Several injured, including children, after minivan drives into crowd in Los Angeles
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(LOS ANGELES) — A minivan plowed into a crowd of bystanders in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon, leaving several injured — including two children and one teenager, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The incident took place shortly after 3 p.m. local time in the downtown area, the LAFD reported.
“A total of 9 patients were assessed for injury on scene,” the fire department said in a statement. That included four adults who were transported to a nearby hospital for medical treatment, two adults who refused treatment, and three minors — ages 8, 11 and 17 — who were also transported for treatment.
The LAFD said that there were no fatalities and “no critical patients at time of transport.”
It also stated that fire companies were still on the scene, where the minivan was “static under a collapsed patio.”
Traffic officers initiated an investigation into why the van went into the patio area. The Los Angeles Police Department told ABC News that there were no early indications that the collision was intentional or criminal in nature.
Later in the evening, the LAPD confirmed that there no alcohol or drugs were involved. Based on statements, police told ABC News, the driver swerved to avoid a stopped car and hit the barrier next to the restaurant.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(GREENCASTLE, Pa.) — The CEO of Pete and Gerry’s Eggs is speaking out after 100,000 eggs mysteriously disappeared from one of its facilities in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, last weekend.
In an exclusive interview with “Good Morning America,” Tom Flocco said the egg firm, which contracts with over 300 farms across the country, is going to boost security measures after 8,000 cartons — worth $40,000 — were stolen from the back of a distribution trailer at approximately 8:40 p.m. on Feb. 2.
“I’ve worked in other industries before where things get stolen from factories,” Flocco told “GMA’s” Elizabeth Schulze. “It happens. It’s terrible. I’m not happy about it, but it does happen.”
To ensure this does not occur again, Flocco said the company will place additional security on the ground, install better lighting and include extra cameras throughout its facilities.
“It could happen once, it could happen again,” Flocco said. “We are putting additional measures in place.”
Police are still scrambling to find a suspect and closely examining video surveillance. If the public knows of any leads, officials urge people to contact Pennsylvania State Police Chambersburg.
“We are working with local authorities in Pennsylvania and we’re giving them our full cooperation,” Flocco said. “We’ll let you know when we learn more.”
Flocco said the thieves might face one obstacle after this unusual heist: The eggs need to stay refrigerated as they are transported, since they can spoil at room temperature.
“They’re transported in a refrigerated truck, they’re brought into a refrigerated warehouse, kept there until they’re ready to be processed, washed, cooled and kept cold until we eat them,” Flocco said.
This case comes amid a soaring amount of bird flu infections occurring across the United States, which is also causing an egg shortage. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, 142 flocks were confirmed to test positive for bird flu, also known as avian influenza, in the last 30 days.
When a bird becomes infected with the virus, the animal needs to be culled and the eggs need to be destroyed. With more farms experiencing bird flu outbreaks, the USDA predicted at the end of January that egg prices will rise up to 20%.
Restaurants like the Waffle House have implemented a surcharge of 50 cents for egg items on their menu due to the shortage, the company announced on Monday. Flocco said Pete and Gerry’s Eggs will continue to remain at the same price of about $7 a dozen, despite the recent heist.
“We’re finding the consumer interest for our product is greater than it’s ever been and we only expect it to continue,” Flocco said. “We are charging the same price to our retail partners today as we did a year ago.”
(SPARTA, Ga.) — History tells us that the railroad helped put America on the right track, when trains started moving people and goods across the country in the 1800s. They were yesterday’s highways, making it possible to traverse the nation in four days instead of 30.
This travel revolution is one of the reasons that it made sense to give railroads, which are still privately owned in most cases, some of the same powers to claim someone else’s land as a power company, an airport or a public school system.
It’s also why 72-year-old Blaine Smith, his wife Diane, his brother Mark and his wife Janet (who live next door) are fighting centuries of history and U.S. law that say a privately-owned railroad can knock on their door in Sparta, Georgia, and tell them that they need to sell a three-quarter-mile strip of their land that’s been home to their family since the era of slavery.
Their land wouldn’t be be put into service as a park or train station that they might use as members of the community. Instead, it’s for a business interest that the rail company says will help everyone — a new 4-mile stretch of rail line that would lead to a rock quarry and other businesses on the other side of the Smith family property.
Right now, the quarry uses trucks to move materials. If the rail company gets its way, the new train line could increase profits for the quarry and railroad. The Smiths aren’t happy with the situation.
“I feel that we were targeted, and this particular community was targeted, because it is a Black community,” Janet told ABC News. “We’ve been labeled poor and Black for so long. And how are we going to fight back?”
ABC News asked them if they thought racism played a role.
“It’s racism. We didn’t want to use that word, we didn’t want to say that,” Janet said. “But that’s why we have a quarry right here in this neighborhood.”
The Smith family story is the very definition of Black history in America. One of their great grandmothers was born here a slave in 1861, on what was then the Dixon plantation near Sparta, a few hours south of Atlanta. Her father was the slave master.
She had children with white farmer David Dixon, who was able to keep his family safe from the racial violence of their time.
One of their daughters, Helen, married James Blaine Smith — they were the ones who saved all they could and started buying up some 600 acres of property in the late 1920s. Their oldest son, James Adolf Smith, told his six children they should never sell any of it.
“And I can tell you that from his dying bed, yes, he said, ‘You’ll keep the property in the family,'” Blaine Smith told ABC News.
About two years ago, the brothers and other family members — who still farm trees on the land — started getting letters from Ben Tarbutton, the president of the Sandersville Railroad Company.
Tarbutton told ABC News he moved back home to hard-pressed rural Georgia after college to run the family business, carrying on the legacy started by his great grandfather in 1916.
“I just think that, you know, rural Georgia needs opportunity,” he told ABC News.
Tarbutton said the new rail line to the quarry could create at least a dozen permanent jobs in the area, helping to revive the local economy. Pointing out the sad storefronts in town, he said they have looked that way for more than 30 years.
In terms of the line’s impact on the area, Tarbutton told ABC News they would operate during daylight hours, Monday through Friday, with one roundtrip per day. He also argued that the quarry’s resources are valuable to the country as a whole, especially given the increased need for raw materials after the passage of the 2021 infrastructure bill.
“The country is at a deficit of aggregate rock,” he said. “So the need for aggregate stone, which goes into asphalt and the concrete so that goes in the roads because of the bridges, is, you know, it was already needed prior to that bill, but now even more so.”
He told ABC News he’s still trying to get the Smith family to sell small portions of their land, but wouldn’t say how much he’s offering them.
“I’m a landowner, too. I’ve been on their side of the table really all the time, until now,” Tarbutton said. “And the thing that we always have done is we try to get as much money as we could.”
The Smiths argued that it wasn’t enough.
“Whatever he offered was not what it would have been worth if we went to sell it,” Janet told ABC News. “They tried to minimize the impact of a train, cutting directly through your property.”
The Smiths say they have not been offered an easement, which would give the railroad company the right to use or enter their property without owning it. The company offered to build railroad crossings for each of the Smith family parcels of land, which the railroad would break into two. That would allow the families to walk across and farm trees across their land.
When the Smiths were first approached, the tracks were running right behind their houses. After they expressed their outrage, Sandersville agreed to move the railroad line slightly to avoid this.
Tarbutton has a major advantage in the negotiation — the power of eminent domain. This compulsory acquisition of private property for public use is typically wielded by the government, like a state highway department, or a public utility, like a gas company.
It’s traditionally associated with building something everyone can use, like New York City’s Central Park or the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas.
This practice can feel enormously cruel to landowners. In 1997, it allowed the city of New London, Connecticut, to condemn Susette Kelo’s home. She fought her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court because her land was being taken to build a $300 million research center for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
In a decision that still shocks people today, the court narrowly ruled against Kelo in 2005. They said that economic development was a good enough reason to condemn her land and sell it to private developers. The Pfizer research center was never built.
The legal group that fought for Kelo — the Institute For Justice — is helping the Smith family for free.
“We have currently a petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case out of New York trying to overturn that Kelo decision,” Mike Greenberg, an attorney with the Institute For Justice, told ABC News. “If that case is not the one that is going to do it, this certainly could be the case that makes it up there.”
At a recent hearing, Judge Craig L. Schwall expressed sympathy for the landowners.
“And if I ruled from what I thought was morally right, I would absolutely rule in your favor,” he said.
Ultimately, the judge ruled for the railroad, pointing to the law. However, he won’t let Sandersville Railroad Company boss Tarbutton condemn the land until the families get another chance with a higher court. On Feb. 27, the Smiths filed an appeal to the Georgia state Supreme Court.
The railroad president denied accusations that the Smiths would be treated differently if they were white.
“Well, I think that’s a gross mischaracterization. You know we came up with a straight line from point A to point B,” he told ABC News. “And we didn’t know who the property owners were at that time, much less what they look like.”
Sandersville Railroad Company is a private entity, but Tarbutton said lines like the one his company is trying to extend free up the nation’s roads.
“The vast majority of railroads are privately owned. And so those costs, as infrastructure calls, owning and maintaining the right of way government track — that is borne by the railroads,” he told ABC News. “And so if railroads didn’t handle the amount of traffic that we currently do, just would push all of that traffic back on roads — more trucks — it would just completely clog up the North American road system.”
From the sky, the construction of the new rail line or spur is visible right up to the Smith family properties, on land that other neighbors have already agreed to sell. These tracks were recently connected to a much larger CSX rail line that stretches up and down the East Coast, allowing Sandersville customers to transport their goods far away more easily.
In a statement to ABC News, the owners of the quarry say that it will soon be able “to produce and transport several times its current annual volume” and that “this will also benefit the local economy with increased expenditures on fuel, electricity, supplies, food and catering.”
The Smiths are hoping a court will let them honor their father’s dying wish: to keep the land whole.
“I want people to remember that this is America, where we are always given the right to freedom,” Diane told ABC News. “And not be encumbered with other people coming in and trying to take away or steal that little piece of serenity.”
As divers continue to use “side-scanning sonar” to search the Hudson River for wreckage from the helicopter crash that killed six people, the National Transportation Safety Board said the aircraft was not equipped with any flight recorders.
“No onboard video recorders or camera recorders have been recovered and none of the helicopter avionics onboard recorded information that could be used for the investigation,” the agency said in an investigation update Saturday evening.
According to the NTSB, the helicopter had its last major inspection on March 1. On the day of the crash, the helicopter had performed seven tour flights, and was on its eighth flight when the accident occurred, per the NTSB.
The main fuselage, including the cockpit and cabin, the forward portion of the tail boom, the horizontal stabilizer finlets and the vertical fin have all been recovered, according to the agency.
Some of these will be sent to the NTSB lab in Washington, D.C., for further inspection, the agency said.
Divers on Saturday were still working to recover more pieces of the helicopter, including the main rotor, main gearbox, tail rotor and a large portion of the tail boom.
Recovery operations in the river will continue on Sunday, the NTSB said.
The family on board was Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, 49; his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, 39; and their children, ages 4, 8 and 10, officials said.
The family came to New York City to join Escobar, who was in the U.S. for a business trip, according to Jersey City Mayor Fulop.
The family died one day before the 8-year-old’s birthday, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Also killed was the pilot, 36-year-old Seankese “Sam” Johnson, officials said.Johnson, who had served in the military, accumulated 788 hours of total flight time, the NTSB said.
Johnson was “an amazing man,” said Matt Klier, his friend from the Navy and a fellow helicopter pilot.
Thursday’s deadly crash occurred at 3:17 p.m., just over 15 minutes into the flight, officials said. The helicopter reached the George Washington Bridge before turning south and crashing, officials said.
ABC News’ Leah Sarnoff, Sam Sweeney and Erin Murtha contributed to this report.
