Talk of the Town
(NEW YORK) — Pope Leo addressed President Donald Trump on Saturday while aboard the papal plane on his trip to Angola.
The pope said recent remarks that appeared to address the U.S. president were prepared two weeks ago, before Trump had commented on him.
“Yet as it happens, it was looked at as if I was trying to debate, again, the president, which is not my interest at all,” he said.
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(ORANGEBURG, S.C.) — Two people were killed and one person was wounded after a shooting Thursday night on the campus of South Carolina State University, the school said.
The shooting, which was reported in an apartment at the Hugine Suites student residential complex on the Orangeburg campus, prompted a campus lockdown that remained in place hours after the shooting, according to a news release from the university.
Officials have not released any details about a suspect.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) is investigating the shooting, the university said.
The university said school officials have not confirmed the victims’ identities or the condition of the wounded person.
Classes are canceled Friday, the university said.
Two shootings on the campus in October, including one at the same student housing complex, left one person dead and another wounded.
The university has a student population of about 2,800 students.
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(NEW YORK) — The murder trial of Kouri Richins, a Utah mom accused of fatally poisoning her husband with fentanyl who self-published a children’s book on grieving following his death, is set to get underway with opening statements on Monday.
The 35-year-old realtor was charged with aggravated murder in connection with the 2022 death of her husband, Eric Richins, following a lengthy investigation. Prosecutors allege she spiked his cocktail with a lethal dose of fentanyl.
Her charges also include attempted aggravated murder, with prosecutors alleging she gave her husband a sandwich laced with fentanyl on Valentine’s Day two weeks before his death in an initial, failed attempt to kill him.
She has pleaded not guilty. The trial in Park City is scheduled to last up to five weeks.
“Kouri has waited nearly three years for this moment: the opportunity to have the facts of this case heard by a jury, free from the prosecution’s narrative that has dominated headlines since her arrest,” Kouri Richins’ attorneys — Wendy Lewis, Kathy Nester and Alex Ramos — said in a statement ahead of Monday’s opening statements. “Now the state must prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“What the public has been told bears little resemblance to the truth,” the statement continued. “We welcome the courtroom, where evidence is bound by rules, not sensational coverage. Kouri is a mother who wants to go home to her children. We are confident this jury will make that possible.”
Prosecutors allege that Kouri Richins was in “financial distress” due to her realty company’s debts and believed she would have financially benefited from her husband’s death, according to the charging document. They also allege she was having an affair and purportedly told a witness months before her husband’s death that she “felt ‘stuck’ and ‘trapped’ in her marriage and it would be better if Eric Richins just died,” according to the charging document.
Eric Richins, 39, was found dead in the couple’s bedroom in the early hours of March 4, 2022. An autopsy determined he died from fentanyl intoxication, and the level of fentanyl in his blood was approximately five times the lethal dosage, according to the charging document. The medical examiner determined the fentanyl was “illicit fentanyl,” not medical grade, according to the charging document.
Prosecutors allege that Kouri Richins purchased illicit fentanyl shortly before the Valentine’s Day incident and again before his death, at which point she allegedly asked for stronger drugs.
Weeks before her husband’s death, she is accused of fraudulently securing a life insurance policy for her husband with his forged signature, and then fraudulently claiming the benefits following his death, according to the charging document.
Kouri Richins has proclaimed her innocence, speaking out from jail in an audio recording released in May 2024.
“The world has yet to hear who I really am, what I’ve really done or didn’t do,” Kouri Richins insisted in the audio, provided to ABC News through a trusted confidant. “What I really didn’t do is murder my husband.”
Kouri Richins has remained in Summit County Jail since her arrest in May 2023.
A month prior to her arrest, the mom of three young sons appeared on a “Good Things Utah” segment on Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KTVX to promote her children’s book. In the segment, Kouri Richins said her husband of nine years died “unexpectedly” and that his death “completely took us all by shock.”
Kouri Richins also faces over two dozen charges in a separate case filed last year alleging she committed mortgage fraud in 2021. The charging document alleges she submitted falsified bank statements in support of mortgage loan applications for her realty business, committed money laundering and issued bad checks.
The charges in the case also allege she murdered her husband for financial gain as she “stood on the precipice of total financial collapse.” According to the charging document, around the time of Eric Richins’ death, her realty company owed lenders nearly $5 million, and his estate was worth approximately $5 million.
She has not yet entered a plea to those charges.
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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Friday dismissed the criminal human smuggling case brought by the Department of Justice against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss, finding that the federal government failed to rebut Abrego Garcia’s “presumption of vindictiveness.”
Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March of last year to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, after which U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis released him from ICE detention while he was awaiting trial.
Judge Crenshaw, in his decision Friday, wrote that the timing of a DHS agent’s decision to reopen a closed investigation of a November 2022 traffic stop, and that “now unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation to Abrego’s successful lawsuit taints the investigation with a vindictive motive.”
“Because the presumption of vindictiveness remains unrebutted, the indictment must be dismissed,” Crenshaw said.
The criminal charges in Tennessee stem from a 2022 traffic stop that was disclosed in an April 2025 press release issued by the Department of Homeland Security, which said it had a “bombshell investigative report” regarding the stop, alleging that Abrego Garcia was a suspected human trafficker. The release included a screengrab of body camera video from the traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia was not charged or arrested during the traffic stop, which lasted for more than an hour. Body camera footage showed Tennessee troopers — after questioning Abrego Garcia — discussing among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking because nine people were traveling in the vehicle without luggage.
“Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego,” Crenshaw wrote, referring to now-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement following the order, “Another activist judge has placed politics above public safety. The judge’s order is wrong and dangerous, and we will appeal.”
“Justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill, and I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward,” Abrego Garcia said in a statement released by CASA, an immigrant advocacy group that represents him.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department,” Abrego Garcia’s criminal attorneys told ABC News in a statement. “We are so pleased that he is a free man.”
In Friday’s dismissal order, Judge Crenshaw mentioned the involvement in the case of high-ranking DOJ officials including Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, who called the case a “top priority” in emails to prosecutors. He also mentioned a Feb. 5, 2025, memo from then-Attorney General Pam Bondi warning DOJ staff of potential termination if they refused to advance the administration’s goals.
Judge Crenshaw concluded that while there was insufficient evidence to prove actual vindictiveness, the government could not justify its sudden shift from wanting to deport Abrego Garcia to prosecuting him.
“The evidence it labels as newly discovered was available to be obtained with due diligence long before April 2025,” the judge wrote. “Even more, it does not explain the Government’s change in position to remove Abrego and not prosecute him to then prosecute and not remove him.”
In his order, Crenshaw quoted former Attorney General Robert H. Jackson: “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”
Abrego Garcia had been scheduled to go to trial on the Tennessee charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, in January.
He is still fighting his deportation case in Maryland, where U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has blocked the government from re-detaining him.
ABC News’ Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
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