Dozens injured in accident involving wagons at apple orchard: Authorities
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(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.) — More than two dozen people were injured in a tractor accident at an apple orchard in Wisconsin, authorities said.
The incident was reported Wednesday morning at Bushel and a Peck Apple Orchard in Chippewa Falls.
Emergency personnel were dispatched for a “tractor accident involving two hay wagons with kids and adults,” Chippewa Fire District Deputy Chief Cory Jeffers told reporters.
The fire department activated its mass casualty protocol so that outside agencies could help respond to the incident, Jeffers said. One helicopter from the Mayo Clinic was called in, he said.
Twenty-five individuals were transported from the scene to various agencies, Jeffers said.
Details on the ages of the victims, including how many were children, were not immediately available.
Marshfield Medical Center-Eau Claire received seven patients from the incident who are being treated for minor to serious injuries, a spokesperson confirmed to ABC News.
The scene has since been cleared, Jeffers said.
All of the children who were still at the scene have been reunited with their families, he added.
ABC News left a message with the orchard seeking comment.
Chippewa Falls is located about 12 miles northeast of Eau Claire.
(NEW YORK) — A New York City teacher was struck by a stray bullet on the eve of the first day of school while setting up his classroom, police said.
The bullet flew through the window of the sixth-floor classroom, striking the 33-year-old teacher in his right hand, police said.
The incident occurred shortly before noon Wednesday at a middle school in the Bronx borough, according to the NYC Department of Education.
The bullet is believed to have been fired from an elevated surface a long distance from the school, M.S. 391, police said.
“The school was not targeted,” Deputy Chief Keiyon Ramsey with the NYPD’s Patrol Borough Bronx told reporters during a news briefing Wednesday.
The teacher suffered a graze wound to the palm of his right hand, Ramsey said. He was transported to a local hospital in stable condition and has since been released.
One fired bullet was recovered from the classroom and is being processed, Ramsey said.
Police are working to determine where the bullet came from and who fired it, according to Deputy Chief Louis Deceglie with the NYPD’s Detective Bureau Bronx Commanding Officer.
“We are currently searching all rooftops nearby, looking for both ballistic evidence and video evidence,” Deceglie told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing.
No students were in the classroom at the time of the shooting, as school does not start until Thursday. Additionally, no students were around the school at the time, Ramsey said.
“This egregious display of violence is both upsetting and reprehensible,” the DOE said in a statement. “NYPD immediately responded to the scene where one educator sustained non-life-threatening injuries. We will provide support additional support to this school community.”
There will be additional school safety agents and police officers at the middle school for the first day of school on Thursday “out of an abundance of caution,” Ramsey said.
Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — Opening statements will begin Friday in the trial of subway rider Daniel Penny charged in the May 2023 choking death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man, in a New York City subway car.
The jury was seated Wednesday. The trial is expected to last between four and six weeks, according to Judge Max Wiley.
Penny, a former Marine, has pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death.
Wiley denied Penny’s bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter case in January.
Penny put Neely, 30, in a fatal chokehold “that lasted approximately 6 minutes and continued well past the point at which Mr. Neely had stopped purposeful movement,” prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have said.
Penny’s attorneys said they were “saddened at the loss of human life” but that Penny saw “a genuine threat and took action to protect the lives of others,” arguing that Neely was “insanely threatening” to passengers aboard the F train in Manhattan.
Witness accounts differ on Neely’s behavior on the train, prosecutors say.
They note that many witnesses relayed that Neely expressed that he was homeless, hungry and thirsty, and most of the witnesses recount that Neely indicated a willingness to go to jail or prison.
Some witnesses report that Neely threatened to hurt people on the train, while others did not report hearing those threats, according to police sources.
Some witnesses told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train; however, others have said though Neely had exhibited erratic behavior, he had not been threatening anyone in particular and had not become violent, police sources also told ABC News following the incident.
Some passengers on the train that day said they didn’t feel threatened — one “wasn’t really worried about what was going on” and another called it “like another day typically in New York. That’s what I’m used to seeing. I wasn’t really looking at it if I was going to be threatened or anything to that nature, but it was a little different because, you know, you don’t really hear anybody saying anything like that,” according to court filings by the prosecution.
Other passengers described their fear in court filings. One passenger said they “have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.” Another said Neely was making “half-lunge movements” and coming within a “half a foot of people.”
Neely, who was homeless at the time of his death, had a documented mental health history and a history of arrests, including alleged instances of disorderly conduct, fare evasion and assault, according to police sources.
Less than 30 seconds after Penny allegedly put Neely into a chokehold, the train arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette Station: “Passengers who had felt fearful on account of being trapped on the train were now free to exit the train. The defendant continued holding Mr. Neely around the neck,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass in a court filing against Penny’s dismissal request.
According to prosecutors, footage of the interaction, which began about 2 minutes after the incident started, captures Penny holding Neely for about 4 minutes and 57 seconds on a relatively empty train with a couple of passengers nearby.
Prosecutors said that about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into the video, Neely ceases all purposeful movement.
“After that moment, Mr. Neely’s movements are best described as ‘twitching and the kind of agonal movement that you see around death,'” the prosecutor said.
The defense argued Penny had no intent to kill, but Steinglass noted that the second-degree manslaughter charge only requires prosecutors to prove Penny acted recklessly, not intentionally.
“We are confident that a jury, aware of Danny’s actions in putting aside his own safety to protect the lives of his fellow riders, will deliver a just verdict,” Penny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, said after Penny’s request to dismiss the charge was denied.
In a past statement to ABC News, an attorney representing Neely’s family said, “This case is simple. Someone got on a train and was screaming so someone else choked them to death. Those two things do not and will never balance. There is no justification.”
“Jordan had the right to take up his own space. He was allowed to be on that train and even to scream. He did not touch anyone. He was not a visitor on that train, in New York, or in this country,” attorney Donte Mills said.
(WASHINGTON) — Americans lost $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency scams in 2023, according to a new report released by the FBI on Monday.
Scammers use elaborate tactics to assure potential victims that their investment in cryptocurrency will pay off, according to James Barnacle, the deputy assistant director of the criminal investigative division at the FBI.
“Over time, the victim is being cultivated, and the fraudsters are building confidence in the victim,” Barnacle told ABC News. “They’re friends. They met on the internet, or they met on social media. They’ve met on text message. They develop a friendship, then the fraudster will offer an investment opportunity, and the pitch is something along the lines of like, ‘Hey, I’m in a group that does investments or I know someone that does investments in cryptocurrency.'”
From there, Barnacle said, the victim is given a web app to place their money in.
“Everyone reads about all these crypto millionaires, so people are looking for the next big investment opportunities and fraudsters take advantage of that,” he said.
The impacts of these schemes, however, are devastating, according to Barnacle .
“Some people take mortgages, or third mortgages or equity lines of credit. People withdraw or liquidate from their 401(k) or their IRA, and they’ll put money into these investment schemes, keep putting in more and more and more,” he said. “We’re seeing people lose $4 million, $5 million, $6 million. We’re seeing people that are complaining and reaching out to us for $2,000 … it’s a huge impact to the victim.”
The report found that people over 60 years old were the most scammed: they lost nearly $1.6 billion in 2023.
“Elderly have generally a lot more free time,” Barnacle explained. “They’re at home, they’re in an assisted living facility, and so they’re pretty easy to target, in that sense, just their availability is higher than someone who’s not at home all day. And the fraudsters are really good at building that rapport.”
Fraudsters also give “detailed” directions on how to go to a cryptocurrency kiosk and deposit cash and transfer it to a scammer’s crypto wallet, he noted.
“You wouldn’t think your 89-year-old grandmother would go to a kiosk, but we’re seeing it all day long,” Barnacle said.
The chances that someone recovers the money are “slim,” Barnacle said.
FBI officials, in an effort to prevent fraudsters from taking money from victims, are training state and local law enforcement to better see the warning signs of crypto scams, and they are asking banks to also look out for the warnings from customers.
“They’re coming into your bank and saying they need cash for that home renovation project [but] does it make sense that they keep coming in and taking out significant amounts of money, even when some of them, the elderly folks, may live in a nursing home,” Barnicle said.
Since January, the FBI has notified 3,000 people that they were victims of fraud; however, the number of scams is being undercounted because many people don’t realize they are being scammed.
“The 3,000 people we’ve notified this year, 75% had no idea they were victims of fraud,” Barnacle said.
