A Montana man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after his conviction on federal hate crime and firearm charges related to a “self-described mission to rid the town of Basin of its lesbian, queer and gay community,” officials said.
John Russell Howald was convicted in February for firing an AK-style rifle at the home of a woman who openly identified as a lesbian, the US Department of Justice said in a news release. The woman was inside the home during the March 2020 incident.
Howald was armed with two assault rifles, a hunting rifle, two pistols and multiple high-capacity magazines that were taped together for faster reloading, the release said.
“Hoping he had killed her, Howald set off toward other houses occupied by people who identify as lesbian, queer or gay,” the release said.
Some residents who knew Howald spotted him and stalled him long enough for a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy to respond, prosecutors said.
Howald was recorded “yelling and firing more rounds with the same rifle, expressing his hatred toward the community’s gay and lesbian residents and his determination to ‘clean’ them from his town,” the release said.
Howald pointed his rifle at a responding deputy, “nearly starting a shootout in downtown Basin,” before running into surrounding hills, according to the release.
He was arrested the next day, armed with a loaded pistol and a knife. “In Howald’s car, officers found an AR-style rifle and a revolver. During a search of Howald’s camper, officers found an AK-style rifle, a hunting rifle, and ammunition,” prosecutors said.
“Motivated by hatred of the LGBTQI+ community and armed with multiple firearms and high-capacity magazines, this defendant sought to intimidate – even terrorize – an entire community by shooting into the victim’s home trying to kill her for no reason other than her sexual orientation,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in the release.
Howald’s 18-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years of supervised release, was announced during Pride Month and comes as the Human Rights Campaign has declared a national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community in the US.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived – they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
Howald hoped to inspire similar attacks around the country, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be free from hate-fueled violence,” Clarke said in the release. “This Pride Month, we affirm our commitment to using the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act to hold perpetrators of hate-fueled violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community accountable.”
As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to sourcea batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t a “hunting cartridge;” it’s a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasionof Ukraine beganon February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images
“Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
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Sergey Panov, Sarah Anne Aarup and Douglas Busvine
The mother of a 6-year-old boy who brought a gun to school and shot his first-grade teacher in January in Newport News, Virginia, will plead guilty to new federal felony charges as part of a deal with prosecutors, her attorney said Monday.
Deja Taylor, the 26-year-old mother, was charged with unlawful use of a controlled substance while possessing a firearm and with making a false statement while purchasing the firearm, specifically a semiautomatic handgun, the federal complaint states.
Her attorney, James Ellenson, said Taylor’s guilty plea was an “agreed procedure which eliminated the need for the government to take the case to a grand jury.”
“Our action follows very constructive negotiations we had with federal authorities. The terms of the agreement, which we believe to be fair to all parties, will be disclosed when we enter the guilty plea,” Ellenson said.
In addition to the federal charges, Taylor has been indicted on state charges of felony child neglect and one count of recklessly leaving a firearm to endanger a child.
The federal charges come about five months after the shooting at Richneck Elementary School in which the 6-year-old shot his teacher, 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner. She suffered gunshot wounds to her hand and chest but survived.
The gun was purchased by Taylor and kept on the top shelf of her bedroom closet, secured by a trigger lock, Ellenson told CNN in January. The child brought the gun to school in his backpack, police said.
The child will not be criminally charged, Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn has said.
Taylor has no criminal record and has cooperated since the shooting occurred, Ellenson said in an earlier statement.
“As always, first and foremost is the continued health and wellbeing of all persons involved in the incident at Richneck Elementary School, to include both the teacher and Deja’s son,” the statement said.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney said the office has asked the Circuit Court to assemble a special grand jury to investigate “any security issues that may have contributed to the shooting.”
Zwerner filed a $40 million lawsuit in April alleging school administrators and the school board were aware of the student’s “history of random violence” and did not act proactively amid concerns over a firearm in the boy’s possession the day of the shooting.
The boy has an “acute disability” and was under a care plan that required a parent to attend school with him, though he was unaccompanied on the day of the shooting, the family has said in a statement. “We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the statement read.
A South Carolina man was arrested after authorities said he robbed a convenience store with a fake gun designed to play a Nintendo video game.
David Joseph Dalesandro, 25, held up a Kwik Stop in Sharon, a small town in northwestern South Carolina, using a black spray-painted “Duck Hunt” gaming pistol, according to the York County Sheriff’s Office.
CNN was unable to determine whether he was represented by an attorney.
Witnesses told deputies a person allegedly walked into the store on May 30 wearing a wig, hoodie sweatshirt and a mask, a sheriff’s office news release stated.
The person allegedly showed the clerk the fake gun in his waistband and demanded about $300 from the register, authorities said.
Sheriff’s deputies discovered Dalesandro in a nearby Dollar General store parking lot, armed with the gaming pistol in his pants, according to the news release.
Dalesandro was arrested and remained behind bars Friday without bond, booking details showed.
He faces charges including armed robbery with a deadly weapon and petty larceny, according to the sheriff’s office.
A bus driver and passenger opened fire on each other on a moving Charlotte transit bus earlier this month, leaving both injured, transit authorities said.
The incident started when a bus passenger, who authorities identified as Omarri Shariff Tobias, got up while the bus was in motion and asked the driver to let him off between designated bus stops, according to a news release from Charlotte Area Transit System.
The driver, David Fullard, told Tobias he would have to wait until the next approved stop. After about a two-minute exchange, Tobias pulled out a gun and pointed it at Fullard, the transit system said.
At this time, Fullard also pulled out a firearm, the transit system said. Both men fired their guns “in rapid succession,” although it is unclear who shot first, company spokesperson Brandon Hunter told CNN by phone Saturday.
Fullard was struck in the arm and Tobias was struck in the abdomen, according to the transit system.
Dramatic video of the encounter shows Fullard stopping the bus and pushing open the shattered driver barrier, as he stands up with his gun still drawn. As Tobias crawled toward the back of the bus, where the two other passengers on board had moved, Fullard fired his gun again from the aisle of the bus.
Tobias and another passenger exited the bus through the side door and Fullard exited through the front door, firing his gun again, the transit system said.
Both Fullard and Tobias are in stable condition and expected to recover, and the other two passengers were unharmed, the transit system said in a statement released Wednesday.
Tobias was charged with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injuries, communicating threats, and carrying a concealed firearm, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in a news release. It’s unclear whether charges will be brought against Fullard.
Fullard was fired by his employer, RATP Dev, which employs the transit system’s bus operators, Hunter told CNN Saturday. CNN has reached out to RATP Dev for comment.
Possession of a firearm or other weapons while on duty or on company property is prohibited by the company’s workplace policy and employees can be discharged after the first violation, according to the transit system.
The Charlotte Area Transit System said Fullard did not follow proper protocol.
“It would have been reasonable for the operator to attempt to de-escalate the situation by allowing the suspect/passenger to exit the bus before arriving at the next bus stop,” the transit system said.
Fullard is still recovering from his injuries, his attorney told CNN Saturday, noting Fullard was “a dedicated employee and treasured his employment,” who worked as a driver for more than 19 years.
“I have represented a substantial number of CATS drivers over the years. Some of whom who have been assaulted, shot at or shot during their work activity,” attorney Ken Harris told CNN in an email.
“They consider themselves public servants. In light of their commitment, dedication and the workplace dangers that they encounter, we have continuously encouraged the CATS system to enhance security measures for drivers,” Harris said.
Tobias is currently being held in lieu of $250,000 bond and is next due in court June 6. CNN has not been able to locate an attorney for him.
Police say they are continuing to investigate the case.
The drive takes us through unmarked roads and fresh trails in a remote wooded area.
“We’re nearly there,” our driver signals, pointing at a dot on a map, a location shared by the Ukrainian military.
We turn a corner and, in the bushes, we see the Gepard, a German-made self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.
Air defense units like this one can be the difference between life and death, whenever Russia launches missile strikes or fills the skies with swarms of Iranian-made drones.
They are frequently targeted by Moscow and this type of access is rare.
“You are looking at a Gepard 1 A2 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun,” Oleh, one of the gun’s operators says.
“The turret is equipped with two 35 mm guns made by Orlikon, the rate of fire of these guns is 550 rounds per minute per gun, which is 1,100 rounds per minute in total.”
This is one of 34 Gepards Germany has sent to Kyiv, with more already promised. The system, first built in the 1970s and decommissioned by Berlin in 2010, is old but reliable and has been a game changer for Ukraine.
“Thanks to the fact that this anti-aircraft system has a computer system that automatically helps us to detect the target, capture it and help us destroy it as soon as possible,” Oleh explains.
“There may be more than one target, maybe three or four targets, and we need to destroy them one by one, so the computer system makes it as easy as possible for the operator to do their job.”
His unit has already shot down four Shahed drones and two missiles.
“[The Russians] like to say that their missiles are impossible to shoot down, but when the technology allows, the crew is motivated, trained and knows their job, nothing is impossible,” he adds. “We can destroy any enemy target.”
Because of Western donations, Ukraine now field a multi-layered air defense network capable of hitting short, medium and long range targets.
The Gepard is the tip of the spear in an arsenal that now includes Franco-Italian SAMP/T, German Iris-T, as well as the American NASAMS and Patriot air defense systems, among others. All of these are kept under even more secrecy, in undisclosed locations away from prying eyes, to avoid targeting by Russian forces.
And the results are on display, with Russian missile and drone strikes inflicting less and less damage.
“By enriching our air defense system with such very effective models, we increase the effectiveness of the air defense system in general, in particular, we have the means that can fight Kinzhals and ballistic missiles, as well as cruise missiles and strike drones,” Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine says.
Lt General Naiev has oversight over the Gerards and says their work in combination with other systems is why Ukraine’s air defenses have become so effective.
“We place them at appropriate distances in the overall air defense concept. This gives the result that we see with our own eyes when we count the number of enemy targets shot down,” he explains.
“The percentage is constantly increasing, now the efficiency is over 80%.”
He says the current success rate has no parallel.
“This is the efficiency of our crews, these guys, and the assistance provided by our partners. We are grateful to our partners,” Naiev says. “We’ll definitely continue learning and will definitely continue to defend our land from air strikes.”
Still, some drones and missiles do break through Ukraine’s anti-aircraft defenses.
Sometimes their impact is minimal, but sometimes it is devastating, such as Friday’s deadly strike in the city of Dnipro.
“S-300 or S-400 anti-aircraft guided missiles, this is the type of weapon the occupiers often use attacking the frontline areas. Presumably, it was these types of rockets that struck civilian objects [in Dnipro],” Yurii Inhat, spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force command said after the strike.
“Using this type of weapon in the densely populated cities is pure terrorism.”
Lt. General Naiev says to stop such attacks breaking through its defenses Ukraine needs more equipment, more ammunition and more training for its personnel.
“We realize that the protection of civilians and important critical facilities depends on the amount of equipment we have received and the training of our personnel,” Naiev says.
“In order to increase and improve the air defense system, we need more of the latest models and certainly ammunition and missiles for them, because the enemy tests our air defense system almost every night.”
“We are spending our missiles and ammunition,” he adds.
Oleh agrees. “We are very effective in doing our job, but in order to push the enemy out of our land, we certainly need more weapons,” he says.
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak says the Ukrainian government is trying to get its soldiers what they need, asking allies for additional weapons.
“President Zelensky, together with the leaders of other countries, has built an almost perfect system of closed skies over Ukraine, which consists of many different elements of missile defense,” he says.
“But in order for the sky to be absolutely covered, especially from guided air bombs and from ballistic missiles with a close range, which have an approach time of 1.5 minutes, we need F-16s for that.”
“Undoubtedly [our allies] will finally allow us to close the sky and then Russia will lose its last trump card – the ability to terrorize the civilian population of Ukraine using aerial attacks.”
As Ukraine shifts from defense to offense, preparing to launch a much anticipated counteroffensive, air defense assets like the Gepard will also play an important part protecting advancing troops.
“[Air defense] is very important in order to protect the counteroffensive groups during their movement, also for the creation of proper offensive groups, and during the conduct of the offensive as an air cover, because the enemy will throw all available forces that he has to reduce the combat potential of our offensive,” Lt. General Naiev explains.
“Success on the ground during the advance and liberation of Ukrainian territory will depend on high-quality air defenses.”
In some cases, air defense systems can also be used for offensive purposes.
“We can destroy the Su-25, Su-35 and Su-54, which are the most promoted aircraft of our enemy,” Oleh says. “We can also work on ground targets, on armored vehicles.”
“We have additional weapons, we can use shells that can hit lightly armored and armored vehicles,” he adds.
A man now under arrest walked up to the CIA Headquarters’ gate Tuesday and allegedly said, “I’m here and I have a gun,” a law enforcement source told CNN.
Uniformed federal officers turned him away and notified Fairfax County, Virginia, police of his description, the source said Wednesday.
He later was arrested and charged with felony possession of a firearm on school property, police said. He was identified as Eric Sandow, 32, of Gainesville, Florida.
Sandow said he was headed to the CIA and had an AK-47 and another weapon in his vehicle as he was arrested Tuesday at Dolley Madison Preschool in McLean, Virgnia, after he trespassed on school grounds around 11 a.m., police said.
The preschool is less than 1.5 miles from CIA Headquarters and about a 10-minute drive to major Washington, DC, landmarks, including the National Mall.
“He requested access to the (preschool) building facilities to use the restroom, which was denied by school staff,” Dolley Madison Preschool said in a statement Wednesday. “At no point did he gain physical entrance to the school building.”
Fairfax County police were then called to the scene. “While speaking with him, he made statements he had weapons inside his car located on school property,” the police department said Wednesday in a statement.
“Officers searched the car and found two weapons, an AK-47 and a pistol, along with magazines and ammunition.”
Sandow was arraigned Wednesday morning in Fairfax County General District Court, a court official said.
He was being held Wednesday without bond, police said. It was not immediately clear whether Sandow had legal representation.
“It does not appear he was acting in conjunction with anyone else,” Fairfax County police said. “Sandow did not make any threats and the weapons never left the vehicle.”
Sandow does not appear to have a lengthy criminal history, public records show. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery in 2014 and did not declare a political party with his voter registration.
Law enforcement lauded an alert person who summoned them Tuesday to the day care.
“We’re grateful to the community member who did the right thing and called us,” police said. “We’d like to remind our community to report suspicious activity as you never know what you may prevent by making that call.”
When news broke of a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, one year ago, President Joe Biden was on his way back from Tokyo following a major international summit.
Biden watched the news unfold on Air Force One, feeling, like others, horrified and heartbroken for the families, and deciding in that moment to speak upon returning to the White House, a White House official told CNN.
Moments after landing, a somber Biden – who had been in the Obama White House during the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School – walked into a briefing in the Oval Office and prepared an address he delivered that evening in the Roosevelt Room.
“I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” Biden said as he started the speech. He later visited Uvalde.
Over the last year, Biden has signed legislation called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law and implemented two dozen executive actions to try to reduce gun violence. And on Wednesday, Biden will again deliver remarks to mark the one-year remembrance of the Uvalde shooting.
But in that same time span, hundreds more mass shootings have gripped communities nationwide.
Mass shootings have become so common in the United States that the White House has framed their approach as akin to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s hurricane response. Behind the scenes, administration officials have been developing ways in which the federal government can respond in the short and long term after a mass shooting, recognizing the physical, mental and economic ramifications.
“I think we’ve learned that the needs of these communities are really intense, and they also last long after the immediate hours and days after a mass shooting. If a hurricane devastates a community, you get that immediate White House response, but you also get FEMA deployed on the ground to provide direct services and support to survivors,” one source told CNN.
This recognition of the long after-effects of mass shootings has prompted discussions within the White House about additional measures, including earlier this month, when Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice gathered the first meeting of Cabinet officials and senior staff to discuss steps forward in responding to mass shootings, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The reality officials were up against in that meeting came into sharp focus again less than 24 hours later, when another mass shooting unfolded – that time, in Allen, Texas.
“I don’t think we could feel more urgency than we did on [that] Friday. I think people feel this very deeply. We now work with so many communities that have experienced shootings. It’s devastating, of course, when another gets added to the list,” the source told CNN.
The Buffalo, New York, shooting last year at a local grocery story was an example of a tragedy that had unanticipated effects as it left a mostly Black community without a crucial grocery store for a period of time.
“For too long, when we’ve thought about mass shootings and gun violence in general, we’ve only thought about the individuals hurt or killed. What this administration does is certainly attend to survivors and the families of those who have been hurt, but they have a realization that a mass shooting or gun violence in general ripples through the community,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, told CNN.
An operation kicks into gear within the walls of the White House the moment an alert pops up of a potential mass shooting.
The White House Situation Room and the National Security Council work with the Justice Department and other law enforcement, as well as the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, to track down information and gather the facts as they emerge. Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will then brief Biden on what’s known about the situation and the weapon used, according to a White House official, acknowledging that it can be a fluid situation.
The Domestic Policy Council, meanwhile, assesses patterns and whether there are new lessons to be gleaned and considered in policy making. And the intergovernmental affairs team also races to reach out to the mayor’s office or other local officials to provide a point of contact at the White House.
Biden’s advisers keep him updated along the way. But the exasperation felt by White House officials after each mass shooting has been reflected in Biden’s statements, which have started with: “Once again.”
In an op-ed this month, Biden touted the work done by this administration, but called on Congress to do more.
“But my power is not absolute. Congress must act, including by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring gun owners to securely store their firearms, requiring background checks for all gun sales, and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability,” he wrote.
White House officials have also been sober about the political realities Democrats face with the current makeup of Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden’s term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary to advance bills through the Senate.
After three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville in March, Biden asserted that he’s done all he can to address gun control and urged members on Capitol Hill to act.
Many Republicans in Congress, including those in positions of leadership and in the Tennessee delegation, had either been reluctant to use the deadly violence in Nashville as a potential springboard for reform or they outright rejected calls for additional action on further regulating guns, arguing that there isn’t an appetite for tougher restrictions. Some Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, slammed House Republicans for their disinterest.
Advocacy groups have welcomed Biden’s executive actions and the administration’s response in the wake of a shooting, but stress there’s room for more.
“It’s part of what moves the needle. Seeing the movement at the federal level is encouraging,” said Mark Barden, co-founder and CEO of the Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund. “It’s something. It’s not everything. It’s not enough. We certainly need more.”
A 13-year-old boy shot in the head playing basketball at a Staten Island playground is brain dead, the Daily News has learned.
The victim was shooting hoops at the Reverend Dr. Maggie Howard Playground when shots rang out 3:55 p.m. Friday. He fled for his life as the shooter fired three times, including the bullet that struck the teen in the head, cops said.
Medics rushed the victim to Richmond University Medical Center in critical condition, where specialists have diagnosed him as brain dead, police sources say.
The victim, a resident of South Beach Houses, is enrolled as an eighth grader at Eagle Academy for Young Men. The middle school is located within the IS49 campus on Hicks St., near the playground, where students commonly hang out after the closing bell, according to area residents.
Police believe the shooting was premeditated and are currently investigating a suspect, although no arrests have been made, according to law enforcement source
“It was a hit,” an NYPD official said.
Police at the scene where a 13-year-old was shot at a playground in Staten Island.
Following the shooting, worried parents of Eagle Academy students were spotted swarming the courtyard outside the Stapleton Houses, located adjacent to the playground where the grisly shooting occurred.
“They didn’t know who was shot,” said Cindy Perez, whose apartment overlooks the courtyard. “They wanted to know if it was their son.”
“I don’t let my kids play around here,” said Bielka Munoz, who has three teen daughters. “Shootings are a problem around here. You never know what could happen.”
Murders in the 120th Precinct where the shooting occurred have skyrocketed 250 percent over last year, with 7 killings to date this year.
A student in Phoenix faces “a number of serious felony charges” after police accused him of bringing an AR-15 weapon and ammunition to a high school, authorities said.
Phoenix Police Department officers and two school security officers responded Friday afternoon to a call of a student with a gun on campus, the department said in a news release Saturday.
School administrators called police after learning of a possible weapon at Bostrom High School shortly before 1 p.m., the Phoenix Union High School District said in a statement emailed to CNN.
“During our investigation, we discovered the report was accurate, and local authorities intervened and confiscated the weapon,” the school district said in an email.
Arriving officers detained the male juvenile student in the main office of Bostrom High School, authorities said.
Police said they “acted quickly” to arrest the student, who was found to have brought additional ammunition in his lunchbox and backpack, according to the statement.
School administrators placed the campus on lockdown during the investigation, according to the high school district.
The Phoenix Police Department’s Crime Gun Intelligence Unit is assisting with the investigation, and the department said it’s working closely with school and district officials.
“We commend those who originally reported the possibility of a weapon on school grounds to adults on campus who immediately called police,” police said in the statement.
The police did not immediately release information on where the semi-automatic rifle came from and why the student allegedly brought it to campus.
The student’s name and age were not released because he is a minor.
His arrest comes days after an 18-year-old man in Farmington, New Mexico, used an AR-15-style rifle and two other guns to shoot and kill three people and injure six others, including two police officers, CNN reported.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the current Republican favorite to be the party’s nominee for governor in 2024, has a long history of remarks viciously mocking and attacking teenage survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for their advocacy for gun control measures.
In posts after the shooting, Robinson called the students “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,” “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots.”
Robinson, whose political rise as a conservative Internet personality started when a clip of him speaking at a city council meeting in April 2018 went viral, as he was speaking against a proposal to cancel a local gun show after the Parkland shooting. He also began attacking the Parkland survivors after they launched the “March for Our Lives” movement that called for new gun control measures, comparing the students to communists.
Robinson’s comments about the school shooting survivors were frequently personal, mocking their appearance and intelligence. In one post on Facebook, Robinson shared a photo of several students posing for photos, with the caption, “the look you get when you let the devil give you a ride on a river of blood to ’15 minutes of Fameville.’”
In another comment on Twitter in April of 2018, Robinson shared several crying laughing emojis in response to a post that blasted conservatives who mocked the survivors, writing that when children “got sassy,” adults needed to make sure the “CHILDREN knew their place.”
Robinson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
As Robinson became known for his fierce defense of gun rights, he was frequently featured in videos and promoted by the National Rifle Association. Robinson leveraged his often viral and unapologetic Facebook posts to win his party’s nomination for the state’s lieutenant governorship in 2020, winning the race to become the state’s first Black lieutenant governor.
Though the position is largely considered a ceremonial role – and the state has a Democratic governor because the jobs are elected separately – Robinson has now set his sights on the top job. Roy Cooper, the current Democratic governor, is term-limited, and Robinson would likely face Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, a Democrat finishing out his second term.
CNN’s KFile examined his mostly unreported remarks, as the candidate is coming under renewed scrutiny in his bid for the governor’s mansion. Robinson, who frequently posted in defense of law enforcement, often attacked left wing protesters, going so far as defending the shooting of students at Kent State protesting the Vietnam War in May 1970, commonly known as the “Kent State Massacre.”
Robinson said such a response deserved to be emulated today.
“The shooting that happened at Kent State now, I don’t know how much you know about that shooting at Kent State, but people have got to understand it,” Robinson said on one podcast in 2018. “We have the constitutional right to peacefully assemble. Now peacefully assemble does not mean you could throw bricks at National Guardsmen, bust out windows and block traffic. Once you cross that line into violence and the disruption of public transportation and public services and start blocking the entrances of a federal building, you are no longer a protester.”
“You are are now a criminal and you need to be dealt with like a criminal,” he continued. “And we need some politicians in office in some of these cities that’s gonna let people know from the get-go, you go in the street and block traffic, if you block buildings, if you destroy property, you are going to be dealt with swiftly and harshly. We are not going to tolerate it. That is exactly the message that needs to go out to these people. You wanna apply for a permit to protest at the park, that’s fine, but it’s gonna be peaceful and you’re not going to bother anybody, and you’re not going to destroy anything. If you do, you will be dealt with harshly and swiftly.”
Though there were violent clashes between local police and protesters in the days leading up to the shooting, the Nixon administration-established President’s Commission on Campus Unrest said that the shooting was unjustified, writing in a 1970 report, “Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified.”
Robinson was also frequently critical of the “March for Our Lives” rally itself, calling it, “a march of pawns in Washington today” and mocked attendees.
One photo shared by Robinson mocked an attendee at the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington, DC, saying the college-aged student needed to “put that sign down and go read a book dummy” and “They live. They breathe. They’ll procreate. #funnybutscary.”
His harshest rhetoric was saved for then-18-year-old Parkland activist David Hogg, calling the student a “commie stooge,” in a post that also mocked 18-year-old Parkland student X Gonzáles as “that bald chick,” referring to the pair as “stupid kids.”
In another post on Facebook, less than two weeks after the shooting in 2018, Robinson shared the laughing crying emoji with a photoshopped chyron on a picture of Hogg on MSNBC with the title “Media Hogg,” and a day later shared a crude photoshop of the student’s face on body of Boss Hogg from “The Dukes of Hazzard” calling the student “just as corrupt as the TV character.”
More than 200 officers from multiple law enforcement agencies are searching for the gunman accused of shooting and killing five people, including a 9-year-old child, at a Cleveland, Texas, home after neighbors asked him to stop firing his rifle outdoors, officials said Sunday.
Those officers are going door to door and asking community members for information while authorities are also creating billboard posters in Spanish to inform everyone of the search, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said in a Sunday afternoon news conference.
And there’s now also a collective $80,000 reward being offered for information that leads to the suspect’s arrest, FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge James Smith announced in the news conference.
Francisco Oropesa, 38, is accused of killing four adults and a 9-year-old boy at a neighboring home Friday night in the city of Cleveland – about 40 miles northeast of downtown Houston. Investigators initially started tracking Oropesa using his cellphone, but said that trail went cold Saturday evening – and he could now be anywhere.
“We don’t have any tips right now to where he may be and that’s why we’ve come up with this reward, so that hopefully somebody out there can call us,” Smith said at Sunday’s news conference.
“I can pretty much guarantee you, he’s contacted some of his friends,” Smith said, adding, “We just don’t know what friends they are and that’s what we need from the public, is any type of information because right now we’re running into dead ends.”
In a Twitter post earlier Sunday, the FBI warned the suspect is “armed and dangerous” and urged anyone who saw Oropesa not to approach him.
The US has suffered at least 184 mass shootings in the first four months of this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The nonprofit, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot – not including the shooter.
Authorities said Sunday they were focused on capturing the suspect and bringing closure and justice to the five people killed. A day earlier, the sheriff described how the violence unfolded.
“The victims, they came over to the fence said, ‘Hey, could you mind not shooting out in the yard. We have a young baby that is trying to go sleep,’” Capers said Saturday.
The suspect, who had been drinking, responded: “I’ll do what I want to in my front yard.”
At some point, a doorbell camera at the home of the victims captured the suspect approaching with his rifle, Capers said.
Then the home turned into a scene of carnage. Multiple people were later found dead in different rooms.
Nine-year-oldDaniel Enrique Laso-Guzman was shot and killed. So were Sonia Argentina Gúzman, 25; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, and José Jonathan Cásarez, 18.
All five were shot “almost execution style” – above the neck at close range, the sheriff said.
Five other people who were home during the rampage were not hurt, Capers said. Three children were found covered in blood and were taken to a hospital, but were not injured.
Authorities believe two women died while using their bodies to shield the children who survived.
“The three children … were covered in blood from the same ladies that were laying on top of them trying to protect them,” the sheriff said Sunday. Those children are now safe and with family, he added.
A vigil for the 9-year-old boy was scheduled to take place Sunday evening, the sheriff said. Authorities initially reported the boy was 8 years old, but his father told CNN on Sunday his son turned 9 in January.
Wilson Garcia, the father of the young boy killed, said they called 911 five times Friday night to report the suspect shooting his firearm.
Capers, the sheriff, said Sunday authorities got to the scene as fast as they could but there is a small force covering a large county. The home where the shooting took place is about 15 minutes outside of town.
Garcia said he and two other men walked over to Oropesa to ask him to stop shooting so close to their home because their baby was sleeping. He said they asked Oropesa to shoot on the other side of his property.
About 10 to 20 minutes later, the suspect came back, walked up to the house and started shooting, killing Garcia’s wife, Sonia Argentina Gúzman, first at the front door of the home, he said.
Garcia said he jumped out of a window and ran – adding another woman told him he had to survive because his children didn’t have a mother anymore and needed him.
Authorities had received previous calls about Oropesa allegedly shooting his rifle in the front yard, the sheriff said.
Law enforcement initially spelled the suspect’s name as “Oropeza” but the FBI said Sunday it will use the spelling “Oropesa” to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” The FBI acknowledged he has been listed in various databases with both spellings.
Oropesa was known to shoot a .223 rifle, Capers said. Shell casings were also found outside the home after the shooting.
Authorities found at least three weapons inside the suspect’s home and spoke to the suspect’s wife, the sheriff said.
Oropesa’s cell phone was found abandoned, along with articles of clothing, Capers said.
“The tracking dogs from Texas Department of Corrections picked up the scent, and then they lost that scent,” he said.
Authorities said Sunday they did not know if the suspect was still in the area.
“If anybody, whether you are here in this county, or this state of Texas or around the country, have any tips, we’re asking you to please call” authorities, Smith, with the FBI, said. “Right now, we have zero leads.”
Some of those inside the home had moved there from Houston just days ago, the sheriff said.
Wilson Paz, director general of migrant protection for Honduras, told CNN all five victims were Honduran.
The Honduran Consulate in Houston is offering support to the victims’ families and preparing to repatriate the five people killed, the Honduran Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on Twitter.
“The Government of Honduras deeply regrets the loss of these valuable lives and accompanies all their loved ones in their pain,” the statement said. “We demand that the pertinent authorities arrest the perpetrator of this terrible event and apply the full weight of the law.”
Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong photo of the suspect due to incorrect information provided by the FBI Houston Field Office.
A gunman is still at large after allegedly fatally shooting five people, including an 8-year-old, in a Cleveland, Texas home after a Friday night rampage that started with a noise complaint about gunfire, according to the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspect, identified as 38-year old Francisco Oropeza, was apparently shooting a rifle in his yard when neighbors asked him to stop because a baby was trying to sleep, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. The suspect then opened fire on the neighbors, Capers said.
Authorities found the victims Friday night after receiving a harassment report about 11:30 p.m. local time, the sheriff said.
“The victims, they came over to the fence said, ‘Hey, could you mind not shooting out in the yard. We have a young baby that is trying to go sleep,’” Capers said.
The suspect, who had been drinking, responded, “I’ll do what I want to in my front yard.”
A doorbell camera at the home of the victims at some point captured the suspect approaching with his rifle, Capers said.
Multiple people were shot around the residence, Capers said. Two female victims in a bedroom used their bodies to shield two young children who survived, he added.
“They were trying to take care of them babies and keep them babies alive,” Capers said of the victims.
The victims were shot above the neck at close range – “almost execution style,” according to Capers.
The deceased were identified as Sonia Argentina Gúzman, 25; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; José Jonathan Cásarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman, 8.
Investigators tracked Oropeza with his cell phone, but the trail went cold Saturday evening, according to local law enforcement.
“He could be anywhere now,” San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said during a press conference.
Authorities tracked Oropeza’s cell phone, but found it abandoned, along with articles of clothing, according to the sheriff. “The tracking dogs from Texas Department of Corrections picked up the scent, and then they lost that scent,” Capers said.
The FBI’s Houston field office said on Twitter that it is assisting in the manhunt.
“We consider him armed and dangerous,” said FBI special agent in charge James Smith. “He’s out there, and he’s a threat to the community.”
Authorities said they had received previous reports about the suspect firing a rifle in his yard.
The suspect was known to shoot a .223 rifle, according to Capers. Shell casings were discovered outside the home. At least three weapons were found in the home of the suspect. Investigators said they have spoken with the suspect’s wife.
Authorities said they believe Oropeza is no longer in the area.
A local judge issued an arrest warrant for the suspect.
There have been at least 174 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Both CNN and the archive define a “mass shooting” as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
“It’s not just at banks, schools, supermarkets, or churches where Americans fear becoming victims of a mass shooting,” Kris Brown, president of Brady, a gun violence prevention organization, said in a statement.
“People in this country are being gunned down with assault weapons in their own home, and that is the horrifying reality we will continue to live under until our norms and policies change.”
There were 10 people inside the home at the time of the shooting, according to the sheriff.
The victims range in age from 8 to about 40, Capers told reporters earlier Saturday. The 8-year-old victim was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Three people were taken to the hospital, and two were evaluated at the scene and released, according to authorities.
Capers said the victims were from Honduras, and some had arrived at the home from Houston in recent days.
CNN has reached out to authorities for more information.
Berlin is keen to expand its support to Ukraine as the government in Kyiv prepares for an anticipated counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion of the country.
The German government has approved a new €2.7 billion package of weapons for Ukraine, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters on Saturday. The package, first reported by German outlet Spiegel, is Berlin’s largest arms delivery to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
“We all wish for a speedy end to this terrible and illegal war,” Pistorius said. “Unfortunately, this is not yet foreseeable.”
“Therefore, Germany will provide any help it can — as long as it takes,” he added.
The planned shipments include armored vehicles, drones and air-defense systems, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said on Telegram on Saturday. The package also includes “a large amount of ammunition,” he said.
The new package will be formally announced on Sunday in parallel with the presentation of the Charlemagne Prize to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Aachen, according to a report by Spiegel. Ukraine should receive the equipment in the coming weeks and months, the outlet said.
Zelensky is traveling to Rome on Saturday for talks with Italian officials and Pope Francis. That trip could be followed by a visit to Berlin. German officials have not confirmed the visit, but Berlin police have opened an investigation after details of a possible trip appeared in the media.
Between January 1, 2022, and April 24, 2023, Germany exported about the same amount of military goods, according to government figures.
An American woman has been arrested in Sydney after arriving on a flight from Los Angeles with 24-carat gold-plated handgun packed in her luggage.
The 28-year old woman, who arrived in Sydney on Sunday, did not hold a permit to import or possess a firearm in Australia, the Australian Border Force (ABF) said in a statement.
The woman, who was not identified in the statement, appeared before a local court Monday and received bail. The status of her visa and continued stay in Australia is subject to the courts. Depending on the outcome, she could be removed from the country, according to the ABF.
ABF Commander Justin Bathurst said the arrest spoke to the diligence of the force’s officers and sophistication of the country’s detection technology.
“ABF officers are committed to protecting our community by working with law enforcement partners to prevent items like unregistered firearms getting through at the border,” Bathurst added in the statement.
The country implemented sweeping gun-control measures after a lone shooter murdered 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in April 1996.
Rapid-fire rifles and shotguns were banned, gun owner licensing was tightened and remaining firearms were registered to uniform national standards alongside a hugely successful nationwide buy-back and amnesty scheme.
Gun violence has reached record levels in the United States, which is the only nation in the world where civilian firearms outnumber people. In Australia, there are approximately just 14 guns for every 100 people, compared to 120 per 100 in the US, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS).
The US also has more deaths from gun violence than any other developed country per capita. The rate in the US is eight times greater than in Canada, 22 times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data from 2019.
Two teenage cheerleaders were shot after one said she mistook the suspect’s vehicle for her own in a supermarket parking lot near Texas’ capital – making this at least the third incident this week in which young people who’d made an apparent mistake were met with gunfire.
Authorities arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, the man they say shot the two teens. He was taken into custody early Tuesday, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release later that morning.
According to a probable cause document, Tello is accused of deadly conduct with a firearm, a third-degree felony. He is being held on a $500,000 bond. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
Officers responding just after midnight Tuesday to an H-E-B supermarket parking lot found two people in a vehicle who’d been struck by bullets, police said, citing preliminary reports. One with serious injuries was rushed by helicopter to a hospital and was in critical condition, while the other was treated at the scene, the release said.
The latter girl had gotten out of a friend’s car and opened the door to a vehicle she thought was hers, only to find a man sitting in the passenger seat, she said during a livestreamed prayer vigil Tuesday night at her cheer team’s gym, CNN affiliate KTRK reported.
Heather Roth said she was trying to apologize to the man when he got out of the passenger door.
“He just threw his hands up, and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us,” Roth said, fighting tears.
Lynne Shearer, managing partner of the Woodlands Elite Cheer Company, told CNN the Roth and fellow cheerleader Payton Washington fled immediately in their car.
“As soon as they saw the gun, they said go and they drove and they went about two miles down the road,” Shearer told CNN. “And that’s when they realized that Payton was seriously hurt and they pulled over once they realized that guy wasn’t following them because Payton was … throwing up blood at that point. So they, that’s when they called 911.”
Washington was shot twice and badly injured, according to a GoFundMe spearheaded by her cheerleading team, the Woodlands Elite Generals. Washington is stable and recovering in the ICU, according to the team.
Roth was struck by a bullet but was treated and released at the scene, Shearer said.
Washington is “doing well today” after suffering from a ruptured spleen, which was removed, and she has damage to her pancreas and diaphragm, Shearer said Wednesday.
“Her stomach is not closed up yet and they are keeping her on heavy antibiotics for at least 48 hours to hopefully fight off infection,” she said. “Once they are sure there is no infection, they will go back in and finish up any issues and close her up.”
In another interview with CNN, Shearer said Washington should make a full recovery and has been FaceTiming with her friends.
Roth and Washington are from the Austin and Round Rock area and were commuting in a carpool to a cheerleading gym in Oak Ridge North, a Houston suburb, three times a week.
The commute is about 300 miles round trip – a commute Washington has been doing for eight years, Shearer said.
Roth is in college, while the other three girls in the vehicle, including Washington, are in high school.
Washington, a senior who had committed to Baylor University’s Acrobatics and Tumbling team, was born with only one lung and “has surpassed many obstacles to rise to the very top of her sport,” Shearer said.
“Payton is a strong young lady; if you know her, you know that about her,” Baylor head acrobatics and tumbling coach Felecia Mulkey told CNN. “I have no doubt she’s going to get through this.”
After visiting Roth on Tuesday, Mulkey said all things considered, she looked great and is making good progress – but acknowledged there’s still a long way to go on her path to recovery.
Mulkey described Roth as an “amazing athlete but a better human.”
“I know mental wounds also leave scars,” she said. “We want to lift up the athletes and their families during this difficult time. We love Payton and we wish her well as she recovers.”
Shearer said her team is busy still trying to prepare for the World Championships this weekend in Orlando, which Roth still plans to compete in.
Tuesday’s shooting was yet another case this week in which young people were shot after apparently going to the wrong place, including a 16-year-old struck in the head after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City and a 20-year-old killed by the owner of a home whose driveway she’d inadvertently turned into.
The United States is the only nation with more civilian guns than people, with about 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Small Arms Survey. Elgin is a city of some 10,000 people about a half-hour drive east of Austin.
A supermarket manager witnessed the incident, and police have surveillance footage from the parking lot that shows the license plate on the suspect’s car, police said, according to the probable cause affidavit.
“Elgin Detectives contacted Pedro Tello at the residence. Pedro Tello was still wearing the clothing that was observed by Elgin Detectives in the surveillance footage,” the affidavit states.
Four Woodland Elite Cheer athletes were “involved in a horrific incident” on their way home from practice Monday night, the cheerleading and tumbling company said in a Facebook post.
Authorities investigating the weekend shooting that killed four people and left dozens of others injured at a teen’s birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama, are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday about the case that’s left the small community grappling with grief and confusion for days.
Details about what will be covered in the news conference, scheduled for 10 a.m. CT, weren’t immediately available. It will come four days after Saturday night’s attack, in which authorities have yet to name any suspects or provide a possible motive.
The party, held at a downtown venue in celebration of Alexis Dowdell’s 16th birthday, was in full swing when gunfire erupted there, witnesses said. Her 18-year-old brother, Philstavious Dowdell, was killed, as were Marsiah Emmanuel Collins, 19; Shaunkivia “Keke” Nicole Smith, 17; and Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 23, the Tallapoosa County coroner said.
Thirty-two other people were injured, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has said, without specifying their ages or whether they all were shot.
The FBI, US marshals, a prosecutor’s office and local police will be among those joining the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency at Wednesday’s news conference, the state agency said.
Investigators have been following up on “strong leads” in the shooting, Dadeville Police Chief Jonathan Floyd told CNN earlier this week.
As of Monday, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency still was processing evidence and interviewing witnesses, it said.
Several shell casings used in handguns were collected at the scene, the agency said. No high-powered rifle ammunition was recovered, it added.
After days without significant answers from authorities, Alexis and Phil’s mother, LaTonya Allen – who was shot twice in the attack – has been anxiously awaiting news.
“I just want justice for my baby and all the other kids that were involved,” Allen told CNN on Monday. She later added, “They took away a piece of my heart, and I know the other mothers and fathers feel the same way.”
The attack was one of more than 160 mass shootings that have taken place so far this year in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Like CNN, the nonprofit defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Alexis had been planning her party for months, she told CNN, and began feeling “butterflies in my stomach” the day of the party.
When she went to sit on her brother’s bed to tell him she was nervous, Alexis said, he assured her that he would make sure she had fun.
Just hours later, Alexis and her friends were enjoying the music of the party’s DJ when gunfire erupted inside the venue, she said. Neither she or her mother recall hearing an altercation before the shooting.
“All I remember is my brother grabbing me and pushing me down to the ground,” where she fell into a puddle of blood, she said.
After Alexis and her mother ran from the building, they returned to see the bodies of the injured and dying scattered across the dimly lit dance floor, they said. As the room’s lights were flicked on, the family was horrified to see Phil’s body soaked in blood.
The teen recalls running to Phil and pleading with him to stay alive. “He was trying to say something to her,” Allen said.
“You’re going to make it. You’re strong,” Alexis told her 18-year-old brother as his consciousness wavered. She begged: “Don’t give up on me.”
By the time first responders arrived on the scene, Phil was dead, Alexis said.
“It’s a nightmare that I don’t wish on any parent – to go in and to see my baby laying there in a pile of blood,” Allen said. “That was the worst thing that I could experience in my life.”
Earlier in the evening, Allen said she heard a rumor that someone in the party may have been armed. She said she made a stern announcement over the speaker: “If anyone in here has a gun, then you need to leave because we’re here to celebrate Alexis’ Sweet 16.”
She and other chaperones scoured the crowd for anyone carrying a firearm, but didn’t see one, the mother said.
The family of a victim and several survivors of a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis filed a lawsuit against companies involved in the manufacturing, marketing and sale of the high capacity magazine used by the gunman who killed 8 people and injured several others in 2021.
The federal lawsuit, filed in US District Court in the Western District of New York, targets a gun distributor and magazine manufacturers, and alleges the companies recklessly marketed and sold their products to impulsive young men at risk of violence.
The gunman in the April 15, 2021, attack, Brandon Hole, 19, was previously employed at the facility and opened fire on his former coworkers before killing himself. About a year before the attack, Hole browsed White supremacist websites, CNN previously reported. His mother contacted the police in March 2020 because she was worried about his behavior and threatening statements he’d made after he purchased a gun, according to police.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday on behalf of the estate of Jaswinder Singh, who was killed during the shooting, Harpreet Singh, who was injured, and his wife Dilpreet Kaur, and Lakhwinder Kaur, who was also injured in the attack. They are each seeking at least $75,000 from the lawsuit and are asking for a jury trial, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit targets American Tactical Inc., an American firearms importer, manufacturer and seller, along with the company’s president and the director of marketing and purchasing. Schmeisser GmbH, a German firearms manufacturer; and 365 Plus d.o.o., a Slovenian company that designs, produces and distributes firearms accessories and other tactical equipment are also listed as defendants.
The three companies were involved in the manufacturing, marketing and sale of the 60-round high-capacity magazines that “have been used repeatedly to slaughter and terrorize Americans in horrific mass shootings since long before April 2021,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit claims these companies made these magazines easily accessible to Hole and targeted their marketing campaign to “a consumer base filled with impulsive young men who feel they need to harm others in order to prove their strength and who have militaristic delusions of fighting in a war or a video game.”
“This case is about what happens when companies recklessly design, market, sell, and distribute these accessories to the general public—indiscriminately—and without adherence to reasonable safeguards,” the lawsuit reads.
American Tactical declined to comment to CNN about the lawsuit. Lawyers for the other defendants did not immediately respond to requests.
Schmeisser GmbH manufactured the magazine used in the mass shooting and distributed it in the US through American Tactical and 365 Plus, the lawsuit claims.
“The high capacity of the magazine emboldened the shooter to commit the attack, knowing he had the ability to fire 60 rounds continuously without the need to pause to reload,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint says American Tactical promoted marketing videos that show men dressed in tactical vests similar to what Hole wore during the 2021 attack as they fire “a constant stream of bullets at unseen targets in various offensive, tactical operations.”
The lawsuit alleges the firearm companies placed an “unreasonably dangerous product on the market without sufficient safeguards to prevent its foreseeable unlawful use.”
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the gun control advocacy organization that employs two of several lawyers representing the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement to CNN the nonprofit is “trying to achieve justice for these survivors and their family, and hold American Tactical, Inc. accountable for their irresponsible marketing and sales practices.”
“If you decide to sell such highly lethal products to the general public anyway, you need to be very careful about who you’re selling them to. As we allege in our complaint, defendants here have instead taken a hard turn and specifically marketed their highly lethal products to a dangerous class of individuals,” said Philip Bangle, the Brady Center’s senior litigation council.
Editor’s Note: Michael Fanone, a former Washington, DC, police officer, is the author of a memoir, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” He is a CNN law enforcement analyst, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, an avid hunter and sport shooting enthusiast. The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
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A friend of mine recently asked me about last week’s mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky — one of the160-odd mass shootings we’ve experienced in this country as of mid-April. The one where a guy in his mid-20s purchased an AR-15-style, semi-automatic rifle equipped with a magazine capable of delivering 30 rounds of ammunition in a matter of seconds. A weapon like ones we send our service members overseas to kill with.
The shooter purchased this devastating weapon of war just days before he entered hisplace of employment and unleashed his fury in the form of .223-caliber bullets that penetrated the bodies of his targets and likely the walls behind them. One of the victims was a 26-year-old rookie cop named Nickolas Wilt, who is still in critical condition after being shot in the head while responding to the shooting. Shot in the head running toward the gunfire.
This brings me back to the question my friend posed. “It seems so unusual to me to send a kid who’s been out of the academy for a matter of a few days into the most harrowing, challenging kind of policing situation one can imagine.”
My response? “That’s the job.”
Policing is a profession mostly learned through experience. That’s certainly the way I approached it during my 20-year career as a beat cop. There was no way for my instructors in the academy to prepare me for each and every situation encountered. Facing those sometimes harrowing experiences on the job did.
During the course of my day-to-day, I was introduced to police tactics that I employed to fit each incident I faced. I learned the policy and procedure, rules and guidelines that I used to carry out my responsibilities.
In the past few days, we have felt the heartbreak of learning that Wilt was gravely injured in the line of duty while trying to save innocent lives. And just a few weeks ago, we also saw what the American police officer can do when equipped with the right training, the right equipment and most importantly, the right mindset.
At a school in Tennessee last month, officers responded to an active shooter who had taken the lives of teachers and their young students. They entered immediately with no regard for their own safety and shot and killed the assailant. This is the job.
As was the case in Louisville and Tennessee, men and women just like us are asked to set aside their own personal safety to maintain order in our “civilized society.” I will never say that police are above reproach and that reforms are not needed in our criminal justice system, but I will say that the actions of these brave officers are the rule and not the exception.
As a cop, I have witnessed countless acts of bravery and selflessness performed by my colleagues. I can count on one hand the times I saw them betray their oaths. We owe it to these officers to provide them with the best training and afford them the ability to train often. Frequency builds muscle memory. And when you are asked to make complex decisions in a matter of seconds, muscle memory could save the officer’s life or allow them to save yours.
Police officers also deserve state-of-the-art protective equipment. The job carries unavoidable risks, but to the extent that we can keep them safe we owe them that much.
Too many times toward the end of my career I heard politicians, media pundits and even executives in my own department prioritize optics over officer safety. Police need some of the heavy armament that some people criticize as excessive. Yes, armored cars look scary, but they are just bullet-resistant vehicles that keep cops safe.
Finally, we owe it to these officers to reduce the likelihood that they will have to encounter firearms wielded by criminals or those suffering from mental health issues. We need to require background checks for the transfer of all firearms in the United States. Background checks aren’t federally mandated when guns are given as gifts, but they should be. As a gun owner who plans to one day transfer my firearms to my children, I would gladly pay the nominal fee and undergo the slight inconvenience of visiting a local licensed federal firearms dealer to complete that transaction.
In fact, every single firearms transfer in this country should begin with a background check. It takes only a few minutes, and the fees are nominal. It’s a small inconvenience that should be borne by all gun buyers if it means helping keep our fellow Americans safe.
We are all going to have to give a little for the betterment of our country. It’s called compromise. Red flag laws aren’t perfect, but they work. We should embrace them, rather than write them off.
The average gun owner will never convince me that they need an AR-15. You want one because you want one. That’s it. It’s time Americans start placing their public safety needs over their recreational desires. There are many firearm platforms available that serve the same purpose and can be used to accomplish the same goal.
As I thought about Officer Wilt, I recalled my own experiences as a rookie cop working in the inner city.
By the time I was 25, I had seen the effects of gun violence firsthand. The countless shooting scenes in which men, women and children’s bodies were torn apart by bullets. I buried several colleagues, including my former partner James McBride, who died during a training event. Listening to the dispatcher call James’ “End of Watch” was one of the most emotional moments of my life.
Over the course of my two decades as a police officer, I saw the body of an infant who had been killed by the child’s father, who was high on PCP. I fought for my life and the lives of my co-workers, and I stared down the barrel of a gun wielded by a young teenager.
This is the job, and this is what is asked of these officers. Every single goddamn day.
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In 1917, British analysts deciphered a coded message the German foreign minister sent to one of his country’s diplomats vowing to begin “unrestricted submarine warfare” and seeking to win over Mexico with a promise to “reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona” if the US entered the world war. When it became public, the Zimmerman Telegram caused a sensation, helping propel the US into the conflict against Germany.
“Never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message,” wrote David Kahn in his classic 1967 history of secret communications, “The Codebreakers.” The Germans had taken great pains to keep their intentions confidential, and the codebreakers in London’s “Room 40” had to do a lot of work to decipher the telegram.
Their efforts stand in stark contrast to the ease with which secrets came tumbling out of a Pentagon intelligence network when 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard cyber specialist Jack Teixeira allegedly posted hundreds of documents on a Discord chatroom known as “Thug Shaker Central.” The disclosures likely won’t start a war, but they could prove extremely damaging to the US and several of its allies, including Ukraine.
Teixeira is one of more than one million people who have Top Secret clearance. “The Pentagon has already started taking steps to limit the number of people who have access to such sensitive information,” wrote Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat and Obama administration official. “But much more can be done. … Why do so many people, especially those working short stints in government, have access to information that can shape the fate of nations and their leaders?”
Writing in the Financial Times, Kori Schake saw “some good news.”
“While specific details will be incredibly valuable to Russia and other adversaries, these are not bombshell revelations: journalists had already reported Ukrainian ammunition running low; peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv were never likely; allies have long been aware that the US eavesdrops on them; and the disparaging assessment of Ukraine’s forthcoming offensive may prove no more accurate than previous predictions were.” These will not prove as damaging as the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning disclosures.
In less than a week, the two Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House for their participation in a gun control protest were sent back to office by local officials.
Writing for CNN Opinion, Rep. Justin Pearson noted, “This should be a chastening moment for revanchist forces in Tennessee’s legislature and across the country. Over the long haul, the undemocratic machinations employed to oust us from office are destined to fail. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once famously said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Events this week demonstrated, more than ever, that this is indeed the case…”
“Over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre.”
The politics of gun control have shifted, argued Democratic strategist Max Burns. The NRA’s internal struggles have weakened its influence while Democrats in office, who once feared touching the issue of guns, are increasingly speaking out. And they are making some progress in enacting new state laws, Burns noted.
“The American people decisively support Democratic proposals for addressing the scourge of gun violence. Political watchers who criticized Democrats for talking too much about abortion during the 2022 midterm elections later ate crow after that once-dreaded culture war topic topped the list of voter concerns nationally…
On Friday, the Supreme Court issued an order that temporarily ensured access to a key drug used in many medication abortions. The move gave the justices more time to consider the issue after a Texas federal judge suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill 23 years ago.
“If abortion opponents are successful, access to the pill — reportedly used in more than half of abortions in the United States — will be severely undercut,” wrote Michele Goodwin and Mary Ziegler.
“There are no grounds for challenging mifepristone’s approval, especially 23 years after the fact. The drug received extensive review — more than four years — before FDA approval. Moreover, claims that mifepristone threatens the health of those who take it are unfounded. The drug has a better safety record for use than Viagra and penicillin. Notably, it was available and used for years without incident in Europe.”
In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow bureau chief for US News & World Report, was seized by Soviet authorities and locked up in Lefortovo prison. He was the last American journalist to be arrested in Russia before last month’s detention of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, who like Daniloff, speaks Russian fluently. Gershkovich has been charged with espionage but US officials have concluded that he was “wrongfully detained.”
As David A. Andelman noted, Daniloff’s detention in prison lasted for 13 days before he was put under house arrest and then eventually swapped for an accused Soviet spy. In a conversation with Andelman, Daniloff recalled his reaction when he was imprisoned. “I felt claustrophobic, and I felt like I wanted to get out of there immediately. Of course, there was no chance of that. The door slams, and you have all these thoughts and feelings that run through you, and then you settle down and you realize you’re going to be hanging around that cell for some time.”
Gershkovich’s family in Philadelphia received a letter, handwritten in Russian, from the reporter Friday.
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” he noted. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.”
The Amazon series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns this month for its fifth and final season — and David Perry is here for it. The series brings back memories of visiting his grandparents Irma and Mordy in their “tiny rent-controlled Greenwich Village apartment,” an experience that helped shape his Jewish identity.
“As a Jewish historian,” Perry wrote, “I worry about the tension between preserving the memory of past hardships while not locking our entire history into a tale of oppression. The moments of peace and joy are as vital as the moments of violence. In fact, it’s the periods of peace, of success, of interfaith community, that reveal the terrible truth about the violence: it wasn’t inevitable. People could have made different choices…”
In the latest installment of CNN Opinion’s “Little Kids, Big Questions” series, 10-year-old Ronan wonders if animals are capable of being smarter than humans. With the help of the John Templeton Foundation, which is partnering on the project, the answer came from Jane Goodall, world renowned for her work with chimpanzees.
“One of the attributes of intelligence is the ability to think and solve problems. In the early 1960s, I was told that this was unique to humans, and only we could use and make tools, only we had language and culture,” Goodall said. “But more and more research has proved that many animals are excellent at solving problems. Many use tools, and many show cultural differences. Some scientists believe that whales and dolphins are communicating with what may be a real language.”
“Although the difference between humans and other animals is simply one of degree, our intellect really is amazing. …bees can count and do math, and that just shows how much we still have to learn about animal intelligence. But humans can calculate the distance to the stars.”
Earlier this month, a Texas jury convicted Daniel Perry of murder for fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. The jury deliberated for 17 hours and decided Perry’s action couldn’t be excused under the state’s “stand your ground” law. Prosecutors argued Perry had instigated the incident and they introduced into evidence messages that suggested the shooting was not a spur-of-the-moment act but a premeditated one.
On the evening of the jury verdict, Fox News host Tucker Carlson criticized the decision and told viewers he had invited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on the show to ask if he would consider pardoning Perry. Others on the right called for Abbott to issue a pardon, and the governor soon responded with an announcement that he would do just that, as long as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Perry should be granted one.
Two of the likeliest candidates for president in 2024 haven’t officially committed yet.
President Joe Biden says he intends to run again but has delayed making a formal announcement. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making all the moves a presidential contender usually makes, including hawking his new book and visiting New Hampshire, but he hasn’t joined fellow Republicans including former President Donald Trump, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson in declaring.
“A third Trump presidential nomination would indicate that Republican primary voters may prefer style over substance. But if they are serious about not just making liberals mad but advancing actual policy, GOP voters should consider other names, starting with the Florida governor.”
Even without an official announcement by the president, wrote Julian Zelizer, the Biden-Harris campaign is very much under way. “By choosing to lie low while Republicans are gearing up for 2024, Biden is employing his version of what has become known as the ‘Rose Garden Strategy,’ whereby the incumbent campaigns by focusing on the business of being president and showing voters that he is the responsible figure in the race.”
“The president’s understated strategy makes room for Republicans to stoke chaos, tear each other apart and make unforced errors while he remains above the fray for as long as possible. This strategy makes the GOP the focus of the election, allowing Biden to reinforce his message from 2020: do voters want someone who will govern and act in a serious manner or do they want a circus?”
Jill Filipovic recently took a domestic flight in South Africa. “Passengers and airport staff alike were friendly and polite. The airplane seat offered enough room for both of my legs and both of my arms. We took off on time and landed early. My shoes stayed on the whole time I was at the airport.”
It was a vivid reminder of what’s possible in air travel — and of what’s usually lacking.
Take the security system: “More than 20 years after Sept. 11, 2001, only passengers who pay for the privilege can avoid removing their shoes and laptops from their bags by submitting their personal information ahead of time and undergoing background checks.”
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