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    Man Arrested in Shooting That Killed One at Tuskegee University

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    The shooting, which wounded 12 people, happened early on Sunday as crowds gathered at the historically Black school to celebrate the final day of its 100th homecoming week.A 25-year-old man was charged in connection with a shooting on the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama early Sunday morning that left one person dead and a dozen others wounded as crowds gathered for the school’s homecoming celebration, the authorities said.The man, Jaquez Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, was arrested on Sunday and charged under federal law with possessing a machine gun, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said on Facebook.Officers found Mr. Myrick leaving the scene of the shooting with a handgun equipped with a machine gun conversion device, the agency said. It was not immediately clear what led to the shooting, which took place about 1:40 a.m. on the campus.The identity of the person who was killed, 18, was not released. The victim was not a student at the university, the university said in a statement.“The parents of this individual have been notified,” the university said. “Several others, including Tuskegee University students, were injured.”Twelve people were wounded in the shooting and taken to hospitals, the authorities said. Their conditions were not immediately clear on Sunday. Four other people were also hurt.The shooting took place as crowds gathered at the historically Black liberal arts university, which has 3,000 students, to celebrate the last day of its 100th homecoming week, which began on Nov. 3.In a video posted on social media, a young woman could be heard shouting “Get down! Get down!” as she and others ducked behind a car during the gunfire.The university is in the city of Tuskegee, which has a population of about 8,700 residents and is about 40 miles east of the state capital of Montgomery, Ala.The homecoming celebration included a parade, concerts and a football game between Tuskegee and Miles College on Saturday.“We extend our deepest condolences to those impacted and pray for healing and justice,” Miles College said in a statement on Sunday. “Miles College stands with you in this difficult time.”Tuskegee University said that it had canceled Monday’s classes. More

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      Biden, Eyeing His Legacy, Signs Executive Orders on Gun Safety

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      The president used a poignant White House ceremony to pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made gun safety an issue in her campaign.President Biden, frustrated with congressional inaction on gun violence and seeking to secure the issue as part of his legacy, said on Thursday that he was using his executive authority to improve school preparedness and to stem the tide of untraceable weapons and devices that make firearms more deadly.Mr. Biden made the announcement at a packed and poignant ceremony in the East Room of the White House, where he was introduced by the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Randall Woodfin. Mr. Woodfin’s brother was killed by gun violence, and his city has been grieving after a mass shooting left four people dead last week. Scores of activists and gun violence survivors attended.The event was timed to the first anniversary of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Mr. Biden created last year after signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety bill in nearly 30 years. It was also a chance for Mr. Biden to pass the baton to the official who heads that office: Vice President Kamala Harris, who is leaning into gun violence prevention as an issue as she campaigns to succeed Mr. Biden.“We know how to stop these tragedies, and it is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” said Ms. Harris, who spoke before Mr. Biden and who has said while campaigning that she owns a firearm for self-protection. “I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban.”She was referring to a provision in the 1994 crime bill, spearheaded by Mr. Biden when he was a senator, that banned certain types of military-style assault weapons for 10 years. The ban expired in 2004, when Congress refused to renew it.The executive orders, which Mr. Biden signed at the conclusion of the ceremony, do not have the force of law. Should former President Donald J. Trump win the White House in November, he could easily reverse them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alex Jones’s Infowars Will Be Auctioned Off to Pay Sandy Hook Families

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      A sale of the Infowars website and other property is set for November, and could determine the conspiracy theorist’s fate as a broadcaster.A Houston bankruptcy judge ruled on Tuesday that assets from the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars empire can be auctioned off to help pay families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims the defamation awards he owes them.The auction, set for mid-November, will include Infowars’ website, social media accounts, broadcasting equipment, product trademarks and inventory owned by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company.Mr. Jones’s fate as a broadcaster most likely depends on who buys his business. Though the Infowars name and assets are potentially of interest to a range of entities on the far right, under the terms of the sale anyone can bid.Mr. Jones spent years spreading lies that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first graders and six educators was a hoax aimed at confiscating Americans’ firearms, and that the victims’ families were actors complicit in the plot. The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed the conspiracy theory.Relatives of 10 victims sued Mr. Jones in 2018 for defamation and were awarded more than $1.4 billion in damages in trials in Texas and Connecticut. But the most the families are likely to ever see is a small fraction of that, and they have been divided over how to equitably distribute the money.As the cases headed to court in 2022, Mr. Jones’s company declared bankruptcy. Mr. Jones declared personal bankruptcy soon afterward.Since then, the families have been wrangling in bankruptcy court over assets and revenue that are far less than they originally envisioned. Mr. Jones’s personal and business assets combined are worth less than $10 million, according to independent valuations presented in court. His lawyers and other bankruptcy professionals will be paid first, leaving even less for the families.The Connecticut and Texas sides divided sharply over how to go after Free Speech Systems. Lawyers for the families who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut — the relatives of eight victims — favored shutting down the company and liquidating its assets, with the money distributed among the family members.Lawyers for families who sued Mr. Jones in Texas favored a settlement in which he would pay them a percentage of his income over the next decade, most likely netting more money for each relative. As a condition of the latter deal, Mr. Jones would have had to agree never to mention the shooting again.The asset sale is probably the least lucrative option for the family members, though its potential for shutting down Infowars appealed to some. Juries in the two lawsuits awarded individual relatives widely varying amounts, and lawyers from the Connecticut and Texas sides have been dueling over how to fairly allocate the money.The situation is further complicated by the fact that a jury has yet to decide how much in damages Mr. Jones must pay Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the shooting. More

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      21 Juveniles Charged With Making School Threats in South Carolina

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      The charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since a mass shooting on Sept. 4 in Georgia in which four people were killed at a high school.Nearly two dozen juveniles have been charged in connection with online threats made against schools in South Carolina since early September, the authorities said on Tuesday.The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release that 21 people had been charged for making what it called “extremely serious” threats targeting schools. Many of the threats were shared on social media, the agency said.“School threats are not a joke,” Chief Mark Keel of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a statement. “Law enforcement takes every threat seriously, and everyone needs to understand that there are serious consequences.”According to the news release, the charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since Sept. 4, when the authorities say a 14-year-old gunman fatally shot two students and two teachers at his high school in Georgia.Threats of mass violence have proliferated on social media since the Georgia shooting and have left law enforcement officials, who traditionally have been limited in their response to threats of possible violence, feeling exasperated. In Central California, several teens have been arrested in connection with threats. In Broward County, Fla., where 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland in 2018, officials said last week that they had arrested nine students since August in connection with threats of violence.And in an unusual step, Sheriff Mike Chitwood of Volusia County, Fla., this week posted pictures and videos of an 11-year-old who was charged in a fake school shooting threat, part of a pledge to take a tough stance on the wave of threats.The police in South Carolina have worked to secure schools “and find those responsible,” the agency said in the news release. The agency’s behavioral science unit, which provides psychological profiling and threat assessments, has been called in to assist with six school threat investigations stretched across different counties.Details about the threats, the charges and the identities and ages of those arrested in South Carolina were not immediately available. Renée Wunderlich, a spokeswoman for the agency, said additional information was not available.WCNC-TV, an NBC affiliate station in Charlotte, reported that the threats included an alleged shooting threat at Lancaster High School in Lancaster, S.C., on Sept. 11. WMBF-TV, another NBC affiliate station, reported that Horry County Schools, in the southeastern part of the state, was the subject of rumored threats that circulated on social media. More

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      Border Agents Made Decision to Confront Gunman in Uvalde, Report Finds

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      A report by the federal border agency on the school shooting in 2022 found that its agents lacked adequate training and authority to respond to active shooter situations.Amid two years of painful wrangling over the delayed police response to the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the role of the federal agents who finally breached the classrooms and killed the gunman has largely avoided scrutiny.The agents, from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, were seen as having saved the day by responding to the school and stepping in after a 77-minute delay.But a 203-page report released on Wednesday by the agency complicated that simple narrative, finding that the border agents had been just as confused and delayed as dozens of other state and local law enforcement agents inside the school by the chaotic and mostly leaderless response.The report, from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, also offered the most detailed account yet of the tense and violent moments when federal agents finally entered the classrooms and the gunman burst from a closet and began firing at them.And despite the agents’ central role in confronting and killing the gunman, the report raised questions about whether the dozens who responded had the legal authority to do so. The agents were insufficiently trained in responding to active shooter situations, the report found.Its recommendations included that the agency take steps to better train its officers in active shooter responses, particularly to those in which breaching a door may be necessary, and to seek to clarify the law around how the agency interacts with state and local law enforcement during such events.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Five People Shot on I-75 in Kentucky, Officials Say

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      The victims were in stable condition, the authorities said. What led up to the shooting on I-75 near London, Ky., was not immediately clear.A section of a Kentucky highway was closed for several hours on Saturday night after five people were shot, the authorities said.What led up to the shooting was not immediately clear. All five shooting victims were in stable condition, said a spokesman for the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Gilbert Acciardo.The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that the shooting happened on I-75, which was closed at Exit 49, nine miles north of London, Ky. It said just after 6:30 p.m. that the highway was closed “due to an active shooter situation,” but did not elaborate.Randall Weddle, the mayor of London, said in a Facebook video said the authorities were searching for a “suspect or suspects” in “rugged terrain” in the northern part of Laurel County.Deputy Acciardo said helicopters and infrared scanners were being used to search for the gunman in the woods.The London Police Department said on Saturday night that a person of interest had been identified and asked the public for any information about his whereabouts. The city of London is about 90 miles south of Lexington.Just after 9:20 p.m., the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that while I-75 had reopened, the search for the suspect would continue. Angel Jarrett was working at the 49er Truck Stop when someone told her that shots had been fired nearby.Eventually, multiple police cars surrounded the truck stop near the exit where the shooting took place and placed the facility on lockdown.“We’re not allowed to go in or out,” Ms. Jarrett said. “It’s a little panicky but we’re OK. They’re surrounding us, the cops are.”Saint Joseph London, a hospital in London that is a part of CHI Saint Joseph Health, said that it had “received multiple patients and is treating them for minor injuries.”Two patients were being treated at the University of Kentucky’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital, a spokeswoman said. Their conditions were unknown.The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said on social media that it was sending agents from its Louisville office to help the State Police and local authorities “with a critical incident” near Interstate 75 in Laurel County.Yan Zhuang More

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      Georgia to Put School Shooting Suspect’s Parent on Trial, Testing a Novel Tactic

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      After four people were killed at Apalachee High School, prosecutors charged a student and his father, who officials say had given the boy the gun as a gift.In a landmark criminal case in Michigan earlier this year, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents convicted in connection with killings carried out by their child in a mass shooting.Now, in the first mass school shooting in the United States since those convictions, Georgia officials appear poised to try the same tactic. On Thursday, prosecutors filed charges, including two counts of second-degree murder, against the father of the suspected gunman, saying he had provided a gun to his son “with knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others.”Such charges were all but unheard of before the Michigan case, and the Georgia prosecution will test the emerging push to hold parents responsible for mass shootings by young people.The bigger test may be whether the prospect of criminal prosecution spurs parents to do more to seek help for troubled children and to keep them away from guns in a country awash in firearms.Proponents of such prosecutions have said that charging parents can help prevent young people from carrying out such shootings. But critics say it’s a misguided effort that scapegoats parents while lawmakers fail to act to reduce gun violence. And its effectiveness as a deterrent may be limited by the deep dysfunction already at play in the families of some of the young people implicated in mass shootings.The prosecution of the Crumbleys, after their 15-year-old son killed four people in 2021 at a high school outside Detroit, was seen as a long shot. But in separate trials, the Crumbleys were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years in prison.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Father of Accused Georgia Shooter Charged With Two Counts of Second-Degree Murder

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      The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was arrested and charged on Thursday with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the attack, the state’s Bureau of Investigation said.The father, Colin Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, officials said at a news conference on Thursday night.The charges against Mr. Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, the bureau director, said at the news conference. He declined to provide details, including what evidence had given the authorities probable cause to charge Mr. Gray in the attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.Earlier on Thursday, Charlie Polhamus, the teenager’s maternal grandfather, said he believed his grandson was responsible for what happened, but he also cast some of the blame on the tumult in the teenager’s home life with his father, who had split from Mr. Polhamus’s daughter. “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” Mr. Polhamus said. When investigators looking into an online threat spoke to Mr. Gray last year, he said he had been teaching his son, then 13, about hunting and guns to divert his attention from video games. The teenager denied making the threat to “shoot up a middle school” and claimed his account on the social media platform Discord had been hacked, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview.Mr. Gray told the investigator that he had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He also suggested that he had emphasized the dangers of using a firearm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tip on Georgia School Shooting Threat Last Year Led to Suspect’s Door

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      The teenager charged with killing four people at his Georgia high school on Wednesday denied making an online threat, and the authorities could not prove he did. He, and now his father, face murder charges.JEFFERSON, Ga. — The threat posted online last year to “shoot up a middle school” was the kind that the authorities have become all too familiar with in the United States.After receiving tips about the threat, the authorities homed in on a 13-year-old boy in Georgia, and an investigator spoke with the teenager and his father.During the conversation in May 2023, the boy, Colt Gray, assured the investigator, from the sheriff’s office in Jackson County, Ga., that he had not made the threat. He said that he had not used Discord, the social media site where the threat was posted, in months, and that he had deleted his account.“The only thing I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teenager said, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times.The teenager’s father, Colin Gray, confided that his son had been picked on in middle school and said that he had been teaching him about firearms and the outdoors to get him away from video games.“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and not use them,” the elder Mr. Gray said, adding that his son had recently shot his first deer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More