As state authorities investigate the police response to the Uvalde school shooting, a mother of two Robb Elementary School students described her experience in the chaos, from being handcuffed to saving her kids.
Angeli Gomez told CBS News that she rushed to the school at 100 miles per hour when she heard the news about an active shooter.
Gomez, who had just been at the campus for her kids’ ceremonies, parked her car outside the school and sprung into action, but she was immediately approached by U.S. Marshals, she said.
They said she was being “very uncooperative” when she tried to go after her kids and Marshals threatened to arrest her, she told the TV network.
“I said, ‘well you’re going to have to arrest me because I’m going in there, and I’m telling you right now, I don’t see none of y’all in there. Y’all are standing with snipers and y’all are far away. If y’all don’t go in there then I’m going in there,’” she said.
“He immediately put me in cuffs.”
Uvalde police told US Marshals to release her and she immediately ran toward the school.
She jumped the fence, went inside the building and went to her son’s class. The teacher asked her if they had enough time to leave, and Gomez said yes.
Once she knew the class was safe, she ran to get her other son in another classroom.
She encountered officers, who told her she was being uncooperative. She told them “y’all aren’t doing s*** … somebody give me a vest, something,” she recalled.
When she got to her other son’s class, she said the teacher did not want to open the door for her.
Officers then started to escort her out, but when officers opened the teacher’s door, Gomez saw her son, grabbed him and took him outside, she said.
During the time she was inside the school, she could hear the gunshots, she said.
The police response to the shooting has come under criticism as authorities have released conflicting details in the timeline.
According to Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the 18-year-old shooter was in the school for about 80 minutes before law enforcement officers killed him.
During that time, he barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom and fatally shot 19 students and two of their teachers with an AR-15-style rifle.
McCraw said that the incident commander at the scene, Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo, believed it was a hostage situation and not an active shooter situation.
Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez said that Arredondo did not know that children inside the classrooms were calling 911 and pleading for help.
Witnesses and parents have since told media outlets that they urged police officers to charge into the school.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, told the Associated Press that he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
“They were unprepared,” he added.
Gomez told CBS News that authorities were more worried about keeping parents back than going into the school.
“If anything they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there. And like I told one of the officers, ‘I don’t need you to protect me, get away from me, I don’t need your protection. If anything, I need you to go in there with me to go protect my kids,” she said.
“They could have saved many more lives… they could have done something.”
Gomez added that authorities threatened her for speaking out because she was on probation and could be charged with obstruction of justice. That probation was recently shortened by a judge, she said.
Kyiv said Moscow had reinforced its troops around Sievierodonetsk and attempted to cut off Ukraine’s access to the industrial city, the focus of a Russian offensive to take the eastern Donbas region.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, said Russian forces were blowing up bridges across the Siverskyi Donets river to prevent Ukraine from bringing in military reinforcements and delivering aid to civilians in Sievierodonetsk.
“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its efforts, all its reserves in that (Sievierodonetsk) direction,” Gaidai said in a live TV broadcast. “Russians are blowing up bridges, so we could not bring in reinforcements to our boys in Sievierodonetsk.”
Since being driven back from the capital Kyiv, Russia has launched a massive assault in Luhansk and Donetsk, two provinces that make up the eastern Donbas region.
For both sides, the fighting in the east in recent weeks has been one of the deadliest phases of the war, with Ukraine saying it is losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday Russia had used artillery to conduct “assault operations” in Sievierodonetsk, but Russian forces retreated and Ukrainian troops are holding positions inside the city, around 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Russian border.
Russian soldiers also attempted to advance towards Lysychansk, across the Siverskyi Donets river from Sievierodonetsk, but were stopped, Ukraine’s military general staff said.
Reuters reached Sievierodonetsk on Thursday and was able to verify that Ukrainians still held part of the city.
In neighboring Donetsk province, Russian troops were just 15 km (9 miles) outside the city of Sloviansk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Reuters on Friday.
Britain’s defense ministry said Russian air activity remains high over Donbas, with Russian aircraft carrying out strikes using both guided and unguided munitions.
In Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, a missile hit an agricultural storage unit, wounding two people, the regional administration’s spokesman wrote on Telegram.
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware – President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were transported to a safe location for about 30 minutes on Saturday after a small plane entered the secure airspace over the family’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, house.
The White House said in a statement that “a small private plane entered restricted airspace, all indications are by mistake, and precautionary measures were taken.”
“There was no threat to the President or his family,” the White House added.
The Bidens left the secure location at 1:29pm ET. The White House confirmed they went back to their residence by around 2:05 p.m. ET.
“The aircraft was immediately escorted out of the restricted airspace. Preliminary investigation reveals the pilot was not on the proper radio channel, was not following the NOTAMS (Notice to Airmen) that had been filed and was not following published flight guidance,” the Secret Service said.
The Secret Service said they will be interviewing the pilot.
The aircraft was a single-engine Cessna 172 that entered the restricted air space with no flight plan and without communicating with air traffic control, according to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The Cessna was “intercepted” by two F-15 fighter jets and an MH-65 helicopter off the Cape May coastline, NORAD said.
The plane landed at Cape May Airport at 1:11 p.m. local time.
Officials at a local fire station said the Secret Service notified them around 12:48 p.m. that they would be arriving with the Bidens.
Rehoboth Beach resident Susan Lillard told CBS News she saw a small white plane flying near Cape Henlopen State Park, which is near the president’s beach home. Lillard then said she saw two planes scramble into the air a few minutes later.
CBS News also saw these two jets flying low over the downtown area of the beach town.
Hundreds of onlookers gathered around the fire station about five blocks from a nearby beach because Secret Service officers were stopping all pedestrians and traffic.
The motorcade arrived at 12:52 p.m. and the Bidens waited in an SUV inside the fire station for roughly 37 minutes, Rehoboth Beach Fire Department chief Chuck Snyder told CBS News.
Snyder told CBS News his fire department has previously practiced emergency response drills with the Secret Service.
The action from the slain 10-year-old’s family followed a similar move Thursday from Emilia Marin, a Robb Elementary staffer who filed a petition to investigate Daniel Defense’s marketing to young people and for company officials to sit for a deposition. Marin, an after-school-program worker who has been employed by the district for about 25 years, had closed a door she had propped open after she saw Ramos heading toward the school, her attorney,Don Flanary, told the San Antonio Express-News. The door was supposed to lock, but it did not, he said — allowing the gunman to be able to enter the school.
A shooting at a strip mall in Phoenix, Ariz., left one dead and eight others injured early Saturday morning.
Two female victims are receiving treatment for life-threatening injuries, while another died from severe injuries after the attack, according to police.
The injuries sustained by six other people in the shooting, including a teenage boy, are not life-threatening. They were all transported to local hospitals.
Phoenix Police Department Sgt. Andy Williams said during a news conference that a fight broke out during a “large gathering” of roughly 100 people at the mall and escalated into shooting, according to video posted by ABC15. Police have not arrested any suspects.
The shooting occurred after midnight in the north of the city, police said.
Law enforcement is conducting an investigation into the shooting based on surveillance videos and other information, with police saying that there is a “ton” of physical evidence to be inspected.
“Change must happen now,” wrote Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego (D) in response to the shooting. “Seems we can’t go a day without another mass shooting.”
This follows a string of other shootings around the country, including at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week and a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., last month.
Following the massacre, the Texas state legislature formed investigative committees this week in both the House and Senate that aim to prevent future shootings and bolster school security.
The accused Buffalo shooter traveled to a predominantly Black area and killed 10 in a racially motivated attack.
HOUSTON — Residents of Centerville had become more vigilant over the past three weeks as authorities searched for a murderer who had killed on behalf of Mexican drug cartels and who stabbed and injured the driver of a prison transport bus last month when he escaped custody not far from their small Texas town.
The search for Gonzalo Lopez, 46, ended late Thursday in a shootout about 220 miles away. He led officers on a brief chase in a stolen truck before he was gunned down.
Authorities believe while Lopez roamed free, he killed a man and his four grandsons, then stole an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol from their ranch near Centerville, as well as the truck he drove to Atascosa County, south of San Antonio, where he was fatally shot by officers.
“This is something that you can’t imagine ever to happen in a small community like this,” said Tuffy Loftin, 61, a pastor in Centerville who knew the family.
Centerville residents had been worried ever since May 12, when Lopez overpowered the officer who was driving him and 15 other prisoners near their community between Dallas and Houston. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is still investigating how Lopez broke free from his restraints and escaped a caged area of the bus where he had been held.
Following his escape, law enforcement vigorously patrolled Highway 7 and other roads in Centerville, escorting many of the city’s nearly 1,000 residents to their homes to ensure they felt safe.
Jean Davis, 70, who owns a feed and fertilizer store on the east side of town, said her husband wanted her to take a rifle and pistol to work, but she refused.
“The town has really been on edge, especially that first 10 days when he was out missing and nobody knew where he was,” said Davis, who lives about 15 miles away in Buffalo.
State troopers, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officers, the U.S. Marshals service and sheriff’s deputies from Leon County — which includes Centerville — searched the area for Lopez for weeks with no luck.
Concerns over his whereabouts were justified: Lopez’s long criminal history included convictions for capital murder, attempted capital murder, kidnapping and aggravated assault. Authorities said he belonged to the Mexican Mafia, which is a prison gang, and was a contract killer for at least two drug cartels.
In a confession to authorities, Lopez said he had been on his way to Laredo to kill a restaurant and bar owner for the Mileno drug cartel from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 2004 when he became embroiled in a shootout with deputies who tried to stop his vehicle.
Lopez escaped to Mexico with the help of the Mexican Mafia.
In March 2005, Lopez said he was contracted by La Mana drug cartel from Tamaulipas, Mexico, to kidnap a man from Weslaco in South Texas because he owed the cartel $40,000, according to court records.
Lopez and another person kidnapped the man and left him “hog tied in an outside room of my mom’s residence” as they went to pick up money and marijuana that the man’s family had left for them, according to court records. Lopez later bludgeoned the man’s head with a pickaxe and buried his body in a desert.
Lopez had been serving a life sentence for capital murder for the man’s death and a life sentence for attempted capital murder for the 2004 shootout with deputies, when he escaped from the prison bus.
Authorities maintained nearly 40 roving patrols, believing Lopez remained in the area around Centerville, possibly entering unoccupied structures to look for food, water and clothing, said Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
At around 6 p.m. on Thursday, authorities went to a home near Centerville for a welfare check and discovered five bodies. In a statement, their family identified the dead as 66-year-old Mark Collins, and his four grandsons: Waylon Collins, 18; Carson Collins, 16; Hudson Collins, 11; and Bryson Collins, 11. Waylon, Carson and Hudson were brothers and Bryson was their cousin.
“These precious people who loved and were loved by so many, will never be forgotten,” the Collins family said in a statement. Steve Bezner, the family’s pastor, described the Houston area family as having “the greatest character, the deepest faith and unrelenting kindness and love.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference, Andy Kahan, the director of victim services and advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston, called the family’s killing “absolutely one of the most gut-wrenching scenarios that I’ve dealt with and I’ve seen a lot and been through a lot.”
The Tomball school district in suburban Houston said Friday that the grandchildren were students in its district.
Loftin, a pastor at the Cowboy Church of Leon County, said he used to go to the family’s ranch, which also features a “beautiful fishing lake and a pier,” to help with cattle management. He called them “good, salt of the earth people.”
Authorities believe Lopez confronted the family on Thursday. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office has not specified how they were killed.
Authorities say Lopez took several firearms from the home as well as the family’s white Chevy truck and fled. Law enforcement spotted him just before 10 p.m. in Atascosa County.
Officers with Jourdanton police used spike strips to flatten the truck’s tires, but Lopez kept driving, firing the rifle through a truck window before hitting two telephone poles and a fence, said Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward.
Lopez “exited the stolen pickup truck armed with a rifle and handgun and reportedly fired at officers,” Soward said. Four officers returned fire, killing Lopez.
Latisha Rogers, an assistant office manager at the supermarket, told The Buffalo News that she had called 911 while hiding inside the store and was whispering on the phone to avoid the gunman’s attention.
She said the dispatcher admonished her for speaking quietly on the call.
“She was yelling at me, saying, ‘Why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper,’” Ms. Rogers told The News, “and I was telling her, ‘Ma’am, he’s still in the store. He’s shooting. I’m scared for my life. I don’t want him to hear me. Can you please send help?’ She got mad at me, hung up in my face.”
In a separate interview with The New York Times, Ms. Rogers said she ducked down behind the store’s customer service counter when she first heard gunfire and called 911 on her cellphone.
She said the dispatcher asked her why she was whispering and then the connection broke.
At a news conference last month, the county executive, Mark C. Poloncarz, said that the handling of the call was “completely unacceptable.” A transcript of the call has not been released.
The dispatcher was represented by the Civil Service Employees Association, a union for public employees in New York.
Kyiv said Moscow had reinforced its troops around Sievierodonetsk and attempted to cut off Ukraine’s access to the industrial city, the focus of a Russian offensive to take the eastern Donbas region.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, said Russian forces were blowing up bridges across the Siverskyi Donets river to prevent Ukraine from bringing in military reinforcements and delivering aid to civilians in Sievierodonetsk.
“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its efforts, all its reserves in that (Sievierodonetsk) direction,” Gaidai said in a live TV broadcast. “Russians are blowing up bridges, so we could not bring in reinforcements to our boys in Sievierodonetsk.”
Since being driven back from the capital Kyiv, Russia has launched a massive assault in Luhansk and Donetsk, two provinces that make up the eastern Donbas region.
For both sides, the fighting in the east in recent weeks has been one of the deadliest phases of the war, with Ukraine saying it is losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday Russia had used artillery to conduct “assault operations” in Sievierodonetsk, but Russian forces retreated and Ukrainian troops are holding positions inside the city, around 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Russian border.
Russian soldiers also attempted to advance towards Lysychansk, across the Siverskyi Donets river from Sievierodonetsk, but were stopped, Ukraine’s military general staff said.
Reuters reached Sievierodonetsk on Thursday and was able to verify that Ukrainians still held part of the city.
In neighboring Donetsk province, Russian troops were just 15 km (9 miles) outside the city of Sloviansk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Reuters on Friday.
Britain’s defense ministry said Russian air activity remains high over Donbas, with Russian aircraft carrying out strikes using both guided and unguided munitions.
In Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, a missile hit an agricultural storage unit, wounding two people, the regional administration’s spokesman wrote on Telegram.
The lack of clarity surrounding authorities’ response to the mass shooting at a South Texas elementary school could hinder efforts to prevent such massacres from happening again, a state lawmaker told CNN on Friday.
Ten days after a gunman slaughtered 19 students and their two teachers in their classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, there are still significant gaps in the information officials have released about law enforcement’s response.
“My point as a policymaker, which is the third function of my job, is to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde.
“How in the world are we going to be able to do anything if we can’t figure out what happened in that building in those 40 minutes?”
The shifting police narratives, unanswered questions and the horror of knowing 21 victims were trapped with a gunman for more than an hour – despite repeated 911 calls for help from inside the classrooms – is tormenting this small Texas city.
Gutierrez has questioned whether the responding officers on scene were aware of those calls as they stood outside the classrooms. It’s also unclear whether the incident commander, who made the call for the officers not to confront the shooter immediately, was on scene as the shooting unfolded.
The frustration was palpable Friday night when Uvalde held its first board meeting following the massacre.
The main public development was that Superintendent Hal Harrell reiterated students would not be returning to Robb Elementary – after which the schoolboard went into a lengthy closed-door session that was scheduled to involve the approval of personnel employments, assignments, suspensions and terminations.
Angela Turner, a mother of five who lost her niece in the shooting, expressed outrage. “We want answers to where the security is going to take place. This was all a joke,” she told reporters, referring to the meeting. “I’m so disappointed in our school district.”
Turner insisted that she will not send her children to school unless they feel safe, adding that her 6-year-old child told her, “I don’t want to go to school. Why? To be shot?”
“These people will not have a job if we stand together, and we do not let our kids go here,” she said as she pointed to a vacant school board podium.
Dawn Poitevent, a mother whose child was slated to attend Robb Elementary as a second-grader, was tearful as she told reporters that she wants the board to consider letting her child stay at his current school, Dalton Elementary.
“I just need to keep my baby safe, and I can’t promise him that. Nobody can promise their children that right now,” Poitevent said. “At least if he goes to Dalton, he’s not going to be scared, and he’s not going to be having the worst first day that I can possibly imagine.”
Poitevent added that her son, Hayes, has been telling her that he’s scared to go to school because a “bad man” will shoot him.
“We’re just trying so hard to get past everything,” she said. “We’re trying to bury our babies and say goodbye to people that really mattered.”
Gutierrez reiterated that the issue goes beyond school safety.
“The errors that occurred here, the systemic failure, the human errors that ended up in this terrible loss of life: Everybody is accountable,” Gutierrez said.
Gun manufacturer under scrutiny
Also under scrutiny is the gun manufacturer of the weapon used in the mass shooting.
Lawyers for the father of shooting victim Amerie Jo Garza, 10, said Friday they asked gunmaker Daniel Defense to provide all marketing information, particularly strategy aimed at teens and children, according to a statement.
“She would want to me to do everything I can, so this will never happen again to any other child,” Alfred Garza III said in the statement. “I have to fight her fight.”
Attorneys for her mother, Kimberly Garcia, also sent a letter to the company, demanding it “preserve all potentially relevant information” related to the shooting.
On Thursday, an attorney representing teacher Emilia Marin filed a petition to depose the gunmaker, according to a court filing. Marin had been wrongly accused of opening the door that the shooter used to access the school.
“The subject matter of the potential claim is the conduct of Daniel Defense which was a cause of the injuries and damages suffered by Emelia Marin,” according to the petition provided to CNN by the teacher’s lawyer.
Daniel Defense has not replied to multiple requests by CNN for comment.
On its website, Daniel Defense said it will “cooperate with all federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities in their investigations,” referring to the Uvalde shooting as an “act of evil.”
In February, the families of five children and four adults killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting reached a $73 million settlement with the gun manufacturer Remington, which made the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre. That shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead in Newtown, Connecticut, was the deadliest school shooting in the US.
House hearing focuses on recent shootings
Next week, survivors and others affected by the recent shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde will testify before the House Oversight Committee, according to the committee’s website.
Witnesses scheduled at next Wednesday’s hearing include Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grade student at Robb Elementary; Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary; Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was injured in the Buffalo, New York, shooting; and Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician in Uvalde, Texas. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia will also testify.
“The hearing will examine the urgent need for Congress to pass commonsense legislation that a majority of Americans support,” Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney said in a statement. “This includes legislation to ban assault weapons and bolster background checks on gun purchases, while respecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”
Meanwhile in Texas, a state legislator established a committee to “conduct an examination into the circumstances” surrounding the shooting.
“The fact we still do not have an accurate picture of what exactly happened in Uvalde is an outrage,” Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, said in a statement Friday.
CNN’s Ed Lavandera, Morgan Rimmer, Meridith Edwards, Omar Jimenez, Travis Caldwell and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
A suspect who allegedly shot and killed a retired Wisconsin judge Friday in a targeted act had a hit list that included U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Law enforcement responded to a home in New Lisbon, Wisconsin, Friday morning after a 911 caller reported there was an armed person in the residence who had fired two shots, according to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.
The caller had exited the home and contacted law enforcement from a nearby home.
The Juneau County Special Tactics and Response Team responded and attempted to negotiate with the alleged shooter before entering the home. Inside, they found the homeowner, a 68-year-old man, dead, and a 56-year-old man in the basement suffering from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Kaul said.
The suspect, who was later identified as Douglas Uhde, was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition, Kaul said. A firearm was recovered at the scene, he said.
“This does appear to be a targeted act,” Kaul told reporters Friday. “The individual who is the suspect appears to have had other targets as well. It appears to be related to the judicial system.”
Kaul did not provide further details Friday on the man killed and the other targets, beyond that they appear to be targeted “based on some sort of court case or court cases.” The Wisconsin Department of Justice said in an update Saturday that the victim was retired Juneau County Judge John Roemer.
When SWAT entered the home, they found Roemer zip-tied to a chair and fatally shot, according to the law enforcement official.
A hit list with over a dozen names found inside the suspect’s car at the scene included Roemer’s, McConnell’s and Whitmer’s, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’, the source said.
The information is preliminary and could change as the investigation continues.
Kaul said authorities have contacted those believed to be targets and that they have determined there is no threat to the public at this time. Investigators are also working to determine any link between this incident and others, he said.
A spokesperson for Whitmer confirmed to ABC News that their office was notified on Friday that the governor’s name “appeared on the Wisconsin gunman’s list.”
“While the news reports are deeply troubling, we will not comment further on an ongoing criminal investigation,” Whitmer’s deputy chief of staff, Zack Pohl, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Evers told ABC that they do not comment on specific security threats or the governor’s security detail.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation into the shooting.
The investigation is being handled as both a homicide and a possible case of domestic terrorism, the law enforcement official told ABC News.
Roemer was first elected to the Juneau County Circuit Court in 2004 and was reelected in 2010 and 2016 before retiring in 2017. He had previously served as an assistant district attorney for Juneau County and an assistant state public defender. He also was a lieutenant colonel for the U.S. Army Reserves.
Threats against judges have increased in recent years. By one measure, there were over 4,500 threats and “inappropriate communications” against protected people, which includes federal judges, last year, according to the U.S. Marshals.
“Typically security for judges is based on threats,” ABC News crime and terrorism analyst Brad Garrett told “Good Morning America.” “It’s all going to be driven by known threats because there isn’t enough manpower obviously to guard every judge at every level in this country.”
Garrett said more should be learned in the coming days about how much law enforcement knew about the alleged shooter.
U.S. District Judge Esther Salas is fighting to get a federal bill passed that would limit access of public officials’ private information after her son was murdered in a targeted attack at their New Jersey home in 2020. A similar bill was passed in New Jersey in 2020. Daniel’s Law, named after Salas’ son, shields the home addresses and telephone numbers of any active or retired judge, prosecutor and law enforcement officer from public disclosure.
ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Matt Foster contributed to this report.
Kyiv said Moscow had reinforced its troops around Sievierodonetsk and attempted to cut off Ukraine’s access to the industrial city, the focus of a Russian offensive to take the eastern Donbas region.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, said Russian forces were blowing up bridges across the Siverskyi Donets river to prevent Ukraine from bringing in military reinforcements and delivering aid to civilians in Sievierodonetsk.
“The Russian army, as we understand, is throwing all its efforts, all its reserves in that (Sievierodonetsk) direction,” Gaidai said in a live TV broadcast. “Russians are blowing up bridges, so we could not bring in reinforcements to our boys in Sievierodonetsk.”
Since being driven back from the capital Kyiv, Russia has launched a massive assault in Luhansk and Donetsk, two provinces that make up the eastern Donbas region.
For both sides, the fighting in the east in recent weeks has been one of the deadliest phases of the war, with Ukraine saying it is losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday Russia had used artillery to conduct “assault operations” in Sievierodonetsk, but Russian forces retreated and Ukrainian troops are holding positions inside the city, around 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Russian border.
Russian soldiers also attempted to advance towards Lysychansk, across the Siverskyi Donets river from Sievierodonetsk, but were stopped, Ukraine’s military general staff said.
Reuters reached Sievierodonetsk on Thursday and was able to verify that Ukrainians still held part of the city.
In neighboring Donetsk province, Russian troops were just 15 km (9 miles) outside the city of Sloviansk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Reuters on Friday.
Britain’s defense ministry said Russian air activity remains high over Donbas, with Russian aircraft carrying out strikes using both guided and unguided munitions.
In Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, a missile hit an agricultural storage unit, wounding two people, the regional administration’s spokesman wrote on Telegram.
On the eve of critically important local elections, Los Angeles is in a bad mood.
“The streets are dirty, they need to empty the trash cans, there’s tagging, there’s homeless people everywhere,” Alejandra Montiel said at a bus stop in Boyle Heights.
I heard similar laments repeatedly on all-day treks from Boyle Heights to Pacific Palisades, and from Leimert Park to Sylmar. I also encountered numerous people who either didn’t know there was an election coming up or didn’t know who was running for mayor, City Council or county offices.
And then there were those who, in addition to being fatigued and irritated, are deeply cynical. They’ve lost faith that anyone will fix L.A.’s major problems, including the high cost of living in a city with a low-wage economy.
“My general assessment here is that there’s huge disappointment in our elected officials over their lack of response and support,” said Steve Kang of the Koreatown Youth and Community Center.
Polls show there are three leading contenders in the race to succeed Eric Garcetti as mayor of Los Angeles. Here’s a guide to the top contenders.
Petty theft and anti-Asian hatred have the community on edge, said Kang, and he no longer feels comfortable walking the streets at night. But apathy is running high, he said, because people are tired of unkept promises from politicians. For many registered voters, Kang said, the attitude is, “Why bother?”
On Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, I came upon a sanitation crew clearing the charred debris from a fire at a homeless campsite. The crew chief said this is all his four-person team does all day, every day.
“This was about 500 pounds of plastics, linens, electronics,” he said of the load the crew shoveled into the dump truck.
The fire scorched shrubs in a strip mall planter box. Just down the street, several tents occupied the sidewalk and a homeless person told my colleague, photographer Genaro Molina, not to dare walk through the area. A man in a sad state, pants falling off, was sprawled on the pavement.
Inside nearby Mike’s Smoke Shop, two clerks told me their customers are wary of coming in, and that people who appear to be high or mentally ill often enter the store. On occasion, they said, they’ve used a Taser on threatening people.
Outside, Christopher Crouch, who lives in the neighborhood, walked by the encampment. He opened his backpack to show me the club he carries. He said he’s been attacked and needs to protect himself.
“All these people need housing,” said Crouch, who plans to vote but hadn’t decided on a mayoral candidate. “They all say they’re going to do this or that, but things stay the same.”
I noted in a recent column that among the three mayoral candidates with the greatest name recognition — mall operator and developer Rick Caruso, U.S. Rep Karen Bass and City Councilman Kevin de León — the latter two have more nuanced plans on homelessness.
Dwayne Gathers, a Hancock park resident and strategist in business and government affairs, had an interesting take on that.
“Maybe voters are tired of ‘nuance’ and simply want to see some results that affect their day-to-day lives,” he said.
Gathers said that in recent weeks, political progressives he knows have said they’ve had it with festering problems despite the billions spent on homelessness. Two friends recently told him, “You know what? We’re tired of five-year plans. We’re with Caruso.”
I heard that from others, but the sentiment is not universal. At Echo Park Lake, refurbished after the controversial clearing of an encampment, Carrie S. and her husband, Brandon, said they’re backing Bass and think she’d be more inclined to find humane solutions.
Hugo Henriquez, who avoided the park when it was a campsite and has happily returned for walks with girlfriend Lourdes Rivas, is intrigued by Caruso but still thinking about it.
At the Grove, owned by Caruso, Vera Borges was doing some shopping and told me she’s going with Bass. Borges said that as a state and federal lawmaker, Bass has been working for years on the social and economic issues that have fueled homelessness, and “she has her priorities straight.”
Of the five L.A. mayoral candidates who stood onstage Tuesday at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, Rick Caruso and Karen Bass provided some of the most vivid contrasts.
At the Farmers Market, Third and Fairfax, writer Ron Clark and musician/actress Lucia Micarelli were working on a play, scrawling notes on a yellow legal pad. Clark, it turns out, wrote “Revenge of the Pink Panther” and two Mel Brooks films, one of which describes the current mood of the city — “High Anxiety.”
“I’m a cynic with a healthy grain of optimism,” said Clark, who said there’s no denying that the rich get richer and that poverty is always with us, though he thinks L.A. has a lot going for it. He said he already voted but didn’t want to reveal his pick. He did say, however, that he recalls another businessman-turned-politician who claimed to have all the answers.
“Isn’t that what Trump said?” Clark asked.
On Olvera Street, jeweler Pablo Sanchez runs a stall and said his family has been in business there for nearly a century. He said Caruso is too conservative for his liking, and he thinks Bass or De León would be more likely to deliver permanent solutions rather than push homeless people around.
But Sanchez can’t vote in L.A. He lives in Desert Hot Springs because housing is vastly more affordable there. His commute, on some days, eats up six hours.
In Leimert Park, Kevin Wharton Price and a friend who gave his name as Zino P. weren’t impressed by anyone running for mayor.
“People out here are cold, hungry and dying, and I’ve been two of those,” said Zino, who is homeless, and says economic development is sorely needed in South L.A.
“You can’t come to us and say give us your vote, when this is the state of things,” said Price, who told me nothing will change until homeless people and working people are part of the policy-making process. “We voted for [Measure] H and [Proposition HHH], they spent all that money, and people are still dying in this park right here.”
The truth is that thousands of people have been housed in recent years, but the pace has been too slow and the cost too high to keep up with the constant flow of newly homeless people. Mental illness and addiction complicate matters, and vital resources are in short supply.
Caruso has used his personal fortune to spend an astounding $25 million on political ads, dwarfing the amounts raised by his competitors and arguing that politicians can’t be trusted to straighten out a mess they’ve created.
At Philippe’s, always a good place to check the pulse of the city, three buddies who attended Lincoln High together many years ago met for breakfast Wednesday morning and told me their old neighborhood has plenty of people living in beat-up RVs. Mario Rojas, Ray Madrano and Jose Vargas attributed this to the economy, to housing costs, to mental illness and other factors.
“It’s disheartening,” said Rojas, who likes Caruso, but there’s one thing about the developer that gives him pause.
“He was a registered Republican,” said Rojas, and switched to Democrat prior to running.
With all the money he’s spending, this isn’t a fair fight, the friends agreed.
“But it’s his money,” said Madrano.
Not far from Philippe’s, I saw two teachers leading a pack of students on a downtown field trip. The kids, in third, fourth and fifth grades at 59th Street Elementary School, walked past tents, with City Hall rising in the background.
“It’s sad,” said teacher Lorna Palmer. When they returned to school, there’d be a discussion and she’d ask students, “Why is this here, and what are the solutions?” She said she supports Caruso.
One thing worth noting about this election, and this moment in L.A. history, is that dissatisfaction runs through every neighborhood and every income level. It’s as if a city divided among haves and have-nots, among nannies and the people who hire them, has finally come together on something other than the Lakers.
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As I plowed the length of Sunset Boulevard — from the ZIP Codes of landscapers to the sprawling yards they manicure — the air gets cooler and the real estate gets hotter. On my way to the beach, Caruso signs were posted on lawns in Pacific Palisades. And at the end of the road, near Gladstone’s, I met a homeless guy, fittingly enough.
Phillip Krohn, who said he’d been homeless for a couple of years, was feeding cheddar cheese to squirrels and fending off gulls. He wore a sequined fabric, one of many he said he bought in the Garment District, and he was hoping Kim Kardashian would drive by and notice his eye for fashion.
He didn’t know who was running for mayor or have any advice for the candidates, other than the obvious — more housing needed. As I was leaving, he fended off another homeless guy who wanted to fight, and surfers rode a short wave that broke right.
It was comfortably cool at the water’s edge, but Thursday afternoon, it was uncomfortably warm in Northridge, where Andrea Burman and her mother, Marian, strolled through the air-conditioned Northridge Fashion Center. For them, the mayor’s race is no toss-up. They’re with Caruso.
“I mean, he’s not a politician,” said Andrea, who thinks he’d do a better job on crime, homelessness and affordable housing than the current mayor, Eric Garcetti, who was nominated to serve as U.S. ambassador to India by President Biden.
“I feel sorry for the people of India,” Andrea said.
My two-day mission to take the temperature of the city ended with Luis Rodriguez and his wife, Trini, at the Sylmar cultural center and bookstore they own — Tia Chucha’s.
Luis, former poet laureate of Los Angeles and award-winning author of books including “Always Running,” and Trini have devoted themselves to fighting the forces that have led to growing inequality. Luis is working on four books simultaneously and running a long-shot campaign for governor on the Green Party ticket.
“Housing is now treated as a commodity,” said Trini, who grew up in this part of the San Fernando Valley, where living wage jobs died when the manufacturing and aerospace industries waned.
The people in power, said Luis, “are managing problems but not getting at the root causes of them.” If wages aren’t going to rise, a far greater investment in housing is a must, because in addition to homelessness, multiple families are crammed into single homes and still struggling.
“There’s so much cynicism and people aren’t engaged, and it’s hard to convince people to get out and vote,” said Luis.
But he has never been one to give up the fight, having survived poverty, gang violence and hopelessness. For all the frustration and fatigue in Los Angeles right now, Luis had a piece of advice.
Mark Collins had brought his four grandsons Waylon, Karson, Hudson and Bryson up to his ranch north-west of Houston on Thursday for what sounded like a southern boy’s dream: shooting guns, taking boats on big ponds and fishing.
While Collins knew authorities had been looking in the general area for a convicted murderer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel who had broken free from a prison bus three weeks earlier, he may not have known that the fugitive had apparently burglarized a home next door to the ranch, according to family friend David Crain.
And within hours of their arrival, Collins and his grandsons were dead at the hands of the escapee, 46-year-old Gonzalo Lopez, who stole guns, clothes and a truck from the ranch before police shot him dead more than 200 miles away.
Officials with Crime Stoppers of Houston late on Friday identified Mark Collins, 66; Waylon Collins, 18; Karson Collins, 16; Hudson Collins, 11; and Bryson Collins, also 11, as the five family members murdered by Lopez in the final hours of his run from the law.
Waylon, Karson and Hudson were brothers, and Bryson was their cousin, the family’s pastor, Steve Bezner, said at a news conference on Friday.
The boys played football and baseball, and they had gone up to their grandfather’s ranch to hunt, fish and spend time on the water a week into their vacation from classes at the Tomball independent school district, which serves a suburb of Houston.
Waylon had recently graduated high school. Bryson had just been baptized into the Christian faith in his family’s swimming pool three days earlier.
“What happened to the Collins family is just unspeakable – those kids were bright, shining stars,” said Crain, the family friend. “Even [for] the hardest of the hard – this is really difficult to take.”
On 12 May, three weeks before Thursday’s violence, Lopez managed to remove his restraints and crawl out of a caged area of a bus driving him from a Texas state prison in Gatesville to one in Huntsville for a medical appointment. He attacked the bus driver, who was stabbed in the hand, before ducking gunfire from officers and running off into the woods in Leon county, a rural area between Houston and Dallas whose local government is headquartered in Centerville.
Law enforcement agencies launched a manhunt involving hundreds of officers, a search plane and a reward of $50,000 for information leading to Lopez’s capture.
Police knew Lopez was serving two life sentences for shooting a sheriff’s deputy in Webb county, Texas, in 2004, then in 2005 using a pickaxe to kill a man he had kidnapped near the state’s border with Texas and held for ransom over a $40,000 drug debt owed to the La Maña cartel from Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Officials leading that search had looked in the Collins family ranch multiple times while Lopez was at large, Crain said. It was clear each time.
But then, citing information from state authorities, Crain said investigators had determined that Lopez had broken into a neighboring property on Monday. Crain isn’t sure his friend Mark Collins received that information before bringing his grandchildren to the ranch on Thursday morning.
When Mark Collins didn’t check in with another family member later on Thursday, that relative called police and asked them to check on the ranch. Officers went and found the bodies of the four children and their grandfather, and their white pickup truck was missing.
Police in Jourdanton, a Texas community about 220 miles south-west of Centerville, saw Lopez driving the truck and pursued him. Officers disabled the truck by putting down a strip of spikes that Lopez drove over, authorities said.
Armed with an AR-15 rifle and a pistol that were apparently stolen from the Collins ranch, Lopez subsequently died in a shootout with police. No officers were wounded.
Bezner, the Collins family pastor, said the victims’ loved ones remain pious. “None of us can understand why, but [we] continue to trust that God is good and he is with us under these circumstances,” Bezner said.
Nonetheless, Crain said those grieving the Collinses are closely monitoring an ongoing investigation into exactly how Lopez escaped and then managed to elude capture for so long.
“If steps can be taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again, then there’s where we go,” Crain said.
Andy Kahan of Crime Stoppers Houston asked the public to consider donating to an online GoFundMe campaign meant to cover funeral expenses for the slain Collins family members.
“This is the worst that you can possibly imagine,” Kahan said. “It doesn’t get any worse.”
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — The state agency investigating the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde has determined that the commander facing criticism for the slow police response was not carrying a radio as the massacre unfolded, a Texas state senator said Friday.
Authorities have not said how Arredondo was communicating with other law enforcement officials at the scene, including the more than a dozen officers who were at one point waiting outside the classroom where the gunman was holed up. Arredondo heads the district’s small department and was in charge of the multi-agency response to the shooting.
He has not responded to multiple interview requests from AP since the attack, including a telephone message left with district police Friday.
The apparently missing radio is the latest detail to underscore concerns about how police handled the shooting and why they didn’t confront the gunman faster, even as anguished parents outside the school urged officers to go inside. The Justice Department has said it will review the law enforcement response.
Focus has turned to the chief in recent days after Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo believed the active shooting had turned into a hostage situation, and that he made the “wrong decision” to not order officers to breach the classroom more quickly to confront the gunman.
Police radios are a crucial source of real-time communication during an emergency and, according to experts, often how information from 911 calls is relayed to officers on the ground. It’s unclear who at the scene was aware of the calls. Uvalde police did not respond to questions about the calls Thursday.
The news emerged amid tensions between state and local authorities over how police handled the shooting and communicated what happened to the public.
The gunman in Uvalde, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, spent roughly 80 minutes inside the school, and more than an hour passed from when the first officers followed him into the building and when he was killed by law enforcement, according to an official timeline.
Ramos slipped through an unlocked door into adjoining fourth-grade classrooms at 11:33, authorities said. He rapidly fired off more than 100 rounds.
Officers entered minutes later, exchanging fire with Ramos, and by 12:03 there were as many as 19 officers in the hallway outside the classroom, McCraw said. Authorities have not said where Arredondo was during this period.
Officers from other agencies urged the school police chief to let them move in because children were in danger, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
A U.S. Border Patrol tactical team used a school employee’s key to unlock the classroom door and kill the gunman around 12:50 p.m., McCraw said.
Law enforcement and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the shooting and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing statements hours later. State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.
Gutierrez said Friday that a Texas Department of Public Safety official told him that the Uvalde-area district attorney, Christina Mitchell Busbee, a Republican, had directed the agency to not release more information about the shooting investigation to the senator or the public.
The Department of Public Safety on Friday referred all questions about the shooting investigation to Busbee, who has not returned telephone and text messages seeking comment.
Gutierrez said Thursday that many people should shoulder some blame in the Uvalde shooting, including the Texas governor.
“There was error at every level, including the legislative level. Greg Abbott has plenty of blame in all of this,” he said.
Coronado reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; and Mike Balsamo in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
“Victory shall be ours,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiysaid in a video featuring the same key ministers and advisers who appeared with him in a defiant broadcast on 24 February, the day his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, launched his unprovoked assault. “The armed forces of Ukraine are here. Most importantly, our people, the people of our country, are here. We have been defending Ukraine for 100 days already … Glory to Ukraine,” Zelenskiy added.
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