No CBP personnel responding to Uvalde shooting violated policy or law: Internal report
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(UVALDE, Texas) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, did not violate policy or the law, according to an internal CBP report released on Thursday.
However, the report found responding agents weren’t properly trained for a school shooting event and there were no clear instructions from local agencies on the ground.
CBP personnel including a tactical team from the agency responded to the shooting at the school in 2022, and they ultimately killed the shooter, but not until after a lengthy delay in the response, according to the report.
The fault of the slow response was ultimately placed on local officials who were at the school but didn’t take command of the scene, according to the report.
Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the Robb Elementary School mass shooting.
“None of the first responders or CBP personnel who were in a position to take action against the assailant had access to an accurate school layout or understanding of where to locate the necessary keys for entry to critical areas of the school, which may have been mitigated by a functioning command and control system,” CBP said in a statement about the report.
Ahead of the report, CBP has taken more than half a dozen steps to address issues with its response to mass casualty events — and the lack of training before the shooting hindered the CBP response, it said.
“The training did not prepare CBP personnel for incidents in which they would be responding to a situation at a school, where an active shooter would be engaged behind a locked door, and where local authorities had not established a command and control framework. It also insufficiently covered using a ballistic shield, legal authorities, leadership responsibilities, and agency interoperability,” according to a press release from the agency.
As a result of the shooting, CBP said it has also corrected several policies. Use-of-force training materials have been distributed to agency personnel across the country, the agency is looking at acquiring more tools to respond to active shooters, and it’s also working on a plan for Congress to clarify federal authorities for responding to mass-casualty situations, according to CBP.
The inability of law enforcement to establish an “identifiable incident management or command and control protocols led to a disorganized response to the Robb Elementary School shooting,” the report found.
“No law enforcement official ever clearly established command at the school during the incident, leading to delays, inaction, and potentially further loss of life,” according to the report.
One Border Patrol agent told internal investigators they “never knew who was in command” of the scene.
At least 188 members of CBP responded to the incident, with 19% being members of the BORTAC team — the equivalent of a CBP SWAT team.
There was also no diagram of the school that was useful for the BORTAC agents to use, according to the report..
The report points to a 40-year-old Border Patrol training manual that had not been updated to accurately reflect the post-9/11 federal law enforcement apparatus under the Department of Homeland Security.
“… CBP training on active shooter response procedures did not adequately prepare responding personnel to deal with this situation,” the report states.
(MINNEAPOLIS, Mn) Police in Minneapolis arrested a man early Monday morning on charges of second-degree attempted murder for allegedly shooting his neighbor following a year-long dispute.
The arrest came after an intense standoff between a SWAT team and the suspect, 54-year-old John Herbert Sawchak, who surrendered peacefully on Monday, according to police.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose office is prosecuting the case, confirmed to ABC News on Monday that Sawchak is in custody and is being held on suspicion of second-degree attempted murder after allegedly shooting his neighbor, Davis Moturi, on the evening of Oct. 23, 2024.
“It was a very traumatic moment,” Moturi told ABC News in an interview on Sunday from his hospital bed. “Just to realize that like, you’ve been injured like that. Not only, not only shot, but shot in your neck and the people are fighting to save your life. And you don’t know if you can make it.”
According to a probable cause statement obtained by ABC News, Moturi’s’ wife told police that her husband was shot while he was outside pruning a tree near the couple’s property line. The incident was captured on surveillance video that was obtained by ABC News.
The suspect allegedly told Davis Moturi, “Touch my tree again and I’ll kill you,” Moturi’s wife told police, according to the probable cause statement.
Police said that the incident came after a year-old dispute between Moturi and Sawchak.
“Defendant has made countless other threats and engaged in almost constant harassment of the victim and his wife since they purchased their home in September 2023,” the probable cause statement said, referencing at least 19 other incidents of “vandalism, property destruction/theft, harassment, hate speech, verbal threats and threatened physical assaults” – the oldest of which dates back to October 2023.
“Even before [the shooting], it had a major impact on my life,” Moturi told ABC News, referencing the ongoing dispute with his neighbor.
According to charging documents obtained by ABC News, Sawchak is facing three additional felony charges for stalking, harassment and assault.
Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara said during an early morning press conference on Monday that there were multiple warrants out for Sawchak’s arrest, but he evaded police for four days and refused to emerge from his home.
“Minneapolis police exhausted all of our efforts to peacefully bring this situation to a resolution without prior to escalating the use of force with a SWAT team and special tactics,” O’Hara said.
“Thankfully, our officers were able to peacefully arrest this individual tonight after several hours of a SWAT operation,” he added.
ABC News’ attempts to reach out directly to Sawchak were unsuccessful and it is unclear if he has retained an attorney. Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty told ABC News on Monday that Sawchak is in custody and is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday afternoon.
O’Hara said on Monday that police made “dozens of attempts” to arrest Sawchak since April but “were unable to make contact with this individual.”
O’Hara acknowledged that law enforcement “failed” to protect Moturi in this case.
“We were unsuccessful,” O’Hara said, in reference to prior attempts to arrest the suspect. “And so in that sense, yes, we failed. We failed this victim. He should not have been shot. But I will say this – we had no reason to suspect that he would shoot … the neighbor from inside the house.”
Everoak Farms volunteers harvest sugar cane that could be salvaged after heavy winds and water from Hurricane Milton wrecked and flooded crops on the Orlando, Florida, farm. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ) — Florida’s agricultural fields — including the state’s iconic orange groves and berry farms — are routinely damaged by strong storms that roll through the state.
Some of the Sunshine State’s most important farms are now recovering from two of the 2024 season’s most powerful hurricanes, which struck one after the other.
On Sept. 27, Hurricane Helene became the strongest hurricane to strike Florida’s Big Bend. Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 10, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key. After both Category 4 storms brought life-threatening storm surge to the Gulf Coast, they turned toward the heart of the state, destroying farmland with strong winds and heavy rains, experts told ABC News.
While the state is no stranger to hurricanes, its agriculture industry is threatened every time a strong hurricane rolls in, Angela Lindsay, associate professor and disaster specialist at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), told ABC News.
Florida’s groves were heavily impacted by the recent hurricanes, which tore through regions with some of the most productive citrus acreage in the state, Matt Joyner, executive vice president and CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest citrus trade association, told ABC News.
Hurricane-force winds caused defoliation — or the leaves to fall off — damaged limbs and branches and even downed entire trees, snapping them at the roots, Lindsay said. While oranges are not yet ready for harvest, they are currently near maturity and heavier, making it easier for high winds to pull the fruit from their branches, Joyner said.
“We know that we have a lot of fruit on the ground for this year’s crop,” Joyner said.
At Showcase of Citrus, an orange grove in Clermont, Florida, near Orlando, the gusts from Milton bent some trees at a 45-degree angle, owner John Arnold told ABC News.
Floods often kill the citrus groves, especially young orange trees planted in low-lying areas, Arnold said, adding that several of his young orange trees were lost to flooding.
Mitigation is difficult, the farmers said. Complicating matters even further is the uncertainty of the forecast up until just a few days before landfall, making it difficult to tend to hundreds and thousands of acres in a short amount of time, Michael Hill, co-founder and CEO of H&A Farms in Mount Dora, Florida, told ABC News.
Citrus trees can be staked in order to provide support from the hurricane-force winds, Lindsay said. Some farmers have tried wrapping the trees in tarp-like material, but that technique is not commonly used, Lindsay added.
“I’ve seen storms that tipped over entire groves of mature trees,” Arnold said.
There’s not much that can be done to protect crops in the ground, said Hill, who grows strawberries and blueberries — two of the most vulnerable crops in the state, after citrus, experts say.
A tree fell on Hill’s home in Eustis, Florida, but once the storm passed, all he cared about was the state of his fields.
“That’s the least of my worries,” he said of the downed tree.
About 60% of the plastic mulch the strawberries were planted in on Hill’s farm were torn up by Milton, he said. Hill and his workers are attempting to re-lay the plastic while keeping the plants alive in a cooler.
For the dairy industry, the cows still need to be milked, but the stressed cows likely produce much less, Jeb Smith, president of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation, told ABC News.
“It may be a month before they’re able to get back to where production should be,” Smith said.
Structural damage often includes buildings and fences that require re-building, Smith said. Showcase of Citrus sustained some damage to its screen buildings for growing grapefruit, Arnold said. A barn at H&A Farm was destroyed by Milton’s hurricane-force winds, and the entire facility lost power for days, Hill said.
Once the storm rolls through, farmers try to save whatever fruit fell to the ground and attempt to stake damaged trees in an attempt to support what’s remaining, Lindsay said.
Milton was the fourth named storm to hit many of the farms in Central Florida in 14 months, following Hurricane Irma in September 2023 and Debby in early September 2024, Smith said.
“It leads to more impact, when you have blow after blow,” Smith said.
In 2022, Florida’s agriculture industry generated $182.6 billion in revenue and supported more than 2.5 million jobs, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services. While citrus is Florida’s signature crop, the state is an important producer of many other agricultural products. Florida is the second-largest producer of all oranges, strawberries, sweet corn and non-Valencia oranges in the country. More than 40 vegetables are grown commercially in the state, which ranks in the top three on production value of tomato, bell pepper, snap bean, squash, cabbage and cucumber, according to the University of Florida.
Sugarcane, timber, cattle and dairy are also major commodities for the state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Other storms in the recent past have been just as devastating, the experts said.
Farmers were in disbelief over the amount of fruit that had been blown to the ground after Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Ian in 2022, Lindsay said. The citrus industry saw a 1,000% loss as a result of Ian, Smith said.
In 2018, after Hurricane Michael struck the panhandle, researchers and officials couldn’t even get to some of the fields — many of which contain row crops of tomatoes and cotton — to assess the damage because of the damaged roadways, Lindsay said.
“We were using drones to look at them,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot there.”
Hurricane Ian in 2022 led to an estimated $7.9 billion in agricultural losses and impacted nearly 5 million acres, a report by the university found. Hurricane Irma in 2018 caused about $1.3 billion in losses, impacting about 1.9 million acres, according to an IFAS report.
Milton resulted in losses between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, in addition to the estimated $1.5 billion in damage caused by Idalia, Debby and Helene in the 13 months prior, according to a preliminary assessment by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services released Thursday.
Every named storm in recent memory that has passed through central Florida has caused damage to Arnold’s farmland, he said.
“Just as we replant trees and rehabilitate groves and look to recover and move into better seasons, we’re getting hit with these storms,” Joyner said. “It’s really been difficult for growers to kind of regain their footing and move forward.”
In addition to crop insurance, there are several programs in place for farmers, including loan and recovery programs by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Lindsay said. The data collected by IFAS is sent to federal officials, who then determine the amount of aid to be distributed to farmers.
Once the damage is assessed, farmers then must make long-term decisions on how to move forward, Smith said.
“Some of these producers will have impacts years down the road,” Smith said, adding that the adverse impacts on the citrus industry can even last for decades.
Hurricanes are just one of the hazards Florida farmers face regularly. The last few years have been tough on the industry, with citrus farmers experiencing widespread greening, a disease that impacts citrus trees, Arnold said.
Combined with freezes, market prices, other diseases, labor challenges and inflation, farmers in the state have left many farms struggling to keep afloat, Hill said.
“When you see Florida strawberries in your stores this year, know that it came from a farmer that chose not to give up,” Hill said.
(NEW YORK) — When Jill Antares Hunkler purchased land in Belmont County, Ohio, in 2007, she never envisioned her home would be surrounded by 78 oil and gas fracking wells a decade later, she said.
“I wanted to build my home where I had roots,” Hunkler, a seventh-generation Ohio Valley resident, told ABC News. “It was a place where I could live a more traditional, natural life.”
Hunkler’s three-acre property at the headwaters of the Captina Creek Watershed was one of hundreds in the area that she said became a magnet for fracking.
Her property sits on the Utica and Marcellus Shales in the Appalachian Basin, geologic formations known to hold large reserves of oil and natural gas.
As of April 2024, the Marcellus Shale contained about 120 million barrels of oil, while the Utica Shale contained 2.3 million barrels, according to the United States Geological Survey.
There are 1,625 fracking wells in Belmont Country this year, which marks a 25% increase from 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which oversees unitization orders in the state.
Hunkler said when oil and gas representatives called “landmen” came knocking on her door, calling her home and sending repeated notices, she learned of the state’s unitization laws. The fate of her land was largely out of her hands, she said.
“To be perfectly honest, it makes me cry even now,” Hunkler said.
What is unitization?
Unitization is the consolidation of multiple land parcels into a single operational unit for fracking, according to ODNR.
Instead of drilling multiple wells on separate properties, which can be inefficient, unitization combines adjacent properties over a pool to allow for a more coordinated approach to extracting oil or gas.
Because it’s multiple properties, most neighbors in the area must apply to lease their land, according to state law.
In Ohio, 65% of property owners in a project area must sign an application to lease their property for drilling before going forward, according to ODNR.
This leaves a population of dissenting or “non-participatory” landowners forced into fracking in the area, even if it’s not on their property.
Unitization has been legal in Ohio since 1965, however, the last decade has seen unitization orders surge to meet fracking demands.
The ODNR enacted 112 unitization orders in 2022 and nearly 100 in 2023, according to ODNR records.
Before 2021, which saw 73 unitization orders, ODNR enacted less than 50 orders per year between 2012 and 2020, according to records.
Negotiating a lease
Proponents believe fracking brings jobs back to the region, which historically relied on coal and steel manufacturing, and gives residents the opportunity to make passive income by leasing land.
“Natural gas production has been tremendously profitable for Ohio,” state Sen. George Lang and two researchers said in a 2023 press release posted on the Ohio Senate website. “The shale revolution has been the greatest driver of the state’s economic progress since the late 1990s. Ohio now ranks sixth among states in natural gas production, exporting to our neighbors and the world.”
Ohio law states landowners must make “just and reasonable” compensation for leasing sites, which can vary based on location, under state law.
In 2024, some local drillers reported paying landowners an average of $500 per acre, but lease bonus payments in southeast Ohio can range from $3,000–$6,000 per acre, according to McCleery Law Firm, which provides consultation and legal services to landowners considering entering, or impacted by, a leasing agreement.
“It is also an area where landowners are chronically exploited,” the firm says in their “Landowner’s Guide.”
“This is because landmen usually offer significantly less per acre if they suspect you lack knowledge of the market. Without knowledge of fair market value, an increase of two thousand dollars per acre might seem advantageous, when in reality, the starting offer was simply egregiously low,” the firm claims.
Property owners also receive royalties on the gas produced, which typically begins at 12.5%, according to ODNR.
Echoing Hunkler’s story, a study published this month in Nature Energy reviewed detailed records of landmen’s dealings with 37 property owners in Ohio to investigate how they may be disadvantaged in lease negotiations.
The records spanned from January 2014 and April 2021, which saw a boom of fracking increases in the state, according to the study.
Researchers found that companies used persistent and personal strategies to overcome landowner reluctance, such as repeated in-person visits, calls and in some cases, contacting their family members and neighbors.
The study cited a log of contact between a landman and a property owner in Noble County, Ohio.
“When their calls go unanswered, they send letters. When those are returned with ‘REFUSED’ handwritten across them, landmen drive to her house. When she refuses to answer the door, they speak to her neighbours and family members,” according to the study.
When property owners refused all requests, the study found widespread use of compulsory unitization.
“In roughly 40% of the wells drilled in Ohio, compulsory unitization applications were used because voluntary consent from landowners was not obtained,” according to the study.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources did not comment on claims against oil and gas agents to ABC News.
Changed way of life
“People that don’t live in southeast Ohio have no concept of what it’s like,” Randi Pokladnik, a lifelong resident of the Ohio River Valley and retired research chemist, told ABC News about fracking in the area.
“It sounds like a jet engine in the middle of the night and you can smell the emissions. It’s a constant barrage of sand trucks and fracking trucks with brine in them,” Pokladnik said.
She unaffectionately calls the nightly traffic the “brine truck parade.”
Pokladnik and her husband own property in Tappan, Ohio, and despite denying leasing requests from oil and gas representatives for over a decade, in February, Pokladnik’s property was “force pooled” to participate without their consent.
“It made me sick to my stomach when I first got the notice in the mail that they were going to be doing this,” Pokladnik said.
“This is like the ultimate slap in the face for somebody who’s an environmentalist,” she added.
Environmental and health effects
In 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency found scientific evidence that fracking can potentially impact drinking water resources under some circumstances.
Chemicals used for fracking may travel through cracks in the rock into an underground drinking water source and contamination could also occur if a well is improperly installed, if chemicals are spilled from trucks or tanks or if flowback is not effectively contained, according to the agency.
The Yale School of Public Health found that fracking has led to heightened concerns about its impact on the environment and human health due to wastewater and greenhouse gas emissions.
In response to health and environmental concerns, Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association said companies work to ensure the safety of the properties they work on and the record stands for itself.
Speaking about conventional fracking wells Brundrett told Energy News Network, “The fact that there have been only three major incidents since 2018 is a testament to the industry’s rigorous safety standards and practices.”
“Considering that only .004% of Ohio oil and gas operations have had a major reportable incident during that timeframe, I would put our industry’s safety numbers against any other manual industry in Ohio,” he added.
The incidents include a gas leak, crude oil spill and a combustor fire, according to the outlet.
ODNR says it has addressed water well complaints since 1983 and none of the investigations revealed groundwater quality problems due to fracking, the department said in a fracking fact sheet.
However, Pokladnik believes that the effects of fracking in the Ohio River Valley are not in a bubble and should be considered by everyone.
“There’s not a dome over these well pads and everything that we do here is eventually going to cause more climate change,” Pokladnik said.
“So even though you’re not living here and you won’t have to worry about drinking contaminated water or breathing these emissions directly, it is affecting your life,” she added.
