Stowaway arrested by FBI after returning to US from France: Official
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(NEW YORK) — Svetlana Dali, the woman who stowed away on a Delta Air Lines flight to France, was arrested by the FBI upon her return to New York, an official confirmed.
She returned to John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday, once again flying Delta, but this time escorted by U.S. law enforcement, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA confirmed that its inspectors, along with other law enforcement officials, were there to meet Dali at the gate for questioning when she deplaned.
The stowaway’s name was confirmed Tuesday by her daughter and ex-husband, although authorities had yet to verify her identity at the time of her return to the U.S.
Dali had previously been described only as a Russian national who had been caught traveling without proper documentation on Delta Flight 264. The flight was scheduled to fly between New York City and Paris on Nov. 26.
According to a statement from the French Interior Ministry, “She was not admitted to French territory due to lack of a valid travel document (visa) and was placed in the waiting area for the time necessary for her re-routing to the United States since she held a valid US residence permit.”
Dali will be making her initial appearance in Brooklyn Federal Court on Thursday, officials have confirmed.
However, the charges against her have not been made public as of the time of her arrest.
It is therefore unknown if the appearance is related to the civil case that the TSA told ABC News it was preparing against Dali.
“TSA opens a civil case against any passenger when there is evidence that TSA regulations may have been violated,” the spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.
Upon Dali’s reentry to New York on Wednesday night, Delta issued a statement thanking French and U.S. authorities for assisting in the incident.
“Our review affirms that Delta’s security infrastructure, as part of our Safety Management System framework, is sound and that deviation from standard procedures is the root cause of this event,” the statement said.
“We are thoroughly addressing this matter and will continue to work closely with our regulators, law enforcement and other relevant stakeholders,” it continued. “Nothing is of greater importance than safety and security.”
Details about how she was able to originally sneak onto an international flight remain under investigation.
Christopher Looft and Ayesha Ali contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A week after cellphone users across the U.S. reported a flurry of racist text messages, members of the Hispanic and LGBTQ communities are now receiving text messages saying they have been selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp, according to a new statement from the FBI.
The messages follow reports of African American and Black residents receiving racist texts in the days after the 2024 election that they were selected to “pick cotton on a plantation,” according to the FBI. Cellphone users in at least nine cities — New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Houston, Huntsville, Texas, Los Angeles, Norfolk, Virginia, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama — reported receiving the messages.
The new message also include some emails, the FBI said in its statement.
TextNow, a mobile provider that allows people to create phone numbers for free, said last week it discovered “one or more” of its users allegedly sending out racist text messages to phone numbers across the country and that the service quickly shut down the accounts.
The FBI has said it is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.
Recipients of these messages include high school and college students.
“Although we have not received reports of violent acts stemming from these offensive messages, we are evaluating all reported incidents and engaging with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division,” the FBI said in its Friday statement. “We are also sharing information with our law enforcement partners, and community, academia, and faith leaders.”
Anyone who receives these messages — or any threats of violence — is encouraged to report them to the FBI.
(WASHINGTON) — A piece of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible’s deadly catastrophic implosion showed “anomalies,” a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Kramer said his team examined material from the manufacturing of the hull and found “several anomalies within the composite and the adhesive joints, including waviness, wrinkles, porosity and voids.”
They also examined a piece of the hull recovered from the ocean floor and found similar anomalies, including “waviness and wrinkles within the hull layers” and voids within the adhesive that joined the layers, he said. The recovered hull also showed “features consistent with rubbing damage at one of those adhesive joints.”
Kramer said the Titan debris on the ocean floor showed that the hull “encountered a significant amount of delamination” — or separating into layers — most of which was within or adjacent to co-bonded adhesive interfaces.
Asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the delaminations, voids or rubbing damage could have been present before the implosion, as opposed to being caused by the implosion, Kramer said he is not offering analysis as to when they occurred.
Further asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the issues he observed could have caused the implosion, Kramer said that is “still subject to our own internal analysis at this point.”
Strain response after loud bang on dive 80
Kramer also discussed the loud bang passengers heard as the Titan ascended during a dive that occurred a year before the implosion, on July 15, 2022 — referred to as dive 80 — which has been referenced throughout the two-week hearing. The bang was also detected by the Titan’s real-time monitoring system, which had sensors to detect acoustic events, as well as multiple strain gages to monitor mechanical strain, he said.
Kramer said his team determined that the hull’s strain response changed after this loud bang incident in subsequent dives in 2022. He said the strain gage data showed a change in the strain in the hull for four of the eight gages.
“Those changes persisted from dive to dive,” he said.
There was no difference when comparing the strain response to a dive prior to dive 80, Kramer said.
No strain data is available for dives conducted in 2023, according to Kramer.
Phil Brooks, OceanGate’s former engineering director, testified on Monday that following the loud bang on dive 80, the strain gage data showed a minor “shift,” though they did not see “any further shifts in strain data” on subsequent dives in 2022. Nothing “really seemed out of the ordinary,” and OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush made the decision to continue dives, Brooks said.
Asked how his team arrived at its determination on the change in strain response based on the graphs of the available data, Kramer said, “I guess it’s a matter of opinion as to whether one can discern the changes in strain output.”
Brooks said Rush theorized that the loud bang was caused by the frame “readjusting back to its original shape” as it returned to the surface.
Kramer noted that the NTSB’s investigation is still ongoing, and the scope of his presentation was therefore limited.
Marine Technology Society draft letter to Rush
William Kohnen, the CEO and founder of submersible maker Hydrospace Group, said during his testimony on Wednesday that he would not have made a carbon-fiber hull. He said it would cost “too much money” and “is really, really difficult.”
The investigators asked Kohnen about a draft Marine Technology Society letter he wrote in March 2018 to Rush based on public safety concerns raised during a conference.
“This was considered an issue of where we as consensus, as professionals in this industry, had significant concerns — not on one particular thing, but the overall approach of neglecting the years of experience and tradition and diligence that we applied,” he said.
Kohnen said the letter was signed by around 40 members and went through other drafts, though the Marine Technology Society board never approved sending it to Rush on behalf of the society. Rush still managed to get a copy of the original draft letter, which Kohnen said they discussed over the phone.
During the call, Kohnen said he told Rush he found the language on OceanGate’s website confusing for the general public not familiar with submersibles and that they were “highly inferring” the experimental sub was classed, when that wasn’t the case. He said the website was subsequently updated.
Kohnen stressed the importance of classification and regulations to build safe submersibles.
“We have a record of 50 years without a single fatality until Titan,” he said. “It does indicate the power of our regulation.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.
(NEW YORK) — Closing arguments began Monday in the trial of Daniel Penny over the May 2023 subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.
Penny, a 25-year-old former Marine, put Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, in a six-minute-long chokehold after Neely boarded a subway car acting erratically, according to police. Neely entered a subway car on an uptown F train at the Second Avenue stop, and was described by witnesses as yelling and moving erratically when Penny put Neely in a chokehold, officials said.
Penny is charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide in Neely’s death. He pleaded not guilty.
He faces up to 15 years in prison if he’s convicted of manslaughter. There is no minimum sentence.
The proceedings began late so the defense could fix two audio exhibits. The prosecutors alleged the defense had “willy nilly edited” the audio and “taken out what they don’t like.” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said it would be misleading for the jury to hear an edited excerpt.
The judge agreed, and the defense recut the exhibits, so jurors were clear they were hearing edited portions.
The delay means the jury will likely not begin deliberations until Tuesday. If necessary, the judge asked jurors to consider continuing their deliberations Wednesday, when the trial did not sit.
The defense’s closing arguments
The defense attorney, Steven Raiser, asked jurors in closing arguments to imagine they were on the train that day, conjuring the scene with sound effects of closing doors, a train pulling out of a station and police body camera footage of passengers saying Neely “scared the living daylights out of everybody.”
A “violent and desperate” Jordan Neely entered the uptown F train on May 1, 2023, “filled with rage and not afraid of any consequences,” causing passengers to be “frozen with fear” before Daniel Penny “acted to save those people,” a defense attorney said Monday during closing arguments at Penny’s manslaughter and negligent homicide trial.
In its summation, the defense challenged the prosecution’s assertion that Penny held Neely in a chokehold for “way too long,” and did not let go for almost six minutes. Raiser said Penny did not intend to kill Neely but did not let go because Neely was fighting back.
“Of course, he didn’t. He had to remain in place out of fear that Neely would break free,” Raiser said.
The city’s medical examiner concluded Penny’s chokehold killed Neely. The defense argued Neely died from a genetic condition and the synthetic marijuana found in his system.
Defense attorney Steve Raiser argued that Penny “was not applying a textbook Marine blood choke because his purpose was not to render Mr. Neely unconscious,” Raiser said. Raiser said Penny applied a chokehold “in a less aggressive manner,” reflecting his character.
“He could have squeezed Mr. Neely to unconsciousness,” Raiser said. “Instead, he laid with him on the dirty subway floor while the smell of uncleanliness…and feces enveloped him.”
The defense summation included an image of the two men on the subway floor: “It’s basic human instinct to grab at the arm choking you. You don’t see that here because Danny’s not choking him,” Raiser said.
Raiser argued Penny was not applying pressure on Neely’s neck in the hold’s final 51 seconds and the whole case represented a rush to judgment: “This was not a chokehold death,” Raiser said. “They failed to prove their case, period.”
During the trial
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Penny went “way too far,” holding Neely around the neck for nearly six minutes, past the point when he posed a threat. About 30 seconds after Penny put Neely in the chokehold, the train arrived at the next station and many passengers left the train car, according to court filings.
Footage of the interaction between Penny and Neely, which began about 2 minutes after the incident started, captures Penny holding Neely for about 4 minutes and 57 seconds on a relatively empty train with a couple of passengers nearby.
Prosecutors argue that Penny should have known that his minutes-long chokehold was turning fatal.
Witness accounts of Neely’s behavior that day differ.
In court filings, some passengers described their fear. One passenger said they “have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.” Another said Neely was making “half-lunge movements” and coming within a “half a foot of people,” according to court filings.
Other passengers on the train that day said they didn’t feel threatened — one “wasn’t really worried about what was going on” and another called it “like another day typically in New York. That’s what I’m used to seeing. I wasn’t really looking at it if I was going to be threatened or anything to that nature, but it was a little different because, you know, you don’t really hear anybody saying anything like that.”
