Woman charged for allegedly ‘enticing’ tiger after hopping zoo fence: Police
Bridgeton Police Department
(BRIDGETON, N.J.) — A 24-year-old woman has been charged for allegedly hopping a fence at a New Jersey zoo and “enticing” a tiger, according to police.
Zyair Dennis was charged with one count of defiant trespassing and was issued two city ordinances related to climbing fences in the zoo, Bridgeton police said in a statement Monday.
Dennis allegedly entered a restricted area at the Cohanzick Zoo on Aug. 18, according to police.
Witnesses gave authorities video and photos that showed a woman jumping over the fence, approaching the caged tiger enclosure and “reaching into the cage before quickly pulling her hand out when the animal reacted aggressively,” police said.
Police said she was almost injured when she “enticed” the tiger.
The woman was allegedly also seen on video “depicting the same scenario at the bear enclosure,” police said.
Last week, Bridgeton police released information and images from the incident in an effort to identify the suspect. Police said Monday that the footage helped them identify Dennis.
Dennis’ appearance in Bridgeton Municipal Court has not been scheduled, police said.
ABC News’ Julia Reinstein contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A “diverse set of actors” in the U.S. could use Monday’s one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel as an opportunity to “engage in violence or threaten public safety,” Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials warned on Wednesday, sources said, adding that the actors could specifically target Jewish, Muslim or Arab communities.
Law enforcement is particularly concerned about hoax threats targeting symbolic institutions or public gatherings, according to sources, although there is currently no credible threat that anything is going to happen.
Those places are “pretty attractive targets” if an extremist wanted to carry out an attack, officials said.
Actors with a range of motivations, including those who are antisemitic or Islamophobic, could be motivated to strike, especially with Al Queda and ISIS encouraging lone offenders to carry out attacks against the West, according to sources.
Foreign terrorist organizations online could escalate the threat of violence in the U.S., particularly targeting Jewish community institutions and U.S. officials who support Israel, sources said.
At the same time, it is unlikely that Hezbollah or Iran or its proxies would attack inside the U.S. homeland, sources said.
After the events of Oct. 7, hate crimes in the U.S. skyrocketed. Hate crimes continue to be the biggest threat to members of the Arab, Jewish and Muslim communities, officials warned.
Senior DHS and FBI officials are concerned that graphic images from the continuing conflict in the Middle East could contribute to radicalization, violence and even retaliatory attacks.
Sources also said that the FBI and DHS are “aware” that violence can occur at local protests.
Officials went into more detail about the threat that election officials face from domestic violent extremists.
White supremacists did make threats in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, according to sources, and officials remain concerned they could be inspired to carry out an attack.
The FBI believes that the threat from domestic violent extremists could persist through the presidential inauguration in January.
Violent extremists could seek to use a range of violence or disruptive tactics against individuals and entities associated with the presidential election, including physical attacks, threats of violence, swatting and doxing, mailing or otherwise delivering suspicious items, arson and other means of property destruction, FBI officials said on a call with law enforcement partners that was described to ABC News.
Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Kristie Canegallo said on the call that the threat environment is “volatile.”
Individuals who could be targeted include candidates for public office, elected officials, political party representatives, election workers, judicial personnel, participating in court cases related to the election media personnel and perceived ideological opponents, the FBI assesses, according to sources.
Domestic violent extremists could also target voting locations, ballot drop boxes, voter registration locations, political rallies, campaign events and political party offices, and could target the homes of public officials.
The concern from security officials is that domestic violent extremists continue to “promote and exploit” narratives about the election and that that could motivate some extremists to act upon grievances.
“Since the last presidential election, some of the most common social and political issues extremists have violently reacted to include immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights and abortion access,” an FBI official said, according to sources.
Some indicators, sources said, are suspicious behavior around the sites themselves, specific threats of violence, packages with excessive tape or postage stamps, photographing election related infrastructure and unfamiliar people around a certain site.
The warning comes as DHS on Wednesday issued its Homeland Security Threat Assessment that outlined threats facing the United States.
(HILLSBOROUGH, N.C.) — A convicted murderer escaped from custody Tuesday morning while being transported to a medical appointment at a North Carolina hospital, the sheriff’s office said.
Ramone Alston, 30, broke away from a corrections officer while being escorted to UNC Hospital in Hillsborough, according to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction.
“He had freed himself from leg restraints and, still in handcuffs, jumped out and ran into adjacent woods,” the department said in a statement.
He was last seen wearing a gray T-shirt, brown pants and white New Balance sneakers, as well as handcuffs connected to a waist chain, officials said.
Officials are asking the public to immediately call 911 if they see him and warning them not to approach him.
“He’s unpredictable — we don’t know what he’s going to do, so he should certainly probably be considered dangerous,” Keith Acree, a spokesperson for the Department of Adult Correction, said in a press briefing. “People make rash decisions at a time like this; he’s already made one very large rash decision this morning.”
As of Wednesday morning, Alston’s whereabouts were still unknown, though he is believed to have headed north of the hospital.
Director of Orange County Emergency Services Kirby Saunders said state, local and federal law enforcement teams have searched hundreds of acres for Alston, using aerial assets, helicopters, canine resources and ground searchers.
The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction said Tuesday they would offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Alston. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the department said the U.S. Marshals Service had contributed $10,000, increasing the reward amount to $35,000.
Alston was convicted of shooting and killing a 1-year-old girl on Christmas Day in 2015. He is serving a life sentence.
The infant victim, Maleah Williams, had been playing outside with her Christmas toys when she was struck by gunfire, her mother previously told Raleigh ABC station WTVD.
Alston’s family has been cooperating with authorities, Sheriff Charles Blackwood told reporters, though he said “cooperation has been varied.”
Blackwood said he went to school with Alston’s father and has known the suspect since he was born. He called Alston a “troubled child” and said he’d been involved in criminal activity since his youth.
“He’s extremely cagey, he’s extremely dangerous and he has nothing to lose,” Blackwood said.
(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, finding several major issues “impugn the reliability” of the original outcome.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faulted the trial judge for dismissing the case before the jury had reached a verdict. The jury was allowed to continue deliberating before ultimately finding the newspaper not liable in February 2022.
“Unfortunately, several major issues at trial — specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court’s Rule 50 dismissal ruling — impugn the reliability of that verdict,” the opinion said.
Palin sued the Times and its former opinion editor, James Bennet, over an editorial published on June 14, 2017. The piece, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” linked the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to a digital graphic of a crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts published in March 2010 by Palin’s political action committee. A relationship between the crosshairs map and the shooting was never established. Rather, at the time of the editorial, the attack was widely viewed as a result of the shooter’s mental illness.
Palin’s original defamation lawsuit was dismissed but, in 2019, the Second Circuit vacated the dismissal. The case went to trial in 2022. Judge Jed Rakoff granted the Times’ motion for a directed verdict days before the jury found the newspaper was not liable for defaming Palin.
In its opinion on Wednesday, the appeals court agreed with Palin that Rakoff “erroneously disregarded or discredited her evidence of actual malice and improperly substituted its own judgment for that of the jury.”
The New York Times told ABC News in a statement Wednesday: “This decision is disappointing. We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”
Rakoff said at the time that he would set aside the verdict and dismiss the lawsuit because Palin had not met the high standard of showing the Times had acted with “actual malice” when it published an editorial that erroneously linked Palin’s political action committee to a mass shooting.
Palin sued the Times in 2017, roughly nine years after she was tapped to be Sen. John McCain’s GOP vice presidential nominee, claiming the newspaper deliberately ruined her burgeoning career as a political commentator and consultant by publishing an erroneous editorial she said defamed her.
The editorial that prompted the lawsuit was published on the same day a gunman opened fire on GOP politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in a Washington, D.C., suburb, injuring six, including Republican Rep. Steve Scalise.
The Times’ editorial board wrote that prior to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and left Giffords with a traumatic brain injury, Palin’s political action committee had fueled a violent atmosphere by circulating a map that put the electoral districts of Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
Two days later, the Times published a correction saying the editorial had “incorrectly described” the map and “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”
During the trial, Palin, in her testimony, accused the Times of deliberately fabricating information to sully her reputation.
Bennet testified that while he was responsible for the erroneous information in the editorial, it was an honest mistake and that he meant no harm.
