Small plane crashes in Boca Raton, Florida; all 3 on board killed
(BOCA RATON, Fla.) — All three people on board a small plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Boca Raton, Florida, on Friday morning, according to local officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The “aircraft had apparently some mechanical issues and went down here on Military Trail,” Michael LaSalle, assistant fire chief for Boca Fire Rescue, said at a news conference. “Also, there was a car on the ground.”
One man in the car suffered non-life-threatening injuries, LaSalle said.
The Cessna 310R took off from Boca Raton Airport and was heading to Tallahassee International Airport, the FAA said. It was in the air for a little less than 20 minutes before it crashed, according to Flightradar24.
Dillon Smith was at his office when he saw the plane flying “extremely low” and appearing like it would hit the roof of a nearby building, he told West Palm Beach ABC affiliate WPBF.
“I saw the plane, basically, turn, come back, and I heard it and saw it go over our building,” Smith said.
He lost sight of the plane, but said it then “came back — it was looking like maybe it was going toward the [nearby Boca Raton] airport.”
“I just saw it drop below the trees” and “heard a boom,” Smith said. He said his office windows shook and he saw a “fireball.”
Video shows what appears to be the small plane’s wreckage on railroad tracks next to a road. The fire caused by the crash has been extinguished.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — A Catholic school in Oklahoma is asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for it to become the nation’s first religious charter school funded directly by taxpayers.
Oral arguments will be heard in the landmark case on Wednesday, pitting claims of religious freedom against efforts to maintain strict separation of church and state.
The justices will be weighing whether the First Amendment, which prohibits a government role in establishing religion while also protecting an individual right to practice religion, means only nonsectarian organizations can qualify for Oklahoma’s charter schools program or whether faith-based groups are also eligible.
The case turns in large part on whether the state’s charter schools meet the definition of “public” schools and, as such, operate as extensions of state government.
“The claim in this case is not that government schools are allowed to be Catholic or religious. This is a claim that, in Oklahoma, charter schools are contractors,” said Rick Garnett, a constitutional law professor at the University of Notre Dame.
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which was created by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa in 2023, argues state funding for charter schools is made generally available to qualified organizations and that the state cannot discriminate on the basis of religion.
A series of recent Supreme Court decisions has made clear that taxpayer-funded public benefit programs, from school vouchers to state-run scholarships, must be equally available, even if a person or organization has a religious affiliation.
“It’s a pretty settled rule of the Supreme Court that once a government opens up a benefit program, it can’t discriminate on the basis of religion,” Garnett said of the school’s argument.
Oklahoma argues that its charter schools are part of the public school system and, under state law, must be “free, open to all, funded by the State, subject to state control, nondiscriminatory and nonsectarian.” Forty-five other states and the federal government have similar guidelines.
The state’s highest court ruled last year that taxpayer-funded religious schools would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.
“In Oklahoma, the charter school law defines charter schools as public schools, so the case is sort of closed there,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“This school is run by the Catholic diocese in Oklahoma, and they say they will conduct themselves as a Catholic school according to the morality codes of a Catholic schools, which, read between the lines, means that they will discriminate against LGBTQ kids and families,” Laser said.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, said the state supports school choice and access to private religious education, including through the use of tax credits and state-funded tuition assistance. But in court documents, Drummond argued that charter schools are not simply “contractors” receiving a benefit.
“They are free, open to all, subject to anti-discrimination laws, created and funded by the State, and subject to continuing government regulation and oversight as to curriculum, testing, and a host of other matters,” the state said in its brief to the justices.
The state warned that a decision in favor of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have “sweeping consequences” nationwide, upending charter school programs and the education of millions of students.
Advocates for the school say not allowing the Catholic school to receive charter school funding amounts to religious discrimination.
A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.
(NEW YORK) — The Columbia University student who was detained in Vermont by Immigration and Customs Enforcement told ABC News that he was about to sign a document saying he was willing to take the Pledge of Allegiance, one of the final steps in the process to become a U.S. citizen, when masked agents suddenly arrested him.
In an interview nearly a week after a federal judge ordered him released from detention while his case proceeds, Mohsen Mahdawi recounted his arrest and detainment, saying that he feared his citizenship interview was a “trap” and that he’s concerned that democracy in the U.S. is under attack.
“It was a moment of like, should I be happy or should I be cautious when I received the notice?” Mahdawi told ABC News about receiving the notice for his citizenship interview. “And I sense that this might be a trap. And for sure, indeed, it was an alarm bell where I directly reached out to my legal team in order to navigate, you know, the pros and cons and this risk that I think that I may lose my freedom.”
Mahdawi said that, as he was completing his interview, “at that moment, [I had] very strong feelings of, ‘Oh my god, things are working out. And then they came into the office … and you can imagine the feeling between, I am being excited to receive the citizenship, and then feeling of betraying disappointment.”
A Department of Homeland Security official pushed back on concerns that the interview may have been a trap staged to detain Mahdawi.
“The Department does not ‘stage’ interviews or any other type of adjudication,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “If an alien is seeking a benefit, they will almost assuredly be interviewed. If the alien is subject to detention, that alien will almost assuredly be detained. One has no bearing on the other.”
“Illegal aliens do not have a right to roam freely in our country, nor do they have a right to elude federal authorities,” McLaughlin said.
Mahdawi, who co-founded a university organization called the Palestinian Student Union with detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving in 2014 to the U.S. where he has been a legal resident for 10 years.
His lawyers believe that, like Khalil, he is being targeted by the Trump administration under Immigration and Nationality Act section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), which asserts that the secretary of state can deem a person deportable if they have reasonable ground to believe that the person’s presence or activities in the U.S. could have adverse foreign policy consequences.
In response to the government’s allegations against him, Mahdawi and his lawyers have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or those of the Jewish faith. He told ABC News he has been advocating for peace and protesting against the war in Gaza.
“So for them to accuse me of this is not going to work, because I am a person who actually has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi said. “And I believe that the fight against antisemitism and the fight to free Palestine go hand in hand, because, as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
After his arrest at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont, where he was undergoing his citizenship interview, Mahdawi said he was quickly put in handcuffs, but was not given a reason for why he was being detained.
“The first thing they’ve done is they isolated me from my lawyer, separated me from my lawyer,” Mahdawi said of his arrest. “They did not show us any paperwork they had on them. I told them, ‘I am a peaceful man and I will collaborate.'”
Mahdawi claims ICE officials were planning to send him to Louisiana where Khalil is detained, but missed the flight by a few minutes. His lawyers, who crafted several habeas petitions in anticipation that he could be detained, filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, which a federal judge granted.
“They were preparing to send me to Louisiana,” Mahdawi said. “They had my flight tickets really printed, and two agents came to take me … to ship me on a commercial flight from Burlington Airport to New York and from New York to Louisiana.”
At his bail hearing last week, the Department of Justice argued against Mahdawi’s release, saying that during a 2015 FBI investigation, a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews, proving that he was a threat. According to a police report obtained by ABC News from Windsor Police in Vermont, a “concerned citizen” alleged that Mahdawi “seemed to have knowledge about gun design and function.”
But that investigation was closed and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point that Judge Geoffrey Crawford highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release last week.
During the hearing, the federal judge said that while the allegations were “shocking,” he noted that because the FBI at the time decided to close the case, he understood that to mean that the FBI came to the conclusion that the allegations made by the gun shop owner and the other individual were unfounded claims.
Judge Crawford noted during last week’s hearing that Mahdawi had received letters of support from over 90 community members, including from members of the Jewish community, adding that “people who have in a consistent pattern described him as peaceful.”
The judge also said Mahdawi had “made substantial claims that his detention was in retaliation for his protected speech.”
Mahdawi told ABC News that his Buddhist faith has kept him grounded as his immigration and federal cases continue to play out in court and the threat of deportation still lingers.
He said he believes “everybody should be alert and alarmed” that the Trump administration targeted him for his advocacy.
“We are at a very critical time,” Mahdawi said. “What is happening in America is going to affect the rest of the world. The attack on democracy that guarantees many rights for people, democracy that has established international order and human rights, is a very dangerous phenomenon.”
During the interview, Mahdawi said he first experienced true freedom when he moved to the United States — a feeling he claims to still have despite his legal battle.
“They can put me in prison, but my spirit is free, and the free spirit is a spirit that does not give up on the idea of justice,” he said. “The free spirit is a spirit that empathizes with everyone, including its oppressor, so I do feel free.”
(NEW YORK) — The number of measles cases associated with an outbreak in western Texas has grown to 400, with 73 cases reported over the last three days, according to new data released Friday.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). At least 41 people have been hospitalized so far.
Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases at 164, followed by children ages 4 and under comprising 131 cases, according to the data.
It comes as the CDC has so far confirmed 483 measles cases this year in at least 19 states: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington
This is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that some unvaccinated children hospitalized with measles in Texas are showing signs of vitamin A toxicity.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other vaccine skeptics have promoted vitamin A amid the measles outbreak. During an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity earlier this month, Kennedy said that HHS was currently providing vitamin A to measles patients for treatment, claiming vitamin A can “dramatically” reduce measles deaths.
Vitamin A can be used as part of supportive treatment for those who are already sick, with the World Health Organization recommending two doses of vitamin A in children and adults with measles to restore low vitamin A levels, which can help prevent eye damage and blindness.
However, vitamin A does not prevent measles infections, experts previously told ABC News, nor does it directly fight the virus when used as a treatment.
Covenant Children’s Hospital, which has treated dozens of measles patients in Texas amid the outbreak, told ABC News in a statement that some parents appear to have given their unvaccinated children vitamin A for “treatment and prevention.” Some of those children now show signs of vitamin A toxicity.
Fewer than 10 children have come in with abnormal liver function in routine lab tests, indicating possible vitamin A toxicity, according to Covenant Children’s.
Vitamin A toxicity occurs when someone consumes too much vitamin A, and can result in severe complications iincluding liver and kidney damage.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles.
The CDC currently recommends that people receive two vaccine doses, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective, the CDC says. Most vaccinated adults don’t need a booster.
State health data shows that Gaines County, which is the epicenter of the Texas outbreak, has seen its number of vaccine exemptions grow dramatically in the last dozen years.
In 2013, roughly 7.5% of kindergartners in the county had parents or guardians who filed for an exemption for at least one vaccine. Ten years later, that number rose to more than 17.5% — one of the highest in all of Texas, according to state health data.
Among the nationally confirmed cases by the CDC, about 95%, are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, the agency said.
Of those cases, 3% are among those who received just one dose of the MMR inoculation and 2% are among those who received the required two doses, according to the CDC.
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
