Tropical Storm Francine tracker: Storm forecast to make landfall in Louisiana as a hurricane

(Delphi, IND.) — Delphi, Indiana, murder suspect Richard Allen allegedly confessed to the crime in multiple jail phone calls to his wife, which were played for the jury on Thursday.

In one call, Allen told his wife, Kathy, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. Allen replied, “Yes, I did.”

“Why would you say that?” Kathy said. “I know you didn’t. There’s something wrong.”

In another call, Allen told his wife, “I think maybe I’ve lost my mind. … I need you to know I did this.”

She replied, “No, you haven’t. You’re unwell.”

Allen is accused of killing Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams 13, on a hiking trail in February 2017. He’s pleaded not guilty to murder.

In a separate call, Allen said to his wife, “If I get the electric chair or the death penalty, will you be there for me? I killed Abby and Libby.”

In another call, Allen said, “I did it, Kathy. I did it. Do you still love me?”

She replied, “Yes, I do. But you didn’t do it.”

“I don’t want to upset you. I’m sorry,” Allen told his wife. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’ve lost my mind.”

“I feel like I’m already in hell,” he told her later in the call. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Allen also allegedly confessed to corrections officers and a prison psychologist, according to their testimonies. But Allen’s mental state while in custody has come into question.

A psychologist testified this week that Allen could be classified as having serious mental illness. Allen was in solitary confinement for 13 months, which she said can be detrimental to a person’s mental health.

The psychologist said she believed Allen suffered from “situational psychosis” in jail. She said Allen would have episodes of psychosis and then it would go into remission.

Allen’s strange behavior in custody included hitting his head on the wall, washing his face in the toilet, refusing food, eating paper, smearing feces in his cell and putting feces on his face for two hours, according to testimony from corrections officers.

On the day of the murders, Libby and Abby saw a man behind them on the bridge, and Libby started recording on her phone, prosecutors said. The man — known as “bridge guy,” from the video of his voice released to the public — pulled out a gun and ordered the girls to go “down the hill,” prosecutors said.

Indiana State Police trooper Brian Harshman, who said he listened to 700 of Allen’s calls and monitored his texts and video chats, testified Thursday that after listening to the calls, he believes Allen is the voice on Libby’s “bridge guy” video.

The psychologist testified that Allen told her he ordered the girls “down the hill” and intended to rape them, but then he saw something — either a person or a van — and was startled.

Harshman told the jurors he believed Allen was startled by a van belonging to resident Brad Weber. Weber, who lives near the crime scene, owns a 2000 Ford Econoline van. Harshman said the time it would’ve taken Weber to drive home from work fits with the timing of the murders.

Defense attorney Brad Rozzi said police never investigated how many vans were registered in the county at the time of the murders. Rozzi also noted that numerous people were suspected of being the man in the “bridge guy” video, including Weber.

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(JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo.) — A Colorado teenager who was shot in the face while looking for a place to take homecoming photos said he knew he was bleeding and told deputies he screamed “I was going to die,” according to an affidavit.

The teenager is hospitalized with serious injuries, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Medical professionals told the sheriff’s office they believed there was a fragment of a bullet in the teen’s head, according to the affidavit.

Officers responded to a report of two trespassers on a property on Tuesday to find one of two teens shot in the face. The homeowner had also called her boyfriend to report the trespassers, according to the sheriff’s office.

A 17-year-old and his friend left a Colorado high school around 3:30 p.m. and went looking for a place to take homecoming pictures this weekend, the affidavit said.

The teens drove around and saw a house with a lake and a dock. They stopped to try to contact the homeowner to get permission to take photos near the lake, according to an affidavit.

The boys parked in front of the gate, walked up the driveway to the house and knocked on the door, but received no answer, the affidavit said.

They then walked down the driveway and returned to the car, which was parked on the roadway near the property. One of the boys then took out his school binder and was writing a note to leave for the homeowner when they saw a truck pull up and block their car, the affidavit said.

The driver then got out of the truck and walked toward the front of the car, pulled a handgun from his holster and pointed it toward the boys. They then heard the handgun go off and saw the windshield glass shatter, the affidavit said.

The boys told authorities they heard the truck driver say ‘oh s—, my gun went off,” according to the affidavit.

The boy in the passenger seat then got out of the car, took off his shirt and ran around to the driver’s side and began to help his friend, applying pressure to his wounds, according to the affidavit.

The driver then tried to assist in rendering aid, but the boy pushed him away and asked why he shot his friend, the affidavit said.

The victim told the sheriff’s office he did not think the man “intentionally shot him,” and he didn’t see the gun but heard the shot. After the gun went off, the shooter tried to help the boy, according to the affidavit.

The victim was “bleeding heavily from his face and had blood running down his arm” when officers responded to the scene, according to an affidavit. The 17-year-old’s friend was holding a white t-shirt up to his face to put pressure on the wound, the affidavit said.

An apparent bullet hole in the windshield of the car was centered where the driver’s seat was located.

When an officer tried to ask the man — 38-year-old Brent Metz — if he had shot a gun, he did not answer the question and said he wanted to speak to his lawyer, the affidavit said.

Metz told authorities the gun was in the truck for safety purposes and he was placed in handcuffs, according to the affidavit.

Metz was then arrested and transported to the sheriff’s office, where he was booked into jail for first degree assault, felony managing, illegal discharge of a firearm and reckless endangerment, according to the sheriff’s office.

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(TAMPA, Fla.) — It has been more than 100 years since Florida’s Tampa Bay area – a region especially vulnerable to storm surge and flooding – faced a direct hit by a hurricane.

But Hurricane Milton is now heading straight for Florida’s Gulf Coast, with landfall and a 15-foot storm surge possible in Tampa by late Wednesday night, meaning residents are racing to evacuate ahead of the storm even as they continue to clean up the damage from Hurricane Helene.

Here’s why Hurricane Milton is posing such a threat to the Tampa Bay region:

Why is Tampa susceptible to flooding and storm surge?

The two major surrounding bodies of water – the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding bays – as well as the low-lying coastline make the Tampa Bay area especially susceptible to storm surge, according to experts.

The continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico extends far offshore, up to 150 miles in some spots, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. When water gets “shoved” onto the coast from tropical systems, it has nowhere to go but onto the land, Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.

Additionally, when it comes to storm surge, it isn’t the strength of the storm that matters, but rather the size, Shepherd noted. That’s because the larger is the storm system, the longer water gets pushed onto shore, according to Josh Dozor, general manager of medical and security assistance at International SOS, a risk mitigation company, and former deputy assistant administrator of FEMA.

“When you have a large storm, it enables the gradual, continuous buildup of storm surge as it approaches,” Dozor told ABC News. ” … That 10 to 15 feet of storm surge could result in 10 to 15 feet over what is normally dry land.”

It isn’t uncommon for rising waters from Hillsborough Bay, which comprises the northeast arm of Tampa Bay, to spill onto Bayshore Boulevard, a scenic waterfront roadway in South Tampa that serves as recreation for residents, as well as a common route for drivers. Bayshore Boulevard flooded ahead of and during Hurricane Helene, when the storm surge was less than is currently forecast for Hurricane Milton.

Hurricane Helene’s impact is still fresh

The Tampa Bay region is nowhere near done with recovery and cleanup from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall Sept. 30 and brought six feet of storm surge to the Tampa area’s coastlines. The storm’s size allowed for that surge to infiltrate homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast from Cedar Key to Fort Meyers – each of which is about two hours north and south of Tampa, respectively – residents told ABC News.

In Dunedin, Florida, located on the Gulf Coast at the northernmost tip of Tampa Bay, mountains of debris still litter the streets and people were still airing out their belongings when evacuation orders for Hurricane Milton were issued, Dunedin resident Candace Allaire, 39, COO of the Crown & Bull restaurant, told ABC News.

While the restaurant’s newly renovated kitchen weathered the brunt of Helene’s damage, the rest of the neighborhood was destroyed, Allaire said. Many homes for Allaire’s family and employees, as well as neighboring restaurants, had four feet of standing water in them for hours as Helene barreled through, she said.

The emotional toll of Helene less than two weeks ago, and Hurricane Ian two years ago, is still pervasive in the community. Rebecca Kuppler, mother to a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, lost everything in Hurricane Helene. The family had evacuated to Orlando ahead of the storm and heard from neighbors that the water line was rising higher and higher, she told ABC News.

“It’s not stuff,” Kuppler said of the loss. “It’s our home, it’s the memories, it’s the love, the time you put into that, and that’s what’s been really hard.”

The pile of debris outside of Kuppler’s home was still there as the forecasts for Hurricane Milton began, prompting the family to evacuate yet again.

The back-to-back storms are reminiscent of the 2004 hurricane season, when Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne all struck Florida within a six-week period.

“It’s an extreme amount of stress, and if it happens once in a while, I think people can weather it,” Dozor told ABC News. “But when it happens a couple times a year or a couple times every few years, it takes a great toll on people.”

How climate change is increasing the storm risk in the Tampa Bay region

The extreme threat from hurricanes that the Tampa Bay region faces is also likely being influenced by our changing climate.

Human-amplified climate change is the primary cause for present-day rising sea levels, according to a consensus of climate scientists. It’s also triggering more frequent and more intense extreme rainfall events, experts say.

While many factors contribute to the magnitude and impact of storm surge and coastal flooding, average sea levels for many Gulf Coast communities are more than six inches higher today than they were just a few decades ago, data shows.

Human-amplified climate change also likely affected how fast Hurricane Milton intensified as it tracked over the warmer than average waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico, according to researchers. The record-high sea surface temperatures observed in this region over the past two weeks were made up to 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change, according to a rapid attribution analysis by Climate Central.

Warm ocean waters provide the energy hurricanes need to form and intensify. The warmer the water, the more powerful the storms typically are.

While a link has been established between the unusually warm sea surface temperatures and human-caused climate change, it is not yet known to what degree that climate change may have influenced Hurricane Milton’s development.

How Tampa Bay is preparing for the storm

Mandatory evacuations are in place for six counties in Florida, with Tampa at the center of the threat. Airports, businesses and schools from Tampa to Naples, some 170 miles south, are closing in preparation for Milton.

The Tampa area is one of the top five places for evacuations due to potential storm surge, Dozor said. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued a dire warning, urging those in the evacuation zones to heed evacuation mandates.

“If you choose to stay in one of the evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Castor said in an interview with CNN Monday night.

While FEMA and emergency management at the state and local levels report that they are adequately prepared for Hurricane Milton, it is incumbent upon residents to follow instructions and get themselves out of harm’s way in a timely manner, Dozor said. In highly populated cities along the Tampa peninsula, like Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, it is important for people to leave early because of the limited roadways.

“There are a lot of bottlenecks that hinder quick and efficient movement of populations to be able to leave the peninsula of Tampa,” he said.

It appears that residents are heeding the warnings, Dozor noted. Beginning on Monday, standstill traffic could be seen for miles on I-75 and the Sunshine Skyway, the bridge that spans the Tampa Bay, as residents embarked on a mass exodus to safety.

At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Candace Allaire and her fiancé evacuated north to Destin, in Florida’s panhandle, to ride out the storm. Fuel was hard to come by in preparation of their road trip, she said.

In addition, hotel availability is most major Florida cities to which residents might evacuate – such as Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville and Jacksonville – is already extremely low, Dozor said.

“All the hotels are reserved for people who’ve obviously been evacuated,” he said.

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