Man and dog killed in suspected bear attack in Florida: Officials
Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(JEROME, Fla.) — A man and a dog were killed in a suspected bear attack in Florida, officials said.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call shortly after 7 a.m. Monday involving a “bear encounter.”
The incident was reported in the area of State Road 29 and U.S. 41, just south of the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, a conservation area, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.
“The FWC is actively investigating a suspected fatal wildlife attack, that’s been reported to involve a bear, near Jerome in Collier County,” the commission said in a statement. “Preliminary information notes that the attack resulted in the death of a man and a dog.”
The FWC warned residents and visitors that the animal may still be in the area as authorities work to locate it and secure the perimeter.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we urge residents and visitors to remain vigilant, and avoid the area,” the FWC said.
(GREEN, OHIO) — A 13-year-old boy died after falling from a Memorial Day parade float in Ohio, authorities said.
The incident occurred late Monday morning during a Memorial Day parade in Green, located south of Akron in Summit County.
The teenager was riding in the parade on a trailer being pulled by a pickup truck, authorities said. He fell off the front of the trailer and was then run over by the trailer’s tires, sustaining severe injuries, authorities said.
Fire personnel who were already on site for the parade immediately responded. The teen was transported in critical condition to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the Green Fire Department said.
The name of the child, who was from North Canton, was not released.
The incident remains under investigation, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office said, referring to the death as a “tragic accident.”
The parade ended immediately, ABC News’ Cleveland affiliate WEWS reported.
“Our hearts go out to the family at this time of terrible loss,” Green Mayor Rocco Yeargin told reporters. “We look to support them as a Green community any way that we can.”
The Green school district has offered counseling support to the North Canton school district, the mayor said.
(MILWAUKEE, WI) — Federal prosecutors argued Monday that a court should reject a Wisconsin judge’s attempt to have the obstruction case against her dismissed based on judicial immunity.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, 65, was arrested by the FBI on April 25 and is charged with concealing a defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, to prevent his arrest by immigration authorities.
Prosecutors contend that her motion to dismiss the charges ignores “well-established law that has long permitted judges to be prosecuted for crimes they commit,” according to court documents.
“Her state judicial post is not a license to engage in conduct that violates federal criminal law,” wrote Richard Frohling, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
The government’s filing also takes aim at Dugan’s claim that federal agents on April 18 disrupted active proceedings in her courtroom when they showed up in the courthouse seeking to arrest Flores-Ruiz on alleged immigration violations, arguing that it was Dugan “who took it upon herself to interfere with the federal agents’ performance of their responsibilities,” according to the filing.
Prosecutors allege that “Dugan chose to pause an unrelated case, leave her courtroom, disrupt proceedings in a colleague’s courtroom to commandeer her assistance, and then confront agents in the public hallway.”
The filing goes on to allege that Dugan directed agents through a set of double doors to the chief judge’s office even though she knew the chief judge was not in the office. “Dugan quickly returned to her courtroom and, among other things, directed E.F.R.’s attorney to ‘take your client out and come back and get a date’ and then to go through the jury door and ‘down the stairs’ before physically escorting E.F.R. and his attorney into a non-public hallway with access to a stairwell that led to a courthouse exit,” stated the filing, which refers to Flores-Ruiz by his initials. “She did this all just days after thanking a colleague for providing information which explained that ICE could lawfully make arrests in the courthouse hallway.”
The filing is the first time federal prosecutors have alleged that Dugan instructed the man to go “down the stairs,” and the first time they have referenced access to a stairwell leading to an exit.
Video from more than two dozen surveillance cameras at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, obtained by ABC News through a public records request, shows the man and his attorney did not, in fact, take the stairs after the encounter with the judge but exited a private door that led to a public hallway. From there, the video shows the man and his attorney take the elevator down to the court’s main floor while being followed by federal agents. The videos obtained by ABC News do not have sound.
Flores-Ruiz, who was due to appear before Dugan that day on a battery charge, was captured outside the court building after a brief foot chase.
“Put simply, nothing in the indictment or the anticipated evidence at trial supports Dugan’s assertion that agents ‘disrupted’ the court’s docket; instead, all events arose from Dugan’s unilateral, non-judicial, and unofficial actions in obstructing a federal immigration matter over which she, as a Wisconsin state judge, had no authority,” prosecutors said in the filing.
In the filing, the prosecution argues that even if judicial immunity applied in this case, it would “not help Dugan” because her actions “went well beyond her official role when she endeavored to prevent federal law enforcement officers from executing a valid arrest…in a public area of the Milwaukee County Courthouse.”
Dugan has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and a trial date is set for July 21.
Lawyers for Dugan, in part citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in President Donald Trump’s immunity case, have argued she has judicial immunity for official acts and that her prosecution is unconstitutional.
“The problems with this prosecution are legion, but most immediately, the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts,” her attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss filed last month. “Immunity is not a defense to the prosecution to be determined later by a jury or court; it is an absolute bar to the prosecution at the outset. The prosecution against her is barred. The Court should dismiss the indictment.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan in the wake of her arrest, stating in an order that it found it was “in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties.”
(WASHINGTON) – Hundreds of parents and children separated under the “zero-tolerance” border policy during President Donald Trump’s first term — who were later reunited and protected by a 2023 settlement — are at risk of being separated again due to a lapse in legal services, lawyers argue.
Under the 2023 court-approved settlement agreement, reached as a result of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018, the federal government agreed to provide certain services to an estimated 5,000 people — families and children separated under the 2017-2018 “zero tolerance” policy — including behavioral health services and immigration legal services.
However, the ACLU says a recent decision made by the Trump administration to gut and then abruptly terminate a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice violates that agreement, leaving hundreds of migrants in legal limbo. The nonprofit organization is the main contractor that oversees services provided to separated families, such as helping them apply for parole and other benefits they’re “mandated” to receive at the government’s expense, the American Civil Liberties Union argues.
An estimated 414 migrants who are eligible for benefits are at risk of deportation because their legal status is set to expire by the end of the month if they don’t receive the help Acacia was offering them, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt argued during a federal court hearing Friday in the Southern District of California.
“If they don’t have parole, they’re subject to arrest, deportation and re-separation,” Gelernt said during the hearing.
The Trump administration argues that it wants to provide those services on its own — through the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Helpdesk, “or a separate similar program” and that it is not prohibited by the 2023 agreement from doing so.
An attorney representing the Trump administration said they had already emailed more than 52,000 individuals on their list of pro bono providers to see if they could represent some of the people covered under the settlement.
As of May 15, however, only 71 had “expressed interest,” so far, according to documents submitted in court.
“On the record before the court now there’s not enough to show a breach, and I can understand why the court is directing the parties to provide more information,” the government attorney said. “But again, right now, it is speculation and as the government noted in its response to the plaintiff’s motion, they have not provided one class member who has been deprived of services required under the settlement. So again, I think we’re getting way ahead by speculating on things that may or may not happen.”
Gelernt countered by saying even if those 71 providers eventually offer to help, it’s not enough to deal with the thousands of cases that are now in limbo because of Acacia’s absence.
“We spent two years working through this and the government understood that the only way to do this and provide people real, meaningful help was this structure,” Gelernt said, referring to the years of negotiation leading to the 2023 settlement. “This can’t be a sort of sideshow for the government. They’ll get to it when they get to it. Acacia woke up every morning with all its subcontractors, and all day long, worked on this as a full-time matter with their subcontractors.”
Judge Dana Makoto Sabraw set another hearing for May 30 and asked both sides to provide additional information about what services the government could reasonably provide.
“If Mr. Gelernt is correct in his assessment, in his understanding of the full landscape of these class members, the services they need, the services that were provided by Acacia, in his view, that there’s simply no way in the real world that 71 or a few more volunteer pro bono attorneys can pick up this caseload that Acacia was addressing, that, too, could lead to a finding of breach of the settlement agreement. But I need additional evidence in order to make those determinations,” the judge said.
Gelernt said that if the government now seeks to provide these services, affected class members may not trust them enough to reach out.
“I don’t know whether people will reach out to the government, because it’s the same government, obviously, that separated them,” he said.
