Prisoner at large after escaping from Texas hospital
Bellville Police Department
(BELLVILLE, Texas) — Police are searching for a prisoner who escaped custody while undergoing testing at a hospital in Bellville, Texas, on Thursday.
The inmate, Salvador Saucedo, has red hair and tattoos and isn’t handcuffed. He was wearing an orange shirt and blue pants when he escaped, according to the Bellville Police Department.
He is missing his front teeth and has face tattoos, according to the Austin County Sheriff’s Office.
Saucedo was in custody on charges of possession of a controlled substance, resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer, according to the Waller County Sheriff’s Office.
Saucedo escaped from custody at Bellville Hospital shortly after 7 p.m. on Thursday, police said.
He has not been seen since, according to law enforcement.
Authorities from the Bellville Police Department, Austin County Sheriff’s Office and Waller County Sheriff’s Office have multiple units searching for him, including K-9s, drones and a helicopter.
It is unknown if Saucedo is still in the Bellville area or not. Bellville is about an hour west of Houston.
Anyone who sees the suspect is being asked to call 911 or call the Waller County Sheriff’s Office at 979-826-8282 or the Austin County Sheriff’s Office at 979-865-3111.
(KILAUEA, HI) — One of the world’s most active volcanoes, located in Kilauea, Hawaii, erupted for the seventh time since December, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. local time Monday, the volcano released a “small, sporadic splatter foundation,” which then continued to increase in intensity until 6:41 p.m., when the eruptions began.
“Episode 7 of the ongoing Halema’uma’u eruption began at 6:42 p.m. HST on Jan. 27 and is currently feeding a small flow onto the crater floor,” USGS said in an advisory statement posted Monday evening. “Lava fountains are 100-120 ft high and eruption is likely to last 10-20 hours.”
The lava flow has covered 15-20% of the volcano’s crater floor, with additional lava flow emerging from the south side of the cone appearing at 7:35 p.m. local time.
“HVO (Hawaii Volcano Observatory) continues to closely monitor Kilauea and will issue an eruption update tomorrow morning unless there are significant changes before then,” USGS said.
USGS said that the eruption is contained within the closed area of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but warned about the risk of volcanic gas creating a haze of “vog” — volcanic smog — entering the atmosphere.
“Water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide are the primary hazard of concern, as this hazard can have far-reaching effects downwind,” USGS said in a statement.
The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Service encouraged people to stay away from the volcano’s enclosed area, since “high levels of volcanic gas and strands of volcanic glass are among the hazards.”
The eruption is under an orange warning, meaning the volcano is either currently erupting without any volcanic ash emissions, or it is “exhibiting heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption, timeframe uncertain,” according to the USGS website.
The USGS has provided a live stream for viewers to monitor activity. This intermittent series of eruptions began on Dec. 23, 2024, said the agency.
There are about 170 potentially active volcanoes, including Kilauea, in the United States, according to the USGS.
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — Ryan Routh, the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at the president-elect’s golf club in Florida, is now facing a state attempted murder charge in connection with a car accident that occurred following his arrest, officials announced Wednesday.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office said it has obtained an arrest warrant against Routh, who was apprehended on Interstate 95 in Martin County on Sept. 15 after he allegedly fled the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, authorities said.
Following his arrest, an accident occurred that seriously injured a 6-year-old girl who was traveling with her family, according to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody.
“As a result of that, we felt compelled to seek justice on her behalf and her family that will never be the same as they cope with her injuries,” Moody said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
The multi-vehicle accident occurred on I-95 approximately three or four miles south of where Routh’s traffic stop occurred, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
A Martin County deputy located the suspect’s vehicle at approximately 2:09 p.m. It was unclear if any vehicles or explosives were in the vehicle, and northbound traffic was stopped due to the “high-risk potential” of the traffic stop, according to the affidavit. Routh was taken into custody at approximately 2:23 p.m., according to the affidavit.
Southbound traffic was also stopped while authorities worked to clear Routh’s vehicle, and traffic began to back up in both directions for miles, according to the affidavit.
The accident occurred at approximately 3 p.m., according to the affidavit. The child, whose name has not been released, suffered critical injuries after a vehicle rear-ended the one she and her family were traveling in, according to the affidavit.
“When you couple those terrible injuries together with [Routh’s] other criminal conduct, which we believe rises to the level of domestic terrorism, it turns his actions into an attempted felony murder case,” Moody said.
Moody said her office has filed a complaint and arrest warrant against Routh on Wednesday. The charge carries a sentence of up to life in prison if convicted.
Moody said her office had reached out to the federal government regarding pursuing the attempted murder charge against Routh.
“They responded that we should not bring charges,” she said. “The excuse and the reasoning kept coming back to the need to protect the case and national security.”
Moody filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in October claiming the agency was unlawfully attempting to block Florida’s criminal investigation into the alleged assassination attempt against Trump.
ABC News has reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which is prosecuting the federal case against Routh, for comment.
Routh faces multiple federal charges in connection with the alleged attempted assassination.
On the day in question, Trump was playing golf on the course when a Secret Service agent spotted a gun barrel poking out from the tree line near the sixth green, according to investigators.
The agent then fired in the direction of the rifle and saw Routh fleeing the area and entering his nearby vehicle, according to the federal criminal complaint.
In the area of the tree line where the suspect was seen, agents found a digital camera, two bags, including a backpack, and a loaded SKS-style 7.62×39 caliber rifle with a scope, according to the complaint.
Trump was not harmed in the incident and was taken to a safe location by Secret Service agents.
Routh pleaded not guilty to federal charges including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate and assaulting a federal officer, as well as several firearms charges.
(WASHINGTON) — A judge on Tuesday will consider whether to temporarily block the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs across the federal government, in one of several lawsuits challenging Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s large-scale effort to slash the federal workforce.
The lawsuit, filed last week by a coalition of five federal workers’ unions, alleges that the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to fire massive numbers of federal employees across multiple agencies — including its recent deferred resignation offer to more than 2 million federal employees — violates Congress’ power to establish a federal workforce, as well as federal procedures that dictate how the workforce should be reduced.
“The Executive Branch acting as the ‘woodchipper for bureaucracy’ conflicts with Congress’s role as the creator, funder, and mission setter for the executive branch agencies,” the lawsuit said.
The unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of employees across dozens of federal agencies and departments, are seeking a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, claiming that the mass reduction of the federal work force will lead to a “critical” loss of revenues for unions as well as their influence at the bargaining table.
The National Treasury Employees Union, the unions claimed, stands to lose “as much as half of its dues revenue and around half of the workers that it represents.”
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have pushed back against the allegations, arguing that an order blocking the changes would “interfere with the President’s ability to manage, shape, and streamline the federal workforce to more closely reflect policy preferences and the needs of the American public.”
“[T]he President is charged with directing the Executive Branch workforce, and he has determined that the politically accountable heads of his agencies should take steps to streamline and modernize the workforce through measures including voluntary deferred resignations, removal of certain probationary employees, and RIFs [reductions in force],” the Justice Department wrote in a court filing.
The government also claimed that President Donald Trump’s executive action ordering the reductions is “consistent with applicable law,” and dismissed the unions’ concerns over their potential loss of revenues and bargaining power as “speculative.”
Since Trump returned to the White House, Musk, named by Trump as the head of DOGE, has been spearheading efforts to reduce the size of government, slash thousands of federal contracts, cut programs deemed to be wasteful, and root out fraud.
After ending its deferred resignation offer last week amid court battles challenging the program, the Trump administration has begun layoffs by targeting mostly probationary employees — recent hires who joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
This initial round of layoffs could impact more than 200,000 workers hired by the federal government within the last two years, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.
