Category: National

(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — A suspect is in custody after allegedly killing a man on a Florida golf course with his own golf clubs on Monday in what police said appeared to be a “random act of violence.”

Junior Boucher, 36, faces first-degree murder charges for the death of the man, identified by police as 65-year-old Brian Hiltebeitel, at Sandhill Crane Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

A witness said he heard the victim yelling “he’s trying to kill me” while running away from Boucher, who was allegedly brandishing a golf club, according to a Palm Beach Gardens Police Department affidavit.

Boucher allegedly began beating Hiltebeitel with the golf club, striking him in the head, and then chased him toward a pond on the golf course’s first hole, according to police.

He allegedly continued beating Hiltebeitel in the pond, and while in the water, “jumped on top of Hiltebeitel and appeared to be choking him,” the police report stated.

After Hiltebeitel was no longer moving, Boucher allegedly struck him several more times in the head, police said in the affidavit, then got out of the water and “stripped his clothes off.”

Officers pulled Hiltebeitel out of the pond, where he was observed with “multiple deep lacerations to the back of his head and on his person.”

He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Palm Beach Gardens Police Chief Dominick Pape said Boucher was taken into custody “after a short foot pursuit,” and was found “unclothed.” According to the affidavit, Boucher attempted to flee from police and was arrested “only after the use of an electronic control weapon.”

Pape said police are not currently aware of any connection between the suspect and victim, and are still working to determine a motive.

“At this time, it does not appear that Boucher had any legitimate purpose for being at the golf course. This appears to be a random act of violence where Boucher used the victims’ golf clubs as weapons and viciously attacked the victim, ultimately killing him,” Pape said.

About an hour before the incident, police said Boucher’s family reported him missing.

Boucher has an extensive criminal history, including arrests on drug charges and domestic battery.

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(WASHINGTON) — One day after moving to dismiss both his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith is continuing to defend the validity of his own appointment as he appeals the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump’s co-defendants.

In a filing Tuesday, Smith urged a federal appeals court to reverse U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to toss the classified documents case based on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.

Smith moved to drop Trump from the case Monday due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president, as he continues his appeal of the case’s dismissal with Trump’s two co-defendants, his longtime valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.

Trump, along with Nauta and De Oliveira, also pleaded not guilty to allegedly attempting to delete related surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Judge Cannon dismissed the case against all three defendants this past July on the grounds that Smith’s appointment as special counsel overseeing the case was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.

Smith, in Tuesday’s filing, urged the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse Cannon’s “flawed” conclusion so he can continue the case against Nauta and De Oliveira.

“The Supreme Court held more than 50 years ago that Congress vested the Attorney General with the power to appoint special prosecutors like the Special Counsel, and the text, context, and history of the four statutes the Supreme Court identified, as well as the long history of special-counsel appointments, confirm that Nixon was correct,” the filing said.

In a statement Monday, John Irving, a lawyer for De Oliveira, said, ““The Special Counsel’s decision to proceed in this case even after dismissing it against President Trump is an unsurprising tribute to the poor judgment that led to the indictment against Mr. De Oliveira in the first place. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If they prefer a slow acquittal, that’s fine with us.”

This is likely to be Smith’s last filing against Trump as a defendant, though Trump’s inclusion in the brief is a technicality. While Smith moved on Monday to drop Trump from the case, the court hasn’t yet dismissed the appeal for the president-elect.

“The government has moved to dismiss this appeal as to Donald Trump. If granted, defendant Trump will not appear in the caption in future filings in this case,” Smith wrote in a footnote of Tuesday’s filing.

Smith’s other case against Trump, involving the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was dismissed Monday at Smith’s request, due to the Justice Department’s presidential immunity policy.

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(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Andrew Lester, the man charged in the April 2023 shooting of Ralph Yarl after the teenager mistakenly went to the wrong house, is set to appear in court Tuesday after his attorney submitted a mental evaluation — the results of which could determine whether Lester is fit to stand trial in February 2025.

Steven Salmon, Lester’s attorney, confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday that the examination has been filed with the court.

“I suspect the judge will make a ruling based on that evaluation at the next hearing [on Nov. 26],” he said. “I am not able to provide that report or its contents as it is covered under the gag order entered in the case.”

In October, a Clay County judge rescheduled Lester’s trial, which was initially set for Oct. 7, to begin on Feb. 18, 2025, pending the results of the mental evaluation. That exam was ordered by the judge after Salmon filed a motion requesting it, according to court documents obtained by ABC News.

In the motion, Salmon claimed that Lester, who is 86, is facing health conditions that could impair his ability to understand legal proceedings or assist in his defense at trial.

He said in the motion that Lester has lost more than 50 pounds, experienced issues with his memory and has exhibited confusion surrounding the details of the case. He also noted that Lester had also suffered a broken hip, heart issues and hospitalization since the case began.

Salmon also noted that Lester has faced “stress” due to “overwhelming media attention, as well as death threats and other unwanted attention, making it difficult for him to interact socially with anyone.”

Lester was charged with one count of felony assault in the first-degree and one count of armed criminal action, also a felony, in the shooting of Yarl, a Black teenager who mistakenly went to Lester’s Kansas City home after arriving at the wrong address to pick up his twin brothers from a play date on April 13, 2023.

Lester, who is white, pleaded not guilty later that month and was released on a $200,000 bond.

Yarl, who was 16 at the time, was shot in the head and in the right arm, by Lester, according to police. The now 18-year-old suffered a traumatic brain injury, his family previously told ABC News.

According to a probable cause statement obtained by ABC News, Lester told police that he “believed someone was attempting to break into the house” and grabbed a gun before going to the door because he was scared.

Yarl opened up about the shooting in an exclusive interview with Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts in July 2023, where he reflected on his recovery and the harrowing experience.

“He points [the gun] at me … so I kinda, like, brace and I turn my head,” Yarl told Roberts. “Then it happened. And then I’m on the ground … and then I fall on the glass. The shattered glass. And then before I know it I’m running away shouting, ‘Help me, help me.'”

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(WELCHES, Ore.) — A search continued Tuesday for a missing hiker and her two large Malinois-mix dogs believed to be in the Green Canyon Way Trail area of Welches in Oregon, according to officials.

Susan Lane-Fournier, 61, was reported missing after failing to show up at work, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.

Searchers looked for Lane-Fournier on Monday in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, covering over 100 miles of trail.

Deputies did not find Lane-Fournier at her residence after she was reported missing by her employer. A community member saw her white 1992 Ford F-250 parked along a road near the trail a day later.

Lane-Fournier, who also goes by the name “Phoenix,” is 5-foot-2-inch, weighs 150 pounds, and has reddish-brown hair.

“Although she is familiar with the area, it is not known if Ms. Lane-Fournier was prepared to stay out overnight. Temperatures in the area have dropped into the 30s with light rain,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Anyone who has seen Lane-Fournier or her dogs is asked to contact the sheriff’s office.

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(NEW YORK) — When the weather turns cold, meteorologists and climate scientists almost always get a variation of the same question, “If we had global warming, I don’t think I’d have a jacket on.”

That’s because climate and weather are two terms that go hand in hand but are not the same thing.

ABC News Chief Meteorologist and Chief Climate Correspondent Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has heard questions like this for years.

“How can we have sweatshirt weather, or even the first snow, when the whole globe is getting warmer and warmer?”

It’s the same for Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, who will get questions like, “What are you all talking about — that the climate is changing? It’s snowing right now!”

Weather is the temperature and conditions on one particular day, Zee said — the short-term state of the atmosphere and what it brings.

“If you walk outside and almost every day it’s hot, or almost every day it’s dry, that’s called climate,” Zee said.

People also often refer to climate as “average weather,” which is another misnomer, Shepherd said.

“That’s actually not correct,” he said. “Climate is really more the full statistics of weather, not just average. It’s the highs and lows. It’s frequency. It’s max and min. It’s a lot of things.”

The seasons are governed by the Earth’s tilted axis and its path of orbit around the sun, Shepherd said. The tilted axis means there are times when some parts of the planet are getting less energy from the sun — the main distinction between summer and winter.

Just because the climate is warming overall doesn’t mean there won’t be big swings in either direction, including cold fronts and snow storms in typically warm places or drought conditions in typically wet places and torrential downpours in normally dry climates, the experts said.

“As the globe warms, we are going to have cold and, of course, snow,” Zee said. “Because if that all abruptly stopped, it would be really scary.”

Scientists love their metaphors, especially when it comes to comparing the two terms.

Weather is your mood, and climate is your personality, according to Shepherd and Zee.

Weather and climate can be looked at as the dog and the dog walker, Yarrow Axford, a professor in geological sciences at Northwestern University, told ABC News. The dog can sniff around and tug at its leash, but the dog walker is the one setting the pace and direction.

But that old adage often no longer applies because the climate is changing so quickly, Axford said.

On a long-term scale, the number of overall cold events is declining. The likelihood of extremely cold days has decreased due to human-caused global warming, a 2016 paper published in The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine authored by Shepherd found. The same paper also found an increase in the number of extremely hot days.

The lack of cold events could cause people to pay more attention when they happen, the experts said.

Geography also makes a difference, Zee said. When scientists say the climate is warming, they mean for the entire planet — not in a particular city, state or county, Zee said.

“The point is that climate — all weather days all over the world — on average, is getting warmer,” Zee said.

Shepherd continued, “We’ve got to really expand the average person’s understanding of what climate actually is.”

ABC News’ Dan Manzo contributed to this report.

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(DENVER) — Incoming border czar Tom Homan says he’s willing to throw Denver Mayor Mike Johnston in jail over his protests about mass deportation.

“But look, me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing — he’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail because there there’s a statute. It’s Title 8 United States Code 1324 (iii). And what it says is it’s a felony if you knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer,” Homan told Hannity during an interview on Fox News last night.

Homan’s comments come after Mayor Johnston said he was willing to go to jail to stop possible mass deportation efforts under the incoming Trump administration.

“I’m not afraid of that and I’m also not seeking that,” he said during an interview with a local NBC affiliate.

Johnston did walk back comments he made about stationing police officers at the county line to stop federal forces from coming in to deport undocumented immigrants. In an interview with local news outlet Denverite he likened those efforts to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China.

Homan and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who were both interviewed by Hannity on Monday night, said they plan to make two stops along the border to feed National Guard troops and DPS troopers who have been vital to Texas’ mission to stop immigrants from coming to the border.

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(NEW YORK) — Snow and rain are in the forecast for some parts of the U.S. as travelers hit the road and head to the airport for Thanksgiving.

Here’s your weather forecast for the holiday week:

Tuesday

Rain is sweeping across the East Coast from New York to Alabama on Tuesday morning.

There’s a slight chance for freezing rain in southern Vermont and the southern Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York before it warms enough to change to rain mid-day.

The rain will end in New York City and the Mid-Atlantic by mid-afternoon. Boston will be dry by 7 p.m.

In the West, 3 to 6 inches of rain is possible for the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range through Tuesday morning.

Heavy rain is also hitting California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Snow is falling at higher elevations from California to Colorado, with winter storm warnings in effect.

California’s snow will end Tuesday night; totals could reach 3 to 5 feet in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains.

Treacherous travel is expected in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains as snowfall there continues through Wednesday. Up to 3 feet of snow is possible and avalanche warnings are in place.

Wednesday

The East Coast and West Coast will be dry on Wednesday, setting up a good holiday travel day for both coasts.

Interstate 70 will be the hardest-hit by rough weather, with snow in the Colorado Rockies and rain in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.

In the South, temperatures will be well above average, with highs in the 70s and 80s. Houston may reach a record high for the second time this week.

Thanksgiving

Spectators heading to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City should bring umbrellas and raincoats, as the parade will be rainy with temperatures in the 40s. The breeze could reach 10 to 15 mph.

Rain will be falling across most of the East Coast Thursday morning, while snow hits northern Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

Much of the Interstate 95 corridor will be soggy throughout the day, especially north of Philadelphia where the rain will continue through the afternoon.

Meanwhile, temperatures will reach the 70s in Arizona and the 80s in Florida. But highs will only be in the 30s and 40s in the Midwest.

Friday

On Friday, snow will be falling from West Virginia to Pennsylvania to western New York.

Rain will move through north and central Florida, but it won’t reach Miami until Saturday morning.

Low temperatures may plunge to the single digits in Minneapolis for the first time this season Friday or Saturday morning.

High temperatures will only reach near freezing in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Omaha, Nebraska. The highs will only be in the 20s in Chicago.

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(BETHESDA, MD) — An FBI special agent has been arrested in Montgomery County, Maryland, and stands accused of sexually assaulting two women, according to police.

Special Agent Eduardo Valdivia, 40, is charged with 10 counts, including two counts of second-degree rape.

According to court records, the alleged attacks took place in May 2024 and September 2024.

Valdivia is in custody in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and is scheduled to appear for a bond hearing in district court on Tuesday.

“The FBI takes allegations of criminal violations and misconduct very seriously. We are aware of the matter involving the recent arrest of an FBI employee and are fully cooperating with the Montgomery County Police Department,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office said in a statement to ABC News.

“Regarding the employment of Eduardo Valdivia, he is currently suspended pending the conclusion of the Montgomery County Police Department investigation,” the statement said.

Valdivia was previously charged with attempted murder in a 2020 off-duty shooting after a verbal exchange on a Metro train car. The incident was captured by security cameras.

A jury in Montgomery County found Valdivia not guilty in that case after a trial in 2022.

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(BOULDER, CO) — On the day after Christmas in 1996, John and Patsy Ramsey woke up to discover their 6-year-old daughter, JonBenét, a child beauty queen, was missing from the family’s Boulder, Colorado, home.

A handwritten ransom note demanding $118,000 — John’s exact bonus that year — was found on the stairs by the kitchen. Seven hours later, John discovered his daughter’s lifeless body in a small room in the basement.

For decades, the case has captivated the nation.

Now, 28 years later, John Ramsey remains hopeful that his daughter’s killer will be caught. He believes new DNA technology could aid police in re-investigating JonBenét’s murder, a case that drew global attention.

JonBenet’s autopsy determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and her skull was fractured. Unknown DNA was found under her fingernails and in her underwear.

The Ramseys quickly became suspects, even though no evidence connected them to the crime.

The Ramseys have consistently claimed they were not involved in JonBenet’s murder. However, the Boulder District Attorney’s Office took 12 years to fully exonerate the Ramseys and their son, Burke.

As the weeks passed without any arrests in the case, a media frenzy began to build, fueled by nonstop tabloid images of JonBenét competing in beauty pageants.

A number of suspects surfaced, including a man named John Mark Karr, who confessed to the killing in 2006. However, his DNA did not match the evidence, so he was never charged. The case remained open.

To this day, John Ramsey believes his family has a cloud over them because there are still people in the country who believe that he and his late wife Patsy, who died in 2006, are responsible for JonBenét’s murder.

“There’d still be 5 to 10% of the population that think, ‘yeah yeah it was the father or yeah it was the mother,'” John said.

Despite the loss of his wife and daughter, John Ramsey remains steadfast. He has now remarried and finds comfort in his children and grandchildren.

John is also working with director Joe Berlinger on a new docuseries streaming on Netflix titled, “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?”

“We think the crime can be solved,” Berlinger said. “We want to pressure the Boulder police to test DNA.”

The docuseries revisits the early stages of the investigation. From the beginning, there were questions about the police’s handling of the investigation.

“Early on, they looked into this crazy idea that the parents were responsible,” Berlinger said. “They get tunnel vision, so they’re not looking to investigate all possibilities.”

The crime scene is also under scrutiny, as it was potentially contaminated, which created additional challenges, according to Berlinger.

People were streaming through the house, moving from the kitchen to the living room.

The Boulder Police Department told “Nightline”: “We are dedicated to following up on every lead. We continue to collaborate with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners across the country until this tragic case is resolved. This investigation will always remain a priority for the Boulder Police Department.”

John Ramsey is confident that advancements in DNA technology can help identify his daughter’s killer.

“There’s been a number of old, old cold cases solved using this genealogy research,” John Ramsey said. “Let’s do a reverse family tree and see if he (the killer) had a relative living in Boulder in 1996. That’s what we’re asking the police to do.”

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(CAPE CORAL, FL) — A 22-year-old social media influencer on TikTok with nearly 300,000 followers has been arrested after using fake barcodes to steal from Target and filming herself getting ready before the alleged theft, police say.

The Cape Coral Police Department in Florida responded to a Target branch located at 1890 NE Pine Island Road in Cape Coral last Wednesday regarding a past retail theft that occurred on Oct. 30, according to a statement from the Cape Coral Police Department.

“Loss Prevention at Target stated that on October 30, 2024, an unknown female entered the store and selected items listed for sale,” police said. “Once at the self-checkout register, the female suspect did not scan the items’ barcodes, instead scanning a false barcode with cheaper prices.”

In total, 16 items of miscellaneous household goods and clothing were stolen with a total retail value of $500.32, which was verified by officers via Target’s security cameras.

In an attempt to help identify the suspect through public assistance, the Cape Coral Police Department’s Facebook and Instagram accounts posted the female’s picture, describing her as appearing to be “approximately 20-35 years old, had long black hair, and was wearing a tan shirt, tan pants, and glasses.”

An anonymous caller who saw the post on social media subsequently contacted the police and gave the possible identification for the suspect as Marlena Velez and informed them of her social media profiles.

“Officers then found Marlena’s TikTok account, which documents her getting ready on October 30, 2024, in the same outfit and glasses and going to Target,” police said. “Marlena documents herself picking out items inside the store and placing them in her car after exiting the store. Marlena appears to be a content creator with almost 300,000 followers.”

Velez has since been arrested and taken to the Lee County Jail and charged with petit theft of less than $750.

The investigation is currently ongoing.

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