Trump calls himself ‘father of IVF,’ doubles down on ‘enemy within’ remarks in town hall

(ATMORE, Ala.) — Alabama carried out the second-ever nitrogen gas execution in the United States on Thursday.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of his then-coworkers Lee Holdbrooks and Christoper Scott Yancy, and his former supervisor Terry Lee Jarvis.

Miller was executed after 6 p.m. CT at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, a state prison in Atmore, Alabama. His time of death, according to Gov. Kay Ivey’s office, was 6:38 p.m.

“Justice has been served,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. “After two decades, Alan Miller was finally put to death for a depraved murder spree that cruelly took the lives of three innocent men.

“I ask the people of Alabama to join me in praying for the families and friends of the victims, that they might now find peace and closure,” Marshall’s statement concluded.

Miller was initially sentenced to be executed in September 2022 via lethal injection, but it was called off after officials had trouble inserting an intravenous line to administer the fatal drugs and were concerned they would not be able to do so before the death warrant expired.

Prior to the botched execution, the state had considered carrying out the death sentence via nitrogen hypoxia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides data and analysis on capital punishment.

In November 2022, Alabama officials agreed not to execute Miller by lethal injection again but said if they made a second effort, the state would use nitrogen hypoxia as the method, the DPIC said.

In May 2024, the Alabama State Supreme Court agreed to let the Department of Corrections carry out Miller’s death sentence by nitrogen hypoxia.

It comes after Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner, Kenneth Eugene Smith, by nitrogen gas in January of this year.

Nitrogen hypoxia is the term for a means of death caused by breathing in enough nitrogen gas to deprive the body of oxygen — in this case, intended to be used as a method of execution.

The protocol in Alabama calls for an inmate to be strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask and a breathing tube. The mask is meant to administer 100% pure nitrogen, depriving the person of oxygen until they die.

About 78% of the air that humans breathe is made up of nitrogen gas, which may lead people to believe that nitrogen is not harmful, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

However, when an environment contains too much nitrogen and the concentration of oxygen becomes too low, the body’s organs, which need oxygen to function, begin shutting down and a person dies.

State officials have argued death by nitrogen gas is a humane, painless form of execution and that the person would lose consciousness within seconds of inhaling the nitrogen and die within minutes.

Three states — Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma — have approved nitrogen gas as a form of execution and Ohio lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year to allow execution by nitrogen gas.

However, medical and legal experts have told ABC News that nitrogen gas as a method for execution is untested and there’s no evidence the method is any more humane or painless than lethal injection.

Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor in the department of anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine, said he reviewed Smith’s autopsy which showed blueness of the skin, pulmonary congestion and edema, which he says indicated that he died from being asphyxiated “slowly and painfully.”

“If that’s what Alabama thinks is a job well done, well then there seems to be a wide disagreement on what a job well-done means,” he told ABC News. “So, if this is again, what they intend, then they intend to kill him cruelly, and they will intend to kill Alan Miller in the same cruel way.”

Zivot has previously reported analyzing autopsies after lethal injection cases and reports finding that many show signs of pulmonary edema. In 2020, NPR said it expanded this work by analyzing over 200 autopsies after lethal injection and reported that signs of pulmonary edema were mentioned in 84% of the cases it reviewed.

Attorney General Steve Marshall described Smith’s execution as “textbook” but Zivot said it’s hard to describe nitrogen hypoxia as “textbook” and that it’s a “proven method” when it’s never been a tested method.

“I recognize that [people were] murdered and that what is at stake here is a very, very serious problem,” he said. “We’re not saying that Kenneth Smith or Alan Miller have become saint-like men as they have been incarcerated. It doesn’t matter whether they’re good or bad at this point with respect to how their punishment should be delivered. That doesn’t give us license to torture them.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The crew of the Titan’s support ship felt a “shudder” around the time they lost contact with the submersible during its doomed dive to the Titanic shipwreck, the Coast Guard said Friday.

U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Chair Jason Neubauer revealed during the last day of a two-week hearing on the implosion that the master of the Polar Prince told them that in hindsight, he believes he felt the ship “shudder” around the time when communications with the sub were lost during the June 2023 expedition.

The statement was provided to the board in October 2023, when the unidentified master was asked if he or crew members heard anything indicating the OceanGate submersible imploded, Neubauer said.

“The answer from the master was, ‘With the benefit of hindsight, I now believe I felt the Polar Prince shudder at around the time communications were reportedly lost, but at the time, we thought nothing of it. It was slight,'” Neubauer said.

Capt. Jamie Frederick with U.S. Coast Guard Sector Boston, who testified Friday on the Titan search and rescue mission, said if that information had been reported immediately to the Coast Guard, that could have had a “drastic impact on the search efforts.”

“My initial reaction is, if that was information they have, to me personally, it would be unconscionable that they would not share that with the unified command,” Frederick said.

Neubauer added that from the crew’s perspective, the shudder was “not immediately connected to the event” so wasn’t reported to the Coast Guard.

Frederick detailed during his testimony the complex, international search and rescue response, which culminated with a remotely operated vehicle able to go to a depth of 6,000 meters finding the Titan debris on June 22 on the ocean floor.

“They discovered the tail cone first. And then as we continued to find additional debris, it became apparent that it had been a total loss,” he said.

The implosion killed all five passengers, including Stockton Rush, the co-founder and CEO of the sub’s maker, OceanGate. French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, were also killed.

Frederick said the responders understood the Titan had survival systems on board and that they “never even got to the point to have the discussion of suspension.”

“I wouldn’t even want to speculate on when that would happen,” he added.

Frederick also addressed knocking noises detected by sonar buoys in the vicinity of the search location the day after the Titan imploded. He said the data was given to the U.S. Navy, which determined two days later it was not anyone knocking on the hull of the Titan. “They were 100% certain that it was not human in nature,” he said.

He also addressed an “anomaly” consistent with an implosion that was detected by the U.S. Navy in the general vicinity of where the Titan was at the time communications were lost. He said he was informed of the data a day after the Titan was lost and the information was classified at the time.

“It was one piece of data. It wasn’t definitive,” he said. “The Navy couldn’t tell us that it was 100% definitive, that it was an implosion.”

Rush said he would ‘buy a congressman’ to make Titan problems go away: Ex-employee

A former OceanGate employee testified during the hearing on Friday that he resigned from the submersible company after Rush told him he would “buy a congressman” to make problems with its Titan vessel go away.

Matthew McCoy was an active duty member of the U.S. Coast Guard prior to joining OceanGate as an operations technician in April 2017 as the company was building the first Titan prototype, which was never used on Titanic dives. He said he quit six months later, in September 2017, a day after his conversation with Rush.

McCoy said he told Rush he was concerned about operating the experimental Titan vessel without a certificate of inspection and that it would not be inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard. He said Rush responded that the Titan would be operating in the Bahamas and launch out of Canada and would not fall under U.S. jurisdiction.

“I think I had expressed to him that still taking U.S. passengers on there for hire at any point in time, if they touched the U.S. land, you know, U.S. port, that would also be of consideration,” McCoy said.

He said the conversation became “tense” and ended with Rush saying that “if the Coast Guard became a problem, he would buy himself a congressman and make it go away.”

“That will stand in my mind for the rest of time,” McCoy said. “I’ve never had anybody say that to me directly, and I was aghast. And basically, after that, I resigned. I couldn’t work there anymore.”

Asked by the Marine Board of Investigation if he felt like Rush was trying to intimidate him or if it was “more like bluster,” McCoy said he felt like Rush was trying to “either intimidate me or impress me.”

McCoy, a member of the Coast Guard Reserve, said he wasn’t clear on the regulations for the sub but was concerned about potentially violating U.S. law. He said he considered whether to notify the Coast Guard but OceanGate hadn’t done any dives in the U.S. with Titan.

He said he subsequently learned of a complaint OceanGate whistleblower David Lochridge filed in 2018 with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration following his termination. McCoy said he thought there would be a “deeper investigation” into OceanGate at that point. Lochridge’s whistleblower retaliation case was closed in late 2018 after he and OceanGate entered a settlement agreement in their respective lawsuits, OSHA said. Lochridge’s safety allegations regarding the Titan were referred to the Coast Guard, OSHA said.

McCoy said there was an “alarm bell” before he quit that made him concerned about OceanGate’s operations and the production of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull.

When he started, he said, it was “made very clear” OceanGate was working with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Boeing, “so they had a lot of what sounded like legitimacy behind them, as far as the engineering.”

But he said he soon learned the company had broken ties with the laboratory and Boeing wasn’t going to be doing the layup for the carbon fiber. He said he felt OceanGate’s engineering department “didn’t seem overly qualified” and there were mostly “college interns” during the summer he was there.

He said after he left OceanGate he didn’t keep tabs on the company for long.

“I just kind of quit following the company, not thinking that they would ever actually dive the Titan,” he said.

Coast Guard investigation continues into ‘unprecedented’ incident

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.

The main purpose of the hearing was to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.

At the conclusion of the two-week hearing Friday afternoon, Neubauer said the Coast Guard will conduct an analysis of the evidence collected and issue any recommendations to the commandant of the Coast Guard “to help ensure that nobody has to endure a future similar occurrence.”

Neubauer said that process can take several months but his priority is to “get this investigation done expeditiously, because I feel there are global issues at stake.”

Any determination on potential criminal acts will also be sent to the commandant of the Coast Guard, who would decide whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, Neubauer said.

The National Transportation Safety Board will issue a separate report on its findings, including their official determination of the probable cause of the incident, at a later date, Marcel Muise, an investigator with the agency’s Office of Marine Safety, said at the conclusion of the hearing.

Neubauer offered his condolences to the families of those killed and thanked the more than two dozen witnesses who testified in the proceedings.

“It takes courage to testify in the public spotlight, especially in the aftermath of a traumatic event,” he said. “The subject matter covered during the sessions was often highly technical and emotionally charged, and I’m grateful to each witness who stopped and assisted in our efforts to fully understand this unprecedented incident.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LONDON, Ky.) — As a massive search continued Monday afternoon for the suspect in a Kentucky interstate shooting that injured five people and left a dozen vehicles with bullet holes, an arrest warrant released by authorities alleges the fugitive gunman sent a woman a text message threatening to “kill a lot of people” about a half hour before highway rampage.

The suspect, 32-year-old Joseph A. Couch, was also allegedly involved in a domestic dispute on Saturday morning and legally purchased an AR-15 rifle and ammunition at a gun store hours before allegedly opening fire on vehicles traveling on Interstate 75 near London, Kentucky, law enforcement officials told ABC News.

According to an arrest warrant, Couch is wanted on charges of attempted murder and first-degree assault.

Before the interstate shooting, according to the arrest warrant, a Laurel County 911 dispatcher received a call from a woman who alleged Couch texted her before the interstate shooting and “advised he was going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least.” The text message was sent to the woman at 5:03 p.m. Saturday, about a half-hour before the interstate shooting started, according to the arrest warrant.

“Couch sent another message to [the woman] that read, in part, ‘I’ll kill myself afterwards,” according to the arrest warrant.

London city officials told ABC News the woman Couch texted is the mother of his child.

Details of the domestic dispute that allegedly involved Couch were not disclosed.

Couch allegedly purchased a Cobalt AR-15 rifle with a mounted sight and 1,000 rounds of ammunition for $2,914 at a London, Kentucky, gun store on Saturday morning, according to the arrest warrant.

Saturday’s interstate shooting unfolded around 5:30 p.m. local time on I-75 at Exit 49, about eight miles from London, officials said.

At a news conference Sunday night, Laurel County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Richard Dalrymple estimated that 20 to 30 rounds were fired at vehicles in both the north and southbound lanes of I-75, from a hillside near Exit 49. At least 12 vehicles were struck by gunfire, leaving five people with gunshot wounds, including one victim who was shot in the face, officials said.

The five victims suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.

Authorities initially said seven people were injured in the incident.

Officials said they do not believe any of the victims of the shooting were targeted.

State police announced Monday that a $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest of the suspect.

A silver Toyota SUV registered to Couch was found abandoned on a forest road in the dense woods near Exit 49, according to the arrest warrant issued for Couch. A Cobalt AR-15 rifle believed to have been used in the shooting and a green army-style duffle bag containing ammunition and several magazines were discovered in roughly the same area, according to the arrest warrant. The duffle bag had “Couch” handwritten on it, according to the warrant.

Investigators believe that the suspect was unprepared for a long period of trying to evade law enforcement in the woods because he left his gun, ammunition and vehicle behind. There is no indication, so far, that Couch had any type of stash of supplies that would enable him to disappear into the rugged terrain, investigators said.

Couch was initially named as a person of interest in the shooting, and the sheriff’s office released his photo and said he was “considered armed and dangerous.” On Sunday afternoon, Laurel County Sheriff John Root announced that Couch had been upgraded to the primary suspect.

Root said Couch has an address in Woodbine, Kentucky, and the sheriff’s office described him as about 5-foot-10 and 154 pounds.

According to military records, Couch served as a member of the U.S. Army Reserve from March 2013 to January 2019. Records show he was part of an Army Reserves engineering company, the 979 Engineering Company, based in Lexington.

More than 150 law enforcement officers are participating in the search for Couch.

Authorities are focusing their search in the area of Exit 49, although they have also investigated reported sightings of Couch in other areas of Laurel County and outside the county, officials said.

The area around Exit 49 is the most remote area of I-75 and the terrain is densely wooded and rugged, Kentucky State Police Trooper Scottie Pennington said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

“We’re in the Daniel Boone National Forest; this is thousands and thousands of acres. It’s kind of like a jungle,” Pennington said.

Pennington said the plan is to continue applying pressure on Couch to “wear him down.”

“Hopefully he has no water and nothing to eat,” Pennington said.

London Police Department Assistant Chief Bobby Day told ABC News that the area authorities believe Couch is hiding in has an extensive cave system and that the search has included underground caves.

At least nine Kentucky school districts and a community college campus closed Monday due to safety concerns stemming from the search for Couch.

“Student and Staff safety is a priority in the Laurel County Public Schools; therefore, out of an abundance of caution, school is canceled for tomorrow, Monday, September 9, 2024,” the Laurel County Public School said in a statement Sunday night.

ABC News’ Darren Reynolds and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.