One dead, two missing in ‘major marine incident’ off Connecticut coast
(NEW YORK) — One person is dead and two people have been reported missing with several others injured in what authorities are describing as a “major marine incident” that has caused “mass casualty” in Connecticut, officials said.
The North Madison Volunteer Fire Department says that the three people reported missing do not have life jackets and that multiple personnel and ambulances from the towns surrounding Old Saybrook, where the incident is currently ongoing, are assisting with the operation.
Authorities responded to the boating accident at approximately 9:15 p.m. Monday and discovered a single motorboat floating, half-submerged, near the Harbor One Marina in Old Saybrook. There was significant damage to the boat, which hit the east-facing jetty at the mouth of the Connecticut River.
A total of nine people were on the boat. An adult male was recovered deceased, and six people were taken to the hospital for treatment. As of 1 a.m., two people were still being searched for.
“A mass casualty incident describes an incident in which emergency medical services resources, such as personnel and equipment, are overwhelmed by the number and severity of casualties,” the North Madison Volunteer Fire Department said in a follow up statement online describing the operation.
No other details about the cause of the accident or the identities of the victims have been made available and the incident is ongoing.
(AUSTIN, Texas.) — A Texas woman who self-managed her abortion is suing prosecutors and a local sheriff after she was held in jail for two nights on a murder charge that was ultimately dismissed.
Lizelle Gonzalez, a Star County, Texas, resident, filed a civil rights complaint alleging that hospital staff provided her private information to prosecutors and the county sheriff who later charged her with murder, according to court documents.
Under Texas’ multiple abortion bans, it is not a crime for a woman to obtain or seek abortion care for herself; the abortion bans target physicians and anyone who aids a woman in obtaining or seeking an abortion.
Gonzalez is alleging the prosecutors and the sheriff violated her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and is seeking over $1 million in damages. Two prosecutors — District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez and District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera — as well as Starr County Sheriff Rene Fuentes and Starr County are all named in the lawsuit.
State law prohibits physicians from providing abortion care and places civil and criminal penalties on anyone who aids a woman in obtaining abortion care unless the mother’s life is at risk.
Complaint alleges privacy law violations Gonzalez says she went to an emergency room in January 2022 after having taken “Cytotec Icetrogen 400 mcg” — otherwise known as misoprotol, one of the two medications used in the abortion pill regimen — to cause an abortion when she was 19 weeks pregnant, according to her complaint.
An exam found no contractions and found a fetal heart rate so she was discharged from the hospital and told to follow up days later, according to her lawsuit.
Less than an hour after she was discharged, she was taken back to the hospital with complaints of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. No fetal cardiac activity was detected upon examination and a cesarean section was performed. She delivered a stillborn child, according to court documents.
Gonzalez alleged her private medical information was then given to state prosecutors and the sheriff, ultimately leading to her arrest which she says violated federal privacy laws.
Gonzalez alleged in court documents that the district attorney’s office and the Starr County Sheriff’s Office had agreements with a local hospital to report these types of cases. Gonzalez also alleged there are other women who’s health information was also shared for the purpose of investigations and potential indictments.
She alleged that two district attorneys and the Starr County’s sheriff presented false and misleading information to a grand jury to secure an indictment against her, according to court documents.
Gonzalez was arrested in April 2022 and held in jail for two nights before a $500,000 bond was posted and she was released. The charges against her were dismissed two days after she was released.
Due to her indictment and arrest, Gonzalez suffered “humiliation” which has “permanently affected her standing in the community,” she alleged in court documents.
Earlier this year, Ramirez agreed to pay a $1,250 fine under a settlement reached with the State Bar of Texas and to have his license held in a probated suspension for 12 months for his prosecution of acts clearly not criminal under state law. He remains the Starr County district attorney.
Ramirez and Barrera have sought to have the suit dismissed and have argued in court documents that they have “absolute immunity for the individual claims against them because the pleaded facts show nothing other than actions taken as part of the judicial phase of criminal proceedings,” according to court documents.
Fuentes also sought to get the case thrown out and argued that he has “qualified immunity” and argued that she did not specify claims against him specifically, but rather against his office.
An attorney representing Ramirez, Barrera, Fuentes and Starr County declined to comment on the lawsuit and told ABC News all responses will be through court filings.
(ATLANTA) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, did not appear Friday at a hearing held by a Republican-led state Senate committee that has been investigating her.
Willis has challenged the legality of the subpoenas she received from the committee, a spokesperson for her office previously told ABC News.
The hearing today was set to include “sworn testimony” from Willis, according to a press release from the committee.
Willis’ attorney, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Willis “will not appear until there has been a judicial determination of the validity of the subpoena.”
Barnes did not respond Friday to a request for comment from ABC News.
Republican State Sen. Bill Cowsert, the chairman of the committee, said at the beginning of the hearing that “we have subpoenaed Fani Willis to testify … she is defying her subpoena and not appearing.”
“But we will welcome her if she appears at some point during the meeting,” Cowsert said, before continuing the hearing with other issues and witnesses.
Willis charged Trump and 18 others in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. All defendants, including Trump, pleaded not guilty, then four defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against the others.
The judge in the case, Scott McAfee, ruled in March that either Willis or prosecutor Nathan Wade must step aside from the case due to a “significant appearance of impropriety” stemming from a previous romantic relationship between Wade and Willis. Wade subsequently stepped down.
The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations was established earlier this year with a stated goal to “thoroughly investigate the allegations of misconduct” by Willis.
It said it would look to “enact new or amend existing laws and/or change state appropriations to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
Cowsert previously said it was not within the committee’s authority to seek to disqualify Willis from the election case or to criminally prosecute her, but rather to “investigate many of these troubling allegations.”
A Georgia court of appeals paused the election interference case in June, pending the resolution of a court battle over Willis’ being allowed to remain on the case..
Oral arguments in that matter are currently scheduled for Dec. 5, a month after the presidential election.
In a separate case, a Georgia state prosecutor said in a statement Friday that he would not pursue criminal charges against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones for acting as one of Trump’s so-called “fake electors” in the 2020 election.
Pete Skandalakis, the head of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, was tasked with investigating Jones after Willis was disqualified from investigating him in 2022 by a Fulton County judge after Willis held a fundraiser for Jones’ political opponent.
Skandalakis, in his decision Friday, wrote that the case against Jones “does not warrant further consideration” and that Jones “did not act with criminal intent” when he served as an alternate elector and aided Trump’s efforts in the state in other ways.
Jones was not indicted in Willis’ election interference probe.
(NEW YORK) — A day after former President Donald Trump asked a federal appeals court for a stay that would delay the sentencing in his New York hush money case, the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Thursday asked the court to reject Trump’s request.
Trump’s longshot attempt to delay his Sept. 18 sentencing came a day after District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied Trump’s bid to move his criminal case to federal court.
In a 28-page filing late Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to stay Judge Hellerstein’s order — a move that would delay Trump’s criminal case, including his sentencing, from moving forward.
“Absent the requested stay, President Trump and the American people will suffer irreparable harm,” defense attorneys Emil Bove and Todd Blanche wrote.
In their filing on Thursday, prosecutors said there’s no reason for the appellate court to get involved.
“For one thing, state court is already considering defendant’s request to defer a ruling on his post-trial motion and to delay the sentencing hearing until after the election,” Steven Wu, chief of appeals in the Manhattan DA’s office, said in a letter filed to the court.
Trump’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that the former president’s case belongs in federal court because the allegations and evidence in the case relate to Trump’s official acts as president — an argument defense attorneys said was bolstered by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.
In their filing, Trump’s attorneys emphasized the “irreparable harm” of allowing the sentencing to proceed because it could result in Trump’s “unconstitutional incarceration while the 2024 Presidential election is imminent.”
“Unlawfully incarcerating President Trump in the final weeks of the Presidential election, while early voting is ongoing, would irreparably harm the First Amendment rights of President Trump and voters located far beyond New York County,” defense attorneys wrote.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election. He has said he will appeal the decision.
On Friday, a panel of judges on the same federal appeals court is set to consider Trump’s appeal of a 2023 civil judgment that found him liable for the sexual abuse of magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.