Woman suffers burns in Savannah chemical attack: Police
Savannah Police are looking for a suspect in conjunction with a crime where police say a woman had an unknown chemical poured on her. Savannah Police Department.
(SAVANNAH, Ga.) — A woman is recovering after officials say she was the victim of a chemical assault in Savannah, Georgia.
The victim suffered burns in the incident, officials said. She was walking around Forsyth Park near West Waldburg and Whitaker streets just before 8 p.m. on Wednesday when a man came from behind and poured a chemical on her, according to police.
The victim did not know the man, officials said, and no arrests have been made yet. On Thursday, Savannah police released an image of a man in dark clothing they are trying to locate.
Savannah resident Grace Warner told WJCL that the incident shocked her.
“I walk around this park a lot, even at night,” she said. “You just don’t expect something like this to happen here.”
Savannah Police Chief Lenny B. Gunther noted in a press release that local authorities are investigating the incident.
“Our first priority is the well-being of the victim, and our detectives are working around the clock to determine exactly what happened,” he said. “While this was a disturbing incident, we want to reassure our community that we are actively investigating and have increased patrols in our parks out of an abundance of caution.”
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson also released a statement on social media decrying the incident.
“City leadership is working closely to ensure SPD has every resource needed, from personnel to technology, to bring resolution to this case swiftly,” he said in the Facebook post. “We will continue to keep our community informed, and we thank everyone who has already stepped forward to assist.”
(RIDGEFIELD, Conn.) — A Connecticut mother is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday after she was charged with allegedly attempting to poison a man with whom she shares a child by putting antifreeze in his wine at his home in Ridgefield, according to the Connecticut State Police.
Kristen Hogan, 33, was arrested on Friday and charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of interference with an officer after she admitted to pouring ethylene glycol — a “poisonous ingredient within antifreeze and other household products” — in a bottle of wine from which the man drank, according to an affidavit obtained by ABC News.
On Sept. 12, police interviewed the 34-year-old male victim, who had been hospitalized “sometime in early August” and underwent a blood test that revealed he had ethylene glycol in his system, the affidavit said.
The victim, who has not been identified, said during the interview that he had “family over for dinner and that his stepmother had brought an unopened bottle of wine,” officials said. The victim and his family drank some of the wine, with the remainder being “corked and placed in the fridge at the end of the night,” officials said.
Then on Aug. 10, five days after the family dinner, the victim said he “consumed a small amount of the same wine,” went to bed and then “woke up in the middle of the night multiple times and became increasingly ill,” officials said.
At 6 a.m. the next day, the victim “woke up vomiting and called his father for advice,” who directed him to call his mother, who lived in the area, officials said.
Once at his home, the victim’s mother found her son “slurring his words, staggering, and vomiting,” and then decided to take him to the hospital, officials said.
The hospital “initially believed he was experiencing a stroke” but then determined that the victim was “exhibiting signs of an ethylene glycol poisoning,” the affidavit said. The victim was then placed on dialysis and admitted to the ICU, officials said.
Once authorities arrived at the hospital, the victim told them that he believed Hogan, with whom he shares a child, had poisoned the wine “based off the fact her phone uploaded data” to his Wi-Fi router a few days earlier and that she was the “last person other than himself to be in the residence prior to him drinking the already opened wine,” officials said.
The victim told officials he “believed that a motive for him being poisoned is the fact that Hogan would become the full owner of the residence and would gain full-time custody of their child,” officials said.
On Sept. 30, a final lab report indicated that “ethylene glycol was detected in the wine,” officials said.
Police also went through Hogan’s phone, which revealed searches for “various lethal amounts of poisons” and “how much mono ethylene glycol would kill you” after the victim was hospitalized, the affidavit said.
In an interview with police, Hogan said she and the victim had been separated since May but that she had “more recently started living back at the same residence” where the victim lived, officials said.
Hogan also said she “never intended to kill him, but just wanted to make him sick as payback for being mentally abusive,” the affidavit said.
Officials said Hogan had also claimed she was in Rhode Island when she was supposed to be in court with the victim on Aug. 7 regarding a complaint she had filed but that she was actually at the victim’s residence, to which she had full access, the affidavit said.
Hogan also told officials that she has poured “a very small amount” of the same substance into the man’s iced tea bottle on a separate date, the affidavit said.
“If undetected or untreated, ethylene glycol ingestion can cause serious or fatal toxicity,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a statement to ABC News, Hogan’s lawyer, Mark Sherman, said it is “premature to comment on any specifics.”
“What we know is that Kristen is a loving mother who misses her children dearly right now. These are just accusations and we will be diligently investigating and defending her against these claims,” Sherman said in a statement.
Hogan’s bail was set to $1,000,000. She is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday at 10 a.m. local time, according to court records.
Damage caused by the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium building, Surfside, Miami Beach, Florida. (Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — More than four years after the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, federal investigators are expected to announce their preliminary findings on Tuesday regarding the cause of the tragedy.
“It is more likely that the collapse initiated in the pool deck than the tower,” a slide deck prepared ahead of today’s National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee meeting states.
Champlain Towers South was an oceanfront complex just north of the Miami Beach city line. The collapse of the structure killed 98 people in the middle of the night in June 2021.
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have preliminarily concluded that the pool deck started to collapse more than seven minutes before the building fell to the ground, confirming what was suggested in earlier media reports.
The exact cause of the collapse has been under investigation in the years since the incident, but investigators have long focused part of their attention on the pool deck.
“At the time of the failure, the pool deck’s slab-column connections had critically low margins of safety,” the presentation notes. “The bulk of the critically low margins of safety was caused by design understrength and misplaced slab reinforcement.”
Officials noted in their presentation that issues with the pool deck existed from the time Champlain Towers South was built more than four decades ago.
“The structure had low resistance to progressive collapse, allowing the collapse of the pool deck to spread into and throughout the middle and east parts of the tower,” the slides added.
The federal probe into the collapse has been delayed several times. The final investigative report was previously expected to be completed in 2025, but that goal has since been pushed back another year.
(LOS ANGELES) — Evacuation warnings are in place for parts of Southern California as an incoming storm could bring potential mudslides and debris flows to burn scar areas, according to county officials.
“Anyone in these areas should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice,” Los Angeles County officials said in a statement.
The evacuation warnings are in effect for the following burn scar areas: Canyon, Bethany, Eaton, Palisades, Hurst, Kenneth, Sunset, Lidia, Franklin and Bridge, according to officials.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday that emergency resources will be pre-deployed ahead of the storm to protect communities in the Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties from mudslides and debris flow.
This storm — which is a moderate atmospheric river building along a cold front — will begin to hit areas of Northern and Central California, Washington and Oregon on Thursday before slamming parts of Southern California.
Heavy rain will push through the Bay Area and Sacramento on Thursday morning, bringing up to 4 inches of rain in some areas, before traveling south to Los Angeles late Thursday into Friday morning.
Rain, heavy at times, will continue across Southern California on Friday and Saturday, with 1 to 3 inches of rain expected across much of Western California — although some localized areas at higher elevation could receive more.
Over just two days, Friday and Saturday, higher elevations around Santa Barbara could see 4 to 6 inches of rain, bringing the threat of rockslides, landslides and debris flow through the weekend and into next week as more rain continues over these saturated soils.
This system will also force below-average temperatures over Southern California, with scattered showers remaining a possibility on Sunday through at least Tuesday.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department said anyone living in burned or flood-prone areas should “stay away from flood channels, catch basins, canyons and waterways which are vulnerable to floods” and if people have to evacuate, to “return to your home only after local authorities have said it is safe to do so.”
The evacuation warnings in Southern California will be in effect through Sunday, officials said.
