(WASHINGTON) — Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys and who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump, was arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, according to authorities.
Tarrio, according to the U.S. Capitol Police, allegedly struck a woman’s phone and arm when she allegedly put a phone near his face after a press conference wrapped up on Capitol grounds.
Tarrio was sentenced in September 2023 for his conviction on seditious conspiracy and given the longest sentence of all of the convicted Jan. 6 rioters, though he was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
During his sentencing, prosecutors pointed to a nine-page strategic plan to “storm” government buildings in Washington on Jan. 6 that was found in Tarrio’s possession after the riot, as well as violent rhetoric they say he routinely used in messages with other members of the group about what they would do if Congress moved forward in certifying President Joe Biden’s election win.
Tarrio was notably sentenced to the longest term of imprisonment among all of the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the attack.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Three people were shot and killed in a parking lot outside a driver’s licensing office in Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday, police said.
A male victim died at the scene while two female victims died at a hospital, Louisville police said.
No suspect is in custody, police said. Witnesses said the suspect appeared to flee the scene, according to police.
“There does not seem to be a public threat,” police said at a news conference.
Authorities didn’t discuss any potential connection between the victims.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has been removed by Mayor Karen Bass in the wake of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires that killed dozens and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Bass said on Friday that she removed Crowley because firefighters were sent home instead of being used when the fires broke out last month.
“We know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch,” Bass said in a statement. “Furthermore, a necessary step to an investigation was the President of the Fire Commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after action report on the fires. The Chief refused. These require her removal.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(MAYVILLE, N.Y.) — A jury has convicted a New Jersey man for attempted murder in the 2022 stabbing attack on author Salman Rushdie while the author was on stage at a speaking event in upstate New York.
Hadi Matar was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder and assault in connection with the attack at the Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York.
The jury began deliberating around midday Friday before reaching their verdict within two hours.
Jurors heard starkly different accounts of the assault, which occurred on Aug. 12, 2022, while Rushdie was speaking before an audience at the education center.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt played slow-motion video showing Matar emerging from the audience, sprinting toward Rushdie, and launching a violent attack. Schmidt described the stabbing as a deliberate, targeted act, arguing that striking someone 10 to 15 times in the face and neck made death a foreseeable outcome. A trauma surgeon testified that Rushdie would have died without immediate medical intervention.
The defense, led by Andrew Brautigan, countered that prosecutors failed to prove Matar intended to kill Rushdie. The defense characterized the incident as a chaotic, noisy outburst rather than a calculated murder attempt. Public defender Nathaniel Barone argued that Matar was overcharged due to Rushdie’s celebrity, noting that he used knives rather than a gun or bomb and that Rushdie’s vital organs were not harmed.
Rushdie, 77, took the stand during the trial, vividly describing the attack that blinded him in one eye. He described his attacker’s eyes as “very ferocious” as he approached, before “hitting and slashing” him in his chest, torso, waist and eye as he struggled to get away, according to The Associated Press.
“It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” Rushdie said, according to the AP.
Rushdie recounted the attack in his book, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” which was published last year.
Henry Reese, who was moderating the event and was wounded in the attack, also took the stand during the trial.
Reese told jurors he initially thought someone was running toward Rushdie as “a prank” but “at some point it became real, and I got up and tried to stop the attacker,” according to the AP.
The assailant was tackled by bystanders and pinned to the stage.
Matar did not testify and the defense called no witnesses during the two-week trial.
He rejected a plea deal ahead of the trial.
Matar still faces federal terrorism charges in connection with the attack. He was indicted by a grand jury on three counts, including attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and providing material support to terrorists. The indictment alleges that he “knowingly did attempt to provide material support and resources” to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and “had engaged, and was engaging, in terrorism.”
Matar was also charged with an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries for the attack against Rushdie. The indictment alleges that he “did knowingly attempt to kill, and did knowingly maim, commit an assault resulting in serious bodily injury, and assault with a dangerous weapon.”
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of eight asylum seekers on Thursday, but the move was too late for one woman who her lawyers believe has already been deported by the Trump administration.
Despite seeking asylum in the United States to escape a violent former partner, according to her legal team, the woman was sent back to Ecuador this week — just hours before a court blocked her deportation — where her lawyers fear she might be killed.
“Plaintiff N.S. fled Ecuador to escape horrific violence and kidnapping by her former partner—a police officer who called her anti-indigenous slurs while raping her, beating her, and holding his gun to her head—and fears that he will kill her if she is removed,” her lawyers wrote in a filing to the court, adding that the woman was held captive by her former partner.
Her rapid removal comes as immigrant advocates raise concerns that the Trump administration is hastily carrying out deportations of migrants while disregarding their asylum claims and in spite of active litigation to stop their removals.
According to court records, the woman entered the U.S. around Jan. 26 and asked for asylum after turning herself in to immigration officials. But as of Wednesday, court records show she had not received a “credible fear” interview, one of the first steps in determining eligibility for asylum.
Her lawyer Keren Zwick, a litigation director at National Immigrant Justice Center, said she has not made contact with the woman since Wednesday evening ahead of the court hearing and believes she is en route to or back in Ecuador where her life is in danger.
“I’m very worried about her wellbeing. She fled because she is facing domestic violence, and she fled a partner who threatened to kill her and held her captive and went looking for her when she tried to escape,” said Zwick “I feel sure that he will continue to do that and if he learns that she’s back in the country I think her life is in danger.”
During Thursday’s hearing, lawyers with the Department of Justice told the court that one of the asylum seekers may have already been in deportation proceedings, Zwick said.
Zwick said that the Department of Homeland Security has been unwilling to provide information about the state of her clients removal or intervene to stop the deportation.
“Their agency is not being helpful,” she said. “We haven’t been able to get clear information.”
DHS declined to comment or confirm if N.S. was deported to Ecuador.
A DOJ attorney representing the case did not respond to a request for comment.
As the Trump administration rapidly scales up deportation efforts, immigration advocates have criticized the administration for steamrolling removals with little regard for pending lawsuits or attempts to claim asylum.
In a separate case last week, the Trump administration deported three men to Venezuela just one day after a court order blocked their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. In other legal cases, the Trump administration has been accused of intentionally violating court orders.
“If we’re living in a world where the U.S. government thinks it’s okay to remove a person and asylum seekers … without giving them any opportunity to pursue protection, that’s just a complete subversion of our asylum,” Zwick said.
While today’s court order came too late to prevent what Zwick and her team say is a deportation, lawyers for asylum seekers will return to court next week to fight against their imminent removal to countries including Afghanistan, Ecuador, Brazil, and Egypt where their lawyers say they fear they’ll face persecution or violence.
The request to block the deportation of the eight asylum seekers is linked to an ongoing lawsuit the ACLU and other groups filed against the Trump administration earlier this month, challenging the president’s invocation of a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens” when their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
The eight asylum seekers who brought the case come from different home countries but each fear the same outcome if they are removed from the U.S.
According to court records, two plaintiffs fled Afghanistan due to fears that the Taliban might persecute them over their support for the United States. One plaintiff said they suffered kidnapping, rape and torture by the hands of a Ecuadorian cartel before fleeing to the United States. Another said they were jailed and tortured in Egypt due to their pro-democracy views.
“There is no legitimate governmental or public interest in the unlawful removal of the Individual Plaintiffs to countries where they face persecution or torture,” lawyers for the asylum seekers argued.
(NEW YORK) — Nineteen states from Nebraska to Florida are facing cold weather alerts on Friday morning as a relentless Arctic blast persists — but a warmup is finally on the way.
Friday marks the fourth morning in a row of record-low temperatures across the central U.S.
Cities across the Plains and the South broke or tied their record-low temperatures on Friday: Lincoln, Nebraska, at negative 17 degrees; Kansas City, Missouri, at negative 5 degrees; Memphis, Tennessee, at 15 degrees; and Birmingham, Alabama, at 17 degrees.
The warmup will begin this weekend across the Heartland and the South, with temperatures climbing to the 50s in Kansas City and 60s in Austin by Sunday. By next week, Kansas City will reach the 60s and Austin will warm up to the 70s.
The mild weather will even reach the north.
By Monday, Chicago could warm up to close to 50 degrees. By Tuesday, New York City could climb to 50 degrees and Washington, D.C., could rise to the balmy 60s.
Body-worn camera footage from correctional officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility released by the New York Attorney General’s Office.
(NEW YORK) — Ten former prison guards were indicted for the killing of Robert Brooks, a prisoner incarcerated at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Marcy, New York, who was fatally beaten at the prison in December.
A grand jury indicted six officers — Nicholas Anzalone, David Kingsley, Anthony Farina, Christopher Walrath, Mathew Galliher and an unnamed defendant — on felony second degree murder and first degree manslaughter.
The nine defendants charged in the indictment appeared in court on Thursday and all pled not guilty to the charges brought against them. A tenth, unnamed defendant was unavailable to surrender on Thursday and is expected to be arraigned soon. He is not believed to be a flight risk.
The officers are accused of acting with other correctional officers in conduct that “created a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby caused the death of Robert Brooks,” according to a criminal indictment.
Brooks was transferred from the Mohawk Correctional Facility to the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, 2024.
Excerpts of body-worn camera footage from four corrections officers were released Dec. 27 by the New York Attorney General’s Office showing the in-custody beating of the 43-year-old inmate.
In the footage reviewed by ABC News, multiple officers can be seen holding Brooks upright on an exam table, with his arms restrained, punching and kicking him in the face, torso and genitals. The beating was described in a deposition by an investigator for the New York Department of Corrections Office of Special Investigations.
Brooks was pronounced dead at a local hospital the day after the beating, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is investigating the incident.
The deposition detailed that two sergeants and a nurse watched the attack and neglected to intervene. They were among the 14 prison staffers whom New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered to be terminated by the state.
The indictment Thursday said Brooks was allegedly assaulted on two occasions when he arrived at the infirmary by Anzalone, Walrath and the unnamed defendant — despite being restrained.
Upon arriving to the emergency room of the infirmary, Brooks was “restrained, beaten, choked, gagged, forcibly moved and kicked, all with minimal resistance on the part of Mr. Brooks and with no legitimate law enforcement purpose,” the indictment alleges.
Beating and assaults were carried out by the defendants while acting in concert together, the indictment said.
“In addition to the beatings, defendants with depraved indifference, did nothing to restrain each other, did nothing to stop the beatings and failed to immediately order medical assistance for Mr. Brooks,” the indictment said.
Brooks suffered injuries to his head, neck, hyoid bone, thyroid cartilage, torso, liver, spleen and testicles, his air passages were restricted and he chocked on his own blood, resulting in his death, according to the indictment.
Michael Mashaw, Michael Fisher and David Walters were indicted on felony second degree manslaughter. Nicholas Gentile was charged with tampering with physical evidence.
Walrath and the unnamed defendant were also indicted on felony second degree gang assault.
Mashaw, who was the ranking corrections officer in the infirmary, is accused in the indictment of failing to order the beatings to stop and not getting Brooks medical assistance until it was too late to save him.
Fisher and Walters are accused of having a clear line of sight to Brooks, but failing to attempt to stop the beatings or shield him. Walters also allegedly instructed a nurse no not enter the emergency room where Brooks was, the indictment said.
Anzalone and the unnamed defendant are accused of offering a false statement with intent to defraud the state. They wrongfully reported that all force against Brooks ceased when he entered the emergency room of the infirmary, the indictment alleges. The defendants were not aware that their actions were being recorded, according to the indictment.
“Nothing can bring him back to us. Nothing can return to us what these men have taken away. Still, these indictments are a necessary and important step toward accountability. These men killed my father, on camera. All the world could see what happened. Waiting for these charges has been incredibly hard,” Robert Brooks, Jr., the son of Brooks, said in a statement Thursday.
“These men must be fully prosecuted and convicted for what they have done. But even the convictions of these corrections officers for the murder of my father will not be enough. Every person in authority who allowed this system of violence and abuse to exist and continue for so long must also be held accountable,” he said.
The New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association issued a statement in December reading, “What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day… This incident has the potential to make our correctional facilities even more violent, hostile, and unpredictable than ever before.”
(NEW YORK) — Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione is set to return to a New York City courtroom on Friday for a brief appearance in his state murder case.
The afternoon appearance in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court marks Mangione’s first hearing since his arraignment on the state charges in late December 2024, when he appeared in a maroon sweater and pleaded not guilty to murder charges that include an enhancement for terrorism.
The judge is expected to ask the parties for an update on the exchange of evidence and, perhaps, set a trial date.
He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of the state charges.
He remains in custody at a federal detention center in Brooklyn.
Mangione, 26, also faces federal charges, including one that could yield the death penalty, but he has not yet been indicted by a federal grand jury. His next date in federal court is in mid-March.
The suspect is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in front of the Hilton in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024, as the CEO headed to an investors conference, in an act that prosecutors said was premeditated, targeted and “intended to evoke terror.”
His defense team has alleged the case was being politicized and has vowed to fight the state and federal charges.
The New York state and federal cases are in addition to the charges brought against Mangione in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested following a dayslong manhunt and faces charges including forgery and possession of an unlicensed firearm.
Mangione made his first formal statement Friday since his arrest on a website launched by his New York defense team, in which he thanked his supporters.
“I am overwhelmed by — and grateful for — everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support,” he said in the statement. “Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded MDC from across the country, and around the globe. While it is impossible for me to reply to most letters, please know that I read every one that I receive.”
(WASHINGTON) — When unemployed marine biologist Lanny Flaherty poked his head into the ranger’s station at the Wallowa Whitman National Forest in the Pacific Northwest and asked to be a volunteer, he said it put him on a 13-year career path with the U.S. Forest Service that included stints as a botanist, a wildfire resource adviser and a range ecologist.
When he wasn’t researching the effects of vegetation on fire behavior or identifying fungi on national forest land, the 40-year-old Flaherty said he was a “red-card” carrying certified firefighter, helping battle some of the biggest wildland fires in the nation.
In 2016, he helped fight the Great Smoky Mountain wildfires, the largest arson blazes in Tennessee history, and in 2021, he helped extinguish the Dixie Fire that swept through five Northern California counties, scorching nearly a million acres and destroying more than 1,300 structures.
“I’m so proud of everything I’ve done,” Flaherty told ABC News. “Stumbling into the Forest Service was the first time in my life where I was like, ‘Oh, this fits. I’m running with it. This is me.'”
But while on assignment last week with a U.S. Forest Service fire engine crew in Louisiana restoring federal land and structures at the Kisatchie National Forest that had been devastated by hurricanes, Flaherty said his job came to an abrupt end.
As a probationary range ecologist, he was among several thousand probationary workers terminated from the U.S. Forest Service in the Trump administration’s sweeping reduction in the federal workforce being overseen by billionaire Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking to end up under the bus on what’s obviously a politically motivated illegal termination,” said Flaherty, whose two-year probationary period wasn’t scheduled to end until November of this year. “I mean, I’ve got 13 years’ worth of qualifications and I was cast aside as a probationary employee, despite having proven myself time and time again in a multitude of different positions.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, announced that 2,000 USFS “probationary, non-firefighting employees” were being let go. At least 1,000 probationary employees of the National Park Service, which is under the U.S. Interior Department, were also terminated, including those who worked as secondary firefighters.
“To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement.
Rollins, according to the USDA statement, “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people.”
“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve people, not the bureaucracy,” the USDA statement reads.
‘These fires are going to get exponentially bigger’
While hosting a roundtable in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday with U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighters, Rollins praised their response to the devastating January wildfires in Los Angeles County that decimated the communities of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Following the meeting, the USDA released a statement, saying, Rollins is “committed to ensuring that the United States has the strongest and most prepared wildland firefighting force in the world to save lives and protect our beautiful homeland.”
But the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) told ABC News that the USFS cuts will severely weaken the agency’s ability to respond to wildfires.
Steve Gutierrez, NFFE’s national business representative, said that based on data the union requested from the USFS, the number of fired probationary non-fire personnel is about 3,400.
Flaherty said that in the past five years, 40% to 50% of his job was fighting wildfires as part of what the Forest Services refers to as “militias” comprised of trained secondary firefighters.
“When a fire breaks out, we’re out there like everybody else getting into the fray,” Flaherty said.
Gutierrez, a former USFS firefighter, told ABC News that the cuts affect about 10% of the U.S. Forest Service’s total workforce. He said many of the terminated employees held dual jobs, like Flaherty, including working as firefighters responding to all-hands-on-deck blazes throughout the country.
“When I say ‘non-fire personnel,’ we can’t totally think that they don’t ever touch fire, that they’re not important,” Gutierrez said. “They’re all part of this logistical machine that helps support fire. They’re either ecologists, they’re mechanics, they’re pilots, they’re water systems operators, they’re grants and agreements folks, they’re land management, minerals and geologists to help recovery efforts from the aftereffect of fire.”
He added, “They support all of what happens before fire, during a fire and after a fire.”
Gutierrez said some of the federal employees who got fired had just helped battle the Los Angeles fires just weeks ago.
“They just fought this fire in LA, one of LA’s most devastating wildfires that we’ve ever had and now they’re terminated because they have ‘poor performance,'” Gutierrez said. “It’s just crazy to me that you can be so utterly disrespectful and ultimately it’s a slap in the face to these brave men and women who have risked their lives for the American public.”
Making matters worse, Gutierrez said, is an imposed hiring freeze, which has stalled the annual task of “fuels management,” which means clearing federal lands of fire hazards like dead trees and overgrown brush.
“If we’re not able to get that process moving immediately, fires are not going to just be, like, small. These fires are going to get exponentially bigger. Communities are going to burn and people are going to die, and that’s what’s going to happen,” Gutierrez said. “It’s not going to be just a California problem. It’s going to be a United States problem. I mean, there are several states, New Jersey, for example, they had a fire every year, every month for the past year. There was a fire in New York, right there in Manhattan. It’s not going to stop. It’s a national issue.”
Almost stranded in Louisiana
Flaherty said that when he got a call in Louisiana from his forest supervisor relating that he was terminated effective immediately with no severance package, he was initially told he’d have to get his own transportation back to Oregon.
“He offered no solution whatsoever, despite being fully aware of the fact that I would be stranded in Louisiana and unable to make travel arrangements short of purchasing myself a ticket. I was not in Louisiana on my own time, I was there on official travel and his plan was to, I guess, just wing it,” Flaherty said.
Flaherty said his union, the NFFE, intervened and got the USFS to cover his transportation by temporarily rescinding his termination until it got him back to Oregon.
“It’s just really sad that the top of the food chain doesn’t understand the impacts of what they’re doing when they swipe their pen,” said Gutierrez, responding to Flaherty almost being stranded in Louisiana. “They don’t understand the complexities of the entirety of the government.”
Flaherty said the “insult still rings true even though I am back home.”
“To me, that just kind of sums up how callous and poorly thought out all of this is,” Flaherty said. “I have deep, deep concerns for the amount of stress that everybody has been put through in every agency, and it just continues. It’s harming people’s physical and mental well-being, and it’s criminal.”
‘Dream job’
Eric Anderson said that in June 2024 he landed a job as a biological science technician and lead fire effects monitor for the National Park Service, after working since 2021 as a seasonal employee.
“I spent two years, three years working as a temporary hire to keep my face seen, to improve my qualifications, to gain more experience. And now, I finally get into a position that I knew three years ago, OK, my predecessor, is probably going to be retiring. I think I can improve my qualifications and become useful to do that position. And I worked toward it, I applied, and I got the position.”
Like Flaherty, Anderson, 48, a married father of two high school-aged children, told ABC News that he was fired in what he called, “the Valentine’s Day massacre.”
“You finally get your dream job that you’ve been working toward for many years, and it just got pulled out from under you for politics,” said Anderson, who was stationed at the Indiana Dunes National Park on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.
He said he received his dismissal letter in his email inbox from an Interior Department administrator he had never met.
“The Department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department’s current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment to the position of BioScience Tech (Fire Eff. Monitor),” reads the dismissal letter Anderson shared with ABC News.
“This is a lie. This says I’m fired because of my performance and my inability to do the job and that I’m no longer needed. My performance evaluations are excellent, and I’m crucial to the program. I have qualifications that we need within our unit to function,” Anderson said. “It’s a bit maddening.”
A former Peace Corps volunteer from 2000 to 2002 in Kenya, East Africa, Anderson said he used to work as a consultant in the private sector and took a huge pay cut when he joined the NPS as a seasonal employee.
“My bosses worked really hard to justify that I should be kept on, noting that in my position description, yes, it says biological science technician, but if you just read down a few lines, you see the box checked that says wildland firefighter, which was supposed to be in the protected ones that weren’t getting fired,” Anderson said.
In his job as a biological science technician, he said he would collect plant samples for analysis and prepped parklands in the winter months for the fire season, eliminating hazardous fuels by conducting prescribed or controlled burns. His work also included rehabilitating burned land.
“When bulldozers come through trying to protect towns, someone has to put that back together. So, we worked very much on how do we keep this from washing down the mountain during the next atmospheric river,” Anderson said. “By mid-August or so, we’re pretty much done with our sampling at various parks around the Great Lakes that we go to, and then we are available to do wildland fire or help as collaterals for wildland fires,” Anderson said. “A lot of the people that were let go in the last week were also collateral firefighters.”
In September, Anderson worked on the front lines of the Line Fire that burned more than 44,000 acres in and around the San Bernardino National Forest and threatened the community of Highland, California. In August 2023, Anderson said he helped battle the Happy Camp Complex Fire, which burned more than 21,000 acres in the Klamath National Forest in Northern California’s Siskiyou County.
He just returned in January from conducting prescribed fires in the Florida Everglades.
“Maybe, this is that Peace Corps volunteer in me that looks for mission-driven work. I know that’s just my personality type. I need to be working somewhere that I feel it’s important,” Anderson said. “I very much want to go back and work for the place that I was just fired from. I live what I do. These are all very qualified, excellent people doing good work that needs to be done and they’re just slashed without any real cause.”
(NEW YORK) — The Maui Police Department in Hawaii is investigating what led to a gas grill explosion at a Kaanapali Beach condo Thursday evening which left seven people injured.
The Maui Police Department, according to their statement, received reports of the explosion which took place at 2481 Kaanapali Parkway at approximately 6:15 p.m. and found seven people, from the ages 18 to 74, injured, ABC News’ Honolulu affiliate KITV reports.
Three of those seven people are currently in critical condition, and one had to be transported to the Maui Memorial Medical Center Emergency Room for further treatment, KITV said.
In livestream video obtained by ABC News, the explosion seemingly takes place in one of the middle floors of the condominium complex with beachgoers and other witnesses rushing toward the scene to help in the immediate aftermath.
Preliminary investigations suggest the explosion may have involved liquefied petroleum gas, commonly used for BBQs and, according to KITV, witness statements indicated there could have been a grill malfunction before the incident.
There are no further updates on the conditions of those involved and the public has been asked to avoid the area while first responders investigate.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
