‘This is our moment’: Utah governor’s impassioned plea after Charlie Kirk shooting
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(OREM, Utah) — After a suspect was arrested in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an emotional Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he is “as angry as I have ever been” and that this shooting marks a “moment” in the nation’s history.
“This is our moment. Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?” Cox told reporters during a press conference on Friday.
Cox confirmed that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was allegedly the person who shot and killed Kirk on Wednesday while the conservative activist was speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University in Orem, about 39 miles south of Salt Lake City.
The governor said he could not confirm that the suspect was cooperating with law enforcement and does not believe there are any more suspects.
During his emotional speech, Cox, who has served as Utah’s governor since January 2021, said Kirk’s murder is “much bigger than an attack on an individual” and that is is an “attack on all of us.”
“It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been and who we could be in better times,” Cox said.
He also emphasized that violence is not the answer.
“We can return violence with fire and violence. We can return hate with hate. And that’s the problem with political violence, is it metastasizes, because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse. These are choices that we can make,” Cox said.
While Cox said this is a “terrible day for the state of Utah,” he said he is “grateful that at this moment, we have the opportunity to bring closure to this very dark chapter in our nation’s history.”
“History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. But every single one of us gets to choose right now,” Cox said.
He also pleaded to the younger generation, saying they have an “opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now.”
“To my young friends out there, you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path,” Cox said.
Toward the end of his speech, Cox said he still believes in the country.
“I still believe that there is more good among us than evil, and I still believe that we can change the course of history. I’m hopeful because Americans can make it so,” Cox said.
He also thanked the federal agencies involved, including the FBI, and “everyone who worked together in such a short amount of time to find this person and to bring justice.”
Cox said state officials are already moving to pursue the death penalty if the case goes to trial.
(NEW YORK) — The risk of the catastrophic flooding that struck Texas Hill Country as people slept on July 4 and left at least 120 dead was potentially underestimated by federal authorities, according to an ABC News analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data, satellite imagery and risk modeling.
Some of the youth camps and recreational areas most devastated by the extreme weather were established on land designated by the FEMA as “special flood hazard areas” or in the river’s floodway, making them especially vulnerable to the July 4 flash floods that exceeded some federal estimates for a worst-case scenario.
At some points, water extended for hundreds of feet outside the Guadalupe River’s banks and beyond FEMA estimates, according to satellite data. First Street, a risk modeling company, told ABC News that the company believes that more than double the 8 million homes nationwide that are designated by FEMA to be in flood zones are actually at risk, finding that government models are outdated and fail to consider extreme weather events. Devastated camp ‘predominantly in a flood zone’
Along the river banks in Kerr County, the all-girls Camp Mystic was overrun by flood waters, which claimed the lives of 27 campers and counselors and swept multiple buildings from their foundations. According to FEMA maps, more than a dozen of the 36 cabins were located within areas designated as high risk for potential flooding on the river and nearby Cypress Creek.
“We knew this camp was predominantly in a flood zone, and even the areas that we showed that were outside were right on the edge of a flood zone,” said Jeremy Porter, the head of climate implications research at First Street, which provides climate data for companies like Zillow and Redfin.
Multiple buildings at Camp Mystic, including four cabins, were built within the Guadalupe River’s “regulatory floodway,” where most new construction is severely limited due to flood risk and to “protect human life and health,” according to Kerr County’s Flood Damage Prevention Order from 2020. The document noted that the stretch of land where Camp Mystic is situated is “an extremely hazardous area due to the velocity of flood waters which carry debris, potential projectiles and erosion potential.”
An additional 12 cabins at Camp Mystic were built on land designated as “special flood hazard areas,” where residents face a 1% chance of flooding annually and are normally required to have flood insurance.
“These should guide where you should or should not construct, whether you should have mitigation processes in place, like putting homes on elevated beds,” said Jonathan Sury, a senior staff associate at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in Manhattan.
But some of those structures at the nearly 100-year-old camp were built decades before FEMA began issuing its flood maps in the 1960s and were likely permitted to remain despite modern construction regulations, Porter noted.
A row of cabins at Camp Mystic sat directly behind the “special flood hazard area” and was deemed a lower risk for typical flooding. However, the extreme flash-flooding over Independence Day weekend inundated even the area thought to be at lower risk for flooding, satellite and radar analysis show.
‘Outdated’ maps
At its maximum point, the floodwaters were recorded to be more than 500 feet from the Guadalupe River banks, and more than 200 feet from the edge of the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, according to the satellite data. The satellite data was collected and provided to ABC News by ICEYE, a company operating synthetic aperture radar satellites, which can obtain real-time data worldwide by using radar pulses to generate data. The data collected measures the depth of the water in a given location.
Other areas along the Guadalupe River were not only vulnerable to flooding but also saw a higher-than-expected water level, exceeding the area marked for a 0.2% annual chance of inundation. Experts told ABC News that Texas practices “very little oversight” over youth camps, and state officials last week approved Camp Mystic’s emergency plans.
At the Heart O’ the Hills Camp for Girls – where 1 person was killed – at least seven structures were built in the Special Flood Hazard Area. The data shows that the floodwater reached up to 220 feet from the riverbed.
Floodwaters devastated RV parks north of the other camps on the Guadalupe River. More than 60 RV spots had been situated in the FEMA-designated Special Flood Hazard Area. Satellite data shows the area was covered in floodwater spanning the entire RV park.
Lorena Guillen, the owner of the Blue Oak RV Park, told ABC News that she was familiar with where her business fell on the FEMA flood map and never considered that the floodwaters could reach as far as they did last week.
“It’s always come up…but there was nothing that would give us an indication that the flood was going to get all the way up 35, 40 feet high in 40 minutes,” she said. “Everything is gone. And there is so much debris, so much cleanup to do that it is going to take, it’s going to take months and months.”
Requests for comment to the camps and FEMA were not immediately answered.
“Our City of Kerrville and Kerr County leadership are committed to a transparent and full review of processes and protocols,” the Kerr County Joint Information Center said in an email. “The special session [of the state legislature] will be a starting point in which we will begin this work, but our entire focus since day one has been rescue and reunification.”
According to Porter, the extent of the flooding at Camp Mystic and other areas is representative of a broader problem with FEMA’s modeling, which places 8 million properties across the country at risk of a 100-year flood.
FEMA’s flood maps are generally used by the government to determine what insurance requirements are needed for homeowners, according to Lidia Cano Pecharroman, a researcher at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.”When planning for flooding we cannot be over-reliant on these maps,” she said. “They are a useful tool but they are based on limited modeling and data.”
FEMA’s model considers factors like coastal storm surge and risks of flooding along river channels, but does not take into account heavy precipitation, such as the extreme rains that swept across Texas last week, Porter said.
“They’re outdated in the sense that they’re not climate corrected,” Porter said. “As those intensities increase of those rainfall events, we’re getting more rainfall happening all at once. It’s filling the waterways, and we’re seeing rapid increases in the river levels.”
First Street estimates that there are more than 2.2 times the number of properties at risk of hundred-year floods than FEMA’s model suggests.
“It’s a devastating event that occurred, but people should look at it and say, you know, if we know our risk, we should retrofit our buildings,” said Porter. “We should make sure that they’re designed to a standard that can withstand the risk that exists in an area right outside of that flood zone.”
(NEWS YORK) — A Michigan man was sentenced to 40 to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and torturing a woman he stalked for more than a decade, in a case that highlighted the potentially devastating impact of stalking.
Christopher Thomas, 39, pleaded guilty to kidnapping, torture and aggravated stalking in December 2023, and was sentenced in 2024. The charges stemmed from a horrific October 2022 incident in which he kidnapped Samantha Stites and held her in a soundproof bunker he had constructed inside a storage unit.
“I wondered if I would see daylight again,” Stites said in her victim impact statement during sentencing. “I shook and sobbed after he raped me, I wasn’t sure he would stop.”
ABC News Studios’ “Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror,” a three-part series, is streaming in its entirety on Hulu and Disney+ from Tuesday, Aug. 19.
While Thomas was initially charged with criminal sexual conduct, those charges were later dropped as part of a plea agreement.
The case gained national attention due to its disturbing details, but also because Stites had previously sought protection from Thomas through the legal system. Just months before the kidnapping, her request for an ex parte — meaning the defendant was not present — personal protection order was denied.
The stalking began in 2011 when Stites was a college student at Grand Valley State University. Thomas, who is seven years older than Stites, began appearing at the same Christian group she attended. What started as seemingly innocent interactions quickly evolved into something more sinister.
“At first I think he is just lonely and for some reason finds me an approachable person to talk to,” Stites told ABC News. “And then at some point, it kind of changes.”
Despite Stites’ repeated rejections and clear boundaries, Thomas’s behavior escalated. He would appear at her workplace with flowers, show up at her sports practices and eventually began following her movements through GPS trackers he secretly placed on her vehicle and those of her friends.
“She felt sorry for him. So she was a little bit nice to him,” Charissa Hayden, Stites’ former roommate, told ABC News. “And he took that and he spun it into something it wasn’t and ran away with it.”
On Oct. 7, 2022, Thomas broke into Stites’ home early in the morning and kidnapped her. He had spent months preparing for this moment, building a soundproof room within a storage unit.
“He spent thousands of dollars on creating this box so he could spend time with Sam,” Detective Mike Matteucci of the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News. “And do God only knows what.”
Inside the bunker, Thomas revealed he had tracked Stites’ movements for over a year using GPS devices, showing her the tracking app on his phone. He told her she would be held for two weeks, showing her supplies he had gathered including food, water and a bucket for bathroom needs.
Stites, fearing for her life, strategically engaged him in conversation. When Thomas expressed fear about going to prison, Stites saw an opportunity. After nearly 14 hours in captivity, she convinced him to release her by promising not to report the crime. Once free, she immediately sought medical attention and reported the incident to authorities.
The investigation revealed Thomas had a prior conviction for stalking another woman. Kelli, whose last name was withheld for legal reasons, told ABC News she had obtained a protection order against Thomas in 2009 after he engaged in similar stalking behavior.
“I always knew that there would be somebody else,” Kelli said after being contacted by detectives investigating Stites’ case. “When they called me in 2022, there’s like this guilty feeling like he did do it to somebody else. I was right.”
During the sentencing, Judge Kevin Elsenheimer — who had denied Stites’ ex parte protection order request in July 2022, just three months before the kidnapping — acknowledged the severity of Thomas’s actions and his likelihood to reoffend.
The judge pointed to Thomas’s jail conversations with his mother as evidence of his obsession, noting that Thomas admitted “nothing would have mattered, that nothing would have stopped you from doing what you were going to do.”
If Thomas is ever released, he will be required to wear a GPS monitor for the remainder of his life.
“Justice is a funny thing. It doesn’t necessarily come in the form of prison years,” Stites said. “I can’t ever go back to before I was kidnapped. And that’s something I had to grieve. But knowing that I’m finally turning the page on this and that I should feel safe with him off the street and that I am protected meant a lot. I felt free.”
According to court documents, the case prompted changes in how courts handle protection orders in Michigan. New policies require referees — who consider PPO applications and make a referral to the judge on what to do — to examine any prior PPOs before making recommendations to the court.
According to national statistics presented in the case, one in three women will be stalked in their lifetime.
“I want other women, whether they’ve been stalked or sexually assaulted or not believed, I want them to see my story and think things can change,” Stites said.
Heavy rain poured over parts of central Texas, dumping more than a month’s worth of rain for places like San Angelo, killing at least 43 people.
Dangerous amounts of rain caused dangerous flash flooding in parts of Texas, destroying homes and cars on Independence Day.
Here’s a timeline of the disaster:
Friday, July 4 Flash flooding is occurring and with a continued threat through the time period. This is mainly west of Austin and San Antonio.
A flash flood emergency was issued for Friday morning for South-central Kerr County, including Hunt – a “particularly dangerous situation” with up to 10 inches of rain having fallen and more rain still coming down at rates of up to 4 inches per hour.
Another flash flood emergency is north of San Angelo, Texas, with up to 10 inches of rain falling there already with another 3 to 4 inches of rain possible.
7 a.m.: Kerr County, Texas, begins to evacuate people near the Guadalupe River in Hunt amid major flooding caused by 6 to 7 inches of rainfall.
10 a.m.: The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office confirm there have been “multiple fatalities” from “catastrophic flooding.”
“The entire county is an extremely active scene. Residents are encouraged to shelter in place and not attempt travel. Those near creeks, streams, and the Guadalupe River should immediately move to higher ground,” the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office said.
1 p.m.: The “devastating and deadly flood” has far surpassed the flood of 1987, becoming the highest flood on record, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a press conference Saturday.
Officials say there have been dozens of water rescues.
“This came at night when people were asleep in bed. Please pray for our community,” Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring, Jr. said during a press conference.
Camp Mystic, a girls only camp along the Guadalupe River, said it lost power, water and Wi-Fi. In a letter, the camp told parents that if they have not been personally contacted, then their daughter is accounted for.
“The highway has washed away so we are struggling to get more help,” Camp Mystic said in a statement.
3 p.m.: Heavy rain remains ongoing in parts of Texas, dumping more than a month’s worth of rain for places like San Angelo.
A Flash Flood Emergency remains in effect for south-central Kerr County, including Hunt — a “particularly dangerous situation” with up to 12 inches of rain already have fallen and more rain still coming down through this evening.
Another Flash Flood Emergency for the Guadalupe River from Center Point to Sisterdale, as well as to the north for the Llano River south of Mason remains in effect as the extreme runoff from the heavy rain makes its way down the rivers.
Several major camps in the area are likely impacted by the flooding.
Just before 5 pm: Patrick said they are working to evacuate camps with some of the kids, announcing that there are around 23 campers unaccounted for at Camp Mystic.
Once rain clears, they have 10 buses ready to go and get kids to reunite them with their parents, Patrick said.
Thirteen people are confirmed dead, according to Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha.
10 p.m.: At least 24 people have been confirmed dead, according to Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha.
Around 23 to 25 campers are still unaccounted for from Camp Mystic.
Saturday, July 5 3 a.m.: A flash flood emergency has been issued by the National Weather Service for Northwestern Travis County and far eastern Burnet county around Lake Travis in south-central Texas
Flash flooding is already occurring as 3 to 7 inches of rain have fallen and the expected rainfall rate is 6 inches in an hour. Additional rates of 2 to 5 inches are also possible.
7 a.m.: This earlier Flash Flood Emergency has been expanded to include much of Burnet County and western parts of Williamson and Travis County.
