Three police officers killed in Kentucky by suspect with rifle

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 03 July 2022

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Allen, Eastern Kentucky, USA - Three law enforcement officers were killed and five wounded in eastern Kentucky when a man with a rifle opened fire on police attempting to serve a warrant, authorities said.

Police took 49-year-old Lance Storz into custody late on Thursday night after an hours-long standoff at a home in Allen, a small town in the hills of Appalachia.

An emergency management official was also injured and a police dog was killed, according to the arrest citation.

The responding officers encountered “pure hell” when they arrived on the scene, Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt told reporters Friday afternoon.

“They had no chance,” he said.

Hunt said four deputies initially responded, then called for backup when they were shot at. The sheriff said Storz surrendered after negotiations that included his family members. Hunt had told local media the deputies were serving a court-issued warrant Thursday evening related to a domestic violence situation.

Hunt said one of his deputies, William Petry, and Prestonsburg Police Capt. Ralph Frasure were killed in the shooting. Frasure worked for 39 years in law enforcement in Floyd County. Another Prestonsburg officer, Jacob Chaffins, died after being hospitalized, the police department said in a social media post Friday night.

Storz was arraigned Friday morning by a judge in Pike County. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder of a police officer and was jailed on a $10 million bond. One of the charges was originally attempted murder of a police officer, but a judge said at the hearing that was upgraded to murder. He is also facing another attempted murder charge and assault on a service animal.

Few details were available Friday. State police had said in a brief statement that they were investigating an officer-involved shooting.

“This is a tough morning for our commonwealth,” Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post Friday morning. “Floyd County and our brave first responders suffered a tragic loss last night. I want to ask all of Kentucky to join me in praying for this community.”

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron posted on social media that he was heartbroken over news of the officers' deaths.

“Our law enforcement exhibited unimaginable heroism and sacrifice last night in the face of evil,” he said.

'Stacks of bodies': 46 dead migrants found in truck in Texas

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 28 June 2022

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By Kaylee Greenlee Beal, Kristina Cooke and Mica Rosenberg

SAN ANTONIO, USA -The bodies of 46 dead migrants were discovered inside a tractor-trailer on Monday in San Antonio, Texas, city officials said, in one of the most deadly recent incidents of human smuggling along the U.S.-Mexico border.

A San Antonio Fire Department official said they found "stacks of bodies" and no signs of water in the truck, which was found next to railroad tracks in a remote area on the city's southern outskirts.

Sixteen other people found inside the trailer were transported to hospitals for heat stroke and exhaustion, including four minors, but no children were among the dead, the department said.

"The patients that we saw were hot to the touch, they were suffering from heat stroke, exhaustion," San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told a news conference. "It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer but there was no visible working A/C unit on that rig."

Temperatures in San Antonio, which is about 160 miles (250 km) from the Mexican border, swelled to a high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) on Monday with high humidity.

The city's Police Chief William McManus said a person who works in a nearby building heard a cry for help and came out to investigate. The worker found the trailer doors partially opened and looked inside and found a number of dead bodies.

McManus said this was the largest incident of its kind in the city and said three people were in custody following the incident, though their involvement is not yet clear.

A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that its Homeland Security Investigations division was investigating "an alleged human smuggling event" in coordination with local police.

RECORD CROSSINGS

The deaths once again highlight the challenge of controlling migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, which have reached record highs.

The issue has proven difficult for U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat who came into office in January 2021 pledging to reverse some of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump. Republicans have criticized Biden's border strategy ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November.

Mexico's Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard called the suffocation of the migrants in the truck the "tragedy in Texas" on Twitter and said consular officials would go to the hospitals where victims had been taken to help "however possible."

A spokesman for the Honduran foreign ministry told Reuters the country's consulates in Houston and Dallas would be investigating the incident. Ebrard said two Guatemalans were hospitalized and Guatemala's foreign ministry said on Twitter that consular officials were going to the hospital "to verify if there are two Guatemalan minors there and what condition they are in."

The I-35 highway near where the truck was found runs through San Antonio from the Mexican border and is a popular smuggling corridor because of the large volume of truck traffic, according to Jack Staton, a former senior official with ICE's investigative unit who retired in December.

In July 2017, 10 migrants died after being transported in a tractor-trailer that was discovered by San Antonio police in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The driver, James Matthew Bradley, Jr., was sentenced the following year to life in prison for his role in the smuggling operation.

Staton said migrants have regularly been intercepted in the area since the 2017 incident. "It was only a matter of time before a tragedy like this was going to happen again," he said.

Trump raised $250m to fight non-existent voter fraud but gave it to his own PAC

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 14 June 2022

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WASHINGTON - Former US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign raised $250 million from supporters by telling them the money would be used to fight voter fraud, but the campaign knew those claims of fraud were bogus and instead diverted the money to his own political organisation, the House committee investigating the January 6 Congress attack claimed on Monday.

Mr Trump’s campaign sent myriad fundraising emails to supporters encouraging them to donate to help fight voter fraud between election day and January 6, the committee said. Many of those emails asked supporters to donate to an “election defense fund” for legal cases related to the election.

However, an investigator for the committee said that that fund did not exist, and that most of that money went Mr Trump’s ‘Save America’ political action committee, not to election-related litigation.

“The evidence highlights how the Trump campaign pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist,” said Amanda Wick, senior investigative counsel for the House committee.

“The Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false yet they continued to barrage small-dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the ‘Official Election Defense fund.’ The select committee discovered no such fund existed,” she added.

Committee member Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic congresswoman from California, said President Trump “used the lies he told to raise millions of dollars from the American people.”

Congresswoman Lofgren added that the committee’s investigation found evidence that “the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for. So not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Rip Off.”

The committee played video testimony from a former Trump campaign digital director, Gary Coby, who agreed that the use of the phrase “election defense fund” was a “marketing tactic.”

Ms Vick, the committee investigator, said that the claims that the election was stolen were so successful that president Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million of which came in the first week after the election.

n its second hearing this month, the committee showed how the former president ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.