August 20, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Orange County Sheriff’s OfficeBy IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A sheriff’s office released body camera footage Tuesday night from an arrest outside a Florida mall on Aug. 7, when deputies shot and killed a suspect who they say was running away and drew a gun.

The attorney representing the family of the slain man, Salaythis Melvin, 22, however, told ABC News the footage doesn’t entirely fit the police’s story and the officer’s use of force was unjustified.

Melvin was part of a group that was stopped by police outside the Florida Mall in Orange County. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said one of the four suspects, who was not Melvin, had an arrest warrant and was wanted in connection for a shooting.

As authorities were attempting to arrest Melvin, he took off on foot and was pursued by Orange County Sheriff’s Office Agent James Montiel, according to a police affidavit. The deputy said he saw Melvin had a handgun in his waistband, according to a police affidavit.

Montiel allegedly told Melvin to drop his weapon, but Melvin kept running, according to the affidavit.

Montiel said Melvin turned his head and started to face him while holding the gun, which prompted the officer to shoot Melvin, the affidavit said. Melvin was struck in the back and later died in the hospital, police said.

One of the six videos released Tuesday shows another deputy drive toward the chase and Melvin is seen in the distance running before falling to the ground. At least four officers surround Melvin who is groaning in pain and they handcuff him before administering first aid.

During this time, one of the deputies is heard calling Melvin a racial slur. An ambulance doesn’t arrive on the scene until eight minutes after the shooting.

Bradley Laurent, an attorney representing Melvin’s family, told ABC News that the footage shows that he wasn’t a threat to the officers. Laurent, who has called for the release of the video for days, contended there is no indication that Melvin had his hand on the gun or was aiming at officers.

“When you look at the video, he was in a full sprint. He posed no threat to anyone,” he told ABC News.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged the allegations that one of its officers made “inappropriate comments” in a statement released on social media.

“OCSO is aware of allegations related to the body worn camera video that was released yesterday,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “It is alleged that a deputy on the video made inappropriate comments. At this time, we have initiated an inquiry into this matter. Once complete, we will make the results public.”

The entire shooting is under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the sheriff’s office would not provide further comment. Orange County Sheriff John Mina addressed the body camera videos during a news conference Tuesday night after he won reelection for his seat.

“We want to let [the FDLE] handle their investigation, but because of the public interest in this case, we made a decision in this agency that we would release bodycam video,” he said.

Mina added that once the investigation is complete, they will turn over the findings to the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

Laurent said Melvin’s family is calling for Montiel to be fired and they are mulling civil charges.

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August 20, 2020 • No Comments • National News

amphotora/iStockBy HALEY YAMADA, ABC News

(MINNEAPOLIS) — Audio recordings of an investigator interview with one of the former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s death were released Tuesday.

The interview with Thomas Lane was conducted by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension shortly after Floyd died on May 25. The audio contains a statement by Lane as to his perspective regarding Floyd’s arrest and eventual death.

“Once [Floyd] kind of stopped fighting us, I think I had said again, ‘I think we should roll him onto his side,” Lane told agents during the interview.

Lane said that he believed former officer Derek Chauvin, who was seen in video footage with his knee on Floyd’s neck, had told him and the other two officers to continue to hold Floyd on the ground and that there was an ambulance on the way.

“That made sense to me, just because I’ve had experiences with people who are [overdosing] and they’ll be out one minute and they’ll come back and really, you know, be aggressive with me,” said Lane in the interview.

“I would say I felt like it maybe could have been handled differently or we should be reassessing what we’re doing,” Lane added.

All four officers involved in Floyd’s death were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and charged with his death. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. Lane, as well as J. Alexander Keung and Tou Thao, have been charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter.

The officers have not yet formally entered pleas. Their trials are scheduled for March 2021.

The release of Lane’s interview audio comes a little over a month after Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, released audio transcripts from Lane and Kueng’s body camera videos, which provided the most detailed account yet of the events that took place as police took Floyd into custody.

The new transcripts were made public as part of Lane’s request to have the case against him dismissed.

Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, had also filed Thao’s body camera video with the court to support a motion to dismiss criminal charges against him, the Star-Tribune reported on Aug. 13.

Paule had argued in court filings that Thao’s video proved he was focused on crowd control and that he never physically laid hands on Floyd or had a full view of what was happening as the three other officers restrained Floyd on the ground.

Floyd’s death sparked nationwide outcry and massive protests around the world against racial injustice and police brutality. During his arrest, Floyd repeatedly told the officers that he could not breathe and called out for his mother before passing out. He was pronounced dead at a hospital that evening.

Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, has asked the judge presiding over the officers’ cases to have all four tried jointly. Defense attorneys have until Sept. 8 to respond. The next court hearing for the four is scheduled for Sept. 11.

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August 19, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Sullivan County Sheriff’s OfficeBy IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News

(SULLIVAN COUNTY, Tenn.) — Megan Boswell has been charged with murder in the death of her 15-month-old daughter, Evelyn, who was reported missing in February and found dead more than two weeks later.

After a five-month investigation into Evelyn’s death, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday alleged Boswell, 19, killed her child and disposed of her body. A grand jury returned several indictments against the teen mom, including two counts of murder, a count of child abuse and 16 other charges, TBI said.

Boswell has been in jail since February, for allegedly lying to investigators during the investigation into Evelyn’s disappearance, and Sullivan County Sheriff Jeff Cassidy said she also spread misinformation to the public.

“As a result of false information given by the defendant along with misinformation circulated in the community, there has been a lot of confusion in the case,” he said during a news conference. “I want to be clear when I say that after an extensive and thorough investigation, other individuals were eliminated as suspects and Megan Boswell became the sole suspect in this case.”

Evelyn was last seen with her mother in December, but she was only reported missing by a family member on Feb. 18, the TBI said. An Amber Alert was issued on Feb. 19 and investigators searched extensively for the child.

Over 16 days, authorities received and followed up on more than 1,000 tips, TBI said. During the investigation, Evelyn’s grandmother, Angela Boswell, and another man, William McCloud, were arrested and charged with possession of stolen property when they were found on Feb. 20 with a car connected to the Amber Alert.

Megan Boswell was arrested five days later for allegedly lying to investigators.

On March 6, officials searched the Blountville, Tennessee, property owned by Megan Boswell and found Evelyn’s remains.

“She didn’t deserve this, no child does,” Cassidy said.

Megan Boswell is due back in court on Aug. 28 and her bond has been set at $1 million, the TBI said. Her attorney, Brad Sproles, told ABC News he couldn’t comment on the charges, because as of Wednesday evening he had not spoken to his client.

“Our jail is dealing with COVID issues and pretty much locked down and I haven’t been able to talk to her,” Sproles told ABC News. “We’re trying to get something set up soon.”

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August 19, 2020 • No Comments • National News

ABC NewsBy Seni Tienabeso, Lindsey Griswold, and Anthony Rivas, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — By his account, Elie Kirkland shouldn’t have been at Morehouse College’s commencement last year, when billionaire Robert Smith pledged to the class of 2019 to “put a little fuel in your bus” by paying off millions of dollars in their student loans.

Kirkland was one of 396 graduating from the historically black college. The senior was supposed to graduate in 2018 but didn’t because of financial aid issues. Kirkland had fallen behind on credit card payments and his parents had taken out loans to help him graduate. Before Smith announced his promise, Kirkland was ready to walk away with over $100,000 in debt.

Instead, he owes nothing.

“When that happened, my credit score, first of all, went up tremendously,” Kirkland told ABC News. “I just have so much more freedom. I’m not handicapped to that bad credit monster.”

Jordan Randle, part of the class of 2020, wasn’t as lucky. With the coronavirus pandemic in full effect, his commencement was canceled; his family came together for a small socially distant gathering in his backyard. His student loan debt now stands around $30,000.

“I almost feel bad saying that,” he told ABC News, “because I’ve literally said that and some students have laughed, like, ‘I wish I had your case,’ which is sad. … Moving [out], getting my new car, trying to apply for another credit card — just doing those typical adult things have been a lot harder.”

Now entering the workforce, both Randle and Kirkland said that with the cost of higher education so high, the system needs to be re-examined — that as student loan payments loom, some people may not be able to find an adequately paying job to pay them off.

“There are a lot of people who are struggling or who have that degree and can’t find work. … They’re using every penny to pay off that debt — basically just going to school just to pay off that debt,” Kirkland said.

“A lot of people are stuck in so much debt that they can’t even do what they studied for,” Randle added. “So what’s the point?”

Federal student loans have been suspended and their interest waived since President Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March. Through an executive order, he extended the suspension for some federal student loans to the end of the year.

But when payments resume, many people still won’t have jobs that allow them to pay off their student loans, which total $1.7 trillion nationwide.

Lowell Ricketts, lead analyst for the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Center for Household Financial Stability, said a degree is still worth getting but that the payoff isn’t nearly as guaranteed as it was a generation ago.

“[Student loans have] outpaced inflation and other growth in prices and wages for many, many Americans, and so, it gives us a sense of crisis,” Ricketts told ABC News. “The returns, relative to the generations that came before, are starting to weaken when it comes to wealth.”

For graduates of color, the center’s data shows the returns are even weaker. For Black Americans born as early as the 1960s, having a college or postgraduate degree was statistically insignificant to their wealth. On average, they essentially broke even.

“It points to some of the fundamental wealth gap sources as being deeply entrenched in our history, and shows how difficult it is for any one family or individual to escape from some of the systemic gaps in wealth accumulation that we see based on race and ethnicity,” Ricketts said.

Nick Ducoff is the founder of Edmit, a company that helps students navigate the financial aid process to get the maximum benefit. He says a college degree “is still worth it,” but that it’s important to know the financial responsibility you’re signing up for ahead of time.

“The average college graduate earns nearly $1 million more over the course of their lifetime than a comparable high school graduate without a degree,” Ducoff said. “So, generally speaking, it’s worth it. But the devil is always in the details.”

Since 1998, the average price of college tuition has risen 183%. <>> From 1989 to 2016, the collective balance of outstanding student loan debt for U.S. families rose from 8.9% to 22.4%. <<>>

Nearly 7 out of 10 students from the class of 2019 signed up for some form of student loan, graduating with an average debt of nearly $30,000. These graduates joined 44 million Americans with student debt, 11% of whom have loans that are at least 90 days delinquent or in default.

For some former students, the debt is too much to handle. Katrina Williams said she was working at a Starbucks, a call center and delivering mail on Saturdays, and she still couldn’t afford to pay a $700 monthly payment.

“Even if I worked three jobs until I paid nothing but my student loan debt … I still wouldn’t be able to pay it off within the next 30 years, and that’s why you’re just like, ‘I’m not gonna pay them,'” Williams said.

With over $100,000 in student loan debt, the stress of which she said caused her to constantly break out in hives, Williams moved to Japan to teach and, one day, just stopped paying her student loans. While she was relieved from her decision, she still feels the system doesn’t work.

“The days when I was 18 years old and my eyes were full of stars and I’m like, ‘I’m going away to college’ … I had no idea what all those giant numbers meant when I was a kid,” she said. “People are starting to realize, ‘Oh, those millennials aren’t just eating avocado toast to be lazy. They’re in crippling debt.”

Ducoff said people who see their student loan debt adding up should try to exhaust every repayment option available, like income-driven repayment plans, which can help minimize the burden.

“Make sure you understand what options are available with respect to addressing your student debt,” he said.

He also said that students aren’t alone.

“There’s a lot of, unfortunately, other students that have an awful lot of student debt,” he said, “and there are communities online that they can find and meet others who have been chipping away at that.”

Although he’s already begun working full time to help pay off his loan, Randle still wants to see the system overhauled.

“I think the issue with the student loan system is it is basically combusting. … There needs to be change in our academic system in general,” he said. “Because I think it still benefits people who come from wealth because that’s who it was made for.”

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August 19, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Lord Runar/iStockBy BILL HUTCHISON, ABC News

(LOS ANGELES) — Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes over 72 hours ignited hundreds of fires across California that have roared through wildland, destroyed homes and forced thousands to evacuate.

The historic lightning siege left firefighters scrambling from one end of the state to the other and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a statewide emergency, calling for extra personnel and equipment to battle the conflagrations from the ground and from the air.

“What has occurred over the last 72 hours has certainly stretched the resources of this state,” Newsom said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The fires have come during a record-breaking heatwave in California, with temperatures soaring past 100 degrees every day this week.

“Over the past 72 hours, California has experienced a historic lightning siege,” said Jeremy Rahn, division chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, aka Cal Fire.

Rahn said that more than 10,849 lightning strikes had started 367 new fires since Monday, adding that “resources are depleted as new fires continue to ignite.”

No deaths have been reported, but multiple people have been injured attempting to flee the fires, officials said. Two of the largest are in Northern California.

The so-called SCU Lightning Complex fire, which started on Tuesday, had burned more than 85,000 acres across Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties and was only 5% contained on Wednesday afternoon.

Farther north, in Sonoma and Napa counties, which have been devastated by massive fires in recent years, more than 46,000 acres had burned in the LNU Lightning Complex blaze, which has destroyed or damaged 100 structures and was threatening 1,900 others, officials said.

Evacuation orders were issued in cities throughout Sonoma and Napa counties.

Marcia Ritz, an artist, told ABC News that she and her husband fled their Spanish Flats mobile home park in hills of Napa County near Lake Berryessa. When Ritz returned to the mobile home park, her residence and her neighbors’ had been destroyed.

“The worst part is, I’m an artist and I lost all my artwork,” Ritz said.

As she shined a flashlight where her home of 13 years had stood, Ritz, who also runs a nearby general store, tearfully exclaimed to her husband, “Oh my God, there’s nothing.”

“My house was so nice, too,” she said. “We’ve had fires around us for years. For four years in a row we’ve had fire problems, but it’s never gotten like this.”

Ritz said she and her husband were working at the store and monitoring fire conditions on Tuesday.

“And then it was like, we have to get out,” she said.

In Southern California, firefighters had gotten a handle on the Apple Fire in the Cherry Valley of Riverside County, according to Cal Fire. The blaze, which ignited July 31, was 95% contained on Wednesday after burning more than 33,000 acres, destroying four structures and injuring four people.

Mandatory evacuations also were ordered in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County, where the Lake Fire, which started on Monday in the Angeles National Forest near Lake Hughes, was 38% contained on Wednesday after burning 26,000 acres, officials said.

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