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Social media posts linked to alleged gunman at Wisconsin protests under investigation

• No Comments • National News

Pornpak Khunatorn/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, JOSH MARGOLIN and JACK DATE, ABC News

(KENOSHA, Wis.) — Authorities investigating social media accounts associated with the name of the alleged gunman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, have found references of support for President Donald Trump and a video that appears to show the poster at a Trump rally, law enforcement officials told ABC News.

The social media accounts were deactivated Wednesday and are now part of the investigation into the deadly shooting. Investigators are looking to determine whether the accounts are legitimate and are scrubbing them for any information pertinent to the probe, two law enforcement officials told ABC News.

Local law enforcement agencies are not commenting on the social media accounts.

Trump’s reelection campaign issued a statement Wednesday night distancing itself from the alleged shooter.

“President Trump has repeatedly and consistently condemned all forms of violence and believes we must protect all Americans from chaos and lawlessness,” Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump 2020 campaign, said in a statement. “This individual had nothing to do with our campaign and we fully support our fantastic law enforcement for their swift action in this case.”

At least three people were shot late Tuesday night near a gas station in Kenosha, some 40 miles south of Milwaukee, and two of the victims died from their injuries, according to the Kenosha Police Department. The third gunshot victim was taken to a hospital with “serious, but non-life-threatening injuries,” police said.

The violence occurred amid a third night of protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, who remains hospitalized in serious condition.

Cellphone video from Tuesday night’s protests showed a white man, armed with what appeared to be a semiautomatic rifle, running past police and being chased by demonstrators. The footage showed the man trip and fall and appeared to open fire on protesters. He then is seen running away.

The alleged gunman, identified as 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois, surrendered himself to authorities in Antioch, Illinois, before dawn Wednesday, according to Antioch Interim Police Chief Geoff Guttschow. Rittenhouse was arrested based on a warrant issued by authorities in Wisconsin’s Kenosha County, charging him with first-degree intentional homicide. He’s also being held on a charge of “fugitive from justice,” for purposes of extradition to Wisconsin, Guttschow said.

Rittenhouse is currently being held at the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center in Vernon Hills, Illinois, according to Guttschow.

He is expected to be charged as an adult back in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is assisting in tracing a firearm recovered Wednesday that is believed to have been used in Tuesday night’s shooting, a law enforcement official told ABC News.

The civil unrest in Kenosha unfolded Sunday evening after Blake was shot by police in broad daylight. Cellphone video taken by a witness shows three Kenosha police officers following Blake around his SUV, and at least one of them is seen shooting Blake multiple times in the back as he opened the driver’s side door and entered the vehicle, where his three young children were still inside.

The officers involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation, which is leading the probe into the incident. The Kenosha Police Department does not have body cameras.

Authorities, in a statement, later said that officers attempted to stop Blake with a stun gun but that efforts were unsuccessful.

Since then, hundreds of protesters have converged at the Kenosha Police Department headquarters and the Kenosha County Courthouse. Some have smashed patrol car windows and set fires to buildings. Police in riot gear have repeatedly deployed tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

The violence prompted Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers to mobilize additional members of the National Guard to Kenosha.

Blake’s family has repeatedly called for peaceful protests.

A statement released Wednesday night by the Wisconsin Department of Justice identified the officer who shot Blake and provided more details on the incident.

Officers from the Kenosha Police Department were dispatched to a residence Sunday, after a female caller reported that her boyfriend was there and “was not supposed to be on the premises,” according to the statement. During the incident, the officers tried to arrest Blake and deployed a stun gun in an attempt to stop him, but “the taser was not successful,” according to the statement.

Blake then walked around his car, opened the driver’s side door and “leaned forward,” according to the statement. Officer Rusten Sheskey, who has been with the Kenosha Police Department for seven years, fired his gun seven times into Blake’s back while holding onto his shirt, according to the statement. No other officer fired their weapon, the statement said.

The officers “immediately provided medical aid” to Blake, who was then flown to a hospital in Milwaukee, according to the statement.

During the investigation following the initial incident, Blake “admitted that he had a knife in his possession,” according to the statement. Investigators recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Blake’s vehicle. No additional weapons were found, according to the statement.

When taking questions from reporters at a press conference Wednesday night, Wisconsin Department of Justice officials would not say whether Blake was the person who the female caller said was at her home.

Prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Blake’s family, said his client was attempting to de-escalate a domestic incident when police drew their pistols and stun guns on him. Crump said Blake was walking away to check on his children when police shot him.

He told ABC News that Blake’s family is calling for the officers involved in the shooting to be terminated from the police force and charged with attempted murder.

“Where is humanity? Where is the professionalism? Where is the training? Why is it again that we’re seeing another African American who the police are supposed to protect and serve like anybody else use this brutal, excessive force?” Crump said. “It was done in front of his three little boys … who were all sitting in the car. Eight years old, five years old, three years old. Can you imagine the psychological issues these babies are going to have?”

Blake’s family told ABC News he is currently paralyzed from the waist down but that doctors hope the paralysis is temporary.

Despite his condition, Blake has been the one trying to comfort family from his hospital bed.

“That tells you what kind of man he is,” Blake’s uncle told ABC News in an interview that aired Wednesday on Good Morning America.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Six arrested as violent protest erupts in Minneapolis over false reports of fatal shooting involving police

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kali9/iStockBy BILL HUTCHINSON and WILLIAM MANSELL, ABC News

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Violence erupted in Minneapolis overnight when protesters took to the streets, some looting and vandalizing businesses, after social media posts wrongly claimed officers fatally shot a Black man who police alleged died by suicide following his involvement in a homicide.

At least six people were arrested when the civil unrest took an ugly turn in the city where a national wave of protests began in May with the killing of George Floyd.

The Minneapolis Police Department took a rare step Wednesday night of immediately releasing surveillance video of the suspect allegedly shooting himself at a shopping mall with several members of the public nearby.

The video was released, according to police officials, because many community residents took to the streets believing social media reports that the suspect was shot in the head by police.

“This evening, a murder suspect committed suicide as police approached them at 8th & Nicollet,” the Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement accompanying the surveillance video. They warned, “contains graphic images.”

“No officer weapons were fired,” the statement went on. “This is a tragedy for our community that is still hurting. Our condolences go to the families of the victims.”

The incident followed three days of violent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that spread to several other U.S. cities after cellphone video captured a police officer there shoot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, multiple times in the back in front of three of his six children.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz mobilized about 150 State Patrol troopers to respond to Minneapolis to restore order.

“Minneapolis, it’s time to heal,” Walz said in a message posted on Twitter. “We must rebuild and recover. Dangerous, unlawful behavior will not be tolerated.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the governor on Twitter, saying, “The unrest must stop and the healing must start.”

During a news conference Wednesday night, Frey said the city has requested help from the National Guard to restore calm to the city, which saw days of looting, vandalism and confrontations with police in the aftermath of Floyd’s May 25 death in which an officer was caught on cellphone video digging his knee into Floyd’s neck as he repeatedly cried out “I can’t breathe” and called for his dead mother.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js “What our city needs right now is healing,” Frey said, adding that a 72-hour citywide state of emergency and curfew would go into effect at 10 p.m. Thursday and run through 6 a.m. on Friday.

The mayor said he requested the National Guard to help restore peace to the city.

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“We do not need more destruction. We do not need more property damage,” Frey said. “That is unacceptable in every way, shape and form and I want to be very clear, it will not be tolerated.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo also appeared at the news conference and pleaded with protesters in the downtown area to go home.

“This was not an officer-related incident,” Arradondo said. “But we’re compounding more tragedy by the destruction and folks wanting to do harm to our communities and to our downtown sector this evening. I will not allow … more trauma to a city that’s still grieving from May 25.”

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The chaotic night in Minneapolis began on Wednesday afternoon when police responded to a fatal shooting and began searching for a man and a woman suspected of being involved in the homicide and fled the scene on foot, police said. Officers were able to obtain from witnesses descriptions of the suspects and the female suspect was quickly located.

Around 6 p.m., police said the male suspect was spotted by officers outside the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. As officers approached the suspect, he produced a handgun and shot himself in the head, police said.

“He appears to have seen officers approaching. He turned into a doorway of a building, produced a handgun, put it up underneath his chin. He then adjusted his stance, and shot himself underneath the chin closer to where it meets the neck,” John Elder Elder, a Minneapolis police spokesperson, told ABC Minneapolis affiliate station KSTP-TV.

Elder said people began to livestream to social media false information that officers had shot the suspect in the head, prompting protesters to take to the streets and wreaking havoc.

The video, captured by a surveillance camera owned by the city, shows a man dressed in a white T-shirt and dark ball cap and wearing a black backpack walk past a group of people who scattered as he pulled a weapon and shot himself.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

University of Notre Dame changes 'battle plan' after rise in COVID-19 cases

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wellesenterprises/iStockBy MEREDITH DELISO, ABC News

(NOTRE DAME, Ind.) — Before arriving on campus at the University of Notre Dame earlier this month, nearly all undergraduate and graduate students took COVID-19 tests. More than 11,800 tests yielded 33 positive cases, for a positivity rate of 0.28%.

By Aug. 18, eight days after classes started, the campus had 147 confirmed cases and a positivity rate of nearly 16%. The cases had overwhelmed the school’s testing and isolation measures and put the remainder of the fall semester in jeopardy, school officials said. That day, the university announced that undergraduate students would be going virtual for at least two weeks.

The university is one of hundreds of schools attempting to reopen with students on campus amid the pandemic. It’s also among those making headlines for its increase in COVID-19 cases since welcoming back students.

Notre Dame has been committed to reopening its campus since the spring. In late May, its president, Father John I. Jenkins, penned a New York Times opinion piece with the bold headline, “We’re Reopening Notre Dame. It’s Worth the Risk.” Whereas some schools — notably the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill — have pivoted to virtual learning amid coronavirus outbreaks this fall, Notre Dame is continuing to prioritize on-campus learning.

The rising cases — which now total nearly 500 — caused the school to “come up with a new battle plan,” Provost Marie Lynn Miranda said in a video address to students last Friday.

Part of that plan is keeping undergraduates, an overwhelming majority of whom have tested positive for the virus, out of classrooms until at least Sept. 2. The school should have an update on a return to in-person learning by Friday, a spokesman told ABC News.

The university has also expanded its COVID-19 testing. On Friday, it launched randomized testing of its student body to help identify asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases. Over the five days since, Notre Dame conducted 2,175 total tests — about half of the overall number of tests it’s conducted since Aug. 3. The campus positivity rate has decreased to around 3%.

Increased testing is a welcome move for third-year Notre Dame law student Rachel Palermo, though it’s one she wishes the school had implemented from the start.

“I think that the testing has been a huge problem,” Palermo told ABC News.

The university had initially advised that only those students with a set criteria of symptoms look into getting tested. Now, anyone who believes they have had direct contact with someone infected with COVID-19 can get a test — something Palermo also believes should have been the case from the beginning.

“I think the only way to be safely in person is to mandate regular testing of all students,” she said. “I know it’s expensive, but it’s worth it.”

Testing is a sticking point for others in the community. A petition started last week is demanding that COVID-19 testing be made available for the entire student population. The student newspaper, the Observer, has also called for more data in the university’s COVID-19 dashboard, including hospitalizations, recoveries, available quarantine and isolation spaces and demographics of students testing positive. This week, the university updated the dashboard to include some new data, including a rolling seven-day average of positive cases and a breakdown of cases by undergraduates, graduates and employees.

Observers say messaging has been mixed, too, as the university brought some 12,000 students back on campus amid new coronavirus protocols.

“Notre Dame’s biggest issue is a lack of discipline on messaging,” Chris Marsicano, founding director of the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College — which is tracking higher education institutions’ responses to COVID-19 — told ABC News. He pointed to reports that the university’s president apologized earlier this month after failing to comply with the school’s recommended social distancing guidelines while taking selfies with students.

“Discipline of the messaging is important for places that are big,” Marsicano said. “It’s hard to keep tabs on every single student.”

Language on disciplinary action had also been “very vague,” Palermo said. Still, she noted that it’s gotten stricter since the rise in cases. Last week, the university limited gatherings to 10 people, down from 20, and officials warned that students who fail to comply with health protocols could face “severe disciplinary action,” including dismissal.

University spokesman Paul Browne told ABC News that compliance with COVID-19 measures has been strong on campus — there haven’t been any cases linked to classrooms, he said — but “not as much off-campus.” The initial outbreaks were tied to a couple of off-campus parties where students weren’t wearing masks and spread the virus from there, officials said. Recent testing hasn’t found any other super-spreader events, Browne said.

The university is currently weighing disciplinary action for several students who failed to comply with health protocols, such as mask-wearing or social distancing, or didn’t isolate or quarantine when required to, Browne said.

“In some instances, we’ve had students leave those quarters to go out to get food, or just leave,” he added.

Browne said students themselves have been effective at spreading the message to follow health protocols through social media and the student newspaper.

“I think their engagement has probably been as, if not more, effective than messaging from the administration,” he said.

One student recently started an Instagram account on “why we do our part to prevent the spread.” Another, who said he went to the hospital after contracting the virus, pleaded with students to follow protocols in a letter to the editor published in the Observer this week.

“The past is the past, and there is nothing we can do to change that,” he said. “What we can do is begin to take this virus seriously even when the people in power and those closest to us refuse to do so.”

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Sailor investigated for possibly starting fire on Navy ship USS Bonhomme Richard

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U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Julio Rivera/ReleasedBy LUIS MARTINEZ and MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Navy sailor is being questioned by investigators for possible arson after allegedly starting the massive fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego in July, according to defense officials.

The almost week-long fire caused so much damage that the Navy is now debating whether it makes sense to keep the large amphibious assault ship in service.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) has identified the sailor, serving aboard the ship, as the potential suspect that may have started the blaze, a U.S. official said.

The investigation is still ongoing and no charges have yet been pressed, another official said.

“The Navy will not comment on an ongoing investigation to protect the integrity of the investigative process and all those involved,” said Lt. Timothy Pietrack, a U.S. Navy spokesman. “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

KGTV, ABC’s affiliate in San Diego, was first to report the details that a sailor may have been responsible for the fire on the ship.

Multiple sources told KGTV that various search warrants were executed at the sailor’s home and property. The sailor’s name and rank were not disclosed.

The fire began on the morning of July 12, in a storage area above where Marine Corps vehicles are usually stored on the large amphibious assault ship that looks like an aircraft carrier.

The fire quickly spread to the ship’s hangar deck, where it spread throughout most of the ship’s upper decks and raged for five days before it was finally extinguished.

Navy officials said at the time that the temperatures reached as high as 1,200 degrees when the flames were at their peak.

The Navy is carrying out four investigations into how the fire started and the extensive damage that it has left behind.

Following a tour of the damage in July, the Navy’s top admiral questioned whether it made sense to repair the ship that has been in service since the late 1990s.

“I am 100% confident that our defense industry can put this ship back to sea,” said Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations. “But, having said that, the question is: Should we make that investment in a 22-year-old ship? And I’m not going to make any predictions until we take a look at all the facts and we follow the facts and we can make reasonable recommendations up the chain of command on the future steps, any repair efforts, future repair efforts of Bonhomme Richard.”

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Multiple states report COVID-19 cases linked to Sturgis rally

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Ovidiu Dugulan/iStockBy ERIN SCHUMAKER, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — Health experts’ fears about the hundreds of thousands of bikers who descended on South Dakota for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the middle of a pandemic are coming true.

Dozens of coronavirus cases in eight states are believed to be linked to the 10-day motorcycle event earlier this month. South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Washington state health departments all have reported cases.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who spoke at the Republican National convention Wednesday, supported holding the rally in her state.

“We are not — and WILL not — be the subjects of an elite class of so-called experts,” she tweeted on Tuesday. “We the People are the government.”

A patron who visited multiple bars in Sturgis, as well as a tattoo shop employee, tested positive for COVID-19, according to the South Dakota Health Department.

“Currently 40 cases have been reported to the South Dakota Department of Health related to the Sturgis Rally,” the health department told ABC News in a statement. “This includes three out-of-state cases that we were notified of because those cases had close contact with a South Dakota resident.”

On Aug. 7, the opening day of the rally, South Dakota had roughly 9,000 COVID-19 cases, according to the health department. By Aug. 26, positive cases had risen to 11,500. The state’s positivity rate also rose, from 6% for the 14 days before Aug. 7, to 9% for the 14 days before Aug. 26.

A high positivity rate can be a sign that a state is only testing its sickest patients and failing to cast a net wide enough to accurately capture community transmission, according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organization recommends that governments get their positivity testing threshold below 5%.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.