Man arrested after alleged Florida golf course murder: Police
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — A suspect is in custody after allegedly killing a man on a Florida golf course with his own golf clubs on Monday in what police said appeared to be a “random act of violence.”
Junior Boucher, 36, faces first-degree murder charges for the death of the man, identified by police as 65-year-old Brian Hiltebeitel, at Sandhill Crane Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
A witness said he heard the victim yelling “he’s trying to kill me” while running away from Boucher, who was allegedly brandishing a golf club, according to a Palm Beach Gardens Police Department affidavit.
Boucher allegedly began beating Hiltebeitel with the golf club, striking him in the head, and then chased him toward a pond on the golf course’s first hole, according to police.
He allegedly continued beating Hiltebeitel in the pond, and while in the water, “jumped on top of Hiltebeitel and appeared to be choking him,” the police report stated.
After Hiltebeitel was no longer moving, Boucher allegedly struck him several more times in the head, police said in the affidavit, then got out of the water and “stripped his clothes off.”
Officers pulled Hiltebeitel out of the pond, where he was observed with “multiple deep lacerations to the back of his head and on his person.”
He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Palm Beach Gardens Police Chief Dominick Pape said Boucher was taken into custody “after a short foot pursuit,” and was found “unclothed.” According to the affidavit, Boucher attempted to flee from police and was arrested “only after the use of an electronic control weapon.”
Pape said police are not currently aware of any connection between the suspect and victim, and are still working to determine a motive.
“At this time, it does not appear that Boucher had any legitimate purpose for being at the golf course. This appears to be a random act of violence where Boucher used the victims’ golf clubs as weapons and viciously attacked the victim, ultimately killing him,” Pape said.
About an hour before the incident, police said Boucher’s family reported him missing.
Boucher has an extensive criminal history, including arrests on drug charges and domestic battery.
A view of the damaged area at Asheville along with the western part of North-Carolina is devastated by the heavy rains and flooding after Hurricane Helene in Asheville, United States on September 30, 2024. (Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Asheville, North Carolina, has been called a potential safe haven for climate refugees by real estate researchers, praised for its temperate mountain weather, distance far from the coast, experiencing less extreme heat and fewer wildfires.
The city of around 95,000 people was believed markings of a place where those escaping the harsh impacts of the climate crisis could go for safety.
Certainly, there are locations that are going to be able to withstand some of those impacts more than others, according to Dave Reidmiller, the director of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Climate Center.
However, the fatal floods and landslides seen after Helene ripped through Buncombe County, which encompasses Asheville, highlight that “no place is truly untouched by climate change, anywhere in the world,” said Reidmiller. Asheville is nearly 400 miles away from where the storm made landfall in Florida last Thursday.
Experts say human-caused climate change has caused an increase in rainfall, increasing the severity and frequency of rainfall events, and more across the country. As extreme weather worsens amid global heating, the crisis is displacing people not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Because of this, Antonia Sebastian, a professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, doesn’t believe in climate havens.
The designation of a “climate haven” has been denounced by climate experts, who told ABC News that it’s not a widely accepted or official term and that the criteria is unclear.
“Climate change is sort of a pervasive issue that is going to affect communities all over the world — not equally — but definitely it will impact everyone, everywhere in some way,” Sebastian told ABC News.
Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as a massive Category 4 hurricane, was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Big Bend on record. It traveled inland, hitting not just Florida, but also Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
Helene dumped more than 30 inches of rain on North Carolina, producing the biggest local flooding in recorded history. The path of the storm’s devastation has spanned more than 600 miles.
More than 30 people are dead and 600 people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit Buncombe County, according to county officials.
“When you get a really extreme rainfall in mountainous regions, you see flooding, you see the potential for landslides. You see a lot more road washouts than you might in a coastal area with the same kind of storm. That’s that elevation component. The topography component really adds to the severity of the flooding that that people experience,” Sebastian said.
“It’s really not only the volume of water that’s really out like astounding — we’re talking thousand-year-levels of rainfall by some measures — but it’s the ferocity with which that water is flowing, the speed and the real intensity of the flood that they had to experience out there,” she noted.
Across Helene’s path, more than 100 people have been killed.
Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, argues that society needs to move away from viewing some groups as refugees of the climate crisis and instead acknowledge the need for everyone to invest in measures that will make communities and individuals more resilient to extreme weather.
“What folks have experienced over the last few days of Hurricane Helene is unprecedented and terrifying, they’re certainly not alone in experiencing it,” Dahl said in an interview.
The international think-tank Institute for Economics & Peace estimates that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050.
Despite Asheville’s status as a climate resilient city, Amber Weaver, its sustainability officer, announced earlier this year that it was in the process of developing a resilience assessment to adapt to the growing list of major climate-related dangers.
Reidmiller urged cities nationwide to invest in climate change mitigation and preparedness, adding that the cost of climate change — in both damages and human life — will continue to add up unless action is taken.
“You pay, frankly, pay for climate readiness now, or Mother Nature is going to charge you later with interest,” Reidmiller told ABC News. “As we rebuild, we kind of need to ask ourselves, do we need to rebuild higher, stronger, with different permitting and regulatory requirements to make sure that what we are building back is more capable of withstanding these stronger, more intense, more frequent, longer lasting, greater-in-spatial scale events?”
(NEW YORK) — Leah Kim remembers her dad for his infectious smile and loving heart.
“His legacy is for people to live their lives with joy,” she told ABC News.
Seuk Kim, 49, was a pilot, animal rescuer and father of three. He began flying during the pandemic and, having a passion for animals, he started rescuing dogs.
“He stumbled across a rescue organization in which pilots could fly animals, dogs, cats, bunnies, you name it,” his daughter said.
On Sunday, Seuk Kim was flying three dogs from Maryland to a shelter in upstate New York when he hit turbulence and poor visibility.
He requested to change altitude, but his plane crashed near Albany. Seuk Kim and one of the dogs he was transporting didn’t survive the crash.
But 18-month-old Pluto was found nearby with minor injuries, as well as Whiskey, who dug a hole in the snow despite having two broken legs.
Pluto and Whiskey are only two of the hundreds of dogs Seuk Kim has rescued in recent years.
There’s nothing he loved more, according to his daughter.
“Over the summer, I actually flew a rescue mission with him,” Leah Kim said. “As much attention as he was paying to flying, he was looking back every couple minutes at the dogs, and he was smiling. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile that much.”
His daughter added that she had wanted pomegranates for months and while she was at work on Saturday, her dad went out, got her one, took out all the seeds and put them in a little container.
“I was crying while I was eating them, but I wasn’t sad at all, because it was just a reminder that he’s always in our lives,” she said. “He’s always looking out for us. He’s still providing even though he’s gone.”
A Newsmax microphone is seen during the third day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, July 17, 2024. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for the voting machine company Smartmatic and the cable channel Newsmax argued at a hearing Monday over evidence and witnesses expected to be presented when Smartmatic’s defamation case against the news channel goes to trial later this month.
Smartmatic has accused Newsmax of publishing dozens of false reports claiming that Smartmatic helped rig the 2020 election. Newsmax has argued, in part, that they were reporting on newsworthy claims of fraud.
Howard Cooper, an attorney for Newsmax, argued at Monday’s hearing that the news channel should be able to introduce videos of broadcast segments that he says rebut Smartmatic’s argument that “Newsmax took this position of election fraud [and] not calling the election” for winner Joe Biden.
“One of the ways that we can rebut that theory is by showing shows that were contrary to President Trump’s position,” Cooper said of former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud.
The two sides also argued over the inclusion of witnesses who would testify about whether Newsmax, in the course of its reporting, reached out to Smartmatic — or instead only reached out to Dominion, another voting machine company that was falsely accused of wrongdoing.
Dominion, in a separate case last year, reached a $787 million settlement with Fox News in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit.
Newsmax officials have said under oath that the company contacted or attempted to contact Smartmatic during its coverage of the election and its aftermath.
“We’re not disputing that Dominion and Smartmatic are not the same,” said an attorney for Newsmax. “Some of these Newsmax personnel did get to contact Dominion. It is relevant to the case. It’s relevant to their state of mind.”
“I’d love for you to make that argument if I’m on the other side,” Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said in response. “Here is the executive producer of this show, and he doesn’t know the difference between Exxon and Chevron.”
After a lengthy argument about other types of evidence the parties would like to introduce at the trial, the judge reviewed the potential witness list and emphasized the need for clear and concise jury instructions.
At one point during the hearing, an attorney for Newsmax requested permission to depose Smartmatic’s damages expert, arguing that the expert’s “reports and charts” on the damages have changed frequently.
“I would only add they were looking for somewhere, and we don’t know yet, between $400 and $600 million in this case,” an attorney for Newsmax said, criticizing “the idea that we would go to a trial without having a full opportunity to do an up-to-date examination of their damages expert.”
An attorney for Smartmatic pushed back, saying that Newsmax attorneys have previously deposed the expert and that “none of the information has changed.”
Judge Davis said he would rule soon on each of the motions.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Sept. 30 in Delaware.
