Man accused of hijacking Los Angeles bus charged with murder and kidnapping
KABC-TV
(LOS ANGELES) — The man accused of hijacking a Los Angeles Metro bus, fatally shooting a passenger and leading police on an hourlong chase last week is now facing a slew of charges, including murder and kidnapping, prosecutors announced Monday.
Los Angeles County DA George Gascon announced 12 counts against the suspect, 51-year-old Lamont Campbell.
The charges include murder, carjacking, kidnapping during carjacking, assault with a semiautomatic weapon, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, felony evading and felon in possession of a firearm, according to the DA’s office.
Campbell faces a maximum sentence of 90 years in prison.
The incident began at approximately 12:46 a.m. on Sept. 25 when the Los Angeles Police Department received radio calls about a disturbance on a bus in the area of Manchester Street and Figueroa Street in southern Los Angeles, Deputy Chief Donald Graham said in a briefing last week.
“The officers quickly learned from the passengers that there was an armed suspect on the Metro bus. They attempted to stop the bus but were unsuccessful, later discovering that the armed suspect had instructed the driver not to stop,” Graham said.
Multiple spike strips were deployed by officers during the pursuit, deflating several tires on the bus and ultimately causing it to stop, according to LAPD.
“SWAT personnel quickly observed that a victim was down inside the bus, formulated a tactical plan, and made entry without delay. The suspect was taken into custody without further incident,” authorities said.
Officers immediately began to render medical aid to the victim who was suffering from gunshot wounds. The male victim was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Campbell is being held at a local jail in lieu of $2 million bail.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for the first time this cycle, will soon hit the campaign trail with former President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to a senior campaign official.
The vice presidential nominee will be out with his party’s former standard bearers this week and next week in an effort to push for early voting in battleground states, ABC News has exclusively learned.
The governor will first rally with Clinton in Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday — the first day of early voting in the critical battleground state. Next Tuesday, Walz will travel to Wisconsin, another battleground, with Obama for the start of early voting in that state.
The joint campaign blitzes come as the Harris-Walz ticket has deployed both former presidents — some of its strongest political assets — headed into the final stretch of the election cycle.
Obama hit the trail for the ticket starting on Oct. 10 and has additional stops planned in the run-up to Election Day, according to the campaign.
His first stop was in battleground Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area — a visit where he sternly chided Black men over “excuses” to not vote for Harris, saying he finds them sitting out or voting for former President Donald Trump “not acceptable.”
Obama will also independently hit the campaign trail in the Sun Belt this week, with stops on Friday in Arizona and on Saturday in Nevada — the first days of early voting in the state.
On Sunday and Monday, Clinton made his trail debut with travel across rural communities in Eastern and South Georgia to encourage Georgians to vote early.
Last night, on the eve of early in-person voting in the state, Clinton stumped for the Harris-Walz ticket in battleground Georgia, mounting the stakes of the election and the importance of voting.
“I want you to be happy, and I want you to know that I am here because I believe. I believe, based on my personal knowledge of the job and the candidates, that Kamala Harris will be a fine president,” he said.
“All we gotta do is show up. If we show up, we’ll win,” Clinton added.
The joint principal campaign events also come as Walz himself has made campaign stops related to early voting. The governor campaigned last week in Phoenix and Tucson on the first day of early voting in Arizona.
“I know you’ve started voting here in Arizona. It’s happening across the country. We can make a difference. And I think just the idea of having an administration building on these strong relationships, this is our opportunity to take this to the next level that we need to do,” Walz said at event with tribal leaders in Chandler, Arizona last Wednesday.
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
John Norwood, who was injured as Hurricane Helene made landfall, speaks with “Good Morning America” about his missing fiancé, Oct. 1, 2024. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — As Helene swept through North Carolina last week, John Norwood and his fiancé, Julie le Roux, sought shelter at a neighbor’s house.
As they attempted to wait out the worst of the storm, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, a mudslide destroyed the home they had taken shelter in.
“We looked outside and there was a 30-foot-tall wall of water and rocks and tree debris just coming at us,” Norwood told ABC News.
The debris knocked the house “straight down,” flushing out those who had been huddled inside, he said, adding, “And we all got washed downriver.” Norwood was rescued, but le Roux is still unaccounted for, he said. She’s one of hundreds of people who are unaccounted for after the storm, according to officials.
The storm was “unprecedented” for western North Carolina, requiring an “unprecedented response,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Monday. At least 40 people were killed by the storm in Buncombe County, in the western part of the state, local officials said Monday.
Hundreds of people were missing or unaccounted for as of Monday throughout the southeastern United States, Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood Randall said as she gave a lengthy update on the federal response to Helene, including a warning that much is still unknown about the situation.
“When I said there could be up to 600 people lost my point was, there 600 people unaccounted for,” Sherwood Randall said. “That’s the number we’re tracking right now and that we can essentially validate from multiple sources.”
But, she added, there was still uncertainty in that number. It included many who hadn’t been heard from, but they may just be out of contact, she said.
“And as the president said this morning, we’re very hopeful that some of those people just don’t have cell phones working and actually are alive,” she said.
Elsewhere in North Carolina, there were gas lines stretching from stations, as survivors waited for fuel. Officials were busy supplying water and ready-to-eat meals, Will Ray, the director of the state’s Emergency Management agency, said.
In Marion, a city in the state’s hard-hit western area, rescuers used a pulley system to pull Norwood to safety, carrying him over rushing flood waters. A ceiling rafter had crushed his legs, he said, but at least he was rescued. He said he hasn’t seen le Roux since the mudslide hit.
“I crawled around screaming, looking for her,” he said as he fought back tears, “and I just couldn’t find her.”
(PHOENIX, Ariz) — A deaf Black man with cerebral palsy who was violently arrested by two Phoenix police officers in August said he tried to alert the officers that he was deaf before they repeatedly punched and tasered him for an alleged crime he had been falsely accused of by another suspect.
Records show that the incident occurred when officers were dispatched to investigate a report of a man causing problems and wouldn’t leave a Circle K convenience store, according to ABC affiliate in Phoenix KNXV-TV.
According to police records, the original description of the suspect was for a white man who had been creating a disturbance in the store, but that man later claimed he was assaulted by a Black man and pointed to Tyron McAlpin – a claim that was disputed by store employees and surveillance video, KNXV-TV reported.
“The officers took me down … And I told them, I was trying to get to my ears to tell them I can’t hear, I can’t hear, pointing to my ears,” McAlpin said through an interpreter as he used sign language, according to KNXV-TV. “I was trying to gesture, and that’s when the cops grabbed me. (I was) trying to show, hey I can’t hear, pointing to my ears, and they grabbed me.”
McAlpin gave his account in the hospital to a medical worker after his arrest, according to KNXV-TV. Two police officers are seen present in the body camera video during the medical examination.
The Phoenix man is seen in the footage telling medical workers he’s having trouble seeing out of his left eye and complaining of neck and chest pain, according to KNXV-TV.
“White male, 20s, grey shirt, blue shorts,” Ben Harris, one of the officers involved in detaining McAlpin, could be heard saying repeatedly to himself on the way to the call, according to the footage.
The newly released video appears to show that Harris knew the suspect was a white male.
In body-worn camera footage recorded after the arrest, employees at the store told law enforcement that the white male had gotten into a physical altercation the night before, according to KNXV-TV. The staff in the footage explains that McAlpin comes to the store regularly, holds the door for people and was trying to help the employees get the man out of the store.
Harris originally told another officer at the scene that he believed he broke a bone in his hand after striking the Phoenix man in the head, according to body camera footage obtained by ABC News in October.
Harris told a different story in court during an October hearing.
“At one point, when I was trying to regain control of his arm, following his initial swings, punch swings, it appears that these fingers were jammed in his forearm, and bent over all the way to my palm,” Harris testified, according to KNXV-TV.
The two Phoenix police officers who were involved in the arrest were placed on paid administrative leave in October amid an investigation into the incident, a spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department confirmed to ABC News.
ABC News reached out to the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a union representing the officers, but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
The union’s president, Darrell Kriplean, previously defended the officers’ actions in a statement to ABC News, saying that people should know what to do if uniformed officers approach and that the officers, who did now know McAlpin was deaf at the time, had to force him to comply.
McAlpin was initially charged with felony assault and resisting arrest following the Aug. 19 encounter with Phoenix police, but the charges were dropped on Oct. 17.
The decision to drop the charges against McAlpin was announced by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who said in a statement that she personally reviewed the case after a member of the local chapter of the NAACP expressed concern over the incident and poured through “a large volume of video recordings, police reports, and other materials that have been forwarded to my office.”
“I also convened a large gathering of senior attorneys and members of the community to hear their opinions as they pertain to this case,” Mitchell said. “I have now completed my review and have made the decision to dismiss all remaining charges against Mr. McAlpin.”
In the body camera video, police are seen pulling up to McAlpin and ordering him down to the ground. He doesn’t appear to immediately comply. The video then shows the officers punching him at least 10 times in the head and shocking him with a stun gun at least four times while yelling: “Get your hands behind your back.”
McAlpin’s attorney said that his client, who is deaf, didn’t know what was going on and could not hear the commands.
“It is our sincere hope that the County Attorney’s Office will respond to what is shown in the video and to the voices in the community who have raised alarms about what is shown in the video and will dismiss all charges against Tyron,” McAlpin’s attorney, Jesse Showalter, told ABC News in a statement on Oct. 14.
ABC News reached out to Showalter for additional comment after the newly released video became available.
Interim Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan said in a statement on Oct. 16 that the Professional Standard Bureau (PSB) launched an internal investigation shortly after the incident took place.
“Their work is important to ensure all facts are known before drawing any conclusions. I ask for the public’s patience during that process,” Sullivan said.
“I recognize the video is disturbing and raises a lot of questions. I want to assure the community we will get answers to those questions,” he added.
According to Sullivan, the findings of the PSB will be reviewed by himself, as well as by the Office of Accountability and Transparency and the Civilian Review Board “to ensure it is thorough and complete.”
When ABC News asked the Phoenix Police Department if the white man who made the allegedly false allegations was charged, a spokesperson said in a statement that no additional arrests have been made at this point during the investigation.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
