Man charged with attempted murder in hit-and-run outside Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, church preschool
Charleston County Sheriff’s Office
(CHARLESTON, S.C.) — The man accused of driving into three people in a hit-and-run outside a preschool at a South Carolina church has been charged with three counts of attempted murder and first-degree assault and battery, according to online records.
Justin Collin Adams, who was taken into custody on Thursday following an hourslong manhunt, is expected to appear in bond court on Friday morning.
Adams allegedly struck two children and one adult on Thursday afternoon at the Sunrise Presbyterian Church on Sullivan’s Island, a beach town just outside of Charleston, police said.
No one was critically hurt. One child was treated at the scene and released, while the second child and adult were taken to hospital, police said. The child at the hospital was later discharged, according to a hospital spokesperson, and Sullivan’s Island Police Chief Glenn Meadows said Thursday evening that he believed the adult was also due to be released.
Adams allegedly ditched his sedan after the crash and fled on foot, possibly armed with a knife, according to Isle of Palms police Sgt. Matt Storen.
Authorities launched a massive manhunt, which included grid searches of houses, drones scanning the sky and checkpoints at the entryway to Sullivan’s Island, police said.
A sergeant in a Charleston County aviation unit helicopter ended up spotting the suspect, who was found in a boat at a dock across the street from the church, officials said.
The crash is being investigated as possibly being intentional, Storen said. There was no altercation before the incident, according to Storen.
(NEW YORK) — Some 350,000 New Jersey commuters could soon find themselves scrambling for other ways to get to work if contract disagreements between New Jersey Transit and its engineers’ union aren’t resolved, according to transit officials.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) has threatened to strike as early as Friday, May 16 unless NJ Transit and the union are able to agree on new contract terms and conditions for the workers who drive the trains. If no deal is reached, all New Jersey Transit commuter trains – and the MTA Metro-North West of Hudson service – will stop running.
“We have sought nothing more than equal pay for equal work, only to be continuously rebuffed by New Jersey Transit,” BLET General Chairman Tom Haas said during a press conference on May 9. “New Jersey Transit engineers want to keep the trains moving but the simple fact is that trains do not run without engineers.”
BLET National President Mark Wallace said during the press conference that it’s been five years since train engineers working for NJ Transit have received a pay increase. He also said many engineers might seek work at Amtrak or the Long Island Railroad if their contract requirements are not met.
“Reasonable people would vote for an agreement that is fair,” Wallace said.
Haas said during the news conference that engineers working for NJ Transit earn an average salary of $113,000 a year. If New Jersey Transit CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average salary of $170,000 a year for engineer operators, then “we got a deal,” Haas said.
“NJ TRANSIT locomotive engineers already have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000,” according to a statement on the New Jersey Transit website regarding negotiations with the BLET.
During a separate press conference the same day, Kolluri responded to the union’s arguments, saying Haas previously agreed to a wage increase to $49.82 an hour but then later demanded even higher wages because he thought there was “a better pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“I cannot keep giving money left and right to solve a problem. It all comes down to, who is going to pay for this? Money does not grow on trees,” Kolluri said.
ABC News requests sent to NJ Transit and the BLET for comment regarding Wallace, Haas and Kolluri’s statements concerning pay increase claims did not receive a response.
According to TV station WABC in New York, both sides will meet again Thursday morning for 11th-hour negotiations to avert the strike.
New Jersey Transit and BLET representatives met Monday with the National Mediation Board in Washington, D.C. to continue negotiations.
“We want to thank the National Mediation Board (NMB) for convening today’s meeting,” NJ Transit said in a statement on their website following the meeting. “We found the discussion to be constructive and look forward to continuing negotiations in good faith. To respect the collective bargaining process, we will not be sharing any additional details publicly at this time.”
There was no public BLET statement following the National Mediation Board meeting, nor did BLET immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
NJ Transit states that if they were to accept BLET’s terms, it would cost both them and New Jersey taxpayers $1.363 billion between July 2025 and June 2030. Additionally, if BLET chooses to strike, the taxpayer cost of providing a limited alternative service via buses would be $4 million per day, NJ Transit claims.
NJ Transit commuters were already hit with a 15% fare increase on July 1, 2024, with an additional systemwide 3% fare increase scheduled to go into effect July 1 of this year and every subsequent year. NJ Transit said that the increase was necessary in order to cover a budget deficit caused in part by a pandemic-era decrease in ridership, as well as other increased costs, including inflation.
Should the strike commence on May 16, NJ Transit said it “strongly encourages all those who can work from home to do so and limit traveling on the NJ Transit system to essential purposes only.”
NJ Transit officials also said that they’ve developed a contingency plan that includes adding “very limited capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and contracting with private carriers to operate bus service” for commuters that typically rely on the trains.
Even with the expanded bus service, however, NJ Transit said that it “estimates that it can only carry approximately 20% of current rail customers” because the bus system doesn’t have the capacity to replace commuter rail service.
Xuan Sharon Di, associate professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia University, told ABC News the potential NJ Transit strike would be a “disaster” for the traffic in Manhattan due to the increased bus and car traffic into the city from commuters unable to take the train. There also will be the added penalty of commuters into Manhattan having to pay recently enacted congestion pricing.
“New Jersey Transit is the backbone for people who live in New Jersey to move around. This is actually shocking to me,” Di told ABC News of the prospect of a strike.
Steven Chien, civil and environmental engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said many of his colleagues use NJ Transit to commute and that a strike will “paralyze vital transportation arteries in our regions.”
(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia pushed back on the Trump administration’s invocation of the state secrets privilege in a court filing Monday, saying that the government has produced no evidence “showing that it has made the slightest effort to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from detention in El Salvador.
“There is little reason to believe that compliance with a court order to facilitate the release and return of a single mistakenly removed individual so that he can get his day in court implicates state secrets at all,” the attorneys argued.
“No military or intelligence operations are involved, and it defies reason to imagine that the United States’ relationship with El Salvador would be endangered by any effort to seek the return of a wrongfully deported person who the Government admits never should have been removed to El Salvador in the first place,” they said.
The filing came a week after the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, said in a court order that the Trump administration had invoked the rarely used state secrets privilege to shield information about the case.
Judge Xinis has scheduled a May 16 hearing on the matter.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys deny that he is an MS-13 member.
The Trump administration, while acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in error, has said that his alleged MS-13 affiliation makes him ineligible to return to the United States.
Judge Xinis ruled last month that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that ruling, “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
Following the government’s inaction, Judge Xinis ordered several government officials to testify under oath through expedited discovery in order to resolve the matter, which prompted the administration to invoke the state secrets privilege.
In their filing Monday, Abrego Garcia’s argued that the Trump administration “does not come close to making a showing that would disturb the common sense conclusion that there are no genuine state secrets at play here,” saying the administration’s public statements — including in congressional testimony, public interviews and social media posts — demonstrate that “answering the requested discovery would not imperil national security.”
Attorneys for the Department of Justice argued in their own brief Monday that the discovery requests by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys “would damage United States’ foreign relations.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a sealed declaration submitted to the court, affirmed “after actual personal consideration” that “disclosure of such materials reasonably could be expected to cause significant harm to the foreign relation[s] and national security interests of the United States,” DOJ attorneys said.
“Specifically, Secretary Rubio feared that if this information were disclosed, foreign governments would be less likely to work cooperatively with the United States in the future because the disclosure would be viewed as a breach of trust,” said the DOJ attorneys.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia responded that because Rubio is not the head of either the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security, “he did not and could not claim” state secrets privilege for those departments.
“Simply saying ‘military secret,’ ‘national security’ or ‘terrorist threat’ or invoking an ethereal fear that disclosure will threaten our nation is insufficient to support the privilege,” they argued.
(FRISCO, Texas) — A Texas grand jury has indicted a teenager for first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of another teen at a track meet, in a case prosecutors said has “shaken” the community.
The deadly stabbing occurred at a Frisco Independent School District stadium on April 2 during a track and field championship involving multiple schools in the district.
Karmelo Anthony, a then-17-year-old student at Frisco Centennial High School, was arrested and charged in the murder of Austin Metcalf, 17, an 11th grader at Frisco Memorial High School who police said was stabbed during an altercation in the bleachers at the meet.
A grand jury has since indicted Anthony for first-degree murder, Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis announced Tuesday. Willis said his team had presented evidence for several weeks before the Collin County grand jury returned the indictment. A trial schedule is yet to be set.
“We know this case has struck a deep nerve — here in Collin County and beyond,” Willis said in a statement. “That’s understandable. When something like this happens at a school event, it shakes people to the core. But the justice system works best when it moves with steadiness and with principle. That’s what we’re committed to. And that’s exactly what this case deserves.”
Willis’ office noted that 17-year-olds are considered adults in the Texas criminal justice system. If convicted, Anthony faces five to 99 years, or life, in prison, the office said.
The teen has allegedly said he acted in self-defense, according to court records, a claim also raised by his defense attorney.
Anthony’s attorney, Mike Howard, called the indictment an “expected and routine step in the legal process,” and said the teen “looks forward to his day in court.”
“It’s only in a trial that a jury would hear the full story, one that includes critical facts and context that the grand jury simply didn’t get to hear,” Howard said.
“We expect that when the full story is heard, the prosecution will not be able to rule out the reasonable doubt that Karmleo Anthony may have acted in self-defense,” he added.
The stabbing occurred under the Memorial High School tent in the stadium bleachers, according to the arrest report. Responding officers said they spoke to multiple witnesses, including one who reported the altercation began after Metcalf told Anthony to move out from under their team’s tent, according to the arrest report.
The witness reported that Anthony allegedly reached inside his bag and said, “Touch me and see what happens,” according to the arrest report.
Metcalf grabbed Anthony to move him, according to a witness, and Anthony allegedly pulled out what the witness described as a black knife and “stabbed Austin once in the chest and then ran away,” the arrest report stated.
Anthony allegedly confessed to the killing and officers say he told them he was protecting himself, according to the arrest report.
Following the indictment, Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf, told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA that he’s “pleased that we are moving forward.”
“With the first degree murder indictment, it now goes into the court system,” Jeff Metcalf said in a statement to WFAA. “I fully believe that justice will be served for Austin Metcalf. I look forward to the forthcoming trial. But it will never bring my son back.”
Anthony’s mother, Kala Hayes, spoke out on the incident at a press event in April, saying the family has “been under attack.”
“Whatever you think what happened … my three younger children, my husband and I didn’t do anything to deserve to be threatened, harassed and lied about,” she said.
Anthony was initially held on $1 million bond following his arrest, though he was released from the Collin County Jail after a judge reduced his bond to $250,000.
As part of his bond conditions, he has been ordered to be on house arrest, be supervised by a parent or designated adult at all times and have no contact with Metcalf’s family, according to court records.
Both the Metcalf and Anthony families have launched fundraisers that have each raised more than $500,000.
