LaGuardia Airport crash: Plane was traveling 93-105 mph at time of ground collision
An Air Canada Express plane sits on the tarmac after it collided with a fire truck on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport on March 23, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A regional Air Canada jet collided into a Port Authority airport vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, an on-the-ground crash that demolished the front of the airplane, killed two pilots, injured dozens of passengers and prompted the airport to shut down, law enforcement and aviation officials said.
At least 41 people were transferred to local hospitals Sunday night after the plane, which was operated by Jazz Aviation, struck a rescue-and-firefighting vehicle that had been “responding to a separate incident” at 11:47 p.m., a Port Authority spokesperson said.
The pilot and the co-pilot of the plane were killed in the crash, officials said. Two of the injured were Port Authority officers and the other 39 were passengers, officials said.
LaGuardia is closed until at least 2 p.m. Monday, the Port Authority said.
The collision happened shortly after the plane, Air Canada Flight 8646, which was carrying four crew members and 72 passengers, touched down from Montreal, according to Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia.
The ground vehicle — a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting — had requested permission and had been cleared by the air traffic controller to cross Runway 4 at taxiway Delta, according to audio recordings. Shortly after that permission was granted, an air traffic controller was heard telling the vehicle to stop several times right before the collision, according to the recordings.
Preliminary data shows the Air Canada plane was traveling between 93 and 105 mph when it impacted the fire truck, FlightRadar24 told ABC News.
All passengers have been accounted for, Garcia said, and an unaccompanied minor on the plane was reunited with their family.
Thirty-two of those who had been transferred were later released, Garcia said, adding that several others had serious injuries. Two Port Authority police officers who were injured — a sergeant and an officer — were in stable condition at the hospital, she said.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators have responded to the scene.
Teams from Air Canada and Jazz Aviation are also headed to LaGuardia. Canadian authorities will be involved as a party to the investigation as the plane was operated by a Canadian carrier, but the NTSB will be leading the investigation since the collision occurred in the U.S.
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, sits in the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on September 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Brynn Anderson-Pool/Getty Images)
(ATLANTA) — A Georgia jury found Colin Gray guilty Tuesday on charges including second-degree murder and manslaughter, stemming from a 2024 mass shooting allegedly committed by his teenage son with a rifle he gifted him as a Christmas present.
The jury found the 55-year-old Gray guilty of 27 counts. Two other counts were dropped. The jury deliberated fewer than two hours before returning their verdicts.
Colin Gray was charged with multiple counts of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and cruelty to children. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Gray’s son, Colt Gray, now 16, allegedly killed two students and two teachers and injured eight students in a Sept. 4, 2024, mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Colt Gray has been charged as an adult and is awaiting a separate trial on multiple counts of felony murder and aggravated assault. He has pleaded not guilty.
During the two-week trial, Barrow County prosecutors presented evidence that Colin Gray had been warned that his son had an affinity for mass shooters and was aware that Colt kept a shrine in his bedroom dedicated to the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Instead of getting his son psychological help, Colin Gray allegedly gave the boy an AR-15-style weapon as a Christmas present that he ultimately used to carry out the mass shooting at Apalachee High School, prosecutors alleged.
On Friday, Colin Gray took the witness stand in his own defense and broke down while being questioned about whether he noticed any “red flags” that would have led him to believe the boy was capable of committing a mass shooting.
“I struggle with it every day,” Colin Gray testified. “He’s a good kid, you know? He wasn’t perfect, but to do something, uh, that heinous, like I don’t, I don’t know if anybody would see that type of evil.”
During his testimony, Gray confirmed that he gave his son the AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present, telling jurors the gift came with rules.
“This is a weapon that I want you to shoot when we go to the range, and if you keep doing really good in school, going to school and doing all the things you should, you graduate and you’re 18, this will be your gun,” Colin Gray said he told his son.
Voters casting ballot (CREDIT: Hill Street Studios/Getty Images)
(FULTON COUNTY, Ga.) — Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, filed a motion Wednesday seeking the return of all files from the 2020 election that were seized by the FBI last week, according to a spokesperson for the county.
FBI agents last Wednesday removed 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from a county election site after obtaining a search warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge.
The warrant said the material “constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense” and had been “used as the means of committing a criminal offense.”
The county’s new motion also seeks the unsealing of the affidavit filed in relation to the search warrant, the spokesperson said in a statement.
The statement said that because the case is still under seal, the county is unable to share the contents of the motion.
The FBI’s action comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss.
Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, seen inside a car rental facility. (New Hampshire attorney general)
(NEW YORK) — The suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University that left two students dead and nine others wounded was found dead Thursday — and authorities said he is the same man who gunned down an MIT professor two days after the Rhode Island campus shooting.
During a news conference Thursday, authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown graduate student, who attended the school some 25 years ago.
Officials said he took his own life. His body was discovered in a New Hampshire storage unit following an intense, multi-state manhunt that had stretched on for days.
“Tonight our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters at at news conference Thursday night.
Officials said there is no evidence Valente was working with anyone else, describing in detail his movements leading up to and after the shooting, including steps he took to conceal himself from authorities.
Officials have not yet provided a motive for the back-to-back shootings that left residents of parts of New England on edge for days.
Former Ph.D student who spent time in engineering building
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente had enrolled as a Ph.D student in Brown’s physics program in 2000 and attended for less than a year, before going on a leave of absence and then withdrawing. She said it was believed, as a physics student, he spent considerable time in the Barus & Holley engineering building that was targeted in the shooting on Saturday.
Valente, who entered the U.S. in 2000 on a student visa, obtained lawful permanency in April 2017, authorities said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the suspect was granted a visa through the diversity lottery program in 2017 and said that DHS would be pausing the program immediately “to ensure no more Americans are harmed,” according to a statement posted on X early Friday morning.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. In 2017,” said Noem.
He had no current affiliation with the school, according to officials.
How 2 puzzling crimes were linked
Authorities in Massachusetts confirmed Valente is also the suspected gunman in the death of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in Brookline, who was fatally shot on Monday night in the foyer of his building in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Both men were natives of Portugal, and U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley told reporters at a news conference late Thursday night it’s believed Valente and Loureiro studied in the same academic program in Portugal in the 1990s.
It was only the past day or two that the “link began to be established,” between the two puzzling crimes, Foley told reporters as authorities.
Valente’s last known address was in Miami, but he had rented a hotel room in Boston in late November, Foley said. On Dec. 1, he rented a gray Nissan Sentra, which was later observed intermittently in the campus area over the next 12 days leading up to the shooting, she said.
How investigators tracked suspect down
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said local police helped tracked down Valente thanks, in part, to surveillance video and a detailed tip about a vehicle being driven by a person who noted odd behavior by the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious. Police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the tipster told police, according to a complaint released by Rhode Island authorities. “That was the car he was driving.”
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts. There, police obtained a copy of the rental agreement with the suspect’s name, as well as video of the suspect that matched the videos of the person of interest seen on the Brown University campus on the day of the shooting.
What happened at New Hampshire storage facility
Authorities said that discovery ultimately led them to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on the border with Massachusetts, where Valente had rented a unit. Foley, the U.S. attorney, said investigators believe Valente had fled to the storage facility shortly after the shooting of the MIT professor on Monday night.
By Thursday night, investigators were closing in on the storage facility, obtaining a search warrant, which FBI SWAT teams executed shortly before 9 p.m.
Authorities said Valente’s body was found in a storage unit next to the one he had rented. He was found with a satchel containing two firearms.
The two Brown students who were killed were identified as 19-year-old Ella Cook and 18-year-old MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. They were both fatally struck by gunfire when the shooter burst into the first-floor auditorium where a review session for an economics course was taking place.
The building was unlocked for exams being held in the building at the time of the shooting, the university president said.
Authorities also said Thursday someone confronted the gunman in a bathroom in the building and said he felt like he didn’t belong there.
