Cherokee Sheriff’s OfficeBy IVAN PEREIRA and MATT FOSTER, ABC News
(ACWORTH, Ga.) — At least seven people were killed in three separate shootings at spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials.
While responding to a spa in Acworth, Georgia, at about 5 p.m. deputies found two people dead and three others injured, according to a spokesman from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. The three injured were taken to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, where one later died, said Capt. Jay Baker, director of communications from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.
About 47 minutes after that incident, Atlanta police responded to a 911 call of a robbery in progress at a spa on Piedmont Road and found three women dead from gunshot wounds, a spokesman told ABC News in a statement.
While on the scene, the officers were advised of shots fired at a spa across the street. When they went to investigate, police found a woman inside dead from a gunshot wound, Sgt. John Chafee of the Atlanta Police Department said in a statement.
No suspect has been arrested in any of the three shootings.
It was unclear whether they were related, police said.
“Many have asked whether these shootings are related to Cherokee County’s shootings. At the moment, it is too early to confirm that, but we have spoken with Cherokee County officials and we are looking into that possibility,” Atlanta police said in a statement.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office shared photos of the suspect leaving Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth.
Chafee said the investigation at the two Atlanta shootings is ongoing, police are checking similar businesses nearby and patrols have been increased.
ABC News’ Mark Osborne and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Tornado and severe weather season has arrived and a new storm system is moving across the country from the West Coast to the East Coast with a major severe weather outbreak expected across the South.
Over the next three days more than 50 million people will see a threat for damaging winds, hail and tornadoes.
There were already a couple of tornadoes around Kansas City, Missouri producing damage to homes on Monday and, further north, that same storm brought more than a foot of snow from the Dakotas to Minnesota with multiple accidents and spinouts around the Twin Cities.
Now this storm system is moving into the Appalachians and a new storm is coming out of the West.
As these two storms march through the country, 18 states are on alert for strong winds and heavy snow from California to New York.
Over the next 24 hours, severe weather is expected from the Plains — including Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas — which is where there is the biggest threat for damaging winds, large hail and a few tornadoes.
Ahead of this storm on Tuesday, a stationary front will produce strong storms from Louisiana to Alabama and these storms could also produce isolated tornado and damaging winds.
As this storm moves east, the biggest threat for tornadoes and damaging winds is expected on Wednesday from Arkansas to Alabama, including major cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama.
The worst of the severe weather will begin early in the afternoon on Wednesday or evening and overnight into Thursday morning.
By Thursday, the severe weather threat moves into the Southeast from Virginia to Florida with tornadoes, damaging winds and large hail all possible across the region.
WFAA-TVBY: KATHERINE FAULDERS AND LUKE BARR, ABC NEWS
(DALLAS) — The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas is expected to be used to house up to 3,000 immigrant male teenagers coming across the U.S.-Mexico border for up to 90 days, according to sources briefed on the plans and a memo obtained by ABC News.
“This center will be a temporary shelter for unaccompanied children (Males 15-17 [years of age]) that have crossed into the US from the border in the Rio Grande Valley area,” the internal memo said.
The memo was sent to members of the Dallas City Council by the Dallas Office of Emergency Management.
The memo states the contract is in the process of being finalized and FEMA and the United States Department of Health and Human Services want to begin the operation as soon as this week.
The federal agencies conducted walk-throughs of the facility over the weekend, according to the notification.
“FEMA/HHS intends to operate a federally supported decompression shelter a KBHCC for up to 90 days,” the notification said.
The memo said the 3,000 teens will be housed “while plans for more permanent sheltering or connection to sponsor families can be arranged.”
A spokesperson for FEMA, which was recently brought in to help with the overcrowding at the border, told ABC News that the agency is doing everything they can to help.
“FEMA is actively engaged with HHS to quickly expand capacity for safe and appropriate shelter, and to provide food, water and basic medical care,” the spokesperson told ABC News.
T.C. Broadnax, the Dallas city manager, told ABC News in a statement that they are committed to working with the federal government to accommodate the request.
“Collective action is necessary and we will do our best to support this humanitarian effort. Moving forward all questions should be directed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” he said in his statement.
As of this weekend, there are 4,276 children in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol custody, sources told ABC News, pointing out that it seems to be a record number.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
VallarieE/iStockBy MATT GUTMAN and QUINN OWEN, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — The number of unaccompanied teens and children in U.S. custody along the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record numbers, forcing children to stay longer in perilously overcrowded border facilities, many of which are similar to jail, multiple sources who reviewed the most recent government data told ABC News.
There are now 4,276 children in custody, up from about 3,400 earlier in the week. It is a 25% increase, which sources tell ABC News is troubling and could lead to the kind of environment last seen during the 2018-2019 surge, in which six migrant children died in U.S. custody.
Overcrowding, measured in pre-pandemic levels, has spiked, various sources who reviewed recent government data told ABC News. Rio Grande Valley is at 363% capacity and all the major Border patrol sectors are at well over 100% capacity.
The current average time the children spend in facilities typically designed to hold adult males for 24 hours, has increased to 117 hours — 45 hours longer than the legal limits on custody, the sources said.
That amount of time has also increased significantly over the past week.
Most children are being fed and have access to movies, but they’re sleeping on thin pads on the floor with only paper-thin foil blankets to keep them warm, according to congresswoman Veronica Escobar.
“There was no social distancing. This facility is at capacity,” said Escobar of the facility she visited in El Paso, Texas.
The data indicates that most of the children, over 2,600 of them, have been fully processed by Border Patrol officials, but are waiting to be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) facilities, which are designed to shelter minors.
The data also shows the bottleneck, and the challenge for the administration, is only set to grow.
The number of teens apprehended at the border is increasing weekly, averaging at over 500 in the past two weeks and putting the total number of possible apprehensions at an unprecedented 15,000 over a four-week span.
Traditionally, the numbers of migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. increases in late spring.
Human rights observers place blame on the Trump administration for dismantling the humanitarian protections built into the country’s immigration system. Still, Amnesty International USA has condemned the use of facilities like the ones HHS currently relies on for handling the influx of children.
“The government needs to move faster, and it is taking steps to move faster,” said Denise Bell, a researcher for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International. “And in the interim, we have to acknowledge that we don’t want to endanger children by releasing them onto the street when they arrive, or to sponsors that haven’t been vetted, but we need more capacity, and we need to move faster.”
Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security mobilized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist in sheltering and transporting the unaccompanied children.
“I am grateful for the exceptional talent and responsiveness of the FEMA team,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “I am incredibly proud of the agents of the Border Patrol, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care. Yet, as I have said many times, a Border Patrol facility is no place for a child.”
Adding to the backlog are some 8,800 unaccompanied migrants currently under the responsibility of the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to multiple sources. This is up from 8,100 last Wednesday.
Shelter capacity is typically upwards of 13,000, but the COVID-19 pandemic has cut that drastically. Still, ORR acknowledged in a statement that it authorized facilities in its network to open up to pre-pandemic levels.
“Additional shelter capacity will minimize the likelihood that children remain in Border Patrol stations longer than necessary, where they are also exposed to COVID-19 transmission risks as well as child welfare concerns associated with such settings,” ORR said in a statement. “Over-capacity Border Stations pose a greater infection risk to children than ORR program sites that are operating at full licensed capacity but use other COVID-19 mitigation measures.”
The backlog likely persists as the result of more strict health guidelines enforced by state licensing officials.
“It’s not us being able to turn on a light switch,” one senior administration official said. “So it’s going to be really critical that those state licensing officials and state health officials understand and implement that CDC memo to allow our facilities to make those changes necessary.”
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBY: JULIA JACOBO, ABC NEWS
(NEW YORK) — College students are continuing to flock to beaches to celebrate spring break despite the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although universities around the country either scaled back the traditional holiday week or canceled it altogether, the Sunshine State saw an influx of traveling students over the weekend.
On Friday night, two Miami Beach Police officers dispersed a large crowd using pepper balls after two officers were injured, the police department tweeted. Authorities reported instances of bottles being thrown at police and a woman riding on top of a car.
Thirty additional arrests were made Saturday night, police said.
Earlier this month, Miami Beach City Manager Raul Aguila warned spring breakers to stay out of town, and a message to the cellphones of tourists warning them to “Vacation Responsibly.”
“If you want to party without restrictions, then go somewhere else. Go to Vegas,” Aguila said during a virtual city meeting.
On Saturday, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer advised the community to enjoy the weather while maintaining COVID-19 safety guidelines.
In Texas, Galveston was also a hot spot for spring breakers, where thousands of people flocked to the beach to soak in the warm weather, ABC Corpus Christi affiliate KIII-TV reported.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a plan to lift mask mandates and allow businesses to operate at 100% capacity on March 2.
Many people in Galveston chose not to wear the face coverings at the beach, Fort Worth resident Kelly Roberson told KIII.
“We don’t need the government entity to come out here and tell us you need a mask or you don’t need a mask,” Roberson said.
The Transportation Security Administration screened 1,357,111 passengers on Friday and another 1,223,057 passengers on Saturday, according the the agency.
Spring break travel last year may have fueled the spread of the virus as it gained momentum in March 2020, a study out of Ball State and Vanderbilt University that used GPS smartphone data to track the movement of a sample of more than 7 million U.S. college students found.
Some colleges are getting creative in their attempts to get students to stay in town. The University of California, Davis is offering students $75 to not travel during spring break.
Other colleges, including the University of Michigan, University of Tennessee, University of Florida and Baylor University amended their calendars in the fall to do away with spring break completely due to the pandemic.
The behavior of Americans in the months of March and April will be critical in preventing another surge of the virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said earlier this month. Walensky has warned states against reopening too soon as the number of infections plateau.
Cherokee Sheriff’s OfficeBy IVAN PEREIRA and MATT FOSTER, ABC News
