August 7, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Breonna Taylor FamilyBy KARMA ALLEN and SABINA GHEBREMEDHIN, ABC News

(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Kentucky officials offered new details on Friday in the investigation into the death of Breonna Taylor, a young Black medical worker who was fatally shot in Louisville, Ky., by plainclothes police officers who had entered her home.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has said little about the case since taking over the investigation in May amid ongoing protests and calls for immediate charges against the officers involved.

Taylor’s death on March 13 helped ignite civil unrest across the country as people protested against racism and police brutality. Louisville police officers had executed a no-knock search warrant and used a battering ram to forcefully enter the young woman’s apartment. She was not the person they were looking for, according to police.

Amid mounting pressure for a decision in the probe, Cameron reiterated his commitment to the case, but he said investigators were still gathering information.

In a statement Friday, the AG’s office said it was still waiting for key evidence, specifically related to the guns and bullets involved in the shooting.

“Attorney General Cameron remains committed to an independent and thorough investigation into the death of Ms. Taylor,” the office said in a statement Friday. “The investigation remains ongoing, and we currently await additional testing and analysis from federal partners, including a ballistics test from the FBI crime lab.”

The FBI confirmed that it collected a “significant amount of ballistic evidence” after searching Taylor’s home in June.

“As many saw on June 19th, FBI Louisville returned to Breonna Taylor’s apartment to execute a federal search warrant,” FBI officials told ABC News in a statement Friday. “Over two days of searching, the FBI collected a significant amount of ballistic evidence and completed a shooting reconstruction. This evidence is being tested and analyzed at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.”

Cameron has routinely refused to put a timeline on his office’s decision.

Officers had executed a no-knock entry “due to the nature of how these drug traffickers operate,” according to the arrest warrant obtained by ABC News.

Taylor was accused of accepting USPS packages for an ex-boyfriend whom police were investigating as an alleged drug trafficker who used her address, according to the warrant.

Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, got out of bed around midnight when they heard a commotion outside. After a short exchange with police, Walker says he fired his gun in self-defense, saying he thought the home was being broken into, according to police.

The plainclothes officers returned gunfire, firing several shots and fatally hitting Taylor, police said.

Attorneys for Taylor’s estate claimed that more than 20 shots were fired into her apartment, hitting her multiple times.

“I haven’t had time to sit and grieve,” Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, told ABC News in June. “I’m still trying to figure out why my daughter was killed. I’m still trying to figure out, why did it have to come to her being murdered. Why did Breonna have to die?”

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

August 7, 2020 • No Comments • National News

narvikk/iStockBy WILLIAM MANSELL and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — (NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 716,000 people worldwide.

More than 19.1 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.

The United States is the worst-affected country around the world, with more than 4.8 million diagnosed cases and at least 160,255 deaths.

Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:

11:40 a.m.: All New York school districts can open, Cuomo says

In New York state, which was once the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, all school districts can open for the fall based on the infection rate, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on a conference call Friday.

“Every region is well below our COVID infection limit,” Cuomo tweeted. “If the infection rate spikes, the guidance will change accordingly.”

Each of the 749 school districts must have a reopening plan approved by the state’s Department of Health, the governor said. So far, 127 districts have not submitted plans to the department of health.

Each district should also post a remote learning plan and a plan for testing, he said.

11:20 a.m.: Florida has 4 counties with no ICU beds

Hard-hit Florida has 47 hospitals with no available intensive care unit beds, according to the state’s Agency for Healthcare Administration.

Four counties — Bay, Monroe, Nassau and Putnam — had no open ICU beds as of Friday morning, the agency said.

Thirty-one hospitals in the state had just one available ICU bed.

These numbers are expected to fluctuate throughout the day as hospitals and medical centers provide updates.

Florida has over 518,000 coronavirus cases, according to state Department of Health data. Florida has the second-highest number of cases in the country behind California.

9 a.m.: Entire high school football team quarantined in Alabama

The entire football team at Alabama’s Oneonta High School is under quarantine due to coronavirus cases, ABC Birmingham affiliate WBMA-TV reported.

Practice will resume on Aug. 18 and the team’s first game is set for Aug. 21, WBMA reported.

Oneonta High School’s school year has been delayed to start on Aug. 18 after an emergency school board meeting vote on Thursday, the school said.

Classes will have a hybrid in-person/remote learning schedule. Some students have registered for full-time remote learning, the high school said.

7:38 a.m.: CDC says up to 190,000 dead by end of August

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its COVID-19 death projections, saying the coronavirus death toll could reach 190,000 by the end of August. The government’s ensemble forecast predicts “deaths may decrease,” but another 15,000 to 30,000 more Americans may die from COVID-19 over the next 23 days.

This week’s national ensemble forecast predicts that weekly reports of new COVID-19 deaths may decrease over the next four weeks, with 4,500 to 10,600 new deaths reported during the week ending Aug. 29. Its forecast predicts that 175,000 to 190,000 total COVID-19 deaths will be reported by that date.

State-level forecasts, according to the CDC, predict that the number of reported new deaths per week may increase over the next four weeks in Hawaii and Puerto Rico and may decrease in Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Texas, Vermont and the Virgin Islands.

The COVID Tracking Project reported that for the first time since early March, the number of people tested for COVID-19 is down. This week’s tests were 9.1% lower than last week’s national peak of 5.7 million tests.

New cases of COVID-19 were also down this week by 10.4% , according to the COVID Tracking Project.

5:20 a.m.: US weekly COVID-19 cases, deaths down

Another day, another grim milestone for the U.S. as the coronavirus pandemic continues across the globe. Overnight, the U.S. surpassed 160,000 deaths, bringing its total to at least 160,104 as of 4:30 a.m., according to Johns Hopkins. The U.S. crossed 150,000 deaths last week.

In good news, however, an internal Federal Emergency Management Agency memo obtained by ABC News shows that the U.S. is slightly coming down from its recent national surge. New cases and deaths in the last week have both decreased in week-over-week comparisons. At least 396,559 new cases were confirmed during the period of July 29 and Aug. 5, which is a 12.6% decrease from the previous seven-day period.

There were 7,348 deaths recorded in the same time frame, marking a 2.4% decrease in new deaths compared with the previous week.

The national test-positivity rate is also going down. In the last seven days, the rate was 7.5%, which is down from 8.6% from the previous week.

Only two states and territories, according to the FEMA memo, are in an upward trajectory of new cases, while eight are at a plateau and 46 states and territories are going down.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

August 7, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Glynn County Sheriff’s OfficeBy EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News

(COBB COUNTY, Ga.) — The white father and son accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, who was Black and was jogging down a Georgia street, are looking to have bond set and two charges dropped, according to new court documents.

Attorneys for the son, Travis McMichael, 34, called him an “excellent candidate for low bond.”

He was never charged with a crime until this case, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Travis McMichael has a 3-year-old son who lived with him every other week until his arrest, the documents said.

“Travis is an extremely devoted father who dotes” on his son, the defense attorneys wrote.

Travis McMichael has lived all of his life in the Brunswick, Georgia, area and was living with his parents at the time of his arrest, the documents said.

His attorneys said he isn’t a flight risk because he doesn’t have a passport “and most importantly, his family, including his parents and three-year-old son are here in Georgia,” the documents said.

Travis McMichael’s father and fellow defendant, former police officer Gregory McMichael, also “meets the conditions for pretrial release on reasonable bond,” his attorneys said in documents filed Thursday.

Gregory McMichael’s attorneys asked the court to set a hearing within 20 days.

Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested in May and face charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment

A third suspect, neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, faces the same charges as the McMichaels. Bryan’s bail was denied last month.

All three have pleaded not guilty.

Arbery was on a jog in Brunswick when he was shot and killed on Feb. 23. Prosecutors claim that 25-year-old Arbery tried to run for his life before he was struck by a car, gunned down and then called a racial slur by one of the suspects.

The three arrested told police they thought Arbery was a suspect in a series of break-ins. They were charged after video showing the deadly struggle appeared online.

The McMichaels and Bryan also want the charges of malice murder and criminal attempt to commit a felony dropped.

The malice murder count “charges two crimes in one count, making it duplicitous,” the McMichaels’ attorneys claimed. “It does so by trading on vague and uncertain allegation regarding ‘unlawfully chasing’ in pickup trucks, which inserts an unspecified separate crime from malice murder, namely, ‘unlawfully chasing [Ahmaud Arbery] through the public roadways.'”

The McMichael’s attorneys argued that the criminal attempt to commit a felony count is also duplicitous because the count “alleges both a completed crime — ‘unlawfully chase Ahmaud Arbery in pickup trucks’ and an attempted crime ‘attempt to confine and detain Ahmaud Arbery without legal authority on Burford Road using Ford F150 pickup truck and Chevy Silverado pickup truck.'”

Bryan’s attorney filed a motion Thursday looking to adopt the claims made by the McMichael’s attorneys to also get those two charges dropped.

ABC News has reached out to the Cobb County District Attorney’s office for comment.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

August 7, 2020 • No Comments • National News

ABC NewsBy DANIEL MANZO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — Another round of summer storms is getting ready to impact parts of the eastern U.S. Friday as more than one million people are still without power in the region.

This comes after a week that saw Tropical Storm Isaias hit the East Coast, downing thousands of trees and causing widespread wind damage, especially from North Carolina to Connecticut.

Some summer storms caused some flash flooding in parts of Virginia overnight. Those came after storms brought some damaging wind gusts from the Carolinas to New Jersey on Thursday.

Flash flood watches are in effect from Virginia to New Jersey Friday. This alert includes Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia.

The total forecasted rainfall is 1-2 inches, which ordinarily is not incredibly significant, but given the ground is extremely saturated from Isaias, flash flooding can occur rather quickly.

High-resolution forecast models are showing several rounds of storms affecting the region Friday and into early Saturday. Some of these storms could have gusty winds, but the main threat will be flash flooding.

Meanwhile in the West, there is still a fire danger threat this weekend.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

August 7, 2020 • No Comments • National News

franckreporter/iStockBy WILLIAM MANSELL, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — Large portions of Manhattan in New York City were without power Friday morning as at least 1.3 million people are still without power along the East Coast after Isaias wreaked havoc on the region earlier this week.

Con Edison, the city’s main power company, said there are at least 123,808 customers without power, including those who had previously lost power as a result of the storm, as of 6:30 a.m. Friday.

The new power outages in New York City Friday, according to Con Ed’s outage map, were in the Upper West Side, Harlem and Upper East Side neighborhoods.

ConEd, in a statement to ABC News, said the supply has been restored to those areas.

“We are investigating a problem on our transmission system that caused three networks in Manhattan to lose their electric supply at about 5:13 this morning,” ConEd said in a statement.

A live camera from ABC News New York City station WABC-TV showed a large section of the Upper West Side completely dark. A station camera also showed the electricity out in the Upper East Side.

Subways in the city are also being impacted because of the Manhattan power outage, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Lines impacted, according to the MTA, include the A, B, C, D, 1,2,3, E, F, N, Q, and R trains.

“Expect delays as we are getting reports of power outages in some parts of uptown Manhattan,” the MTA tweeted. “This is also affecting stations and third-rail power.”

Thousands have been without power in the city this week as a result of Isaias.

“We realize it is incredibly frustrating to be without power and that is why we are working around the clock to get customers back in service,” Robert Schimmenti, Con Edison’s senior vice president, Electric Operations, said in a statement Thursday. “We have additional mutual aid and contractor workers arriving each day to help us restore service safely. We assure our customers that our crews will remain on the job 24-7 until everyone has their power back.”

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