Iranian officer charged with orchestrating murder of US citizen in Iraq
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(NEW YORK) — A captain in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps faces federal murder and terrorism charges in New York, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday that charges Mohammad Reza Nouri with orchestrating the murder of an American citizen to avenge the drone strike killing of a top Iranian general.
Stephen Troell, a 45-year-old American living in Baghdad, was killed in front of his wife in November 2022 after federal prosecutors said Nouri gathered intelligence on Troell’s daily routine, procured weapons and housed the operatives who carried out the murder.
“We allege that Mohammad Reza Nouri, an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, orchestrated the murder of Stephen Troell, an American citizen living in Iraq, carrying out the Iranian Regime’s efforts to take vengeance for the death of Qasim Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges. “Stephen should still be alive today, and the Justice Department will work relentlessly to ensure accountability for his murder.”
The U.S. has said Iran sought revenge for the January 2020 death of Soleimani in an American drone strike in Baghdad.
In November 2022, the Iranian regime struck in Iraq. A group of operatives working on behalf of the IRGC brutally murdered Troell in Baghdad, where he worked at an English language institute, as Troell was driving home with his wife after work.
Nouri, 36, allegedly “played a key role in the IRGC’s targeting and ultimate murder of Troell,” whom Nouri appears to have believed was working as an American or Israeli intelligence officer.
According to the complaint, Nouri accumulated data including Troell’s date of birth, coordinates of his residence, occupation, work schedule, telephone number, wife’s name, and children’s names, among other information. In the weeks leading up to the murder, he allegedly coordinated with one of his co-conspirators to procure firearms and a vehicle for use in the attack.
Troell was driving home from work with his wife when heavily armed gunmen in two cars forced the couple to stop shortly before they reached their residence, blocked any possible escape route, approached Troell on the driver’s side, and, using an assault weapon, shot and killed Troell as his wife witnessed the attack in the passenger seat.
Less than a half hour after the attack, Nouri sent an encrypted messages inquiring about the wellbeing of the operatives tasked with carrying out the hit, allegedly asking, “The guys are fine?” and “They are doing well?”
In March 2023, Iraqi authorities arrested Nouri and he was subsequently convicted by an Iraqi court for his role in Troell’s murder. He remains in custody in Iraq.
(NEW YORK) — Meeting an exotic animal at a public attraction can fill us with wonder, but critics say that this can also be dangerous. Dana Garber said she had just such an encounter at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 2021.
She thought their family trip would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get close to the world’s largest living land animals.
“It was my youngest son’s birthday,” she told ABC News. “It seemed like for his birthday, it was a wonderful thing. Something we could do as a family.”
The foundation advertises itself as a sanctuary for retired circus elephants, making them a popular attraction in the state.
“I was under the impression that this was a place that was a good place for these elephants to live out their lives after their circus life,” Garber said.
Their day kicked off with the elephants, along with their handlers, greeting the family by bringing them breakfast, according to Garber. Afterwards, she recalled that they fed the elephants graham crackers over a metal fence.
“We were encouraged to pet them,” she said. “We were encouraged to go up to them.”
She recalled taking photos as she says an elephant grabbed her father-in-law with its trunk. She took more photos as she said her husband distracted the towering animal with graham crackers so it would let go of his father. However, to her horror, she said that the same elephant then grabbed her as she tried to walk past it.
“I can tell you that it felt like an anaconda,” she said, referring to the species of snake that constricts its prey. “I was being squished and held very tightly, after the elephant grabbed me and kind of swung me and thrashed me to the ground.”
Garber isn’t alone in claiming to have been injured by an exotic animal at a public attraction. ABC News reviewed government records, lawsuits and local reports to find at least 150 people over the past decade who have alleged they were injured during exotic animal encounters in the U.S.
After the incident, Garber noted that foundation staffers rushed to her aid, offering her ice. She says no one, including her, realized how seriously she had been injured. However, she said her husband — a radiologist — grew increasingly concerned over time.
“He said I wasn’t speaking coherently,” she said. “And at that point, he decided we have to get her immediately to the emergency room.”
Garber said scans revealed the extent of the damage to her knee.
“It had a lateral and a medial tibial plateau crush injury,” she said. “That along with the head injury.”
She told ABC News it has taken almost two years and multiple surgeries for her to regain function of her leg.
In the process of sorting out some of the medical bills, Garber said she reached out to Endangered Ark Foundation to get in touch with their insurance company. She said the company left a voice message suggesting she fell at their location.
“All kinds of hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” she said. “There is absolutely no way that you can get the kind of injury I sustained just by falling.”
Garber eventually filed a lawsuit, which they settled out of court without any admission of wrongdoing by Endangered Ark Foundation. The company told ABC News that they strongly refute all allegations.
“The family of Mrs. Garber continued to enjoy a full day at the foundation after the alleged incident,” it said in a statement.
Since the day she said she sustained her injuries, Garber claims to have discovered that some of the elephants at the sanctuary aren’t retired at all, and are allegedly still performing under a license for a circus called Carson & Barnes. The founders of that circus opened up the Endangered Ark Foundation in 1993 to serve as a retirement ranch for circus elephants, they say.
The circus didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“I was under the impression that this was a true reserve and that these elephants were retired elephants that we would be seeing,” Garber said.
The Endangered Ark Foundation is one of at least 900 facilities in the U.S. that offers human interactions with wild or exotic animals as part of their business. According to critics, some of these places — known as roadside zoos — are not accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums and many have a bad track record in their treatment of animals.
In 2020, the Netflix series “Tiger King” shined a light on several such locations — particularly the since-shuttered Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, which was founded and owned by Joe Exotic.
In the wake of “Tiger King,” the Big Cat Public Safety Act was enacted in 2022. The law prohibits public contact with big cats and the new breeding of cubs for private possession.
The Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare, investigated Exotic’s Oklahoma roadside zoo years before “Tiger King” made him infamous.
Humane Society CEO Kitty Block said her organization often steps in to investigate these facilities because the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is charged with overseeing them, is either too slow or does too little to act.
The Humane Society highlighted Tiger Safari in Tuttle, Oklahoma, as an example. They first recorded undercover footage of people interacting with tiger cubs there in 2014, after which the USDA filed a complaint and fined the zoo $15,000.
At the time, the founder Bill Meadows told local news outlets that his park was among the cleanest in the state and that the animals were treated well. He claimed the negative publicity came because the Humane Society wanted to cut out private zoo ownership, and that his zoo had corrected the USDA citations.
However, the Humane Society returned in 2021 and discovered that the facility had moved on to promoting interactions with other animals, including otter cubs.
The USDA cited them again for causing “unnecessary discomfort.” In total, the USDA has cited Tiger Safari at least 90 times in the past decade for issues like inadequate vet care and unsanitary conditions.
Tiger Safari did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
“The USDA is not even enforcing the meager standards that are there,” Block told ABC News. “They are stretched too thin.”
The USDA told ABC News, in part, that they take enforcement of the federal law seriously, and that they “work with facilities to ensure they comply.”
The agency said that if a facility is consistently unable to achieve compliance, that they are referred for investigation to determine if enforcement actions like “license suspension and revocations” are appropriate.
Advocates said it’s often their responsibility to work to shut such places down. In 2020, Special Memories Zoo in Wisconsin was sued by the Animal Legal Defense Fund for violating the Endangered Species Act. It also alleged that the zoo violated state law by “operating as a public nuisance because it was violating animal cruelty laws.”
A month after the lawsuit was filed, the zoo announced it would close and begin transferring animals to different facilities. However, a fire broke out and allegedly revealed serious neglect of its animals.
Police were dispatched to the property, and footage from their body cameras shows the officers discussing how several of the animals had starved to death before the flames erupted.
Instead of going to roadside zoos to see animals, advocates recommend doing so at locations accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.
The Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C., is one such facility, and it maintains a strict no-touch policy with its Asian elephants. Dana Garber agreed with this approach.
“I could’ve died. I don’t want that to happen to someone else’s family,” she told ABC News. “This is going to be with me forever, I will never be able to fully move on from this.”
ABC News’ Jessica Hopper and Laura Coburn contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly four years after he allegedly shot and killed an unarmed Black man who was dropping off Christmas money to a friend, the murder trial of former police officer Adam Coy was getting underway on Monday.
Coy, who is white, was fired from the Columbus Police Department about a week after the 2020 fatal shooting of 47-year-old Andre Hill.
About a month after the shooting, the 46-year-old Coy was arrested and indicted on charges of murder, reckless homicide, felonious assault and two counts of dereliction of duty. Coy has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has not made any public comments on the case.
If convicted, Coy, who is free on $1 million bail, could face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The trial was scheduled to begin Monday in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Columbus with the start of jury selection.
Opening statements in the long-awaited trial, which was postponed indefinitely in April 2023 after Coy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment, could get underway as early as Tuesday.
The shooting unfolded around 2 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2020, when Coy and another officer, Amy Detweiler, were called to a home in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Columbus to investigate a nonemergency noise complaint from a neighbor reporting a man sitting for a prolonged amount of time in an SUV outside the residence with the engine running, according to police officials and prosecutors.
Coy allegedly drew his gun and shined a flashlight into the open garage as Hill emerged from the garage holding a cellphone, according to police body camera footage released by the Columbus Police Department.
An autopsy determined that Hill was shot four times, suffering wounds to his chest and legs.
Neither Coy nor Detweiler turned their body-worn cameras on until after the shooting, but Coy’s camera had a “look-back” function that automatically activated and recorded 60 seconds of the episode without sound, including capturing the shooting.
The body camera footage also showed that as Hill lay dying on the floor of the garage, none of the officers who responded to the incident immediately provided first aid.
National civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump, who is representing Hill’s family, alleged that the officers waited up to 15 minutes before before they started giving Hill first aid.
After officers on the scene turned their body cameras on, a woman came out of the house and told officers that Hill was a guest.
“He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything,” she was heard telling the officers, who ordered her back inside.
Officer Detweiler, who is expected to testify in Coy’s trial, told investigators that before the shooting she and Coy were standing outside the house attempting to determine why Hill was at the location, according to records in the case released to the public on Dec. 29, 2020. Detweiler told investigators, according to the records, that she and Coy had their weapons drawn when Hill emerged from the garage, but that Hill did not appear to pose any threat before he was shot.
“Officer Detweiler stated Mr. Hill was walking towards her with a cell phone raised in his left hand,” according to the investigation records. “Officer Detweiler stated she did not observe any threats from Mr. Hill.”
Detweiler told investigators that Hill didn’t say a word as he approached her and Coy. She told investigators that Coy suddenly yelled out, “There’s a gun in his other hands, there’s a gun in his other hand” before opening fire, according to investigators.
Detweiler said she did not see a weapon in Hill’s hands and no firearms were found in Hill’s possession after the shooting, according to records.
Coy told investigators he thought he saw a firearm on Hill before shooting the man, officials said.
As protesters took to the streets of Columbus in the days following the shooting demanding Coy be fired and charged with murder, Columbus Public Safety Director Ned Pettus Jr. announced he had terminated Coy, a 19-year veteran of the police force, writing in his ruling that “known facts do not establish that this use of deadly force was objectively reasonable.”
Pettus found that Coy didn’t try to deescalate the situation before shooting Hill. After the shooting, Coy didn’t render aid or ensure that others did, according to Pettus.
The dereliction of duty charges Coy is facing at trial stems from him not turning on his body camera before the shooting and not warning Detweiler of the potential danger he believed Hill posed, prosecutors said.
After Coy was indicted, his attorney, Mark Collins, told ABC Columbus affiliate WSYX-TV that the charges against Coy, particularly the murder charge, did not make sense, saying it suggests his client knowingly intended to kill Hill.
“The knowing element, to cause serious physical harm with a deadly weapon, and someone died, that’s the concept, however, police officers are trained a certain way to take an action and to stop a threat,” Collins said at the time. “So that kind of doesn’t make sense.”
In May 2021, the City of Columbus agreed to a $10 million wrongful death settlement with Hill’s family, the highest amount ever paid by the city.
The indictment of Coy came just days after the Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which was named after Hill and requires Columbus police officers to turn on their body cameras when responding to calls and to immediately render first aid after a use-of-force incident.
(NEW YORK) — A mother of four who has been missing for nearly six months has been found dead in a wooded area in Missouri, authorities confirmed.
Sheriff Dave Marshak of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced that the body of 33-year-old Emily Strite, who was first reported missing on April 20, was discovered in a wooded area approximately 45 miles southwest of St. Louis, Missouri, according to a statement from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office released on Tuesday.
“On September 28th, deputies responded to a wooded area near the 4100 block of Frissell Road in De Soto for a report of human skeletal remains found by the property owner,” authorities said. “Through comparison to medical and dental records, investigators with the Regional Medical Examiner’s Office determined the remains are those of Emily Strite. She was reported missing in the De Soto area in April of this year.”
Detectives said in April that Strite was last seen on foot wearing jeans and a dark blue hoodie on the morning of April 12 in the De Soto area and “is believed to have been leaving the area of her own free will,” police said.
“At this time, Strite’s cause of death is undetermined, and investigators are working to learn how her body ended up where it was found,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
The investigation into her disappearance and death remains ongoing and there are no reported suspects or persons of interest in the case.
“[Due] to the ongoing investigation, we ‘Emily’s Family’ are asking that nobody visits/disturbs the area mentioned of where Emily was recovered,” Strite’s mother posted on social media after authorities confirmed her body had been found. “Please respect our wishes and stay away from the area. We will share details when they are available.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Bureau at 636-797-5515.
