Woman tries to save dog running into traffic, both hit and killed: Police
Getty/Jon Hicks
(DALLAS) — A woman was hit and killed after attempting to save her dog along a highway in Texas on Wednesday, according to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.
At approximately 1 a.m. Thursday, deputies responded to an incident involving a “pedestrian along southbound I-35 at Royal Lane,” the sheriff’s office said in a traffic alert.
Officials said a woman was walking her dog along the highway, when the canine ran “into the lanes of traffic,” police said.
The woman ran into the incoming cars to try and save her dog, but “both were hit and killed,” police said.The vehicle that was involved in the accident stopped and “is cooperating in this investigation,” police said.
The woman was later identified as 35-year-old Melanie Rachelle Dunahue, according to the medical examiner’s report.
According to ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA, the southbound lanes of the interstate were shut down after the crash, but re-opened by the morning rush hour.
(PHILADELPHIA, Pa.) — It was just a normal Friday evening for Philadelphia father Andre Howard and his 10-year-old son Trey Howard.
Andre Howard picked up Trey Howard and his two younger siblings from school and drove to a nearby Dunkin’.
“I promised him Tuesday that we would get donuts on Friday after school,” Andre Howard told ABC News.
However, as they were leaving the Dunkin’, about to turn on Cottman Avenue, Andre Howard said the family heard a loud bang, quickly accompanied by a “ball of fire” and black smoke. Little did they know, a medical transport jet had just crashed nearby.
Andre Howard attempted to reverse his truck, using the donut shop as a shield to stop flying debris. Then, he heard his son shout something from the backseat of the car.
“I hear my son telling his sister, ‘Get down, baby girl,'” Andre Howard said.
Trey Howard, who is in the fourth grade, used his body as a human shield to protect his younger sister from incoming debris, his father said.
“I turn around and he has metal out the side of his head,” Andre Howard said.
In efforts to protect his younger sister, Trey Howard was hit with a piece of plane debris or glass, with part of it sticking out of his head, his father said.
As Andre Howard attempted to move his son, the metal protruding from Trey Howard’s head fell out, causing blood to gush everywhere, he said. Andre Howard said he wrapped Trey Howard’s head with socks, while someone else lent a shirt — anything to stop the bleeding.
Andre Howard said he flagged down a police officer on the scene, who drove the family to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where Trey Howard underwent emergency brain surgery, and then was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Andre Howard said he was told there was a high likelihood his son wouldn’t survive.
However, after the procedure and a full weekend in the intensive care unit, Trey Howard was moved to a regular room on Monday and continues to recover from the harrowing event.
“Am I OK? No. Is his mother OK? No. Is his family OK? No. But we are going to be strong for him every step of this process to get him back to full strength,” Andre Howard said.
When Trey Howard was finally able to speak again, the first thing he asked was, ‘Daddy, did I save my sister?'”
Andre Howard said his son’s selfless act of bravery was “something that not a lot of grown men could do” and called his fourth grader his “superhero.”
The hospital is continuing to monitor Trey Howard’s skull, ensuring all of the debris has been removed, his father said. Until he is able to go home, Andre Howard said his son has been getting many visitors — including his teachers and Philadelphia 76ers player Tyrese Maxey.
“Thank God my son is still here. Thank God we didn’t go into the flame,” Andre Howard said. “I’m just happy he is here.”
The plane crash, which involved a medical transport jet, killed all six people on board, as well as one person on the ground. Officials are still investigating the cause of the crash.
Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Crime in New York City’s transit system dropped in 2024 for the second year in a row, the head of the New York City Police Department said Monday, while acknowledging that people still do not feel safe after several shocking subway incidents that included the death of a woman who was set on fire.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she has ordered more officers to patrol the subway trains and platforms following the “terrifying acts of random violence.”
Overall, major crime — including incidents of murder, felony assault, robbery and burglary — decreased 5.4% last year in the transit system compared to 2023 and is 12.7% below pre-pandemic crime levels, according to NYPD data.
Compared to the previous year, 2024 saw drops in robberies (down 16.3%) and burglaries (down 23.5%) in the transit system, according to NYPD data. However, murders on the subway doubled, with 10 in 2024 compared to five in 2023, and shootings and petit larceny also increased year-over-year, according to the data.
Tisch called the overall transit crime drop “significant” but more needs to be done to address the perception of safety in the subway system after the “terrifying acts of random violence we have seen recently.”
“I want to be very clear, the subways will always be a bellwether for the perception of public safety in New York City. Declining crime numbers are significant, but we still must do more, because people don’t feel safe in our subways,” Tisch said during a press briefing on Monday.
The sentiment was echoed by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
“It is clear, perception always overrides reality, and when you look at some of the horrific incidents that the commissioner talked about in these last few days, the average New Yorker would believe that they’re living in a city that is out of control. That is not the reality,” Adams said. “We know that we are doing a good job in fighting crime, as the numbers will show, but we must deal with the perception that many New Yorkers feel.”
One such horrifying incident included the killing of a 57-year-old woman who was set on fire last month on a subway train in Brooklyn. The victim, Debrina Kawam, was sleeping when she was set ablaze, police said. An undocumented Guatemalan citizen has been charged with first-degree murder.
In another, a man was critically injured last week after an assailant pushed him onto the subway tracks in front of train in Manhattan in a random attack, police said. The suspect in that case was charged with attempted murder.
“Nothing is more horrific than watching a person burned to death on our subway system. We know how individuals feel when they’re shoved to the tracks for no reason at all. We know how it impacts us,” Adams said Monday.
The latest crime data was announced a day after New York City’s congestion pricing plan went into effect. Under the new toll system, the first such program of its kind in the country, drivers will pay $9 to access the center of Manhattan during peak hours as part of an effort to ease congestion and raise funds for the city’s transit system.
Among measures to address subway safety, Tisch said she has directed to move more than 200 officers onto the trains to do “specialty train patrols,” effective this week.
“I have further directed that we deploy more officers onto subway platforms in the 50 highest crime stations in the city,” she added. “It’s all part of the strategy to refocus our subway efforts to places where the crime is occurring.”
She said more initiatives are in the works.
“This month, we will roll out substantial additional improvements to our transit deployments to be even more responsive to the terrifying acts of random violence we have seen recently,” she said. “I will have more to say about that soon.”
Adams also said addressing “severe mental health” issues will be a focus of the governor’s budget to address public transit safety.
“We know we have to tackle that perception, and it starts with dealing with the real issue — mental health,” he said.
Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she plans to launch a $1 billion plan to address mental health care and supportive housing.
“The recent surge in violent crimes in our public transit system cannot continue — and we need to tackle this crisis head-on,” Hochul said in a statement. “Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with serious untreated mental illness, the result of a failure to get treatment to people who are living on the streets and are disconnected from our mental health care system. We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need.”
The drop in transit crime coincides with an overall 2.9% drop in crime in 2024, including murders and shootings, Tisch said.
The police commissioner attributed increases in felony assaults to repeat offenders. She called it “disheartening” for police officers to be arresting the same people over and over again due to an increase in the number of decline-to-prosecute cases and a decrease in the number of defendants for whom bail is set.
(WASHINGTON) — Newly-installed FBI Director Kash Patel, whose proclaimed plans to overhaul the nation’s premier law enforcement agency have rattled many within the bureau, has proposed enhancing the FBI’s ranks with help from the United Fighting Championship, the martial-arts entertainment giant whose wealthy CEO, Dana White, helped boost President Donald Trump’s reelection, according to sources who were told of Patel’s proposal.
On a teleconference Wednesday with the heads of the FBI’s 55 field offices, Patel suggested that he wants the FBI to establish a formal relationship with the UFC, which could develop programs for agents to improve their physical fitness, said sources who had been briefed on Wednesday’s call.
The virtual meeting with each field office’s special-agent-in-charge has long been a weekly occurrence, but this week’s call was the first led by Patel, who was sworn in as director on Friday.
Within hours of Wednesday’s call, word of Patel’s UFC proposal spread to current and former FBI officials around the country.
“If they’re trying to up their physical fitness, the UFC is very specific in their fitness,” said ABC News contributor Rich Frankel, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark, New Jersey, office.
It’s not clear exactly what Patel would want UFC to do or provide to help improve fitness among FBI ranks.
Though Patel’s UFC proposal stood out to some who heard about the meeting, Patel addressed a range of issues on the call, according to sources.
The new director tried to calm some of the concerns among FBI agents after the Justice Department last month demanded a list of the thousands of agents who aided investigations stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and suggested that even those just following orders could be fired, the sources said.
There were also concerns about Patel’s recent announcement that as many as 1,500 employees at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C, would be reassigned to field offices and to an FBI office in Huntsville, Alabama. And last week’s controversial email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding that all federal employees list what they had accomplished over the previous week or face termination only added to concerns within the FBI, sources said.
During Wednesday’s call, Patel expressed his own concerns about that email and with confusing follow-up messages from the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency, which has been guided by billionaire businessman Elon Musk, sources said.
Patel, on the call, also touted the FBI’s work fighting crime and national security threats, and he asked the FBI officials to give him a chance to prove himself as their new leader, sources said. But he also warned them that he would not tolerate “leaks” or what he sees as other forms of insubordination.
Nevertheless, it was Patel’s proposal to ask the UFC for help that quickly created some buzz within the FBI community. UFC is based in Las Vegas, where Patel now lives.
White, who is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has long been friends with Trump and last year became a big donor to Trump’s presidential campaign. He joined Trump on stage in Florida during Trump’s victory speech in November just hours after polls closed on Election Day.
During the speech, Trump recalled how he “helped [White] out a little bit” years earlier when no one else was willing to host UFC fights, claiming that UFC is now “one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere at any time.”
Trump also said that UFC “is the roughest sport I’ve ever seen,” featuring fighters who “really go at it.”
Just days after Trump won the election in November, Trump attended a heavily-promoted UFC fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he sat in the front row between White and Musk.
Frankel, who spent more than two decades with the FBI, said the FBI may benefit from increasing its physical fitness standards — so the idea of the UFC helping with the FBI’s training regimen may not be as unusual as it sounds.
He said some FBI offices have previously brought in martial arts experts and others to offer tips to agents.
But, said Frankel, “I don’t want UFC to take over the gym.”
Asked about Patel’s proposal to collaborate with the UFC, an FBI representative declined to comment to ABC News.
