Cold weather alerts from New Mexico to Florida, with another winter storm expected
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(NEW YORK) — The snow and ice that fell during the winter story is not expected to go anywhere for days, as temperatures remain at or below freezing for many and four states may see soon get another storm.
Cold Weather alerts and Freeze alerts issued from New Mexico to Florida. Wind chills are near 20 degrees all the way south to the Gulf Coast and are in the 30s in Florida.
The major winter storm that brought heavy snow and ice from Kansas to New Jersey is gone. Washington, D.C., had 7.1 inches of snow, making it the biggest snowstorm since 2019. And Cincinnati, Ohio, received about 10.6 inches of snow, marking the biggest snowstorm since 2016.
The chilly weather will continue for most of the East through Friday. The cold air in place, will set up perfect conditions for a new winter storm.
A Winter Storm Watch has already been issued for four states: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Lousiana, where snow and sleet could create treacherous road conditions.
Ice and snow are expected to begin in Texas and Oklahoma early Thursday morning and will continue all day. Dallas, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Little Rock, Arkansas, are just a few cities that will see this winter storm Thursday morning into Friday morning.
By Friday, the snow will move into Tennessee, hitting both Memphis and Nashville, with ice possible for northern Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
Even Atlanta, Georgia, could see ice and snow on Friday afternoon and evening.
Snow is also expected to fall in the recently hard hit Ohio Valley on Friday from Louisville to Cincinnati.
By Friday night into Saturday the snow will move into mid-Atlantic and I-95 corridor again. At this point, it is still too early to say how much snow I-95 corridor will get, but a few inches possible, especially from Washing to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
(GEORGIA) — Three people have been indicted over an alleged drunk driving crash in Georgia that killed a high school student in February — including parents accused of letting the teens drink before the crash.
Sumanth and Anindita Rao, who are 50 and 49 respectively, face charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and maintaining a disorderly house, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced in a press conference Wednesday.
The car’s driver, 18-year-old Hannah Hackemeyer, faces numerous charges, including vehicular homicide and driving under the influence of alcohol under the age of 21.
On Feb. 24, Hackemeyer crashed a car after drinking alcohol at the Raos’ home, police said. She and the Raos’ teen daughter, Ananya, were able to crawl out of the flipped vehicle, but a third passenger, 18-year-old Sophia Lekiachvili, was trapped in the front passenger seat.
Lekiachvili was transported to the hospital, where she died of her injuries, according to police.
Hackemeyer had allegedly been driving more than 60 miles per hour over the speed limit when she crashed, and had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.046, more than twice the legal limit for a person under 21, police said.
According to Boston, the three teenagers had spent the evening leading up to the crash at the Raos’ home, where they drank wine, allegedly “in plain view of Ananya’s parents.”
Shortly before midnight, they allegedly told Sumanth Rao they wanted to go for a drive, Boston said.
“Ananya’s parents knew the girls had been drinking, but they still let them get into a car and leave the house with an open bottle of wine in the front seat,” Boston said. “Less than 30 minutes later, a little more than a half mile away, that decision would prove deadly.”
Boston alleged that allowing the teens to drink was “not an anomaly” at the home of the Raos, who she said had a “long-standing, repeated pattern of allowing teenagers to drink in their home.”
“The Raos’ home was the party house where teens could freely consume alcohol without interference from the adults who lived there — the adults who should have accepted responsibility,” Boston said. “It is a miracle that nothing happened prior to Feb. 24.”
Lekiachvili’s death was a “foreseeable consequence” of the Raos’ alleged permissiveness with teen drinking in their home, Boston said.
“As a prosecutor and a mother of two teenage daughters, I have never seen a more egregious disregard for safety and well-being of young people as I have in this case,” Boston said.
Attorney information for Hackemeyer and the Raos was not immediately available.
(NEW YORK) — A man’s masked face caught peering at a camera from the back of a taxi. Monopoly money in a backpack ditched in Central Park. And bullet casings with words scrawled on them.
Those are just a few of the details that the New York Police Department has released to the public in the five days since a masked gunman fatally shot the chief executive of a health insurance company in Manhattan.
The evidence has painted a picture of a “fully masked” suspect who appeared to have planned his movements with precision, but law enforcement is “on the right track,” Mayor Eric Adams told ABC News’ New York station WABC on Sunday.
“As I say, the net is closing and closing,” Adams said. “This was an extremely challenging investigation. A fully masked person. The amount of detective work it took to put the pieces together — we feel we’re getting closer and closer.”
As the manhunt continued for the suspect, whom investigators have not publicly identified, police in New York and elsewhere said they were still looking for evidence in Wednesday’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. The NYPD believes it is making good progress toward identifying the suspect, but has so far not done so, sources told ABC News.
NYPD detectives arrived on Saturday in Georgia. Investigators have said the suspect took a bus to New York, arriving on Nov. 24 from Atlanta, although it was unclear if his travels began in that city. And the FBI is assisting the nationwide manhunt, according to law enforcement sources.
Back in New York on Sunday, members of the New York Police Department’s dive team were again searching underwater in the Central Park. They were seen in the water near the Bethesda Fountain.
The masked gunman shot Thompson at point-blank range at 6:44 a.m. on Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton Midtown, where Thompson’s company was holding an investors conference. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the attack as “brazen” and “targeted.” The suspect is thought to have left the scene of the shooting and taken a bike north into the park.
Adams on Sunday declined to comment on specific evidence, saying only that “every piece is important.” And he spoke generally about the ongoing underwater search.
“Everywhere is important. Everyplace is important,” Adams said, adding a moment later, “It’s dark down there, you know.”
The backpack had been found nearby in Central Park. Police have not yet recovered the distinctive gun used in the shooting.
The suspect took a taxi to the Port Authority bus facility at 178th Street and boarded a bus out of New York City following the shooting, according to police.
NYPD officials released images on Saturday that they said were of the suspected shooter. The man appeared to have been in the back of a taxi, where he could be seen peering through the open slider in the partition between the seats. Another photo appeared to show the man walking by the window of a cab. It was unclear when the photos had been taken.
Investigators believe they secured DNA samples from several pieces of evidence discovered at or near the crime scene, law enforcement sources told ABC News. The DNA samples are currently at the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to be run through databases for a possible match — a process that could take several days, the sources said.
Police were also able to extract a fingerprint off a water bottle the suspect bought at a Starbucks. The print is smudged, so it is unclear whether it will be helpful to the investigation, sources said.
“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to tip him off that we’re on his trail, but we feel really good where we are,” Adams said on Sunday. “Finding the knapsack, getting the cab photos, looking at some of the evidence that we have available to us, we feel really good where we are.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele, Bill Hutchinson, Jon Haworth, Ivan Pereira and David Brennan contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The largest pharmacy chain in America is accused of “unlawfully dispensing massive quantities of opioids and other controlled substances to fuel its own profits at the expense of public health and safety,” according to a civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, which was unsealed Wednesday.
The DOJ lawsuit alleges that CVS has, for more than a decade, knowingly filled sometimes-dubious prescriptions for controlled substances that lacked a legitimate medical purpose, or were not valid.
Those prescriptions included “dangerous and excessive quantities of opioids” and “trinity cocktails” — a blend of “especially dangerous and abused combination of drugs made up of an opioid, a benzodiazepine and a muscle relaxant,” the suit stated.
The suit also accuses the company of filling “at least thousands of controlled substance prescriptions” penned by “known ‘pill mills.'”
In a statement to ABC News, CVS spokesperson Amy Thibault called the suit “misguided” and said company officials “strongly disagree with the allegations and false narrative” described in the DOJ suit and will “defend ourselves vigorously.”
DOJ’s lawsuit says CVS “contributed to the opioid crisis, a national public health emergency with devastating effects in the United States.” The suit went on to say: “These included illegitimate prescriptions for extremely high doses and excessive quantities of potent opioids that fed dependence and addiction, as well as illegitimate prescriptions for dangerous combinations of opioids and other drugs.”
The suit accuses CVS of ignoring sometimes “egregious red flags” about prescriptions “bearing the hallmarks of abuse and diversion.” The lawsuit points to performance metrics and incentive compensation policies that allegedly pressured pharmacists to “fill prescriptions as quickly as possible, without assessing their legitimacy” and corporate policies that allegedly prioritized speed over safety.
The suit claims CVS refused to implement compliance measures recommended by its own experts to reduce the number of invalid prescriptions with red flags “primarily due to fear that they would slow the speed of prescription filling and increase labor costs,” according to the suit.
The government is seeking civil penalties, injunctive relief and damages to address what it called CVS’ unlawful practices and to prevent future violations.
In her statement, Thibault, the CVS spokesperson, said the company has been an industry leader in fighting opioid misuse.
“Each of the prescriptions in question was for an FDA-approved opioid medication prescribed by a practitioner who the government itself licensed, authorized, and empowered to write controlled-substance prescriptions,” Thibault’s statement said.
She said the DOJ lawsuit “intensifies a serious dilemma for pharmacists, who are simultaneously second-guessed for dispensing too many opioids, and too few.”
