(NEW YORK) — The Minnesota Department of Transportation has issued a “no travel advisory” for highways in northwestern Minnesota as high winds cause dangerous blowing snow and low visibility.
Drivers in Minnesota and North Dakota should be prepared for intense bursts of heavy snow, wind gusts over 40 mph and visibility under one-quarter of a mile.
The cold front will move through the Minneapolis-St. Paul area during the afternoon and reach Chicago by the evening.
The cold front will head to the East Coast by early Thursday morning.
The heaviest snow from this quick-moving clipper system will be near the Great Lakes, where the shot of cold air will create heavy lake effect snow bands.
One to 2 feet of snow is possible from Michigan to upstate New York.
The clipper system will also bring 3 to 10 inches of snow from Massachusetts to Maine.
Up to 10 inches of snow is possible in the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland and West Virginia.
The Interstate 95 corridor — including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City — is not expecting any snow accumulation. But those major cities should be prepared for wind gusts reaching 50 mph.
(RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Cailf.) — A 7-year-old boy fatally shot his 2-year-old brother after finding a gun in the glove box, according to authorities in California.
The shooting unfolded just before 4 p.m. Monday in the cab of a truck that was in a parking lot in Rancho Cucamonga, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.
The shooting appeared to be accidental, sheriff’s department spokesperson Gloria Huerta told ABC News.
The boys’ mom had just parked at a shopping center and was outside of the car, unloading items to bring inside, at the time of the shooting, Huerta told Los Angeles ABC station KABC.
The investigation is ongoing; once completed, a report will be sent to the district attorney’s office for review, the sheriff’s department said.
The type of gun and its registration information have not been released.
“Gun safety is a huge responsibility, but it is also a moral obligation that we have to our children,” Huerta told KABC.
Hundreds of children in the U.S. unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else every year, according to the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety.
Last year, there were 411 accidental shootings by children — the highest number Everytown for Gun Safety had seen since it began tracking the incidents in 2015.
So far this year, there have been at least 270 unintentional shootings by children, causing at least 99 deaths, according to the organization.
Pennsylvania State Police troopers found this sinkhole while searching for a missing woman; Pennsylvania State Police
(UNITY TOWNSHIP, Pa.) — Rescuers are desperately searching for a grandmother they believe fell into a deep sinkhole — holding out hope of finding her despite the difficult rescue conditions.
Elizabeth Pollard, who was last seen Monday evening, has not yet been found amid the complicated search effort in Unity Township, Pennsylvania, police said Wednesday morning.
The sinkhole is believed to be tied to an abandoned coal mine and formed while Pollard was walking in the area, officials said. Search crews have been able to make entry into the mine area, though the integrity of the mine has been compromised by the water they are using to break up the ground, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Steve Limani said during a briefing Wednesday.
The search will continue as long as needed pending any safety concerns, though the digging process may be slower now, he said.
“Hopefully she’s in an air pocket,” Limani said during a briefing Tuesday evening, noting that there have been incidents in the region where people have survived similar situations in underground mines. “This is a rescue to me until something says that it’s not.”
Rescue teams from nearby areas have joined forces, swapping shifts to keep the effort going. Oxygen tankers are being delivered regularly to supply the mine shaft, and crews have made progress entering the underground area.
The conditions are tough, with clay-like soil making it difficult to dig, but rescuers remain determined.
“We’re doing everything we can, and no one is giving up,” said Limani.
He added, “It’s heartbreaking for her family and everyone here. But we’re not stopping. We’re all hoping for a miracle.”
Pollard was reported missing by a family member shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday, Limani said at an earlier press conference Tuesday.
Pollard was last seen around 5 p.m. Monday, Limani said. The family member said Pollard had gone out to look for her cat Monday afternoon but has not been heard from since, he said.
Pollard’s vehicle was located shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday with her 5-year-old granddaughter inside, though Pollard was nowhere to be seen, police said.
“At that point in time we realized this could be a very bad situation,” Limani said.
While searching for Pollard in the area, troopers found an apparent sinkhole with an opening about the “size of a manhole” 15 to 20 feet away from the vehicle, Limani said.
Emergency responders were called to the scene in what is currently being considered a rescue mission, authorities said. Local firefighters, a technical rescue team and the state’s Bureau of Mine Safety are among those working alongside an excavation team to remove dirt to access the sinkhole, Limani said.
The current evidence points toward Pollard being in the sinkhole, Limani said.
“We don’t feel a reason that we should be looking elsewhere,” he said.
The sinkhole appears to have been created during the time that Pollard was walking around, Limani said, noting there is no evidence the hole was there before she started looking for her cat.
The area where the sinkhole formed has a “very thin layer of earth” and appears to have been deteriorating “for a long time,” Limani said.
“It appears to be mostly just grass interwoven where she had stepped,” he said. “There wasn’t much earth at all to hold up that space.”
A camera inserted into the opening of the sinkhole showed a “big void, and it was all different depths,” Marguerite Fire Chief Scot Graham told reporters during the earlier press briefing.
A camera did not pick up any sounds, though authorities did see a “modern-type” shoe in the sinkhole, according to Pleasant Unity Fire Chief John Bacha.
“The process is long and it is tedious,” Graham said of the search effort.
The mine last operated in 1952, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The depth to the coal seam in this area is approximately 20 feet, a department spokesperson said.
Once the scene is clear, the department will investigate the site “to determine if this issue is the result of historic mine subsidence,” the spokesperson said.
Pollard’s granddaughter is safe, despite the cold temperatures overnight, and is currently with her parents, Limani said.
The family is asking for privacy at this time and is hoping for “good news,” he said.
“We need to get a little bit lucky,” Limani said. “We’re going to do everything we can.”
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
The scene of a shooting in Midtown NYC on Dec. 4, 2024. WABC
(NEW YORK) — Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed by a masked man near a Midtown Manhattan hotel early Wednesday, according to police sources.
The shooting appears to be targeted but police do not know why, sources said.
Thompson was not staying at the Hilton outside of which he was shot, sources said.
Thompson was in New York City for an investors conference and his schedule was widely known, police sources said.
The gunman, who was wearing a ski mask, fled down an alleyway near West 55th Street and remains at large, police said.
The suspect is described as a skinny man wearing all black who stands at about 6-foot-1, police said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(BOULDER, CO) — As the new Netflix docuseries “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?” reinvigorates public interest in the 1996 case, JonBenet Ramsey’s father said he’s more encouraged now than he’s been in a long time that the person who killed his 6-year-old daughter will be found.
“I’ve been trying for years to break the roadblock in the [Boulder, Colorado] police department, which has been there almost from day one. And we’ve made some, I think, significant progress,” John Ramsey told “Nightline” on Tuesday.
“They’ve done some changes internally. New police chief, they got rid of some of their not-performing detectives. And we have an open, pretty open communication line with the chief of police.”
“The media attention and pressure, I think, has shaken them up,” he added.
On the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, John and Patsy Ramsey woke up to find their daughter, beauty queen JonBenet, missing from their Boulder home and a handwritten ransom note left on the stairs. Hours later, John Ramsey discovered her dead in their basement.
JonBenet’s autopsy determined she was sexually assaulted and strangled, and her skull was fractured. Unknown DNA was found under her fingernails and in her underwear.
John Ramsey, Patsy Ramsey and their son were cleared as suspects in 2008.
Ramsey hopes new DNA technology using genealogy research could help police solve the case — and he wants the Boulder Police Department to share with him what they’re doing.
“When I talked to the chief of police a couple of months ago — maybe it’s been a little longer — he said, ‘Well, we don’t think DNA technology is there yet to do additional testing, and we’re doing some things, but I can’t tell you about it,'” Ramsey said.
“I firmly disagree with the fact that technology is not there yet. It is there. I’ve met with the founders of one of the premier labs. … They told me what they can do. They’d like to participate, they’d like to help.”
Joe Berlinger, who directed the new Netflix docuseries, told “Nightline” that the Ramseys were “brutalized by an unfair process that [police] largely contributed to — the idea that [the family members] were actually the killers. And in response to that, just good karma dictates that [the police] need to treat this family with the care that they deserve, and they should accept all outside help.”
The Boulder Police Department released in a statement about the JonBenet Ramsey case last week.
“We are committed to following up on every lead and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners around the country until this tragic case is solved,” it said. “This investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department. The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false.”
The department suggested that anyone with any information to contact detectives at BouldersMostWanted@bouldercolorado.gov or by calling its tipline at 303-441-1974.
Sources told ABC News this week that progress is being made in the investigation.
In the last years, a multi-disciplinary team of experts has been assembled to go through the remaining evidence and apply the most modern scientific and cold case techniques to try to solve the crime, sources said. The team has consulted with top experts in their fields, according to the sources.
According to a law enforcement official briefed on the case, tips have come in as recently as the last month and are being followed up on. The renewed investigative efforts of the Boulder police and partner agencies also stand in contrast to years of limited detective work to get to the bottom of the case.
John Ramsey is following up on leads himself.
He noted that he received a letter this week from a woman who wrote, “I think my husband is a killer” and asked him to call her.
“I will call her,” Ramsey said. “That isn’t the first time we’ve gotten that kind of lead. We always follow up.”
“I’m always looking for that silver bullet — that somebody knows something that wasn’t in the media,” he said.
Since the Netflix docuseries premiered on Nov. 25, Berlinger said he’s been getting tips as well.
Ramsey was interviewed for the docuseries, but noted that he hasn’t watched it because of the emotion the case stirs up.
“I’d like to watch it someday. But for now, it’s just difficult to go back and relive the history,” he said.
He expressed confidence that the case was presented accurately.
“Years ago, I said, ‘Why doesn’t God reveal the killer?’ Somebody said, ‘Well, maybe you’re not ready for that yet. And I thought, well, that may be right. Because initially you put me in the room with this creature, we won’t need a trial. The rage was so intense and I would have had no remorse,” Ramsey told “Nightline.”
“But obviously, that’s not the right thing to do. But that’s how I felt. Now, I want this chapter closed for my family benefit. And I think we’re making good progress in terms of publicly questioning what’s going on. … With pressure, they’ll pay close attention to it, I’m hoping.”
This image created on Dec. 4, 2024, shows the snow forecast for the northeastern U.S. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — A fast-moving, low-pressure clipper system is forecast to bring snow and strong winds to the Midwest and the Northeast over the next two days, as cold air drives temperatures down towards freezing.
More than 20 states from the Dakotas to New Jersey were under wind and snow alerts as of Wednesday morning.
The Appalachian Mountains in Maryland and West Virginia are under a blizzard warning with potential wind gusts of up to 65 mph and up to 10 inches of snow.
The heaviest snow is expected to fall near the Great Lakes, where a reinforcing shot of cold air will create heavy lake-effect snow bands.
Between 1 and 2 feet of snow is possible from Michigan to upstate New York, while between 3 and 10 inches is possible from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Caribou, Maine.
The I-95 corridor — including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston — is not expecting any snow accumulation. But major cities can expect high wind gusts of up to 40 to 50 mph. High winds are especially likely for Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City.
Below-freezing temperatures were already biting as far south as Florida on Wednesday. Asheville, North Carolina, on Tuesday reported its first snowfall for 966 days.
The clipper system will be followed by strong winds and Arctic air, driving temperatures down across the eastern half of the U.S. Wind chills are forecast to push temperatures below freezing in the Midwest by Thursday morning.
Temperatures may feel as low as -10 degrees in Chicago as of Thursday morning, with Boston temperatures feeling like 6 degrees by Friday morning.
The Carolinas, meanwhile, may record record low temperatures over the coming days.
(PHILADELPHIA) — U.S. Marshals are on the hunt for a man they say killed a 29-year-old woman and then buried her body in a shallow grave, according to authorities.
The U.S. Marshals Service Eastern Pennsylvania Violent Crime Fugitive Task Force is asking for the public’s assistance in locating 29-year-old Geovanni Otero, who authorities say a warrant for murder out for his arrest, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshals on Monday.
“On November 27, a warrant murder and related charges was issued by the Philadelphia Police Department and Otero is also wanted for violation of his Pennsylvania State Parole. Otetro is charged with killing 29-year-old Melody Rivera in early November,” the U.S. Marshals said. “Her body was found in a shallow grave in the 900 block of Tustin Road in Philadelphia’s Fox Chase section of the city.”
Otero is approximately 5-foot-10 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds, officials said. He has black hair, brown eyes and tattoos covering the top of both hands as well as a tattoo of a dagger behind his left ear, police said. His last known address was in the 5800 block of N. Park Avenue in Philadelphia.
The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to Otero’s arrest and authorities say the reward will be “processed immediately upon arrest and not upon conviction.”
“Geovanni Otero is officially charged with the homicide of Melody Rivera. We are hoping the public can provide information that will assit us in removing this lifelong criminal from society,” said Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark.
The U.S. Marshals Service Violent Crimes Fugitive Task Force is the lead investigative agency tasked with apprehending Otero for the murder and state parole warrants.
(LOS ANGELES) — All raw whole milk and cream products produced by Raw Farm LLC that are still on store shelves are being voluntarily recalled following multiple detections of bird flu virus in the company’s milk and dairy supply within the past week, according to California public health officials.
Officials have also placed the farm under quarantine and suspended any new distribution of its raw milk, cream, kefir, butter, and cheese products produced on or after Nov. 27.
“Californians are strongly encouraged not to consume any raw milk or cream products in their possession or still on store shelves,” the California Department of Public Health said in a statement on Tuesday. “Pasteurized milk remains safe to drink.”
No human bird flu cases associated with the product have been confirmed to date, officials said. Though, bird flu virus levels have been found at high levels in raw milk and health officials believe raw milk is infectious to humans.
“We are working towards resolving this political issue while being cooperative with our government regulatory agencies,” Raw Milk, which is based in Fresno, said in statement posted on its website.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has previously warned of the dangers of drinking raw milk, which does not undergo pasteurization — a process that kills viruses and bacteria.
“Raw milk is milk from cows, sheep, or goats that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful bacteria,” according to the FDA. “This raw, unpasteurized milk can carry dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which are responsible for causing numerous foodborne illnesses.”
(LOS ANGELES) — The power of the ocean could soon be used to power homes in the U.S. as scientists prepare to test an untapped form of renewable energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy has invested $112.5 million to advance the commercial readiness of wave energy technologies by harnessing the powerful waves of the Pacific Northwest.
The first-ever facility, equipped with open water testing is set to begin operations off a seaside Oregon town next summer, Burke Hales, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University who has involved in the launch, told ABC News.
Named Pacwave, PacWave the facility was built with the infrastructure to house four separate test berths, each with its own dedicated cable that leads from about 7 miles offshore back to the coastal facility, Matthew Grosso, director of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, told ABC News.
It’s a project that was more than a decade, requiring years of permit approvals with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and input from all of the federal ocean agencies, including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Commission, Hales said.
The five-year investment from the federal government will involve testing by companies to accelerate the design, fabrication and testing of wave energy converters (WECs), which will harness power from ocean waves, which will then be converted at PacWave into energy that will supply the power grid.
Ocean wave energy could soon become synonymous with other natural sources of power like wind, solar and geothermal. In the U.S., there’s enough marine energy resources, including waves, tides, rivers and ocean currents to power over half of the country’s energy demands, Grosso said.
The renewable could prove to be even be more abundant, unlike solar, which ends when the sun sets, and wind, which isn’t always available, Hales said. The biggest challenge marine energy presents is how new it is compared to the other renewables, which have extensive existing infrastructure, Grosso said.
“Wave is this great complement to the other renewables, because it’s sort of slow and steady, he said. “There are basically always waves on the ocean.”
How is it possible to collect energy from ocean waves?
Using water to create energy is nothing new, the experts said. Traditional water mills were found in China as early as 30 A.D., and humans have been extracting power from the flow of water ever since.
But while water mills rely on the movement of the tide, PacWave will be focusing on surface waves in the open ocean, Hales said.
Devices bobbing up and down on the ocean surface like a buoy harness the natural movement of the water and send the captured energy back to shore via underwater pipes, Grosso said. The devices are located about 7 miles offshore.
One of the challenges is the waves can arrive erratically, so building devices that can withstand a challenging environment is key, Maha Haji, an assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace and systems engineering at Cornell University, told ABC News.
From its shoreside facility, PacWave then takes the power that comes from the wave generation devices and makes it compatible to enter the Central Lincoln Public Utility District, Grosso said.
The PacWave facility is currently in its commissioning phase, Hales said.
“We have to run the system through a number of tests to make certain that we don’t have a short circuit out there miles into the ocean that we have to go fix,” he said.
These US locations are best suited for harnessing ocean energy
While the U.S. is surrounded by coastlines, there are only a few regions where the generation of ocean wave power is viable.
Places with the biggest waves — Hawaii, Alaska and the Pacific coast — are the best locations to utilize wave energy converters due to the strength and consistency of the waves, the experts said.
However, wave energy can also be combined with other renewables, so there are benefits to combining wind, wave and solar together — making Texas another viable option, due to its existing renewable infrastructure, despite the Gulf of Mexico being in calmer waters, Haji said.
When it came time to selecting the best location to put the test facility, Northern California and central Oregon were deemed best suited, Hales said.
Southeast Alaska also has energetic waves, but the coastline is challenging, and the region is not equipped with the necessary infrastructure to connect the collected energy to the local grid.
Input from local communities played a big role in planning
PacWave will be operating out of two different sites — each located near Newport, Oregon, a deepwater port. The inception of the project was devised “hand-in-hand” with the local community, Grosso said.
The exact locations of the sites were picked by local fishers, who made the determination based on the location of the tow lanes that access the port, depth conditions, strength of the waves and whether the local community would be supportive, Hales said.
That level of consideration for the local ecology and economy continues to impact the PacWave project, the energy experts said.
Application documents included fine details on the regional ecosystem, including what kind of shrimp burrow in the nearby sand, fish that are attracted to the region and the marine mammals that could possibly be impacted by the presence of the devices, Hales said. The permits contain a requirement for acoustic monitoring to make certain the devices aren’t changing the underwater noise distributions and ways that impact marine mammals.
This was all done to minimize the impacts on the environment, Hales said, adding that community members have been concerned about the potential hazard to wildlife and the presence of offshore wind infrastructure.
“It was an exhaustive effort to identify where the problem might be, avoid those problems, and, if they’re unavoidable, talk about mitigating them,”
Engaging the community has resulted in “very little footprint” in the construction of the sites, Grosso said.
“It’s hard to tell that there’s anything there,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A wintry blast is slamming the Great Lakes region with 3 to 5.5 feet of snow — and more lake effect snow is in the forecast for later this week.
Monday’s intense lake effect snow band from Lake Michigan brought 7.5 inches of snow and whiteout conditions near Hartford in western Michigan, where a pileup closed Interstate 94 in both directions.
About 14 passenger vehicles and three semitrucks were involved in the crash, according to the Michigan State Police. One driver was critically hurt.
A winter storm warning is ongoing in western Michigan.
“Please drive safely and just stay home if it’s unnecessary to drive,” state police said.
Cars left abandoned in Erie, Pennsylvania Hard-hit Erie, Pennsylvania, which has been blanketed in snow since late last week, remained under an emergency declaration Tuesday.
Crews there were having a difficult time with snow removal efforts due in part to the number of abandoned vehicles on snow-covered roads.
There were an estimated 240 vehicles scattered across the city, “which have greatly impacted our ability to remove the snow,” Erie Bureau of Fire Assistant Chief Gregory Purchase told reporters Tuesday.
“We have deployed more resources, personnel and equipment from every part of the state, as far as Philadelphia, to come to Erie County to help support the situation here and to continue to clean out the state route system,” said PennDOT District Representative Brian McNulty.
McNulty characterized it as the “largest statewide response to a snow event in recent history.”
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in the area around Cleveland and four Northeast Ohio counties in response to the heavy snowfall there — with the possibility of more snow this week. The counties affected are Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga and Lake counties. The governor’s office said snow squalls and gusty winds leading to some gales across Lake Erie are possible.
Meanwhile, from a separate storm system in Iowa, three people were killed in a car crash on Monday when a driver crossed into the oncoming traffic lane to try to pass a snowplow, according to The Associated Press. Two people were also killed in Kentucky on Monday in a crash on an interstate, the AP said.
A lake effect snow warning remains in effect through Tuesday evening for Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, where another 4 to 8 inches of snow is expected.
A new storm system will move in Wednesday, behind this system. One to 2 feet of lake effect snow is forecast for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
The heaviest snow will be closer to the lakes, but a rain and snow mix is possible from northern New Jersey to Maine Tuesday night into Wednesday.
No snow accumulation is forecast for the Interstate 95 corridor, but up to 9 inches of snow is possible from Vermont to northern Maine.
