FSU shooting latest: At least 1 dead, 6 injured; suspect in custody
Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — At least one person was killed and six others were injured in a shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee on Thursday, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
One person is in critical condition and five are in serious condition, according to Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare.
The number of injured is subject to change, sources told ABC News, as law enforcement is actively searching to determine how many might be injured.
A suspect is in custody, multiple sources told ABC News, adding that the search for possible additional shooters is ongoing.
The shooting took place near the Student Union, according to an FSU Alert, which had advised students to continue to shelter in place due to reports of an active shooter.
Student Daniella Streety told ABC News she was in the building across the street from the Student Union when alert sirens started blaring, and people who were standing outside ran into her building.
Students then fled from the Student Union as law enforcement flooded the scene, she said.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Parkland high school shooting in South Florida in 2018, said some of Jaime’s classmates now attend FSU.
“Incredibly, some of them were just a part of their 2nd school shooting and some were in the student union today,” Guttenberg, who has become a gun reform supporter, wrote on social media. “As a father, all I ever wanted after the Parkland shooting was to help our children be safe. Sadly, because of the many people who refuse to do the right things about reducing gun violence, I am not surprised by what happened today.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it’s “actively engaged in the incident.” The FBI is also assisting authorities at the university, an agency spokesperson told ABC News.
President Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
FSU said classes are canceled through Friday.
Leon County public schools have been placed “on lockout as a precaution,” according to the school district.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “My heart breaks for the students, their families, and faculty at Florida State University. There is no place in American society for violence. Our entire nation is praying for the victims and their families.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(BROOKLYN PARK, Minn.) — A break-in has been reported at the home of slain Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, authorities said.
After the Saturday morning killings, the house was processed by crime scene investigators and then was boarded up early Sunday, Brooklyn Park police said. On Tuesday, Hortman family members took their valuables from the house, police said.
At 8 a.m. Wednesday police said they were alerted to an overnight break-in. They discovered the plywood covering the back window was pried off and the window was broken, police said.
“The home was once again processed by crime scene investigators for evidence of the burglary,” police said. “The home appeared to have been searched by an unknown individual; however, the family has indicated that they don’t believe anything is missing.”
The police department is asking local residents to check their surveillance cameras and call the police with any information.
Vance Boelter is accused of killing Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home in Brooklyn Park and wounding Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their house in nearby Champlin early Saturday morning, authorities said.
Boelter allegedly showed up to their doors impersonating a police officer and wearing a realistic-looking latex mask, officials said, noting that two other lawmakers were spared the night of the shootings.
He allegedly “stalked his victims like prey,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson said.
In a search of a home in north Minneapolis tied to Boelter, authorities seized a list of public officials that had a notation under Melissa Hortman’s name reading, “married Mark 2 children 11th term,” according to the affidavit. Another notebook included an added notation next to Melissa Hortman’s name reading, “Big house off golf course 2 ways in to watch from one spot,” the affidavit said.
Boelter allegedly had a list of 45 elected officials in notebooks in his car, prosecutors said.
Boelter faces federal charges including stalking and firearms charges and state charges including first-degree murder, officials said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — A 68-year-old woman has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a man at a senior living facility in Jacksonville, Florida.
Carol Carroll was arrested on suspicion of murder after sheriff’s deputies responded to Morris Manor Apartments and found 73-year-old Robert Tucker with multiple stab wounds to his torso in the lobby of the facility on Tuesday, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Jacksonville Fire and Rescue informed officers that Tucker had died at the scene, according to an arrest report.
Officers noticed a trail of blood from Tucker leading to a specific unit on the property, including multiple spots of blood in the hallway, a pool of blood inside an elevator and more blood on the second flood of the building, according to the report.
After obtaining a master key from the property, Carroll exited the bedroom and was detained by officers, according to the report.
After police spoke to Carroll and reviewed evidence at the scene she was arrested for Tucker’s murder.
Carroll and Tucker knew each other prior to the stabbing, according to police.
A security guard on the property told investigators they had gone to conduct rounds on the property. When he returned to the front security desk in the lobby, he found the victim lying on the floor bleeding, according to the report.
The security guard told officers that he did not recognize the victim, according to records.
While searching the apartment, investigators found a small rag with blood on it, blood on the living room floor and bedroom floor. A knife with blood on it was found in a brown purse inside the bedroom, according to the arrest report.
Investigators notified Tucker’s sons of his death. They told investigators that Tucker came down to Jacksonville in February to be closer to his children and grandchildren, after being released from the hospital following an illness, according to the arrest report.
Tucker had been residing with Carroll at her apartment apart from staying with a son for two days, the report said.
Tucker’s sons told investigators that they did not know Tucker or Carroll to be violent and were not aware of any domestic violence issues between them. But, they told investigators that Carroll is bipolar/schizophrenic, according to the report.
Investigators did not find any obvious signs of injury on Carroll during two interviews with her, but photographs were taken of Carroll in areas where she told police she had been struck, the report said.
Carroll is being held in a pretrial detention facility and will be facing a murder charge, according to the sheriff’s office.
(BOISE, Idaho) — The trial for the man accused of killing four Idaho college students in their beds will continue as a death penalty case, despite the fact that suspect Bryan Kohberger was recently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, an Idaho judge ruled late Thursday.
Additionally, Fourth District Judge Steven Hippler came down on the side of prosecutors — ruling that the “bulk” of what was said on a 911 call the morning after Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death in November 2022 can be shared with the jury, as can text messages between the two surviving roommates. There will be a few exceptions, he said.
Kohberger has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in the murders of the four University of Idaho students. His trial is set to start on Aug. 11 and is expected to last several months.
Autism and the death penalty
Yhe defense attempted to get the death penalty taken off the table on grounds of Kohberger’s autism spectrum disorder, saying that it could make proving his innocence harder. However, in his decision denying the request, Hippler said those concerns could be addressed during jury selection.
“Intellectual impairment — a hallmark of an intellectual disability — is not present in the diagnostic criteria of ASD and no court has ever found the two to be equivalent,” the judge wrote. Kohberger, the judge noted, “has not presented any evidence of a national consensus as to whether the death penalty is a disproportionate punishment for individuals with ASD.”
The judge argued that Kohberger’s lawyers tried to argue with an “apples-to-oranges comparison” of intellectual impairments that ultimately fell flat. And defense lawyers cited no capital case precedent in trying to argue there’s “growing societal sensitivity to mental disorders” and antipathy to executing those who live with them, the judge said.
“No court has ever found ASD to be categorically death-disqualifying diagnosis,” Hippler wrote.
Kohberger may have poor social skills, the judge acknowledged. In fact, Kohberger’s social difficulties, including with personal space, actually “played a role” in his Ph.D. funding being yanked, the judge said, citing a defense expert who interviewed his family, former teachers and peers.
He was never “overtly inappropriate,” but didn’t have a lot of friends — nor insight as to why that might be. He could be rather awkward and “monotone,” using formal and scripted phrases like “Objectively speaking…” and “Mind you…”
But even defense experts did not find him irretrievably impaired, the judge said. Kohberger has an IQ in the 90th percentile for his age, graduated from his master’s degree program with a 4.0 GPA, showed “some typical social behaviors” and could be polite, the judge cited from defense experts.
King Road 911 call
The “bulk” of what was said on the 911 call placed by the surviving roommates of the victims on the morning after they were stabbed to death on Nov. 13, 2022, can be used at trial, Hippler ruled.
He has also ruled in favor of admitting the surviving roommates’ texts to each other, as well as their attempts to reach the victims in those crucial hours the night the killings occurred.
A full breakdown charting out what is and what is not admissible from the call was appended to the end of the judge’s filing.
Explaining why those text messages can be admitted, the judge said that much of it describes what they were seeing, feeling and doing in the moment — and the results of those actions.
“The events are sufficiently startling to both D.M. and B.F for purposes of the excited utterance exception. D.M. and B.F. are young female college students and the self-described ‘scaredy cats of the house,'” the judge wrote. “They were awoken from sleep after a night of drinking with D.M. reporting that she heard noises and saw a masked intruder in their home. None of the other roommates were responding to their calls and texts, further indicating something was amiss.”
“It would be potentially terrifying for anyone, including these young women,” the judge continued. “To argue that they would have run out of the house or called someone else for help had they really been startled unempathetically ignores these circumstances and the trauma and confusion they were evidently experiencing, which likely offset logical thought.”
Among the few items needing redaction is an instance when the person on the phone to the 911 dispatcher describes how one of the roommates had relayed that Xana was “passed out and she was drunk last night and she’s not waking up” and that they “saw some man in their house last night.”
The judge said that person on the call did not have firsthand knowledge and was only telling the dispatcher what they had been told; therefore, that could not be played for the jury.
He also ruled that one of the surviving roommate’s attempts to start a timeline of those early morning hours should be redacted, since it’s not an in-the-moment remark, having come after “several hours to reflect on what she had seen and experienced at 4:00 a.m.”
The latest court filings also provide new information about the moments the surviving roommates came upon the victims, such as when one of them called a friend “to come over and check the house because she was scared.”
The friend and her boyfriend came over and met the two survivors “at the bottom floor of the house,” and together they “started to walk up the stairs to the second floor.”
“When they reached the second floor, H.J. went to the kitchen to grab a kitchen knife. When he came backout, D.M. ‘saw Xana again for a split second. And I just started bawling because I thought she had just like – I don’t even know. I thought maybe she was still just drunk and all asleep on the floor,'” the judge quoted from grand jury transcripts.
“H.J. told D.M. and B.F. to ‘get out,'” the judge quoted. “E.A., who had started up the stairs, also turned around after H.J. instructed her not to come any further. They both went outside.”
“Shortly afterwards, H.J. exited the house and told them to call 911. He was pale white and mentioned something about someone being unconscious,” the judge continued.
Expert witnesses
Siding with prosecutors, the judge ruled Thursday that expert witnesses on a range of fronts will be able to testify.
Those include an FBI special agent who helped analyze Kohberger’s cellphone records — something his lawyers have repeatedly pushed back on.
Defense lawyers said Kohberger was driving around alone on the night the killings occurred, and they wanted to call to the stand a cellphone data expert to back that up. The special agent is expected to counter that data expert’s argument.
Experts also include a forensic accountant for the FBI who can talk about how Kohberger spent his money — including how he only made ATM withdrawals around and after the killings and totally stopped using his debit card just a couple days before the killings — whereas prior, debit card use had been a regular habit.
They also include a supervisor at Amazon.com, expected to speak specifically to Kohberger’s click history and other online shopping data. Prosecutors have alleged that eight months before the killings, Kohberger bought a knife and sheath that could have been the murder weapon.
DNA matching Kohberger’s was found on a KA-BAR knife sheath by one of the victim’s bodies, prosecutors have said — a linchpin in an otherwise largely circumstantial case. No murder weapon has been found.
Prosecutors can also call a detective who can testify that stabbing to death all four students could have been achieved in mere minutes — and that just one person would have needed no help.
“Depending on the suspect’s pace and route, he could have carried out the crimes in approximately two to four minutes,” the judge said in his ruling.
The judge acknowledged that the detective could potentially be called as a rebuttal witness if the defense tries to argue, as they have suggested, that Kohberger’s ASD deficits make it “not possible” for him to have “acted with the speed and coordination required to commit the crimes in the time frame alleged.”
