Man critically hurt in fall from bleachers at Pirates-Cubs game is identified
Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
(PITTSBURGH) — The baseball fan critically hurt in a 20-foot fall at PNC Park in Pittsburgh has been identified as Kavan Markwood.
Markwood fell from the bleachers onto the field during the seventh inning of the Pirates-Cubs game on Wednesday night, officials said. The game was briefly halted as emergency crews responded.
The Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety said the “incident is being treated as accidental.”
As of Thursday, Markwood remained in critical condition, according to the department of public safety.
Markwood previously attended Walsh University in Ohio.
“The Walsh University community was deeply saddened to learn about the tragic accident involving former student Kavan Markwood,” the university said in a statement. “Our thoughts and heartfelt prayers are with him, his family, and friends during this very difficult time. We are hoping and praying for a full recovery.”
After attending Walsh, Markwood transferred to Wheeling University in West Virginia, where he was a member of the football team in 2023.
“The Wheeling University Community is heartbroken,” the university said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Kavan, his family, friends, and all his loved ones. The Cardinal family is praying for a full and speedy recovery.”
Pirates manager Derek Shelton said he saw the fall as it happened.
“The fact of how it went down. And then laying motionless, while a play is going on … it’s extremely unfortunate. I mean, that’s an understatement,” he told reporters after the game.
Shelton said he wanted to ask “everybody to keep him in their prayers.”
ABC News’ Matthew Holroyd and Victoria Beaule contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A day after a federal judge ordered the government to more fully answer questions about the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration, in a sealed motion Wednesday, asked the judge to pause discovery for seven days.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who last week slammed Justice Department attorneys over their inaction over Abrego Garcia’s wrongful detention and ordered government officials to testify under oath through expedited discovery, ordered the government Tuesday to more fully answer and respond by Wednesday evening to discovery requests from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys.
“Given that this Court expressly warned Defendants and their counsel to adhere strictly to their discovery obligations … their boilerplate, non-particularized objections are presumptively invalid and reflect a willful refusal to comply with this Court’s Discovery Order and governing rules,” Xinis wrote Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who has 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.
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. His wife and attorney have denied that he is an MS-13 member.
Judge Xinis early this month ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, 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.”
Earlier Tuesday, government attorneys asserted that providing detailed information on the legal basis for Abrego Garcia’s confinement would be “wholly inappropriate and an invasion of diplomatic discussions,” according to a joint letter outlining the discovery disputes between the parties.
“Upon Abrego’s repatriation to El Salvador, his detention was no longer a matter of the United States’ confinement, but a matter belonging to the government of El Salvador — which has been explained to the Plaintiffs repeatedly,” the government said.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia in the letter accused the Trump administration of responding to their discovery requests by producing “nothing of substance” and providing interrogatory responses that are “non-responsive.”
(NEW YORK) — Despite the deadly storms over the weekend, one of the core government facilities tracking severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, is listed on the website of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as one with a planned office closure.
The Storm Prediction Center — one of several entities housed at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma — issues severe weather forecasts across the nation and identifies threat zones where dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes could move through days in advance.
A spokesperson with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the federal agency that studies and reports on the oceans, atmosphere and coasts as well as oversees the Storm Prediction Center as well as the National Weather Service — confirmed that the “building lease issue is in flux.”
With this latest storm, the Storm Prediction Center began alerting about a potential significant severe weather event across parts of the Midwest and South several days ahead of the first tornadoes. The center also tracks which parts of the country could face critical to extreme fire weather conditions — as Oklahoma, where the center is located, remains under alert for fire danger after being devastated by deadly blazes over the weekend.
At least 40 people were killed amid more than 970 severe storm reports across more than two dozen states over the weekend. A three-day tornado outbreak tore through at least nine states.
Republican Rep. Tom Cole claims that he intervened and that the center in Norman will not lose its lease.
“I am so proud to have advocated for them. As the Representative for Oklahoma’s Fourth District, I will always fight for Oklahomans and my constituents!” Cole wrote in a release last week.
But the building is still listed, along with hundreds of others, as a target of DOGE’s cuts.
The White House said that the General Services Administration is “reviewing all options to optimize our footprint and building utilization.”
“A component of our space consolidation plan will be the termination of many soft term leases. To the extent these terminations affect public facing facilities and/or existing tenants, we are working with our agency partners to secure suitable alternative space. In many cases this will allow us to increase space utilization and obtain improved terms,” a White House spokesperson said.
When the GSA briefly listed office leases it planned to terminate a few weeks ago, the NOAA locations sent shockwaves through the scientific community especially with tornado season (and hurricane season) coming up.
The Norman facility has, according to local outlets, been impacted by some staffing cuts.
Online the center boasts of some 500 scientists, engineers, meteorologists and climatologists from NOAA, the University of Oklahoma and state agencies. It specializes in storm prediction and advancing radar technology.
“We serve as a national resource for severe weather research and work collaboratively with the National Weather Service to ensure that their forecasters have the knowledge, capabilities, and technologies to remain world leaders in effectively communicating accurate, timely, and actionable forecasts and warnings of extreme weather to the public and commerce,” their mission statement reads.
ABC News has reached out to local Oklahoma lawmakers for comment, but hasn’t heard back by the time of publication.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department is in the midst of an urgent and chaotic effort to review sensitive materials from the FBI investigation into the convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, with Attorney General Pam Bondi pushing the FBI and her own department to release more files from the case amid continued pressure from President Donald Trump’s supporters, multiple sources told ABC News.
As many as a thousand FBI agents, many of whom are usually focusing on national security matters, have been enlisted to help with the effort, sources said.
The push comes two weeks after Bondi handed out binders with Epstein case files to pro-Trump social media influencers at the White House — files that ultimately contained little new information. The move caught White House officials off guard and outraged some supporters of the president, who had been promised that more details would be made public. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that “everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump.”
In tense private exchanges earlier this week, Bondi pressed FBI Director Kash Patel to do more to release still-secret information from the case involving one of the most infamous sex-trafficking criminals in modern history, sources said.
Justice Department officials have made it clear to others throughout the Trump administration that it is now a top priority of the attorney general to sort through the materials related to Epstein and decide what can be publicly disclosed in the days ahead, sources said, and FBI agents have been told to expect to work on this into the early morning hours.
Sources tell ABC News that the Justice Department’s national security division is devoting many of their resources to the effort, despite some top law enforcement officials believing that the information Bondi is demanding be reviewed contains no new revelations.
The all-hands-on-deck effort to expedite the release of additional material has led to a growing rift between officials at the FBI and DOJ, sources said, as both have faced online backlash from vocal MAGA over the Trump administration’s handling of the files.
In a statement, a DOJ spokesperson told ABC News, “Under Attorney General Bondi’s leadership, the Department of Justice is working relentlessly to deliver unprecedented transparency for the American people.”
The White House referred ABC News to the DOJ’s response.
“Director Patel is committed to full transparency and justice, swiftly delivering documents to the DOJ,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson told ABC News in a statement. “He has complete faith in Attorney General Pam Bondi’s leadership and dedication to holding the powerful accountable.”
Among the material under consideration for release is previously undisclosed video evidence from the sex-trafficking investigation into Epstein, sources said, adding that the DOJ has not yet made a final decision on that matter.
Authorities may also be reviewing materials detailed in a document released earlier this month that the Justice Department is calling “Evidence List,” a three-page catalog of material apparently obtained through searches of Epstein’s properties in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Among the items investigators obtained, according to the document, is “one CD labelled ‘girl pics nude book 4’ and a folder titled “LSJ logbook,” which appears to be a reference to Epstein’s private island Little St. James.
The document also lists dozens of recording devices, computers, hard drives and memory sticks, along with various sexual paraphernalia.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while facing federal child sex trafficking charges. The well-connected financier, who owned a private island estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has long been rumored to have kept a “client list” of celebrities and politicians, which right-wing influencers have baselessly accused authorities of hiding. Multiple sources familiar with both civil and criminal cases against Epstein say no such list has been discovered.
In an interview last week, Bondi was asked about the increasing pressure from Trump’s base to release more files, and confirmed that the department was working to make them public.
“The MAGA group is mad that we don’t know more about the Epstein files … are you going to give us any more information?” Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo asked the attorney general.
Bondi responded that FBI Director Kash Patel was working on providing the DOJ with a timeline for the next document release.
“We will get out as much as we can, as fast as we can to the American people,” she said.
ABC News previously reported that Bondi faced backlash from the White House and Trump allies over her handling of the initial Epstein file release earlier this month.
During a White House event with pro-Trump social media influencers, Bondi distributed binders labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1,” catching senior White House officials off guard. The materials contained mostly previously public records, sparking outrage from some of Trump’s supporters, including far-right activist Laura Loomer, who slammed the release as “unprofessional” and untrustworthy.
