Dad dead, 5-year-old girl missing after wave pulls them into ocean in Monterey County
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(MONTEREY, Calif.) — A father is dead and the search for a 5-year-old girl is ongoing after a large wave pulled them into the ocean in Monterey County, California, authorities said.
A 15-to-20 foot wave swept the little girl and her dad into the Pacific Ocean just before 1 p.m. Friday near the Rocky Point Restaurant, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said.
When the mom tried to reach out to the girl and the dad, the mom was also swept into the water, authorities said.
While the dad held onto the 5-year-old, the mom made it back to shore, joining a 2-year-old who wasn’t hurt, authorities said.
The dad was rescued from the ocean and given CPR, authorities said. He was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead, according to the sheriff’s office.
The mom was hospitalized in stable condition with mild hypothermia, the sheriff’s office said.
A Coast Guard helicopter is a part of Saturday’s search for the missing 5-year-old.
A memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults murdered on May 24, 2022 during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on January 06, 2026 in Uvalde, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — As soon as Wednesday afternoon, a Texas jury will begin deliberating whether a law enforcement officer should be held criminally responsible for failing to act in the face of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
At issue is whether Gonzales — one of the first officers to arrive at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022 — ignored his training and endangered dozens of students when he responded to the shooting.
Nineteen students and two teachers died, with police officers waiting 77 minutes to confront the gunman. While the shooting response has been the subject of hearings and investigations, the case against Gonzales marks the first criminal trial related to the shooting and the delayed police response.
Prosecution’s closing argument
The jury has an opportunity to “set the bar” for how officers should respond to school shootings, prosecutor Bill Turner said on Wednesday.
“If it’s appropriate to stand outside hearing [hundreds of] shots while children are being slaughtered, that is your decision to tell the state of Texas,” Turner said.
While teachers and students were sheltering in their classrooms — doing exactly what their training taught them to do in an active shooter scenario — the police officer trained to help them failed to act, Turner said. Turner argued that each gunshot fired at Robb Elementary was “notice to Adrian Gonzalez to advance toward the gunfire,” but he failed to follow his training and act in the crucial first minutes of the shooting.
“If you have a duty to act, you can’t stand by while the child is in imminent danger,” Turner said.
Turner pointed jurors to the testimony of teaching aide Melodye Flores, a key prosecution witness who said she pleaded with Gonzales to intervene. Turner argued that the warning from Flores and the clear sound of gunfire should have triggered Gonzales to act.
“The training is, you hear shots, you go to the gunfire. He heard shots, and Melodye Flores was pointing where to go to the gunfire. There’s nothing complicated about that,” Turner said.
Defense’s closing argument
Convicting Gonzales will send a clear message to officers who respond to this country’s next mass shooting, defense attorney Jason Goss said.
“What you tell police officers is, ‘Don’t go in. Don’t react. Don’t respond,'” Goss warned jurors. “We cannot have law enforcement feel that way.”
Goss argued that prosecutors tried to “massage the facts” of the case and “twist them all into a pretzel” to argue Gonzales failed to act. According to Goss, Gonzales did the best he could with the information he had when he arrived at Robb Elementary. While other officers arrived within the same timeframe, only Gonzales is being penalized for attempting to take action that day, he argued.
Goss attempted to empathize with the jurors and the families of victims, arguing he understood the desire for criminal accountability. But he reminded jurors, “The monster who hurt those kids is dead.”
But convicting Gonzales, Goss argued, would do “an injustice” for the victims of the shooting.
“You do not honor their memory by doing an injustice in their name,” he said.
What is he charged with?
Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts of abandoning/endangering children — one count for each of the 19 students who died in the shooting and the 10 children who survived in classroom 112.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison, and Gonzales could spend the rest of his life in prison if he is convicted. While juries in Texas sometimes determine criminal sentences, Gonzales has opted to be sentenced by Judge Sid Harle if he is convicted.
What happened to the police chief’s case?
Along with Gonzales, prosecutors also charged former Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was the scene commander during the Robb shooting. His case has been indefinitely delayed due to a pending civil lawsuit involving the tactical unit that ultimately breached the classroom and killed the shooter.
Are there any comparable cases?
According to Phil Stinson — a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested — the case against Gonzales is uncommon but not unprecedented.
Prosecutors in Florida attempted to similarly charge a law enforcement officer for his response to the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen were killed when a gunman opened fire that day, Feb. 14, 2018, in Parkland.
A jury in 2023 acquitted Scot Peterson, the former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, after he was charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his alleged inaction following the shooting.
Luigi Mangione appears for a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 9, 2025 in New York City. Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The Manhattan district attorney’s office signaled Tuesday it would exclude statements that accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione made while in custody at the Altoona, Pennsylvania, Police Department following his following his arrest on Dec. 9, 2024.
Mangione was in a New York City courtroom Tuesday for the eighth day of an evidence suppression hearing that will determine what evidence will used against him when he goes on trial on charges of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last year.
The New York police lieutenant leading the investigation into the shooting testified that he set up recording equipment inside an interrogation room in the Altoona station house after Mangione was apprehended in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s five days after the shooting. But when asked by defense attorney Marc Agnifilo if he knew whether it was legal to record someone in Pennsylvania without their knowledge, he conceded he did not know.
“I was being guided my legal counsel,” Lt. David Leonardi testified.
Mangione, at the station house, requested an attorney and investigators left the room, but the video and audio recording continued, Leonardi said.
When Agnifilo asked if suspects are made aware they are being recorded during interviews done in New York, prosecutors objected and the judge called both sides to the bench.
When Agnifilo returned to the podium he announced, “I understand that the DA is withdrawing these statements so I have no further questions.”
Earlier Tuesday, attorneys played security camera footage of Mangione using a laptop at a Best Buy appliance store. The footage was among the evidence turned over to the NYPD following his arrest, according to testimony from Altoona Patrolman George Featherstone, the police officer in charge of cataloging the evidence.
Featherstone testified about photographing and processing all the items found on Mangione’s body and in his backpack at the time of his arrest.
Police said they pulled a slip of crumpled white paper from Mangione’s pocket that appeared to be a to-do list. Best Buy was listed under the reminders for Dec. 8. Featherstone said officers also recovered a Best Buy receipt from Mangione, a photo of which was shown in court, that listed items including a Polaroid waterproof digital camera and memory cards.
Security camera footage also showed Mangione at a CVS drug store. He had a plastic CVS bag with him the day he was arrested at McDonald’s that Featherstone said contained a package of 25 CVS-brand medical masks.
Featherstone testified that he has been involved in hundreds of arrests, about 30%-40% of them involving backpacks or bags, and that “every one of them resulted in a search.”
When prosecutor Zachary Kaplan asked how many of those searches involved a warrant, Featherstone said none that he recalled.
The defense has argued the officers violated Mangione’s constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure because they lacked a warrant when they searched his backpack.
(NEW YORK) — When Alyssa Burkett arrived at her Texas workplace one fall morning in 2020, the 24-year-old mother of one didn’t know a deadly plan against her was already unfolding.
On the morning of Oct. 2 that year, Burkett pulled into the parking lot of the Greentree Apartments in Carrollton, where she worked as an assistant office manager, right before tragedy struck.
A new “20/20” episode, “Ride or Die,” airing Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu, examines the case.
You can also get more behind-the-scenes of each week’s episode by listening to “20/20: The After Show” weekly series right on your 20/20 podcast feed on Mondays, hosted by “20/20” co-anchor Deborah Roberts.
According to authorities, a black Ford Expedition pulled up next to her, and the darkly dressed driver shot her through her car window. Miraculously, Burkett managed to get out of, but as she tried to escape into her office, the assailant stabbed and slashed her 44 times.
Carrollton Police Detective Jeremy Chevallier, who responded to the crime, told “20/20” that the scene was extremely disturbing.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 33 years,” he said. “When I arrived, it was the most brutal scene I think I’d ever been to.”
Given the violent nature of the crime, investigators believed it could have been a crime of passion.
Burkett had been engaged in a custody battle with Andrew Beard over their 1-year-old daughter Willow. Beard, who was 10 years older than Burkett and worked as a power tools salesman, had initially met her online, according to investigators.
The day after the killing, while canvassing a neighborhood near Beard’s home, police noticed a vehicle consistent with the one driven by Burkett’s assailant. Upon searching the car, they found a hole drilled into the side of the car that could have been a gun port alongside dark colored makeup and a fake beard, officials said.
Beard soon surrendered himself to the Carrollton Police Department, and he eventually faced federal charges and pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, using a dangerous weapon resulting in death and discharging a firearm in Burkett’s death. He was sentenced to 43 years in prison in May 2023.
However, Beard claimed to authorities that his fiancée Holly Elkins, whom he started dating in 2020, was actually the one who masterminded Burkett’s killing.
Beard pointed authorities to texts between him and Elkins where she said “I need to know you’re my ride or die” and “I’m not coming home unless I know you did this.”
In July 2023, investigators believed that they had collected enough evidence to charge Elkins. She was coming back from a trip in the Dominican Republic when police arrested her at the airport in Miami.
At her trial, Elkins pleaded not guilty and argued that it wasn’t her who committed the crime or installed trackers on Burkett’s vehicle as authorities alleged. Her attorneys also rejected the notion that she was the “mastermind” behind the killing.
She was convicted of conspiracy to stalk, stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death, and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and given two consecutive life sentences.
In December 2025, Elkins had her conviction on the firearm charge overturned on appeal, reducing her sentence to life without parole.
In an exclusive new interview with “20/20,” Beard said that his biggest regret was letting down his daughter.
“My message to my daughter is simply this: Willow, my sweet baby girl. You instantly became our world. I’m sorry for letting you down the way I did, honey,” he said. “Maybe one day you can forgive me for that … I love you with every inch of my heart. I truly do.”
Beard has not seen or had any contact with his daughter since he was arrested. Teresa Collard, Burkett’s mother, adopted Willow, whom she told “20/20” reminds her of her late daughter.
“They are a spitting image of each other. I mean, even the way Willow walks … Willow turns around and walks off and I see Alyssa walking off,” Collard said.
