Dallas school shooting: 17-year-old charged after allegedly firing ‘indiscriminately’ at students
Dallas County Jail
(DALLAS) — A 17-year-old boy has been charged with aggravated assault mass shooting after he allegedly opened fire at his Dallas high school, shooting classmates “indiscriminately,” according to court documents.
Surveillance cameras showed a student letting the suspect, Tracy Haynes, into Wilmer-Hutchins High School through an unsecured door on Tuesday, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Haynes walked the hallway “until he spotted multiple male students” and then allegedly shot at them “indiscriminately,” hitting five people, the document said.
Haynes then allegedly “approached one student who was not able to run” and “appeared to take a point-blank shot,” the document said.
Five students were taken to hospitals, the document said.
The conditions of those injured was not clear.
A senior student told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA that he was in the foyer when, around lunch time, he heard a few gunshots. He said he then saw students running and heard screaming, and he took cover in the band room.
Video shows students evacuating the school as police cars and fire trucks gathered at the scene.
All high school students were reunited with their parents and guardians, according to Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde.
There will be no school the rest of the week and mental health professionals will be made available, she said.
“Today, as we all know, the unthinkable has happened,” Elizalde said at a briefing. “And quite frankly, this is just becoming way too familiar, and it should not be familiar.”
The gun used in the shooting “did not come through during regular intake time,” Dallas Independent School District Assistant Chief of Police Christina Smith said at the briefing.
“It was not a failure of our staff, of our protocols, of the machinery that we have,” Smith stressed.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Josh Margolin, Aaron Katersky and Alex Stone contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The National Archives on Tuesday released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
The records were posted to the National Archives’ website, joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018.
Most of what the government released tonight is not new — in fact, much of what has attracted attention on social media and in news reports has long been in the public domain, except for minor redactions, such as the blacking out of personally-identifiable information of CIA sources or employees, including names and addresses, which have now been disclosed.
But the newly-declassified versions of these documents also shed light on granular details of mid-20th century espionage that the CIA had fiercely fought to keep secret. President Biden and President Trump had accepted those arguments, until now.
Tuesday’s initial release contained 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages. A subsequent release on Tuesday night contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages and key takeaways from the newly released tranche of previously classified records.
Surveillance
Several of the newly-released pages detail how the CIA went about tapping telephones in Mexico City between in December 1962 and January 1963 to monitor the communications of the Soviets and Cubans at their diplomatic facilities, which Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald visited in the months before the assassination.
The previously-redacted pages spell out specific instructions for CIA operatives on how to wiretap, including the use of certain chemicals to create markings on telephone devices that could only be seen by other spies under UV light.
For decades, the CIA has urged the continued secrecy of these details out of fear that they would reveal the methods of the agency’s spy craft.
Another newly-disclosed portion details CIA surveillance of Soviet embassies in Mexico City and efforts to recruit double agents from Soviet agency personnel — and reveal the names and positions of those who were recruited.
The CIA officials writing these memos tout the efficacy of their efforts, with one trumpeting, “I cannot help but feel that we are buying a great deal for our money in this project.”
The memo also details the CIA’s surveillance of an American man described as a Communist living in Mexico. The bulk of the memo is a listing of phone numbers that were tapped by the U.S. government. This file has long been sought by researchers due to Oswald’s visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, but the document includes no mention of Oswald by name.
Cuba and Castro
The material shed new light on U.S. covert activities in Cuba targeting revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
Unredacted text of a June 1961 memo on the CIA — sent to Kennedy by aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. — contained harsh criticism of the spy agency just months after its backing of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.
Some of the other documents also detailed operations to potentially overthrow Castro. One 1964 document showed that two intelligence assets discussed potentially assassinating Castro under the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.
The document said the CIA was allegedly “formerly in favor of such a plan,” but it was “shelved” due to the opposition of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Another previously released document detailed RFK being briefed on potential plans to kill Castro. “RFK asks to be told before the CIA works with the Mafia again,” a footnote of the document read.
CIA foreign footprint
Schlesinger had also argued to Kennedy that the CIA’s reliance on “controlled American sources” had been encroaching on the traditional functions of the State Department, and that the CIA may have been seeking to infiltrate the politics of America’s allies.
At the U.S. embassy in Paris, for example, Schlesinger wrote that the “CIA has even sought to monopolize contact with certain French political personalities, among them the President of the National Assembly,”
Newly declassified portions of Schlesinger’s notes also revealed the number of CIA sources in Austria and Chile.
RFK killing
The release included 77 documents regarding RFK, with most of the documents relating to his activities as attorney general and senator, totaling about 2,500 pages.
Of those, only two directly mentioned his assassination in 1968. An intelligence document from 1968 — previously released in 2018 — discusses how RFK’s assassination stoked interest in his brother’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the matter.
“The forthcoming trial of Sirhan, accused of the murder of Senator Kennedy, can be expected to cause a new wave of criticism and suspicion against the United States, claiming once more the existence of a sinister ‘political murder conspiracy,'” the dispatch said.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Maryland has granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in error, by Monday.
“I am going to grant the motion for preliminary injunction I’ve reviewed, and I’ll read this word for word, so that there is no dispute that the oral order is the written order,” said U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis at Firday’s hearing, making a reference to the Alien Enemies Act court case in which the government failed to carry out another judge’s oral order.
“The two defendants are hereby ordered to facilitate the return of plaintiff Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States by no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 7, 2025,” Judge Xinis said.
Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador as part of what the Trump administration described as a $6 million deal with Salvadoran authorities in which they would house deported migrants in exchange for payment. At Friday’s hearing, however, the Justice Department attorney denied there was such a contract.
“The way I see the record, though, is that there is an agreement between your clients and El Salvador where your clients are [paying] upward of $6 million to house individuals,” Judge Xinis said. “There’s nothing to suggest that they’re still not in the custody of DHS and immigration.”
Erez Reuveni, Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Immigration Litigation for DOJ, replied, “There’s nothing in the record that there is a contract.”
When Judge Xinis pushed back and said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have spoken about an agreement between the two countries, Reuveni said he could not speak for them.
“I can’t speak to where they got their information from,” Reuvani said. “But neither of them said there is a contact.”
“They may not have used the word contract, but agreement sounds a lot like contract where we paid $6 million,” Judge Xinis replied. “I think I can draw a logicial inference.”
Abrego Garcia, despite having protected legal status, was sent to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador following what the government said was an “administrative error.”
“The facts are conceded,” Reuvani said during Friday’s hearing. “Mr. Abrego Garcia should not have been removed.”
Although the government has acknowledged the error, it said in an earlier court filing that because Abrego Garcia was no longer in U.S. custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the U.S., nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.
Last month, Abrego Garcia, who has a U.S. citizen wife and 5-year-old child, was stopped by ICE officers who “informed him that his immigration status had changed,” according to his attorneys. He was detained and then transferred to a detention center in Texas, after which he was sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, along with more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members, on March 15.
Abrego Garcia entered the United States in 2011 when he was 16 to escape gang violence in El Salvador, according to his lawyers. His attorneys say that in 2019, a confidential informant “had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member” of the gang MS-13. Abrego Garcia later filed an I-589 application for asylum, and although he was found removable, an immigration judge “granted him withholding of removal to El Salvador,” the attorneys said.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say that he “is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang” and said that the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation.”
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — while acknowledging the government’s error in sending him to El Salvador — called Abrego Garcia a leader of MS-13.
“The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” Leavitt said.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the attorney representing Abrego Garcia, acknowledged at Friday’s hearing that his client could have been removed to another county — just not El Salvador.
“He certainly was removable to many countries on Earth — El Salvador is simply not one of them,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“There was no removal order as to El Salvador,” he added. “This was essentially the equivalent of a forcible expulsion.”
When asked by Judge Xinis under what authority law enforcement officers seized Abrego Garcia, Reuveni said he was frustrated that he did not have those answers.
“Your honor, my answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating and I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you on a lot of these questions,” Reuvani said.
Following the hearing, Abrego Garcia’s wife said she will continue to fight for her husband.
“I want to say thank you to everyone that has helped us, that has supported us in fighting this, and we will continue fighting for Kilmar, for my husband,” said Jennifer Varquez Sura.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Thursday denied a request from U.S. Agency for International Development contractors to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s mass termination of their contracts.
The Personal Service Contractor Association, an advocacy group for U.S. personal services contractors employed by USAID, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last month after the secretary of state issued a stop-work order for all foreign assistance and contracts.
The contractors alleged the stop-work order prevented the association’s members from carrying out work for “which their positions were created and exist by law and from overseeing often lifesaving humanitarian relief.”
According to the complaint, the contractors were “irreparably injured” because they say the stop-word order cut “essential communication and network access, endangering their personal safety and security” and water and electricity for their homes overseas due to the funding freeze.
“The impact around the world of freezing foreign aid funding and stopping foreign aid programs has been and remains calamitous,” the contractors said in the complaint.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied the contractors’ request for the temporary restraining order.
