April 9, 2021 • No Comments • National News

MicroStockHub/iStock

By Emily Shapiro and Mark Osborne, ABC News

(BRYAN, Texas) — Two victims remain in critical condition following a Thursday afternoon shooting at a cabinet-making business in Texas, police said Friday.

An employee of Kent Moore Cabinets in Bryan, just outside of College Station, allegedly opened fire, killing 40-year-old Timothy Smith and injuring four others at the facility, officials said.

A sixth shooting victim — a Texas Department of Public Safety officer — was shot and injured while trying to apprehend the suspect, officials said.

Police on Thursday arrested 27-year-old Larry Bollin, of Iola, Texas, and charged him with murder. He’s being held on $1 million bond, according to jail records.

Bollin was an employee of Kent Moore Cabinets, Bryan Police Department Chief Eric Buske said.

Marc Barron, a co-worker, told ABC Houston station KTRK that he’d see Bollin every day.

During the shooting, Barron said they came face to face.

“I turned around and he faces me. We made eye-to-eye contact,” Barron told KTRK. “He basically turned away from me to shoot.”

Bollin had fled the location when Bryan police arrived shortly after 2:30 p.m. local time, authorities said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said its officers tried to take Bollin into custody near Iola at about 3:30 p.m., but the suspect allegedly shot a trooper and fled. Bollin was then found and taken into custody 50 minutes later in the town of Bedias.

The trooper, Juan Rojas Tovar, “remains in critical but stable condition,” the Texas Department of Public Safety said Friday.

A seventh victim was taken to the hospital after suffering an asthma attack.

Amelia Rodriguez, another co-worker, told ABC News, “I don’t know how to feel.”

“Two hours ago, I thought I was gonna pass out, you know, my legs are feeling weak and everything,” she said. “Life is unpredictable, and it can go in a second.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement, “I have been working closely with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers as they assist local law enforcement on a swift response to this criminal act.”

“The state will assist in any way needed to help prosecute the suspect,” he said. “Cecilia [the governor’s wife] and I are praying for the victims and their families and for the law enforcement officer injured while apprehending the suspect.”

Hours before the shooting, Abbott had criticized President Joe Biden’s new executive actions aimed at gun reform.

“Biden is threatening our 2nd Amendment rights. He just announced a new liberal power grab to take away our guns,” he tweeted. “We will NOT allow this in TX.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

April 9, 2021 • No Comments • National News

FILE photo – Dennis Swanson – Studio 101 West Photography/iStockBy Alexander Mallin and Luke Barr, ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — A Pennsylvania man charged with assaulting officers at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection says he was brutally beaten by two guards at the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility late last month, according to his lawyer.

Ryan Samsel, who was arrested in late January after authorities identified him as the man seen on video pushing against a police barricade that knocked a female officer to the ground as a pro-Trump mob descended on the Capitol, relayed details of his alleged assault to his attorney, Elisabeth Pasqualani.

In a phone interview with ABC News Thursday, Pasqualani said she believes the incident is being investigated by both the D.C. Department of Corrections and the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

“The Department of Corrections takes the safety and well-being of all residents, staff, and contractors extremely seriously,” a Department of Corrections representative said in a statement to ABC News. “We are aware of the allegation made by an inmate and it is under investigation by the Department of Justice.”

FBI officials, in a brief statement, said they were “aware of the allegations, however, as a matter of policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Pasqualani said Thursday that she was told by Samsel that two guards came to his cell late last month in the early morning hours and ordered him to put on zip-tie handcuffs before taking him to another nearby cell.

Pasqualani said Samsel told her that one of the officers then proceeded to “punch him, hit him, kick him” as he lay on the ground.

According to Pasqualani, Samsel was taken to a hospital and suffered a broken nose and a fractured orbital floor in his eye socket, and that he still cannot see out of his right eye, which “might be permanent,” she said.

Samsel has since been relocated to a separate facility, Pasqualani said, after she requested his transfer following the alleged assault.

Samsel is not the first defendant to raise accusations of harsh treatment and poor conditions in the D.C. jail.

During a hearing this week, Capitol riot defendant Ronald Sandlin told a judge that guards have harassed his fellow defendants with threats of violence, and he cited Samsel’s alleged beating as he pleaded for release from pretrial detention.

Other defendants have complained to the court that they’ve been kept in lockdown for 23 hours each day, with some alleging decrepit conditions inside their cells like freezing temperatures and insect infestations.

Last month, a former Trump appointee arrested for his alleged role during the riot complained to a judge that there were “cockroaches literally everywhere” in his detention facility.

“I’m wondering if there’s a place I could stay in detention where I don’t have cockroaches crawling on me while I’m trying to sleep,” Federico Klein, who was an active government appointee when he allegedly participated in the riot, asked a federal judge.

A deputy warden at the jail confirmed to a federal judge last month that defendants being held on charges related to the Capitol riot were being held in a restrictive housing unit, citing “their own safety and security.”

In a separate detention hearing for an accused Capitol rioter on Thursday, a senior judge in the D.C. district court, Emmet Sullivan, said he and several of his colleagues had set a Friday meeting with the director of the D.C. Department of Corrections to get answers on some of the “rumors” they had been hearing from defense attorneys in their cases.

Sullivan expressed concern that attorneys for accused rioter Jeffrey Sabol said they have not received an explanation as to why Sabol and others are being placed in lockdown for 23 hours a day.

“Like everything else, we want to separate fact from fiction,” Sullivan said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

April 9, 2021 • No Comments • National News

carlballou/iStockBy William Mansell and Emily Shapiro, ABC News

(ROCK HILL, S.C.) — Five people are dead, including a doctor and two of his grandchildren, following a shooting at a home in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Wednesday afternoon, according to the York County Sheriff’s Office.

The suspect, 32-year-old Phillip Adams, was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at a nearby home, the York County Sheriff’s Office said.

Adams, a Rock Hill native, was a former NFL player, according to ESPN. He was drafted by San Francisco in the seventh round out of South Carolina State in 2010 and played as a reserve defensive back for five teams in six years from 2010 to 2015.

The victims were identified as Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70; his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69; their grandchildren, 9-year-old Adah Lesslie and 5-year-old Noah Lesslie; and James Lewis, 39, who was working at the home at the time he was shot, authorities said.

A sixth person was also shot and survived, officials said.

Lewis and the surviving victim — who was in critical condition Thursday morning — were air conditioning techs who were found shot beside their work vans, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said.

Lewis leaves behind a daughter and two sons, according to a GoFundMe.

Robert Lesslie was a well-known doctor in Rock Hill, ABC Charlotte affiliate WSOC reported. He spent many years working in emergency rooms in the Charlotte area, according to his website biography.

The sheriff said, “Dr. Lesslie was a pillar in this community.”

“He had treated me in the past,” he said.

Robert Lesslie and his wife had four children and five grandchildren, his website biography said.

The Lesslie family said in a statement, “We are truly in the midst of the unimaginable. The losses we are suffering cannot be uttered at this time.”

The family said, “If you would like to do something for the family, Adah and Noah would want you to stock the free pantries and libraries in your community. Barbara and Robert would want you to be good stewards of what you are given, leaving every place better than it was before you got there.”

All the deaths are being investigated as homicides, according to the York County Coroner’s Office.

The York County Coroner’s Office said Adams was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a nearby home on the same road as the Lesslies, following a standoff.

“We did recover evidence at the scene that linked Mr. Adams to that area definitively,” Tolson said at a news conference Thursday.

A motive has not been determined, Tolson said.

“There is nothing about this right now that makes sense to any of us,” the sheriff said.

Rock Hill is about 26 miles south of Charlotte, North Carolina.

South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman said Robert and Barbara Lesslie were his close friends.

“Through the decades, they made such an incredible impact on our area and the lives of countless people,” Norman said in a statement.

“It is impossible to imagine the grief that the extended Lesslie family must be feeling,” he said. “I also want to send my sincere condolences to the family of James Lewis.”

Joel and Steven Long, co-owners of GSM Services, the company which employed Lewis and the man who was shot and survived, said in a statement, “Our team at GSM Services is heart broken.”

“Both men involved in this incident are long-standing, beloved members of our family at GSM. These men embody the values we strive to achieve at GSM and are family focused, up-beat, and wonderful team members who cared about all the people they encountered,” the Longs said. “In the coming days, our focus is on helping these families and our team members cope with this tragedy.”

The NFL said in a statement, “Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the victims of these devastating tragedies.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.