People gather at Lynhurst Park where a candle light vigil was being held for the victims of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis. (Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Over 100 people gathered across the street from the children’s ward at Minneapolis’ Hennepin County Medical Center to pray for the kids recovering there after they were shot at the Annunciation Catholic School this week.
Teachers, students and nurses, as well as police officers who had heard about the Thursday night candlelight vigil over their dispatch radios, all joined together for a moment of silence, united in a shared sense of grief and hope after Wednesday’s mass shooting.
“This is every nurse/mother’s worst nightmare, and worst fear come true,” a flyer for the vigil said. “We’d like anyone who is interested to come join us to light up [Minneapolis] with candlelight, love, and support, for the kids, their families and our staff.”
One of those victims is 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, who is in critical condition after undergoing surgery. It’s a tragedy that struck her entire family at once — her younger brother was inside Annunciation Catholic School at the time of the shooting and her mom is a pediatric nurse at the hospital where Sophia was admitted.
“Sofia’s mother was called into work, and only to find out when she arrived that her daughter was one of the victims, unfortunately,” Father Timothy Sas of St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church told ABC News.
“No priest is ever prepared enough to offer consolation for a moment like this,” he said.
He described Sophia as “luminous” and “bright,” an active student at school and in church.
“She’s pulled through, and we need about two, three days before they can understand what her future prognosis is,” he said.
Eighteen people — including 15 kids — were injured. All injured victims are expected to survive, police said.
The 23-year-old shooter, who previously attended the school, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. A motive remains unknown.
Miami Hurricanes’ Adarius Hayes catches a pass during spring practice at the Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility at the University of Miami on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in Coral Gables, Florida. (D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(MIAMI) — University of Miami football player Adarius Hayes has been arrested and charged with vehicular homicide following a monthslong investigation into a car crash that killed three people in Florida, police said Friday.
Hayes, 20, turned himself into the Largo Police Department and was transported to the Pinellas County Jail on Friday, police said.
Largo police said that Hayes was “traveling at a high rate of speed and maneuvering aggressively through traffic” shortly before colliding with another vehicle on May 10.
Three people, including two children, were killed in the crash, police said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who left for a three-day hiking trip and was last heard from on July 29, was found dead in Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, according to the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office. Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office
(BIG HORN COUNTY, Wyo.) — After being missing for nearly a month, a man who had left for a three-day hike in Wyoming was found dead in Bighorn National Forest, authorities said.
“While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family,” the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.
Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who had planned on a three-day hike “through the Misty Moon Lake area, eventually summiting Cloud Peak,” which is the highest peak within Bighorn National Forest, was last heard from on July 29, when he contacted his wife, saying he had made it to the summit, the sheriff’s office said.
Phone records revealed that he had reached the summit at Cloud Peak — which is around 13,000 feet — at approximately 7 p.m., which was concerning to officials due to the “lack of visible trails through cliffs, timer line, boulder fields and other hazards that had to be navigated after dark before reaching clear trails and safe terrain,” officials said.
Since then, officials said “there has not been any contact with Gardner.”
On Tuesday, a professional climbing team from North Carolina “summited Cloud Peak and descended to the northern route of the peak,” the sheriff’s office said. When the team was establishing a high-altitude camp for the evening, they “noticed a slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” and were “confident it was a backpack,” the sheriff’s office said.
But due to nightfall approaching, further investigation would be “too dangerous,” so the team notified the sheriff’s office via satellite, officials said.
Then on Wednesday, teams from the sheriff’s office were launched and “Grant Gardner’s remains were located near the backpack” and he was wearing “clothing that very closely matched the terrain he was climbing in,” officials said.
The body was recovered in one of the two primary search areas, “very closely matching one of the highest probability scenarios,” officials said.
“It is noteworthy that this area had been covered by air and other means, underscoring how difficult this mission has been,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bighorn National Forest is over 1 million acres, with 191,000 acres dedicated to the Cloud Peak Wilderness area, which is where Gardner is believed to have been traveling, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
While the case has been transferred to the Big Horn County Coroner’s Office to determine the time, manner and cause of death, officials said they believe Gardner “succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised.”
Prior to the discovery of Gardner’s body, officials had suspended search efforts for the hiker, saying that his “most optimistic survival odds have run out.”
“I have made the heartbreaking and difficult decision to suspend active search and rescue operations for Mr. Gardner. Our teams have exhausted all resources and personnel over the last 20 days. With weather conditions and other factors updated in our search models, we have to face the reality that the most optimistic survival odds have run out,” Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn said in a statement last week.
Now, after this “dangerous” recovery, Gardner’s body will be “brought home to his family,” officials said.
Luigi Mangione attends a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court on February 21, 2025 in New York City.Luigi Mangione attends a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court on February 21, 2025 in New York City.
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione, the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, may have influenced last month’s deadly attack on NFL headquarters in New York City, federal prosecutors argued in a new court filing.
By carrying out the assassination-style killing of CEO Brian Thompson last year on a Midtown Manhattan street, Mangione “hoped to normalize the use of violence,” instead of reasoned dialogue, to achieve political objectives, prosecutors said. The prosecutors used last month’s mass shooting attack on the NFL headquarters in Midtown as an example.
On July 28, Shane Tamura brought an assault-style rifle to 345 Park Avenue, not far from where Mangione allegedly gunned down Thompson. Tamura shot and killed four people and, like Mangione, left behind writings for investigators to find. Tamura, in a letter found on his body, blamed the NFL and football for causing CTE. Tamura played football in high school, but not beyond that level.
CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, often seen in military veterans and athletes, including football players, hockey players and boxers. It can only be diagnosed after a person’s death.
Mangione allegedly wrote “deny,” “depose” and “delay” on the bullets used to kill Thompson, authorities said. In a notebook found after his arrest, Mangione allegedly wrote in a journal, “The target is insurance” because “it checks every box.”
“The murder was thus, by the defendant’s own admission, calculated to resonate beyond this specific victim and to generate scorn, outrage, or fear toward the health insurance sector more broadly,” prosecutors said. “Simply put, the defendant hoped to normalize the use of violence to achieve ideological or political objectives. Since the murder, certain quarters of the public — who openly identify as acolytes of the defendant — have increasingly begun to view violence as an acceptable, or even necessary, substitute for reasoned political disagreement.”
The government believes Mangione deserves the death penalty in part because he poses a continuing danger by seeking to influence others.
Federal prosecutors elaborated on their reasoning for pursuing capital punishment as they urged a federal judge to deny a defense motion that asked for additional evidence to support the government’s theories.
Prosecutors said Mangione is not entitled to additional information at this stage of the case and argued “the defendant is already in possession of the evidentiary support for the Government’s aggravating factors and there is no risk of surprise.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing. Mangione is accused of shooting the CEO several times using a 9 mm handgun equipped with a silencer. He was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, several days later.
(Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(KENAI, Alaska) — A woman has suffered “serious injuries” in Alaska when a bear attacked her near her driveway while she was out on her early morning jog, officials said.
The incident occurred early Tuesday morning when the Kenai Police Department in Alaska received a call at 6:58 a.m. informing them that there had been a bear attack near the intersection of Chinook Drive in Kenai, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in their statement on Tuesday.
“[An] investigation revealed a 36-year-old female departed her residence at 5:45 a.m. to go jogging and was near her driveway when the initial attack occurred,” police said.
A neighbor eventually came outside and located the unnamed victim before alerting authorities to the incident.
The jogger was taken by helicopter to an Anchorage area hospital where she was treated for “serious injuries,” according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, though no details were given about what injuries she sustained or what condition she was in following her initial medical evaluation and treatment.
“Alaska Wildlife Troopers, Kenai Police Department, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel searched the area on foot and with a drone looking for the bear,” officials said. “The bear has not been located. Patrols of the area will continue, and the public is advised to remain vigilant while outdoors.”
The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge nearby contains almost 2 million acres of land along with an estimated 2,183 different animal species living there, according to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
The investigation into the attack is currently ongoing.
Dozens of first responders crowd the street in front of Annunciation Catholic Church that was the scene of a shooting that killed two children and wounded seventeen other people on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minn. (Renee Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — A motive in the Annunciation Catholic School mass shooting remains under investigation, and police said they’ve not identified a specific trigger for why the children at this church were targeted.
Investigators determined that Westman “harbored a whole lot of hate towards a wide variety of people and groups of people,” and also “had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News Live on Thursday.
“This person, you know, committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.
“The shooter expressed hate towards almost every group,” Joe Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said at a news conference on Thursday. “The shooter expressed hate towards Black people, the shooter expressed hate towards Mexican people, the shooter expressed hate towards Christian people, the shooter expressed hate towards Jewish people. In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us.”
The shooter also “expressed hate” toward President Donald Trump, he said.
“There appears to be only one group that the shooter didn’t hate, one group of people who the shooter admired — the group were the school shooters and mass murderers that are notorious in this country,” Thompson said.
“More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children, defenseless children. … The shooter wanted to watch children suffer,” Thompson said.
An 8-year-old and a 10-year-old were killed and 18 people — including 15 kids — were injured when the shooter opened fire through the windows of the Minneapolis school’s church on Wednesday morning. All injured victims are expected to survive, police said.
Westman never entered the church building, but could have entered after shooting out a door-sized window, O’Hara told ABC News.
“These children were slaughtered by a shooter who could not see them,” O’Hara said at a news conference, noting the shooter “was standing outside of the building firing through very narrow church windows.”
Westman died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Driver’s license information reviewed by ABC News described Westman as a female, born on June 17, 2002. A name change application for a minor born on the same date, June 17, 2002, was approved by a district court in Minnesota in 2020, changing the name of a Robert Westman to Robin Westman, explaining the minor child “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
Investigators are reviewing hundreds of pages of documents, videos and other evidence as they look for a motive, O’Hara said.
Police have also conducted dozens of interviews with witnesses as well as people who knew the suspect, though investigators “have not been successful” in talking to Westman’s mother, the chief said.
Officials are investigating a series of videos posted to YouTube believed to be associated with the suspect, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the matter. Two videos, posted Wednesday morning and since removed by YouTube, show someone flipping through dozens of pages of notes dated over the course of several months, which include what appears to be doodles of weapons, middle fingers and expletives, as well as repeated references to killing.
Writings in notebooks and on the guns indicate a series of grievances, anger and ideations of harm to self and to others. The writings also appear to show overt references to other high-profile school shootings and shooters.
Officers recovered three guns — one rifle, one shotgun and one handgun — at the scene, all of which are believed to have been fired in the attack, police said. All of the guns were purchased legally by Westman, police said, and authorities believe they were purchased recently in Minnesota.
Three shotgun shells and 116 rifle rounds were recovered, police said. One live round was recovered from a handgun that appeared to malfunction, leaving the bullet stuck in the chamber, the chief said.
As Minneapolis mourns, Mayor Jacob Frey is stressing the need for gun control, telling ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” “How many times have you heard politicians talk of an ‘unspeakable tragedy’? And yet this kind of thing happens again and again.”
“Prayers, thoughts, they are certainly welcomed, but they are not enough,” Frey said. “There needs to be change so that we don’t have another mayor, in another month-and-a half, talking about a tragedy that happened in their city.”
Danielle Gunter, whose son, an eighth grader, was shot and wounded, said in a statement to Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP, “We feel the pain, the anger, the confusion, and the searing reality that our lives will never be the same. Yet we still have our child.”
“We grieve and we pray: for the others who were shot, for their families, and for those who lost loved ones,” she said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he’s sending state law enforcement to help with security at schools and places of worship in the city.
ABC News’ Alex Perez, Alyssa Acquavella, Mariama Jalloh, Pierre Thomas, Jack Date, Luke Barr, Aaron Katersky and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office released photos of Travis Decker in a wanted poster. (Chelan County Sheriff’s Office)
(CHELAN COUNTY, Wash.) — After a two-day search of the area where Travis Decker allegedly murdered his three young daughters, the FBI said they will be analyzing “several items” that were recovered near the crime scene.
The FBI concluded its two-day grid search operation on Tuesday, focusing within the vicinity of Rock Island Campground in Leavenworth, Washington, where the girls bodies’ were found back on June 2, W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle field office, said in a press release on Thursday.
The purpose of search was to “locate Travis Decker, discover signs of his whereabouts or find any other evidence of the murder of his three daughters,” Herrington said.
Over 100 personnel were deployed and 1,000,000 square meters were searched, but Decker has not been located, Herrington said.
“A search of this magnitude and detail has not previously taken place in this area,” Herrington said.
During the investigation, Herrington said search personnel recovered “several items that are being examined to determine if they are related to this investigation,” saying that final results “will take some time.”
“Finding this potential evidence emphasizes the value in having various teams search an area multiple times, especially in such challenging conditions,” Herrington said.
Herrington added that officials are “committed to bringing every available FBI resource that will advance this case for as long as it takes.”
During a press conference on Monday, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said officials “will not relent” and “not give up” on the search efforts, even if locating Decker takes years.
“The girls would not want us to give up,” Morrison said on Monday. “If it’s not me wearing this uniform, it’s another Chelan County sheriff. We will find him, in one fashion or another.”
Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, 5, were found dead near the Rock Island Campground after they left home for a planned visit with their father on May 30, according to police.
The U.S. Marshals Service is still offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading directly to Decker’s arrest.
Anyone who sees Decker or knows of his whereabouts should call 911 immediately and not contact or approach him, officials said. He is currently wanted for three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of kidnapping, officials said.
Decker is considered armed and dangerous, officials said.
In this screen grab from a video, Newark Airport is shown on Aug. 28, 2025. (WABC)
(NEW YORK) — A temporary ground stop halted incoming flights at Newark Liberty International Airport on Thursday due to air traffic control communication issues, marking the latest in a series of disruptions at the busy New Jersey airport.
Air traffic controllers briefly lost their radio frequencies during the ground stop, which lasted from approximately 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET, according to Federal Aviation Administration bulletins. Delays averaged more than two hours.
The FAA responded by further reducing Newark’s flight capacity. The agency cut incoming flights to 28 per hour until at least Friday, a significant decrease from the airport’s normal capacity of 40-42 flights per hour, which had already been lowered to 34 in recent weeks.
“The FAA is pausing some flights into Newark Liberty International Airport due to equipment issues. We are investigating the cause,” the agency said in a statement. Controllers were instructed to space arriving aircraft about 20 miles apart on approach to Newark, a controller on duty told ABC News.
The disruption marked the second outage for controllers at the Philadelphia air traffic control center, which manages Newark’s airspace, within 24 hours.
During Wednesday evening’s outage, pilots reported that controller call signs were cutting out entirely, according to air traffic recordings obtained by LiveATC.net. One controller was heard telling pilots they were “having some sort of FTI issues” and had placed flights in a hold.
“Out here it’ll be no call sign or just be heading 040,” one pilot reported during Wednesday’s incident, explaining why aircraft weren’t acknowledging transmissions.
The latest disruption adds to a growing list of technical issues at Newark.
On May 11, a telecommunications problem at the Philadelphia TRACON facility prompted a 45-minute ground stop. Just days earlier, on May 9, radar screens went dark for 90 seconds, forcing controllers to warn incoming aircraft about potential communication issues, according to FAA reports.
In late April, controllers experienced a 60-90 second outage that darkened their computer screens and cut off aircraft communications, sources familiar with the incident told ABC News.
Following the April incident, several controllers took medical leave, citing the event as traumatic, ABC News had reported.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The Minneapolis Police Department’s response to Wednesday’s deadly church shooting showed significant improvements in how law enforcement handles mass casualty events, according to a former police chief who managed a similar crisis.
Jarrod Burguan, who led the response to the 2015 San Bernardino terror attack, praised Minneapolis authorities for their clear communication and fast response to the Annunciation Catholic School shooting that killed two children — an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old — and left 18 others injured.
“Minneapolis PD has done a very good job in this case,” Burguan told ABC News on Thursday. “Chief O’Hara was tremendous. He was very clear in his press conferences and gave very good information. For the most part, this has not been an incident that had a lot of false information getting out there.”
The FBI is investigating the attack as potential domestic terrorism and a possible hate crime after the shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, opened fire through church windows during a Mass marking the first week of school. Westman died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Burguan told ABC News that the coordinated response between local police and federal authorities reflects improvements made since previous mass shootings.
“We are better today than we were three years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago,” he said, while acknowledging the tragic reality that schools now require enhanced security measures.
Drawing on his experience in the December 2015 San Bernardino attack, in which 14 people were killed and 22 were injured, Burguan explained how federal and local agencies cooperate in such investigations.
“The reality is, on the ground, the FBI agents and the leadership in Minneapolis, as well as Minneapolis PD and the surrounding agencies… they really work well together,” he said.
However, Burguan expressed concern about potential warning signs that may have preceded the attack.
“For somebody to have been living that life, people in and around that suspect had to have known something was off,” he said, noting the suspect’s “hatred of institutions in this country, whether it was the church.”
Burguan warned that extensive coverage of mass shootings could motivate copycats who glorify such violence.
“You hear a story of somebody like this that somehow seemed to idolize people that perform this act,” he said. “That is very, very disturbing to think that even in light of coverage like this and the anger and the community frustration that happens, somebody might be sitting back going, ‘Well, this was a good thing.’ That’s frightening.”
(LEWISTON, Maine) — One of Maine’s largest abortion care providers said it will have to dramatically cut services after a federal judge ruled earlier this week that the Trump administration is not required to restore Medicaid funding.
Under H.R.1 — the mega-bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last month — family planning and abortion providers are not allowed to collect Medicaid funding if they received at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in 2023.
The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) sued the Trump administration on behalf of Maine Family Planning — the largest network of sexual and reproductive health care clinics in the state — arguing that the provision violates the Equal Protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
However, Judge Lance Walker ruled that because Roe v. Wade was overruled in June 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Congress can “withhold federal funds and otherwise disassociate from conduct that is not enshrined.”
Medicaid funds are not used to cover abortion costs in most circumstances, but they are used to pay for other health care costs. George Hill, president and CEO of Maine Family Planning, said the network will have to cut services or drastically reduce the number of patients they can see.
“Right now, we’re not accepting new Medicaid-insured patients for primary care,” he told ABC News. “We are going to have to stop providing primary care to Medicaid enrolled patients, probably by the end of September.”
Hill said Maine Family Planning is not billing Medicaid for current Medicaid patients, but added that continuing to do so is likely not a sustainable option.
“It’s costing us, in lost revenue, about $165,000 a month,” Hill said. “That clearly is unsustainable. We’re spending a good deal of time getting the word out about the quality of the care that we provide, why it’s necessary in the areas that we provide, to a wide range of private donors. But … it’s not sustainable over the long term.”
Maine Family Planning has been receiving about $1.9 million a year in reimbursements, which makes up about 20% of its budget, Olivia Pennington, director of advocacy and community engagement at Maine Family Planning, told ABC News.
Pennington said the provision in the mega-bill was intended to prevent federal dollars from reaching Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., but the Maine agency appeared to be caught in the crosshairs.
“We knew there was a chance we were going to get caught up in this attempt to defund Planned Parenthood,” she told ABC News. “We weren’t sure exactly what that was going to look like, but July 4, when that bill was signed, we were acutely aware that, as of that day, we had to stop billing MaineCare, which is what we call Medicaid here in the state of Maine.”
Pennington said that although Maine Family Planning does provide abortion care, the clinics also provide contraceptive care, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and HIV testing and prevention.
Maine Family Planning can also refer patients to other services, such as care for HIV treatments, Pennington said.
Additionally, at three of Maine Family Planning’s 18 brick-and-mortar clinics — mainly in rural and unserved areas — staff provide primary care. The agency also has a mobile medical unit for those who can’t make it to a physical location.
Pennington said the clinics are in areas with no public transit infrastructure and that the next closest clinic for patients may be as far as three hours away.
“There’s a lack of access to primary care in those areas,” she said. “For most of our patients, we know that we are the first and only health care provider they see in a year.”
Pennington added that half of all patients not receiving abortion care at Maine Family Planning are covered by Medicaid. Currently, the clinics are seeing those patients free of charge.
However, she is worried that not having Medicaid funding restored will result in a domino effect that could harm all patients, including those not on Medicaid.
“If MaineCare patients can no longer receive services at their local Maine Family Planning, other providers are going to be forced to absorb those patients,” Pennington said. “And because there’s already such a shortage of family planning and reproductive health care providers in the state, it will become much harder for everyone in the state to get health care.”
She went on, “We are continuing to see these patients free of charge because we believe that they deserve access to high-quality health care, but that’s not a sustainable option.”
Astrid Ackerman, staff attorney at CRR, told ABC News the team is prepared to explore every legal avenue to restore Medicaid funding for Maine Family Planning. She said the decision by the court this week is putting the health care of “thousands” of people in Maine in jeopardy.
“What is really happening is that it’s a way for the Trump administration to punish and go after abortion providers,” Ackerman said. “Medicaid funding has not … covered abortion, besides just some very limited exceptions, for decades — like they cannot use Medicaid funding for abortion generally.”
“So then the Trump administration, what they’re doing is trying to say, ‘Look, you are providing abortions. I know that I’m not giving you federal funding for abortions, but nonetheless, I’m going to punish you for providing abortion.’ Again, in a state [like Maine] where abortion is protected,” she added.
ABC News reached out to the HHS asking for a request for comment.
