(NEW YORK) —A storm system is expected to rapidly intensify Saturday and bring heavy rain, gusty winds and snow to parts of the Northeast.
The strengthening storm system, a Nor’easter, is bringing bands of heavy rain along the I-95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia, to New York City and into most of Connecticut.
Up to 1 inch per hour of heavy rain was reported in parts of Maryland and Delaware Saturday morning. There has also been some flooding.
The heaviest rain is expected to pivot into some of the northeastern cities throughout the morning, and winds are expected to increase as well, gusting, at times, at over 30 mph.
As the storm strengthens and moves north and east, it should pull some colder air in from the north, and snow is expected to replace the rain in parts of New England.
Winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories have been issued for parts of the region from Connecticut to Maine.
The snow accumulation forecast is a little tricky. The atmosphere is relatively warm and will likely remain so throughout the entire event. Even though some cold air should help produce snowfall, it’s uncertain how much snow will actually fall due to the marginally cold temperatures.
Because of this, most snow will accumulate on grassy surfaces and where there is enough cold air. This could make driving very treacherous in spots, and the heavy wet snow, combined with gusty winds, could cause power outages.
States will likely see 1 to 3 inches of snow, though some areas, especially northeast Connecticut and Massachusetts, could see 3 to 6 inches of snow. Southeast Maine and a couple of spots in Massachusetts will likely see the most snow — possibly over 6 inches.
In California, the Bond Fire has now reached over 7300 acres, and is 30% contained.
The peak of the latest Santa Ana wind event has passed, but winds could remain gusty through Saturday and move at up to 35 mph. Relative humidity could be as low as 5%.
Sunday will be relatively calm in terms of wind across Southern California.
Another Santa Ana wind event will arrive Monday or Tuesday. It’s unclear how low the relative humidity will be, but regardless, there will likely be a period of enhanced fire conditions.
(HOUSTON) — Immigration officials arrested one suspect in connection to a possible human smuggling operation in southwest Houston Thursday evening.
Houston police initially responded to a kidnapping call in the 4800 block of Ridgeton Street, and when they arrived at the scene, they found a man running down the street looking for help, Houston police said on Twitter Thursday evening. The man said 30 more people were being held hostage in the house, police said.
Inside the house, police found 28 men dressed in only their underwear, and one woman, police said. They were not bound, but investigators said the windows of the house were boarded up and the doors locked, KTRK-TV reported. There was also food inside the house.
Most of the people told police they were being held against their will and had been locked in the house from a few days to a week.
Investigators said the victims were picked up in Brownsville, Texas, but originally came from other countries, such as Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Cuba, KTRK reported. Immigration officials concluded Friday the 29 people are all undocumented immigrants.
The 29 people were taken to the Ridgemont Elementary School gym for shelter, police said.
On Friday evening, immigration authorities arrested 36-year-old Mauro Dominguez-Maldonado, from Honduras for allegedly harboring the 29 individuals inside his Houston residence, U.S. attorney Ryan K. Patrick said in a release.
He is expected appear in court on Monday.
The criminal complaint alleges Dominguez-Maldonado was in charge of watching over the aliens and performing multiple tasks in furtherance of a human smuggling operation, according to the release.
If convicted, Dominguez-Maldonado could face up to 10 years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
(KENOSHA, Wis.) — John M. Pierce, a California lawyer who has employed war-like rhetoric in his advocacy and fundraising for Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old accused of killing two men and wounding another during a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin — filed a motion to withdraw from Rittenhouse’s criminal case, just hours after prosecutors alleged in a court filing Thursday that Pierce’s reported financial problems raised ethical concerns and a potential conflict of interest.
“So that it does not take Kyle’s supporters by surprise, effective immediately I am taking over all civil matters for Kyle including his future defamation claims,” Pierce wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon. “I will also be orchestrating all fundraising for defense costs. The terrific Mark Richards [a local criminal defense attorney] will proceed in Wisconsin.”
Kenosha County prosecutor Thomas Binger on Thursday morning took the highly unusual step of advocating against Pierce’s request for admission to the criminal case, a procedural measure required of out-of-state lawyers that would typically be granted without objection.
But Binger filled six and a half pages with unsparing criticism of Pierce, citing numerous public statements by Pierce that Binger claimed could “materially prejudic[e]” the case, along with reports of the collapse of Pierce’s law firm earlier this year “under a cloud of debt,” and several lawsuits alleging Pierce defaulted on hundreds of thousands of dollars in business and personal loans.
Pierce’s “personal financial difficulties raise significant ethical concerns,” Binger wrote in a court filing, contending Pierce could “personally benefit” from his close ties to the “#FightBack Foundation,” a Texas organization co-founded by Pierce and nationally known defamation lawyer Lin Wood. #FightBack had been raising money for Rittenhouse’s defense until last month, when Pierce posted $2 million raised by the foundation to bail the teenager out of jail.
Though Pierce stepped down from the foundation board in September, Binger noted in his court filing that Pierce continued to urge his 32,500 Twitter followers to send donations for Rittenhouse.
“This creates a potential conflict of interest for Attorney Pierce. Given his own substantial personal debts, his involvement with an unregulated and opaque ‘slush fund’ provides ample opportunity for self-dealing and fraud,” Binger alleged in the court filing. “Money that should be held in trust for the defendant may instead be used to repay Attorney Pierce’s numerous creditors.”
After Rittenhouse was released, Wood announced on Twitter that #FightBack would shift focus to what he described as “exposing fraud in the November 3 election” for the foreseeable future and directed Rittenhouse’s supporters to contact Pierce for any future donations. Wood is now involved in election-related litigation in multiple states. Wood told ABC News by email earlier this fall that all contributions to #FightBack designated for Rittenhouse would be used “exclusively for his criminal defense.” Anything left over, Wood said, would be “given to Kyle.”
With #FightBack apparently out of the fundraising picture, Pierce appeared Friday morning on the conservative news channel NewsMax TV in his new role as civil lawyer. Accompanied by his client’s mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, Pierce used the segment to announce a new fundraising site and vowed to pursue “a lot” of civil cases against media organizations and politicians he claims have defamed Rittenhouse. At the time the segment aired, the new fundraising site was still under construction. He tweeted Friday afternoon the site would be “live shortly.”
Pierce also continued his broadsides against the criminal case as a “political prosecution” and predicted that Rittenhouse would be acquitted. “This is probably the most important case, honestly, in the history of self-defense in the Anglo-American legal system,” Pierce told NewsMax, while making an overt appeal for contributions. “We’re going to need millions of dollars more to fund this legal defense.”
Pierce’s motion to withdraw as counsel in the criminal case makes no mention of the prosecutor’s blistering opposition to his participation in the case. Pierce’s filing simply states that “the legal team representing Kyle Rittenhouse in his various legal matters has been restructured” and that Pierce would be representing Rittenhouse “in the capacity of civil legal counsel only.”
In an email to ABC News, Pierce wrote it was “always the plan” for him to turn his attention “to the massive tasks of preparing Kyle’s defamation and other civil claims as well as orchestrating our new fundraising efforts to ensure we have the resources to get through trial.”
Over the past two years, at least nine lawsuits have been filed against Pierce’s law firm, Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price and Hecht, according to records from courts in Massachusetts, Texas, Arkansas, California and New York. The plaintiffs include a digital marketing company, legal support vendors, lenders and a former law partner.
In May, Pierce signed a “confession of judgment” in a New York court, acknowledging a debt of nearly $4 million to a merchant lender on a high-interest loan against his law firm’s assets and personally guaranteed by Pierce. While Pierce is still the 100% owner of that firm, he created in May a separate legal entity, Pierce Bainbridge, P.C., which Pierce has claimed to have “zero debt.”
The prosecutors handling the Rittenhouse case also called the court’s attention to an income and expense declaration Pierce submitted in family court late last year in connection with his divorce. In that November 2019 filing, Pierce declared no income and substantial personal debts, including federal and state tax tabs of $1.05 million, a $90,000 bank loan and a $27,000 debt owed to his former mother-in-law.
This is not the first time opposing counsel has taken the extraordinary step of arguing against Pierce’s admission to a case. In a New York court in June, attorneys for the defendants in a civil lawsuit contested Pierce’s request to join the plaintiffs’ legal team, citing many of the same financial issues raised by the Kenosha prosecutor and alleging “a practice and pattern of at best questionable and at worst unethical conduct,” according to court records. The plaintiffs withdrew Pierce’s application the next day without addressing the allegations about Pierce and attributed the move to a decision to hire a different law firm.
At a preliminary hearing in Rittenhouse’s criminal case conducted by video conference on Thursday, Rittenhouse sat silently in Richards’s law office as a judicial commissioner determined there was probable cause to proceed to trial. Pierce did not appear at the hearing and filed his motion to withdraw later that evening.
“Kyle is in terrific hands with our Wisconsin lawyers. We will all be working side by side to ensure Kyle is acquitted and all of his legal rights are vindicated,” Pierce wrote in an email to ABC News. He did not address the allegations raised by the prosecutors opposing his participation in the criminal case.
(HARRIS COUNTY, Texas) — A Texas doctor who treated COVID-19 patients died this week due to complications from the virus, relatives said.
Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza died Monday night, his wife said in a moving social media post.
“Since COVID-19 was introduced to our community in early 2020,” the pulmonologist “has been at the forefront of the fight against this novel virus,” Paige King said in the post.
Araujo-Preza, 51, was recently the critical care medical director at HCA Houston Healthcare Tomball, in Harris County, Texas.
Earlier this spring, he participated in a national convalescent plasma study for critically-ill COVID-19 patients. In late April, he safely discharged his first patient to receive a convalescent plasma transfusion, HCA Houston Healthcare’s parent company announced.
“We are saddened by the passing of Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza,” HCA Houston Healthcare said in a statement. “His clinical excellence, compassionate care and kindness will be greatly missed. Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza touched so many of our lives and will always be remembered for his profound commitment to his patients.”
Araujo-Preza also owned the Woodlands Lung Center, where he managed patients on long-term ventilators, according to his bio on the company’s website.
As he battled the virus in the intensive care unit, the doctor was on a ventilator himself for several weeks, according to ABC Austin affiliate KVUE.
“My dad was relatively young, he was 51. He didn’t have any preexisting conditions that would have put him at risk,” his daughter, Andrea Araujo, told the station. “He was just unlucky to have gotten COVID, and a bad case of it.”
In her post, Araujo-Preza’s wife said the doctor was not afraid of treating COVID-19 patients, but that he declared he was “born for this.”
“Even now, as I struggle to come to terms with the fact that the love of my life is no longer here with me on this earth, I find comfort knowing that Carlos died by his own terms — he sacrificed himself in order to save the lives of others,” Page said.
FILE photo – April Wong/iStockBy JULIA JACOBO, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Pieces of a meteor were seen falling from the sky across the East Coast of the United States and Canada in the middle of the day.
Residents in upstate New York began seeing flashes of light around noon Wednesday, and by the evening, the American Meteor Society(AMS) had received more than 150 reports in seven states. The event was mainly seen in New York and Ontario, but the organization also received reports of sightings in Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Dozens of people in New York contacted local authorities and media Wednesday afternoon after hearing a “loud boom,” according to the AMS.
The sound occurs when a very bright fireball penetrates the stratosphere below an altitude of around 30 miles and explodes as a bolide — an extremely bright meteor.
While traveling westward at a speed of about 56,000 miles per hour, the meteor broke into pieces at an altitude of approximately 22 miles, which then produced the bright lights seen throughout the East Coast.
The fireball’s physical flight ended somewhere over Cayuga Lake in New York, the ground track of the event, which was computed by NASA, shows.
EarthCam tweeted a video of the meteor flashing through the Toronto skyline Wednesday afternoon, captured by a camera that faces the CN Tower.
Is it a bird? 🐦 Is it a plane? ✈️ Is it a meteor? ☄️ At the same moment in time, our cameras that face the CN tower in Toronto caught this object. We're not sure what it is or whether it is related. Follow the red circle and you tell us! Comment below! @TourCNTowerpic.twitter.com/NCsY9DHFX2
Several thousand fireballs occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day, but the majority of them occur over oceans and uninhabited regions, and many are masked by daylight, according to the AMS. In addition, fireballs that occur at night are often missed because no one is out to see them. The brighter the meteor, the rarer the event.
But multiple meteor sightings have occurred in the past month.
On Monday, a bright meteor was seen throughout Japan as it fell through the sky. Small fragments of the meteor may have reached the ground, experts said.
This fireball has been seen from Central & Western Japan last Sunday (Nov. 28 16:04 Universal Time).
NASA also confirmed that a streak of blue light seen across central Texas near Killeen in mid-November was a meteor.
“A giant ball like a meteorite changed the rainbow spectrum of colors until it turned into a beautiful turquoise,” Texas resident Mary Ann Miron told ABC’s Houston station KTRK, describing the light as “huge” and colorful.
Did you see or hear the bright fireball that exploded over Texas into a brilliant shade of turquoise last night?! Follow the link here to file a report with @amsmeteors and send me your pics/videos if you've got them!
ABC NewsBY: DANIEL MANZO, ABC NEWS
