New Mexico flash flooding prompts ‘particularly dangerous situation’ warning
(ROSWELL, NM) — Roswell, New Mexico, experienced an overnight “Flash Flood Emergency” on Saturday, the National Weather Service reported — the highest tier of flash flood warning.
Between 4 and 9 inches of rain fell in parts of the state, prompting the NWS to declare a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” alert — a warning issued when a Flash Flood Emergency occurs in an area of significant population.
The NWS issued a flood warning for east central, northeast, and southeast New Mexico through to the early hours of Monday. A flash flood watch remains in effect for eastern New Mexico through Sunday night.
Additional rain is expected through Sunday, falling on ground already saturated by Saturday’s downpours and thus raising the risk of further flash flooding.
Roswell was inundated with an all-time record daily rainfall of 5.78 inches — higher than the previous record of 5.65 inches set on Nov. 1, 1901.
Emergency services reported that numerous rescues were ongoing throughout the Roswell area, with water entering homes and cutting off numerous roads.
The Chaves County Sheriff’s Office shared an emergency alert on its Facebook page warning of “an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation.”
The Sheriff’s Office later shared videos of people being brought to safety through floodwaters and of roads being cut off by rising water.
The Spring River in the Cahoon area rose rapidly, stranding several vehicles under bridges along the river.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Police are investigating multiple separate shootings that occurred Monday night on Interstate 5 in Washington state in what authorities called unacceptable “mayhem.”
Six people were injured in six shooting incidents, including a woman who was critically injured, according to the Washington State Patrol.
A suspect whose vehicle was sought in connection with several of the shootings was arrested in the Tacoma area early Tuesday, police said.
In four of the incidents, the victims reported being shot at by a white Volvo, according to Washington State Patrol spokesperson Chris Loftis. Investigators are still working to determine whether all the shooting incidents involved the same suspect vehicle, according to Capt. Ron Mead, the commander of District 2 of the Washington State Patrol, located in King County.
Police are treating this as a mass shooting event, Loftis said.
“The only difference from this and other events that we see across the country in schools and parks and so forth is the area of the shooting was not confined to a very specific place or location,” Loftis told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday afternoon.
There were two “spasms” of violence along I-5, resulting in the six shooting incidents, Loftis said.
The first occurred over 17 minutes, between 8:26 and 8:43 p.m. local time, northbound on I-5, he said.
It unfolded at I-5 and State Road 18, when “several rounds” were fired from a white Volvo, striking the passenger of a car, Loftis said. The driver took the 320th Street exit and contacted a fire station, and the female passenger was transported to a local hospital, where she remains in critical condition, he said.
A few minutes later, at 8:42 p.m. local time, a victim reported being shot at on I-5 near Martin Luther King Jr. Way and sustained abrasions from broken glass, Loftis said. The victim did not have a description of the suspect vehicle.
One minute later, on I-5 just south of I-90, a victim reported being shot at by an unknown vehicle and sustaining a grazing wound to the leg, Loftis said. The victim was transported to a local hospital as a precaution, he said.
The second wave of gun violence occurred between 10:57 p.m. and 11:01 p.m. local time, southbound on I-5, Loftis said.
On I-5 at State Road 18 at 10:57 p.m., a driver and passenger reported being shot at by a white Volvo, Loftis said. They sustained non-life-threatening wounds to the legs and have since been released from the hospital, Loftis said.
One minute later, another shooting involving a white Volvo was reported on I-5 near South 375 Street, Loftis said. Windows in the car were broken, but no one was injured, he said.
Then, at 11:01 p.m., on I-5 near 54th Avenue, a victim reported being shot by a white Volvo, Loftis said. The victim was shot in the neck and transported to a local hospital, he said.
A suspect was subsequently identified and arrested in the Tacoma area, police said.
Pierce County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home of the possible suspect late Monday, but his vehicle wasn’t there, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, a deputy saw the suspect vehicle pull into an apartment complex, the sheriff’s department said. Backup arrived, and deputies followed the vehicle, which was subsequently disabled by stop sticks set up by a Fircrest police officer, authorities said.
“Once the vehicle ran over the sticks it came to a stop and deputies initiated a felony stop,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said in a press release. “The suspect was compliant and taken into custody by a Fircrest officer and WSP trooper.”
The suspect has been booked into King County Jail on first-degree assault, police said.
State police said they are not releasing the name of the suspect at this time or speaking to an alleged motive.
“I’m not going to give that credibility for the mayhem he created,” Mead told reporters.
All of the victims are believed to have been random in what Mead called an “unwarranted, unprovoked attack.”
“Any one of us could have been that unwitting victim,” he said while decrying the gun violence.
Police said there may be additional victims. A person who was traveling on I-5 to Portland Monday night called police Tuesday to report that their car had been shot, Loftis said.
“They heard the news accounts and realized that they may have been involved in this situation,” he said.
No one was injured in that incident. The person is in the process of traveling to Bellevue to speak with detectives to determine if this is a potential seventh victim of the shooting spate, Loftis said.
“We would like to encourage other folks who may have been in this area last night during these timeframes, if you saw something, call,” he said.
At this time, police said they can only connect the shootings in which the victims reported seeing the white Volvo, Mead said.
“While the timing certainly would suggest that all of these are related, we’re only going to be able to connect what we can connect through physical evidence,” he said. “Beyond that is speculative, and that’s why we will do the investigation to make sure that we can tie them to the additional shootings.”
(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas.) — A Texas mother was taken into custody Tuesday after police alleged her 22-month-old child died when she left the infant in a car outside a Corpus Christi school on one of the hottest days of the year.
The mother, 33-year-old Hilda Ann Adame, was jailed on charges of causing serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury, according to a Corpus Christi Police Department incident report.
It was not clear how long the infant had been in the car before the baby was found unresponsive, according to the incident report.
At least 24 children, ranging from a 10-month-old in Louisiana to an 8-year-old in North Carolina, have died this year across the nation after being left in vehicles during hot weather, according to the nonprofit child advocacy organization Kids and Car Safety.
The latest hot car death, according to police, unfolded around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday outside the Tom Browne Middle School in Corpus Christi as temperatures soared past 100 degrees during a heat advisory issued for the city by the National Weather Service.
The weather service advisory said the heat index, which factors in relative humidity, made it feel like 112 degrees in Corpus Christi on Tuesday.
When officers arrived at the scene in the city’s South Side neighborhood, a school nurse was already performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the infant, according to the incident report.
The baby was taken by ambulance to nearby Driscoll Children’s Hospital, where the child was pronounced dead, police said.
Adame was taken into custody at the scene and questioned by police before being booked at the City Detention Center. Police did not disclose what Adame said in the interview with detectives.
Leanne Libby, spokesperson for the Corpus Christi Independent School District issued a statement, saying, “We want to express our gratitude to those who swiftly responded upon learning of this crisis, including school staff as well as district police and local law enforcement.” Libby said counseling was made available on campus Tuesday afternoon and the district’s crisis counseling team will be onsite on Wednesday.
The child’s death came just two days after a Louisiana mother was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder in the hot-car death of her 10-month-old child, according to the Jennings, LA, Police Department. The mother, Hannah Faith Cormier, 32, of Jennings, was being held Wednesday on a $1 million bond following her arrest on Sunday.
Jennings Police Chief Danny Semmes told reporters Cormier’s baby died a day after Cormier took her to a hospital on Aug. 13. Jennings alleged Cormier left the baby in the car after being called to work.
“Children should never be left in cars, even if it’s not hot out,” Jenette Fennell, president of Kids and Cars Safety, told ABC affiliate station KIII in Corpus Christi. “In the first 10 minutes, the temperature in the vehicle can rise as much as 20 degrees.”
Fennell recommended that people force themselves into the habit of looking through their vehicles before locking them.
“The biggest problem we have is nobody thinks it’s going to happen to them until it happens to them,” Fennell said.
(LOS ANGELES) — The 1986 cold case murder of a teen has been solved after a DNA match led investigators to a convicted serial killed on death row.
When presented with the DNA evidence, William Lester Suff, a 70-year-old convicted serial killer, admitted to stabbing 19-year-old Cathy Small multiple times in the chest and leaving her on a California road after an argument, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Lt. Patricia Thomas.
On Feb. 22, 1986, South Pasadena police responded to a report of a woman lying in the street. When officers arrived, they found the woman unresponsive in the middle of the street, wearing a nightgown and suffering from several stab wounds throughout her body, Thomas said.
She was pronounced dead at the scene. She had no identification and was listed as Jane Doe No. 17, Thomas said. She was found to have died from multiple stab wounds and strangulation, Thomas said.
On Feb. 25, 1986, detectives received a call from a resident in the Lake Elsinore area who was concerned the victim was his roommate. After seeing her remains, the man identified the victim as Small, Thomas said.
The roommate told detectives Small was a prostitute and lived at his house for a few months. Small told her roommate a man named Bill was picking her up and giving her $50 to drive with him to Los Angeles.
He said never saw or heard from Small again, Thomas said.
The case remained unsolved despite detectives following up on numerous leads throughout the years, Thomas said.
On Oct. 11, 2019, detectives responded to the scene of a natural death across the street from where Small’s body was found.
The coroner’s investigator found several disturbing items in the house, including numerous photos of women who appeared to have been assaulted and held against their will and a newspaper article about the identification of Small after her murder, Thomas said.
While the dead man’s DNA did not match any crimes, it was through this search that investigators discovered none of the items of evidence from Small’s murder — including a sexual assault kit and the victim’s clothing — were ever tested for DNA, Thomas said.
The DNA evidence was finally tested in August 2020, more than 34 years after Small’s killing, which revealed the presence of two male donors, one of whom was identified as Suff and the other as an unknown male.
Suff is a notorious convicted serial killer — also known as the Riverside Prostitute Killer or the Lake Elsinore killer, Thomas said.
In July 1995, Suff was found guilty and sentenced to death for 12 homicides that occurred in the Riverside County from 1989 to 1991, Thomas said.
Suff would admit under questioning that he was living in Riverside County and working in Lake Elsinore at a computer repair shop in 1986. On the day of the murder, Small went into the repair shop and gave him her phone number.
He called her later that day and he picked her up, after which they got into an argument and he became enraged because she knocked his glasses off his face. He retrieved a knife he kept in the vehicle and stabbed her multiple times in the chest as she sat in the passenger seat, Thomas said.
At the time of her death, Small had two small children and a younger sister, Thomas said. Detectives said her sister was relieved that the killer was found, but Small’s mother had died years before he was identified.
“Cathy had a family who cared about her deeply. It is horrifying that her life was taken away so violently and in such a tragic way,” Kathryn Barger, a member of the LA County Board of Supervisors, said during a press conference. “Justice will be served for Cathy and her family.”