Police officer shot inside home they were responding to for help
Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun Staff
(RALEIGH, NC) — A police officer has been seriously injured after a suspect opened fire at authorities from inside a home, officials said.
Officers were called to a home in the Renaissance Park neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina, just after 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Raleigh Police Deputy Chief of Operations Rico Boyce said.
Once at the scene, someone inside the home opened fire at responding officers, causing officers to return fire before striking and fatally wounding the suspect, police said.
One officer was shot during the exchange and was transported to a local hospital with serious injuries, Boyce said.
The incident was contained to the home, and the emergency alert that was sent to those in the area has since been lifted, Deputy Chief Boyce continued.
“I have been briefed by Chief Patterson concerning the shooting of a Raleigh police officer tonight. The officer is being treated at the hospital now. Anna and I are praying for a complete recovery,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein posted on social medi
Police did not give any further details behind the motivation of the shooting or the identities of those involved.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the federal government would cover 100% of costs for the initial disaster response to the Los Angeles wildfires.
Meeting with federal officials at the White House, Biden said the funds would go toward debris removal, temporary shelters, salaries for first responders and more for 180 days.
“We are with you,” Biden said. “We are not going anywhere. To the firefighters and first responders, you are heroes.”
As Biden spoke, five fires were spreading around the Los Angeles area. Roughly 28,000 acres had been scorched and hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. At least five people died in the fires, and many more injured.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is from California and whose neighborhood was forced to evacuate earlier this week, was also at the meeting.
“What we have seen in California and in particular in Southern California is apocalyptic in terms of the nature of it,” Harris said.
A major disaster declaration was approved by Biden, allowing victims of the fire to “immediately access funds and resources to jumpstart their recovery,” according to the White House. Biden also directed the Pentagon to provide any firefighting resources the area needs, including helicopters to help suppress the flames.
Biden cancelled his trip to Italy, where he was planning to meet with Pope Francis and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in his final foreign trip of his presidency, to focus on the federal response to the tragedy.
The president was in California on Wednesday and received a briefing from officials alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom, a target of attacks from President-elect Donald Trump over his handling of the fires.
Trump also claimed on Thursday morning that FEMA has “no money” under the Biden administration, which is false. Congress passed a bill in December that provided an additional $100 billion for disaster aid, including $29 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund. The infusion was less than the $40 billion Biden had requested for the agency.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was in Los Angeles on Thursday to meet with local officials and survey the damage.
FEMA also released a guide to assistance for those impacted by the fires to “jumpstart” the recovery process. The agency said individuals in designated areas may be able to receive money for essential items, including food, water, medication and other supplies.
(NEW ORLEANS, La.) — Nearly a month after a terrorist drove a truck down Bourbon Street, killing 14 people, New Orleans is set to host Super Bowl 59.
At a press briefing Monday, officials said there were no credible threats to the game, or its many surrounding events.
“Right now we have no specific credible threats to this event … which I think should give us all a sense of security,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in New Orleans on Monday. “We recognize the importance of making sure that we’re doing due diligence and being prepared for events as proactive as possible, and pre-deploying resources and partnerships that will help us make sure that these events come off safely and with a focus on security.”
She added, “We have partners that we are dedicated to working with to make sure we get through these types of events in a way that has been important to focus on the priorities.”
NFL Chief of Security Cathy Lanier said in the days after the terrorist attack, the NFL changed their security plan.
“We have reviewed and re-reviewed all the details of what happened on Jan. 1,” Lainer said. “We have reviewed and re-reviewed each of our roles within the overarching security plan, and we have reassessed and stressed tested — our timing, our communication protocols, our contingency measures and our emergency response plans multiple times over, over the past several weeks.”
There will be over 2,700 state, federal and local law enforcement members securing the game, according to officials.
Lainer said the event is a “no-drone zone” meaning drones are not allowed anywhere near the stadium. A drone that was not cleared to fly over M&T Bank Stadium briefly halted the Steelers-Ravens wild card game last month.
Noem was on Bourbon Street on Monday at the site of the terrorist attack. Bollards that were not in place during the New Year’s celebrations, due to repair, are now back in place.
“We have an opportunity to learn from what happened,” Noem told reporters earlier in the day, she said she also wanted to honor the victims lost. “The Super Bowl is the biggest Homeland Security event we do every single year.”
The game gets a SEAR 1 rating — meaning there is a federal coordinator that is in charge of the security, in this case Eric DeLaune, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ New Orleans field office.
DeLaune is a Louisiana native and securing the game is personal for him, he said.
“I have worked to coordinate the security of the land, air and local waterways, with the vital support of our partners, leveraging a united front of all of those law enforcement entitles,” he said. “In the days ahead, there will be a significant increased law enforcement presence in New Orleans, some of which will be visible and obvious.”
(NEW YORK) — Trevell Coleman, known professionally in the rap music world as G. Dep, is best known for his hit songs ‘Special Delivery’ and ‘Let’s Get It’. But his success was overshadowed by the overwhelming guilt he felt for shooting a man in 1993 and he decided one day in 2010 that he could no longer bear that burden.
Coleman, who joined P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records in 1998, was only 18 years old when he shot a stranger, in the chest with a .40-caliber handgun near the James Weldon Johnson Houses, located on Park Avenue and E. 114th Street in Harlem.
The case remained cold for 17 years until Coleman made the shocking decision to confess to his crime.
“I think I was just at a point, you know, where it was like enough is enough,” Coleman told ABC News’ Deborah Roberts from prison in 2013.
Coleman said he ambushed the man during an attempted robbery and then fled the scene. He wondered for years whether the man had survived the shooting. After a weeklong trial in 2012, a jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
At the end of 2023, after serving more than 13 years, G. Dep was shown mercy. With the original prosecutor’s and judge’s support, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul granted him clemency.
He walked free in April 2024.
“It’s still things that I have to,” Coleman said. “You know, I would like to give back to the society.”
Coleman, at 50, is searching for a new beginning. He earned an associate’s degree in prison and has the support of his wife, Laticia, and his adult children.
Coleman now works in music production at SCAN-Harbor, a nonprofit organization serving at-risk children and families in Harlem and the South Bronx.
He speaks to young people and shares his story to motivate them to avoid a life of crime, emphasizing the importance of staying out of prison.
“You take somebody’s life like, what do you do to make up for that,” Coleman told SCAN-HARBOR youth. “But, you know, all you can do is make steps toward it, you know, making it better.”
While he now tries to help guide vulnerable kids down the right path, Coleman understands the harsh reality that many end up in prison — some even for life.
“Yeah, he did something wrong,” Lew Zuchman, Scan-Harbor executive director, said. “But… that his conscience, which moved him to turn himself in, is very special to me. And I’m hoping that he can… really share this and explain this to our young people.”
Federal and state officials have debated suitable sentences for youth offenders who have committed violent crimes, as has the Supreme Court in a series of rulings.
In 2012, Miller v. Alabama found that mandatory life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders was unconstitutional. Four years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the 2012 Miller v. Alabama decision should apply retroactively to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole.
Since the rulings, more than 1,000 juvenile lifers have been released. As of today, 28 states and Washington, D.C., have banned such sentences.
“I was a follower in a way,” Coleman said. “Like, I learned that, you know, I wasn’t really thinking and I wasn’t really being an individual.”
While Coleman and others were given a second chance, youth in other states have more challenges. Pennsylvania is one of the states where regulations for young offenders remain among the strictest, making advocacy even more imperative.
Pennsylvania had the highest number of so-called “juvenile lifers” of any state at the time of Miller v. Alabama, with the majority coming from Philadelphia.
In Pennsylvania, children as young as 10 can be charged, prosecuted, and convicted as adults. This is something that John Pace, a senior reentry coordinator at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, highlights.
At the age of 17, Pace was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree homicide. He served 31 years and earned a college degree while incarcerated.
“The ’80s was a time period in which the war on drugs was very prevalent,” Pace said. “It made it easy for legislators to create laws that would make it easy to prosecute young people as adults.”
Pace now helps mentor incarcerated youth through the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. One of those youths is 26-year-old Raequan Deal, born and raised in Philadelphia. In 2016, when he was 17, Deal was convicted of two felonies and served a total of twenty-two months in an adult county jail.
While incarcerated, Deal found support from the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, an organization dedicated to preventing children like him from being placed in adult jails and prisons and advocating for the release of “juvenile lifers.”
“Being in jail was no fun place, it can make or break you. Luckily it made me, you know,” Deal said. “So I kind of see though I went to prison, I came out as a better person.”
