Woman arrested after bodies of 2 girls found in suitcases in Cleveland field: Police
(CLEVELAND) — A 28-year-old woman has been arrested days after the bodies of two girls were found in suitcases in a field in Cleveland, police announced Thursday.
The Cleveland Division of Police did not say what charges the suspect was arrested on in connection with the suspected homicides, noting that the woman is expected to be formally charged later Thursday. Her name will be released at that point, police said.
Detectives began investigating the deaths on Monday, following the “horrific” discovery, according to Cleveland Police Chief Dorothy Todd.
An individual spotted one of the bodies inside a suitcase while walking a dog in a residential neighborhood on Monday evening and reported it to police, according to Todd.
Responding officers located a second body in another suitcase nearby, Todd said. Both suitcases were in a shallow grave in a field near a school, she said.
One of the girls is suspected to have been between the ages of 8 1/2 and 13, and the second between 10 1/2 and 14, Todd said. They have been determined to be half-siblings, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office said Wednesday.
It was unclear how long the girls had been at the location, just that “it was some time,” and that there were no clear indicators of the cause of death, Todd told reporters Tuesday.
“This is a traumatic event for our officers, for the community,” Todd said.
The cause and manner of death have not yet been determined, and the medical examiner’s office is continuing to work to officially identify the children, police said Thursday.
The investigation led detectives to execute a search warrant at a residence located within a block of the field on Wednesday, where they “recovered substantial evidence related to the case,” the Cleveland Division of Police said.
A person of interest was detained on Wednesday, with Cleveland Police Sgt. Wilfredo Diaz telling reporters it was a “significant break” in the case.
Todd said in a statement Thursday that “careful and methodical work” in the case “allowed our detectives to develop the evidence needed to make quick identification of a person of interest, ultimately resulting in an arrest.”
A child located inside the searched home has been taken into custody by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, police said. The child appeared to be in good health, police said.
American Tourist Yoni Pizer speaks of getting caught in the violence that erupted in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, February 22, 2026, after the Mexican government killed the cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — In harrowing detail, an American tourist described the violence that he, his husband and two friends were caught in on Sunday in the vacation mecca of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when armed criminals responded to the killing of a notorious cartel boss.
Yoni Pizer of Chicago told ABC News that he and his husband, who own a vacation condo in Puerto Vallarta, were driving their friends to a whale-watching expedition around 8:30 a.m. local time on Sunday when chaos suddenly erupted.
Pizer said they were just west of Puerto Vallarta, approaching an intersection, when they first noticed trouble and soon realized their lives were in jeopardy.
“We suddenly noticed a man running at us with a gun in his hand and one of my friends who was in the backseat shouted, ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!'” Pizer said.
He said the man was part of the group of armed assailants who were stopping cars and pulling the occupants out.
Pizer said the man banged on his car window and pointed the gun at his head. He said at first he thought it was just a carjacking, but later noticed other armed assailants stopping cars and pulling the occupants out.
He said the armed man ordered him and the others with him to get out of the car.
“At that point, he got into the car and drove it just a few yards into the intersection, and then threw an incendiary device in it, which exploded, and the car was quickly engulfed in flames,” Pizer said.
Widespread cartel-organized violence erupted following a Mexican Special Forces operation on Sunday that killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, who is also known as “El Mencho.”
Oseguera Cervantes was one of the most wanted criminals in both Mexico and the United States. He was one of the top traffickers of fentanyl into the U.S. Last year President Donald Trump designated the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
When Mexican forces moved in to arrest him on Sunday in another part of the state of Jalisco, “El Mencho’s security detail opened fire,” Mexico’s Secretary of National Defense Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said Monday. More than 30 cartel members were killed in the firefight, which also left 25 members of the Mexican National Guard dead, Mexican officials said.
Oseguera Cervantes initially got away, but government forces tracked him down in the town of Tapalpa, about 180 miles southeast of Puerto Vallarta, where he and his two bodyguards were gravely wounded in a gun battle, Mexican authorities said.
El Mencho and his bodyguards died during an evacuation flight to a medical facility, Trevilla Trejo said.
In response, cartel members fanned out across the country, setting fire to vehicles and buildings, authorities said.
Among the other cartel members killed was a “principal confidant” of El Mencho in Jalisco who was “coordinating road blockades, vehicle burnings, and attacks on military and government facilities,” Trevilla said.
“Their goal was clearly to block all main roads in Puerto Vallarta. And, clearly, it wasn’t to kill people, because they easily could have killed all of us,” Pizer said.
He said that after his car was taken and set on fire, he and his party ran for their lives as they heard gunshots and saw numerous vehicles being torched.
“Then a city bus came up and they went onto the bus and started shooting their guns to make sure people understood that they meant business,” Pizer said, adding that the assailants blocked a road with the bus and set it on fire.
Pizer said at one point during their escape, he was separated from his husband and one of their friends, who both ended up sheltering in a church orphanage for more than eight hours.
Pizer said that a good Samaritan stopped and gave him and his other guest a ride back into Puerto Vallarta.
“We ran to the beach and turned around and saw black columns of smoke throughout the city,” Pizer said.
The U.S. State Department is advising American tourists to continue sheltering in place until tensions subside.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said there is a “greater calm” in Mexico as government forces worked to quell the violence.
Pizer said he fears the attack will wreck Puerto Vallarta’s top industry — tourism — at least for the short term.
“This all makes me very, very sad,” Pizer said. “Puerto Vallarta is such a wonderful, special place. Obviously, that’s why so many people come here.”
A memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults murdered on May 24,2022 during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on January 05, 2026 in Uvalde, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(UVALDE, Texas) — A jury has acquitted former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer Adrian Gonzales for his response to the Robb Elementary shooting in May 2022.
After more than seven hours of deliberations, the jury returned a not guilty verdict Wednesday evening on all 29 counts of child endangerment.
As the verdict was read, Gonzalez bowed his head as he heard it. Several of those sitting in the gallery started crying. He hugged his lawyers, shook hands and appeared to be tearing up.
Gonzales was among the first officers to respond to the mass shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed. It took 77 minutes before law enforcement mounted a counterassault to end the rampage.
Prosecutors alleged Gonzales did not follow his training and endangered the 19 students who died and an additional 10 surviving students.
Lawyers for Gonzales, who pleaded not guilty, argued he was unfairly blamed for a broader law-enforcement failure that day.
Ex-officer: Focused on ‘picking up the pieces’ When he walked out of the courtroom on Wednesday night after the jury acquitted him, Gonzales was a man of few words.
“I want to start by thanking God for this — my family, my wife and these guys — he put them in my path,” he told reporters, referring to his lawyers. “Thank you for the jury, for considering all the evidence.”
When ABC News’ John Quiñones asked him, “What does moving on look like to you?” he answered succinctly.
“Picking up the pieces and moving forward,” Gonzales said.
Asked about the frustration of some of the families of victims about the verdict, defense attorney Nico LaHood said he’s “sorry that they feel that way” and vowed to pray for them.
“We pray for them. We’re sorry that they feel that way. We understand that their separation from their loved one is going to be felt as long as they walk on this earth, and we don’t, we don’t ignore that. We acknowledge that we’re just going to continue to pray for them. So I’m very sorry that they feel that way,” he said.
According to LaHood — who said he spoke with some of the jurors after the verdict — the jury was saddened by the trial but couldn’t see through some gaps in the prosecution’s case.
“They were very mindful and deliberate,” LaHood said. “Obviously, they were saddened, because they know what the other families are mourning still, but they said there were a lot of gaps in the evidence, and some of it didn’t make sense.”
Jason Goss, another attorney for Gonzales, told reporters that he believes the verdict clears his client’s name.
“The evidence showed that not only did he not fail, but he put himself in great danger,” Goss said. “So, you can imagine how somebody who has had the entire country look at him as somebody who was not willing to do his duty. He is a proud man who does do his duty. And he went in there. When it was time for him to go, he went in there.”
Families of the victims react
For Jacinto Cazares — whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie died in the shooting — the verdict was yet another instance of the legal system failing to deliver justice after one of the worst mass shootings in US history.
“We had a little hope, but it wasn’t enough,” he said outside the court. “Again, we are failed. I don’t even know what to say.”
Cazares said he was hopeful that the jury might have reached a different conclusion but “prepared for the worst.”
“I need to keep composed for my daughter. It has been an emotional roller coaster since day one. I am pissed,” he said.
Jesse Rizo, Jackie’s uncle, told reporters he was concerned about the message the verdict might send to police officers who respond to future mass shootings.
“I respect the jury’s decision, but what message does it send?” he said. “If you’re an officer, you can simply stand by, stand down, stand idle, and not do anything and wait for everybody to be executed, killed, slaughtered, massacred.”
When asked about the defense case by ABC’s John Quiñones, Jackie’s aunt Julissa Rizo pushed back on the defense narrative that Gonzales acted heroically that day.
“The defense said he did as much as he could,” Quiñones said.
“That’s not true,” she responded. “There were two monsters on May 24. One was the shooter, and the other one was the one that never went in, that could have avoided this.”
How the trial unfolded Each of the 29 counts Gonzales faced carried a maximum penalty of two years in prison, and h. could have spent the rest of his life in prison if he was convicted.
Prosecutors claimed Gonzales had a unique opportunity to stop the carnage when he arrived and learned gunman Salvador Ramos’ location from a teaching aide. The aide testified that she repeatedly urged Gonzales to intervene, but said the officer did “nothing” in those crucial moments. Prosecutors also argued Gonzales failed to act once he got inside the school.
Before jurors were sent to deliberate, District Attorney Christina Mitchell gave an impassioned plea, saying, “I know this case is difficult, and it has been difficult. But we cannot continue to let children die in vain.”
The defense argued that Gonzales did everything he could in that moment — including gathering critical information, evacuating children and entering the school — and said Gonzales acted on the information he had. The defense also highlighted that other officers arrived in the same timeframe as Gonzales and that at least one officer had an opportunity to shoot the gunman before he entered the school.
This case marks the second time in U.S. history that prosecutors have sought to hold a member of law enforcement criminally accountable for their response to a mass shooting.
In 2023, a Florida jury acquitted Scot Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, who was charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his alleged inaction during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Peterson’s lawyers argued his role as an armed school resource officer did not amount to a caregiving post needed to prove child neglect in Florida, and that the response to the shooting was muddled by poor communication.
Former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — who was the on-site commander on the day of the Robb Elementary shooting — is also charged with endangerment or abandonment of a child and has pleaded not guilty. Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.
“What happened to Uvalde on May 24 can happen anywhere, at any time,” she said. “If it’s going to happen, and if we have laws mandating what the responsibility of a law enforcement peace officer is for a school district, then we better be ready to back it up.”
An F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron 151, prepares to make an arrested landing on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of Operation Epic Fury, March 2, 2026. (U.S. Navy)
President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff revealed in an interview this week that Iranian negotiators told him in the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli military operation in Iran that they had enough enriched uranium to “make 11 nuclear bombs.”
But since the major combat operations were launched on Saturday with the intent of crushing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the administration has yet to publicly produce any concrete evidence on the whereabouts of the nuclear material or who is in control of it. The Israel Defense Forces claimed that at least 40 top military commanders were killed in the opening strikes of the conflict.
In an interview on Fox News, Witkoff told host Sean Hannity that as soon as he and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sat down with the Iranian negotiators for denuclearization talks last month, their counterparts spoke of their stockpile of enriched uranium.
“Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all the nuclear fuel they possessed,” Witkoff said. “We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you in your tracks.”
Witkoff claimed the Iranian negotiators openly shared details about their supply of nuclear material.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff said the 60% enriched uranium can be brought to weapons-grade in about a week and that the 20% enriched uranium can be brought to weapons-grade in three to four weeks.
“They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material,” Witkoff said. “So, there’s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it.”
The statement appears to contradict what the Pentagon said last summer about Iran’s ability to develop weapons-grade uranium following U.S. strikes on its nuclear facilities.
In July 2025, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said at a news conference that that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June set back Iran’s capability to develop a nuclear weapon by “closer to two years.”
“It’s not just … enriched uranium or centrifuges or things like that. We destroyed the components that they would need to build a bomb,” Parnell said at the time.
But on Tuesday, that assessment fell to the wayside as the administration defended the U.S. military operation by insisting Iran posed an imminent threat to Americans. A senior administration official told reporters in a briefing that among the factors in the operation was that Iran had the ability to rebuild those components destroyed in the bombing, including its own centrifuges.
The official said a lot of the enriched uranium remained mostly in Isfahan with some still at Natanz and Fordo.
“It can be a long and cumbersome process in extracting it and covering it up,” the official said. “I think the first question is, where is it? The second question is, how do we get to it, and how do we get physical control? And then after that, it would be a decision of the president and department, the Department of War, CIA, as to whether we wanted to physically transport it or dilute it on premises.”
Iran has stated numerous times that it doesn’t want nuclear weapons, but believes it has the right to use nuclear power for civilian purpose. It had also been part of a nuclear deal with the U.S., which Trump withdrew from during his first term.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told ABC’s “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the attack on his country was “unprovoked and unwarranted.” He said Iran was negotiating with the United States in good faith prior to the attacks.
“A deal was at our reach, and we left Geneva happily with the understanding that we can reach a deal next time we meet,” Araghchi said.
In their two public briefings on “Operation Epic Fury” in Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not address what has become of Iran’s nuclear material since the widespread military strikes began on Saturday.
In several speeches since the attacks commenced, Trump has also not been specific about the status of Iran’s nuclear material.
Hegseth, Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio conducted a closed-door briefing with members of the U.S. Senate and House on the Iran operation on Tuesday afternoon.
In a letter sent on Monday to the administration’s briefers, five top House Democrats — including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee — asked for information on nuclear security in Iran.
“Who currently controls Iran’s nuclear facilities and materials, and what safeguards are in place to prevent diversion or proliferation, or complete loss of control?” the Democratic lawmakers asked in their letter.
But following the briefing, Meeks said the briefers offered few answers.
“Here we are again without answers. Here we are again without complete transparency,” Meeks said. “Here we are again trying to go around Congress.”
Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said the briefers provided “no additional” information on the imminent threat that prompted the military operation, adding, “There’s nothing that we got that you don’t have.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., challenged any suggestion that the Trump administration was unclear during their briefing with House members about their objectives in Iran.
“This is really a very simple matter. It’s about the building of ballistic missiles. That’s what Iran was engaged in, and they were doing it at a speed and in a scale that was exceeding the ability of our regional allies to respond appropriately,” Johnson said. “This created an imminent and serious threat. It also gave them cover to continue with their nuclear ambitions.”
Johnson added, “As you know, we tried very hard to negotiate with them about that nuclear enrichment of uranium … and the buildup of their missiles was so important and so serious that the President of the United States, this president, thought that it was a great enough threat that we needed to act.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, said in a social media post on Tuesday that, based on the latest available satellite imagery, it “can now confirm some recent damage to entrance buildings of Iran’s underground Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant [FEP].”
“No radiological consequence expected and no additional impact detected at FEP itself, which was severely damaged in the June conflict,” the IAEA said in the post.
In June 2025, the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched “Operation Midnight Hammer,” targeting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan — with “bunker-buster” bombs, according to the White House.
At the time, Trump said the operation “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key uranium enrichment sites.
In a speech on Monday at the White House, Trump said that after “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Iran attempted to rebuild its nuclear facilities in another location, “because they were unable to use the ones we so powerfully blew up.”
“In addition, the regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas,” Trump said. “The purpose of this fast-growing missile program was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these highly forbidden, by us, nuclear weapons.”
The Institute for Science and International Security said in a statement on Tuesday that its analysis of satellite imagery indicates the Natanz nuclear complex, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, was struck twice during Saturday’s joint U.S.-Israeli attack.
Neither the Trump administration nor the Israeli government have confirmed the alleged strikes on the Natanz complex.
Meanwhile, Israel targeted a compound near Tehran linked to the regime’s nuclear weapons “capabilities,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in statement Tuesday.
After the U.S. targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, Israel, which participated in the operation under the code-name “Rising Lion,” continued to track scientists connected to the Iran’s nuclear weapons program “and located their new location at this site in a manner that enabled a precise strike on the covert underground compound,” the statement said.
“The strike removes a key component in the Iranian regime’s capability to develop nuclear weapons and joins a series of strikes conducted during Operation ‘Rising Lion’ that were essential to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat,” the IDF said.
-ABC News’ Mary Kekatos and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
