Manhunt underway after officer shot, critically injured in north Georgia

(LORAIN, Ohio) — An Ohio officer has died a day after a gunman opened fire on him and a fellow officer while they were eating lunch in their patrol vehicles, authorities said.

Lorain Police Department officer Phillip Wagner, 35, was critically wounded in what police described as an “ambush attack.” He died on Thursday in a hospital “despite the valiant efforts of fellow officers, first responders and medical professionals,” the Lorain Police Department said.

“Officer Wagner’s life and service to our city will never be forgotten,” acting Lorain Police Chief Michael Failing said in a statement. “Our department mourns the loss of a true hero and stands in unwavering support of Officer Wagner’s family, friends, and fellow officers during this heartbreaking time.”

Wagner joined the Lorain Police Department in February 2022 and had previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps, police said.

Two other Lorain Police Department officers were also injured in the shooting, which occurred at the dead end of an undeveloped industrial park in Lorain, located in northeast Ohio, police said.

The gunman was killed in an ensuing exchange of gunfire, with the motive for the shooting not yet known, the Elyria Police Department said Thursday.

The shooting unfolded around 1 p.m. Wednesday, after Wagner and fellow Lorain officer Peter Gale, 51, had picked up pizza for lunch and were parked side-by-side at the dead end, according to Failing.

The suspect had parked at the dead end and had an “arsenal of weapons with him,” Failing said at a press briefing Wednesday.

In and around his vehicle were “multiple high-powered rifles, handguns, and a substantial quantity of loaded magazines,” the Elyria Police Department, which is investigating the incident, said in a press release Thursday. A “significant quantity of improvised explosive materials” was also found in his vehicle and safely detonated away from the scene, police said.

“He was laying in wait and opened fire with multiple rounds at both of the officers who were sitting in their vehicles,” Failing said.

A third Lorain officer who responded to a call for additional officers, 47-year-old Brent Payne, was then shot by the suspect multiple times in his patrol vehicle, Failing said.

Additional officers who responded to the scene helped treat their wounded fellow officers and drove them to an area hospital, according to Failing.

Gale was shot in the hand and has since been treated and released, police said Thursday.

Wagner and Payne both suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were airlifted to another hospital for treatment, Failing said. Payne had surgery Thursday morning and is recovering, police said.

Officers returned fire on the suspect, who was armed with a “high-powered rifle,” according to Elyria Police Chief James Welsh, who spoke at a separate briefing earlier Wednesday.

The suspect was shot and pronounced dead at the scene, Failing said. The Elyria Police Department identified him Thursday as 28-year-old Michael Parker of Lorain.

Welsh said no other suspects have been located and they are “fairly confident” there was only one shooter. The area has been contained, he said.

A motive for the shooting remains under investigation, Elyria police said Thursday.

“This is a difficult day for the Lorain Police Department and the law enforcement community,” Welsh said.

“It will take time to determine exactly what transpired here today,” he said.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he has been briefed on the shooting, saying it “appears to have been a targeted attack on law enforcement.”

“This situation reminds us that those who work in law enforcement risk their lives every day for the safety of their communities,” he said in a statement on social media. “We are so very grateful for the men and women who willingly and bravely serve and protect.”

Ohio Sen. Jon Husted said his office has offered assistance to local officials.

“There is no place for this kind of violence in our state or country,” he said in a statement on social media.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — William H. Webster, a longtime U.S. public servant who served as the head of both the FBI and the CIA in a career spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s, has died. He was 101.

The FBI confirmed his death in a statement Friday.

Webster, who was the only person to have led both agencies, “was a dedicated public servant who spent over 60 years in service to our country, including in the U.S. Navy, as a federal judge, director of the CIA, and his term as our Director from 1978-1987,” the FBI statement said.

A statement from Webster’s family said, “We are proud of the extraordinary man we had our lives who spent a lifetime fighting to protect his country and its precious rule of law.”

A memorial service for Webster will take place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, the family said.

As FBI director, Webster served under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

He then served as CIA director from 1987 to 1991 under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.

“As the only individual to have led both the FBI and the CIA, Judge Webster’s unwavering integrity and dedication to public service set a standard for leadership in federal law enforcement,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement.

Webster was born on March 6, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts and earned his law degree at Washington University Law School in St. Louis.

He served as a U.S. Navy lieutenant in both World War II and the Korean War. A practicing attorney in St. Louis from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, Webster went on to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.

In the 1970s, he was appointed as a U.S. District Court judge and then a U.S. Court of Appeals judge before taking the FBI director post.

He is survived by his second wife, Lynda Clugston Webster, three children, 7 grandchildren and spouses and 12 great grandchildren.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — With the Fourth of July just days away, law enforcement and federal officials are on guard about Iranian retaliation in the United States, despite officials saying there are no specific, credible threats at this time.

This comes after the U.S. military’s strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities by B-2 stealth bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

“We would be foolish to assume that they’re not plotting revenge even if we can’t see it right now. It will come, and we need to maintain vigilance because if we don’t, they will use the element of surprise to their advantage and cause harm,” said Elizabeth Neumann, a former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism during the first Trump administration.

Even before Saturday’s bombing mission in Iran, the U.S. was at a heightened level of security after a string of high-profile terrorist attacks occurred across the country in the first six month of 2025 — including a deadly truck ramming rampage in New Orleans on New Year’s Day and a June 1 Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder, Colorado.

The wave of extremist violence has come against a backdrop of a rising number of assaults, vandalism and harassment nationwide linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

In the wake of the U.S. mission to cripple Iran’s ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, released a message on social media saying, “We will not surrender.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi threatened in a speech that his country will seek revenge that will have “everlasting consequences” and accused the United States of committing “dangerous, lawless and criminal behavior.”

“In accordance with the U.N. Charter and its provisions allowing a legitimate response in self-defense, Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interests, and people,” Araghchi said.

On Monday, Iran carried out a missile attack on the United States’ Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. U.S. Central Command said both U.S. and Qatari forces “successfully defended” against the attack and that no casualties were reported.

Later in the day, President Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire had been agreed upon between Israel and Iran, but tensions remained high into Wednesday.

‘A long memory’

In reponse to the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear apparatus, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a nationwide bulletin, saying the ongoing conflict is “causing a heightened threat environment in the United States” and warning that “low-level cyber-attacks against US networks by pro-Iranian hacktivists are likely, and cyber actors affiliated with the Iranian government may conduct against US networks.”

Neumann, an ABC News contributor, said Iran’s initial response to the U.S. bombing of three of its nuclear facilities is similar to what the country did following the Jan. 3, 2020, U.S. strike in Baghdad, Iraq, that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Forces.

Five days after Soleimani’s death, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard launched a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. Al Asad airbase in western Iraq. The attack left over 100 U.S. service members with traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.

“We were definitely very concerned about the potential for something to happen in the homeland,” said Neumann, who was working in the DHS under the first Trump administration when Soleimani was killed.

Neumann said the DHS’s Iran specialists assumed Iran would activate sleeper cells possibly in the United States and that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia group, would launch terrorist attacks against U.S. interest.

But Neumann said Iran’s attack on the Al Asad airbase was used by Iran to appease its domestic audience by publicly displaying pictures of the attack to give the impression they were pushing back against the United States.

“Since they mostly control the airwaves in Iran, they can kind of get away with it. They don’t actually have to do a major military strike and hurt us the way that we’ve hurt them because they can just kind of manufacture the story that they want for their domestic audience,” Neumann said.

Neumann recalled that at the time, the DHS rapidly prepared an assessment of what Soleimani’s assassination could mean for the United States and released a bulletin similar to the one DHS put out this week. But after the attack on the Al Asad airbase, Iran’s response quieted down.

“The Iranian regime … has a long memory and they recognize that they do not have the strength right now to get back at us,” Neumann said. “But they will wait and they will look for opportunities to cause harm.”

She noted that in August 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard attempted to pay an individual $300,000 to kill John Bolton, the National Security Advisor during Trump’s first term, saying it was likely in retaliation for Soleimani’s death.

In November 2024, the Department of Justice announced that three people, including one described as an “asset” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, were charged in Iran-linked murder plots, with one of them accused of trying to assassinate then-President-elect Trump to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

Iran could turn to ‘crude or escalatory tactics’ employing proxies

A threat assessment by the Center for Internet Security that was released after the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, said, “Tehran is likely to leverage a combination of direct, proxy, and irregular/inspired forces to conduct physical, cyber, or terrorist attacks against US interests both at home and aboard.”

“In light of Israeli strikes and the degradation of the Iranian proxy network in the Middle East, Iran will likely seek to re-establish deterrence against its adversaries, potentially relying on crude or escalatory tactics and informal networks,” according to the assessment. “US interests — particularly Embassies and military bases overseas — are likely to be targeted, and it is possible that Tehran will order or encourage attacks on the US government institutions, businesses, critical infrastructure, or civilians.”

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, widespread surprise attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists that ignited the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the DHS and FBI have repeatedly issued warnings that large-scale events are prime targets of violence.

“Violent extremist messaging continues to highlight major sporting and cultural events and venues as potential targets, and threat actors — including domestic violent extremists (DVEs), homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) inspired by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), and other mass casualty attackers not motivated by an ideology — previously have targeted public events with little to no warning,” according to the joint bulletin put out in May by the DHS and FBI.

Given the nation’s alarming security threat, the FBI is planning to reallocate potentially thousands of FBI agents away from immigration enforcement work to focus on cyber threats and counterterrorism efforts, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News on Tuesday. Months ago, as ABC News has previously reported, the FBI directed agents from around the country, many of them working on counterterrorism and cyber issues, to focus instead on helping DHS conduct immigration enforcement operations.

‘Lone wolf’ and cyberattacks

Richard Frankel, a retired FBI agent, said that no credible threats against the U.S. homeland have been uncovered, “but there has been a lot of chatter.”

Frankel said in an ABC News Live interview on Monday that the FBI has been briefing the governors across the country about the heightened threat.

“They’re going to tell the governors that they need to maybe heighten their protection of special sights,” said Frankel, an ABC News contributor, adding that the New York Police Department has added extra security to landmarks such as the Empire State Building and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum as well as synagogues and other religious institutions.

Don Mihalek, a retired senior Secret Service agent and a national security and law enforcement consultant, said a major concern for law enforcement is that Iran or its proxies will try to elicit “lone wolf” attackers, who are radicalized online, to create mayhem on its behalf.

“I think that’s the bigger issue that everybody is worried about because I don’t think the Iranians are dumb enough to launch a state-sponsored, flag-waving attack against the continent of the United States,” Mihalek, an ABC News contributor, said. “But I think they definitely could get some guy in a basement who is antisemitic, who is anti-U.S., who just needed that little push to go to the local shopping center or a mall some place and conduct a low grade, low level attack that would disrupt that part of the United States and if it was coordinated it would have a significant impact on the U.S.”

Mihalek noted the possibility of Iranian sleeper cells being activated in the United States to organize and execute attacks.

During a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science on Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked by Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, how many Iranian sleeper cells currently exist in the United States.

“Congressman, I can’t talk about that in this setting. But what I can tell you is I know Homeland Security, I know the FBI, and they are focusing on doing everything we can to keep our nation safe. And they will continue to do that,” Bondi said.

Asked by Gonzales how many active cases of threats to the homeland the DOJ currently has open, Bondi answered, “Countless” without elaborating.

And just flagging DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s comments on the threat from Monday:

Reporters asked DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday about the possibility that people who have crossed the border illegally could be Iranian-affiliated, radicalized actors.

“We’re aware that some of these folks that may have come into our country could’ve been radicalized and so that is why we go out every day to identify individuals that could be a threat to our homeland,” Noem said. “We recognize that as tensions escalate, there could be more of a potential for threats here at home. That’s why we’re at an elevated threat right now and we will continue to stay diligent.”

Nome said that in the past, there have been people who have been radicalized both in the United States and abroad.

Asked about concerns over the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, Noem said, “There’s been concern since I took this job.”

“We have incredible threats to this country from many nations that are enemies to the United States of America,” Noem said. “It’s not just Iran. It’s North Korea, Russia, China — consistently every single day are trying to threaten our way of life.”

How can the average citizen help?

Mihalek said another worry for law enforcement is that Iran or its supporters will attempt to commit cyberattacks in the United States.

In 2023, then-White House deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger told the Associated Press that an Iranian hacker group known as “Cyber Av3ngers” had conducted low-level cyberattacks on U.S. water authorities in multiple states and were responsible for a string of ransomeware attacks on the health care industry.

Mihalek said the average citizen could play a significant role in protecting themselves and helping law enforcement thwart attacks, particularly during large events scheduled around the Fourth of July.

“If you see something strange or have somebody in your orbit who is acting strange, you want to let somebody know so they can look at it and investigate it. Often when that happens, the threat is mitigated before it becomes a problem,” Mihalek said. “The other part is if you’re going out some place, you’re going to an event, take the time to look for the exits, how to get out of some place, pay attention to your surroundings and listen to your gut.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.