Man charged with stalking for allegedly threatening WNBA star Caitlin Clark
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(INDIANAPOLIS) — A Texas man has been charged with stalking for allegedly sending WNBA star Caitlin Clark threats over social media, officials said Monday.
Michael Lewis, 55, was arrested on Sunday in Indianapolis and has been charged with stalking for allegedly sending “numerous threats and sexually explicit messages to Clark via his social media accounts,” the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said in a press release.
“No matter how prominent a figure you are, this case shows that online harassment can quickly escalate to actual threats of physical violence,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said in a statement.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office became aware of a “possible pattern of stalking” by Lewis toward Clark this month, according to the affidavit for probable cause. Between Dec. 16, 2024, and Jan. 2, the suspect allegedly sent Clark numerous sexually explicit messages over X, according to the affidavit.
Investigators traced the X account to Lewis and determined that recent messages were sent from an IP address at a hotel in Indianapolis, which was “especially concerning given that he is a Texas resident,” the affidavit stated.
Clark told investigators she does not know Lewis and has not responded to his social media messages or posts, and that his presence in Indianapolis made her “very concerned for her safety,” according to the affidavit.
“Clark stated that she has been very fearful since learning of the messages and that she has altered her public appearances and patterns of movement due to fear for her safety,” the affidavit stated.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Special Counsel Jack Smith issued his first response Tuesday to an effort by Donald Trump’s co-defendants to have the judge who tossed his classified documents case issue an emergency order blocking Smith’s final report on the investigation.
Lawyers for Trump’s former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, asked Judge Aileen Cannon — who dismissed the case in July after deeming Smith’s appointment unconstitutional — to issue an order barring Attorney General Merrick Garland from publicly releasing the report by Jan. 10.
In a brief filing, assistant special counsel James Pearce confirmed the office is “working to finalize” a report and Attorney General Garland — who has the final say over what material from the report is made public — has still not determined what to release from the volume that relates to Smith’s classified documents investigation.
The office assured Judge Cannon in their filing that Smith would not release that specific volume of the report anytime before 10 a.m. Friday and that they would submit a fuller response to Nauta and DeOliveira’s emergency motion no later than 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
The legal maneuver by Trump’s now-former co-defendants came the same day Trump’s personal lawyers sent a letter to Garland demanding he remove Smith from his post and defer the decision about the report’s release to Trump’s incoming attorney general, Pam Bondi.
“No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed, including for even suggesting that course of action given his obvious political motivations and desire to lawlessly undermine the transition,” wrote Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s defense attorneys and his picks for top posts within the Department of Justice.
Smith has been winding down his cases against the president-elect, moving to dismiss Trump’s election interference case and dropping their appeal of his classified documents case against Trump, and is expected to submit a final report about his investigations to Garland before stepping down.
(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of murdering Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus was found guilty on all charges Wednesday, including malice murder and felony murder.
Prosecutors called the evidence against the suspect “overwhelming,” while the defense raised the theory that the defendant could be an accomplice but not the killer during closing arguments in his trial.
Jose Ibarra, 26, was accused of killing the 22-year-old nursing student while she was out for a run after prosecutors said she “refused to be his rape victim.” Jose Ibarra, an undocumented migrant, was charged with malice murder and felony murder in connection with her death, which became a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump.
Jose Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial and the case was presented over four days in the Athens-Clarke County courtroom to Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who rendered the verdict on Wednesday.
Sobbing could be heard in the courtroom as he read the guilty verdicts on each charge.
Before announcing his verdict, Haggard told the courtroom that he wrote down two statements from the attorneys during closing arguments.
One was a statement by the prosecutor, who said the “evidence was overwhelming and powerful.”
The other was one by the defense attorney, who said that the judge is “required to set aside my emotions.”
“That’s the same thing we tell jurors,” he said. “That’s the way I have to approach this, and I did. Both of those statements are correct.”
Court is on recess until 12:30 p.m. ET, at which point Haggard said he is ready to move ahead with sentencing.
Jose Ibarra faces a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors called 28 witnesses while laying out what they said was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Jose Ibarra killed Riley, who died by blunt force head trauma and asphyxia.
Special prosecutor Sheila Ross told the court Jose Ibarra encountered Riley while she was on her morning jog on Feb. 22 while he was out “hunting” for women on the Athens campus.
Ross said Riley “fought for her life” in a struggle that caused Jose Ibarra to leave forensic evidence behind. Digital and video evidence also pointed to him as the only killer, she said.
“The evidence in this case has been overwhelming, and the evidence in this case has spoken loud and clear — that he is Laken Riley’s killer, and that he killed her because she would not let him rape her,” Ross said during her closing argument on Wednesday.
A forensics expert testified that Jose Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s right fingernails, and that his two brothers, who lived with him in an apartment near the campus, were excluded as matches.
When Jose Ibarra was questioned by police a day after the murder, he had visible scratches on his arms, officers said. He also had scratches on his neck and back, which Ross said could have only been left by Riley.
“In order to not find him guilty, you would have to disbelieve your own eyes,” Ross said.
“She marked him. She marked him for everyone to see. She marked him for you to see,” Ross told the judge.
Prosecutors argued Jose Ibarra hindered Riley from making a 911 call, and said his thumbprint was left on her phone. Data from his Samsung phone and the Garmin watch Riley was wearing on her run showed the devices overlapped and were in close proximity in the forest where she was found dead, an FBI analyst testified.
Jose Ibarra was captured on Ring footage discarding a bloody jacket and disposable gloves near his apartment about 15 minutes after Riley died, prosecutors said. The individual’s face can’t be seen in the video, but Jose Ibarra’s roommate testified that it was him. The defendant’s brother, Diego Ibarra, also identified him as the person in the video while being questioned by police a day after the murder.
Riley’s DNA was found on the jacket and gloves, the forensics expert said. Jose Ibarra’s DNA was also found on the jacket, while his two brothers were excluded as matches, the expert said.
“That is what we call consciousness of guilt in our business — he threw away those items because he knew he had killed her, and he threw them away because he didn’t want anyone to find him,” Ross said.
Her DNA was also found on an Adidas cap he was seen wearing in the video, the expert said. That cap was not discarded, Ross surmised, because Jose Ibarra could not see that there was actually blood on it.
Jose Ibarra was also seen in different clothes from the dumpster Ring footage discarding unidentifiable items in a bag that was never recovered by police hours after the killing. Ross surmised that the bag contained the clothes he was wearing earlier, which were also similar to ones he was wearing in a selfie posted on Snapchat earlier that morning.
“His digital evidence of posting selfies of himself wearing what is basically his rapist gear an hour before he leaves his house that condemns him, he has condemned himself,” Ross said.
The defense called three witnesses, including a neighbor who said Diego Ibarra had threatened her the night of Riley’s murder.
The defense said they had planned to call two additional witnesses — including Diego Ibarra, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to possessing a fraudulent green card, however, his attorney did not wish for him to testify.
“While the evidence in this case is voluminous, it is circumstantial,” defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck told the judge.
Beck told the judge they advised Jose Ibarra to have a bench trial “trusting that your honor could and believing that your honor would set aside the emotions in this case and simply consider the evidence.”
She argued there is doubt about what was tested and said the judge should be “skeptical” of the DNA evidence.
She presented an “alternative theory” that Diego Ibarra was actually Riley’s murderer, and that Jose Ibarra was an accomplice in covering up the evidence.
“Maybe it was him throwing away the jacket, as Diego said, maybe he was covering up for his brother,” Beck said.
“Under that theory, of course, Jose would be guilty of tampering, but that theory does not prove that he was present or involved in the murder of Laken Riley,” she said.
She said since three gloves were discarded, which “suggests that there are multiple pairs of hands wearing those gloves.”
On rebuttal, Ross called the defense’s theory “desperate” and a “mischaracterization of the evidence.”
“There is no reasonable explanation for all of this evidence other than he is guilty of every single count in this indictment,” Ross said.
Diego Ibarra told officers during questioning that he was asleep at the time the killing occurred. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified earlier Wednesday that there was no evidence to contradict that statement.
Jose Ibarra, a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022, waived his right to testify during the trial. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges, including malice murder and felony murder.
Additional charges in the 10-count indictment included aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. The latter charge alleged that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — the jacket and gloves — involving the offense of malice murder.
Jose Ibarra was also charged with a peeping tom offense. Prosecutors said that in the hours before Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a UGA graduate student, and said the incident “shows his state of mind” that day.
The student testified that she called police after hearing someone trying to open her door.
Ross said the person at the student’s apartment was wearing clothes similar to the ones Jose Ibarra had on in the Snapchat selfie posted earlier that morning, including the Adidas cap.
