Four killed, 14 hurt in Chicago mass shooting: ‘Absolute chaos’
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(CHICAGO) — Four people were killed and 14 others wounded in a “deplorable and cowardly” mass shooting in Chicago on Wednesday night, according to the police superintendent.
Around 11 p.m., people were exiting a venue in the River North neighborhood and standing on the sidewalk when a vehicle pulled up and someone in the car opened fire on the crowd, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said at a news conference.
“They didn’t care who was struck, and in a matter of seconds, they were able to shoot 18 people,” Snelling said.
The venue was targeted, but it’s not clear who specifically was the target, police said.
The vehicle fled the scene immediately and no one has been taken into custody, police said. Two different calibers of shell casings were recovered, police said.
The victims killed were identified as Leon Andrew Henry, 25; Devonte Terrell Williamson, 23; Taylor Walker, 26; and Aviance King, 27, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Fourteen others were wounded, including several who were hospitalized in critical condition, according to police. The injured victims are all in their 20s and 30s, and 11 of the 14 people hurt are women, police said.
“When I arrived last night it was absolute chaos,” Pastor Donovan Price, who works to help victims of violence, told reporters. “From people screaming, to blood on the streets, to people laying on the streets, a massive police presence. Just horrific. More than I’ve ever seen.”
The hospitals were “almost as chaotic” as the crime scene as people searched for their loved ones, Price said. “It can happen anywhere,” he warned. “It’s devastating.”
A second mass shooting also erupted on Chicago’s far South Side on Wednesday night, leaving four people hospitalized, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said.
“We are frustrated, but we are also grieving,” Johnson said, adding, “We will not rest until there is full accountability.”
Despite the shootings, murders were down 32% year-to-date in the city as of June 29 and shooting incidents were down 39%, according to Chicago’s crime data.
(NEW YORK) — The Columbia University student who was detained in Vermont by Immigration and Customs Enforcement told ABC News that he was about to sign a document saying he was willing to take the Pledge of Allegiance, one of the final steps in the process to become a U.S. citizen, when masked agents suddenly arrested him.
In an interview nearly a week after a federal judge ordered him released from detention while his case proceeds, Mohsen Mahdawi recounted his arrest and detainment, saying that he feared his citizenship interview was a “trap” and that he’s concerned that democracy in the U.S. is under attack.
“It was a moment of like, should I be happy or should I be cautious when I received the notice?” Mahdawi told ABC News about receiving the notice for his citizenship interview. “And I sense that this might be a trap. And for sure, indeed, it was an alarm bell where I directly reached out to my legal team in order to navigate, you know, the pros and cons and this risk that I think that I may lose my freedom.”
Mahdawi said that, as he was completing his interview, “at that moment, [I had] very strong feelings of, ‘Oh my god, things are working out. And then they came into the office … and you can imagine the feeling between, I am being excited to receive the citizenship, and then feeling of betraying disappointment.”
A Department of Homeland Security official pushed back on concerns that the interview may have been a trap staged to detain Mahdawi.
“The Department does not ‘stage’ interviews or any other type of adjudication,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “If an alien is seeking a benefit, they will almost assuredly be interviewed. If the alien is subject to detention, that alien will almost assuredly be detained. One has no bearing on the other.”
“Illegal aliens do not have a right to roam freely in our country, nor do they have a right to elude federal authorities,” McLaughlin said.
Mahdawi, who co-founded a university organization called the Palestinian Student Union with detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving in 2014 to the U.S. where he has been a legal resident for 10 years.
His lawyers believe that, like Khalil, he is being targeted by the Trump administration under Immigration and Nationality Act section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), which asserts that the secretary of state can deem a person deportable if they have reasonable ground to believe that the person’s presence or activities in the U.S. could have adverse foreign policy consequences.
In response to the government’s allegations against him, Mahdawi and his lawyers have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or those of the Jewish faith. He told ABC News he has been advocating for peace and protesting against the war in Gaza.
“So for them to accuse me of this is not going to work, because I am a person who actually has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi said. “And I believe that the fight against antisemitism and the fight to free Palestine go hand in hand, because, as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
After his arrest at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont, where he was undergoing his citizenship interview, Mahdawi said he was quickly put in handcuffs, but was not given a reason for why he was being detained.
“The first thing they’ve done is they isolated me from my lawyer, separated me from my lawyer,” Mahdawi said of his arrest. “They did not show us any paperwork they had on them. I told them, ‘I am a peaceful man and I will collaborate.'”
Mahdawi claims ICE officials were planning to send him to Louisiana where Khalil is detained, but missed the flight by a few minutes. His lawyers, who crafted several habeas petitions in anticipation that he could be detained, filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, which a federal judge granted.
“They were preparing to send me to Louisiana,” Mahdawi said. “They had my flight tickets really printed, and two agents came to take me … to ship me on a commercial flight from Burlington Airport to New York and from New York to Louisiana.”
At his bail hearing last week, the Department of Justice argued against Mahdawi’s release, saying that during a 2015 FBI investigation, a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews, proving that he was a threat. According to a police report obtained by ABC News from Windsor Police in Vermont, a “concerned citizen” alleged that Mahdawi “seemed to have knowledge about gun design and function.”
But that investigation was closed and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point that Judge Geoffrey Crawford highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release last week.
During the hearing, the federal judge said that while the allegations were “shocking,” he noted that because the FBI at the time decided to close the case, he understood that to mean that the FBI came to the conclusion that the allegations made by the gun shop owner and the other individual were unfounded claims.
Judge Crawford noted during last week’s hearing that Mahdawi had received letters of support from over 90 community members, including from members of the Jewish community, adding that “people who have in a consistent pattern described him as peaceful.”
The judge also said Mahdawi had “made substantial claims that his detention was in retaliation for his protected speech.”
Mahdawi told ABC News that his Buddhist faith has kept him grounded as his immigration and federal cases continue to play out in court and the threat of deportation still lingers.
He said he believes “everybody should be alert and alarmed” that the Trump administration targeted him for his advocacy.
“We are at a very critical time,” Mahdawi said. “What is happening in America is going to affect the rest of the world. The attack on democracy that guarantees many rights for people, democracy that has established international order and human rights, is a very dangerous phenomenon.”
During the interview, Mahdawi said he first experienced true freedom when he moved to the United States — a feeling he claims to still have despite his legal battle.
“They can put me in prison, but my spirit is free, and the free spirit is a spirit that does not give up on the idea of justice,” he said. “The free spirit is a spirit that empathizes with everyone, including its oppressor, so I do feel free.”
(NEW YORK) — The Army is reviewing how pro-President Donald Trump merchandise wound up being sold on one of its bases this week at a service-sponsored event orchestrated by the White House and the president’s supporters.
Earlier this week, Trump spoke at Fort Bragg in North Carolina in celebration of the Army’s 250th birthday. At the event, a truck was spotted selling Trump merchandise — including “Make America Great Again” hats and other “America First” swag. The practice is likely at odds with long-standing Defense Department policy, which prohibits troops from wearing political garb such as hats or flags or expressing their political opinion while in uniform.
The policy is intended to preserve America’s tradition of apolitical military forces, serving at the behest of a democratically elected president regardless of party.
When asked about pictures of troops in uniform buying Trump merch on a military base, a spokesperson for the base said the matter was under review.
“The Army remains committed to its core values and apolitical service to the nation,” said Col. Mary Ricks, a spokesperson for the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg.
“The Army does not endorse political merchandise or the views it represents,” Ricks added. “The vendor’s presence is under review to determine how it was permitted and to prevent similar occurrences in the future.”
The public event at Fort Bragg, which is home to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, was orchestrated much like a Trump campaign rally.
Trump spoke for nearly an hour, repeating false claims of a “rigged and stolen election” and bashing his political rivals. He referred to Los Angeles as a “trash heap” in the grip of “transnational gangs and criminals” — a reference to the ongoing protests in the city. He said immigration protestors were part of a “foreign invasion,” an assessment at odds with his top military adviser, Gen. Dan Caine, who publicly contradicted that statement in testimony.
Sources say organizers of the event placed soldiers who volunteered to attend directly behind the president as he aired his political grievances. Some of the troops nodded and cheered at Trump’s suggestion of putting people in jail for burning the American flag and some jeered when he mentioned the “fake press.”
Several of the soldiers booed at Trump’s references to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
“In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, they’re incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists,” he said of the protests in Los Angeles. “They’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
In hindsight, one Army official said, uniformed officials on the ground probably should have pushed back more on the political nature of the event. Two weeks prior, the president had turned a commencement ceremony at West Point into a politically charged speech in which he also advised cadets to avoid “trophy wives.”
“But what can you do? To you, he’s the president. To us, he’s the commander-in-chief,” the official said, a reference to the president’s democratically appointed role in commanding the nation’s fighting forces.
Sources say civilians from the federal commission America 250 — many of them with close ties to the White House — were given “full creative control” of the Fort Bragg event. America 250 and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to two people familiar with the planning effort, the organizers told Army officials on base ahead of the rally that they wanted a certain number of soldiers eager to stand behind the president. These troops would have to undergo a criminal background check for security reasons. Also required, according to sources, — the troops would need to look fit, not fat, in keeping with the new administration’s focus on fitness standards, warrior ethos and lethality.
The troops would have to agree to behave professionally and respectfully, sources said. No eyerolling, for example, or reacting negatively during Trump’s speech.
Army officials from the base worked diligently with America 250 organizers to find troops that would fit the bill.
“We’re soldiers,” one person said. “We do what we’re told.”
As it turned out, finding troops on base willing to be respectful of Trump wasn’t hard, sources said. Trump tends to be popular at Fort Bragg among many of the rank-and-file there. And because the event was voluntary, the spectacle attracted his most ardent supporters.
In the end, footage of troops booing and cheering a political speech while being offered MAGA merch was regrettable, said the Army official.
“We wish it hadn’t happened,” the official said. “The Army would like to focus on the history and the celebration of its 250th anniversary and its commitment to defend the nation.”
ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
An American Airlines plane. Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images
(LAS VEGAS) — An American Airlines flight returned safely to Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport shortly after takeoff due to a “mechanical issue” on Wednesday morning, the airline said.
The Federal Aviation Administration described it as an “engine issue.” While American Airlines said there was “no evidence of fire in the engine,” videos obtained by ABC News showed short bursts of flames shooting out of an engine.
Matthew Villasista was at the Las Vegas National Golf Club when he saw what appeared to be smoke coming from the plane.
“We could hear lots of booming noises, almost like a boombox. It sort of stopped us in our tracks to hear the noises,” he told ABC News.
Mark Jackson was in a parking lot when he said he heard what sounded like “large fireworks.”
“When we looked up and saw what was really happening, I was shocked and super sad thinking about how scared everyone on board must be,” Jackson told ABC News. “Those brave pilots working under some heavy pressure. It just looked like it was dropping rapidly.”
American Airlines Flight 1665 — an Airbus A321 — was heading to Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, the FAA said. Passengers deplaned normally in Las Vegas, American said.
The plane “is being taken out of service to be evaluated by our maintenance team,” American said.
“We appreciate the professionalism of our crew and thank our team who are working to get our customers to their destinations as quickly as possible,” the airline added.
