California radiologist, wife fatally shot in driveway by son, police say
Law enforcement on the scene after two people were shot and killed in Simi Valley, Calif., Dec. 1, 2025. KABC.
(SIMI VALLEY, Calif.) — The son of a California radiologist has been identified as the suspect in the fatal shooting of his parents at their home.
Dr. Eric Cordes, 63, and wife, Vicki, 66, were shot multiple times in their Simi Valley garage on Sunday shortly after 12 p.m. local time. The couple was taken to a local hospital and later died of their injuries, the Simi Valley Police Department told ABC News.
Keith Cordes, 37, allegedly shot his father and stepmother multiple times before fleeing the scene to the city of Chino, police said. He then reportedly set the car he escaped in on fire before fatally shooting himself, police said.
The San Bernardino County Medical Examiner’s Office was able to confirm the remains in the car set ablaze as Keith Cordes on Tuesday, police said.
Investigators said they believe that the weapon used in Keith Cordes’s suicide is the same weapon that was used to kill the couple, but forensic testing is still pending.
The circumstances and motive for the double murder are still under investigation, according to police.
The suspect — a resident of Kentucky — allegedly approached the couple in their garage before opening fire on Sunday. He then fled the scene in a black sedan with out of state plates, according to witness statements obtained by police.
Detectives later found the vehicle and the suspect’s remains by tracking its movement using FLOCK cameras and LPR cameras.
Dr. Cordes worked with Focus Medical Imaging for several years before his killing, the radiology clinic told ABC News on Tuesday.
“Dr. Eric Cordes was a brilliant, hard working doctor, and a respected colleague. He served the Simi Valley community and surrounding areas throughout his entire 30 plus year career. His tragic passing will leave a huge hole that will take a long time to fill,” Focus Medical Imaging said.
Adventist Health Simi Valley, where he also worked, called the couple’s killing a “shocking loss.”
“The Adventist Health Simi Valley community is heartbroken by the tragic deaths of our longtime colleague, Dr. Eric Cordes, and his wife, Vicki. Dr. Cordes was a highly respected, board-certified radiologist and beloved physician who served this community with compassion and excellence for nearly 30 years,” the hospital told ABC News in a statement.
Adva Lavie is wanted for a string of burglaries in which she allegedly targeted older men, posing as a romantic companion on virtual dating platforms and social media, according to officials.
The suspect is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighing 104 lbs. with brunette hair and hazel eyes. Lavie is believed to drive a black Porsche SUV or white Mercedes-Benz.
She is also known to use the aliases Mia Ventura, Shoshana or Shana, according to officials.
When contacted by ABC News, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said they had no additional information to provide about the suspect or her alleged crimes.
Officials are asking anyone with information about Lavie or incidents in which she may have been involved to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or Los Angeles Police Department.
Azia Rodriguez and Brandon Laboy speak out after police officers saved their choking baby, 10-month-old Makai Laboy, who had stopped breathing. (NYPD)
(NEW YORK) — In a matter of seconds, a New York City mom said she worried her 10-month-old boy might not live to see his first birthday after he started to choke and suddenly could not breathe. But thanks to two police officers who saved the child, the “endless bundle of joy” is alive.
“Knowing that my son’s alive, he’s OK, he’s happy, he’s growing, I get to see his first birthday in a month, that’s the biggest blessing I could ever ask for,” the child’s mom, Azia Rodriguez, told ABC News on Wednesday.
On Oct. 10 at approximately 4:40 p.m., officers responded to a 911 call for a choking baby, and once on the scene, observed a “10-month-old male child in an unresponsive state due to an obstruction in his breathing passage,” the New York City Police Department said in a statement to ABC News.
Prior to alerting first responders, Rodriguez said her son, Makai Laboy, had just been put down for a nap. As she was watching him via the baby monitor camera, she noticed he was “tossing and turning back and forth.”
She then went into the room where he was sleeping in their Queens home and saw he was throwing up, she said.
Rodriguez said she immediately picked her son up and placed his chest on her palm to start patting his back, which caused more vomit to come out. Makai was then breathing normally and laughing, but proceeded to throw up again, Rodriguez said.
Then, “two seconds later,” she said phlegm began to come out of his mouth and he was “swallowing it back in,” which appeared to obstruct his airways.
Rodriguez called 911, and officers performed “lifesaving measures which caused the obstruction to be dislodged,” the NYPD said.
Rodriguez said the moment when officers saved Makai “happened so quickly” that she “didn’t acknowledge or grasp what had happened” until after she watched it unfold via the police’s body-worn camera on Tuesday.
In the video, officers are seen repeatedly patting the baby’s back until Makai — who was wearing pajamas adorned with police cars — was able to breathe on his own.
While reliving the harrowing moments was “a lot to process” for Rodriguez, she said she is “more confident in first responders than I’ve even been.”
“Words can’t thank the cops enough for what they did,” Makai’s father, 28-year-old Brandon Laboy, told ABC News
“It showed in a matter of seconds, that situation could have been a thousand times worse than it was. But with their instincts, their quick thinking, they were able to save his life,” Laboy said.
Rodriguez said she is planning on personally thanking the two officers who saved her son, saying she will be “hugging them and never letting them go.”
“When you become a mom, you hear stories like this, but you never think that you’d go through it,” Rodriguez said while holding back tears.
The family, who is getting ready to celebrate Makai’s first birthday on Nov. 12, encouraged parents to “always have a baby camera” and emphasized that in these situations, “every second counts.”
“All that matters is making sure there’s a smile on their face,” Rodriguez told ABC News.
Former President Donald Trump appears in court with his attorney Todd Blanche during his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court, April 26, 2024, in New York. Curtis Means/Pool/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official in the Justice Department, once assailed what he described as a calculated and “vindictive” effort by federal prosecutors driven by political animus to target a defendant who had committed no crimes.
In that instance, he was speaking for his client at the time — Donald Trump.
In a 2023 court filing seeking to dismiss the federal case brought against Trump for his efforts to subvert his 2020 election loss, Blanche — who was then Trump’s defense attorney — wrote of an endeavor by “biased prosecutors” who “pursued charges despite the evidence, rather than based on it,” including “one prosecutor violating DOJ rules and ethical norms by forecasting the investigation in a television interview.”
He further cited reports that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland felt “boxed in” at the time to indict Trump after, Blanche said, President Joe Biden “pressured DOJ to pursue the nakedly political indictment in this case.”
“These actions, which are demonstrated by, inter alia, Biden’s public statements and reports from the New York Times and Washington Post based on leaks from participants in the investigation, require further inquiry and dismissal of the indictment,” Blanche wrote.
On Friday in a television interview with Fox News, however, Blanche took a differing position as he defended the Justice Department’s decision to seek an indictment against one of President Trump’s political foes, former FBI Director James Comey.
The charges against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony in 2020, came following a rushed effort by a Trump-installed prosecutor who dismissed the recommendations of career prosecutors who had determined that Comey’s conduct did not amount to a crime. Comey, who has denied the charges, said following the indictment, “I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial.”
“This was a case — again, this is not just pulled out of thin air,” Blanche said told Fox News. “It was prosecuted by the Eastern District of U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia, and folks may have their view from looking at the indictment and from knowing Mr. Comey, like a lot of these folks do, and might not be happy with this indictment, but as alleged, these are very serious crimes.”
It is unusual for Justice Department officials to comment publicly on a criminal case before it has been fully adjudicated.
But Blanche, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have disregarded such norms since Comey’s indictment — which has also been publicly cheered by President Trump, who last week moved to force out the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who had resisted bringing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump then issued a social media post urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to move “now” to prosecute Comey and others.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump wrote.
The reports from The New York Times and Washington Post that Blanche cited in his 2023 motion described private conversations among White House officials expressing concern over the Justice Department not moving quickly enough to address what they saw as clearly criminal conduct on Trump’s part, both regarding his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged possession of highly classified records after leaving the White House, before both cases were dropped following November’s election due to a long-standing DOJ policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
In public, however, President Biden and other White House officials were mostly restrained in their public comments about Trump, saying it would be inappropriate to intrude on the DOJ’s independence.
The judge overseeing Trump’s election interference case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, denied Blanche’s motion to dismiss the charges, saying Blanche’s interpretation was based on a “misreading” of the articles in question, and that most of the facts pointed to a Justice Department that exercised great caution in even opening a criminal investigation of a former president.
When asked in his Friday interview on Fox News whether he himself felt pressured to pursue Comey based on Trump’s public comments and his overt instructions in his social media posts, Blanche said he did not.
“I don’t take that as pressure,” Blanche said. “When the president says that he’s reading things or that he wants us to do investigations and he wants us to do our job — the attorney general does not take that as pressure. I don’t take that as pressure. I take that as a president who is working every day for the American people and every day to make sure that we’re doing our jobs.”
