SUV crash that killed 4, hurt 6 at after-school camp doesn’t appear to be targeted: Police
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(CHATHAM, Ill.) — An Illinois community is reeling after an SUV drove into an after-school camp, killing four, but police said the crash does not appear to be targeted.
The driver struck the YNOT After School Camp building in Chatham, just outside of Springfield, on Monday afternoon, killing two 7-year-olds, an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old, according to the Illinois State Police.
Six children were taken to hospitals, including one who remains in critical condition, police said Tuesday.
According to camp founder Jamie Loftus, the SUV drove through a farm field before hitting the east wall of the camp building. The SUV then exited the building on the west side, went across a gravel road and became lodged against a power pole and baseball field fence, Loftus said.
The driver, 44-year-old Marianne Akers of Chatham, is not in custody, police said. The cause of the crash remains under investigation, but police said it didn’t appear to be targeted. Akers — who was the only person in the vehicle — wasn’t hurt, police said.
“I cannot gather the words to express much of anything that will make sense in print,” Loftus said in a statement. “However, I do know that our families who suffered loss and injury today, are hurting very, very badly. They are friends and their kids are like our kids. The Village of Chatham and Ball Chatham Schools are going to need their populations and that of the outside world to love them, pray for them, think of them.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said, “Our community lost a group of bright and innocent young people with their whole lives ahead of them.”
“Parents said goodbye to their kids this morning not knowing it would be the last time,” he said in a statement. “My heart is heavy for these families and the unimaginable grief they’re experiencing — something that no parent should ever have to endure.”
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(NEW YORK) — A document unsealed Tuesday from the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams may raise questions about the testimony of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during his Senate confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Blanche was asked about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the corruption charges against Adams.
“What I just saw with the dismissal of the Adams charge, that was directed by D.C., correct?” Democratic Sen. Peter Welch asked.
“I have the same information you have,” Blanche responded. “I don’t know beyond what I’ve [seen] publicly reported.”
However, a newly unsealed draft letter from then-interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon suggests Blanche may have known more than he let on.
Sassoon, who was fighting the directive to drop the mayor’s case, wrote that she expressed concern to top DOJ official Emil Bove that such a grave decision about a high-profile case should wait until Blanche was confirmed. In response, Sassoon wrote that “Bove informed me that Todd Blanche was on the ‘same page.'”
Sassoon would later resign rather than obey Bove’s order to drop the mayor’s case.
Her draft letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi was among a tranche of materials ordered unsealed by Judge Dale Ho, who is still considering whether to dismiss the case against Adams.
The Justice Department insisted Blanche played no role in the determination to seek dismissal.
“Todd Blanche was not involved in the Department’s decision-making prior to his confirmation,” a spokesperson said in a statement provided to ABC News.
The mayor’s lawyer said the unsealed letter is further proof that the case should be tossed.
“As I’ve said from the beginning, this bogus case that needed ‘gymnastics’ to find a crime – was based on ‘political motive’ and ‘ambition’, not facts or law. The more we learn about what was really going on behind the scenes, the clearer it is that Mayor Adams should have never been prosecuted in the first place,” the mayor’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, said in a statement.
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(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — The suspected arsonist who allegedly tried to kill Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro decided to firebomb his official residence because of “what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” according to a search warrant signed by Pennsylvania State Police.
Investigators obtained several warrants as part of the investigation into the early Sunday morning arson attack, including for suspect Cody Balmer’s storage unit, electronic devices and parents’ home, where he told a Dauphin County judge he had recently been living.
Balmer, 38, targeted Shapiro “based upon perceived injustices to the people of Palestine,” one of the warrants said, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Attorney General Pam Bondi strongly condemned the attack in remarks at the Department of Justice on Wednesday, but she declined to label the act “domestic terrorism” or commit to opening a separate federal case against the suspect.
“It is absolutely horrific what happened to him,” Bondi said. “We have been praying for Josh, for his family. Those photos, it was horrible. I firmly believe that they wanted to kill him. The defendant allegedly said he was going to use a hammer if he could have gotten to the governor. I’ve known the governor many, many years. It is horrible, and yes, we are working with state authorities to do — it’s now a pending investigation — anything we can to help convict the person that did this and keep them behind bars as long as possible.”
Bondi did not answer a direct question from a reporter about whether she would label the action “domestic terrorism,” as she has repeatedly described the wave of attacks carried out on Teslas and dealerships around the country in recent months.
The attack occurred hours after the Shapiro family hosted more than two dozen people for the first night of Passover.
The fire was reported at about 2 a.m. ET Sunday and the family was safely evacuated.
Investigators have not released a motive for the attack, but the search warrant represents the most direct indication of why Balmer allegedly hopped a fence at the governor’s mansion, broke windows and hurled Molotov cocktails police said he made from beer bottles and gasoline.
Balmer called 911 less than an hour after the attack, identified himself and told the call-taker that he will not take part in Shapiro’s plans “for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” the warrant said, according to the sources. Balmer added Shapiro needed to “stop having my friends killed.”
After turning himself in, Balmer allegedly told police he would have attacked Shapiro with a hammer if he happened upon the governor inside the residence, according to court documents.
Balmer faces eight criminal charges, including attempted murder, terrorism and aggravated arson. Prosecutors at this time have not invoked a hate crime law, which in Pennsylvania is known as ethnic intimidation.
The Pennsylvania State Police has hired an outside investigator to conduct a review of its security posture at the governor’s mansion. The review will include a “risk and vulnerability assessment of the Governor’s Residence and grounds,” police said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Venezuelan migrants removed by the Trump administration to El Salvador last week deserved to have a court hearing before their deportations to determine whether they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, a federal judge ruled Monday morning.
In a ruling denying the Trump Administration’s request to dissolve his order blocking the deportations, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote that Trump’s “unprecedented use” of the Alien Enemies Act does not remove the government’s responsibility to ensure the men removed could contest their designation as alleged gang members.
Trump last week invoked the Alien Enemies Act — a wartime authority used to deport noncitizens with little-to-no due process — by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the U.S.
“The Court need not resolve the thorny question of whether the judiciary has the authority to assess this claim in the first place. That is because Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on another equally fundamental theory: before they may be deported, they are entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all,” Judge Boasberg wrote in his ruling Monday, adding the men were likely to win their case.
Judge Boasberg acknowledged that the use of the Alien Enemies Act “implicates a host of complicated legal issues” but sidestepped the larger question of whether the law was properly invoked, instead focusing on the due process deserved by the men. He added that the men have been irreparably harmed by their removal to an El Salvadoran prison where they face “torture, beatings, and even death.”
“Federal courts are equipped to adjudicate that question when individuals threatened with detention and removal challenge their designation as such. Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge,” he wrote.
Judge Boasberg also cast doubt on the Trump administration’s allegation that the decision risks national security, noting that the men would still be detained within the United States if they had not been deported. During a court hearing on Friday, DOJ lawyers acknowledged that the men deported on the Alien Enemies Act have the right to a habeas hearing — where they could contest their alleged membership in Tren de Aragua — but declined to vow that each man would be given a hearing before they were removed from the country.
Boasberg’s ruling comes as a federal appeals court prepares to hear arguments Monday over the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act for last week’s deportations.
If the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns Boasberg’s blocking of the president’s use of the centuries-old wartime law, the Trump administration could exercise the authority to deport any suspected migrant gang member with little-to-no due process.
Lawyers representing the Venezuelan men targeted under Trump’s proclamation have argued that the president exceeded his authority by using the Alien Enemies Act against a gang — rather than a state actor — outside of wartime.
“The President is trying to write Congress’s limits out of the act,” the plaintiffs argued, adding that U.S. presidents have used the law three other times during or immediately preceding a war.
But the Trump administration has argued that the judiciary does not have the right to review the use of the Alien Enemies Act, alleging the deportations fall under the president’s Article II powers to remove alleged terrorists and execute the country’s foreign policy.
“The President’s action is lawful and based upon a long history of using war authorities against organizations connected to foreign states and national security judgments, which are not subject to judicial second guessing,” DOJ lawyers have argued in court filings.
Last week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked the president’s use of the law to deport more than 200 alleged gang members with no due process, calling the removals “awfully frightening” and “incredibly troublesome.” An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subsequently acknowledged in a sworn declaration that “many” of the noncitizens deported last weekend under the Alien Enemies Act did not have criminal records in the United States.
The Trump administration is asking the appeals court to overturn Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking the deportations, while Judge Boasberg continues to examine whether the Trump administration deliberately defied his order by sending the men to an El Salvadoran prison rather than returning them to the United States as he directed.
“The government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order and who ordered this and what’s the consequence,” Boasberg said on Friday.
With deportations under the Alien Enemies Act temporarily blocked, the Trump administration has vowed to use other authorities to deport noncitizens. Over the weekend, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez announced that the country had reached an agreement to resume repatriation flights of Venezuelan migrants from the U.S.
“We’re going to keep targeting the worst of the worst, which we’ve been doing since day one, and deporting from the United States through the various laws on the books,” border czar Tom Homan told ABC’s Jon Karl on Sunday.
The three-person panel hearing today’s arguments includes two judges nominated by Republican presidents, including one nominated by Trump himself. The D.C. Circuit is the last stop before the Trump administration could take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump nominated three judges during his last term, solidifying the court’s conservative majority.
