Prosecutor in Tyre Nichols trial tells jury that officers laughed, bragged in closing

(NEW YORK) — Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricane Maria — nearly seven years after the powerful Category 4 storm caused extensive damage to the island’s already delicate infrastructure.

September marks National Preparedness Month and the start of Hispanic Heritage Month — stark reminders of the work that remains to be done on the island, especially as climate change could lead to more rapidly intensifying hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin.

Getting Puerto Rico to the necessary storm preparedness is about “justice and fairness” in protecting a unique culture and heritage that belongs to the United States, Jorge Gonzalez-Cruz, professor at the University of Albany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center who has researched urban energy sustainability in Puerto Rico, told ABC News.

“We are U.S. citizens and deserve the best possible opportunity to develop and grow and have a sense of well-being and prosperity,” said Gonzalez-Cruz, who was born and raised on the island.

Hurricane Maria brought 155 mph winds as it made landfall near the city of Yabucoa, on the southeast portion of the island, on Sept. 20, 2017. The storm knocked out 95% of cell towers, leaving residents without the ability to communicate. Power, already scarce due to Hurricane Irma just weeks before, was knocked out on the entire island. Flooding on the island was rampant, with 13 locations reaching record flood stage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Structural damage to buildings was widespread, and nearly all road signs and traffic lights were destroyed, officials said.

Some communities were without power for up to a year, according to Gonzalez-Cruz.

Out of the nearly 3,000 deaths attributed to Maria, only dozens were as a result of the actual storm, Kyle Siler-Evans, senior engineer of RAND, a nonprofit research institute and public sector consulting firm, told ABC News. The rest of the fatalities were caused by lack of access to clean water, food and power for an extended period of time, he added.

The frequency of strong storms that impacted the U.S. in 2017 likely contributed to delays in response to Puerto Rico, Sally Ray, director of domestic funds for the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, told ABC News. Hurricane Harvey brought widespread flooding to the Houston area in August 2017. Hurricane Irma caused extensive damage in Florida after striking the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, in early September 2017.

“By the time you got to Maria, you know, everybody had given all their attention and money to Harvey and not as much to the subsequent storms of that season,” Ray said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent storms that followed and the rise of inflation delayed the reconstruction even more, Siler-Evans said.

Puerto Rico was awarded $34 billion from the federal government for Hurricane Maria recovery efforts, $28.6 billion of which was allocated for permanent work and management costs, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As of September 2023, 86% of FEMA’s Projects for Puerto Rico, including hazard mitigation and management costs had been completed, according to FEMA.

Gonzalez-Cruz described recovery efforts as being at a “good pace,” despite the setbacks. Improvements continue to be made to the power system, new flooding zones are regularly identified and reconstruction is moving steadily across the island, he said.

Thousands of smaller projects, such as the building of baseball fields and repairs to roads and bridges, are currently in the works as well, Siler-Evans told ABC News.

“But, [there’s] still a lot of work to be done,” Gonzalez-Cruz said.

Puerto Rico is often in the bullseye of storm systems that generate in the Atlantic Basin, the experts said. Every extreme weather event to impact the island since 2017 has been a litmus test of what still needs to be done to modernize its aging infrastructure, much of which was built during the mid-20th century.

More than 30,000 homes still had damaged roofs — covered in blue tarp — in 2019 as Hurricane Dorian neared the island, but a direct hit was avoided due to a late shift in track. In 2020, one million customers were without power following back-to-back earthquakes. An explosion and subsequent fire at a substation left 900,000 customers on the island without power in June 2021. Another massive fire at a major power plant caused a massive outage for about 1.3 million customers in April 2022, followed by Hurricane Fiona in September of that year.

Fiona was considered the first big test of the improvements made on the infrastructure since Maria, Gonzalez-Cruz said. The entire island lost power following the impact of the Category 1 storm.

The most recent named storm, Hurricane Ernesto, caused significant flooding on the island and left 730,000 customers without power — about half the island — after striking the island last month, officials said.

“There’s this whole cycle of problems that happens after a storm like Ernesto that [doesn’t] get the attention,” Ray said.

The toll from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria took on the collective psyches of Puerto Ricans cannot be understated, Gonzalez-Cruz said.

“It also shocked the makeup of the Puerto Rican people,” he said. “It revealed a lot of challenges that the island has been dealing with over [the] years.”

FEMA, its federal partners and the Government of Puerto Rico continue working closely on the island’s unprecedented recovery mission, a FEMA spokesperson said in an emailed statement to ABC News.

“FEMA is committed to the work that lies ahead and to ensuring that this historic recovery will have a lasting, positive impact on future generations,” the spokesperson said. “As National Hispanic Heritage Month begins, FEMA is proud to mention that its Hispanic and Latino Employee Resource Group is one of the largest in the agency with nearly 1,000 members across the country, many of whom are Puerto Rican and are leading the island’s long-term recovery efforts.

A request for comment from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority was not immediately answered.

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(DELPHI, Ind.) — The small town of Delphi, Indiana, is reeling with grief and shock after the horrific double murder of two teenage girls in broad daylight, forever changing the lives of those who knew and loved the victims.

Now, seven years later, one man is standing trial in the murders.

The story of the Delphi murders begins and ends on the Monon High Bridge Trail. It was here that police believe Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, spent the last moments of their lives.

On Feb. 13, 2017, the two best friends went missing and were found dead the following day. Tens of thousands of tips were received, dozens of people were interviewed, and a crucial piece of evidence emerged: a video recorded by one of the girls that pointed directly to a suspect.

“For a long time, the question was, ‘Who is Bridge Guy?'” ABC News’ Janel Klein said. “A lot of people in town thought they recognized him.”

The case went cold but five years after the murders, in 2022, police arrested Richard Allen, who worked at a local CVS store in Delphi. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while kidnapping in the deaths of Abby and Libby.

Today, the question is whether Allen is the man on the bridge as he stands trial.

Allen has pleaded not guilty to the murders, but the prosecution claims they have more than 60 confessions from him admitting to killing the girls. He allegedly confessed to wardens, inmates, family members, and almost anyone who would listen within the prison and jailhouse setting.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before,” Tracy Walder, a former FBI special agent, said. “They typically confess one time, right? They don’t do so over and over and over.”

A key moment in the trial was when audio recordings of Allen calling his wife and mother from jail were played. The audio reveals Allen admitted to committing the crime, and asking his wife Kathy, “Do you still love me?”

Despite the alleged confessions, Allen’s defense has called a list of experts as they try to poke holes in the state’s case.

Allen’s defense has sought to focus the jury’s attention on Allen’s mental health, and addressed the issue of him declining after being held in solitary confinement for months.

“We heard from his psychologist who testified as to what a decline he had and some of the behaviors that he displayed in prison were alarming. He was naked a lot,” Klein said. “He was rolling around on the floor. He was eating paper. He was drinking from his toilet. All of these things, they say, were proof that he was really suffering mentally and entering psychosis, including at the time when he was admitting to these crimes and making numerous confessions to his wife and mother.”

Another key point for the defense is that investigators found no DNA evidence at the scene linking Allen or anyone else to the crime.

In an unusual memorandum filed with the court which the judge ruled cannot be allowed into court, Allen’s team is alleging that the double crime was committed by a mysterious group they refer to as a white supremacist cult of Odinism.

“The defense from the beginning has been blaming the murders on Odinism, what they describe as a Nordic cult with ties to white supremacy,” ABC’s Alex Perez said.

“They believe (the cult) were carrying out some sort of ritual when they killed the girls,” Perez said. “And the defense attorneys in their memorandum pointing to certain things at the crime scene that they believe they say were signs the way branches were laid around the bodies of the two girls.”

Allen’s team said in the filing that the girls’ bodies were found in unusual positions with branches over them, and the defense argued that the branches resembled Pagan Runes.

Jefferson Calico, an associate professor at University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, studied Pagan religions, including Odinism, and explained what this means.

“So runes are widely incorporated into Odinist culture as well,” Calico said. “So if there were runes in the crime scene, then that would be a reason to suspect pagan or Odinist involvement for sure. For instance, the sticks over the body, possibly a rune mark on a tree. It’s not convincing to me as someone who studied these religions, but it provides an interpretation of some of the details of the crime scene.”

But Calico also said that Odinists were not known to engage in human sacrificial rituals and added that, as believers in white supremacy, it would make no sense to kill two Caucasian girls.

The Delphi murder trials are continuing, and 12 jurors will decide Allen’s fate. If convicted, he faces 130 years in prison.

“Even once they arrested Richard Allen, there’s been so much doubt across the board as to whether he’s responsible,” Klein said. “There are many people attending the trial and weighing in on social media that will say there is no way he did this. Whether he’s convicted or not, I think there will always be that speculation in Delphi as to who really is responsible for this crime.”

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(NEW YORK) — On a recent Sunday night in Virginia, Henrico County registrar Mark Coakley was waiting for the start of the Cowboys-Steelers NFL game that was delayed due to inclement weather.

Coakley was scanning X, formerly known as Twitter, when he came across a post by the platform’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is a vocal Trump supporter. Musk had reposted a tweet from 2023 that falsely claimed that “election integrity leaders in Virginia” found fraudulent votes in Henrico County from the 2020 election.

“Is this accurate @CommunityNotes?” Musk posted in conjunction with the tweet, engaging X’s Community Notes feature that allows users themselves to fact check a tweet.

Coakley, the county’s top election official, scrambled to respond. On Monday morning, the Henrico County’s X account debunked the premise of Musk’s posts in a five-post thread.

“They were uninformed tweets,” Coakley recalled in an interview with ABC News. “Media was calling, friends were calling me.”

The challenge for Coakley: While Musk’s initial post has garnered 27.7 million views, Coakley’s response has received fewer than 100,000. It’s a contemporary spin on the old adage that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

As Musk has continued to promote false and misleading election information on X, election officials have increasingly confronted him on his own platform. But their reach typically pales in comparison to Musk’s 200 million followers.

“It’s just not a fair battle,” said Larry Norden, a voting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit think tank.

In Philadelphia, Musk reposted a tweet suggesting that 5,200 voters had registered with the same address. “This is crazy,” Musk commented.

Seth Bluestein, a Philadelphia County Commissioner, replied hours later, tweeting, “The post you shared is spreading disinformation.”

But while Musk’s initial tweet drew nearly 10 million views, Bluestein’s response garnered fewer than 10,000.

Even some Republican officials have confronted Musk on X. Stephen Richer, the GOP recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, has regularly quarreled with Musk online over alleged election misinformation targeting the state — and has even offered to connect with Musk in person.

“On every previous post you’ve made about Arizona elections (all of which have been wrong, but you’ve never corrected any of them), I’ve offered my office as a resource to you (and anyone) who wants actual answers to these questions,” Richer told Musk in a post in September.

Sam Woolley, a disinformation researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said Musk has treated X as his own “bully pulpit” to support Trump and denigrate the election system since taking control of the company in 2022.

“This is certainly a case of a very powerful individual using not only his ownership of the platform but also his ability to control massive swaths of engagement on the platform for his own benefit and for the benefit of his political allies,” Woolley said.

Not only are the misinformation narratives promoted by Musk “corrosive to democracy,” Norden said, but the time and energy required to rebut them might actually undermine election officials’ ability to execute their other election-related work.

“It’s distracting,” Norden said. “We are putting a huge load on election officials, and if, on top of that, they have to respond to a guy who boosts his own content on his own network to spread lies, it’s distracting from the essential work that they need to do. That is troubling.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

Despite the enormous online reach of the world’s richest man, at least one election official has managed to match it: Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan.

After Musk suggested on X that there are more registered voters in the state than eligible voters, Benson shot back.

“Let’s be clear: @elonmusk is spreading dangerous disinformation,” Benson wrote. “Here are the facts: There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 citizens of voting age in our state.”

Musk’s initial retweet received some 32 million views.

But Benson’s response topped it, getting 33.5 million.

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