Woman accused of locking boyfriend in storage unit for days wanted for attempted murder
Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office
(MATTHEWS, N.C.) — A North Carolina woman is charged with attempted murder after allegedly locking her boyfriend in a storage unit, where he was stuck for several days with no food or water before being rescued, police said.
Robin Deaton, 52, of Matthews, North Carolina, has been arrested on attempted murder and kidnapping charges, the Monroe Police Department said. She was booked into jail early Thursday after a manhunt by police.
Her 51-year-old boyfriend had been locked in the unit on Thursday, police said. Deaton allegedly convinced him to crawl to the back of the unit to get her something, then slammed it shut and said, “This is what you get,” according to police.
He had no food, water or power source, and there were two locks on the storage unit, police said.
The man called 911 on Monday and told the dispatcher that his girlfriend had locked him in her storage unit at Cooper Storage in Monroe.
“I’ve been locked in a storage unit for about a week now, and I’ve just now found my phone,” he said in the 911 call, released by Union County Emergency Services. “My girlfriend locked me in here. She doubled up my lock, and I don’t know how she put me in it but she put me in here.”
He said he was in unit 43 and his phone was about to die. When asked if he needed emergency services, he said, “I just need to get out of here.”
“I just can’t breathe. I haven’t had nothing to drink or anything,” he said.
Officers responded to the facility around 1:15 p.m. Monday, according to the incident report.
The man was taken to an area hospital but has since been released, Charlotte, North Carolina, ABC affiliate WSOC reported.
The incident report listed the crime as false imprisonment, though detectives sought higher charges for Deaton’s arrest warrant based on the investigation, the police spokesperson said.
Members of the Chicago White Sox grounds crew struggle to deploy the rain tarp in the bottom of the seventh inning as hail and rain delay a game against the Los Angeles Angels at Rate Field on March 30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Matt Dirksen/Getty Images)
(CHICAGO) — Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power across the Midwest on Monday after deadly, severe weather battered the region on Sunday.
More than 310,000 customers are without power in Michigan Monday morning. Another 55,000 are without power in Wisconsin and 48,000 are in the dark in Indiana.
The National Weather Service said it recorded more than 200 wind damage reports and at least four tornadoes were reported across Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Five fatalities have been attributed to the storm.
Three children — a 2-year-old girl, her 4-year-old brother and their 11-year-old cousin — were killed when the car they were in was hit by a tree in Michigan, the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office said. Weather appeared to be the main contributing factor, the sheriff’s office said.
In Valparaiso, Indiana, one person was killed when “severe crosswinds” blew a tractor and a trailer onto their sides, according to local authorities.
The National Weather Service said a second person was killed north of Millersburg, Indiana, when wind from a thunderstorm blew over an Amish buggy.
The severe weather threat continues Monday, with both tornado and severe thunderstorm watches in effect across multiple states in the South.
Some storms could bring hailstones the size of tennis balls and damaging winds of up to 60 mph.
The storms are expected to reach New Orleans and Atlanta in the morning. The severe weather will hit Jacksonville, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Charlotte, North Carolina, by the afternoon.
The Southeast region is where the strongest of the storms are expected, with damaging wind, large hail and tornadoes possible.
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York could see storms by the evening rush hour.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds and Jessica Gorman contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — While President Donald Trump’s comments about wanting to “clean out” Gaza and forcibly displace its nearly 2 million Palestinians have stirred outrage and accusations of ethnic cleansing among U.S. allies and international law experts, some members of the Arab American community still believe he was a better choice than Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I don’t regret having supported the president. He promised us an end to the war, and he was able to get a ceasefire for us in Gaza, and for that we are grateful. Imagine how many hundreds of Palestinians we’ve been able to save because of the ceasefire,” Bishara Bahbah, the chairman for Arab Americans for Peace told ABC News.
The Biden-Harris administration faced criticism from the Arab American community due to its perceived unconditional support for Israel in its war on Gaza. More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people and hundreds more were taken captive.
“President Biden was asleep at the wheel, ignoring our our pleas with him. So we decided to tell President Biden that because you have ignored us, we are going to punish you at the polls, and that’s one of the major reasons why we decided to establish Arab Americans for Trump,” Bahbah said.
Many prominent Arab-American advocacy groups and community leaders threw their support behind Trump or Green Party candidate Jill Stein due to the Biden administration’s stance on Gaza.
“For many people, this was very painful. This was not an easy choice, because they were looking at what was going on in Gaza, it was very hard for them to support President Biden,” and later Vice President Harris, James Zoghby, the cofounder of the Arab American Institute, a political and policy organization that did not support Trump, told ABC News.
Now, with Trump proposing the forcible displacement of Palestinians, and attempting to pressure Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza — by threatening to cut billions in aid — some groups have maintained their support of Trump and are waiting to see what actions he takes and are maintaining their opposition to Harris and Biden.
“These were grotesque comments. They’re unacceptable comments, they’re absolutely horrific comments. But you know, at the end of the day, when you put them on a scale, they’re comments. It’s rhetoric, and I don’t feel it is appropriate, nor is it honest to sit here and conflate it with the actions of the Biden-Harris administration, or to try and use that rhetoric to use it as a ‘gotcha’ moment to people who voted against the Biden-Harris administration,” Hudhayfah Ahmad, the head of media for the Abandon Harris campaign, told ABC News.
The Abandon Harris campaign, which started as the Abandon Biden campaign, gave both Democratic Party candidates an ultimatum, asking for them to call for an unconditional ceasefire or lose the group’s support. Biden and Harris did not meet the deadline set by the group to call for a ceasefire, according to Ahmad.
The Trump campaign was able to garner support from the Muslim American community largely in the last four weeks before the election by making public calls for a ceasefire and vowing to make it happen, Ahmad said.
“There was never really any support before that,” Ahmad said.
“A considerable chunk of people who had previously committed to voting third party, said that I’m going to vote the Trump-Vance ticket at the top of the ticket, and I’ll vote Green Party down ballot. I heard this from multiple people in multiple swing states,” Ahmad said.
But some community leaders felt that despite the actions of the Biden Administration in Gaza, Trump would be worse.
“I was very much opposed to the hucksters who were trying to sell Jill Stein and to the folks who supported Donald Trump. It was a really not just a bad call, it was a dangerous call. And I felt that despite the insult, despite the hurt, we had a responsibility to think big. [Biden and Harris] were at fault for making our job more difficult,” Zoghby said.
“The pain that we knew would occur if Donald Trump got back into the White House was too great to too many people,” Zoghby said. “Even though [Biden and Harris] didn’t give us what we needed, we still had to recognize that letting Donald Trump back into the White House was was going to be a disaster.”
Arab Americans for Peace — an advocacy group formerly called Arab Americans for Trump — changed its name this month after hearing some of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the displacement of Palestinians, but a leader told ABC News they have not yet withdrawn their support for Trump.
“Our objective from the very beginning for supporting Trump was peace. We were telling the Biden administration continuously to stop its aid to the Israelis because the Israelis are committing genocide with the arms that are provided by the United States and Western Europe,” Bahbah said.
“The change of the name does not mean that we are withdrawing our support for President Trump. It just means that we are going back to the root cause of our very existence, which is the promotion of peace in the Middle East,” Bahbah said.
Even community leaders who did not support Trump as a candidate argued that he secured a ceasefire.
“Trump did this ceasefire solely for his own self interest and self image and self benefit. Nothing humanitarian about it at all,” Ahmad said.
“It’s hard to say that anyone feels regret [for supporting Trump] when you take into consideration that we are no longer seeing a daily influx of videos and pictures of children, men, women, elderly, being butchered with U.S. weaponry. That has stopped completely,” Ahmad said.
Despite some holding onto support for Trump, his comments on forcibly displacing Palestinians drew sharp criticism from Arab Americans.
“We are totally opposed to the idea of displacing Palestinians out of Gaza. Gaza belongs to the Palestinians, and it is not for anyone in the world to tell the Palestinians to leave that territory,” Bahbah said.
“Like my father, Palestinians are prepared to die on their homeland. And will not immigrate or be forced out of their homeland,” Bahbah said.
“There’s time to wait and see how things will evolve before I can say ‘I am really angry with the president, and I no longer supporting him.’ That is not the case right now, because it’s just the beginning of that process. But I also believe that the coming four years are going to be critical for the Israel-Arab conflict,” Bahbah said.
He said Arab Americans for Peace decided to support Trump because he promised to end the war in Gaza and ensure lasting peace in the Middle East.
He believes Trump’s pressure on Netanyahu stopped the war in Gaza.
But Bahbah said he believes Trump’s recent comments on Gaza are providing Israel cover to “destroy” the West Bank, drawing attention away from what is happening there.
Other leaders in the Arab community strongly disagreed with Trump’s comments on Gaza, and are skeptical of the motivations behind Trump’s comments on wanting to forcibly displace Palestinians.
“I think the purpose is to provide Netanyahu the cover to end this ceasefire after phase one and secure the hostages and go no further. Because I don’t think Trump is interested at all in seeing this through on the terms that were negotiated — which ultimately requires a full Israeli withdrawal and the reconstruction,” Zoghby said.
Netanyahu has faced criticism for not laying out a plan for what happens in Gaza after the war is over. The ceasefire agreement requires a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, but remains unclear if the ceasefire will reach its final stages.
“I could get as indignant as everybody else about [Trump’s comments] and it being illegal, but there’s so much in that involves Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians — and the U.S.’s enablement of Israel doing it — that is illegal, immoral,” Zoghby said.
Now they are awaiting on Trump to deliver lasting peace, Bahbah said.
“We continue to insist and be a voice of reason, telling the president what we want as an Arab American community, and that is lasting peace in the Middle East based on a two state solution, keeping in mind that what brought us to this point is the Biden-Harris administration by allowing Israel to literally destroy the Gaza Strip,” Bahbah said.
But support for Trump is conditional on what actions he takes, some activists say.
“We are not beholden to anybody or to any party. We will support whomever we think will end the wars and provide a permanent resolution to the Arab Israeli conflict and peace in the Middle East,” Bahbah said.
The group Abandon Harris plans to throw its support behind third-party candidates in the future, Ahmad said.
“Our movement is solely structured behind morals, values, principles — not parties, not individuals, not candidates,” Ahmad said.
(GEORGIA) — A Southwest Airlines pilot was arrested this week for allegedly reporting to work at a Georgia airport intoxicated, causing his Chicago-bound flight to be delayed for hours.
The pilot, identified as 52-year-old David Allsop, was arrested at Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah on Wednesday after a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer noticed he allegedly “smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated,” the agency said in a statement to ABC News.
Southwest Airlines confirmed the pilot had been removed from duty and apologized to customers whose travel plans were disrupted.
The flight Allsop was scheduled to operate, Flight 3772 headed to Chicago, was delayed several hours from 6:05 a.m. to 10:56 a.m. while Southwest got a new pilot, according to the airline.
Allsop was taken into custody around 7 a.m. by the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office and charged with driving under the influence, according to the booking document obtained by ABC News.
In its statement, TSA said this event was an example of its “see something, say something” motto.
“TSA always reminds passengers that if you see something, say something, and that is exactly what our Transportation Security Officer at Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) did when they saw something out of the norm. Upon encountering an individual in the crew screening lane who smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated, the TSA officer contacted local law enforcement who then engaged the individual directly,” the agency said.
“TSA maintains close relationships with our local law enforcement partners precisely for these types of situations. The TSA workforce is vigilant and always maintains heightened awareness in their efforts to secure our transportation systems and keep the traveling public safe,” the agency added.
