, in which she said he mistreated women for years, amid his divorce from his first wife. She later told the newspaper that she regretted her original sentiments and expressed regret to her son in a follow up email. ABC News has not obtained or reviewed the email.
The Monterey Police Department released a report last month detailing how a woman told investigators in October 2017 that she had encountered Hegseth at an event afterparty at a California hotel where both had been drinking, and claimed that he sexually assaulted her.
No charges were filed, although Hegseth subsequently paid the woman as part of a settlement agreement, which Hegseth’s attorney said was only because Hegseth feared his career would suffer if her allegations were made public. The agreement stated that Hegseth made no admission of wrongdoing in the matter.
Hegseth, who has previously said he welcomed the FBI’s work, has denied the allegations against him, writing in the Wall Street Journal that “the press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down.”
“It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown. They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity,” he wrote in the op-ed.
As ABC News previously reported, the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will review Hegseth’s nomination, has also reached out to the Monterey County, California, district attorney regarding the 2017 sexual assault allegations, and to the conservative veterans’ organization Hegseth once ran following a New Yorker report about alleged financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse and sexist behavior, which Hegseth has denied.
Hegseth has denied claims of alcohol abuse, and said in a podcast interview that he won’t drink if confirmed by the Senate.
“This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it,” he said last month in an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
