Grayson Lee Boggs had been picked up by his father, Matthew Boggs, after he was dropped off by a school bus on May 15 when his dad was struck by lightning and the current passed through both him and Grayson, according to NBC affiliate KXAN.

The father was pronounced dead following the lightning strike while Grayson spent a month in the hospital trying to recover from his injuries, but ended up passing away on June 16.

“Grayson was a huge part of the church and loved his church family unconditionally,” according to his obituary. “He would shake all the men’s hands and hug the ladies before service. He loved his donuts and was the biggest helper”. 

The National Weather Service reported an average of 20 people die each year from lightning strikes, with hundreds more injured. Those injured can live with lifelong neurological complications, the NWS said.

Becky Randall, whom the Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Office identified as one of the three victims of the twister that roared through the city of Perryton on Thursday, “was born and raised in this town.”

“She lived for this town and the people in this town,” Randall’s daughter-in-law, Randi Cunningham, told NBC News.

The other victims were identified as 11-year-old Matthew Ramirez, who was at his family’s trailer when he died, and Cindy Bransgrove, 67, who was at a food bank when she perished, the sheriff’s office said.

Read more at NBCNews.com.

In Perryton in the Texas Panhandle, Ochiltree County Sheriff Terry Bouchard said three people were killed when the tornado struck Thursday afternoon.

Another person died Thursday night in the Florida Panhandle when at least one confirmed tornado cut through Escambia County, toppling a tree onto a home, county spokesperson Andie Gibson told the Pensacola News Journal.

Also, a Mississippi man died after a tree fell on him during stormy weather early Friday. Canton Police Chief Otha Brown told WLBT-TV the man was killed after high winds toppled over a tree onto his carport as he was entering his car.

In Texas, of the homes searched so far in Perryton, all but one occupant had been accounted for, so the main priority was going back over the area and the debris field to find that person, Perryton Fire Chief Paul Dutcher said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Dutcher estimated that 150 to 200 homes in the community had been destroyed and said that in the downtown area, many storefronts were totally wiped off and buildings had collapsed or partially collapsed.

“You keep hearing people say, ‘We’ll rebuild’ and ‘We’ll be back,’” he said. “And we will. That’s the hope we have.”

But the biggest concern was trying to help the families of those who were killed carry on, Dutcher said.

“It is such a tragedy,” Dutcher said. “All the stuff behind me, it can all be rebuilt, but those lives that we’ve lost is really the tragedy of everything,” the fire chief said.

When the storm first approached Sabrina Devers’ ranch about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of Perryton, she told Fox Weather it brought golf ball-sized, then softball-sized hail and Devers said she could then see a tornado.

After the tornado moved away, Devers went into the town to check on their store.

“The devastation was unbelievable. It took a tanker truck and threw it into a pasture,” Devers said. Power lines were knocked down and buildings were flattened in the town of about 8,000 about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line.

The National Weather Service in Amarillo was sending a survey team Friday to assess damage and determine the tornado rating in the Perryton area, meteorologist Brett Muscha said.

More thunderstorms are possible in the far northern Texas Panhandle and the Oklahoma Panhandle Friday afternoon and night, Muscha said.

The greatest chance of strong and severe storms were on the Oklahoma side with golf ball-size hail and 60 mph (97 kph) wind gusts, Muscha said.

Ochiltree General Hospital treated 115 patients suffering minor to major injuries, including head injuries, collapsed lungs, lacerations and broken bones, according to a Facebook post.

“We kind of expected to see more last night and we didn’t,” interim CEO Kelly Judice said. “We just want people in our community to know that we’re here. We’re open. We have clinics open. We’re ready for business to take care of the people that need to be treated.”

People with routine medical checkups planned were asked to reschedule.

The hospital is operating on a generator and some patients were being treated in a bright conference room since exam rooms in one clinic don’t have windows, Judice said.

After hitting Perryton, the storm system moved into Oklahoma, spawning several more suspected twisters in addition to high winds and large hail.

Observations Program Leader Forrest Mitchell at the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, said survey crews were expected to head out Friday to southwest and west central Oklahoma and western North Texas to investigate possible tornados.

Nearly 590,000 customers were without electricity in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma Friday morning, according to the poweroutage.us website.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday he had directed the state Division of Emergency Management to help with everything from traffic control to restoring water and other utilities, if needed.

Meanwhile, flash flooding was reported in Pensacola, Florida, where between 12 and 16 inches of rain has fallen since Thursday evening, said Caitlin Baldwin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Mobile in Pensacola.

In West Pensacola, flash floodwaters surrounded an apartment complex that was evacuated of all its 146 residents. Boats were used to remove some and take them to a local community center, said Davis Wood, public information officer for Escambia County Public Safety.

No injuries were reported in that evacuation.

The storm system also brought hail and possible tornados to northwestern Ohio.

It was the second consecutive day that powerful storms struck the U.S. and comes as spring nears its end, not a typical time of year for tornadic activity, but not rare, according to meteorologist Matt Mosier at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman.

“You expect thunderstorms this time of year,” Mosier said. “It’s definitely not rare, but tornadoes are not on a lot of people’s minds because they’ve just kind of moved away from the season that they’re typically focused on (tornadoes).”

This week has been very warm with moist, unstable conditions that combined with strong wind shear, which is abnormal for this time of year, Mosier said.

“Thunderstorms are not uncommon at all, but to get storms that were producing very large, I mean, 2- to 3-inch hail, day after day — that is abnormal,” Mosier said.

Also in Texas and Southern states including Louisiana, heat advisories were in effect Friday and were forecast into the Juneteenth holiday weekend with temperatures reaching toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). It was expected to feel as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).

Associated Press journalists Rick Callahan in Indianapolis, Robert Jablon in Los Angeles, Alina Hartounian in Phoenix, Lisa Baumann in Seattle and Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas contributed to this report.

There were 40 migrants who arrived, including children, who traveled more than 23 hours without food before arriving in Los Angeles, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights told NBC4.

It’s the latest in a tactic employed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has sent unannounced busloads of migrants to other so-called sanctuary cities like Philadelphia. The tactic has been decried as a political stunt.

“Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status,” Abbott said in a press release. “Our border communities are on the frontlines of President Biden’s border crisis, and Texas will continue providing this much-needed relief until he steps up to do his job and secure the border.”

The migrants were receiving help at St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in Chinatown. The Los Angeles Fire Department said shortly after 5 p.m. that it received a “medical need” request for a number of people at the church. Those people’s medical condition was not immediately known.

Other cities have criticized a lack of prior notice about arriving migrants, which at times has led to confusion and a scramble to house and provide resources for the migrants.

CHIRLA Executive Director Angélica Salas said her group had heard rumors about the possibility of a migrant arrival. They mobilized other community-based organizations and worked with the city and county of Los Angeles to prepare for the arrival, Salas said.

She added that Abbott made a “politicized choice” that put people’s lives at risk.

“We make choices, leaders make choices. And the choice that can be made is to receive individuals with humanity, to understand their very desperate plight, and to offer them the solutions and the support that they need,” Salas said.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass similarly issued a statement sharply criticizing Abbott.

She noted that shortly after she took office, she directed city departments to make plans in case Los Angeles “was on the receiving end of a despicable stunt that Republican Governors have grown so fond of.”

“This did not catch us off guard, nor will it intimidate us. Now, it’s time to execute our plan. Our emergency management, police, fire and other departments were able to find out about the incoming arrival while the bus was on its way and were already mobilized along with nonprofit partners before the bus arrived,” Bass said.

Salas said the migrants were receiving information about their legal case, as well as being connected to family members and sponsors.

Most of the dead fish were menhaden, a small fish often used for bait, and died due to “a low dissolved oxygen event,” according to a Facebook post from the Quintana Beach County Park.

Fish kills like this are common in the summer as water temperatures rise, Texas Parks and Wildlife said. Many cases of low dissolved oxygen are natural occurrences.

A sufficient level of dissolved oxygen in water is necessary to sustain aquatic life. Warm ocean water holds less oxygen than cold water and can contribute to oxygen levels dropping too low, impacting water quality and starving fish of a life necessity. Recent samples taken from the beach showed almost no dissolved oxygen, officials said.

“As we see increased water temperatures, certainly this could lead to more of these events occurring especially in our shallow, near-shore or inshore environments,” said Katie St. Clair, the sea life facility manager at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the oxygen-depleted “dead zone” that forms each year in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana and Texas was forecast to cover about 4,155 square miles this year. The Gulf dead zone is largely created by urban and agricultural runoff and discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus to the Mississippi River, which drains 41% of the continental United States. In the Gulf, the nutrients feed an overgrowth of algae, which die and sink to the bottom, using up oxygen from the ocean floor as they decompose. Fish, shrimp and crabs can swim away. Animals that are slower or fixed to the bottom cannot.

Still, the sheer number of fish and area impacted has some scientists baffled. Julia Wellner, a glacial marine geoscientist at the University of Houston, tweeted Sunday her concerns over a “scary future.”

“Yesterday I took a dozen international visiting sedimentologists to Quintana Beach, TX. I might be an expert on some things on the beach but this fish kill baffled all of us. Went for miles. Low oxygen sure but why here and now? Why this dramatic? Scary future.”

Park crews spent Saturday and Sunday removing the fish remains from the beach. Any dead fish remnants that were left behind or continue to wash ashore will be buried naturally in the sand and ocean over the coming days, park officials said.

Officials urged people to avoid the impacted beach because of high bacteria levels.

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None of the injuries were expected to be life-threatening, Brazoria County officials said. The cause of the walkway collapse in Surfside Beach, a small city on the Gulf of Mexico, about 60 miles south of downtown Houston, was under investigation.

Surfside Beach Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Justin Mills said his department responded to an emergency call at 12:34 p.m. and set up landing areas for the medical helicopters.

Sharon Trower, public information officer for Brazoria County, said all of the victims were between 14 and 18 years old and from the Bayou City Fellowship summer camp. She said the deck collapsed while they were trying to take a group photo.

The five taken by helicopter were flown to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. Six were taken to local hospitals by ambulance, and about 10 more were taken to hospitals by private vehicles, Trower said.

Memorial Hermann officials and Bayou City Fellowship camp officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Aerial video from NBC’s Houston affiliate KPRC showed the walkway appears to be made from wood and leads to a building.

Texas joined at least 18 other states that have enacted similar bans.

Every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, has opposed the bans and supported medical care for youth when administered appropriately. Lawsuits have been filed in several states where bans have been enacted this year.

Last year, Abbott became the first governor to order the investigation of families who were receiving care. The investigations were later halted by a Texas judge.

The GOP-controlled Legislature sent the bill to Abbott last month. Republicans in the Senate took the final vote over the objections from Democrats, who used parliamentary maneuvers to delay passage but could not derail it entirely.

Transgender rights activists have disrupted the Texas House with protests from the chamber gallery, which led to state police forcing demonstrators to move outside the building.

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Attorneys representing the nine states that have sued to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department and DACA recipients were scheduled to appear at a court hearing before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen.

In 2021, Hanen declared DACA illegal, ruling that the program had not been subjected to public notice and comment periods required under the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Hanen also said the states seeking to stop it had standing to file their lawsuit because they had been harmed by the program.

Ahead of the hearing on Thursday morning, more than 50 people gathered at a park near the courthouse to show their support for DACA.

Many of them held up signs that read: “Immigration Reform Now,” “Protect DACA” and “Immigrant Power Immigrant Rights.”

The states claimed they incur hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. The states that sued are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld Hanen’s ruling in 2022 but sent the case back to him to review changes made to the program by the Biden administration.

The new version of DACA took effect in October and was subject to public comments as part of a formal rule-making process.

In court filings, Texas and the other states argued that the updated program is essentially the same as the 2012 memo that first created it and remains “unlawful and unconstitutional.” The states also argued that the White House overstepped its authority by granting immigration benefits that are for Congress to decide.

The U.S. Justice Department argued in court filings that the states failed to show any direct injury because of DACA and that Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security the “authority and duty to set immigration enforcement policies.”

“DACA is lawful. DACA is consistent with the many policies of the U.S. government in the past under different presidents,” said Nina Perales, with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who will be speaking before Hanen on behalf of DACA recipients.

Hanen has left the Obama-era program intact for those already benefiting from it. But he ruled there can be no new applicants while appeals are pending.

There were 580,310 people enrolled in DACA at the end of December, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Hanen is not expected to immediately rule after Thursday’s court hearing. But whatever decision he makes is expected to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time.

In 2016, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 over an expanded DACA and a version of the program for parents of DACA recipients. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA, allowing it to stay in place.

President Joe Biden and advocacy groups have called on Congress to pass permanent protections for “ Dreamers,” which is what people protected by DACA are commonly called. Congress has failed multiple times to pass proposals called the DREAM Act to protect DACA recipients.

As they read the “Stay Safe” book the school sent home without explanation or a warning to parents, she began crying, leaving her son confused.

“It’s hard because you’re reading them a bedtime story and basically now you have to explain in this cute way what the book is about, when it’s not exactly cute,” Campos said.

She said her first-grader, who goes to the same elementary school as her pre-K son, also got a copy of the book last week. After posting about it in an online neighborhood group, she found other concerned parents whose kids had also brought the book home.

The district’s decision to send kids home with the book has made waves. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, tweeted: “Winnie the Pooh is now teaching Texas kids about active shooters because the elected officials do not have the courage to keep our kids safe and pass common sense gun safety laws.”

It sparked enough of a reaction to warrant an explanation from the Dallas Independent School District, which said in a statement Friday that it works “hard every day to prevent school shootings” by dealing with online threats and improving security measures. It also conducts active shooter drills.

“Recently a booklet was sent home so parents could discuss with their children how to stay safe in such cases,” the district said. “Unfortunately, we did not provide parents any guide or context. We apologize for the confusion and are thankful to parents who reached out to assist us in being better partners.”

The district did not say how many schools and grades in the district received the books.

Campos said the book was “haunting” her and that it seemed especially “tone deaf” to send it home with kids without explanation around the time the state was marking the anniversary of last year’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, when a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. It also comes as Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature wraps up a session in which it rejected virtually all proposals to tighten gun laws but did pass legislation banning school libraries from having books that contain descriptions, illustrations or audio depicting sexual conduct not relevant to the required school curriculum.

Active shooter drills have become common in American schools, though there’s disagreement over whether they do more harm than good.

Campos said that although she doesn’t disagree with the book’s intent, she wished it would have come with a warning to parents so that she could introduce it to her kids at the right time and in the right way. She said she has discussed school shootings with her kids, and that she might have chosen to wait to read them the book until there was another attack.

“I would have done it on my own time,” said Campos, who first spoke to the Oak Cliff Advocate.

The book’s cover says: “If there is danger, let Winnie the Pooh and his crew show you what to do.” Inside, it includes passages such as “If danger is near, do not fear. Hide like Pooh does until the police appear. Doors should be locked and the passage blocked. Turn off the light to stay out of sight.”

The book was published by Praetorian Consulting, a Houston-based firm that provides safety, security and crisis management training and services. The company, which didn’t respond to messages seeking comment, says on its website that it uses age-appropriate material to teach the concepts of “run, hide, fight” — the approach authorities say civilians should take in active shooter situations.

The company also says on its website that its K-6 curriculum features the characters of Winnie the Pooh, which are now in the public domain and even featured in a recent horror movie.

On May 24, 2022, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two adults. Another 17 people who were injured in the shooting survived the attack.

Biden delivered remarks in front of a display with 21 candles, one for each victim, with a white rose and satin ribbons in school colors that displayed each victim’s name and age. All the students killed were between the ages of 9 and 11 years old. Before the president spoke, he and first lady Jill Biden, who is a teacher, stopped to look at the names of the dead.

Biden spoke of how he stood in Uvalde a few days later, staring at 21 crosses outside the school with the names of victims. He said they spent hours with the grieving families.

“We know one year later, this is still so raw for you,” he said. “You’ll miss birthdays and holidays, school plays, soccer games. Just that smile. A year of everyday joy, just gone forever.”

The killings, along with another mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, prompted bipartisan legislation that passed through a divided Congress just a month later. It was the most significant gun safety law in decades. The law toughened background checks for the youngest gun buyers and sought to keep firearms from domestic violence offenders and to help states put in place red flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons away from people adjudged to be dangerous.

“We can’t end this epidemic until Congress passes common sense gun safety laws and keeps weapons of war off our streets and out of the hands of dangerous people. Until states do the same thing. How many more parents will live their worst nightmare before we stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said.

The president pointed his remarks directly at Congress, calling on all members to stand up to the gun lobby and enact legislation that will help stop the epidemic of gun violence in America. Specifically, the president said he hoped to see assault-style weapons once again banned along with high-capacity magazines.

“We still need to ban, in my view, AR-15 firearms and assault weapons, once again. They’ve been used time and again in mass killings of innocent children and people. We need to ban high-capacity magazines with the ability to shoot 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 bullets without reloading,” Biden said. “Today, guns remain the number one killer of children in America.”

Last year, the president and first lady visited Uvalde in the days after the shooting and met with the families of the children killed in the shooting. Biden said that he and the first lady have heard from Americans who have pleaded with him to do something about gun violence.

“Standing there in Uvalde, Jill and I couldn’t help but think that too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields in communities across America. And in each place, we hear the same message: ‘Do something. For God’s sake, please do something,'” Biden said.

“So it’s time to act. It’s time to make our voices heard. Not as Democrats or as Republicans. But as friends, as neighbors, as parents – and as fellow Americans,” Biden said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has pushed back on attempts to enact new gun laws in the state, called for a moment of silence at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, coinciding with the moment the shooting began.

People in the town of Uvalde, who have sought privacy as the anniversary neared, planned a private ceremony and candlelight vigil for Wednesday evening.

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Uvalde is still managing the fallout from the botched emergency response to the shooting. An investigation is still ongoing into how the days after the attack was marred by authorities giving inaccurate and conflicting accounts about efforts made to stop a teenage gunman armed with an AR-style rifle. It was the worst shooting in a school since 2012, when 20 children between 6 and 7 years old and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

A damning report by Texas lawmakers found nearly 400 officers had been on the scene, from an array of federal, state and local agencies. The findings laid out how heavily armed officers waited more than an hour to confront and kill the 18-year-old gunman. It also accused police of failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.”

In Austin on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, read the names of the 21 victims who were murdered as the entire chamber paused in remembrance.

Each victim was memorialized with a speech, describing who they were and the loved ones they left behind. “I pray that in all of our differences, we aspire to our better angels, perhaps remember those moments when we were little,” Gutierrez said. “Look at the pictures of these children and remember our better angels.”

Throughout Texas’ biennial legislative session, which began in January and ends Monday, a group of the victims’ family members made the three-hour drive to Austin every Tuesday, with few exceptions, to lobby lawmakers in hopes of raising the legal age requirement to own certain semiautomatic weapons – like the one used by the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter – from 18 to 21.

But in the GOP-controlled Texas Capitol, Republicans this year rejected it and nearly all other proposals to tighten gun laws.

Several months in, the new federal law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.

Yet since that bill signing last summer, the tally of mass shootings in the United States has only grown. Five dead at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven killed at a dance hall in California. Three 9-year-olds and three adults shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Seven shot dead in rural Oklahoma.

As of May 24, there have been at least 25 mass killing incidents in the U.S. so far in 2023, leaving at least 127 people dead, not including perpetrators who died, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

That puts the country on a faster pace for mass killing incidents than in any other year since 2006, according to the database, which defines a mass killing as an incident in which four or more people are killed, not including the perpetrator, within a 24-hour period.

There have been at least 556 incidents in all since 2006 in the U.S., according to the database, leaving at least 2,892 people dead.

Firearms are the No. 1 killer of children in the U.S. and so far this year, 85 children younger than 11 have died by guns and 491 have died between the ages of 12 and 17. As of 2020, the firearm mortality rate for children under 19 is 5.6 per 100,000. The next comparable is Canada, with .08 per 100,000 deaths.

“It’s time to act,” Biden said. “It’s time to make our voices heard. Not as Democrats or Republicans. But as friends, as neighbors, as parents – as fellow Americans.”

“I know for a long time it’s been hard to make progress,” Biden said. “But there will come a point where our voices are so loud, our determination so clear, that it can no longer be stopped. We will act.”

The city of over 50,000 invited all people named Kyle to central Texas in an attempt to break the world record for the largest same-name gathering. Their turnout of roughly 1,800 was impressive, but not enough to best the 2017 record set by 2,325 Ivans in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Their original invite called all Kyles, “tall Kyles, short Kyles, young Kyles & old Kyles” to join their record-breaking attempt. Many answered the call, with Kyles traveling from around the world.

Kyle Heavey, a photojournalist from ABC’s WMUR station in New Hampshire, made the trip and reported meeting fellow Kyles from Canada, Oregon, California, Florida and Texas.

The event, dubbed a Kyle Fair A Tex-Travaganza, had live music, vendors and of course, lots of Kyles. While there was no dress code, many of the attendees wore shirts reading “My name is Kyle” and “I’m with Kyle.”

The event started Friday afternoon and ran through the weekend, building up to the gathering of the Kyles at 4 p.m. on Sunday. By 6 p.m. event organizers announced the total attendance, confirming that the record would not be broken.

Kyle peaked in popularity in the U.S. in 1990 as the 18th most popular boy name. Just this past year, it checked in at 393 nationally.

This was the city’s fourth attempt to break the record.

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All of the women were told they could not end their pregnancies in Texas, a state that has enacted some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.

Now, they’re asking a Texas court to put an emergency hold on some abortion restrictions, joining a lawsuit launched earlier this year by five other women who were denied abortions in the state, despite pregnancies they say endangered their health or lives.

More than a dozen Texas women in total have joined the Center for Reproductive Rights’ lawsuit against the state’s law, which prohibits abortions unless a mother’s life is at risk — an exception that is not clearly defined. Texas doctors who perform abortions risk life in prison and fines of up to $100,000, leaving many women with providers who are unwilling to even discuss terminating a pregnancy.

“Our hope is that it will allow physicians at least a little more comfort when it comes to patients in obstetrical emergencies who really need an abortion where it’s going to effect their health, fertility or life going forward,” Molly Duane, the lead attorney on the case, told The Associated Press. “Almost all of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit tell similar stories about their doctors saying, if not for this law, I’d give you an abortion right now.”

The Texas attorney general’s office, which is defending the state in the lawsuit, did not immediately return an email seeking comment Monday.

The lawsuit serves as a nationwide model for abortion rights advocates to challenge strict new abortion laws states that have rolled out since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Sixteen states, including Texas, do not allow abortions when a fatal fetal anomaly is detected while six do not allow exceptions for the mother’s health, according to an analysis by KFF, a health research organization.

Duane said the Center for Reproductive Rights is looking at filing similar lawsuits in other states, noting that they’ve heard from women across the country. Roughly 25 Texas women have contacted the organization about their own experiences since the initial lawsuit was filed in March.

The women who joined the lawsuit describe being elated about finding out they were pregnant before the experience turned catastrophic.

Jessica Bernardo and her husband spent years trying to conceive, even consulting fertility doctors, before finally become pregnant with a daughter, Emma, last July.

Almost immediately, Bernardo was coughing so hard and often she would sometimes throw up. Fourteen weeks into the pregnancy, test results revealed her baby likely had Down Syndrome, so she consulted a specialist who gave her devastating news: Emma’s heart was underdeveloped and she had a rare, deadly disorder called fetal anasarca, which causes fluid to build up in the body.

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“He handed me a tissue box,” recalled Bernardo, who lives in Frisco, Texas. “I thought maybe the worst thing he was going to tell us was that she’s going to have Down Syndrome. Instead, he said, ‘I can tell you right away…she wouldn’t make it.’”

The doctor warned her to watch out for high blood pressure and coughing, symptoms of Mirror syndrome, another rare condition where a mother “mirrors” the same problems the fetus is experiencing.

With Bernardo’s blood pressure numbers climbing, her OB-GYN conferred with the hospital’s ethics board to see if she could end the pregnancy but was advised Bernardo wasn’t sick enough. Bernardo spent $7,000 traveling to Seattle for an abortion a week later.

Even if Emma made it through the pregnancy, doctors would have immediately needed to drain excess fluids from her body, only for her to survive a few hours or days, Bernardo said.

“Reading about everything they would do sounded like complete torture to a newborn that would not survive,” she said. “Had I not received an abortion, my life would have very likely been on the line.”

Other women facing similar situations have not had the financial resources to travel outside of the state.

Samantha Casiano, a 29-year-old living in eastern Texas, found out halfway through her pregnancy last year that her daughter, Halo, had a rare diagnosis of anencephaly, where much of the skull and brain is missing. Her doctor told her she would have to continue with the pregnancy because of Texas law, even though her baby would not survive.

With five children, including a goddaughter, at home she quickly realized she could not afford an out-of-state trip for an abortion. The next next few months of her pregnancy were spent trying to raise money for her daughter’s impending funeral, soliciting donations through online websites and launching fundraisers to sell Mexican soup. Halo was born in April, living for only four hours.

“I was so full of heartbreak and sadness, all at the same time,” Casiano said.

Women in the lawsuit say they could not openly discuss abortion or labor induction with their doctors, instead asking their doctors discreetly if they should travel outside of the state.

Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas, never talked about her own abortion with her doctors after they discovered anencephaly on the baby’s ultrasound during her third pregnancy last year. She worried her out-of-state trip to end the pregnancy could jeopardize her medical license or invite harassment against her and her husband, also an OB-GYN. Dennard was inspired to go public with her case when one of her own patients joined the original lawsuit filed in March after traveling to Colorado to abort a twin fetus diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic disorder.

“There was an enormous amount of fear that I experienced afterward,” Dennard said. “It’s an additional way of feeling silenced. You feel you have to do it in secret and not tell anyone about it.”

Dennard is expecting another child later this year.

___

Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss sentenced Donald Hazard to four years and nine months in prison followed by three months of supervised release for his role in the riot at the Capitol, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.

The sentence matched what federal prosecutors had recommended for Hazard, who pleaded guilty to an assault charge in February.

Hazard, 44, of Hurst, Texas, was a member of a militia called the Patriot Boys of North Texas. Lucas Denney, the group’s self-proclaimed president, appointed Hazard as its sergeant-at-arms. Denney also encouraged Hazard to stock up on weapons and protective gear and recruit others to join them in Washington, D.C., prosecutors said.

Hazard was “eager for violence” on Jan. 6, wearing a tactical vest and a helmet adorned with the image of the Confederate battle flag, Justice Department prosecutor Benet Kearney wrote in a court filing.

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After marching to the Capitol, Hazard clashed with officers who were trying to hold off the mob near scaffolding on the northwest side of the building. Hazard grabbed a Capitol police officer and pulled him down a set of concrete steps, knocking him unconscious. That officer was treated for a concussion and foot injuries that required multiple surgeries, according to prosecutors.

Hazard also fell on another Capitol police officer whose head hit the concrete. Hazard and Denney, both wielding what appeared to be canisters of pepper spray, confronted other officers on the west side of the Capitol.

Hazard briefly entered the Capitol before police pushed him and other rioters out of the building.

“When he reached the exterior steps, Hazard raised his arms in a gesture of victory,” Kearney wrote.

In the days after Jan. 6, Hazard bragged on Facebook about storming the Capitol and fighting with police.

“The only regret Hazard expressed was that he no longer had the photographs and videos he took that day,” Kearney wrote.

Defense attorney Ubong Akpan said Hazard had no plan to attack officers.

“His actions were more of a reaction to what he saw that day, as opposed to a plan to attack law enforcement, a group he thought he was similarly situated with,” Akpan wrote in a court filing.

Video shows that Hazard didn’t forcibly assault the officers in the scaffolding, his lawyer argued.

“His conduct was more consistent with impeding officers and his impeding led to bodily injuries of the officers,” Akpan wrote.

Hazard was charged with Denney, who pleaded guilty to an assault charge and was sentenced last September to four years and four months in prison.

More than 100 police officers were injured at the Capitol on Jan. 6, as rioters disrupted Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.

Over 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. Approximately 500 of them have been sentenced, with more than half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to over 14 years.

In a news release Tuesday, DeSantis said the state has more than 1,100 assets and resources to send to aid what he’s calling the “border security crisis.”

Among the assets are:

• 101 Florida Highway Patrol Troopers
• 200 Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officers, in teams of 40
• 20 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Officers
• 800 Florida National Guard Soldiers
• 20 Emergency Management Personnel – including radio technicians, logisticians, mechanics and planners
• Five available fixed wing aircraft with monitoring equipment and downlink capabilities with two aviation crew teams
• Two Mobile Command Vehicles and two command teams
• 17 available unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and support teams
• 10 vessels – including airboats, shallow draft vessels, and mid-range vessels

DeSantis has accused President Joe Biden of refusing to secure the border during his presidency, leading to large numbers of migrants crossing the border.

“The impacts of Biden’s Border Crisis are felt by communities across the nation, and the federal government’s abdication of duty undermines the sovereignty of our country and the rule of law,” DeSantis said in a statement. “At my direction, state agencies including law enforcement and the Florida National Guard are being deployed to Texas, with assets including personnel, boats and planes. While Biden ignores the crisis he created, Florida stands ready to help Texas respond to this crisis.”

The move comes as DeSantis appears to be close to announcing a decision on whether he’ll seek the Republican presidential nomination for 2024. DeSantis has made immigration a focal point of his governorship, and in 2021 sent law enforcement to Texas and Arizona to assist with the border.

Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a sweeping immigration bill that stiffens requirements on businesses to check the immigration status of workers and provides more funding for the governor’s migrant relocation program.

The Biden administration had announced earlier this month that they were sending 1,500 active-duty troops to the border as the pandemic-era Title 42 immigration restrictions came to an end.

A surge of migrants arrived at the border in the days leading up to the end of Title 42 but officials said Monday that they were starting to encounter fewer migrants.

Last month, amid Biden’s announcement of his reelection campaign, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

The administration also announced they will open centers outside the United States for people to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.

Roberto Flores, 42, died when the EF1 tornado struck the community of Laguna Heights, located on the mainland across from South Padre Island, said Cameron County Sheriff Eric Garza.

An EF1 tornado has wind speeds of 86-110 mph (138-177 kph), according to the National Weather Service.

“Apparently it went straight through that community,” Garza said, “Individuals don’t want to leave their houses because they’re afraid that somebody will go in there and start stealing stuff.”

Garza said his the sheriff’s department is helping provide security for the area.

At least 10 people were also hospitalized — two in critical condition — and multiple people suffered cuts and bruises, said Tom Hushen, the emergency management coordinator for Cameron County. The tornado hit at about 4 a.m.

Hushen said the tornado “caused significant damage to residences … we have 40-60 damaged homes,” some heavily damaged.

The Texas tornado follows an outbreak of dozens of twisters in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado that caused damage but no reported deaths.

Laguna Heights is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of the U.S.-Mexico border at Brownsville and is not prone to tornado active, although this spring has been active, said weather service meteorologist Angelica Soria. Weather service radar observed rotation in the storm, she said, which prompted a tornado warning.

“We did have a tornado warning just north of this area a couple of weeks ago,” Soria added, “but we were not able to confirm that tornado, even though it was radar indicated.”

___

Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas, and Miller reported from Oklahoma City.

Harold Thompson, 22, was arrested on a murder charge in the killing of 26-year-old Gabriella Gonzalez.

The shooting happened on Wednesday, May 10, just after 7:30 a.m. near a gas station on the 800 block of south Walton Walker Boulevard.

Police said the two were seen arguing and surveillance footage shows Thompson putting Gonzalez in a choke hold in the moments before shooting her in the head. Gonzalez died at the scene.

Tragically, her sister, Mileny Rubio, witnessed the murder while she was driving nearby to bring her boyfriend to work.

“I heard gunshots and immediately knew it was her and when I looked back, it was her. She was on the floor,” she said. “I was in shock. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t move. My body froze. I just called my mom and I couldn’t even explain to her.”

Gonzalez’s family told NBC 5 that the two had recently ended a tumultuous 4-month relationship.

“I knew she wasn’t OK but we couldn’t help, we didn’t know how,” Rubio said.

A search of Thompson’s criminal history shows prior charges of domestic assault, which resulted in a warrant being issued for his arrest prior to the shooting. Gonzalez’ mother said that report was officially filed in March by her family but they never heard back from Dallas Police after multiple attempts.

“I looked at her beaten, he no longer let her talk to anyone, he took everything from her,” Gonzalez’ mother told NBC 5 in Spanish. “He took his phone, he managed everything for her. She was scared.”

Court records report Thompson had also abused Gonzalez while she was pregnant.

According to the arrest report, Gonzalez had just returned this week from a trip to Colorado to get an abortion. Police say Thompson was believed to be the father of the child.

“He was so angry that she wanted to get away from him,” Rubio said. “She would always tell me that she wanted to leave, but that she couldn’t.“

A bond has not yet been set for Thompson. It’s unknown if he has an attorney.

Gonzalez leaves three young children behind.

“My sister was very beautiful. She was so sweet,” Rubio said. “It’s so heartbreaking because everybody loved her.”

Gonzalez’s family is hosting a viewing and memorial this Sunday. Funeral services are scheduled for Monday. They are currently raising money to help cover funeral costs on GoFundMe.

Authorities said Bethany Mefford’s boyfriend found her unresponsive in their bed at around 6 a.m. Wednesday. Investigators allege that Mefford, 29, had been shot in the head by a bullet that had been fired hours earlier by Darius Lewis. He lived in a nearby building in the same apartment complex in the Houston suburb of Humble, said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

“It is a horrible thing to have happened to someone that’s laying in their bed, not causing anybody any problems because Bethany never would,” said Lana Higinbotham, Mefford’s aunt. “And to just be taken in your sleep, taken away from your family that loves you more than life, it’s a senseless crime.”

At around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, Lewis saw several people breaking into various vehicles at the complex and fired his gun at them, Gonzalez said.

Lewis told officers he fired once into the ground to get the car thieves away from his vehicle. When they “were not moving fast enough for him,” he fired more times into the ground, according to a probable cause affidavit read at a court hearing early Thursday morning.

Prosecutors allege Lewis also fired across a parking lot at the complex and that the bullet went through the wall of Mefford’s apartment, killing her. Lewis has been charged with manslaughter.

Court records did not list an attorney for Lewis, 28, who could speak on his behalf. He was set to have another court appearance Friday.

Higinbotham said Mefford was a mother of three young boys who was originally from southwestern Pennsylvania and had moved to the Houston area several years ago. She had come with her mother and stepfather, who had both received job transfers to Texas, and had just recently been hired by the same oil drilling company where her mother worked.

“It was a great opportunity for them,” Higinbotham said about the family moving to Texas. “They took it with open arms. As for now it’s been wonderful, until this.”

Gonzalez said Mefford’s death was tragic.

“It’s a heartbreaking situation,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve seen situations where people have fired indiscriminately or just fired at others.”

In February 2022, a 9-year-old Houston girl died after she was shot by a man who had opened fire when he was robbed at an ATM. A grand jury later declined to indict the man. Last month, a Houston man was charged with murder after authorities accused him of fatally shooting a man who had posed as a parking attendant and scammed him out of $40.

The use and role of guns in Texas has been under scrutiny recently amid changes in state law and two recent mass shootings in which 13 people were killed.

In 2021, Texas lawmakers approved legislation allowing people to carry handguns without a license, as well as the background check and training that had gone with it.

Higinbotham said she believes that people “have their right to bear arms” but that her niece’s death has highlighted the need for people to be more responsible with their guns.

“Everybody that I know is very self-conscious and very careful with their weapons,” she said. “I live in Pennsylvania, which is a far cry from Texas. Like it just seems that down there they’re a little less caring as to where they’re pointing or where they’re not even aiming and then just pulling the trigger.”

After the gunman, Mauricio Garcia, entered basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, in June 2008, Army officials were concerned about his mental health early on and said he also had an adjustment disorder, the officials said. An adjustment disorder is characterized by significant emotional distress and is a common mental health disorder among active duty service members.

the gunman, then 18, was supposed to be training to become an infantry soldier, but he was expelled within three months without completing training, the officials said. He was removed prior to receiving rifle training, according to the officials.

While in the Army, the gunman never communicated a threat publicly or engaged in a crime, and officials say they believed at the time that they didn’t have any requirement to notify authorities about their concerns.

What motivated the shooter, 33, to bring multiple weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, to Allen Premium Outlets in Allen on Saturday afternoon and indiscriminately shoot at shoppers remains under investigation. Among those killed during the roughly four-minute rampage were a 3-year-old boy and his parents.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The posts by the gunman on a Russian social networking site suggest the 33-year-old had been planning the attack for weeks before he stepped out of a silver sedan and opened fire Saturday. Among the dead were two elementary school-age sisters, a couple and their 3-year-old son, and a security guard.

The gunman’s online activity also betrayed a fascination with white supremacy and mass shootings, which he described as sport. Photos he posted showed large Nazi tattoos on his arm and torso, including a swastika and the SS lightning bolt logo of Hitler’s paramilitary forces.

Other posts indicated he had researched when the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, one of the Dallas-area’s most diverse suburbs, would be the busiest — Saturday afternoons, the time he carried out the massacre, which ended when police shot and killed him.

The online activity contributed to an emerging picture of the gunman, identified as Mauricio Garcia. He was discharged from the Army in 2008 because of mental health issues and apparently had been working as a security guard, according to neighbors and an Army official.

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Aric Toler, director of training and research at the international research collective bellingcat.com, said he identified Garcia’s profile on the Russian site by searching for active accounts with his birthdate located in the U.S. The AP independently verified the account, which also featured an image of a traffic ticket with Garcia’s name and birthdate as well as paperwork from a motel where he stayed before the shooting.

Federal agents investigating what motivated the shooting have also reviewed the online posts, according to a federal law enforcement official who could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News the gunman had a patch on his chest when police killed him that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” popular among right-wing extremists and white supremacy groups.

Investigators have also interviewed family members and associates of the shooter to ask about his ideological beliefs and are examining his financial records and other electronic media, an official told the AP.

The gunman joined the Army in 2008 but was terminated three months later without completing his initial training, U.S. Army spokeswoman Heather J. Hagan said.

According to an Army official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues, he was kicked out due to mental health issues.

He received an “uncharacterized” discharge, which is common for recruits who don’t make it through training or the first 180 days, according to a defense official who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. That type of discharge — which is not dishonorable — would not set off red flags or require any reports to law enforcement.

On the Dallas block where the gunman lived at a family home until recently, neighbors said they thought he worked as a security guard but they weren’t sure where. The company that manages the mall where the attack happened didn’t immediately reply to messages seeking further information.

A woman who lives next door said she didn’t know her neighbors well but described them as nice and polite. Garcia was always friendly, waving and honking, she said.

A law enforcement official said investigators also have searched a Dallas motel where the gunman had been staying ahead of the attack.

Amid protests Monday at the Texas Capitol for stricter gun control, two Republicans sided with Democrats to advance a bill that would raise the age to buy semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21, though the measure has little or no chance of actually becoming law.

The shooting was the latest attack to contribute to the unprecedented pace of mass killings this year in the U.S. Just over a week before, five people were fatally shot in Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbor asked a man to stop firing his weapon while a baby slept, authorities said.

The community mourned the dead and awaited word on the seven people who were wounded. Medical City Healthcare said Monday it was treating six patients: Three were in critical condition, two were in fair condition and one was in good condition at a children’s hospital. Police said a seventh wounded person was taken to a different hospital.

Allen, which is home to about 105,000 people, is among the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s diverse suburbs. The area saw the largest Asian American growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, according to U.S. Census figures. Those statistics show that Allen’s population is about 19% Asian, 10% Black and 11% Hispanic.

Allen also is connected to another of Texas’ recent mass shootings. Patrick Crusius lived there in 2019 before he posted a racist screed online warning of a “Hispanic invasion” and drove to El Paso, where he opened fire at a Walmart, killing 23. Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges in February.

___

Baldor reported from Washington and Johnson from Seattle. Jamie Stengle and Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas; Michael Balsamo in Washington; Vanessa Alvarez in New York; James Vertuno in Austin; Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island; and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

In the past few weeks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have been facilitating these expulsions three times a day as roughly 30,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have entered the U.S. in this region since mid-April. That’s compared with 1,700 migrants Border Patrol agents encountered in the first two weeks of April.

In the other end of the state, in El Paso, officials are dealing with another surge of migrants and worry that thousands more are waiting to cross.

All this comes as the U.S. is preparing for the end of a policy linked to the coronavirus pandemic that allowed it to quickly expel many migrants, and it spotlights concerns about whether the end of the immigration limits under Title 42 of a 1944 public health law will mean even more migrants trying to cross the southern border.

“We’ve been preparing for quite some time and we are ready. What we are expecting is indeed a surge. And what we are doing is planning for different levels of a surge,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week during a visit to southern Texas. But he also stressed that the situation at the border is “extremely challenging.”

He spoke from a location in Brownsville where U.S. officials had set up a tent and facilities like portable bathrooms for migrants. He said it’s difficult to identify the cause of the recent Venezuelan surge but said the U.S. is working with Mexico to address it and predicted change “very shortly.”

Many of those crossing the border are entering through Brownsville just north of the Mexican border town of Matamoros. The city was rocked by another crisis Sunday when an SUV plowed into people waiting at a bus stop across from the city’s migrant shelter. Eight people, mostly men from Venezuela, died.

Ricardo Marquez, a 30-year-old Venezuelan man, arrived at a shelter in McAllen after crossing the border with his wife and 5-month-old child in Brownsville. They left Venezuela because his daughter needs surgery.

“I was confronted with the decision to either stay there or risk it all for my daughter,” he said. They had crossed the Rio Grande after spending a month in Matamoros trying to get an appointment through an app the U.S. uses to schedule appointments for people without documents to come to the border and seek entry.

Officials in President Joe Biden’s administration say they have been preparing for well over a year for the end of Title 42. The strategy has hinged on providing more legal pathways for migrants to get to the U.S. without risking the perilous journey to the border. That includes things like setting up centers in foreign countries where migrants can apply to emigrate as well as a humanitarian parole process already in place with 30,000 slots a month for people from four countries to come to the U.S. Starting May 12 they’re expanding appointments available through the CBP One app Marquez tried to use. When it was launched many migrants and advocates criticized the app, saying it had technological problems and there simply weren’t enough appointments.

The strategy is also heavy on consequences. The U.S. is proposing a rule that would severely limit asylum to migrants who first travel through another country, quickly screening migrants seeking asylum at the border and deporting those deemed not qualified, and a five-year ban on reentry for those deported.

A lot of these consequences have been met with harsh criticism by immigrants’ rights groups who have gone so far as to compare the policies to then-President Donald Trump’s and say the right to apply for asylum on U.S. soil is sacrosanct. Much of the Biden administration strategy is also facing legal peril in the coming weeks. The proposed rule limiting asylum is almost certain to be the subject of lawsuits. And Republican-leaning states want to stop the Democratic administration’s use of humanitarian parole on such a large scale.

The administration has also been increasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights to remove people from the country — flights like one that took off recently from an airport in Harlingen, Texas. Shortly after dawn three buses pulled up next to a plane. One by one migrants got out of the bus. They were wearing handcuffs and leg restraints and surgical masks. First they were patted down for contraband and then slowly walked up the stairs to the plane. Altogether 133 migrants were sent back to their home country of Guatemala.

But those flights only work if countries accept them. Venezuela does not. And Colombia says it’s suspending deportation flights due to “cruel and degrading” treatment of migrants.

Administration officials say they’re using technology to speed up the processing of migrants who cross the border without documentation and using mobile processing, so they can process migrants while they’re being transported by bus or van, for example. They’ve pushed to digitize documents that at one time were filled out by hand by Border Patrol. And they’ve beefed up the hiring of contractors so agents can remain in the field.

But critics have slammed the administration, saying it’s not doing enough. Kristen Sinema, an independent U.S. senator from Arizona, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the administration wasn’t communicating with local officials about things like what type of surge to expect or whether buses would be available to transport migrants. And she said a decision to send 1,500 military troops to the border came too late.

In communities that border Mexico, officials and community groups that care for newly arrived migrants are anxious about what the end of Title 42 means. Sister Norma Pimentel runs Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, the largest shelter in South Texas.

The shelter functions mainly as a resource center where migrants can purchase tickets, make calls, eat and rest before traveling to their next destination, where they often have family or other contacts. But, Pimentel said, many of the Venezuelans in this latest surge don’t have connections in the U.S., making it harder for them to move to the next destination. “That becomes a problem for us,” she said.

The federal government gives money to communities to help them deal with the increases in migrants. On Friday the administration announced that $332 million had been disbursed to 35 local governments and service organizations. Most goes to communities close to the border “due to the urgencies they are confronting,” but cities far from the border also get funds.

In the Texas border city of El Paso, about 2,200 migrants are currently camped or living on the streets a few blocks from major ports of entry that connect El Paso with the Mexican city of Juárez. The city is prepared to open up shelters next week if needed at two vacant school buildings and a civic center.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser estimated that roughly 10,000 to 12,000 migrants are in Juárez waiting to cross, as local officials prepare for the “unknown.” Leeser said migrants are flocking to the border under false assumptions that it will be easier to gain entry to the U.S. when Title 42 goes away, but for many there could be tougher consequences.

It’s a message federal officials have been repeating. But they’re competing against a powerful human smuggling network that facilitates northern migration and the desperation of migrants who feel they have no other option.

At the Brownsville port of entry, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they’ve run drills to prepare in case there’s a surge of migrants trying to cross and they need to close the bridge. Pedestrians cross from Matamoros using a covered walkway that can only accommodate a few people across. Worried about the impact of long lines of migrants coming to the port after May 11 without an appointment and impacting port operations, they’re calling on people to schedule appointments through CBP One.

___

Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. Associated Press writer Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed to this report.

Steven Spainhouer’s son works at the shopping center and called him when he couldn’t get through to 911. Spainhouer was nearby and rushed to the scene, arriving before the police.

He said he performed CPR on victims and helped find rides to the hospital. But for some others, there was little he could do to help.

“The injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do,” Spainhouer said.

His description of the scene is heartbreaking. Spainhouer recounted finding a girl near bushes in a praying position and reached down to check her pulse. When he turned her over, “she had no face,” he said.

“I found a 4-year-old under a lady, got the 4-year-old, 5-year-old, around the corner. He said he was OK, he was covered in blood from head to toe,” he said. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”

Spainhouer’s son sheltered inside the H&M store with fellow employees and shoppers. Father and son reunited when authorities began evacuating the mall.

“My son came out, and I wanna tell you, to see your son come out with his hands over his head and have to walk past dead bodies it’s not something any parent or anybody should ever have to see or experience,” Spainhouer said.

He is now joining a growing chorus of people touched by gun violence across the country who are calling for “meaningful gun control legislation.”

“I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, we gotta find a consensus on how to make our communities safer and still respect the rights of people to have their guns if they want to have them,” Spainhouer said.

The gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others – three critically — before being killed by a police officer who happened to be nearby answering an unrelated call.

Two senior law enforcement officials tell NBC News the man who opened fire was armed with a rifle of some kind as well as a handgun. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of an ongoing investigation.

Officials told The Associated Press the weapons included an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun.

Spainhouer told NBC News’ Morgan Chesky that in the hours after the shooting, he was processing a lot of emotions, and his heartbreak has turned into anger over gun violence. He said, “Mental health didn’t fire that gun,” the victims were killed by bullets.

After witnessing the carnage the guns caused, he believes talking about the shooting will help him process the trauma. He said H&M is offering counseling to his son.

With the outpouring of support for the victims of the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, GoFundMe has launched a centralized hub for all verified fundraisers related to the shooting. The online fundraising platform said it was working around the clock to make sure that all funds donated go directly to survivors or the families of victims.

ALLEN MALL SHOOTING

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Texas Mall Gun Identified, Had 2 Guns and More in His Vehicle: Sources

Shelter director Victor Maldonado of the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center said he reviewed the shelter’s surveillance video on Sunday morning after receiving a call about the crash.

“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a 100 feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said.

The city bus stop is across the street from the shelter and is not marked. There was no bench, and people waiting there were sitting along the curb, Maldonado said. He said most of the victims were Venezuelan men.

He said the SUV flipped after running up on the curb and continued moving for about 200 feet (about 60 meters). Some people walking on the sidewalk about 30 feet from the main group were also hit, Maldonado said. Witnesses detained the driver as he tried to run away and held him until police arrived, he said.

Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval said the crash happened about 8:30 a.m. and police did not know whether the driver intentionally hit people.

“It can be three factors,” Sandoval said. “It could be intoxication; it could be an accident; or it could be intentional. In order for us to find out exactly what happened, we have to eliminate the other two.”

The driver was taken to the hospital for injuries sustained when the car rolled over, Sandoval said. There were no passengers in the car and police didn’t immediately know the drivers’ name or age, Sandoval said on Sunday afternoon.

“He’s being very uncooperative at the hospital, but he will be transported to our city jail as soon as he gets released,” Sandoval said. “Then we’ll fingerprint him and (take a) mug shot, and then we can find his true identity.”

Police also retrieved a blood sample and sent it to a Texas Department of Public Safety lab to test for intoxicants.

Brownsville has long been an epicenter for migration across the U.S.-Mexico border, and it has become a key location of interest for next week’s end to pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42. The Ozanam shelter is the only overnight shelter in the city and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody.

Maldonado said the center had not received any threats before the crash, but they did afterward.

“I’ve had a couple of people come by the gate and tell the security guard that the reason this happened was because of us,” Maldonado said.

The shelter can hold 250, but many who arrive leave the same day. In the last several weeks, an uptick in border crossings prompted the city to declare an emergency as local, state and federal resources coordinated enforcement and humanitarian response.

“In the last two months, we’ve been getting 250 to 380 a day,” Maldonado said.

While the shelter offers migrants transportation during the week, they also use the city’s public transportation.

U.S. Rep. Vicente González said Sunday that local officials are in communication with the federal government about the crash.

“We are all extremely sad and heart broken to have such a tragedy in our neighborhood,” he said.

Editor’s Note: A senior law enforcement official initially told NBC News that authorities believed the driver had plowed into the crowd intentionally but later said it was not clear if he behaved deliberately.

Valerie Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. Travis Loller contributed to this report from Nashville, Tenn.

Two law enforcement officials named the gunman as Mauricio Garcia, who was fatally shot by a police officer who happened to be near the suburban Dallas mall. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of an ongoing investigation

According to law enforcement officials, a preliminary review of what is believed to be the shooter’s social media accounts reveal hundreds of posts that include racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi material and material espousing white supremacy, NBC News reports.

At the time of the massacre, he was wearing a patch on his chest that included the acronym “rwds,” according to two senior law enforcement officials. Authorities believe the letters stand for “right wing death squad,” a phrase used in far-right online spaces, one of the senior law enforcement officials added.

NBC News had not seen any of the suspect’s accounts and the officials stressed it was too early to ascribe a motive.

The official said police also found multiple weapons at the scene after the suspect was fatally shot by a police officer. The weapons included an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, according to the official.

Officials told The Associated Press that the suspect had been staying at a nearby motel. One official said investigators have been searching the motel and a home in the Dallas area connected to the suspect.

COMMUNITY MOURNS VICTIMS

The gunman’s name emerged as the community of Allen mourned for the dead and awaited word on the seven people who were wounded.

John Mark Caton, senior pastor at Cottonwood Creek Church, about two miles from the mall, offered prayers during his weekly service for victims, first responders and the shoppers and employees who “walked out past things they never should have seen.”

“Some of our people were there. Some perhaps in this room. Some of our students were working in those stores and will be changed forever by this,” Caton said.

Recalling phone conversations with police officers, he said: “There wasn’t an officer that I talked to yesterday that at some point in the call didn’t cry.”

The church planned an evening prayer vigil in the aftermath of the shooting.

Police did not immediately provide details about the victims at Allen Premium Outlets, a sprawling outdoor shopping center, but witnesses reported seeing children among them. Some said they also saw what appeared to be a police officer and a mall security guard unconscious on the ground.

A 16-year-old pretzel stand employee, Maxwell Gum, described a virtual stampede of shoppers. He and others sheltered in a storage room.

“We started running. Kids were getting trampled,” Gum said. “My co-worker picked up a 4-year-old girl and gave her to her parents.”

Dashcam video circulating online showed the gunman getting out of a car and shooting at people on the sidewalk. More than three dozen shots could be heard as the vehicle that was recording the video drove off.

Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd said seven people, including the shooter, died at the scene. Nine victims were taken to hospitals. Two of them died.

Three of the wounded remained in critical condition Sunday, and four were stable, Boyd said.

An Allen Police Department officer was in the area on an unrelated call when he heard shots at 3:36 p.m., the department wrote on Facebook.

“The officer engaged the suspect and neutralized the threat. He then called for emergency personnel,” the post said.

Mass killings have happened with staggering frequency in the United States this year, with an average of about one per week, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting in Allen, and the administration offered support to local officials, the White House said.

In a statement, Biden said the assailant wore tactical gear and fired an AR-15-style weapon. He urged Congress to enact tighter restrictions on firearms and ammunition.

“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar. And yet, American communities have suffered roughly 200 mass shootings already this year, according to leading counts,” said Biden, who ordered flags lowered to half-staff.

Republicans in Congress, he said, “cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has signed laws easing firearms restrictions following past mass shootings, called the mall attack an “unspeakable tragedy.”

A live aerial broadcast from a news station showed armored trucks and other law enforcement vehicles outside the mall. More than 30 police cruisers with lights flashing blocked an entrance. Multiple ambulances were at the scene in the city of 105,000 residents about 25 miles north of downtown Dallas.

Video shared on social media showed people running through a parking lot amid the sound of gunshots.

Fontayne Payton, 35, was at H&M when he heard gunshots through his headphones.

“It was so loud, it sounded like it was right outside,” Payton said.

People in the store scattered before employees ushered the group into the fitting rooms and then a lockable back room, he said. When they were given the all-clear to leave, Payton saw the store had broken windows and a trail of blood to the door. Discarded sandals and bloodied clothes lay nearby.

Once outside, Payton saw bodies.

“I pray it wasn’t kids, but it looked like kids,” he said. The bodies were covered in white towels, slumped over bags on the ground. “It broke me when I walked out to see that.”

Further away, he saw the body of a heavyset man wearing all black. He assumed it was the shooter, Payton said, because unlike the other bodies it had not been covered.

Tarakram Nunna, 25, and Ramakrishna Mullapudi, 26, said they saw what appeared to be three people motionless on the ground, including one who seemed to be a police officer and another who resembled a mall security guard.

Another shopper, Sharkie Mouli, 24, said he hid in a Banana Republic. As he left, he saw someone who looked like a police officer lying unconscious next to another unconscious person outside the store.

“I have seen his gun lying right next to him and a guy who is like passing out right next to him,” Mouli said.

Stan and Mary Ann Greene were browsing in a Columbia sportswear store when the shooting started.

“We had just gotten in, just a couple minutes earlier, and we just heard a lot of loud popping,” Mary Ann Greene told The Associated Press.

Employees rolled down the security gate and brought everyone to the rear of the store until police arrived and escorted them out, the Greenes said.

Eber Romero was at an Under Armour store when a cashier mentioned there was a shooting.

As he left, the mall appeared empty and all the shops had their security gates down, Romero said. That is when he started seeing broken glass and victims of the shooting on the floor of the shopping center.

___

Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle and Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas contributed to this report.

On a 1-acre plot of land bought with a small down payment, Garcia built a home in the Trails End neighborhood that provided nurturing shelter for his family. It was also an inviting space for friends to visit. The lush green space around his home, located about 60 miles north of Houston, reminded Garcia of the countryside of his native Honduras.

“Back home in Honduras, he was a country man … He talked about how beautiful the country is,” said Johnny Ray Gibbs, who has known Garcia for a decade. “I asked him, ’How is it up there (in Cleveland)? He said, ‘Beautiful.’”

That beauty was shattered by gunfire on April 28 when authorities say a neighbor, Francisco Oropesa, responded to a request to stop firing his AR-style rifle late at night by charging into Garcia’s home and killing five people.

The shooting victims included Garcia’s wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman; and 9-year-old son, Daniel Enrique Laso; family friends Diana Velásquez Alvarado, 21; Jose Jonathan Cacerez, 18, and Cacerez’s girlfriend, Obdulia Julisa Molina Rivera, 29. All were from Honduras.

As the victims were remembered for their efforts to seek better lives in the U.S. or for their bravery in saving children during the shooting, Garcia and his neighbors were uncertain if they and the community they’ve worked hard to build would ever recover.

“I don’t have words to describe what happened. It’s like I am alive but at the same time not. What happened was something horrible, ugly,” Garcia told reporters following the shooting.

The alleged gunman, 38, was captured after a four-day search and jailed on five murder charges.

Weeks before the shooting, Garcia, who works as an electrician, and Guzman had celebrated the birth of their son. He joined Daniel and a 2½ year old sister in their burgeoning family. Also living in the home was Wilson Garcia’s brother-in-law, Ramiro Guzman, and his wife and 6-month-old son.

The others in the home during the shooting were extended family and friends who would often stay on weekends, Garcia said.

Shawn Crawford, 52, who lives two houses down, said Garcia and his family “were just good people.” Crawford and her grandchildren had attended kids birthday parties and cookouts at Garcia’s home.

Guzman’s brother, Germán Guzmán, 28, said his sister came to the U.S. nine years ago so she could help her family.

“Here in Honduras, there’s no work,” he told The Associated Press from the central Honduras town of La Misión.

Crawford said when Guzman was pregnant last year, Garcia went to Crawford’s home and asked if he could buy a pink flower growing from her Yucca plant, saying it was “good for the unborn baby.” Crawford told him to take one anytime he saw it bloom.

“That’s the neighborhood we were … Everybody just helped each other,” Crawford said.

That help among neighbors was valuable because Trails End was not always an easy place to live.

Residents have been forced to collect money to fix the potholes that riddle the streets because they’re considered private roads and not under the county’s jurisdiction.

The killings highlighted the ongoing problem of residents firing their weapons for fun and slow law enforcement response times to such incidents. Garcia had asked Oropeza if he could fire his weapon farther away because Garcia’s 1½ month old son was trying to sleep.

Dale Tiller, who has lived in the neighborhood for 13 years, said despite these difficult circumstances, people live there because of the “pride in wanting to be a homeowner and live a better life.”

Just a week before the shooting, Garcia had finished converting a carport into another room for his home of three years. The building supplies he had used were still in his front yard days after the shooting.

“Besides the issues we do have, there are really good people here,” Tiller said.

Idalmy Hernandez, 45, said she and the other immigrants in Trails End have fought for the dream of home ownership. When she spoke to Garcia after the shooting, he told her he felt his dream had ended.

“He is very sad,” said Hernandez, who is from Honduras.

At a vigil in front of Garcia’s home, 10-year-old Guillermo Tobon recalled how he would often play soccer with Garcia’s son, Daniel, as they waited for the morning school bus. Soccer was Daniel’s favorite sport. The last time they played was a day before his death.

“We played about 30 minutes until the bus arrived,” Tobon said.

Among the flowers and stuffed animals placed at a memorial in front of Garcia’s home was a letter addressed to Daniel: “You were the best friend ever. You were so good at golie in soccer. You were the best teamate. You will always be in our hearts.”

“It’s very hard because nothing like this has ever happened,” said Manuela Lara, who would often see Garcia and his family at the neighborhood Mexican food stand that Lara owns.

Velásquez Alvarado’s father, Osmán Velásquez, said his daughter had traveled to the United States eight years ago without documents but had recently received U.S. residency status.

Jeffrison Rivera, Velásquez Alvarado’s husband, said in a video posted on immigration activist Carlos Eduardo Espina’s Facebook page that Jonathan Cacerez was his nephew and had been like a father to Molina Rivera’s two children. Rivera said Molina Rivera had only arrived in the last year.

Rivera said his two sons — one 9 months old and the other 6 years old — were among the five children that Velásquez Alvarado and Molina Rivera protected in a closet by hiding them under a pile of clothes.

Oropeza “took my heart. He left my two kids with no mother,” Rivera said.

While the remains of four of the victims will be repatriated to Honduras, Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the U.S.

Crawford said she thinks the shooting along with comments from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in which he described the five victims as “illegal immigrants,” have residents in her neighborhood scared. She’s not sure if things will go back to normal, when neighbors were outside barbecuing, walking around with their families.

“I hope it does because that was the nice part of the neighborhood,” Crawford said.

___

Associated Press reporter Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, contributed to this report.

___

Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd confirmed at about 9 p.m. Saturday that the gunman killed six people at the mall and injured at least nine others. Of the nine who were hospitalized, two later died bringing the total number of people killed to nine, including the gunman.

On Sunday, the Allen Police Department said four patients were being treated at Medical City McKinney, one in fair condition and three in critical condition. One patient was transferred to Medical City Plano, a Level I Trauma Center, and is listed in fair condition. One patient was transferred to Medical City Children’s Hospital and is in fair condition. Another was treated at a different area hospital.

Medical City Healthcare told NBC 5 Saturday that shooting victims ranged in age from 5 years old to 61 years old.

Boyd cautioned that there could be additional victims who were injured in the shooting and who were taken to hospitals in other ways.

U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R-McKinney, District 3) said on Twitter at about 6:15 p.m. that the gunman was no longer a threat and that there were a number of casualties, which Allen Chief of Police Brian Harvey later confirmed at a news conference at about 6:30 p.m.

Harvey said an officer was at the outlet mall responding to an unrelated call when he heard gunfire at about 3:30 p.m. Harvey said the officer ran toward the gunfire, found the gunman and “neutralized” him. The officer then made the call for ambulances.

Harvey said they believe the gunman acted alone and that there is no ongoing threat to the community.

“Our deepest sympathies are with the families of the victims,” said Harvey. “This is a tragedy, people will be looking for answers, we’re sorry that those families are experiencing that loss.”

In a tweet Saturday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed the active shooter situation at the mall at about 4:30 p.m., about 60 minutes after the incident took place. The bureau sent agents to the mall and helped local police in the initial response of clearing stores in the sprawling outdoor mall.

An ATF spokesperson told NBC 5 agents and K-9 officers are now working to locate shell casings and begin the process of tracing the firearm or firearms involved in the attack.

WITNESSES REPORT TAKING SHELTER, SEEING BODIES

Several witnesses described to NBC 5 that they saw several people who had been shot. Officials later confirmed there were six people killed at the sprawling outdoor mall and at least nine others were injured. Two of those later died. With the death of the gunman, the total climbed to nine deceased.

Hundreds of people were evacuated and were being kept in a parking lot across from the mall, waiting for someone to pick them up or being allowed back to their cars. Officials said it may be up to 24 hours before people will be allowed to remove cars from the parking lot.

Witnesses described moments of terror as they sheltered inside stores for as long as an hour before they were evacuated.

One man, who said he was an employee of a store at the mall, told NBC 5 he and a co-worker saw bullets hitting the columns in front of the shop and ducked to the ground. They managed to make it to a back room, where they barricaded themselves.

They described seeing who they believed to be the gunman, wearing a mask and police-like attire.

Bullet holes could be seen in cars in the mall parking lot as well as in storefronts.

The shooting drew a large law enforcement presence from several federal, state and local agencies.

The sprawling outlet mall has about 120 stores and is said to typically be very busy on weekends. The Allen Police Department posted on its social media accounts to avoid the area until further updates.

Allen police also ask that witnesses or anyone with footage contact the FBI by calling 1-800-225-5324 (800-CALL-FBI).

POLITICIANS PLEDGE SUPPORT, OFFER PRAYERS

In a written statement, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said he was aware of the shooting and offered the state’s assistance in investigating the shooting.

“Our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas tonight during this unspeakable tragedy,” Abbott said. “I have been in contact with Mayor Fulk and DPS Director McCraw as well as other state and local leaders and offered the full support of the State of Texas to local officials to ensure all needed assistance and resources are swiftly deployed, including DPS officers, Texas Rangers, and investigative resources.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) issued this statement today following news of the shooting in Allen:

“Please join Jan and me in mourning the victims of the unspeakable tragedy in Allen. Please also join us in prayer for the victims’ families and friends along with the residents of Allen. We are grateful for our brave first responders who were deployed to stop the shooter and investigate this hideous crime. We are thankful for their bravery and courage.”

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) national president Domingo Garcia called on Abbott, Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan to convene an emergency meeting on Monday at the Texas Capitol.

“We must stop this epidemic of killings by declaring that Texas is taking immediate steps to prevent more mass shootings that are becoming all too frequent.” Garcia said. “It is no longer enough to express condolences and say prayers after the fact without taking the commonsense steps and enacting laws which can be enforced effectively to address this threat to our communities. Also, politicians doing nothing is no longer acceptable.”

State Rep. Rhetta Bowers (D-Garland, District 113) released the following statement Saturday night regarding the mass shooting, which took place near her district and involved a mall she frequents with her family.

“My heart breaks, as it has too many times before, for the victims and their loved ones affected by this senseless act of mass murder. They will all remain in my thoughts and prayers for the weeks to come. I also commend the heroic and swift police response that neutralized the shooter before even more lives could be lost. However, it must be said that these tragedies will continue to occur so long as Texas fails to enact common sense gun safety reforms and invests in mental healthcare and the social safety net. I am committed to all of the above, and to doing everything I can so that no family ever has to face this devastating violence again.”

Texas Democratic Party Communications Director Ike Hajinazarian, who is based in Plano just a few miles south of the Allen Premium Outlets, issued a statement calling on Republican representatives in the area, State Rep. Jeff Leach and State Sen. Angela Paxton, to take up legislation this session that would prevent future mass shootings.

“So let me say to Jeff Leach and Angela Paxton as one of your constituents: DO SOMETHING. Not one single responsible gun owner in your districts wants these extreme, off-the-wall NRA-lobbied ‘laws’ – or lack thereof – you guys have been shoving down our throats for the past decade in order to win your ridiculous primaries,” Hajinazarian wrote. “Permitless carry (a bill Rep. Leach co-authored in 2021) is a disaster. Letting high schoolers buy ARs is a disaster. Letting rifles fly off the shelves with reckless abandon and flooding Texas streets with firearms is a disaster. Refusing to enact red-flag laws has been a disaster.”

Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano, District 67), who spoke at a news conference at about 9 p.m. Saturday night, also issued the following statement on Twitter.

“I’m deeply saddened by the horrific events that occurred today at the Allen Premium Outlets, right in the heart of House District 67, and am praying for the victims and all those affected by this horrible tragedy. I returned to Allen from the Capitol and am on-site, working with our law enforcement agencies to provide whatever support is needed. I am thankful for the Allen Police Department, the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, Texas DPS – and all of our law enforcement agencies – for responding heroically, swiftly and for taking immediate action. I will continue to monitor the situation and keep you apprised of information as I receive it.”

U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both shared statements on Twitter offering prayers but also gratitude for the officer who stopped the shooter.

“Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin County community that’s in shock from this tragedy. My team is in contact with local officials, and I have offered whatever support is needed to do justice and help those in need. Thank you to the incredible law enforcement who put a stop to the monster who committed this act of evil,” Cruz tweeted.

“I am grieving with the Allen community tonight, and I send my gratitude to the brave @Allen_Police officers, Collin County first responders, and all of those involved in responding to this afternoon’s horrific incident,” Cornyn tweeted.

Neither Cruz nor Cornyn mentioned gun legislation or committed to working to reduce gun violence, but both offered to support “those in need” which included Cornyn sharing a disaster distress helpline run by the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI Texas’ tweet is below for those who need it.

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Emergency responders were called to help around 3 p.m. at the Shell facility in Deer Park, a suburb east of Houston. The city of Deer Park said in an advisory that there was no shelter-in-place order for residents.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said earlier in the day that five contracted employees were hospitalized for precautionary reasons, adding that they were not burned. He said they were taken to a hospital due to heat exhaustion and proximity to the fire.

Shell Deer Park officials said on Twitter Friday night that they were continuing to respond to the fire, all workers were accounted for and nine workers had been released after undergoing precautionary medical evaluations.

Nothing exploded, Gonzalez said, although the sheriff’s office initially responded to emergency calls saying there was an explosion.

As of Friday evening, the fire was still burning but had died down and was contained, Gonzalez said.

The cause of the blaze was still being investigated. The fire started while the olefins unit was undergoing routine maintenance. Air monitoring for any impact from the fire was ongoing, and had not detected any harmful levels of chemicals, Shell Deer Park said.

“There is no danger to the nearby community,” the post said.

The fire started at about 2:56 p.m. in the facility’s olefins unit. The product that ignited includes cracked heavy gas oil, cracked light gas oil and gasoline, Shell Deer Park said.

“The cause of the fire will be the subject of a future investigation, and our immediate priorities remain the safety of people and the environment,” facility officials said.

Shell was conducting its own air quality monitoring, but the city has yet to receive an update, said Kaitlyn Bluejacket, a spokesperson for Deer Park.

The city was advised by Shell that there was no need at the time to shelter in place, but that the city would update residents if that changed, Bluejacket said.

Fire crews from the Deer Park facility and nearby plants responded.

Wind conditions were favorable for fighting the blaze, although temperatures soared to near 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) in the Houston area, but high humidity made it feeler hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius.)

Harris County Fire Marshal Captain James Singleton said his office would be in Deer Park through the weekend investigating.

“You’re looking at a large number of people that need to be interviewed,” Singleton said. “Everyone who was at the unit at the time of the fire, the controllers, management, anybody that called 911.”

Houston meteorologists said the smoke plumes were visible from space via satellite.

Facility fires are not uncommon in the area, with the strong presence of the petrochemical industry. In March, an explosion and a fire erupted at a facility owned by INEOS Phenol in nearby Pasadena, Texas, leaving one injured.

A fire in 2019 at a facility owned by Intercontinental Terminals Company burned for days and though it caused no injuries, it triggered air quality warnings.

It’s pretty common to see squirrels in the park, but spotting a white one is a rarity. And if that white one is an albino squirrel, consider yourself lucky.

It’s not clear whether the squirrel was a white squirrel or the rare true albino because it’s hard to make out the animal’s eye color. The true albino squirrel is all white and has red eyes due to a lack of pigment, while a white squirrel will still have brown eyes and could have splotches of colored hair on its head.

Unlike albinism, the white squirrel is actually a genetic anomaly due to a mutated gene from the common Eastern Gray Squirrel, according to Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory. It is called leucism, which is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation in animals caused by a recessive allele.

According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, albino animals tend to have a tougher time with survival. Albino animals generally have poorer vision and are very sensitive to light. They also are disadvantaged when it comes to blending into their environment.

“This creates quite a problem for the albino predator trying to sneak up on lunch, or the albino prey trying to hide from its enemies. As you would expect, the white predator often starves and the white prey quickly is found and eaten,” the parks department said in an online article.

The parks department estimates true albinism happens only very rarely in the wild — once every 100,000 births. Others say it could be 10 times as rare, happening once out of every million births.

Francisco Oropeza showered and slept at the house outside the city of Conroe on Tuesday while Divimara Lamar Nava got him donuts from a nearby store, a prosecutor said. Lamar Nava also acknowledged delivering a message from Oropeza to his cousins in the area asking them to help him get out of the country, the prosecutor said at Lamar Nava’s probable cause hearing. The cousins refused to help.

Authorities believe Lamar Nava was talking to investigators at the same time she was trying to help Oropeza, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said at a news conference. She initially told authorities she didn’t know where Oropeza was, but later told a federal agent that he showed up at the house about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the prosecutor at the probable cause hearing.

Oropeza, 38, was arrested there on Tuesday evening, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the city of Cleveland, where the shootings took place. Acting on a tip, authorities found him hiding under a pile of laundry in a closet after a four-day manhunt. Lamar Nava, 53, was arrested at the house on Wednesday.

Authorities identified Lamar Nava as Oropeza’s wife, though jail records list her as not being married but sharing a home address with him.

The slayings Friday sent shudders through a nation already dealing with a wave of shootings that have put the U.S. on a torrid pace for mass killings this year.

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Outside the Conroe-area home, yellow police tape could be seen Wednesday in both the front and back, although the officers were gone. Neighbor Angel Lozano recalled looking up from unloading tools from his truck Tuesday night to see unmarked law enforcement vehicles streaming onto his normally quiet street.

“A bunch of people got out with guns and they went straight to the house and surrounded the area,” Lozano, 39, said Wednesday, estimating that at least 50 officers surrounded the home two doors down from his. “It was a really fast job they did. They got him without people getting hurt or another shooting.”

Several others have also been arrested, authorities said, although they only shared details about one of them. Domingo Castilla, a friend of Oropeza, was arrested on Tuesday in the Trail’s End neighborhood where the victims were shot, Dillon said. Castilla was charged with marijuana possession but authorities also expect to charge him with obstructing Oropeza’s apprehension, Dillon said.

At a news conference Wednesday, San Jacinto County Chief Deputy Sheriff Tim Kean said he couldn’t go into details about the other people who were arrested, including how many.

Oropeza was charged Wednesday with five counts of first-degree murder during a court hearing in jail, said San Jacinto County Justice of the Peace Judge Randy Ellisor. Bond is set at $1.5 million per count, for a total of $7.5 million, Ellisor said. Lamar Nava is being held at the Montgomery County jail on a felony charge of hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon. Her bail has been set at $250,000. Bond for Castilla was set at $5,000, Ellisor said.

Oropeza is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials.

Police had previously spotted him on Monday afternoon in Montgomery County, prompting several schools to lock down, Kean said at a news conference outside the county jail Wednesday.

“We did confirm that was him on foot, running, but we lost track of him,” Kean said.

Kean declined to comment on the tip that led authorities to the Conroe home, which he said was one that had not been previously checked by authorities.

Texas May 3

Manhunt Ends With Arrest of Man Accused of Killing 5 Neighbors in Cleveland, TX: What to Know

The arrest came after authorities set up a widening dragnet of more than 250 people, drones and search dogs from multiple jurisdictions and offered $80,000 in reward money. The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. A little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul.

Lozano said he hadn’t known the residents of the home where Oropeza was arrested but would sometimes say hi to them if they were walking by his house. “We never thought he was going to be right next door,” he said.

The victims have been identified as Diana Velásquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9, all from Honduras. Velásquez Alvarado’s father, Osmán Velásquez, said she had recently obtained legal residency in the U.S.

Argentina Guzman’s husband, Wilson Garcia, survived the shooting. He said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield the children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

When offering a reward for Oropeza’s capture, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” which drew widespread backlash. His office apologized on Monday.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.

Osmán Velásquez said his daughter had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister who was already living there.

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”

Divimara Lamar Nava had previously denied knowing where Francisco Oropeza was, but authorities believe she hid him in the home where he was arrested late Tuesday, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the city of Cleveland, where Friday’s fatal shootings took place, said Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson.

Oropeza had a personal connection to the home near the city of Conroe, where Lamar Nava was also arrested, according to San Jacinto County Chief Deputy Sheriff Tim Kean. He didn’t elaborate.

“I believe he thought he was in a safe spot,” Kean said.

Lamar Nava is being held at the Montgomery County jail on a felony charge of hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon, according to online jail records. Henderson identified Lamar Nava as Oropeza’s wife, though jail records list her as not being married but sharing a home address with him.

The slayings Friday sent shudders through a nation already dealing with a wave of shootings that have put the U.S. on a torrid pace for mass killings this year.

Outside the Conroe-area home where the pair were taken into custody, yellow police tape could be seen in both the front and back, although the officers were gone. Neighbor Angel Lozano recalled looking up from unloading tools from his truck Tuesday night to see unmarked law enforcement vehicles streaming onto his normally quiet street.

“A bunch of people got out with guns and they went straight to the house and surrounded the area,” Lozano, 39, said Wednesday, estimating that at least 50 officers surrounded the home two doors down from his. “It was a really fast job they did. They got him without people getting hurt or another shooting.”

Several others have also been arrested, authorities said, although they only shared details about one of them. Domingo Castilla, a friend of Oropeza, was arrested on Tuesday in the Trail’s End neighborhood where the victims were shot, said San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon. Castilla was charged with marijuana possession but authorities also expect to charge him with obstructing Oropeza’s apprehension, Dillon said.

At a news conference Wednesday, Kean said he couldn’t go into details about the other people who were arrested, including how many.

Oropeza was charged Wednesday with five counts of first-degree murder during a court hearing in jail, said San Jacinto County Justice of the Peace Judge Randy Ellisor. Bond is set at $1.5 million per count, for a total of $7.5 million, Ellisor said. Bond for Castilla was set at $5,000, he said. Oropeza is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials.

A four-day manhunt for Oropeza ended Tuesday when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of the Conroe house.

Police had previously spotted Oropeza on Monday afternoon in Montgomery County, prompting several schools to lock down, Kean said.

“We did confirm that was him on foot, running, but we lost track of him,” Kean said.

Kean declined to comment on the tip that led authorities to the Conroe home, which he said was one that had not been previously checked by authorities.

The arrest came after authorities set up a widening dragnet of more than 250 people, drones and search dogs from multiple jurisdictions and offered $80,000 in reward money. The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday. A little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul.

Lozano said he hadn’t known the residents of the home where Oropeza was arrested but would sometimes say hi to them if they were walking by his house. “We never thought he was going to be right next door,” he said.

The victims have been identified as Diana Velásquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9, all from Honduras. Velásquez Alvarado’s father, Osmán Velásquez, said she had recently obtained legal residency in the U.S.

Velásquez Alvarado’s husband, Wilson Garcia, survived the shooting. He said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield the children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

When offering a reward for Oropeza’s capture, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” which drew widespread backlash. His office apologized on Monday.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.

Osmán Velásquez said his daughter had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister who was already living there.

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”

Merchant reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas; Mike Wyke in Coldspring, Texas; Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has stepped up to offer a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed and mutilated six cows in three Texas counties in April.

Six cattle died mysteriously, with their tongues removed, the hide around one side of their mouths gone and no blood spilled, authorities said in April. It happened about 100 miles north of Houston.

The cows were from different locations, pastures, and herds.  

A rancher found a 6-year-old longhorn-cross cow with its tongue completely removed by a “straight, clean cut, with apparent precision” along the jawline where the cow’s face was exposed. Scavaging animals did not touch the cow’s body so it had been decaying for several weeks before the rancher found it.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Office said while investigating, law enforcement discovered five other cows — four adults and one yearling — dead in identical conditions in Brazos and Robertson counties. Two of the cows had their anus and genitalia removed with the same level of precision found in their tongues’ removal.  

While investigating the scene near all six cows, law enforcement did not find evidence of a struggle, footprints, tire marks, or disturbed grass near the bodies.

“Regardless of this case’s bizarre details, six cows are victims of these crimes,” said Animal Legal Defense Fund Managing Attorney Emily Lewis. “Since violent crimes are not always species-specific, we recommend this crime be taken seriously by the entire community. We will do all we can to support law enforcement’s search for answers and accountability for this case.”  

If you have information about these incidents, contact Investigator Foster with the Madison County Sheriff’s Office at 936-348-2755. 

The news comes a day after authorities arrested Francisco Oropeza, following a four-day manhunt in Texas that ended Tuesday when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house.

Oropeza, 38, was captured without incident near the community of Conroe, north of Houston and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland. That’s where authorities say he went next door and shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle shortly before midnight Friday.

Oropeza had been shooting rounds on his property and the attack occurred after neighbors asked him to go farther away because the gunfire was keeping a baby awake, according to police.

Oropeza will be charged with five counts of murder, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. Bond was set at $5 million.

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“They can rest easy now, because he is behind bars,” Capers said of the families of the victims. “He will live out his life behind bars for killing those five.”

The arrest ends what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions and had seen $80,000 in reward money offered. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropeza “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.

The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m., and a little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials

Connor Hagan, an FBI spokesman, said they would not disclose the identity of the person who called in the tip — one of more than 200 tips he says investigators received. Authorities did not say who owned the house, whether Oropeza knew them or if anyone else was inside when he was found.

They also would not say whether friends or family had helped Oropeza evade capture, or where he had been since fleeing the scene in Cleveland, which authorities previously said was likely on foot.

Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropeza were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety and US Border Patrol’s BORTAC team.

Drones and scent-tracking dogs had been used during the widening manhunt, which included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered a $50,000 reward as the search dragged late into the weekend, while others offered an additional $30,000 in reward money.

Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time previously over shooting rounds in his yard.

All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.

Osmán Velásquez, Diana’s father, said Tuesday that his daughter had recently gotten residency and had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister, who was already living there.

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”

In offering the reward, Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” a partially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday after drawing wide backlash over drawing attention to their immigration status. Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said they had since learned that one of the victims may have been in the country legally.

The hunt for 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza began Friday after he fled from the scene of the deadly shooting in the rural town of Cleveland, about 45 miles north of Houston.

The shooting happened after Oropeza’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard because a baby was trying to sleep. The baby’s mother and 9-year-old brother were among the five people killed, who were all originally from Honduras.

Here are some things to know about the case:

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE MANHUNT?

An FBI agent acknowledged Monday that authorities had little to go on in the widening search for Oropeza.

More than 250 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, took part in the manhunt, which had come up empty despite additional manpower, scent-tracking dogs, drones and $80,000 in reward money being offered.

On Monday, a heavy presence of police converged in Montgomery County after a possible sighting, but the sheriff’s office later said Oropeza wasn’t among the people who were questioned.

Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson confirmed Tuesday that Oropeza was arrested without incident near Conroe, roughly 20 miles (32.19 kilometers) from the home where the shooting happened.

WHO IS OROPEZA?

Oropeza is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Oropeza was deported in March 2009, September of that same year, January of 2012 and most recently in July 2016.

The FBI in Houston tweeted Sunday that it was referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropeza, to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” His family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.

WHAT HAPPENED THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING?

Neighbors frequently fire guns in the rural community to unwind. But Wilson Garcia said his baby was struggling to sleep through it, so he and two other people asked Oropeza to move his shooting farther away from their home.

After Oropeza rejected the request, the family repeatedly called law enforcement, Garcia recalled Sunday.

He said while waiting for help to arrive, Oropeza ran toward him and reloaded. Garcia’s house was packed with 15 people, several of them friends who had been there to join Garcia’s wife on a church retreat.

Garcia’s 25-year-old wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, and 9-year-old son, Daniel Enrique Laso, were killed, along with Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18. Two of the victims were shot while shielding Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter.

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES WITH IMMIGRATION?

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has faced criticism for drawing attention to the victims’ immigration status.

Abbott offered a $50,000 reward over the weekend for any tips that might lead to the gunman’s arrest, and while doing so, he described the victims as “illegal immigrants” — a potentially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for on Monday.

Critics accused Abbott, who has made immigration reform a signature issue in Texas, of injecting politics into the tragic shooting.

“We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal.”

Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally. Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned their status and she did not immediately respond to questions about the criticism.

San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said Francisco Oropesa, 38, who had managed to evade authorities until he was arrested Tuesday, allegedly attacked his wife on June 14.

She called the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office to report Oropesa was drunk and had physically assaulted her, Dillon said.

Dillon, citing records kept by his office, said deputies arrived at the couple’s home in Cleveland, where Oropesa’s wife said that Oropesa had kicked her on her backside and in the face and mouth and that he had broken the gate outside their home before he left, deputies reported.

She declined medical attention and chose not to file charges against him, but she asked to file for a protective order, Dillon said.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Francisco Oropesa, 38, was captured without incident near Houston and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he went next door and shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle on Friday night after some of them had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because it was keeping a baby awake.

Oropesa had been shooting rounds on his property and the attack occurred after neighbors asked him to go farther away because the gunfire was keeping a baby awake, according to police.

He will be charged with five counts of murder, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. Bond was set at $5 million.

“They can rest easy now, because he is behind bars,” Capers said of the families of the victims. “He will live out his life behind bars for killing those five.”

The arrest happened near Conroe, ending what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropesa “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.

The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m., and a little more than an hour later, Oropesa was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials

Connor Hagan, an FBI spokesman, said they would not disclose the identity of the person who called in the tip — one of more than 200 tips he says investigators received. Authorities did not say who owned the house, whether Oropesa knew them or if anyone else was inside when he was found.

Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropesa were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety and US Border Patrol’s BORTAC team.

Drones and scent-tracking dogs had been used during the widening manhunt, which included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered a $50,000 reward as the search dragged late into the weekend, while others offered an additional $30,000 in reward money.

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Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time previously over shooting rounds in his yard.

All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropesa walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.

Osmán Velásquez, Diana’s father, said Tuesday that his daughter had recently gotten residency and had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister, who was already living there.

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”

Garcia said Oropesa came running over to their house on Friday loading an AR-style rifle after he and two other people had asked him to stop firing off rounds late at night. Garcia said Oropesa told him he could do what he wanted on his property.

In offering the reward, Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” a partially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday after drawing wide backlash over drawing attention to their immigration status. Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said they had since learned that one of the victims may have been in the country legally.

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An FBI agent on the scene near Houston acknowledged they have little to go on in the widening manhunt for 38-year-old Francisco Oropesa, who has been deported four times since 2009, but who neighbors say lived on their street for years prior to Friday night’s shooting in the rural town of Cleveland.

Twice on Monday, a sheriff’s office in a neighboring county alerted the public about possible sightings, but neither turned up Oropesa.

Abbott offered a $50,000 reward over the weekend for any tips that might lead to the gunman, and while doing so, the three-term governor described all the victims as “illegal immigrants” — a potentially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday. Critics accused Abbott, who has made hard-line immigration measures a signature issue in Texas, of putting politics into the shooting.

“We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal.”

Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting had indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally. Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned their status and she did not immediately respond to questions about the criticism.

More than 250 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, are now part of a growing search that has come up empty despite additional manpower, scent-tracking dogs, drones and a total of $80,000 in reward money on the table. On Monday, a heavy presence of police converged in Montgomery County after a possible sighting, but the sheriff’s office later said none of the persons were found to be Oropesa.

A few hours later, the department reported another possible sighting, tweeting that several schools had “secured their campuses” and again asked residents to avoid the area. But that search, too, turned up nothing.

Both were among the first times since the shooting that authorities had announced a possible sighting.

“I can tell you right now, we have zero leads,” James Smith, the FBI special agent in charge, said Sunday.

The FBI in Houston said in a tweet on Sunday that it was referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropesa, to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” His family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.

Oropesa is considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the area Friday night, likely on foot. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said authorities had widened the search area beyond the scene of the shooting, which occurred after the suspect’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard late at night because a baby was trying to sleep.

At a Sunday vigil in Cleveland, Wilson Garcia, the father of the 1-month-old, described the terrifying efforts inside his home by friends and family that night to escape, hide and shield themselves and children after Oropesa walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that they said Oropesa used in the shootings. Authorities were not sure if Oropesa was carrying another weapon after others were found in his home.

The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because public disclosure was not authorized.

The official said the gunman was first deported in March 2009 and last in July 2016. He was also deported in September 2009 and January 2012.

Law enforcement on the scene have not confirmed the citizenship status of the victims. By describing them as “illegal immigrants” on Sunday in his first public statement about the shooting — and perhaps incorrectly — Abbott came under criticism from immigrant rights groups and Democrats.

“It is indefensible to any right-hearted Texan to use divisive language to smear innocent victims,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

Capers said he hoped the reward money would motivate people to provide information and that there were plans to put up billboards in Spanish to spread the word.

Veronica Pineda, who lives across the street from the suspect’s home, said authorities had stopped by her house over the weekend to ask if they could search her property to see if the gunman might be hiding there. She said she was fearful that the gunman had not yet been captured.

Deputies responded to shots fired just after midnight at a private residence in Jasper County where the party was held and found nine victims with gunshot wounds, according to a statement by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities discovered the additional two victims after they sought treatment the next day, Jasper County Sheriff Mitchel Newman said at a news conference.

According to Jasper County officials, the injuries are expected to be non-life threatening.

About 250 people are estimated to have been present at the time of the shooting, according to a statement from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office.

Eight victims were taken in personal vehicles to Jasper Memorial Hospital in Jasper, Texas, and “at least one” of those were transferred to CHRISTUS Southeast Texas-St. Elizabeth Hospital in nearby Beaumont, Texas, for further treatment, Jasper County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karli Cherry said. One person did not go to the hospital, she said.

Eight of the victims have been released from hospital care, Jasper County victim assistance coordinator Laronnia Gray said at a news conference on Tuesday.

A second shooting within the city limits of Jasper, Texas, occurred shortly after the first, the statement said. There were no injuries in the second shooting, but a connection between the two incidents is being investigated due to a “common vehicle at both locations,” the statement said.

According to officials, four “people of interest” have been identified.

“We expect to be seeing an arrest warrant and warrants soon,” Jasper County District Attorney Anne Pickle said on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The chase took place on Saturday on the Bentsen Palm highway, south of McAllen, Texas.

A video posted on Twitter by Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, shows a man, later identified as 20-year-old Eduardo Herrera, driving a pickup truck with 12 migrants inside before losing control on a dirt road and rolling over.

As police cruisers surround Olivarez’s truck, the video shows several migrants jumping out before running away.

Herrera, originally from Mexico, was charged with evading arrest and human smuggling, Lt. Olivarez said. Herrera and five others arrested were then referred to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The other seven immigrants ran away, according to Olivarez.

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Just after midnight, deputies responded to shots fired at a private residence in Jasper County where the party was held and found nine victims with gunshot wounds, according to a statement by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office. According to Jasper County officials, the injuries are expected to be non-life threatening.

About 250 people are estimated to have been present at the time of the shooting, according to a statement from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office.

Eight victims were taken in personal vehicles to Jasper Memorial Hospital in Jasper, Texas, and “at least one” of those were transferred to Christus Southeast Texas-St. Elizabeth Hospital in nearby Beaumont, Texas for further treatment, Jasper County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karli Cherry said. One person did not go to the hospital, she said.

A second shooting within the city limits of Jasper, Texas occurred shortly after the first, the statement said. There were no injuries in the second shooting, but a connection between the two incidents is being investigated due to a “common vehicle at both locations,” the statement said.

According to the statement, “people of interest are being questioned” and the investigation is ongoing.

Brian Michael Gaherty, 60, was charged in the indictment with four counts of making threats in interstate communications and four counts of threatening a U.S. official, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said in a statement.

Gaherty was arrested April 13 after prosecutors filed a criminal complaint alleging that he had threatened Waters, other elected officials and a news reporter in Houston.

The indictment says Gaherty called the congresswoman’s office four times — twice in August and twice in November — and each time left a threatening message.

Prosecutors said that in one, he told the congresswoman he intended to “cut your throat.”

The indictment alleged Gaherty “knowingly threatened to assault and kill” Waters while she was engaged in the performance of her official duties.

There was no immediate response to messages requesting comment from an attorney who was believed to be representing Gaherty.

After Gaherty was arrested at his residence in Houston, he made a court appearance Monday and was ordered released on $100,000 bond.

He is expected to appear for an arraignment in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.

Each count of making a threat to a federal official carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. The charge of making threats in interstate communications carries a maximum penalty of five years.

The cause of death for the six animals was unknown, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. As of Friday, there had been no updates in the case, a dispatcher said.

The cattle were found along Texas State Highway in three counties — Madison, Brazos and Robertson — with each animal part of a different herd and in a different pasture, the sheriff’s office said.

Five of the animals were adults, the sheriff’s office said. One was a yearling.

It wasn’t immediately clear when they died. The sex of the animals wasn’t disclosed.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Nathan Donald Pelham of Greenville, who initially faced four misdemeanor charges tied to the insurrection, now faces an additional felony charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm following the April 12 incident, the complaint filed this week shows.

An FBI special agent wrote in a filing that he had called Pelham on April 12 and asked him to surrender in a few days. That evening, according to the agent, local authorities went to Pelham’s home after his father requested a welfare check. When the deputies arrived, Pelham fired several shots toward them, prosecutors said.

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The initial charges against Pelham included disorderly conduct, and parading, demonstrating or picketing at the Capitol. He appeared in at least one photo from the riot donning a hat with a logo associated with the Proud Boys, the FBI said.

Read more at NBCNews.com.

Princess Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi, née Rita Carpenter, abandoned the Casino dell’Aurora off the swank Via Veneto hours after Carabinieri police arrived to enforce a court-mandated eviction order. Before she had even left, a locksmith changed the locks on the big green front door.

Her dramatic exit — one of the dogs briefly escaped as she spoke to journalists on the street — capped a remarkable, years-long soap opera that exposed the dirty laundry of one of Rome’s aristocratic families. The Boncompagni Ludovisi are perhaps best known for having produced Pope Gregory XIII of Gregorian calendar fame. But lately they have attracted more attention due to the inheritance dispute and court-mandated auction of their famous villa in the heart of Rome.

“I feel like I’m in a surreal movie, like Sartre’s ‘No Exit,’” the princess said on the street, interrupted repeatedly by a barking fluffy white dog in her arms and three others at her ankles.

Casino dell’Aurora, also known as the Villa Ludovisi, has been in the Ludovisi family since the early 1600s. After Prince Nicolo Boncompagni Ludovisi died in 2018, the villa became the subject of an inheritance dispute between the children from his first marriage and his third wife, the San Antonio, Texas-born Princess Rita, whom he married in 2009.

Previously, she had been married to former U.S. Rep. John Jenrette Jr. of South Carolina.

The children have argued that the home, built in 1570, belongs to them, that their grandfather intended for them to inherit it and that their late father abused them and mismanaged his fortune. They mounted a multi-pronged legal campaign to get control of the property so it can be sold.

The latest chapter in the saga came in January after Rome Judge Miriam Iappelli issued an eviction order, accusing the princess of having violated a previous order forbidding her from conducting guided tours of the property.

Boncompagni Ludovisi has said the tours were necessary to raise money to maintain the villa. In addition, the judge found that the princess had failed to maintain the home in a “good state of conservation” after an exterior wall crumbled.

One of the heirs, Prince Bante Boncompagni Ludovisi, was on hand Thursday at the villa to watch “that woman,” as he refers to his father’s widow, leave the property.

“This house needs renovations. The pipelines of water need to be restored and the frescoes are in danger,” he told reporters. “This is a country: We have our police, we have our judges and you need to respect our country and our laws if you stay here.”

It’s not clear who will now undertake the work on the house, which needs at least 11 million euros in renovations to bring it up to code.

The villa was put on the court-ordered auction block last year as part of the inheritance dispute and assigned a court-appraised value of 471 million euros ($533 million), in large part due to the Caravaggio. After the minimum bid of 353 million euros ($400 million) failed to get any takers in the first auction, the price was progressively lowered in a series of successive auctions, with more scheduled until a buyer is found.

The Caravaggio ceiling graces a tiny room off a spiral staircase on the second floor. It was commissioned in 1597 by a diplomat and patron of the arts who asked the then-young painter to decorate the ceiling of the small room being used as an alchemy workshop. The 2.75-meter (9-foot) wide mural, which depicts Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune, is unusual: It’s not a fresco, but rather oil paint on plaster, and represents the only ceiling mural that Caravaggio is known to have painted.

While the villa’s fate is uncertain, so too is that of the princess.

Vowing that the truth will eventually come out (and announcing a book deal), Boncompagni Ludovisi insisted she had cared for the villa during her two decades living there and digitized the family’s archive, with the help of Rutgers University.

“I see no logic in this. I was a good custodian for the villa,” she said.

She didn’t say where she would go next, though she noted that the Episcopal Church in Rome had reached out to help.

“I love Italy and I’m so sorry to have such a brutal ending to what has been a labor of love for 20 years,” she said. Her book, on the villa and its famous ceiling, is expected to be published at the end of the year.

“It’s dedicated to my husband, Nicolo,” she said, before speeding off with the dogs in a taxi into the Roman traffic.

While preparing to feed her 8-month-old son, Jessica Chavez spotted worms in the formula she had been giving him for weeks.

“I was scooping up some formula and then I noticed something black inside the powder,” she told KXAN. “So, I got it out, and it was moving. That’s when I noticed it was a worm.”

The specific formula was “Enfamil NueroPro Gentlease Infant formula — Brain Building Nutrition, Clinically Proven to Reduce Fussiness, Gas, Crying in 24 hours, 35.2 oz, Power Refill Box (Pack 4).” Chavez purchased it from Amazon on Feb. 25.

Upon spotting the worms, Chavez immediately contacted Enfamil and she was offered a refund. Reckitt/Mead Johnson, the maker of Enfamil, was also scheduled to take samples of the worm-filled formula on Tuesday as part of an investigation.

“At Reckitt/Mead Johnson we take these complaints very seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We received the consumer complaint, have been in touch with the consumer directly, and are moving quickly to investigate the situation.”

Chavez said her son has been experiencing diarrhea, though it’s unclear if that’s a result of the formula. Still, she plans to have him tested for parasites.

“I just want it to be spread out to moms,” Chavez said. “It’s shocking…and…it’s really disgusting to know that there’s worms in there.”

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Elgin Police said officers responded to reports of a shooting outside an H-E-B supermarket early Tuesday. Officers found two victims with gunshot wounds. One of the victims was treated and released at the scene, the other was taken by helicopter to a hospital in critical condition, according to Elgin police.

A suspect identified as Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, was arrested and charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, police said.

Lynne Shearer, the owner of Woodlands Elite Cheer, told NBC affiliate KXAN, that four cheerleaders from her gym typically carpooled from Austin to their location for practice. The teens stopped at the H-E-B in Elgin, about 25 miles northeast of Austin, where some of the members had parked their cars.

One of the teens accidentally tried to get into the wrong car, but when she tried to apologize, the man pulled a gun and she backed into her friend’s vehicle, Shearer said.

“And so they tried to speed off and he shot his gun, like five times or so into the car,” Shearer said.

KXAN, citing criminal complaint documents, reported that surveillance video from the shooting scene led police to the suspect.

Shearer identified the critically injured cheerleader as Round Rock Independent School District student Payton Washington.

“She’s won every title there is to win in all-star cheerleading. She’s literally a role model for the kids in this industry throughout the country,” Shearer said. “Everybody knows her. She’s literally one of the very best that’s ever done this sport.”

Washington’s father, Kelan Washington, told NBC News that his daughter was shot in the leg and back. He said doctors removed her spleen and she’s now stable in the ICU at Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas in Austin.

Kelan Washington described the star athlete, born with just one lung, as “tough as they come.”

He said he was baffled by the shooter’s response, telling NBC News, “You watched her walk up to your door on accident — it’s a girl in a cheer outfit.”

It marks at least the third incident in a week in which young people who’d made an apparent mistake were met with gunfire. Last Thursday, a Black teenager in Kansas City, Missouri, was shot by a homeowner after he mistakenly went to the wrong house to pick up his younger twin brothers from a family friend’s home. On Monday, a 20-year-old woman was shot to death by a homeowner in upstate New York after pulling into the wrong driveway.

But after growing close to 600 feet (183 m) across and 75 feet (23 m) deep, it stabilized, swallowing up some oil tanks and several vehicles but sparing nearby homes. Some residents used humor to calm their fears, making “Sinkhole de Mayo” T-shirts, a reference to Cinco de Mayo. For others, the sinkhole, which eventually filled with water, became a new fishing spot.

“It was just a pond after that, just a story that we told our kids. We just learned how to live with it,” Krystal Parrish, one of the approximately 1,000 residents who live in the town located about 60 miles (97 km) northeast of Houston, said Tuesday.

But earlier this month, city officials announced the sinkhole had expanded after a long hibernation, renewing fears from some residents. Officials say there hasn’t been any significant expansion since the new growth was detected April 2, but they’re monitoring the sinkhole and keeping the public informed. In a preliminary report released Thursday, state researchers said the expansion was actually a new and smaller sinkhole that formed adjacent to the one from 2008.

“I don’t think (residents) should panic or anything. But it’s something that they should watch,” said Richard Howe, a private geologist with Houston-based Terra Cognita who’s helping Daisetta officials monitor the sinkhole.

But Parrish and some other residents say the city hasn’t sufficiently updated the public.

“I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty creeped out by it because it’s twice in my lifetime and my house is like a quarter mile from the sinkhole,” said Parrish as she watched her son during a high school baseball game.

Daisetta sits on a salt dome, a natural formation created below the ground over millions of years where oil brine and natural gas accumulate.

Salt domes create good conditions where oil can migrate and accumulate, Howe said. This was the reason Daisetta became a booming oil town in the early 1900s. The sustained oil drilling along the salt dome over decades could have contributed to creating the sinkhole, Howe said. Investigators had also considered saltwater waste that was being stored underground by an oil and gas waste well business next to the sinkhole as a possible cause.

But Howe said a cause for the 2008 sinkhole was never determined. A more comprehensive study could be done, but it would be costly and “a small town like this is not flush with cash,” he said. Howe, who also helped Daisetta in 2008, is working for the city on a volunteer basis.

Howe suggested the underground cavern in the salt dome that first collapsed and formed the 2008 sinkhole likely expanded, creating a new sinkhole that seems to have merged with the original one.

In the preliminary report, the Bureau of Economic Geology, a research unit at the University of Texas, said the new sinkhole has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 m) and is about 30 feet (9 m) deep. The report said there was no indication the new sinkhole had impacted Farm-to-Market Road 770, the main roadway through the town.

The new sinkhole may or may not expand much, but more study is recommended “to better understand the cause … to minimize risk associated with similar possible future events,” according to the report by the bureau, which functions as the State Geological Survey.

Sinkholes tend to be common in regions where soluble rocks, including salt domes and limestone, can be dissolved by groundwater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Florida, for example, sits above limestone and is highly susceptible to sinkholes.

Howe said officials have placed steel posts 50 feet (15 m) apart in a pasture area near the sinkhole to monitor any changes in their elevation and to act “as an early warning if this thing continues to move south toward homes and buildings.”

“This thing could be like this for another 15 years … or it could be 100 years, or it could change tomorrow. It’s just no way to predict it,” said Howe, adding nothing can be done to stop the sinkhole if it continues expanding.

The expanding sinkhole is located near the high school campus, as well as various homes and a new Family Dollar/Dollar Tree store that opened just days after the new growth was discovered.

At the site of the shuttered oil and gas waste well business that’s been taken over by the expanding sinkhole, a road that connected one end of the location to the other has been washed away. Several large tanks, which officials say are empty, were in the water. A portion of a metal warehouse was being consumed by the sinkhole, while large cracks could be seen on the ground around the building.

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, had relocated six large tanks with an unknown substance from the cracked earth and asphalt near the sinkhole so they could be tested, the TCEQ said in an email Wednesday.

“Due to the imminent threats to human health and the environment, TCEQ and U.S. EPA proceeded quickly to mitigate the potential for chemical releases,” TCEQ said.

Daisetta resident Alexis Laird, 25, a mother of three kids, said she hadn’t really thought much about the sinkhole since first seeing it as a fourth-grader in 2008. Now she’s worried about it, as her apartment is located less than two blocks away from it. She said she wants officials to be more proactive in their updates to residents.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad or a minuscule amount of information. … Tell the people that live here,” she said.

Daisetta City Secretary Joan Caruthers said officials are working to set up a website that will provide updates and are planning to hold a public meeting in the future. Caruthers said they want “a little more information” before scheduling the public meeting.

After the sinkhole appeared in 2008, county commissioners asked the state to set up monitoring devices that could be an early warning system.

Caruthers said she’s not aware if any such monitoring system from the state was ever set up. The sinkhole was monitored for several years after 2008, but there was no recent active monitoring by the city, she said.

Christine Bautsch, Laird’s mother, described Daisetta as a friendly town where “everybody pretty much knows everybody” and residents come together in a time of crisis, including a growing sinkhole.

“There is really good people here and they take care of each other. … We’ll pull together,” Bautsch said. ___ Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at https://twitter.com/juanlozano70.

Following public comments both for and against a possible shutdown, the Llano County Commissioners Court decided to remove consideration of a possible closure from the agenda, assuring its three libraries remain open.

“We will try this in the courts, not through social media or through news media,” said Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who presides over the commissioners court and is one of the defendants in a lawsuit filed a year ago by library patrons.

The struggle in Llano County, home to about 20,000 people in the Texas hill country outside of Austin, reflects an explosion of attempts in recent years to ban books around the U.S. amid escalating cultural wars.

The special meeting was called after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman granted a temporary injunction last month that ordered almost 20 books be returned to library shelves.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said this was the first incidence she was aware of in which officials moved to consider closing a system altogether.

Beginning in 2021, the lawsuit says, the defendants began using various tactics to keep certain books out of the hands of patrons, from moving children’s books they objected to into the adult section to temporarily suspending use of their digital library. The suit also said steps involved dissolving a previous library board and then packing it with appointees, including many of those who had been pressuring the system to ban books.

The other defendants include the four county commissioners, the library system’s current director and some new members of the library board.

One of the new library board members is Bonnie Wallace, who was among those speaking at Thursday’s meeting. Wallace, who said there were over 200 additional books she thinks should be banned, was among those who read aloud explicit sex scenes from books they said were currently on the shelves.

“I am in favor of closing the libraries temporarily until we find a solution to the pornographic filth we do have,” Wallace said.

Resident James Arno, who supported keeping the libraries open, said parents can monitor what their children are reading without denying access to others.

“It’s not our job to burn this thing to the ground to prevent kids from reading what these people are reading,” said Arno, referring to explicit material read aloud at the meeting. “It’s the parents’ job to know what their kids are into.”

Caldwell-Stone said the books targeted in Llano County fit into trends they are seeing nationwide. “The demands that we’re seeing are to remove books that reflect the lives and experiences of LGBTQIA persons or reflect the lives and experiences of persons of color, in particular Black persons,” she said.

The books that were being kept off the shelf include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health” by Robie H. Harris and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

Others were picture books for children including “Larry the Farting Leprechaun” by Jane Bexley and “My Butt is So Noisy!” by Dawn McMillan.

“These are books that we have found over the years appeal particularly to young male readers and are really great tools for encouraging early literacy and a love of reading,” Caldwell-Stone said.

Over 1,200 challenges were compiled by the ALA last year, by far the most since the association began keeping data over 20 years ago. The 2022 number was nearly double the then-record total for 2021.

The uproar in Llano County has drawn interest from notable conservatives. The attorney representing the county is Jonathan Mitchell, an architect of a Texas anti-abortion law in 2021 that was briefly the strictest in the country before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Mitchell, who has appealed the judge’s order in the library case, argued in a recent filing that the plaintiffs’ claims that their First Amendment rights were violated “cannot get off the ground” because the books were currently available to check out through the library’s “in-house” system.

But the judge wrote in his order that books hidden in a back room and absent from the catalog wouldn’t be within reach of the public.

“This is, of course, an obvious and intentional effort by Defendants to make it difficult if not impossible to access the materials Plaintiffs seek,” Pitman wrote.

According to a statement on Facebook, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call from a fisherman on Lake O’ the Pines Friday morning.

“He reported observing a black Jeep submerged about 40 feet from the Woody’s camp boat ramp,” said a statement from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

The woman was pulled out of the water safely with the combined efforts of the wrecker service, fisherman and Marion County deputies.

She was later identified as the same woman who has been reported missing since April 5 by the Longview, Texas, Police Department.

Rather than send a simple email to say her daughter would be absent April 24 after attending one of the Houston dates on Swift’s Eras Tour, Karen Vladeck opted to lean into her inner Swiftie and pen a note laden with references to the singer’s discography.

Vladeck, 38, tells TODAY.com that since it was the first time that her daughter, who is in first grade, would be pulled out of school for something “fun,” instead of for a sick day, she wanted to find a clever way to share the news with her teacher. 

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“At first, it was going to be one sentence long and then I got into it and I just kept pulling different titles out,” she says. 

The lawyer and legal recruiter shared the clever email she sent to her daughter’s teacher on Twitter, adding the message, “Here’s hoping my daughter’s 1st grade teacher is a Swiftie.”

After the “Anti-Hero” themed-subject line “It’s Me, Hi, I’m the Problem, It’s Me,” Vladeck started the email off strong with another “Midnights” reference, writing, “Dear Reader [Ms. Parks], I’m writing to let you know that Maddie won’t be in school on 4/24 because she is going to the Taylor Swift concert in Houston.”

“I hope missing school doesn’t ruin her otherwise stellar Reputation, but she begged me to go and maybe I Should Have Said No but I didn’t want to be Mean,” Vladeck continued, before fitting in another Swift reference. “So It Goes…”

Vladeck added, “Anyway, I hope this doesn’t leave any Bad Blood between you and Maddie and that things for the rest of the year are not Treacherous.”

“I know I Did Something Bad and I promise this will be The Last Time she has an unexcused absence before the Cruel Summer starts,” she said, before signing her email, “Forever & Always, Karen Vladeck.”

“I sent it without asking my husband, even though I copied him on it,” Vladeck explains to TODAY.com. “When he saw it, he was like, ‘What are you thinking?’ But then the teacher wrote back immediately and she absolutely loved it.”

Vladeck says Ms. Parks, who has two teenage daughters of her own, thought the email was “hilarious.”

On Twitter, she also shared Ms. Parks’ formal reply to the Swift-themed email, which read in all capital letters, “THIS MADE MY ENTIRE DAY.”

“MS PARKS GETS IT,” Vladeck wrote in the tweet.

Vladeck says the response to the email has been overwhelmingly positive and a welcome break from the negativity on social media. 

“There’s so much bad news right now, we can spend a couple of minutes just enjoying that someone wrote a funny note to their teacher and it doesn’t have to be that serious,” she explains.

Vladeck, a longtime fan of Swift, is excited to be attending the concert with her daughter. She shares that it will be Maddie’s first concert ever, calling the moment a “big deal.”

“Parents now always talk about those core memories, but I do really hope in 20 years, she’s sitting around with her friends saying, ‘Oh, what was your first concert?’ and she says, ‘My mom took me to The Eras Tour when I was 7,'” Vladeck says.

In addition to getting to create memories with her daughter, Vladeck also celebrates the message Swift has conveyed through the tour. 

“I absolutely love the message of what The Eras Tour represents, which is that you as a woman can be constantly reinventing yourself if you want to,” she says. “I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift since ‘Tim McGraw’ came out and the fact that she’s still here and is still so incredibly relevant — even more so than when she was 18 — that’s just an amazing message for little girls to see.”

This story originally appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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A court case that began in Texas has sought to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone. Lower courts had said that women seeking the drug should face more restrictions on getting it while the case continues, but the Supreme Court disagreed.

The court’s action almost certainly will leave access to mifepristone unchanged at least into next year, as appeals play out, including a potential appeal to the high court.

The new abortion controversy comes less than a year after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

The following is a look at the drug at issue in the new case, how the case got to the nation’s highest court and what’s next in the legal case.

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WHAT IS MIFEPRISTONE?

Mifepristone was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration more than two decades ago. It has been used by more than 5 million women to safely end their pregnancies, and today more than half of women who end a pregnancy rely on the drug, the Justice Department said.

Over the years, the FDA has loosened restrictions on the drug’s use, extending from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy when it can be used, reducing the dosage needed to safely end a pregnancy, eliminating the requirement to visit a doctor in person to get it and allowing pills to be obtained by mail. The FDA also approved a generic version of mifepristone that its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro, says makes up two-thirds of the domestic market.

Mifepristone is one of two pills used in medication abortions, along with misoprostol. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol only if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

HOW DID THE CASE GET STARTED?

A lawsuit over mifepristone was filed in Amarillo, Texas, late last year. Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, represents the pill’s opponents, who say the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was flawed.

Why Amarillo? U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump, is the sole district court judge there, ensuring that all cases filed in the west Texas city land in front of him. Since taking the bench, he has ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on several other issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.

On April 7, Kacsmaryk issued a ruling that would completely revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, but he put the decision on hold for a week to allow an appeal.

Complicating matters, however, on the same day Kacsmaryk issued his order, a court in Washington state issued a separate ruling in a lawsuit brought by liberal states seeking to preserve access to mifepristone. The Washington judge, Spokane-based Thomas O. Rice, whom then-President Barack Obama nominated, ordered the FDA not to do anything that might affect the availability of mifepristone in the suing states. The Biden administration had said it would be impossible to follow both judges’ directives at the same time.

HOW DID THE CASE GET TO THE SUPREME COURT?

HOW DID THE CASE GET TO THE SUPREME COURT?

The Biden administration responded to Kacsmaryk’s ruling by asking the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to prevent it from taking effect for now.

The appeals court didn’t do that, but it narrowed Kacsmaryk’s ruling so that the initial approval of mifepristone in 2000 wouldn’t be revoked. And it agreed with him that changes the FDA made to relax the rules for prescribing and dispensing the drug should be put on hold. It said those rules, including expanding when the drug could be taken and allowing for the drug’s delivery through the mail, should be on hold while the case continued.

The appeals court acted by a 2-1 vote. The judges in the majority, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, are both Trump picks.

The Biden administration and the maker of mifepristone, New York-based Danco Laboratories, appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that allowing the appeals court’s restrictions to take effect would cause chaos. At first, facing a tight deadline, the Supreme Court gave itself some breathing room and issued an order suggesting it would act by Wednesday evening. But no decision came Wednesday and the court instead just gave itself an extension until just before midnight Friday. It wasn’t clear why.

The court did make its second self-imposed deadline, issuing its brief decision around 6:30 p.m. in Washington. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they disagreed with the court’s action but no other justice commented.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The case is on a fast track. Now that the high court has set out the rules that will govern access for now, the case can continue on its path through the courts.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already announced it will hear arguments in the case in less than a month, on May 17. Both sides as well as interest groups will submit written briefs ahead of those arguments. And a three-judge panel of the court will hear the case, though the court has not yet said who those three judges will be. The group won’t issue a decision from the bench but instead hear arguments and ask questions. That will give the public a sense of what they’re thinking. Their decision will be made privately after oral arguments, and at some point they’ll issue a written decision announcing it.

Both sides then have an opportunity to appeal, taking the case to all the judges of the appeals court or directly to the Supreme Court. The justices take a break for the summer, however, and don’t start hearing cases again until October.

Sgt. Daniel Perry was working for a ride-sharing company in July 2020 when he turned onto a street and into a large crowd of demonstrators in downtown Austin. In video that was streamed live on Facebook, a car can be heard honking before several shots ring out and protesters begin screaming and scattering.

The 28-year-old protester, Garrett Foster, was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Perry, who faces life in prison, now awaits sentencing.

“We’re happy with the verdict. We’re very sorry for his family as well. There’s no winners in this,” Stephen Foster, the victim’s father, told reporters Friday.

The jury deliberated for two days. During closing arguments, Perry’s attorneys said he had no choice but to shoot Foster as he approached Perry’s car with an AK-47 rifle, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Prosecutors said Perry could have driven away before firing his revolver.

Witnesses testified that Foster never raised his rifle at Perry, according to the newspaper. Perry, who did not testify, told police that Foster did.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, then-Police Chief Brian Manley said officers heard “two separate volleys of gunfire.” Officers made their way to the crowd, where they found Foster with multiple gunshot wounds.

Manley said the driver, who was not named at the time, called 911 and reported the shooting, and that the second round of shots was fired by protesters who witnessed the shooting.

Perry was stationed at Fort Hood, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) north of Austin. The trial comes after attempts from Perry’s team to throw out the case over the past year.

When Foster was killed, demonstrators in Austin and beyond had been marching in the streets for weeks following the police killing of George Floyd. Floyd died May 25, 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against the Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd, who was handcuffed, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe.

Floyd’s killing was recorded on video by a bystander and sparked worldwide protests as part of a broader reckoning over racial injustice.