The suspect in the Maine mass shooting started making statements about hearing voices and wanting to hurt fellow soldiers while serving at a military base this summer, and spent a few weeks in a hospital, law enforcement officials told CNN.
But a relative of the suspect and two former colleagues in the Army Reserve told CNN they weren’t aware of him having any longstanding history of mental health issues – although one former colleague remembered him as a skilled marksman and outdoorsman who was among the best shooters in his unit.
Robert R. Card II, who police are searching for in connection with the fatal shooting of at least 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, made his troubling statements while he was at the Camp Smith training facility in New York, the law enforcement officials said. His command referred him to a military hospital, and he spent a few weeks under evaluation, they said.
In July, Army Reserve officials reported Card for “behaving erratically,” and he was transported to the nearby Keller Army Community Hospital at the United States Military Academy for “medical evaluation,” a National Guard spokesman told CNN.
“Out of concern for his safety, the unit requested that law enforcement be contacted,” said the spokesperson, Col. Richard Goldenberg. New York State Police responded and transported Card to the hospital, he said.
Card then spent a few weeks under evaluation at the hospital, the law enforcement officials said.
The 40-year-old Card also threatened to shoot up a National Guard base in Maine, law enforcement officials previously told CNN.
Card’s sister-in-law, Katie O’Neill, said in a brief conversation with CNN Thursday that Card does not have a long history of mental health struggles.
“This is something that was an acute episode. This is not who he is,” O’Neill said. “He is not someone who has had mental health issues for his lifetime or anything like that.”
Except for an arrest in 2007 for an alleged driving under the influence charge, the suspect is not known to ATF or in FBI holdings, according to law enforcement sources. He legally possesses multiple weapons and owns a home on hundreds of acres of land in Maine, the sources said.
Card is a petroleum supply specialist in the Army Reserve and first enlisted in 2002, according to records provided by the Army on Thursday. He has no combat deployments, according to the records.
Clifford Steeves of Massachusetts told CNN he knew Card when they served in the Army Reserve together, starting in the early 2000s until about a decade ago. He said he never witnessed any concerning behavior from Card.
“He was a very nice guy – very quiet. He never overused his authority or was mean or rude to other soldiers,” Steeves said. “It’s really upsetting.”
Steeves said the two served together around the country at different points, including in Wisconsin, Georgia and New York. He said he felt as though he “grew up” with Card because they entered the Army as young men and trained together.
Steeves said that while “aggressive leadership was very prominent” in the Army, Card stuck out for being a “rational, understanding person” who “led through respect rather than fear.”
Steeves said Card never saw combat but had extensive training, including firearms training and land navigation, “so he would be very comfortable in the woods.” He described Card as an “outdoors type of guy” and a skilled marksman who was one of the best shooters in his unit.
Another former Army Reserve member who served with Card also described him as a “nice guy” who “never had an issue with anybody.” The servicemember, who asked to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the situation, did not recall Card showing any kind of violent behavior.
Card studied engineering technology at the University of Maine between 2001 and 2004 but did not graduate, Eric Gordon, a university spokesperson, told CNN.
Public records show addresses for Card in Bowdoin, Maine, a town near Lewiston. Card appears to have been a member of a local horseshoe-throwing club in the nearby town of Lisbon, Maine, according to a local news story and a Facebook photo that showed him wearing a t-shirt with the club’s logo.
An account on the social media platform X with Card’s name and a photo that appears to be him, which has been taken offline, had a history of liking right-wing and Republican political content.
When WNBA player Brittney Griner was released from Russian detention after a prisoner exchange for a convicted arms dealer, the account posted what appeared to be its only tweet. Responding to a CNBC story about the topic, the account wrote: “Mass murderer for a wnba player great job keep up the good work,” in an apparent jab at President Joe Biden.
The account liked a tweet earlier this year from right-wing author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza arguing against an assault weapons ban, as well as other tweets from political figures like Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson.
In the days since a blast ripped through the packed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing hundreds of Palestinians, dueling claims between Palestinian militants and the Israeli government over culpability are still raging. But forensic analysis of publicly available imagery and footage has begun to offer some clues as to what caused the explosion.
CNN has reviewed dozens of videos posted on social media, aired on live broadcasts and filmed by a freelance journalist working for CNN in Gaza, as well as satellite imagery, to piece together what happened in as much detail as possible.
Without the ability to access the site and gather evidence from the ground, no conclusion can be definitive. But CNN’s analysis suggests that a rocket launched from within Gaza broke up midair, and that the blast at the hospital was the result of part of the rocket landing at the hospital complex.
Weapons and explosive experts with decades of experience assessing bomb damage, who reviewed the visual evidence, told CNN they believe this to be the most likely scenario – although they caution the absence of munition remnants or shrapnel from the scene made it difficult to be sure. All agreed that the available evidence of the damage at the site was not consistent with an Israeli airstrike.
Israel says that a “misfired” rocket by militant group Islamic Jihad caused the blast, a claim that US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday is backed up by US intelligence. A spokesperson for the National Security Council later said that analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information suggested that Israel is “not responsible.”
Palestinian officials and several Arab leaders nevertheless accuse Israel of hitting the hospital amid its ongoing airstrikes in Gaza. Islamic Jihad (or PIJ) – a rival group to Hamas – has denied responsibility.
The Israel-Hamas war has triggered a wave of misleading content and false claims online. That misinformation, coupled with the polarizing nature of the conflict, has made it difficult to sort fact from fiction.
In the past few days, a number of outlets have published investigations into the Al-Ahli Hospital blast. Some have reached diametrically different conclusions, reflecting the challenges of doing such analysis remotely.
But as more information surfaces, CNN’s investigation – which includes a review of nighttime video of the explosion, and horrifying images of those injured and killed inside the hospital complex – is an effort to shed light on details of the blast beyond what Israel and the US have produced publicly.
Courtesy “Al Jazeera” – Gaza City, October 17
On Tuesday evening, a barrage of rocket fire illuminated the night sky over Gaza before the deadly blast, according to videos analyzed by CNN.
An Al Jazeera camera, located in western Gaza and facing east, was broadcasting live on the channel at 6:59 p.m. local time on Tuesday night, according to the timestamp. The footage appears to show a rocket fired from Gaza traveling in an upwards trajectory before reversing direction and exploding, leaving a brief, bright streak of light in the night sky above Gaza City. Just moments later, two blasts are visible on the ground, including one at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
By verifying the position of the camera, CNN was able to determine that the rocket was fired from an area south of Gaza City. CNN geolocated the hospital blast by referencing nearby buildings just west of the complex. Footage taken from a webcam in Tel Aviv pointing south towards Gaza, that CNN synched with the Al Jazeera live feed, shows a volley of rockets from Gaza shortly before the blast.
Several weapons experts told CNN that the Al Jazeera video appeared to show a rocket burning out in the sky before crashing into the hospital grounds, but that they could not say with certainty that the two incidents were linked – due to the challenges of calculating the trajectory of a rocket that had failed or changed course mid-flight.
“I believe this happened – a rocket malfunctioned, and it didn’t come down in one piece. It’s likely it fell apart mid-air for some reason and the body of the rocket crashed into the car park. There, the fuel remnants caught fire and ignited cars and other fuel at the hospital, causing the big explosion we saw,” Markus Schiller, a Europe-based missile expert who has worked on analysis for NATO and the European Union, told CNN.
“But it’s impossible for me to confirm. If a rocket malfunctioned… it is impossible to predict its flight path and behavior, so I wouldn’t be able to draw on usual analysis drawing on altitude, flight path and the burn time,” he added.
Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a former deputy director of the US National Security Agency, and a CNN military analyst, said that the aerial explosion was “consistent with a malfunctioning rocket,” adding that the streak of light was consistent with “a rocket burning fuel as it tries to reach altitude.”
Chad Ohlandt, a senior engineer at the Rand Corporation in Washington, DC, agreed that the bright flash of light suggested that the solid rocket motor was “malfunctioning.”
There has been some speculation on social media that the breakup of the rocket could have been caused by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. But experts said there is no evidence of another rocket intercepting it, and Israel says that it does not use the system in Gaza.
At 7 p.m., Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, posted on its Telegram channel that it had bombarded Ashdod, a coastal Israeli city north of Gaza, with “a barrage of rockets.” A few minutes later, PIJ said on Telegram that its armed wing, Al-Quds Brigades, had launched strikes on Tel Aviv in response to the “enemy’s massacre of civilians.”
Another nighttime video of the blast, which appears to have been filmed on a mobile phone from a balcony and was also geolocated by CNN, captures a whooshing sound before the sky lights up and a large explosion erupts.
From X – Gaza City, October 17
Two weapons experts who reviewed the footage for CNN said that the sound in the video was not consistent with that of a high-grade military explosive, such as a bomb or shell. Both said that it was not possible to form any definitive conclusions from the audio in the clip, caveating that the mobile phone could have affected the reliability of the sound.
A leading US acoustic expert, who did not have permission to speak publicly from their university, analyzed the sound waveform from the video and concluded that, while there were changes in the sound frequency, indicating that the object was in motion, there was no directional information that could be gleaned from it.
Panic and carnage
Inside the hospital, the sound was deafening. Dr. Fadel Na’eem, head of the orthopedic department, said he was performing surgery when the blast sounded through the hospital. He said panic ensued as staff members ran into the operating room screaming for help and reporting multiple casualties.
“I just finished one surgery and suddenly we heard a big explosion,” Dr. Na’eem told CNN in a recorded video. “We thought it’s outside the hospital because we never thought that they would bomb the hospital.”
After he left the operating theater, Dr. Na’eem said he found an overwhelming scene. “The medical team scrambled to tend to the wounded and dying, but the magnitude of the devastation was overwhelming.”
Dr. Na’eem said that it wasn’t the first time the hospital had been hit. On October 14, three days earlier, he said that two missiles had struck the building, and that the Israeli military had not called to warn them.
“We thought it was by mistake. And the day after [the Israelis] called the medical director of the hospital and told them, ‘We warned you yesterday, why are you still working? You have to evacuate the hospital,” Dr. Na’eem said, adding that many people and patients had fled before the blast, afraid that the hospital would be hit again.
CNN could not independently verify the details of the October 14 attack described by Dr. Na’eem and has reached out to the IDF for comment. The IDF has said it does not target hospitals, though the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have hit medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
While it is difficult to independently confirm how many people died in the blast, the bloodshed could be seen in images from the aftermath shared on social media. In photos and videos, young children covered in dust are rushed to be treated for their wounds. Other bodies are seen lifeless on the ground.
One local volunteer who did not give his name described the gruesome aftermath of the blast at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, saying that he arrived at 8 a.m. and helped to gather the remains of people killed there.
“We gathered six bags filled with pieces of the dead bodies – pieces,” he said. “The eldest we gathered remains for was maybe eight or nine years old. Hands, feet, fingers, I have here half a body in the bag. What were they doing, what did they do. None of them even had a toothbrush let alone a weapon.”
A freelance journalist working for CNN in Gaza went to the scene the following day, interviewing eyewitnesses and filming the blast radius in detail, capturing the impact crater, which was about 3×3 feet wide and one foot deep. Some debris and damage were visible in the wider area, including burned out cars, pockmarked buildings and blown out windows.
Eight weapons and explosive experts who reviewed CNN’s footage of the scene agreed that the small crater size and widespread surface damage were inconsistent with an aircraft bomb, which would have destroyed most things at the point of impact. Many said that the evidence pointed to the possibility that a rocket was responsible for the explosion.
Marc Garlasco, a former defense intelligence analyst and UN war crimes investigator with decades of experience assessing bomb damage, said that whatever hit the hospital in Gaza was not an airstrike. “Even the smallest JDAM [joint direct attack munition] leaves a 3m crater,” he told CNN, referring to a guided air-to-ground system that is part of the Israeli weapons stockpile provided by the US.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a British weapons expert who was part of an Amnesty International team investigating weapons used by Israel during the Gaza War in 2009, told CNN the size of the crater led him to rule out a heavy, air-dropped bomb. “The type of crater that I’ve seen on the imagery so far, isn’t large enough to be the type of bomb that we’ve that we’ve seen dropped in, in the region on many occasions,” he said.
An arms investigator said the impact was “more characteristic of a rocket strike with burn marks from leftover rocket fuel or propellant,” and not something you would see from “a typical artillery projectile.”
Cobb-Smith said that the conflagration following the blast was inconsistent with an artillery strike, but that it could not be entirely ruled out.
Others said the damage seen at the site – specifically to the burned-out cars – did not seem to suggest that the explosion was the result of an airburst fuze, which is when a shell explodes in the air before hitting the ground, or artillery fire. Patrick Senft, a research coordinator at Armament Research Services (ARES), said that he would have expected the roofs of the cars to show significant fragmentation damage and the impact site to be deeper, in that case.
“For a 152 / 155 mm artillery projectile with a point detonation fuz (one that initiates the explosion upon hitting the ground) I would expect a crater of about 1.5m deep and 5m wide. The crater here seems substantially smaller,” Senft said.
An explosives specialist, who is currently working in law enforcement and was not authorized to speak to the press, said it’s likely that the shrapnel from the projectile ignited the fuel and flammable liquid in the cars, which is why the fireball was so big. These kinds of explosions generate a shockwave that is particularly deadly to children and the frail.
The same specialist, who has spent decades conducting forensic investigations in conflict zones around the world, also said the damage at the crater site, and at the scene, was not congruent with damage normally seen at an artillery shelling site.
Without knowing what kind of projectile produced the crater, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the direction that it came from. However, the debris and ground markings point to a few possibilities.
There are dark patches on the ground fanning out in a southwesterly direction from the crater. The trees behind it are scorched and a lamppost is entirely knocked over. In contrast, the trees on the other side of the crater are still intact, even with green leaves.
This would be consistent with a rocket approaching from the southwest, as rockets scorch and damage the earth on approach to the ground. If the munition was artillery, however, these markings could indicate it came in from the northeast, spewing debris to the southwest. But if the projectile malfunctioned and broke apart in the air, as CNN’s analysis suggests, the direction of impact reflected by the crater would not be a reliable finding.
Israel has presented two contrasting narratives on which direction the alleged Hamas rocket flew in from.
In an audio recording released by Israeli officials, which they say is Hamas militants discussing the blast and attributing it to a rocket launched by Islamic Jihad (or PIJ), a “cemetery behind the hospital” is referenced as the launch site. CNN analyzed satellite imagery for the days prior to the attack and found no apparent evidence of a rocket launch site there. CNN could not verify the authenticity of the audio intercept.
The IDF also published a map indicating the rocket had been launched several kilometers away, from a southwesterly direction, showing the trajectory towards the hospital. The map is not detailed but it indicates a rocket launch site that matches a location CNN has previously identified as a Hamas training site. Satellite imagery from this site indicates some activity in the days prior to the hospital blast but CNN cannot determine whether a rocket was launched from there and has also asked the IDF for more details about its map.
Until an independent investigation is allowed on the ground and evidence collected from the site the prospect of determining who was behind the blast is remote.
“An awful lot will depend on what remnants are found in the wreckage,” Chris Cobb-Smith told CNN. “We can analyze footage, we can listen to audio, but the definitive answer will come from the person or the team that go in and rummage around the rubble and come up with remnants of the munition itself.” Getting independent experts there will prove challenging given the war still raging, and Israel’s looming ground offensive in Gaza.
Marc Garlasco, the former defense intelligence analyst and UN war crimes investigator, says there are signs of a lack of evidence at the Al-Ahli Hospital site.
“When I investigate a site of a potential war crime the first thing I do is locate and identify parts of the weapon. The weapon tells you who did it and how. I’ve never seen such a lack of physical evidence for a weapon at a site. Ever. There’s always a piece of a bomb after the fact. In 20 years of investigating war crimes this is the first time I haven’t seen any weapon remnants. And I’ve worked three wars in Gaza.”
Footage CNN collected the day after the blast shows a large number of people traversing the site. The risk that amid the chaos and panic of war, the evidence will be lost or tampered with, is high. Even before this conflict, accessing sites was challenging for independent investigators. Cobb-Smith has investigated in Gaza before.
“The local authorities did not give me free access to the area or were very unhappy that I was trying to investigate something that had clearly gone wrong from their point of view.”
Protests erupted across the Middle East following the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital as Israeli and Palestinian officials traded accusations over who was to blame just hours before US President Joe Biden is set to arrive in Tel Aviv.
Hundreds of people were likely killed in the blast on Tuesday at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City, where thousands were shelteringfrom Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
CNN cannot independently confirm what caused the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital.
But the blast marks a dangerous new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which threatens to spill over regionally. While Israelis grieve those killed in Hamas’ terror attacks on Israeli soil and families plea for the return of loved ones taken as hostages, millions of civilians in Gaza are at risk of injury, death or starvation as vital supplies have been cut to an area that is impossible to leave amid heavy Israeli bombardment.
Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said no Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes took place in the area at the time of the blast, claiming to have intelligence pointing to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group to Hamas in Gaza.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, described “unparalleled and indescribable” scenes after the blast.
“Ambulance crews are still removing body parts as most of the victims are children and women,” Al-Qudra said. “Doctors were performing surgeries on the ground and in the corridors, some of them without anesthesia.”
In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza
Video geolocated by CNN from inside the al-Shifa Hospital, where some victims of the blast were taken, shows chaotic scenes with injured people packed into the crowded facility, doctors treating the wounded on the hospital floor and an emergency worker calling out as he carries an injured child.
Images show women crying out and terrified children covered in black dust huddled together on the hospital floor.
Calling the deadly hospital blast “unacceptable,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said hospitals are sacrosanct and the killings and violence must stop.
“Words fail me. Tonight, hundreds of people were killed – horrifically – in a massive strike… including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. Once again the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.
President Biden, who is en route to Tel Aviv for a high-security wartime visit to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he was “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion.”
But the fallout from the blast threatens to derail US diplomatic efforts to ease the humanitarian suffering in Gaza, where concerns are mounting over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.
Jordan canceled a planned Wednesday summit between Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of the meeting earlier Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
Biden was scheduled to visit Amman after his trip to Tel Aviv, though a White House official said the trip was “postponed.”
“There is no point in doing anything at this time other than stopping this war,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera Arabic early Wednesday. “There is no benefit to anyone in holding a summit at this time.”
The blast has added fuel to rising anger in the region over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Israeli forces have laid siege to the coastal enclave controlled by Hamas following the October 7 attacks on Israel in which the Islamist militant group killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 150 hostages, including children and the elderly.
Protests condemning the hospital explosion have erupted in multiple cities across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Tunisia. Protests also rocked the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as protesters clashed with Palestinian security forces.
In the Jordanian capital Amman, angry protesters attempted to gather near the Israeli Embassy in the Rabieh area but security forces pushed them away. Two activists told CNN on Tuesday that Jordanian security forces using tear gas to disperse crowds.
In Lebanon’s Beirut, hundreds of protesters gathered in the square that leads to the US Embassy on Tuesday and tried to break through security barriers, according to a CNN team there.
Hamas said more than 500 people were killed in the bombing. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier said preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 to 300 people died in the blast.
The hospital tragedy comes as health services in Gaza are on the brink, with no fuel to run electricity or pump water for life-saving critical functions. UN agencies have warned that shops are less than a week away from running out of available food stocks and that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
Israel has insisted it was not responsible for the hospital bombing.
The IDF presented imagery Wednesday which it said shows the destruction at the hospital could not have been the result of an airstrike.
In the 30-second montage, the IDF claimed that a fire broke out at the hospital as a result of a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad. The imagery included fire damage to several vehicles in the hospital parking lot. The IDF said there were no visible signs of craters or significant damage to buildings that would result from an airstrike.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN Wednesday the “first packet of information” was “evidence that clearly supports the fact that it could not have been an Israeli bomb.”
Islamic Jihad has denied Israel’s assertions that a failed rocket launch was responsible for the hundreds of civilian casualties at the hospital.
The group described Israeli accusations as “false and baseless” and claimed it does not use public facilities such as hospitals for military purposes, according to a statement Wednesday.
The US is also analyzing intelligence provided by Israel on the explosion, which includes signals intelligence, intercepted communications and other forms of data, according to an Israeli official and another source familiar with the matter.
Several nations have condemned Israel following the explosion. Pakistan called it “inhumane and indefensible” and Palestinian observer to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israeli officials were being dishonest in blaming Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The UN Security Council will hold an open meeting Wednesday morning on developments in the Middle East, including the hospital bombing and both Israel and Palestinian representatives are expected to speak.
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday. Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
Conditions are dire for the 2.2 million people caught in the escalating crisis and now trapped in Gaza and those on the ground warn that nowhere is safe from relentless Israeli airstrikes and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.
Urgent calls for help are mounting and diplomatic efforts to secure a humanitarian corridor out of Gaza have ramped up in recent days.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has led intense efforts across the Middle East, on Tuesday said the US and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”
But officials have said the Rafah border crossing – the only entry point in and out of Gaza that Israel does not control – remains extremely dangerous.
On the Egyptian side of the crossing, a miles-long convoy of humanitarian assistance is awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.
“Until now, there is no safe passage that has been granted” as they do not “have any authorization or clear, secure routes for those convoys to be able to enter safely and without any possibility of their being targeted,” he said.
He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.
The US intelligence community assesses that there likely were between 100 to 300 people killed in the blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, and there was “only light structural damage at the hospital,” according to an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by CNN that adds more detail to the initial assessment released Wednesday finding Israel was not responsible for the strike.
The unclassified assessment sent to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence adds more detail to the US intelligence community’s initial assessment released Wednesday that Israel was not responsible for the strike on the hospital.
“Israel Probably Did Not Bomb Gaza Strip Hospital: We judge that Israel was not responsible for an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians yesterday [17 October] at the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip,” the assessment states. “Our assessment is based on available reporting, including intelligence, missile activity, and open-source video and images of the incident.”
The US intelligence community also estimates the number of deaths from the hospital at the “low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum,” according to the assessment, a lower number than figures initially cited by Hamas of more than 500.
The intelligence community “observed only light structural damage at the hospital,” with no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters, according to the assessment.
“We see only light damage to the roofs of two structures near the main hospital building, but both structures remained intact,” the assessment states.
The US intelligence community released its initial assessment on Wednesday that Israel was not responsible after President Joe Biden stated publicly while in Israel that the strike appeared to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.” Biden is giving a primetime address from the Oval Office on Thursday evening.
The National Security Council has said that the Biden administration plans to publicize as much intelligence as it can about the strike amid accusations that Israel was responsible for the blast.
“We will be sharing that information with our friends and partners in the region we have shared as much of that information as we can publicly,” Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said on “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.
The assessment states that intelligence indicates that “some Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip assessed that the explosion was likely caused by an errant rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestine Islamic Jihad” and that the militants were still investigating.
“We continue to work to corroborate whether the explosion resulted from a failed PIJ rocket,” the ODNI assessment states.
“We are still assessing the likely casualty figures and our assessment may evolve, but this death toll still reflects a staggering loss of life,” the assessment states. “The United States takes seriously the deaths of all civilians, and is working intensively to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
Finer told CNN that the assessment of the hospital strike was a warning to the danger of drawing conclusions amid the fog of war. “I think this is a cautionary note for governments in the region, and frankly for press, in responding to each and every twist and turn in a conflict,” he said.
The Biden administration has been debating how much raw intelligence to declassify underpinning its assessment that the deadly blast at the Gaza hospital was caused by an errant rocket from a Palestinian militant group — not a missile from Israel, according to a senior administration official.
The White House believes that providing a clearer assessment to the public would be useful in trying to establish a clear and accurate narrative of events, this official said, noting it hasn’t reached a conclusion about how effective raw intelligence would be in that effort.
The debate a reflects growing concern that the US and Israel have lost control of the narrative spiraling out of Gaza that Israel was to blame for those killed in the hospital blast on Tuesday evening.
Former intelligence officials and sources familiar with current US intelligence were skeptical that there was anything the US might make public that would be believed in the Arab world.
“Unfortunately, the narratives have already spread and solidified at this point,” said one US official.
Following a classified Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday afternoon, a bipartisan group of senators urged the Biden administration to make public as much of the intelligence as possible.
“A part of the focus also has to be lowering the temperatures in some of the countries that have had reasonably good relationships with Israel — think Jordan, think Egypt,” Sen. Thom Tillis, Republican from North Carolina, told reporters on Wednesday. “That’s more of the focus now.”
A cyberattack on Thursday knocked computer systems offline at hospitals in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, forcing them to send ambulances to other hospitals, hospital spokespeople told CNN.
As of late Friday morning, Crozer Health, a network of three hospitals and a medical center in the Philadelphia suburbs, was still diverting ambulances for stroke and trauma patients to other hospitals because of a “ransomware attack,” Crozer Health spokesperson Lori Bookbinder told CNN.
The hack hit Prospect Medical Holdings and affected all of their health care facilities, according to a statement from PMH affiliate Eastern Connecticut Health Network. PMH owns 16 hospitals in California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, according to its website.
At Eastern Connecticut Health Network, which includes two hospitals, the urgent care center is closed and elective surgeries were canceled until further noticed because of the hack, according to the network’s website.
Other Prospect Medical Holdings affiliates reported disruptions from the hack.
“We are working closely with federal law enforcement to respond to this incident,” Prospective Medical Holdings said in a statement to CNN.
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told CNN that the White House is “closely monitoring the ongoing incident,” adding that “the Department of Health and Human Services has been in contact with the company to offer federal assistance, and we are ready to provide support as needed to prevent any disruption to patient care as a result of this incident.”
The company has so far declined offers of federal assistance, according to a US official.
But Prospective Medical Holdings said later Friday that they “believe there may have been a miscommunication or a misunderstanding” and that they “welcome any assistance from the federal government.”
CharterCARE Health Partners, which includes two hospitals in Rhode Island, said Thursday that the incident was affecting “inpatient and outpatient operations” and that “some patient procedures may be affected.”
Patient care continues at the affected hospitals, but they’re operating with limited capacity in what is now a well-rehearsed routine. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, ransomware and other cyberattacks hampered patient care at American hospitals that are often ill-equipped to deal with them.
Eastern Connecticut Health Network ended ambulance diversion at 10 a.m. local time Friday, spokesperson Nina Kruse told CNN. The emergency rooms at ECHN’s two hospitals have been open throughout the incident, Kruse said.
This isn’t Crozer Health’s first bout with ransomware. A June 2020 attack orchestrated by a prolific ransomware gang forced the hospital network to take its computer systems offline.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
Amazon’s virtual clinic is now available in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the company announced on Tuesday.
Amazon Clinic launched last November and offers customers 24/7 access to third-party health-care providers directly on Amazon’s website and mobile app. With the service, Amazon customers can receive telehealth treatment for dozens of common conditions, such as pink eye, urinary tract infections and hair loss.
The company said on Tuesday that in addition to message-based consultations being available in 34 states, Amazon Clinic now supports video visits nationwide. Amazon Clinic currently does not accept insurance, but medication prescribed by clinicians may be covered by insurance.
“At Amazon, we want to make it dramatically easier for people to get and stay healthy, and we’re doing that by helping customers get the care and medications they need in the way that is most convenient for them,” Dr. Nworah Ayogu, the chief medical officer and general manager at Amazon Clinic, said in a blog post Tuesday.
The virtual service will allow customers to see the cost before they start the visit, Ayogu said.
Amazon’s foray into the health care space comes as other retailers have made similar moves, from CVS to Walgreens to Walmart. The service will also face competition from urgent-care clinics that are popping up across the country as health care costs spiral and doctors visits for routine matters become impossible to book.
A huge number of telehealth startups grew out of the pandemic, although the market growth has begun to subside.
In recent years, Amazon has gradually been growing its footprint in the health care sector. In 2020, the company launched its own digital drugstore, Amazon Pharmacy. Earlier this year, Amazon also closed its acquisition of health care provider One Medical in a $3.9 billion deal.
Amazon had also partnered with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to provide better health care services and insurance at a lower cost to workers and families at the three companies, and possibly other businesses, too. That effort, however, never got off the ground and ultimately shut down in 2021.
Police in Oregon are looking for a suspect after a shooting at a hospital in downtown Portland left at least one person injured, authorities said.
Portland police said officers responded with a Crisis Response Team to Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in the northwest area of the city after reports of a person with a gun inside the facility, Sgt. Kevin Allen said in a news conference. The facility was placed on lockdown.
When officers responded, they were told a person had opened fire inside the hospital. At least one person was injured, Allen said.
“We were told that shots had been fired in the hospital,” Allen said. A witness told officers the suspected shooter had already left the hospital by the time police arrived.
A Fred Meyer grocery store nearby was evacuated and searched by police, but Allen said authorities have not located the suspect.
“This is still considered an active tactical incident. There’s efforts underway to locate the suspect,” Allen said, adding authorities “no longer think there’s any potential danger at the hospital.”
Allen said officers from across the city were contributing to the search for the suspected shooter. The hospital will remain on lockdown as officers investigate, he said.
Jonathan Avery, the hospital’s chief operating officer, called the shooting “an extremely scary situation.”
“We really want to make sure that folks do not come to Good Samaritan today until everything has been cleared and we’re back and open,” Avery said.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler also advised residents to “stay alert” on Twitter.
“This is still an active investigation,” the mayor wrote. “We urge those in the area to stay alert until further notice.”
Investigators in Baltimore are searching for multiple suspects in a mass shooting that turned a beloved annual neighborhood block party into chaos early Sunday, killing two people and injuring 28 others, most of whom were teens, officials said.
The search for the shooters – investigators believe at least two were involved in the incident – is ongoing, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN Monday, vowing,“We will not rest until we find those who cowardly decided to shoot up this block party and carry out acts of violence which we know will be illegal guns.”
Officials are combing through “every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything that we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”
The gunfire erupted early Sunday in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn, where community members were enjoying a yearly celebration dubbed Brooklyn Day.
Aaliyah Gonzalez, 18, whose surname police initially spelled ending with an ‘s,’ and Kylis Fagbemi, 20, were fatally shot, the Baltimore Police Department announced.
The dozens of surviving victims all sustained gunshot wounds, according to acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley. Five of those injured were adults aged 20 or older and the remaining 23 were teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 19, police said.
Seven of the wounded remain in hospitals, with four in critical condition and three in stable condition, the mayor noted.
Investigators are scouring the sprawling crime scene – which spans several blocks – for evidence and are poring over hours of surveillance footage, the police commissioner said. Officials have also urged community members to come forward with any relevant information or video footage that may assist in the investigation.
A reward for information leading to the capture of the suspects has been raised to $28,000, Worley said at a news conference Monday.
Police began receiving calls reporting the shooting around 12:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Worley.
As officers arrived on the scene, they found an 18-year-old woman – later identified as Gonzalez – dead, police said. A 20-year-old identified as Fagbemi was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
An ice cream truck was parked directly across from where Gonzalez was shot and killed. The truck’s driver, Keith, who declined to give his last name, told CNN he watched her collapse on the stairs as hundreds of people ran for cover.
Keith said he told his children to lay down on the floor of the truck and wait for the rounds of shooting to stop.
“I walked over to [Gonzalez], checked her pulse, straightened her out, tried to start doing CPR but she was already dead,” he said.
Some who suffered gunshot injuries took shelter inside the ice cream truck. On Monday morning, blood was still on the ground near the truck’s parking spot.
Keith said he could not see where the gunshots were coming from. He said there were no disruptions at the block party before the shooting started.
He said his two daughters, 13 and 18 years old, are “fine but extremely stressed out.”
Investigators have yet to determine a motive in the attack and are still figuring out whether the victims were targeted or indiscriminately shot at, the police commissioner said. As officers canvassed the neighborhood during the day Sunday, K-9 units located additional shell casings that had not been found overnight, he said.
Staff at MedStar Harbor Hospital were expecting a routine overnight shift when they were met with the arrival of several patients with traumatic gunshot wounds, Dr. Hania Habeeb, associate chair of the emergency department, said at a news conference Monday.
Habeeb said the hospital received 19 patients within an hour, 14 of whom were teenagers. Many of the patients were minors, brought in by family and loved ones who were “appropriately concerned,” she said.
“We didn’t know if we were safe. We didn’t know if the shooter or shooters were right outside of our hospital doors,” Habeeb said.
The hospital went on immediate lockdown to ensure safety while staff performed lifesaving procedures to stabilize the victims. Habeeb added 10 patients were transferred to Baltimore trauma centers.
The attack marks one of the latest acts of gun violence to thrust an American community into grief as they gather in everyday spaces, including parks, schools, shopping malls and grocery stores.
“This was a reckless, cowardly act of violence that has taken two lives and altered many, many more,” Scott said. “This tragic incident is another glaring, unfortunate example of the deep issues of violence in Baltimore, in Maryland and this country and particularly gun violence and the access to illegal guns.”
Just three days into the month, it is one of five mass shootings in July and one of 340 mass shootings in the US in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.
“These weapons come from Virginia, they come from Texas, they come from Florida, they come from Alabama, they come from everywhere in this country,” Scott said.
“We have to deal with this issue of guns and the flow of illegal guns into the hands of people who should not have them at the national level,” he added.
The National Rifle Association sued Maryland Gov. Wes Moore after he signed the Gun Safety Act of 2023 and other gun safety measures into law in May, court documents show.
The block party was held as an annual celebration of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Scott called on the public to think of the shooting as if it happened in a rural community. “When it happens in Baltimore, Chicago or DC it doesn’t get that same attention,” he said.
“These Black American lives, children’s lives, matter just as anyone else,” he added.
Scott described the Brooklyn neighborhood as a working-class community filled with “immense pride.”
“It is a neighborhood that has had its troubles, but a neighborhood that has seen some folks in that community really determined to see it be successful and see things turn around,” he added.
There were “at least a couple hundred people” at the event Saturday, Worley said at Monday’s news conference, describing it as “unpermitted,” emphasizing no organizers had filed paperwork with the city.
Asked about whether police had been appropriately staffed for the event, Worley said the annual celebration happens on a different Saturday each year. In the past, law enforcement was able to discover the date of the event in advance to prepare resources.
But this year, police did not learn of the event until the day of, Worley said. “As far as I know, no one notified BPD that Brooklyn Day was happening on July 1st.”
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get there in time to prevent what happened.”
Mayor Scott said Sunday his office is mobilizing every available resource to assist with the investigation, including distributing information about community-based services available to residents in the Brooklyn Homes area, which he described as a public housing facility.
Yvonne Booker, a resident of Brooklyn Homes, told CNN affiliate WBAL she’s lived in the area for three decades and feels the gun violence has reached a breaking point.
“It’s kind of hard for me. I’m a mother. They need to stop. It’s too much. I’ve been to so many funerals in this community,” Booker said.
At least nine people were shot Friday in what police believe was a “targeted and isolated incident” in San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood.
Of the nine initially hospitalized, at least six people are still being treated at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the hospital said in a statement to CNN on Sunday.
One patient remains in critical condition, two are in fair condition, three are in good condition and three have since been released, according to the hospital.
The shooting happened while “some sort of block party” was ongoing, San Francisco Police Department Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya said during a news conference.
Police officers were called to the Mission District at 24th and Treat St. around 9 pm local time.
“When officers arrived on scene they located multiple victims suffering from gunshot wounds,” police said in a statement. “Officers summoned medics to the scene to treat and transport the victims to local area hospitals.”
Eight of the people wounded are males and one is female, the hospital statement said, with ages ranging from 20 to 34 years old.
No arrests were immediately reported by authorities.
The Mission District, better known as The Mission, is a large and diverse neighborhood often known for its historic architecture in the east-central portion of San Francisco.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is investigating two hospitals that “did not offer necessary stabilizing care to an individual experiencing an emergency medical condition, in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA),” according to a letter from US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Under EMTALA, health care professionals are required to “offer treatment, including abortion care, that the provider reasonably determines is necessary to stabilize the patient’s emergency medical condition,” Becerra said Monday in his letter to national hospital and provider associations.
The National Women’s Law Center, which said in a statement that it filed the initial EMTALA complaint on behalf of Mylissa Farmer, identified the hospitals as Freeman Hospital West of Joplin, Missouri, and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas.
The patient was nearly 18 weeks pregnant when she had a preterm premature rupture of membranes, Becerra wrote, but she was told that her pregnancy wasn’t viable.
“Although her doctors advised her that her condition could rapidly deteriorate, they also advised that they could not provide her with the care that would prevent infection, hemorrhage, and potentially death because, they said, the hospital policies prohibited treatment that could be considered an abortion,” Becerra wrote.
Becerra added in a statement Monday, “fortunately, this patient survived. But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place. We want her, and every patient out there like her, to know that we will do everything we can to protect their lives and health, and to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority.”
Abortion is banned in Missouri, with limited exceptions, such as to save the mother’s life. State law requires counseling and a 72-hour waiting period. In Kansas, abortion is generally banned at or after 22 weeks of pregnancy, with a 24-hour waiting period and counseling required.
Passed in 1986, EMTALA requires that hospitals provide stabilizing treatment to patients who have emergency medical conditions, or transfer them to facilities where such care will be provided, regardless of any conflicting state laws or mandates.
Changes to state laws in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to an abortion have left many hospitals and providers uncertain or confused about the steps they can legally take in such cases. HHS issued guidance last year reaffirming that EMTALA requires providers to offer stabilizing care in emergency cases, which might include abortion.
Hospitals found to be in violation of EMTALA could lose their Medicare and Medicaid provider agreements and could face civil penalties. An individual physician could also face civil penalties if they are found to be in violation.
HHS may impose a $119,942 fine per violation for hospitals with more than 100 beds and $59,973 for hospitals with fewer than 100 beds. A physician could face a $119,942 fine per violation.
The National Women’s Law Center says the new actions are the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned that EMTALA has been enforced against a hospital that denied emergency abortion care.
“The care provided to the patient was reviewed by the hospital and found to be in accordance with hospital policy,” the University of Kansas Health System said in a statement to CNN. “It met the standard of care based upon the facts known at the time, and complied with all applicable law. There is a process with CMS for this complaint and we respect that process. The University of Kansas Health System follows federal and Kansas law in providing appropriate, stabilizing, and quality care to all of its patients, including obstetric patients.”
Freeman Hospital did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
An HHS spokesperson told CNN that both hospitals are working toward coming into compliance with the law.
In the law center’s statement, Farmer said she was pleased with the investigations, “but pregnant people across the country continue to be denied care and face increased risk of complications or death, and it must stop. I was already dealing with unimaginable loss and the hospitals made things so much harder. I’m still struggling emotionally with what happened to me, but I am determined to keep fighting because no one should have to go through this.”
As fighting between warring factions has engulfed Sudan in recent days, hospitals treating people wounded in clashes have themselves become the targets for attacks, dealing the nation’s healthcare sector a devastating blow.
In one episode, five eyewitnesses told CNN that the paramilitary group battling Sudan’s military for control of the country besieged and shelled a hospital in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, leaving at least one child dead and sending panicked medical staff fleeing for their lives.
The leaders of the opposing sides, Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy and paramilitary chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have traded blame for instigating the fighting that has spread across the country since Saturday. Burhan has accused Dagalo of staging an “attempted coup”; Dagolo has in turn called Burhan a “criminal.”
But at al-Moallem hospital in central Khartoum, where intense shelling forced staffers to evacuate, leaving some patients behind, witnesses said they have little doubt about what happened.
“I have no doubt that they deliberately targeted the hospital,” said one medic who evacuated the hospital on Sunday after Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) laid siege to it. CNN is not using any of the real names of the hospital medics in this article for safety reasons.
The hospital is meters away from Sudan’s army headquarters, which the RSF has made repeated attempts to take over. Medics said it was treating scores of wounded army soldiers and their families. The hospital’s maternity ward was struck in the shelling, causing a wall there to collapse, according to hospital employees.
A 6-year-old child died in the building, one medic said. Two other children were seriously wounded. As the shelling intensified, medics and patients huddled together in the corridor and prayed.
At first we were praying for salvation,” the medic said. “Then when the shelling got worse, we started to discuss what would be the most painless part of the body to be shot in and began to pray instead to die painlessly.”
It’s unclear whether the RSF has taken control of the hospital as it attempts to take over the nearby army headquarters, a flashpoint in Khartoum’s violence.
“The evacuation was chaos,” the medic said. “I thought I was going to vomit. I was stumbling and falling on the ground.”
“Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel,” another medic said. “The smell of death was everywhere.”
“There was no electricity, no water there inside the hospital,” said a third medic. “None of our equipment was working, a woman sheltering with us had a two-day-old baby. I don’t even know what happened to her.”
At least half a dozen hospitals have been struck by both warring sides, according to Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union.
“Sudan’s hospitals under fire,” the Central Committee of Sudan doctors said in a statement on its Facebook page, warning of the potential collapse of the health sector if clashes continue.
“Most of the large and specialized hospitals are out of service as a result of being forcibly evacuated by the conflicting military forces or being targeted by bombing and others. Some other hospitals have been cut off from human and medical supplies, water and electricity,” the committee said.
Doctors Without Borders said its teams were “trapped by the ongoing heavy fighting and are unable to access warehouses to deliver vital medical supplies to hospitals,” and that its premises in Nyala, South Sarfur, had been looted.
Food, water and power shortages are rampant as Sudan has endured a third day of fighting, that has spread from Khartoum across the nation.
“Food in the fridge and freezers have gone bad,” Eman Abu Garjah, a Sudanese-British doctor based in Khartoum, told CNN. “We don’t have any supplies at the moment, that’s why we’re trying to go somewhere where the shops are open.”
“The planes were flying overhead earlier in the day. They didn’t just wake us up, they prevented us from going back to sleep,” she said.
“It’s Ramadan, we’re up for early morning prayers and after that usually you have a little bit of a siesta and wake up again for the afternoon prayers. But sleep was just not possible. The house was rattling and the windows were shaking.”
Until recently, Dagalo and Burhan were allies. The pair worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021.
However, tensions arose during recent negotiations to integrate the RSF into the country’s military as part of plans to restore civilian rule.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Burhan accused Dagalo of attempting to “capture and kill” him during an attempt by the paramilitary leader to seize the presidential palace.
In response to the allegation, an RSF spokesperson called Burhan, “a wanted fugitive.”
“We are seeking to capture him and bringing him to justice. We are fighting for all Sudanese people,” the RSF spokesperson said.
Burhan also accused the RSF of breaking a proposed ceasefire on Sunday and Monday.
“Yesterday and today a humanitarian ceasefire proposal was put forward and agreed upon,” said Burhan from army headquarters, as gunshots rang out in the background.
“Sadly, he did not abide by (the ceasefire),” he added. “You can hear right now the attempts to storm the Army headquarters, and indiscriminate mortar attacks. He’s using the humanitarian pause to continue the fight.”
The RSF denies that it broke ceasefire.
It is unclear how much control the RSF has wrested from the country’s military. Dagalo claims he now controls the country’s main military sites, a claim repeatedly disputed by Burhan.
“We’re under attack from all directions,” Dagalo told CNN’s Larry Madowo in a telephone interview on Sunday. “We stopped fighting and the other side did not, which put us in a predicament and we had to keep fighting to defend ourselves,” he claimed.
The RSF is the preeminent paramilitary group in Sudan, whose leader, Dagalo, has enjoyed a rapid rise to power.
During Sudan’s Darfur conflict, starting in the early 2000s, he was the leader of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed forces, implicated in human rights violations and atrocities.
An international outcry saw ex-President Bashir formalize the group into paramilitary forces known as the Border Intelligence Units.
In 2007, its troops became part of the country’s intelligence services and, in 2013, Bashir created the RSF, a paramilitary group overseen by him and led by Dagalo. Dagalo turned against Bashir in 2019.
Months before the coup that unseated Bashir in April 2019, Dagalo’s forces opened fire on an anti-Bashir, pro-democracy sit-in in Khartoum, killing at least 118 people.
He was later appointed deputy of the transitional Sovereign Council that ruled Sudan in partnership with civilian leadership.
International powers have expressed alarm at the current violence in Sudan. Apart from concerns over civilians there are likely other motivations at play, the country is resource-rich and strategically located. CNN has previously reported on how Russia has colluded with its military leaders to smuggle gold out of Sudan.
Intense fighting has gripped Sudan for a third day and hospitals are under attack from missiles as they battle to save lives, amid a bloody tussle for power that has left close to 100 people dead and injured hundreds more.
Clashes first erupted Saturday between the country’s military and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who told CNN on Sunday the army had broken a UN-brokered temporary humanitarian ceasefire.
On Monday, residents in the capital Khartoum endured sounds of artillery and bombardment by warplanes with eyewitnesses telling CNN they heard mortars in the early hours. The fighting intensifying after dawn prayers in the direction of Khartoum International Airport and Sudanese Army garrison sites.
Hospitals in the country – which are short of blood supplies and life-saving equipment – are being targeted with military strikes by both the Army and the RSF, according to eyewitness accounts to CNN and two doctors’ organizations, leaving medical personnel unable to reach the wounded and to bury the dead.
One doctor at a Khartoum hospital – whom CNN is not naming for security reasons – said his facility has been targeted since Saturday. “A direct strike hit the maternity ward. We could hear heavy weaponry and lay on the floor, along with our patients. The hospital itself was under attack.”
CNN has reached out to the Sudanese military and the RSF for comment.
Another doctor at the same al-Moallem Hospital told CNN that hospital staff stayed on site under bombardment from the RSF for two days, before being evacuated by the Sudanese military. “We were living in a real battle,” the doctor said. “Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel? I can’t believe that I survived dying at the hospital, where the smell of death is everywhere.”
Hemedti said Monday his group will pursue the leader of Sudan’s Armed Forces Abdel Fattah al-Burhan “and bring him to justice,” while Sudan’s army called on paramilitary fighters to defect and join the armed forces.
Verified video footage shows military jets and helicopters hitting the airport; other clips show the charred remains of the army’s General Command building nearby after it was engulfed in fire on Sunday.
Residents in neighborhoods east of the airport told CNN they saw warplanes bombing sites east of the command. “We saw explosions and smoke rising from Obaid Khatim Street, and immediately after that, anti-aircraft artillery fired massively towards the planes,” one eyewitness said.
Amid the chaos, both parties to the fighting are working to portray a sense of control in the capital. The armed forces said Monday the Rapid Support Forces are circulating “lies to mislead the public,” reiterating the army have “full control of all of their headquarters” in the capital Khartoum.
Sudan’s national state television channel came back on air on Monday, a day after going dark, and is broadcasting messages in support of the army.
A banner on the channel said “the armed forces were able to regain control of the national broadcaster after repeated attempts by the militias to destroy its infrastructure.” Although the armed forces appear to have control of the television signal, CNN cannot independently verify that the army is in physical control of the Sudan TV premises.
A banner on the channel said “the armed forces were able to regain control of the national broadcaster after repeated attempts by the militias to destroy its infrastructure.”
In the Kafouri area, north of Khartoum, clashes and street fights broke out at dawn Monday, prompting residents to begin evacuating women and children from the area, Sudanese journalist Fathi Al-Ardi wrote on Facebook. In the Kalakla area, south of the capital, residents reported the walls of their houses shaking from explosions.
Reports also emerged of battles hundreds of miles away in the eastern city of Port Sudan and the western Darfur region over the weekend.
As of Monday, at least 97 people have been killed, according to the Preliminary Committee of Sudanese Doctors trade union. Earlier on Sunday, the World Health Organization estimated more than 1,126 were injured.
The WHO has warned that doctors and nurses are struggling to reach people in need of urgent care, and are lacking essential supplies.
“Supplies distributed by WHO to health facilities prior to this recent escalation of conflict are now exhausted, and many of the nine hospitals in Khartoum receiving injured civilians are reporting shortages of blood, transfusion equipment, intravenous fluids, medical supplies, and other life-saving commodities,” the organization said on Sunday.
Water and power cuts are affecting the functionality of health facilities, and shortages of fuel for hospital generators are also being reported,” the WHO added.
In the CNN interview, Dagalo blamed the military for starting the conflict and claimed RSF “had to keep fighting to defend ourselves.”
He speculated that the army chief and his rival, al-Burhan, had lost control of the military. When asked if his endgame was to rule Sudan, Dagalo said he had “no such intentions,” and that there should be a civilian government.
Amid the fighting, civilians have been warned to stay indoors. One local resident tweeted that they were “trapped inside our own homes with little to no protection at all.”
“All we can hear is continuous blast after blast. What exactly is happening and where we don’t know, but it feels like it’s directly over our heads,” they wrote.
Access to information is also limited, with the government-owned national TV channel now off the air. Television employees told CNN that it is in the hands of the RSF.
The conflict has put other countries and organizations on high alert, with the United Nations’ World Food Program temporarily halting all operations in Sudan after three employees were killed in clashes on Saturday.
UN and other humanitarian facilities in Darfur have been looted, while a WFP-managed aircraft was seriously damaged by gunfire in Khartoum, impeding the WFP’s ability to transport aid and workers within the country, the international aid agency said.
Qatar Airways announced Sunday it was temporarily suspending flights to and from Khartoum due to the closure of its airport and airspace.
On Sunday, Dagalo told CNN the RSF was in control of the airport, as well as several other government buildings in the capital.
Meanwhile, Mexico is working to evacuate its citizens from Sudan, with the country’s foreign minister saying Sunday it is looking to “expedite” their exit.
The United States embassy in Sudan said Sunday there were no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation yet for Americans in the country, citing the closure of the Khartoum airport. It advised US citizens to stay indoors and shelter in place, adding that it would make an announcement “if evacuation of private US citizens becomes necessary.”
The fresh clashes have prompted widespread calls for peace and negotiations. The head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, is scheduled to arrive in Khartoum on Monday, in an attempt to stop the fighting.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also for an immediate ceasefire.
“People in Sudan want the military back in the barracks, they want democracy, they want a civilian-led government. Sudan needs to return to that path,” Blinken said, speaking on the sidelines of the G7 foreign minister talks in Japan on Monday.
The UN’s political mission in Sudan has said the country’s two warring factions have agreed to a “proposal” although it is not yet clear what that entails.
At the heart of the clashes is a power struggle between the two military leaders, Dagalo and Burhan.
The pair had worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021, which ended a power-sharing agreement between the military and civilian groups.
The military has been in charge of Sudan since then, with Burhan and Dagalo at the helm.
But recent talks led to cracks in the alliance between the two men. The negotiations have sought to integrate the RSF into the country’s military, as part of the effort to transition to civilian rule.
Sources in Sudan’s civilian movement and Sudanese military sources told CNN the main points of contention included the timeline for the merger of the forces, the status given to RSF officers in the future hierarchy, and whether RSF forces should be under the command of the army chief, rather than Sudan’s commander-in-chief, who is currently Burhan.
Irvo Otieno had a million-dollar smile, respected others and stood up for what he believed was right, family and friends said Wednesday at the funeral for the man who died after he was pinned to the floor by security officers at a Virginia mental health hospital.
Now it’s time for society to stand for what is right – by implementing law enforcement and mental health care reforms, speakers told mourners during Otieno’s service at First Baptist Church of South Richmond.
Seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital employees are accused of second-degree murder in the March 6 death of the aspiring musician, 28, who prosecutors say was smothered during what the family said was a mental health crisis.
“What kind of sickness would make men pile on a man that’s already handcuffed and shackled?” Rev. Al Sharpton said during the eulogy.
“He had an illness. He should have been doctored to, not treated with brutality,” Sharpton said.
The minister and family attorney Ben Crump said police need to be better equipped to deal with those with mental illness.
They also encouraged Virginia officials to make reforms.
“We can develop mental health courts where they will be treated like they have illness and not like they are criminals and degenerates not worthy of dignity and respect,” Crump told mourners. “Irvo deserved dignity and respect.”
On March 3, Henrico Police responded to a report of a possible burglary and encountered Otieno. Police officers – along with the county’s crisis intervention team – put Otieno under an emergency custody order due to their interactions with and observations of him, police said.
According to Virginia law, a person can be placed under an emergency custody order when there is reason to believe they could hurt themselves or others as a result of mental illness.
The officers transported Otieno to a hospital where authorities say he assaulted three officers. Police took him to county jail and he was booked. At around 4 p.m. on March 6, Otieno was taken to Central State Hospital, a state-run mental health facility south of Richmond, by the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office, according to the commonwealth attorney’s office. It’s not clear why deputies transferred Otieno.
State police investigators were later told Otieno became “combative” and was “physically restrained” during the intake process, the commonwealth attorney’s office said on March 14.
Surveillance video recently released by a prosecutor shows Otieno being pinned to the floor.
Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill’s office released 911 calls about the incident in which a caller described Otieno as “very aggressive” and repeatedly asked for an ambulance, saying he was not breathing.
The video begins as Otieno, bound by his hands and feet, is forcibly taken into a room and dragged into an upright seated position on the floor with his back against a chair. Ten minutes later, after Otieno has turned onto his side with three people holding him, his body jerks, and five more deputies and workers move to pin Otieno to the floor.
A clear view of Otieno is blocked in much of the video, but one deputy appears to be lying across Otieno for most of the incident as he is forced onto his stomach. Eventually, Otieno is rolled onto his back, where several deputies appear to be restraining him with their knees. One deputy holds Otieno’s head still by grabbing his braided hair.
After 12 minutes of Otieno being pinned to the ground, one deputy can be seen shaking Otieno’s hair and attempting to take a neck pulse, but Otieno is unresponsive. Three more minutes pass before CPR begins, with Otieno’s limbs still shackled.
Medical workers from the hospital are seen converging on the room as CPR continues for nearly an hour. After he is pronounced dead, Otieno is covered in a white sheet, still lying on the floor, his body briefly left alone in the room.
An attorney for one of the deputies charged in the case told CNN he’s “disappointed” the prosecutor released the video because he thinks it could influence the jury pool.
Seven Henrico County deputies, who turned themselves in to state police earlier this month, are on administrative leave as investigations by their agency and state police continue, Henrico County Sheriff Alisa Gregory said in a statement.
CNN has sought comment from the deputies. Caleb Kershner, deputy Randy Joseph Boyer’s attorney, told CNN recently that they had yet to see video but claimed “nothing was outside of the ordinary” in the lead-up to Otieno’s death.
“They delivered him as fast as they could because obviously this was a man in tremendous need of some sort of medical attention,” Kershner said. He added that his client said they had dealt with Otieno “for a long time and he had a significant amount of violent noncompliance.”
Prosecutor describes VA death in custody
Three Central State Hospital workers who were arrested were placed on leave “pending the results of the legal proceedings,” the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and Central State Hospital said in a statement. Officials said they will ensure the family receives information about “the tragic events at the hospital.”
The Henrico Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, the local law enforcement officers’ union, “stands behind” the deputies, it said in a statement on Facebook.
CNN has reached out to attorneys, the hospital and jail for additional comment.
Crump has said Otieno was not being aggressive or resisting during the incident. “He was trying to breathe,” he told reporters. “If you were down there, restrained and all of these people on top of you, you would be trying to breathe. You would try to move, too, to let your lungs expand.”
The attorney told those attending Wednesday’s funeral that the situation should have been treated differently.
“When Black people in America have mental health issues, we cannot treat them like criminal issues,” Crump said.
Sharpton said Otieno was a man of talent whose life was unnecessarily cut short.
“If he’d been cared for, rather than cared-less law enforcement, he could have been a shining example of how people, despite their challenges, can be productive anyway.”
The musician’s mother spoke near the end of the service, saying her son had character and will be missed.
“May your spirit lead us in this pursuit of truth and justice. I will miss your infectious smile and your big hugs,” said Caroline Ouko. “We will get to the bottom of what happened to you.”
Three of the 10 people facing murder charges in the death last week of a 28-year-old Black man at a Virginia mental health facility were security guards at the hospital who watched and then participated in the fatal smothering, the prosecutor told CNN Friday.
The victim’s family wants answers as to how a promising musician having what they called a mental health crisis ended with him dying – and why no one stood up for him and kept him from being killed.
The county prosecutor said seven law enforcement deputies, joined by the hospital workers, “smothered him to death” while restraining him.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said, referring to unreleased video that shows the man’s death.
Baskervill said the hospital security guards passively watched the alleged smothering but eventually joined in and piled on top of the victim along with the deputies.
The local law enforcement officers’ union says they “stand behind” the deputies while an attorney for one of the deputies charged said he looked forward to the full truth being shared in court.
Here’s what we know about the deadly incident.
Irvo (pronounced EYE-voh) Otieno was 28. He had a passion for music, family attorney Mark Krudys said Thursday, and was working to become a hip-hop artist. Originally from Kenya, he came to the United States when he was 4.
His mother, Caroline Ouko, said he had “found his thing” with music and could write a song in less than five minutes. “He put his energy in that and he was happy with it,” she said at a news conference Thursday.
Irvo had a big heart, she said, and was the one his classmates came to when they had problems. He was a leader who brought his own perspective to the table, she added.
“If there was discussion, he was not afraid to go the other way when everybody else was following,” she said.
Her son had a mental illness that necessitated medicine, Ouko said. He had long stretches where “(you) wouldn’t even know something was wrong” and then there were times when “he would go into some kind of distress and then you know he needs to see a doctor,” she said.
On March 3, Otieno was arrested by Henrico County police who were responding to a report of a possible burglary, according to a police news release. The officers, accompanied by members of the county’s crisis intervention team, placed him under an emergency custody order.
The officers transported him to a hospital where authorities say he assaulted three officers. Police took him to county jail and he was booked.
On March 6, Otieno was taken to a state mental health facility in Dinwiddie County and died during the intake process, according toBaskervill.
“They smothered him to death,” the prosecutor said.
A preliminary report from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond identified asphyxiation as a cause of death, the commonwealth attorney’s office said in a statement.
Otieno was held on the ground in handcuffs and leg irons for 12 minutes by seven deputies, Baskervill said.
Baskervill said Friday that video of the apparent smothering shows there were hands over Otieno’s mouth, hands on his head and hands holding his braids back.
At the Henrico County jail, just before Otieno’s transfer to Central State Hospital on March 6, he was naked in his cell, with feces all over, according to Baskervill.
She told CNN the video from his cell, which she viewed, shows Otieno was clearly agitated and in distress. CNN has not seen the video.
Otieno was pepper sprayed before five or six Henrico jail deputies entered the cell and tackled him, Baskervill said.
“He’s on the ground underneath them for several minutes there,” she said. “And blows are sustained at the Henrico county jail.”
Asked if Otieno appeared combative, Baskervill said, “I would really characterize his behavior as being distressed, rather than assaultive, combative.”
Later, at Central State Hospital, Otieno was on the ground at one point with at least 10 people on top of him, Baskervill said.
“They’re putting their back into it, leaning down. And this is from head to toe, from his braids at the top of his head, unfortunately, to his toes,” she said.
Baskervill said Otieno was eventually put on his stomach, with the pressure on him continuing, and he died in that position.
Baskervill believes Otieno was dead before a 911 call was even made. Paramedics left and State Police were not called until 7:28 pm, according to Baskervill.
“The delay in contacting proper authorities is inexplicable. Truly inexplicable,” she said.
The seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers have been charged with second-degree murder.
The seven deputies who were charged were identified in Baskervill’s release Tuesday as Randy Joseph Boyer, 57, of Henrico; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37, of Sandston; Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45, of Henrico; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43, of Henrico; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50, of Henrico; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48, of Henrico; and Kaiyell Dajour Sanders, 30, of North Chesterfield.
The Henrico Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, the local law enforcement officers’ union, issued a statement Tuesday saying they “stand behind” the deputies.
“Policing in America today is difficult, made even more so by the possibility of being criminally charged while performing their duty,” the group said. “The death of Mr. Otieno was tragic, and we express our condolences to his family. We also stand behind the seven accused deputies now charged with murder by the Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Baskervill.”
The hospital workers arrested Thursday were identified as Darian M. Blackwell, 23, of Petersburg; Wavie L. Jones, 34, of Chesterfield; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27, of North Dinwiddie.
There is video footage but it will not be released to the public. CNN requested the footage but was told the material is not subject to mandatory disclosure because the investigation is ongoing.
“To maintain the integrity of the criminal justice process at this point, I am not able to publicly release the video,” said Baskervill, noting surveillance video from the mental health facility recorded the intake process.
Otieno’s family has viewed the video provided by prosecutors Thursday and his mother says Otieno was tortured.
“My son was treated like a dog, worse than a dog,” she screamed, angry that no one stopped what led to her son’s death. “We have to do better.”
His older brother, Leon Ochieng, said people should be confident in calling for help when their loved ones are in crisis. He did not believe the people he saw on the video cared about preserving a life.
“What I saw was a lifeless human being without any representation,” Ochieng said, adding that his family is now broken and is calling for more awareness on how to treat those with mental illnesses.
“Can someone explain to me why my brother is not here, right now?” Ochieng said.
CNN has sought comment from the deputies and received word from attorneys of three of the individuals charged.
Caleb Kershner, the attorney for Boyer, told CNN he has yet to see the video but said “nothing was outside the ordinary” in the process of transferring Otieno from jail to the mental health facility.
Kershner told CNN that Otieno refused to get out of the vehicle when arriving at the hospital and deputies had to use force to get him out.
Kershner also said hospital staff administered a sedative to Otieno when he was still alive and resisting. However, Baskervill on Wednesday said the shot was given after Otieno was already dead. CNN has reached out to the hospital for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
“My client was simply holding his leg throughout any ordeal in order to ensure that what we estimate to be a 350-pound man, who was having a severe mental health episode, as not let loose in a medical facility where he could severely injure other people,” Kershner said. “From my review of the case, nothing was outside the ordinary or outside the scope of their training for what they did.”
Peter B. Baruch, an attorney for Disse, issued a statement defending his client.
“Deputy Disse has had a 20-year career with the Sheriffs department, and has served honorably. He is looking forward to his opportunity to try this case and for the full truth to be shared in court and being vindicated,” he said.
Bramble’s attorney, Steven Hanna, said he was still gathering information and declined to comment further.
CNN has not heard from the other attorneys it has identified as representing the other defendants.
An attorney representing one of the deputies told CNN he and other defense attorneys have not yet been able to review the video of Otieno’s death.
The lawyer said he is “shocked” the video has not been released and believes “they are overcharging” the deputies in this case.
Family attorneys say Otieno posed no threat to the deputies.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is working on behalf of the family, said Otieno was not violent or aggressive with the deputies.
“You see in the video he is restrained with handcuffs, he has leg irons on, and you see in the majority of the video that he seems to be in between lifelessness and unconsciousness, but yet you see him being restrained so brutally with a knee on his neck,” Crump said Thursday.
Crump said the video is a “commentary on how inhumane law enforcement officials treat people who are having a mental health crisis as criminals rather than treating them as people who are in need of help.”
Much like the arrest and death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Otieno was face down and restrained, Crump said.
“Why would anybody not have enough common sense to say we’ve seen this movie before?” he said.
Family attorney Mark Krudys said the deputies had engaged in excessive force.
“His mother was basically crying out for help for her son in a mental health situation. Instead, he was thrust into the criminal justice system, and aggressively treated and treated poorly at the jail,” he said.
The video from the mental health facility shows the charges are appropriate, Krudys said.
“When you see that video … you’re just going to ask yourself, ‘Why?’” he said.
The 10 defendants will appear in court Tuesday before a grand jury, according to online court records. If the case goes to trial and any of them are convicted, the prison sentence for second-degree murder in Virginia is a minimum of five years with a maximum of 40 years.
Crump has called for the US Department of Justice to take part in the investigation.
Effie Schnacky was wheezy and lethargic instead of being her normal, rambunctious self one February afternoon. When her parents checked her blood oxygen level, it was hovering around 80% – dangerously low for the 7-year-old.
Her mother, Jaimie, rushed Effie, who has asthma, to a local emergency room in Hudson, Wisconsin. She was quickly diagnosed with pneumonia. After a couple of hours on oxygen, steroids and nebulizer treatments with little improvement, a physician told Schnacky that her daughter needed to be transferred to a children’s hospital to receive a higher level of care.
The physical and mental burnout that occurred during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic has not gone away for overworked health care workers. Shortages of doctors and technicians are growing, experts say, but especially in skilled nursing. That, plus a shortage of people to train new nurses and the rising costs of hiring are leaving hospitals with unstaffed pediatric beds.
But a host of reasons building since well before the pandemic are also contributing. Children may be the future, but we aren’t investing in their health care in that way. With Medicaid reimbursing doctors at a lower rate for children, hospitals in tough situations sometimes put adults in those pediatric beds for financial reasons. And since 2019, children with mental health crises are increasingly staying in emergency departments for sometimes weeks to months, filling beds that children with other illnesses may need.
“There might or might not be a bed open right when you need one. I so naively just thought there was plenty,” Schnacky told CNN.
The number of pediatric beds decreasing has been an issue for at least a decade, said Dr. Daniel Rauch, chair of the Committee on Hospital Care for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
By 2018, almost a quarter of children in America had to travel farther for pediatric beds as compared to 2009, according to a 2021 paper in the journal Pediatrics by lead author Dr. Anna Cushing, co-authored by Rauch.
“This was predictable,” said Rauch, who has studied the issue for more than 10 years. “This isn’t shocking to people who’ve been looking at the data of the loss in bed capacity.”
The number of children needing care was shrinking before the Covid-19 pandemic – a credit to improvements in pediatric care. There were about 200,000 fewer pediatric discharges in 2019 than there were in 2017, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“In pediatrics, we have been improving the ability we have to take care of kids with chronic conditions, like sickle cell and cystic fibrosis, and we’ve also been preventing previously very common problems like pneumonia and meningitis with vaccination programs,” said Dr. Matthew Davis, the pediatrics department chair at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Pediatrics is also seasonal, with a typical drop in patients in the summer and a sharp uptick in the winter during respiratory virus season. When the pandemic hit, schools and day cares closed, which slowed the transmission of Covid and other infectious diseases in children, Davis said. Less demand meant there was less need for beds. Hospitals overwhelmed with Covid cases in adults switched pediatric beds to beds for grownups.
Only 37% of hospitals in the US nowoffer pediatric services, down from 42% about a decade ago, according to the American Hospital Association.
While pediatric hospital beds exist at local facilities, the only pediatric emergency department in Baltimore County is Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson, Maryland, according to Dr. Theresa Nguyen, the center’s chair of pediatrics. All the others in the county, which has almost 850,000 residents, closed in recent years, she said.
The nearby MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center consolidated its pediatric ER with the main ER in 2018, citing a 40% drop in pediatric ER visits in five years, MedStar Health told CNN affiliate WBAL.
In the six months leading up to Franklin Square’s pediatric ER closing, GBMC admitted an average of 889 pediatric emergency department patients each month. By the next year, that monthly average jumped by 21 additional patients.
“Now we’re seeing the majority of any pediatric ED patients that would normally go to one of the surrounding community hospitals,” Nguyen said.
In other cases, it’s the hospitals that have only 10 or so pediatric beds that started asking the tough questions, Davis said.
“Those hospitals have said, ‘You know what? We have an average of one patient a day or two patients a day. This doesn’t make sense anymore. We can’t sustain that nursing staff with specialized pediatric training for that. We’re going to close it down,’” Davis said.
Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise closed its pediatric inpatient unit in July because of financial reasons, the center told CNN affiliate KBOI. That closure means patients are now overwhelming nearby St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital, which is the only children’s hospital in the state of Idaho, administrator for St. Luke’s Children’s Katie Schimmelpfennig told CNN. Idaho ranks last for the number of pediatricians per 100,000 children, according to the American Board of Pediatrics in 2023.
The Saint Alphonsus closure came just months before the fall, when RSV, influenza and a cadre of respiratory viruses caused a surge of pediatric patients needing hospital care, with the season starting earlier than normal.
The changing tide of demand engulfed the already dwindling supply of pediatric beds, leaving fewer beds available for children coming in for all the common reasons, like asthma, pneumonia and other ailments. Additional challenges have made it particularly tough to recover.
Another factor chipping away at bed capacity over time: Caring for children pays less than caring for adults. Lower insurance reimbursement rates mean some hospitals can’t afford to keep these beds – especially when care for adults is in demand.
Medicaid, which provides health care coverage to people with limited income, is a big part of the story, according to Joshua Gottlieb, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
“Medicaid is an extremely important payer for pediatrics, and it is the least generous payer,” he said. “Medicaid is responsible for insuring a large share of pediatric patients. And then on top of its low payment rates, it is often very cumbersome to deal with.”
Medicaid reimburses children’s hospitals an average of 80% of the cost of the care, including supplemental payments, according to the Children’s Hospital Association, a national organization which represents 220 children’s hospitals. The rate is far below what private insurers reimburse.
More than 41 million children are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data from October. That’s more than half the children in the US, according to Census data.
At Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, about 55% of patients use Medicaid, according to Dr. David Wessel, the hospital’s executive vice president.
“Children’s National is higher Medicaid than most other children’s hospitals, but that’s because there’s no safety net hospital other than Children’s National in this town,” said Wessel, who is also the chief medical officer and physician-in-chief.
And it just costs more to care for a child than an adult, Wessel said. Specialty equipment sized for smaller people is often necessary. And a routine test or exam for an adult is approached differently for a child. An adult can lie still for a CT scan or an MRI, but a child may need to be sedated for the same thing. A child life specialist is often there to explain what’s going on and calm the child.
“There’s a whole cadre of services that come into play, most of which are not reimbursed,” he said. “There’s no child life expert that ever sent a bill for seeing a patient.”
“When insurance pays more, people build more health care facilities, hire more workers and treat more patients,” Gottlieb said.
“Everyone might be squeezed, but it’s not surprising that pediatric hospitals, which face [a]lower, more difficult payment environment in general, are going to find it especially hard.”
Dr. Benson Hsu is a pediatric critical care provider who has served rural South Dakota for more than 10 years. Rural communities face distinct challenges in health care, something he has seen firsthand.
A lot of rural communities don’t have pediatricians, according to the American Board of Pediatrics. It’s family practice doctors who treat children in their own communities, with the goal of keeping them out of the hospital, Hsu said. Getting hospital care often means traveling outside the community.
Hsu’s patients come from parts of Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota, as well as across South Dakota, he said. It’s a predominantly rural patient base, which also covers those on Native American reservations.
“These kids are traveling 100, 200 miles within their own state to see a subspecialist,” Hsu said, referring to patients coming to hospitals in Sioux Falls. “If we are transferring them out, which we do, they’re looking at travels of 200 to 400 miles to hit Omaha, Minneapolis, Denver.”
Inpatient pediatric beds in rural areas decreased by 26% between 2008 and 2018, while the number of rural pediatric units decreased by 24% during the same time, according to the 2021 paper in Pediatrics.
“It’s bad, and it’s getting worse. Those safety net hospitals are the ones that are most at risk for closure,” Rauch said.
In major cities, the idea is that a critically ill child would get the care they need within an hour, something clinicians call the golden hour, said Hsu, who is the critical care section chair at the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“That golden hour doesn’t exist in the rural population,” he said. “It’s the golden five hours because I have to dispatch a plane to land, to drive, to pick up, stabilize, to drive back, to fly back.”
When his patients come from far away, it uproots the whole family, he said. He described families who camp out at a child’s bedside for weeks at a time. Sometimes they are hundreds of miles from home, unlike when a patient is in their own community and parents can take turns at the hospital.
“I have farmers who miss harvest season and that as you can imagine is devastating,” Hsu said. “These aren’t office workers who are taking their computer with them. … These are individuals who have to live and work in their communities.”
Back at GBMC in Maryland, an adolescent patient with depression, suicidal ideation and an eating disorder was in the pediatric emergency department for 79 days, according to Nguyen. For months, no facility had a pediatric psychiatric bed or said it could take someone who needed that level of care, as the patient had a feeding tube.
“My team of physicians, social workers and nurses spend a significant amount of time every day trying to reach out across the state of Maryland, as well as across the country now to find placements for this adolescent,” Nguyen said before the patient was transferred in mid-March. “I need help.”
Nguyen’s patient is just one of the many examples of children and teens with mental health issues who are stayingin emergency rooms and sometimes inpatient beds across the country because they need help, but there isn’t immediately a psychiatric bed or a facility that can care for them.
It’s a problem that began before 2020 and grew worse during the pandemic, when the rate of children coming to emergency rooms with mental health issues soared, studies show.
Now, a nationwide shortage of beds exists for children who need mental health help. A 2020 federal survey revealed that the number of residential treatment facilities for children fell 30% from 2012.
“There are children on average waiting for two weeks for placement, sometimes longer,” Nguyen said of the patients at GBMC. The pediatric emergency department there had an average of 42 behavioral health patients each month from July 2021 through December 2022, up 13.5% from the same period in 2017 to 2018, before the pandemic, according to hospital data.
When there are mental health patients staying in the emergency department, that can back up the beds in other parts of the hospital, creating a downstream effect, Hsu said.
“For example, if a child can’t be transferred from a general pediatric bed to a specialized mental health center, this prevents a pediatric ICU patient from transferring to the general bed, which prevents an [emergency department] from admitting a child to the ICU. Health care is often interconnected in this fashion,” Hsu said.
“If we don’t address the surging pediatric mental health crisis, it will directly impact how we can care for other pediatric illnesses in the community.”
Funding for children’s hospitals is already tight, Rauch said, and more money is needed not only to make up for low insurance reimbursement rates but to competitively hire and train new staff and to keep hospitals running.
“People are going to have to decide it’s worth investing in kids,” Rauch said. “We’re going to have to pay so that hospitals don’t lose money on it and we’re going to have to pay to have staff.”
Virtual visits, used in the right situations, could ease some of the problems straining the pediatric system, Rauch said. Extending the reach of providers would prevent transferring a child outside of their community when there isn’t the provider with the right expertise locally.
Increased access to children’s mental health services
With the ongoing mental health crisis, there’s more work to be done upstream, said Amy Wimpey Knight, the president of CHA.
“How do we work with our school partners in the community to make sure that we’re not creating this crisis and that we’re heading it off up there?” she said.
There’s also a greater need for services within children’s hospitals, which are seeing an increase in children being admitted with behavioral health needs.
“If you take a look at the reasons why kids are hospitalized, meaning infections, diabetes, seizures and mental health concerns, over the last decade or so, only one of those categories has been increasing – and that is mental health,” Davis said. “At the same time, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of mental health hospital resources dedicated to children and adolescents in a way that meets the increasing need.”
Most experts CNN spoke to agreed: Seek care for your child early.
“Whoever is in your community is doing everything possible to get the care that your child needs,” Hsu said. “Reach out to us. We will figure out a way around the constraints around the system. Our number one concern is taking care of your kids, and we will do everything possible.”
Nguyen from GBMC and Schimmelpfennig from St. Luke’s agreed with contacting your primary care doctor and trying to keep your child out of the emergency room.
“Anything they can do to stay out of the hospital or the emergency room is both financially better for them and better for their family,” Schimmelpfennig said.
Knowing which emergency room or urgent care center is staffed by pediatricians is also imperative, Rauch said. Most children visit a non-pediatric ER due to availability.
“A parent with a child should know where they’re going to take their kid in an emergency. That’s not something you decide when your child has the emergency,” he said.
After Effie’s first ambulance ride and hospitalization last month, the Schnacky family received an asthma action plan from the pulmonologist in the ER.
It breaks down the symptoms into green, yellow and red zones with ways Effie can describe how she’s feeling and the next steps for adults. The family added more supplies to their toolkit, like a daily steroid inhaler and a rescue inhaler.
“We have everything an ER can give her, besides for an oxygen tank, at home,” Schnacky said. “The hope is that we are preventing even needing medical care.”
A Pennsylvania woman who disappeared more than 30 years ago and was believed to be dead by her family was recently found living in a nursing home in Puerto Rico, her family and police said at a news conference Thursday.
Patricia Kopta, 83, was last seen in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1992, according to a missing person flier posted by the Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center.
Her husband, Bob Kopta, reported her missing a few months later in the fall. At the time, he advised authorities that it wasn’t uncommon for his wife to “drop out of sight for short periods,” according to the flier.
“I come home one night and she’s gone, and nobody knew where she was at,” Kopta said at the news conference with Ross Township Police.
Police said they were first informed about the discovery of the missing woman when an agent from the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and a social worker from Puerto Rico contacted them last year saying that they believed Patricia was living in an adult care home in Puerto Rico.
“What they reported to us was that she came into their care in 1999, when she was found in need in the streets of Puerto Rico,” Ross Township Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhepp said.
INTERPOL and the social worker said Patricia was found wandering the streets and through the years she had “refused to ever discuss her private life or where she came from,” Kohlhepp said.
In her advanced age, Patricia started revealing nuggets that would eventually spur those around her to contact Ross police, Kohlhepp said.
When she was in Pittsburgh, Patricia was a “well-known street preacher,” according to the missing person flier. She would approach strangers, telling them she had visions of the Virgin Mary and that the world was coming to an end, the flier said.
Police said her disappearance wasn’t overtly suspicious because they “knew she had a mental health history and she had made statements to other family individuals that she was leaving, that she was concerned that she was going to be placed into a care facility here,” Kohlhepp said. Kohlhepp said police knew she had likely left of her own volition.
Her husband said that his wife had talked about wanting to go to Puerto Rico to live in a tropical environment.
“I even advertised in the paper down in Puerto Rico looking for her,” Kopta said at the news conference, adding that he spent a lot of money over the years searching for her.
Patricia and Bob were married for 20 years before she went missing, Kohlhepp told CNN. He added that Patricia had no known family or connections in Puerto Rico.
Police determined the woman was in fact Patricia through a nine-month-long process in which they compared DNA samples provided by her sister, Gloria Smith, and her nephew.
“We really thought she was dead all those years,” Smith said at the news conference.
Even before DNA testing was completed, the family knew it was Patricia as soon as they saw her photo, Kohlhepp said.
Smith said that she has called the adult care home in Puerto Rico several times but has been unable to hold a conversation with her sister because she has dementia.
“We didn’t expect it. It was a very big shock to see – to know that she’s still alive,” her sister said. “You know, we’re so happy and I hope I can get down to see her.”
CNN has not been able to directly contact the woman’s family.
While officials have repeatedly sought to assure residents that the water and air in East Palestine, Ohio, are safe after the derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials earlier this month, anxiety has permeated the community amid reports of rashes, nausea and headaches.
The state now plans to open a health clinic in East Palestine Tuesday for residents concerned about possible symptoms related to the derailment and the Biden administration announced it deployed experts to help assess what dangers remain in the area after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine requested medical teams from the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health.
It’s been over two weeks since a train carrying vinyl chloride derailed in the small community of less than 5,000 people, igniting a dayslong inferno and prompting crews to carry out detonations to the toxic chemical to prevent a potentially deadly explosion.
The detonations unleashed a black cloud of smoke over the area, where a chemical stench lingered for days. While it was deemed safe for evacuated residents to return home on February 8, community members have questioned how safe their village is and the validity of the air and water tests.
“We think the water’s safe,” Brown told CNN, citing comments made by the administrators of the state and federal Environmental Protection Agencies. “But when you return to your home, you should be tested again for your water and your soil and your air, not to mention those that have their own wells.”
Testing of air quality in more than 530 homes has shown no detection of contaminants, the US Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday.
As for the water, no vinyl chloride has been detected in any down-gradient waterways near the train derailment, EPA official Tiffani Kavalec told CNN last week.
And while some waterways in the area were contaminated – killing thousands of fish downstream – officials have said they believe those contaminants to be contained.
After crews discovered the contaminated runoff ontwo surface water streams, Sulphur Run and Leslie Run, Norfolk Southern installed booms and dams to restrict the flow of contaminated water, according to the EPA.
Still, despite the assurances from officials that the water is safe, some residents are too afraid to drink from their taps and the town has been distributing bottled water.
Desiree Walker – a 19-year residentof the town who lives just 900 feet from the derailment site – told CNN affiliate WOIO that she refuses to let her children drink the water, fearing it could have long-term health effects.
“There’s a big concern because they’re young. They’ve got their whole life ahead of them,” Walker said. “I don’t want this to impact them down the road. I want them to have a long, happy life.”
Walker said her family is feeling symptoms, but doctors tell them they don’t know what to test for.
“At nighttime especially is when we smell it the most,” she told the station. “Our throats are sore, we’re coughing a lot now. My son, his eyes matted shut.”
Residents reported a variety of issues – including rashes, sore throats, nausea and headaches – and shared worries that the symptoms could potentially be related to chemicals released after a train derailment.
“Why are people getting sick if there’s nothing in the air or in the water,” one resident yelled during the gathering.
Ayla Antoniazzi and her family returned to their house less than a mile from the crash site the day after evacuation orders were lifted. The mother made sure to air the house out and wash all the linen before bringing her children home.
“But the next day when they woke up, they weren’t themselves,” Antoniazzi said. “My oldest had a rash on her face. The youngest did too but not as bad. The 2-year-old was holding her eye and complaining that her eye was hurting. She was very lethargic, so I took them back to my parents’ home.”
The Ohio Department of Health’s clinic opening Tuesday is meant to help East Palestine recover from the incident, officials said. The clinic will have registered nurses, mental health specialists and, at times, a toxicologist, the agency said.
“I heard you, the state heard you, and now the Ohio Department of Health and many of our partner agencies are providing this clinic, where people can come and discuss these vital issues with medical providers,” said the department’s director, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff.
The decision to conduct controlled detonations at the derailment site on February 6 has also fueled skepticism and questions about safety.
Officials said the move was meant to avert an explosion at the site of the derailment by venting the toxic vinyl chloride gas and burning it in a pit, a move that shot up a thick plume of smoke over the town.
Vinyl chloride – a man-made substance used to make PVC – can cause dizziness, sleepiness and headaches and has also been linked to an increased risk of cancer in the liver, brain, lungs and blood.
The burning vinyl chloride gas could break down into compounds including hydrogen chloride and phosgene, a chemical weapon used during World War I as a choking agent, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency and CDC.
After the detonation, crews checked the air for chemicals of concern, including phosgene and hydrogen chloride,as well as butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether acetate, and 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, according to the EPA, and reported that the data was normal.
Work now continues to clear the crash site.
The train’s operator, Norfolk Southern, is “scrapping and removing rail cars at the derailment location, excavating contaminated areas, removing contaminated liquids from affected storm drains, and staging recovered waste for transportation to an approved disposal facility,” the EPA said Sunday.
“Air monitoring and sampling will continue until removal of heavily contaminated soil in the derailment area is complete and odors subside in the community,” the agency said.
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sent a letter Sunday to Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, demanding accountability and calling for greater safety regulations.
“The people of East Palestine cannot be forgotten, nor can their pain be simply considered the cost of doing business,” Buttigieg wrote to the railway’s chief executive.
“You have previously indicated to me that you are committed to meeting your responsibilities to this community, but it is clear that area residents are not satisfied with the information, presence, and support they are getting from NorfolkSouthern in the aftermath and recovery,” Buttigieg added.
Brown also pledged to hold the rail company accountable for the impacts on the community, saying in a news conference he would “make sure Norfolk Southern does what it says it’s going to do, what it’s promised.”
“All the cleanup, all the drilling, all the testing, all the hotel stays, all of that is on Norfolk Southern. They caused it, there’s no question they caused it,” Brown said, adding the total cost could amount to either tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Norfolk Southern’s CEO posted an open letter Saturday telling East Palestine residents, “I hear you” and “we are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.”
“Together with local health officials, we have implemented a comprehensive testing program to ensure the safety of East Palestine’s water, air, and soil,” Shaw said in the letter, adding that the company also started a $1 million fund “as a down payment on our commitment to help rebuild.”
More than 10 days after the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, people continue to be pulled from the rubble alive, defying expectations for survival after so many hours.
“We, of course, thought this wouldn’t be possible, because getting somebody out alive after 10 days would’ve been a really great surprise for us,” rescue worker Özer Aydinli told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta this week.
Aydinli and his team rescued a 13-year-old boy named Mustafa from the rubble 228 hours – nearly 10 days – after the quake.
“When [our friends] said, ‘We found a person alive,’ we thought, ‘No, they must be hallucinating.’ We couldn’t believe it. But it is a miracle. … The only thing we can say is that this is a great miracle,” he said.
Search and rescue teachings have historically emphasized the “golden 48 hours” after a building collapse in which the chance of live rescues is highest. Some studies say the majority of live rescues happen within the first five or six days.
However, people continue to be rescued alive from the rubble of the February 6 quake, including Mustafa.
“I have no clue how he survived for 228 hours, because as the excavator was in operation, there was more debris falling around, filling the space above and under him, and so we couldn’t see any intact residential structure, because it was all rubble,” rescue worker Uğur Sevgin told Gupta. “Then, from the rubble, we got him out, digging him out by hand.”
Amid the rubble, Aydinli said, there was just a pair of eyes and then the call of “Brother!”
“When we saw it, when we heard it, there were 70, 80 people in the crew, and when we said there was a person alive, all our friends swarmed the area,” Aydinli said. “Nobody moved, and we all cried. And even now, we get tears in our eyes from time to time.”
Aydinli says Mustafa may have been trapped in the “triangle of life,” explained by a theory that when buildings collapse, ceilings fall on objects or furniture inside, leaving a viable space next to the person.
“After seeing Mustafa, I absolutely believe that there will be others. It is a miracle,” Sevgin said. “But, of course, it seems scientifically impossible. It has been 10 days and counting.”
Some rescue teams follow a “rule of fours,” which assumes that trapped people can survive four minutes without air, four days without water and four weeks without food.
However, research suggests that “rigid, universal timeframes” may be inaccurate, as survival can be extended under rare conditions.
In Turkey, for example, experts say those who were stuck in collapsed residential buildings may have had access to some source of water or food.
“You really only need a little bit of air, oxygen, water and probably a little bit of food to survive, hopefully just enough to get to a point where the rescuers can find you,” said Dr. Jarone Lee, an emergency and disaster medicine expert at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But I think it also relates to what kind of injuries happen during the initial sort of collapse and insult, if they only had a minor injury versus a major injury to the internal organs like your liver and such.”
Lee said a person’s baseline health status is key. Those with pre-existing medical conditions – who may be unable to access their medication or whose medication includes side effects such as dehydration – have a lower likelihood of survival.
“I do think that the ones that will continue to be found will be the younger, probably kids and other folks who are more robust. … Kids are usually smaller too, and there’s always a chance that they might be in an area of the collapse that they can survive longer just because they are smaller,” Lee said.
Experts say cold temperatures may prevent dehydration and heat exhaustion among trapped people, but the subfreezing temperatures in Turkey and Syria are doing more harm than good.
“In trauma patients, cold temperature is not a good thing for the physiology in general. After some degree of hypothermia, cardiac arrest can be a problem. Blood clotting factors do not work well, and other serious physiologic derangements happen,” said Dr. Girma Tefera, medical director of the American College of Surgeons’ Operation Giving Back.
Advances in search and rescue training and technologies, including the use of dogs, drones and on-site IV rehydration, may also account for the extended survival times.
Lee said that although he is hopeful there will be many more survivors, these are “extraordinary or rare circumstances” amid the more than 43,000 deaths after the earthquake. “These are in many ways still a handful of survivors in a massive amount of unfortunate devastation and death.”
Rescue is only the beginning of a survivor’s road to recovery.
At the Adana City Teaching and Research Hospital, the largest trauma hospital in the region, more than 5,000 patients were treated in the week after the earthquake.
Dr. Suleyman Cetinkunar, chief of staff at the hospital, told Gupta that the majority of injuries include “limb loss, tissue crushes and brain trauma.”
In addition to traumatic injuries from the collapse, patients may have “crush syndrome,” when compressed muscle tissues are finally freed and broken down, releasing toxins into the blood. These toxins can injure the kidneys and lead to kidney failure, causing seemingly stable patients to rapidly deteriorate after rescue.
During their interview, the team received another call to the helipad to receive a 26-year-old who had crush syndrome and was in need of immediate dialysis.
“Even just getting out of the rubble is a big step to get them stabilized into the hospital. But they are not out of the woods in any way. There’s a good chance that they still might not survive in the hospital,” said Massachusetts General’s Lee.
Receiving lifesaving medical care becomes even more difficult as hospital buildings, like most other buildings, were not spared by the earthquake.
The government and nonprofit organizations have set up field hospitals, tent hospitals and even hospital ships to continue to care for earthquake victims.
Gupta spoke to doctors who are performing essential orthopedic surgery in tents set up in the parking lot of a ruined hospital in Antakya, Hatay province.
“I’ve worked in places before where people like this don’t have the operation. They lay at home, languish. Some of them would get bedsores, blood clots, pneumonia and maybe die from that,” Dr. Greg Hellwarth, an orthopedic surgeon from Indiana, told Gupta.
Dr. Elliott Tenpenny, an ER doctor from North Carolina and director of the International Health Unit for Samaritan’s Purse, showed Gupta around the field hospital where, amid 5.0 aftershocks, they continue to manage critical conditions like blood loss and asthma.
“It’s not just about the broken bones and the crush injuries. It’s about these patients also,” Tenpenny told Gupta.
The floating hospital also provides immediate beds, operating rooms and even a maternity ward. Unlike the field hospitals on the ground, hospital ships are relatively protected from the aftershocks that continue to devastate the land, the captain told Gupta.
Experts say this disaster causes disruptions in the health care system that put people with chronic medical conditions at risk of losing access to lifesaving medications or medical appointments.
“The consequences of that are going to be in weeks to years, months to years,” Lee said. “The fallout is going to be unfortunately massive from this.”
The Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled Thursday that a lower court wrongfully stopped the enforcement of two state abortion laws, according to court documents.
The two measures are Kentucky’s so-called trigger law banning the procedure and a separate “heartbeat” law restricting abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy.
Siding with Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Justice Debra Hembree Lambert asserted in her opinion that the circuit court “abused its discretion by granting abortion provider’s motion for a temporary injunction.”
Planned Parenthood, along with an abortion provider represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kentucky, sued to block Kentucky’s sweeping abortion laws after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
They filed two complaints challenging the two statutes, which effectively prohibit abortions in Kentucky except in limited circumstances where it is necessary to preserve the life of the mother, according to the opinion.
The plaintiffs argued that the laws violate the state’s constitutional rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and self-determination, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU said in a statement.
After a circuit court temporarily enjoined the abortion bans last summer, an appellate court judge granted the attorney general’s emergency request to dissolve the injunction, but an appellate panel later recommended that the state’s highest court weigh in on the injunction.
The Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled that the abortion providers did not have the standing to challenge the six-week ban because they had not argued it violated their own constitutional rights, only those of their patients.
Although the court found that the abortion providers have standing to challenge the trigger ban, it ruled that the abortion providers did not show they were sufficiently harmed by the ban to warrant a temporary injunction on its enforcement, according to the opinion.
Instead, the court remanded the case to the lower court to determine the constitutionality of the trigger ban, the opinion stated.
The opinion does not determine whether the Kentucky Constitution protects the right to receive an abortion, as there was no “appropriate party” to raise the issue in the suit, according to Lambert.
“Nothing in this opinion shall be construed to prevent an appropriate party from filing suit at a later date,” she said.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU expressed disappointment with the ruling but said “this fight is not over.”
“Once again, the Kentucky Supreme Court failed to protect the health and safety of nearly a million people in the state by refusing to reinstate the lower court order blocking the law,” the statement said.
The statement added, “Even after Kentuckians overwhelmingly voted against an anti-abortion ballot measure, abortion remains banned in the state. We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision, but we will never give up the fight to restore bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom in Kentucky.”
Cameron called the ruling a “significant victory” Thursday.
“Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last June, we have vigorously defended Kentucky’s Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law,” he said in a statement. “We are very pleased that Kentucky’s high court has allowed these laws to remain in effect while the case proceeds in circuit court.”
Sen. John Fetterman is being kept overnight in a Washington, DC, hospital “for observation,” after being admitted earlier Wednesday after feeling lightheaded, his office said in a statement.
The Pennsylvania Democrat was elected to the Senate in November while recovering from a stroke he had suffered in May. According to his spokesperson, there was no evidence of a new stroke Wednesday, but he was set to undergo more tests during his hospital stay.
“Towards the end of the Senate Democratic retreat today, Senator John Fetterman began feeling lightheaded. He left and called his staff, who picked him up and drove him to The George Washington University Hospital. Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, but doctors are running more tests and John is remaining overnight for observation,” Fetterman’s communications director, Joe Calvello, said in the statement.
Last year, Fetterman checked himself into a hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, several days before the primary. Fetterman won the nomination while in the hospital and underwent a nearly three-hour surgery that same day to implant a defibrillator. He was released from the hospital after a nine-day stay.
Fetterman’s cardiologist later issued a statement, providing more insight into what caused his stroke and outlining that the Democrat suffers from both atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy.
Calvello said Wednesday night that Fetterman was “in good spirits and talking with his staff and family.”
