Detroit police search for arsonist after explosion destroys cars
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(DETROIT) — The Detroit Police Department is seeking public help in their search for an arson suspect who burned four vehicles and damaged two others late last week.
Authorities released a video of the incident on Aug. 15, which occurred at around 1:45 p.m. in a post office parking lot on Harper Ave, near the intersection with Morang Ave. on the east side of the city.
In the footage, a hooded man can be seen breaking the window of a white 2018 Chevy Traverse in the parking lot, before pouring accelerant inside. The suspect then lit the fuel, with the subsequent explosion throwing him backwards against another vehicle. The suspect fell to the floor and then ran from the scene.
“The suspect is described as a heavy set male,” read the appeal from the Detroit Police Department published on Monday. “He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt with a white shirt underneath, and blue jeans. Six vehicles were damaged and four vehicles were burned as a result of this incident.”
Authorities are offering a $500 reward related to the case.
(NEW YORK) — A murder suspect who has evaded authorities for several months was finally captured by U.S. Marshals after he fell through the ceiling from the attic space where he was hiding, authorities said.
Deario Wilkerson, 20, has been wanted since May 9 when an arrest warrant for first degree murder and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon was issued for him in regard to the April 2 shooting death of Troy Cunningham, who was found shot to death on the 1500 block of N. Merton Street in Memphis, Tennessee, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshals published on Monday.
The case was subsequently adopted for a fugitive investigation by the U.S. Marshals Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force (TRVFTF) in Memphis, authorities said.
“On August 26th, the TRVFTF tracked Wilkerson to a residence in the 1400 block of N. Merton in Memphis. Deputy marshals, with the assistance of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and Memphis Police Department’s Fugitive Apprehension Teams, surrounded the home,” read the U.S. Marshals statement detailing the incident. “Wilkerson attempted to hide in the attic as the USMS searched the residence; however, he fell through the ceiling.”
The U.S. Marshals Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force is a “multi-agency task force within Western Tennessee. The TRVFTF has offices in Memphis and Jackson, and its membership is composed of Deputy U.S. Marshals, Shelby, Fayette, and Tipton County Sheriff’s Deputies, Memphis and Jackson Police Officers, Tennessee Department of Correction Special Agents, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Since 2021, the TRVFTF has captured over 2,600 violent fugitives and sexual predators.”
Wilkerson was not injured from the fall and was taken into custody without further incident.
(MEMPHIS) — A second former Memphis police officer federally charged in connection with the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols has pleaded guilty, weeks before the trial is set to begin, court filings show.
Emmitt Martin III is one of five former officers indicted last year on federal civil rights, conspiracy and obstruction offenses in connection with Nichols’ death.
After initially pleading not guilty to the charges following the indictment, Martin pleaded guilty to two of them during a change of plea hearing in federal court in Memphis Friday afternoon, online court records show.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to the court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the online records.
The government said it will recommend a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
In the plea agreement, Martin admitted that, along with the other defendants, he “unlawfully assaulted” Nichols, and then attempted to “corruptly persuade” his supervisor to make “false and misleading statements” on the incident report to “cover up their use of unreasonable force on Nichols.”
ABC News has reached out to his attorney for comment.
Martin is the second former officer to plead guilty in the case ahead of the federal trial, which is scheduled to start next month.
In November 2023, Desmond Mills Jr. pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force — as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
The government said at the time that it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’ plea agreement.
Nichols, 29, died on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after a violent confrontation with police following a traffic stop. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report showed he died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma.
The federal indictment alleges that Martin and Mills — along with Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — deprived Nichols of his constitutional rights during the confrontation.
Each of the defendants, according to the indictment, was involved in beating Nichols during the Jan. 7 traffic stop and none relayed information about their assault to the Memphis police dispatcher, their supervisor or the emergency medical technicians and paramedics who were coming to the scene.
The officers allegedly spoke at the scene about how they had struck Nichols, but they also did not relay that information to first responders or their supervisors even as his condition “deteriorated and he became unresponsive,” the indictment alleges.
As part of his plea agreement, Mills admitted to “repeatedly and unjustifiably striking Nichols with a baton and to failing to intervene in other officers’ use of force against Nichols,” the Department of Justice said in a press release following his change of plea hearing.
He also admitted to not providing any medical aid to Nichols afterward, despite knowing he “had a serious medical need,” and not alerting police or EMTs that Nichols had been struck in the head and body, the DOJ stated.
He further admitted to making false statements and accounts about Nichols’ arrest and the use of force used on him to a supervisor and in a Memphis Police Department report, according to the DOJ.
The other three defendants pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. Their trial is scheduled to start on Sept. 9 and is expected to last three weeks.
If convicted, two of the counts in the indictment carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, while the other two each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, according to the DOJ.
All five former officers also face state felony charges, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping, in connection with Nichols’ death. They pleaded not guilty.
The Memphis Police Department fired the five officers — who were on the department’s now-disbanded SCORPION unit — following an investigation into Nichols’ death.
Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, speaks during a news conference in New York, Feb. 16, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking nearly a dozen large tech companies to take meaningful steps to protect voters from election-related misinformation, according to a letter obtained exclusively by ABC News.
“While misinformation has been a concern in past elections, with the rise of gen AI, barriers that prevent bad actors from creating deceptive or misleading content have weakened dramatically,” said the letter, which was sent to 10 social media and AI companies, including Meta, Google and OpenAI.
The letter said the generative AI tools the recipients have built have “become increasingly popular and easy to use and misuse.”
Deceptive and misleading content about the 2024 presidential election has been circulating online, and generative AI has been making it increasingly difficult for users to distinguish fact from fiction.
In an altered campaign video of Vice President Kamala Harris last month, her original audio was swapped out and replaced with an AI voice-clone mimicking her voice to make her say things she never said. The creator posted the video on the social media platform X, along with a disclaimer saying it was a parody — but the video then garnered massive attention after it was reposted by X owner Elon Musk, who did not explicitly say it was satire.
In January, a robocall appearing to impersonate the voice of President Joe Biden encouraged recipients of the call to “save your vote” for the November general election, rather than participate in the New Hampshire primary, according to audio obtained by ABC News.
James isn’t the only politician raising the alarm about election-related AI.
Last month, the secretaries of state from Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, Washington and Pennsylvania sent a public letter to Musk calling for X’s AI search assistant, “Grok,” to direct voters seeking election information to the nonpartisan CanIVote.org, as the administrators of ChatGPT and OpenAI already do.
“As tens of millions of voters in the U.S. seek basic information about voting in this major election year, X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote,” read the letter.
A recent study by AI Forensics, a European nonprofit investigating the impact of AI, found that Microsoft Copilot’s answers to simple election-related questions contained factual errors 30% of the time. Following that investigation, as well as a request for information from the European Commission, Microsoft and Google introduced “moderation layers” to their chatbots so that they refuse to answer election-related prompts, AI Forensics told ABC News.
In February 2023, most of the technology companies James addressed in this week’s letter signed a voluntary pact to prevent AI tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world. The companies did not commit to banning or removing deepfakes; instead they outlined methods to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms.
In her letter, James is requesting an in-person meeting with these companies to review steps they are taking to protect voters from misinformation. The letter seeks written responses to questions about policies and practices, plus a meeting with corporate representatives.
The letter said nothing about the companies’ obligation to comply, though implicit in any request from the state attorney general is the possibility of an enforcement action.
