Stepbrother pleads not guilty to murder, sex abuse charges in teen’s cruise ship death
The Carnival Horizon cruise ship sits docked in the Caribbean Sea at the Aruba Cruise Terminal, November 11, 2025, in Oranjestad, Aruba. Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
The teenager was due in court in Miami on Wednesday morning for his arraignment, though he waived his appearance, according to a filing from his attorney.
Prosecutors alleged that the stepbrother “sexually assaulted and intentionally killed” Kepner. The Florida high school senior died from mechanical asphyxiation, officials said.
Anna Kepner’s father, Chris Kepner, is married to the suspect’s mother, Shauntel Kepner.
Chris and Shauntel Kepner said in a statement last week, “Our family is devastated by the loss of Anna and continues to grieve this unimaginable tragedy.”
“This situation is deeply painful and complex for our entire family,” the Kepners said. “Anna was deeply loved, and we remain committed to honoring her life and memory every day.”
ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
People walk along snow covered streets as snow falls during a blizzard on February 23, 2026 in the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A quick-moving storm is making its way into northern Minnesota and Wisconsin from Canada on Tuesday and is expected to hit the Great Lakes dumping between 3 to 6 inches in the region.
The brief storm is expected to move into the Northeast around midnight on Wednesday and reach Pittsburgh around 1 a.m. followed by Philadelphia and New York City by around 5 a.m.
Snow will end for Philadelphia and New York City a few hours later at approximately 11 a.m. on Wednesday, while snow should end around 1 p.m. in Boston with a few lingering snow showers will last through the night over interior New England.
All three cities should expect no more than an inch of snow to accumulate, including Rhode Island as they continue to dig out of their 2.5 feet of snow from Monday.
Further inland, however, 1 to 3 inches of snow could be possible with higher elevations in the Northeast seeing up to 3 to 6 inches of snow.
Elsewhere, a storm currently in the Pacific Northwest will move across the country in the coming days and is expected to be shoved south by high pressure over the northern U.S. as it moves east.
This will lead to rain over the upper South on Thursday morning, with heavy rain possible for Kentucky and Tennessee and east through North Carolina.
On Thursday evening, that rain could be heavy over Tennessee as the storm moves north along the mid-Atlantic into Virginia, Delaware and Maryland.
By about 9 p.m. on Thursday, there is a chance this moisture is in line somewhere between Washington, D.C. and New York City with the potential of a wintry mix that could make roads slick.
If temperatures drop low enough, snow is also possible Thursday night for the region between Washington, D.C. to New York City. This could lead to a few inches of wet snow for the New York area, northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania by Friday morning.
The system is expected to move out of the area by midday on Friday and, by the afternoon, the weather could warm up a bit, with highs in the upper 30s.
Temperatures will reach the upper 30s and lower 40s this week in New York City and Boston as well, meaning some of the snow that has blanketed the region could begin to melt with some refreezing possible overnight.
Fraudsters are posing as ICE officers, immigration lawyers and federal judges. (Evelin Flores)
(NEW YORK) — Twenty-year-old Edith from Guatemala has remained in her home with her 1-year-old baby Justin for weeks after selling her only means of transportation.
“Being stuck at home, locked up inside, is very, very difficult for us,” she told ABC News.
Edith, a U.S. citizen who was raised in Guatemala and requested she only be referred to by her first name out of concern over her privacy, sold her car and spent her life savings to pay someone who she thought was an attorney to help her husband Dimas, who was arrested and placed in immigration custody in March.
After Dimas, the undocumented breadwinner of the family, was quickly sent to a detention center in Georgia, Edith sought an immigration lawyer on social media, where a stranger recommended a supposed Florida-based attorney.
“I was scheduled for a video call, and the woman who said she was a lawyer said that to get someone out of immigration detention, a habeas corpus needed to be filed,” Edith told ABC News.
Edith retained the woman and began communicating with her frequently. She completed documents the woman sent her, and began sending the woman payments. She even received documents that appeared to be from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that oversees immigration services.
“She began asking for money, $500, $600, $1,750, $4,000 for the bond, petition, copies [of forms],” Edith said.
But last month, when the woman was scheduled to participate in a video call for Dimas’ initial hearing before an immigration judge, she never appeared on the call. Edith’s husband later told her that the judge said that the attorney wasn’t registered in the court system.
“He said, ‘They’re scamming you,'” Edith said. “I said, ‘But why? Why me?’ I started to feel really bad and I didn’t know what to do.”
After confronting the woman she had hired, Edith realized she had been scammed out of more than $10,000 — her life savings. And with all her money gone, she was unable to pay for a legitimate lawyer to represent her husband, who last month was ordered deported by an immigration judge.
‘A billion-dollar industry’ Edith is one of many victims across the country that law enforcement and immigration lawyers say are being targeted by bad actors seizing on the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Some scammers, according to officials, are using artificial intelligence to hold fake immigration court proceedings with scammers wearing judicial robes and law enforcement uniforms, using fake documents that appear to be from federal agencies.
“In my experience, this is a billion-dollar industry,” said Jorge Rivera, an immigration lawyer in Florida.
Rivera told ABC News that scammers, including the woman who Edith hired, have used his credentials and his law firm’s information to target immigrants.
“[Victims] have shown up to our office and they say, ‘What happened to my case?'” he said.
ABC News found cases of sophisticated immigration scams across the country, including in New York, where five defendants pleaded not guilty to charges accusing them of holding “sham immigration proceedings” including asylum interviews and court appearances.
According to the complaint, one victim ended up missing their real immigration hearing and was deported.
“In doing so, the defendants demonstrated a complete and utter disregard for the potentially life-altering consequences that their actions inflicted on their victims — vulnerable individuals who not only lost significant funds, but also missed their actual immigration court appearances,” prosecutors said.
And last month, four people in Orlando, Florida, were charged with setting up a fake immigration law firm and extorting millions from victims. They have not yet entered formal pleas.
‘It’s heartbreaking’ Rivera said immigration scams have gotten “exponentially worse” during the second Trump administration, because more pathways for immigration relief “have closed.”
“There’s been pauses, there’s more denials, undoubtedly, it’s more difficult to be able to resolve your immigration status,” he said. “So this is a perfect storm for the criminals.”
Rivera said that if those seeking help are “talking to a legitimate attorney and they’re talking to a fraudster, and the fraudster is giving them hope and giving them possibilities, they’re going to go with the person that’s giving them the hope.”
Rivera said he has been working with law enforcement across the country to send them information on alleged scammers, and has been reaching out to social media companies to take down fake profiles.
In a statement to ABC News, the Department of Homeland Security said scammers are also “pretending to be ICE and USCIS to trick people into giving them money or personal information.”
The DHS said that officials will never call out of the blue, demand money, or accept payments using gift cards or crypto currency.
Scammers are also targeting immigrant advocacy groups like Catholic Charities, Kevin Brennan, Catholic Charities’ vice president, told ABC News.
“It’s really been over the past year or so that we started hearing reports of people claiming to be Catholic Charities and other organizations that provide legal services to immigrants and refugees and using social media to fraudulently offer services, express urgency, ask for money,” Brennan told ABC News.
“It’s heartbreaking to see people who are in need and looking for help and being taken advantage of in such a terrible way by these fraudsters and criminals,” he said.
In Edith’s case, the possibility of getting legitimate legal help to try to get her husband released before he’s deported is slipping away. After an immigration judge ordered her husband deported on April 28, he is currently in ICE custody awaiting removal to Guatemala.
Edith said she will likely go to Guatemala to remain with her husband.
“It’s very ugly, and I don’t wish it on anyone else — to a person who is alone and without support,” she said. “This is not easy.”
A man named Cole Allen, who appears to be the same person as the suspect in the shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 25, 2026, is interviewed by KABC in Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
Allen, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, appeared calm and did not speak during the hearing.
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea and is set to return to court on May 11.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
In an overnight court filing, Allen’s attorneys questioned what evidence the government has to determine Allen fired his weapon.
According to U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, “We know [Allen] fired off that 12-gauge shotgun one time.”
“The cartridge was still in the weapon. He fired that gun in the direction of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro told Fox News on Thursday. “The Secret Service officer fired his weapon five times and we know that based on the number of bullets that were left in the weapon.”
The Secret Service agent did not shoot himself, she said.
“We’re waiting for the official ballistics test, but at the same time we filed papers in court this morning for the detention hearing today indicating that this defendant was calculated, he was premeditated and he had every intention of killing the president and anyone who got in his way,” she said.
Pirro said Allen will face additional charges. She also said investigators are searching for anyone he might’ve threatened by name.
Allen’s court appearance came a day after federal prosecutors filed a detention memo, supporting their request for a judge to hold the defendant in custody pending trial.
“The defendant attempted to kill the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The crimes with which the defendant is charged are among the most serious in the United States Code, and the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,” prosecutors wrote.
Under what prosecutors titled in court records as “The Defendant’s Assassination Plan,” prosecutors cited his writings in which he allegedly laid out his plan to target top members of the Trump administration, according to the memo.
The suspect also sent a prescheduled email to his employer minutes before launching the attack, in which he allegedly apologized for his “unprofessionality [sic],” according to a pretrial detention memo prosecutors filed in federal court on Wednesday.
“Consider me to be submitting my resignation effective immediately (if it matters.),” Cole allegedly wrote in the email, according to the memo.
The tutoring company C2 Education, where Allen purportedly worked, said they are cooperating “fully” with law enforcement and denounced the “horrifying incident” at the correspondents’ Dinner, but omitted details of Allen’s work history.
“We were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” the tutoring company said in a statement on Sunday. “We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
