(MINNEAPOLIS) — The trial for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, begins Monday in Minneapolis. The trial is expected to last four weeks. Mar 29, 10:36 am 15th juror to be excused
Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill will excuse the 15th juror chosen for Chauvin’s trial as court gets underway.
The first 14 jurors are present and will be sworn in and seated.
Eight jurors are white and six are people of color, including four jurors who self-identify as Black. There are nine women and five men.
(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — At least four people have died after heavy rain caused flooding to reach record levels in Nashville.
One of the victims was found at the Nashboro Village golf course, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department. Investigators believe he was swept away by high floodwaters after he got out of a car that ran off the road, police said.
Two other victims, a man and a woman, were near a homeless camp in a wooded area adjacent to Wentworth-Caldwell Park, police said.
At least 130 people had to be rescued from flooded areas around Nashville, ABC Nashville affiliate WKRN-TV reported.
More than 7 inches of rain has fallen in parts of the Nashville metro area in two days, the second-highest amount on record. Some waterways in Nashville have risen to their highest levels since 2010.
While the heaviest rain has moved east of the area, it still experienced some additional rainfall Sunday morning.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway and Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.
ABC NewsBY: HOPE OSEMWENKHAE AND DANIEL MANZO, ABC NEWS
(NEW YORK) — Severe weather ripped through the South from Texas to North Carolina on Saturday and continues on Sunday morning with at least 168 reports of severe weather so far in the region.
Nashville, Tennessee, has received its second largest two-day rainfall total of at least 6.69 inches and parts of the metro area have received more than 7 inches already.
Some waterways in Nashville quickly rose to their highest levels since 2010.
The heaviest rain has moved just east of there and could receive additional rainfall on Sunday morning.
So far there have been at least 15 reported tornadoes in four states with five reported in eastern Texas, eight reported in Arkansas and one each in Mississippi and Tennessee.
Baseball-sized hail has also been reported in Arkansas and there is still a tornado watch in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee until 7 a.m. this morning,
There is still a severe thunderstorm watch for eastern Tennessee until 9 a.m. on Sunday morning as well.
Slow-moving thunderstorms this morning could produce up to 1 inch of rainfall per hour towards eastern Alabama and the Appalachians.
The severe risk region is from Georgia to Delaware with over 30 million Americans impacted, including major metropolitan areas such as, Raleigh, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
With this system we can expect flooding rain, damaging winds and a few tornadoes possible with the greatest risk for tornadoes in Norfolk and Richmond in Virginia and just north of Raleigh, North Carolina.
As this system progresses east from Boston, Massachusetts, to northern Alabama, rain totals up to 3 inches will be possible through Monday morning.
With heavy rain and thunderstorms moving across the Northeast by this afternoon, wind alerts are also in effect with gusts up 43 mph possible.
Another system will bring heavy rain and strong storms to the region by Wednesday with rain totals up to 4 inches of rain possible from today through Wednesday.
(MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md.) — Newly released police body camera footage showed officers detaining a 5-year-old boy who left his school grounds in Maryland, putting handcuffs on him and repeatedly saying he should be beaten and spanked.
The footage, released Friday, showed two Montgomery County Police officers responding to a call from East Silver Spring Elementary School about a child who ran away from the school on Jan. 14, 2020.
The video showed the moment officers found the child leaning against a car in a residential area and an officer kneeling down to talk to him.
“You feel like you can make your own decisions? Are you an adult? Are you 18? So why are you out of school?” a male officer can be heard saying to the boy in the video. “I don’t care if you don’t want to go to school. You do not have that choice, do you understand?”
The video then shows the officer grabbing the child’s arm and the child then crying. A female school employee held the boy’s hand and said she would ride in the police car with him back to school.
The male officer then puts the child in the backseat of a police vehicle and says, “You better stop. I don’t want to hear it,” when he started to sob.
“I don’t want to go!” the boy shouts.
A female officer who is also on camera, says: “Does your mother spank you? … She’s going to spank you today. I’m going to ask her if I can do it.”
When they arrive back at the school, the video shows the child wailing when the male police officer picks him up and puts him in a chair.
“Shut that noise!” the female officer can be heard yelling on camera.
The male officer then calls him a “violent little thing.”
The officers are heard in the video repeatedly discussing how the child should be disciplined saying he needs “whoopings” and “spanking.” At one point, the female officer said he should be put in a crate.
Near the end of the clip, the child is handcuffed in front of his mother.
“When you get older, when you want to make your own decisions, you know what’s going to be your best friend? These right here,” the male cop says while holding handcuffs.
“These are for people who don’t want to listen and don’t know how to act,” the male officer says, putting a handcuff on one of the child’s wrists and placing his hands behind his back. “Is that how you want to live your life?”
The child’s family filed a lawsuit in January against the police officers involved in the incident, the county, and the Montgomery County Board of Education.
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and claims the child suffered “severe and extreme emotional distress” following the incident.
The officers’ conduct is described as “malicious, grossly negligent, reckless and in deliberate disregard of the emotional stress it would inflict on the child,” in the court document.
“Our client, Shanta Grant, brought this lawsuit on behalf of her then five-year old son in an effort to get justice and fair compensation for the trauma he endured. She also hopes that the incident will lead to changes in policy and training, both with the school and the police,” Matthew Bennett and James Papirmeister, the lawyers who filed the lawsuit, told ABC News.
Montgomery County Police Department said there was an investigation into the officers’ conduct, but the findings are confidential under Maryland law and both officers remain employed by the force.
The Montgomery County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 also released a statement: “It is clear, that the event and everything that has come after the event should have been handled better by all involved. It’s important to note that unless an officer is assigned to a specialized unit, Montgomery County police officers do not receive training on how to effectively communicate with a young child in distress.”
Montgomery County Public Schools Board President Brenda Wolff and Superintendent Jack Smith said in a statement Friday, “Our heart aches for this student … There is no excuse for adults to ever speak to or threaten a child in this way.”
Councilmember Will Jawando called for the officers involved to be fired and investigated.
“You just see his body language is trembling because his face is blurred out obviously in the video, but the yelling in his face while administrators stood by … putting a handcuff on him, telling him he’s gonna be in jail, just everything was wrong,” Jawando said.
(LOS ANGELES) — A clearing of a homeless encampment in Los Angeles’ Echo Park Lake led to violent clashes between police and protesters Thursday night.
The sweep of the encampment, where about 200 people live, is a part of a monthslong planned $500,000 rehabilitation effort after tents proliferated at the park during the pandemic and sparked concerns over trash and safety.
The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly around 8 p.m. local time after hundreds of protesters faced off with officers. In total, 182 people were arrested for failure to disperse, police said.
Police stated Thursday that people in the crowd flashed high-intensity lights “in an attempt to blind officers and prevent them from performing their duties.” Officers in tactical gear fired nonlethal and bean bag rounds into the crowd in response to projectiles thrown at officers, police said.
Three people arrested were members of the press who were later released at the scene, police said in a Friday statement. Two officers sustained minor injuries and received medical treatment and were released.
The last two individuals remaining inside the park who declined offers for housing were arrested and removed this morning, police said.
Signs were posted at the park Wednesday giving the people who lived there 24 hours to clear out and fencing was put up around the area.
The homeless population was offered transitional housing and shelter, as well as COVID-19 vaccines, Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, whose district includes the park, said.
At least 166 people were offered temporary housing as of Thursday evening, he said.
“We made significant progress today toward our goal of housing everyone (who was) at the park and moved an additional 32 unhoused individuals into transitional housing,” O’Farrell tweeted Thursday. By evening he urged for “calm and cooperation” following news of the clashes.
The encampment has been the site of drug overdoses, assaults and shootings, with four deaths in the park over the past year and the site requires lighting, plumbing and public safety repairs, O’Farrell’s office said.
Councilman Mike Bonin slammed the unrest as “shameful” for the city.
“A neighborhood in lockdown. Hundreds of cops in riot gear. Reporters being zip-tied and detained. Protesters being kettled and arrested. This is a disgrace and it did not have to happen. It’s a shameful day for Los Angeles,” he tweeted Thursday night.
David Tyler, who has lived in the park since 2019, said the clearing of the area left him “terrified”.
“They came in and swooped in in the middle of the night in riot gear, put this fence up, built it,” Tyler said to local Los Angeles station KABC. “It was all insanely planned, and I’m terrified right now is all I can tell you.”
The sweeping has sparked fierce debate over the treatment of people without housing, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shayla Myers, the senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said the Echo Park sweeping and offer for temporary housing isn’t enough to combat the state’s homelessness crisis.
“The reality is folks were offered interim shelter with no path to permanence,” Myers told ABC News. “There’s no long-term strategy to address the affordable housing crisis in this city. A room today means nothing in terms of solving the housing crisis tomorrow. When these interim shelter beds run out, there is nothing to say that people won’t return back to the streets.”
Homelessness in Los Angeles has only soared in the pandemic.
A total of 66,436 people live in the streets, shelters and in vehicles in Los Angeles county — up 12.7% from 2019, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority report released in June.
The city of Los Angeles has a count of 41,290 homeless people, a surge of 16.1% since 2019.
Courtesy Ben Crump LawBy JULIA JACOBO, ABC News
