Helicopter rotor retrieved from Hudson River days after deadly crash
James Devaney/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The rotor of the helicopter from last week’s deadly crash has been retrieved from the Hudson River, four days after the devastating accident that killed all six people on board, according to a statement from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The recovery of the rotor system included the transmission and the roof beam, the NTSB said on Monday night, adding: “They also recovered the tail rotor system.”
The main fuselage, which includes the cockpit and cabin, had already been recovered, the NTSB said.
“Key components of the Bell 206 L-4 helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River last week were recovered Monday, greatly aiding the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the fatal accident,” the statement said, in part.
It credited the efforts to divers from the New York Police Department, the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Jersey City Office of Emergency Management.
“The evidence will be taken to a secure location for further examination,” the NTSB statement said.
“Recovery efforts are now finished,” it added.
The pilot, Seankese “Sam” Johnson, was taking a family of Spanish tourists — Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their children, ages 4, 8 and 10 — on a tour when the chopper crashed on April 10.
Video showed the helicopter plunging into the 5-foot-deep water near Jersey City, New Jersey, without its tail rotor or main rotor blade.
The NTSB is investigating the cause of the crash. The helicopter wasn’t equipped with any flight records, the NTSB said.
New York Helicopter Tours, the company behind the helicopter, has shut down its operations, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA said it will launch an immediate review of the tour operator’s license and safety record.
(NEW YORK) — The third week of testimony in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial resumed on Tuesday with emotional testimony from the rap mogul’s former personal assistant, who testified about the violence and threats she said she witnessed on the job.
Crying at points on the witness stand, Capricorn Clark told jurors that she was told she would be “thrown into the East River” if she failed a lie detector test about the theft of Combs’ jewelry, that she was forced to accompany Combs to confront rival musician Kid Cudi, and how she witnessed Combs beat his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.
The intense testimony was complicated by an emotional cross-examination, as defense attorneys questioned Clark about her desire to reconcile with Combs and continue working with him.
“You want to work with him again?” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo pressed after showing messages where Clark sought to reconcile with Combs.
“I wanted to work in the music industry,” Clark replied.
Combs faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges. Prosecutors allege he used his music empire — including his vast wealth and control over his employees — to run a criminal enterprise that used violence and threats to coerce women into sex and then enforce their silence. The trial has already seen the onetime cultural tastemaker and music industry titan reduced to a drug-addled abuser who led a sex life replete with voyeurism, orgies and prostitutes.
Combs has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that Combs’ actions, while outside the mainstream, were a private matter and not criminal in nature.
“If you don’t convince him, I’m going to kill all you m————-.”
Last week, rapper and actor Kid Cudi — whose legal name is Scott Mescudi — told jurors that he believed Combs broke into his home in a spasm of jealousy after he learned Mescudi had been dating Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Ventura.
Mescudi offered few details about the alleged break-in, telling jurors he rushed over to his home after being tipped off by Clark. Once there, he testified he only found traces of Combs’ alleged actions, including finding Christmas gifts tampered with and his dog locked in his bathroom.
Taking the stand on Tuesday, Clark testified about that episode, which she said began in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2011, when a furious Combs arrived at her apartment with a handgun.
“He said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He said, ‘Who is Scott?’ I said, ‘I don’t know Scott.’ He said, ‘Kid Cudi,'” Clark recalled.
When she protested, Clark testified Combs, gun allegedly in hand, told her, “I don’t give a f— what you want to do, go get dressed.”
Clark said she was forced to join Combs and a bodyguard named Ruben to drive to Mescudi’s home. While Combs and Ruben allegedly entered the house, Clark said she called Ventura to tell her about the break-in, warning Mescudi that he might “get himself killed” if he tried to intervene.
Later that day, Clark testified that Combs ordered her and the bodyguard to pick up Cassie and convince Mescudi not to tell police Combs was involved in the break-in at the house.
“If you don’t convince him, I’m going to kill all you m————-” Clark recalled Combs telling her. When she returned with Ventura, Clark said Combs, standing in his robe and underwear, began kicking Ventura.
She testified that Combs kicked Ventura repeatedly, “and each kick she would crouch into more and more a fetal position” until she was all the way to the street.
Asked why she did not intervene, Clark responded that Combs told her, “If I jump in, he was going to f— me up too.”
Breaking down on the witness stand, Clark told jurors she later called Ventura’s mother and urged her to report Combs to the police. “He’s beating the s— out of your daughter. Please help her. I can’t call the police, but you can,” she recounted to the jury.
Ventura’s mother testified last week that after she learned about Combs’ threat to release two sex tapes of her daughter, she took out a home equity loan to pay Combs $20,000, which was eventually returned to her.
Cross-examining Clark, Combs’ attorneys tried to cast doubt on the former assistant’s recollection of the events and suggested she accompanied Combs and Ruben willingly.
“You went because you were afraid he was going to do something stupid?” Agnifilo asked. “I went because he told me he didn’t care that I didn’t want to go,” Clark responded. “I did not want to go and it was not my choice, sir.”
“They’re going to throw you in the East River.”
Clark told jurors that working for Combs was fast-paced, intense and required loyalty. Within her first year working for Combs, she said she was forced to take a series of lie detector tests to prove she was not involved with the disappearance of three pieces of high-end jewelry Combs had given her.
After she reported the jewelry missing, Clark testified that she was locked inside the unfinished corporate headquarters of Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment by a bodyguard nicknamed “Uncle Paulie.” Taken to the sixth floor of the building, Clark said she found “a heavy-set gentleman who was chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee.” She said the man told her, “I had been brought to the building to take a lie detector test to figure out what happened to this jewelry.”
If she flunked the test, she testified that the man told her, “They’re going to throw you in the East River.”
“I was petrified,” Clark said.
Clark said “Uncle Paulie” took her five days in a row to the same deserted location inside 1710 Broadway in Manhattan, near New York’s famous Carnegie Hall, for lie-detector tests.
“I wanted to prove my innocence. I didn’t like the threats,” Clark testified.
When she was allowed to return to work, Clark told the jury that Combs never mentioned the lie detector tests or inquired where she had been.
During a cross-examination that hopscotched from time period to time period, Capricorn Clark testified she did not know the connection between Sean Combs and the large man she remembered repeatedly administering the lie-detector test. She testified that Combs suspected her of stealing the jewelry, which had been loaned to Combs for his famous annual July 4 white party in the Hamptons.
“You don’t know what relationship he has to Mr. Combs?” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo asked. Clark responded that she did not know.
“I felt that I was somewhat of a protector for Puff.”
While prosecutors sought to use Clark’s testimony to highlight how Combs used his wealth, power, and employees to lead a criminal enterprise, defense attorneys attempted to undercut that narrative by highlighting messages that suggested Clark was eager to work for a man who held a singular position atop the worlds of music and culture.
Clark again broke down in tears and sobs when confronted by several emails she had sent to Combs. One, in 2014, said, “Hopefully you’ll forgive me soon. It’s been long enough. I feel like you’ve forgiven everyone else but me.”
A second one, in early 2015, said, “Sending you blessings and love for a new year.”
More tears flowed when Agnifilo showed Clark an email she sent to Combs on his birthday, Nov. 4, 2015. “My hope for this year is that you make good on your promise to get over things and actually be my friend again.”
Defense attorney Agnifilo kept asking why she wanted to work with Combs again.
“I wanted my life back, sir,” Clark explained.
“You want to work with him again?” Agnifilo asked.
“I wanted to work in the music industry,” Clark replied.
Federal prosecutors, resuming their questioning after the cross-examination, suggested Clark returned to work for Combs because he stymied her attempts to work elsewhere in the music industry.
“He held all the power as it related to me,” Clark testified through sobs.
(WATERBURY, CT) — Five people were shot at a Connecticut shopping center on Tuesday, police said.
Officers responded to the Brass Mill Center in Waterbury at approximately 4:40 p.m. following reports of a “disturbance,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said during a press briefing. They found several victims suffering from gunshot wounds, he said.
The victims were transported to local hospitals for medical treatment. There are no fatalities at this time, according to Spagnolo.
A person of interest was identified by detectives and taken into police custody Tuesday evening, Waterbury Police said in a statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the person of interest was one of the five injured.
The shooting was not a random act of violence, Spagnolo said, adding, “We believe this started as a conflict and it escalated.”
Police believe the suspect and victims knew each other. A semi-automatic pistol was used in the shooting, the chief said.
State police and federal agencies are assisting in the investigation, including clearing the mall and collecting digital evidence, the chief said.
“There’s a tremendous amount of law enforcement here right now,” Spagnolo said. “We’re following some very strong leads.”
Spagnolo said he does not believe there’s any threat in the immediate area.
Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Following a nearly 10-hour court hearing Thursday, an immigration judge will not immediately decide if Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who the Trump administration has targeted for deportation after he helped organize pro-Palestinian protests as a student at Columbia University, is eligible for asylum.
Instead Judge Jamee Comans is giving attorneys for Khalil, who took the stand Thursday, as well as attorneys for the Trump administration until June 2 to file written closing statements on the matter before she makes her decision.
Khalil, a green card holder who is married to an American citizen, has been held in a Louisiana detention facility since ICE agents arrested him in the lobby of his apartment building in New York City in March.
When he took the stand Thursday, Khalil testified in support of his case for asylum and for withholding of removal to either Algeria or Syria.
He spoke at length about growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria where he said his friends and family faced torture, kidnappings and, in some cases, death. He repeatedly stated that the Trump administration’s accusations that he’s a Hamas supporter makes him a target for Israel in any country he could be deported to. In Syria, he also said remnants of the Assad regime as well as military factions within the country could target him as well or that he could be used as a “bargaining chip” in negotiations between the new Syrian government and other nations including the U.S.
Prior to the hearing, Khalil met his infant son for the first time. The proceedings were attended by Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s son on April 21 during Khalil’s ongoing detention in Louisiana.
Throughout the hearing Khalil would often look back toward his baby when the newborn cooed.
Khalil also testified about his role negotiating between different protest groups at Columbia.
“The liberation of Jewish people and Palestinian people are intertwined,” he said.
In one of his final remarks on the stand, Khalil said he would continue to protest against the war in Gaza.
“I spent a good time of my life fleeing from harm, advocating for the marginalized to have rights. That’s what put me in danger. Israel is committing genocide. America is funding that genocide. Columbia is investing in it. That is what I was protesting. This is what I will continue to protest. This is what everyone should protest. This is where our efforts should go,” he said.
Earlier in the hearing, several expert witnesses were called by Khalil’s legal team, including U.C. Davis historian Muriam Davis, an expert on the Middle East and North Africa, who testified to the dangers Khalil might face if deported to Algeria or Syria, due to the notoriety of the case.
“In general, his case has achieved an international prominence that would make him a target,” Davis testified.
During a cross-examination Thursday, DHS Deputy Chief Counsel Numa Metoyer pressed Khalil about whether he was ever personally harmed when he lived in Syria, or the few times he’s visited Algeria.
Khalil recalled that the Assad regime would often kidnap and torture people involved in humanitarian efforts, like he was. When two of his friends were “disappeared” he said he made the decision to flee to Lebanon. He also repeated that he had friends and family members who were either killed by the regime or kidnapped and tortured.
“What physical persecution did you face before you left,” Metoyer asked, attempting to make the point that Khalil himself had not been harmed.
“In December 2012, the regime attacked my camp. We were under bombardment by the regime,” Khalil said.
When pressed if he had been harmed, Khalil said no, but that his neighbors had been.
Last month, Comans ruled that Khalil is deportable based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assertion that his continued presence and actions in the country poses “adverse foreign policy consequence.” She did not ask to review any evidence backing those claims.
Officials from President Donald Trump’s administration have said Khalil was detained for his purported support of Hamas — a claim his legal team has rejected.
In a memo filed in the case, Rubio wrote that Khalil should be deported because of his alleged role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Earlier in Thursday’s proceedings, Comans denied Khalil’s motion to terminate the case based on his allegation that his arrest and detention is illegal because he was arrested without a warrant.
The judge also declined to hear argument from Khalil’s team pertaining to the government’s allegations that Khalil lied on his application for a green card, saying the issue was “irrelevant” because she had already determined that Khalil was removable.
There were several heated exchanges between Khalil’s counsel, Marc Van Der Hout, and Judge Comans, who at one point cautioned Van Der Hout “not to argue with her.”
Van Der Hout, his voice rising, replied, “Well, I am going to argue with you.”
“And you’re going to lose,” Comans responded.
Ahead of the hearing, Khalil’s attorney submitted over 600 pages of documents, declarations and expert analyses supporting their claim that he is not antisemitic and that he could face torture and death if he were to be deported.
