Person linked to missing USF students in custody after barricading themselves: Police
In these photos released by the University of South Florida Police Department, Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy are shown. (University of South Florida Police Department)
(TAMPA, Fla.) — A person who investigators said was linked to the disappearance of two University of Southern Florida doctoral students was taken into custody Friday, police said.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said they responded to a “barricaded subject connected” to the probe into the whereabouts of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, who went missing on April 16.
“The situation has been resolved. One individual is in custody,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post Friday afternoon, without giving more details.
Limon and Britsy, both 27, were last seen at separate locations in the Tampa area on April 16, according to the USF Police Department.
Officials received new information to warrant upgrading their status from missing to endangered, which indicates they are at risk of physical injury or death, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.
The sheriff did not provide any more details about the investigation or search efforts.
Limon and Bristy are friends, and a mutual acquaintance reported them missing, campus police said.
Limon, who is pursuing a degree in geography, environmental science and policy, was last seen at his Tampa residence at approximately 9 a.m. on April 16, according to police.
Bristy, who is studying chemical engineering, was last seen at the USF Tampa campus at the Natural & Environmental Sciences Building at approximately 10 a.m. that day, police said.
Both students have been entered into state and national missing persons’ databases.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to call the University of South Florida Police Department at 813-974-2628.
-ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 16, 2026, in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump is traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada to promote the tax cuts he signed into law in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” ahead of the midterm election. Tomorrow he will deliver remarks at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for President Donald Trump say they are “in discussions” with the Department of Justice to potentially resolve a $10 billion lawsuit that Trump, two of his sons, and his company filed against the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year.
According to a court filing on Friday, lawyers for the Trumps requested a deadline extension so they can “engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation.”
President Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department in January related to the unauthorized disclosure of tax information during Trump’s first term.
A government contractor with the IRS pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing the tax information of Donald Trump and other wealthy Americans and leaking it to media outlets in 2019 and 2020.
“Defendants have caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing,” the Trumps said in their lawsuit, which requested $10 billion in damages.
“The Parties are engaging in discussions and need time to work through how to ensure those discussions can take place productively to avoid protracted litigation,” the attorneys said in Friday’s filing with the consent of the DOJ lawyers. “This brief period will allow the Parties to initiate and structure those discussions in a manner that best serves the interests of all Parties and the Court.”
The Department of Justice had not yet responded to the lawsuit and faced an impending deadline this month. Friday’s filing said both sides agreed to the 90-day extension.
A group of former government officials last month filed an amicus brief with the court to raise concerns about the ethics of the president suing his own government for billions.
“This case is extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics,” the amicus filing said. “To treat this case like business as usual would threaten the integrity of the justice system and the important taxpayer and privacy protections at the heart of this case.”
The Trumps, in the suit, argued that the IRS and Treasury Department should have had “appropriate technical, employee screening, security, and monitoring” to prevent the theft of tax information.
Crosses dedicated to the 21 victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary are placed in front of the school on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 in Uvalde. (Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.
Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.
Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.
Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.
The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.
Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.
Gonzales and Arredondo are the only officers charged. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Investigations have determined that Salvador Ramos, 18, acted alone in carrying out the massacre. He was killed on-site at Robb Elementary School.
Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts, one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who died in the shooting and 10 students who survived in classroom 112.
According to the indictment, he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing the gunshots and learning about the shooter’s location.
Arredondo was charged with 10 felony counts for allegedly endangering the 10 survivors by delaying the law enforcement response and not following active shooter protocols.
Arredondo and Gonzales were charged at the same time, but Gonzales will be facing trial first and alone.
Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.
Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison, though judges and juries in Texas have broad discretion in imposing sentences, according to Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
“There’s a lot of different ways that this could go,” she said. “All the children who were so horrifically killed that would seem to motivate a longer sentence for anyone who is found to have some fault.”
Ahead of trial, prosecutors issued at least 75 subpoenas to potential witnesses, including police officers, teachers, and families of victims, according to court filings.
More than 20 members of the elite Texas Rangers, 16 members of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and multiple physicians from nearby hospitals have received subpoenas, according to court filings.
In the attempt to make their case against Gonzales, prosecutors turned to a child endangerment law more commonly used to prosecute negligent parents or caretakers responsible for things like leaving a child in a hot car or without supervision at a beach. The law has rarely been used against police officers, experts noted, because of the difficulty in proving they had a legal obligation to the children.
“The critical issue here is whether the individual has a duty to act,” said Thompson, the law professor in Houston.
According to Houston-based defense attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, prosecutors will need to establish that Gonzales had a legal duty — not just a moral obligation — to intervene and that he failed to follow his training for active shooter scenarios.
“The jury is going to have the nasty task of looking through some horrible things to determine if he had the duty to act,” she said, referencing evidence such as body camera footage and frantic 911 calls from the shooting.
Legal experts who spoke with ABC News noted that Gonzales’ role as a responding officer — not the commander or case agent at the scene — could make it tough to convince the jury the man’s conduct amounted to a crime.
If prosecutors can secure a conviction, it would mark the first time that a police officer has been held accountable for how they carried out their duties at a mass shooting to which they responded.
Prosecutors rarely attempt to charge police officers who have responded to mass shootings, according to Phil Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested. Of the 25,000 arrests since 2005 included in the database, Stinson identified only two prosecutions similar to those against Gonzales and Arredondo.
Defense attorneys for Gonzales have argued he is being unfairly scapegoated for a crime he didn’t commit and that he did all he could to save and rescue children who were in imminent danger.
“Those precious souls were stolen by a monster that day, but that monster was not Adrian [Gonazales],” defense attorney Nico LaHood told ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio. “He was there, he was present. He was going into danger. And so the narrative of the government is something we’re going to contest highly, and that’s going to be the point of contention before this jury.”
Court filings shed little light on the case Gonzales’ lawyers will mount, though attorneys have signaled plans to use drone footage from Robb Elementary to assist them.
“The factual circumstances of this case intricately entail the timing and spatial proximity of the actors and events unfolding at Robb Elementary school on the day of the murders,” attorneys wrote in a court filing.
: Funeral ceremony is held for people, who lost their lives following the attacks launched by the US and Israel against Iran on February 28, at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran, Iran on March 9, 2026. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as “an operational trigger” for “sleeper assets” outside the country, according to a federal government alert sent to law enforcement agencies.
The alert, reviewed by ABC News, cites “preliminary signals analysis” of a transmission “likely of Iranian origin” that was relayed across multiple countries shortly after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on Feb. 28.
The intercepted transmission was encoded and appeared to be destined for “clandestine recipients” who possess the encryption key, the kind of message intended to impart instructions to “covert operatives or sleeper assets” without the use of the internet or cellular networks.
It’s possible the transmissions could “be intended to activate or provide instructions to prepositioned sleeper assets operating outside the originating country,” the alert said.
“While the exact contents of these transmissions cannot currently be determined, the sudden appearance of a new station with international rebroadcast characteristics warrants heightened situational awareness,” the alert said.
While the alert is careful to say there is “no operational threat tied to a specific location,” it does instruct law enforcement agencies to increase their monitoring of suspicious radio-frequency activity.
If the contents of the alert prove true, it would confirm the fears expressed by law enforcement officials after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran that sleeper cells deployed around the West could be used for retaliation.
