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Tag: Roy A. Cooper

  • Shootings at power substations cause North Carolina outages

    Shootings at power substations cause North Carolina outages

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    CARTHAGE, N.C. — Two power substations in a North Carolina county were damaged by gunfire in what is being investigated as a criminal act, causing damage that could take days to repair and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, authorities said Sunday.

    In response to ongoing outages, which began just after 7 p.m. Saturday across Moore County, officials announced a state of emergency that included a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also, county schools will be closed Monday.

    “An attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on Twitter.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motivation. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.”

    “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,” Fields said, adding “we’re looking at all avenues.”

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Fields said law enforcement is providing security at the substations and for businesses overnight.

    “We will have folks out there tonight around the clock,” Fields said.

    Roughly 36,000 electric customers in the county were without power on Sunday evening, according to poweroutage.us.

    With cold temperatures forecast for Sunday night, the county also opened a shelter at a sports complex in Carthage.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said multiple pieces of equipment were damaged and will have to be replaced. He said while the company is trying to restore power as quickly as possible, he braced customers for the potential of outages lasting days.

    “We are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multiday restoration for most customers, extending potentially as long as Thursday,” Brooks said at the news conference.

    Dr. Tim Locklear, the county’s school superintendent, announced classes will be canceled Monday.

    “As we move forward, we’ll be taking it day by day in making those decisions,” Locklear said.

    The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road.

    “A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported.

    The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour’s drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

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  • Outages could last days after shootings at substations

    Outages could last days after shootings at substations

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    CARTHAGE, N.C. — Two power substations in a North Carolina county were damaged by gunfire in what is being investigated as a criminal act, causing damage that could take days to repair and leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, authorities said Sunday.

    In response to ongoing outages, which began just after 7 p.m. Saturday across Moore County, officials announced a state of emergency that included a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also, county schools will be closed Monday.

    “An attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on Twitter.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motivation. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.”

    “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,” Fields said, adding “we’re looking at all avenues.”

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Fields said law enforcement is providing security at the substations and for businesses overnight.

    “We will have folks out there tonight around the clock,” Fields said.

    Roughly 37,000 electric customers in the county were without power on Sunday evening, according to poweroutage.us.

    With cold temperatures forecast for Sunday night, the county also opened a shelter at a sports complex in Carthage.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said multiple pieces of equipment were damaged and will have to be replaced. He said while the company is trying to restore power as quickly as possible, he braced customers for the potential of outages lasting days.

    “We are looking at a pretty sophisticated repair with some fairly large equipment and so we do want citizens of the town to be prepared that this will be a multiday restoration for most customers, extending potentially as long as Thursday,” Brooks said at the news conference.

    Dr. Tim Locklear, the county’s school superintendent, announced classes will be canceled Monday.

    “As we move forward, we’ll be taking it day by day in making those decisions,” Locklear said.

    The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road.

    “A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported.

    The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour’s drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

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  • Police: 5 killed, including officer, in N. Carolina shooting

    Police: 5 killed, including officer, in N. Carolina shooting

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    RALEIGH, N.C. — Five people were killed by a shooter who opened fire along a walking trail in North Carolina’s capital city on Thursday and eluded officers for hours before he was cornered in a home and arrested, police said.

    An off-duty police officer was among those killed by the suspect, who police only described as a white, juvenile male. He was arrested around 9:37 p.m., authorities said. His identity and age weren’t released.

    The gunfire broke out around 5 p.m. along the Neuse River Greenway in a residential area northeast of downtown, Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said. Officers from numerous law enforcement agencies swarmed the area, closing roads and warning residents to stay inside while they searched for the shooter.

    Two people, including another police officer, were taken to hospitals. The officer was later released, but the other survivor remained in critical condition.

    “Tonight, terror has reached our doorstep. The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh. This is a senseless horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed,” Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters.

    Authorities didn’t offer any details on a motive, but Baldwin joined Cooper in decrying the violence.

    “We must stop this mindless violence in America, we must address gun violence,” the mayor said. “We have much to do, and tonight we have much to mourn.”

    The Raleigh shooting was the latest in a violent week across the country. Five people were killed Sunday in a shooting at a home in Inman, South Carolina. On Wednesday night two police officers were fatally shot in Connecticut after apparently being drawn into an ambush by an emergency call about possible domestic violence. Police officers have been shot this week in Greenville, Mississippi; Decatur, Illinois; Philadelphia, Las Vegas and central Florida. Two of those officers, one in Greenville and one Las Vegas, were killed.

    Thursday’s violence was the 25th mass killing in 2022 in which the victims were fatally shot, according to The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database. A mass killing is defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator.

    Brooke Medina, who lives in the neighborhood bordering the greenway, was driving home at around 5:15 p.m. when she saw about two dozen police cars, both marked and unmarked, race toward the residential area about 9 miles (14 kilometers) from Raleigh’s downtown. She then saw ambulances speeding the other direction, toward the closest hospital.

    She and her husband, who was working from home with their four children, started reaching out to neighbors and realized there was a shelter-in-place order.

    The family closed all of their window blinds, locked the doors and congregated in an upstairs hallway together, said Medina, who works as a communications vice president at a think tank. The family listened to the police scanner and watched local news before going back downstairs once the danger seemed to have moved further away from their home.

    “We’re just going to hunker down for the rest of the night and be very vigilant. Keep all of our lights on, doors locked,” she said.

    She described the neighborhood known as Hedingham as a sprawling, dense, tree-lined community that’s full of single-family homes, duplexes and townhomes that are more moderately priced compared to other parts of the Raleigh area.

    Allison Greenawalt, 29, who also lives in the neighborhood, said she was sitting on the couch with her cat around 5 p.m. when she heard “three shots in a pretty rapid succession.” She said police arrived quickly and that she’s grateful that they were there during the chaotic hours while she sheltered inside. Her husband, meanwhile, tried to drive home from work after the shooting and was turned away by police who had closed nearby streets, and he didn’t make it home until around 10:30 p.m., she said.

    “I was sitting in our house with the lights turned off and the windows closed for the majority of the evening, just waiting to hear that” the shooter had been arrested, she said.

    ———

    Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in Silver Spring, Maryland and Gary D. Robertson and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh contributed to this report.

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  • Governor’s office reports at least 4 N.C. storm fatalities

    Governor’s office reports at least 4 N.C. storm fatalities

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    RALEIGH, N.C. — The remnants of Hurricane Ian downed trees and power lines across North Carolina, and authorities reported at least four fatalities Saturday connected to the severe weather.

    In Johnston County, outside of Raleigh, a woman found her husband dead early Saturday morning after he went to check on a generator running in their garage overnight, sheriff’s office Capt. Jeff Caldwell said.

    Carbon monoxide levels also were high inside the home, and the woman was checked out at a hospital, according to Caldwell.

    Also in Johnston County, two young adults died in traffic collisions during stormy and wet conditions Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said in a news release. In eastern North Carolina’s Martin County, a 22-year-old man drowned when his truck left the roadway and submerged in a flooded swamp, the news release said.

    “We mourn with the families of those who have died and urge everyone to be cautious while cleaning up to avoid more deaths or injuries,” Cooper said in a statement.

    The highway patrol responded to over 1,400 calls for service and 784 collisions between midnight Friday and early Saturday morning, a spokesman said. Not all were necessarily weather-related.

    There were no initial reports of major structural damage, though nearly 73,000 people across the state were without power Saturday evening, according to a state outage map. That was down from over 330,000 earlier in the day.

    The National Weather Service warned that hazardous conditions remained along the coast, including the possibility of flooding and rip currents.

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