April 11 top stories
It is April 11. Here are today’s top stories.
Updates on Louisville bank shooting
Here are updates on the mass shooting yesterday morning at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky.
The death toll increased to five after a 57-year-old woman named Deana Eckert passed away last night in a hospital.
The other four victims were between the ages of 40 and 64.
The gunman was a 25-year-old bank employee named Connor Sturgeon. Police said he purchased his AR-15-style rifle last week. He knew that he would be fired from the bank and wrote a note to his parents and a friend on Monday morning before going to the bank. The note said he would shoot up the bank.
Sturgeon went to the bank about 30 minutes before it was set to open to the public. He started shooting in a conference room while there were bank staff gathered. He live-streamed the shooting on Instagram. The video was later taken down.
The initial shooting lasted about a minute. Sturgeon stopped and waited in the lobby for about a minute and a half before shooting at responding officers. Officers shot and killed Sturgeon after about three minutes.
There are four people who are wounded in the shooting that are still in a hospital. One of them is a rookie Louisville police officer who just graduated from the police academy 10 days ago. His name is Nickolas Wilt and he is 26 years old. He was shot in the head and underwent brain surgery. Doctors said he is still in critical condition but is stable and looking better.
Louisville police said they would release body camera footage of officers responding to the shooting tonight.
Those who knew Sturgeon said he was a quiet, relaxed, and intelligent person and they expressed shock that he would do something like this.
Louisville’s mayor said there would be a vigil on Wednesday night to honor the victims.
Nashville Rep. Justin Jones is reinstated
Last week a Tennessee lawmaker, Rep. Justin Jones (D), was expelled by the legislature’s Republican majority after he and two other representatives led a protest to demand stricter gun laws after the Nashville school shooting.
Justin Jones is now back as a representative. The Washington Post explained that the Nashville Metro Council voted 36-0 last night to give his job back. He marched with over 1,000 supporters on Nashville streets. Jones told the crowd that this is a “rebirth” with movements led by young people.
There was another lawmaker that was expelled, Democrat Rep. Justin Pearson from Memphis. A local commission will vote on whether to reappoint him today.
Volcano in Russia erupts
A volcano in eastern Russia named Shiveluch erupted today, sending ash up about 12 miles into the sky. An ash cloud covered several villages in dust. Russian officials said the ash fell on about 42,000 square miles of territory. Some areas got about 3 inches of ash.
There were lava flows from the volcano that hit snow. There was a warning of mudflows near a highway. Skies over the area were closed off to aircraft. Many schools were closed. There are no reports of injuries so far.
———
[Sponsored Video from Sorenson: www.sorenson.com]
———
[Advertisement from Disaster Distress Helpline: After a disaster, you may be at risk for emotional distress. Warning signs can include feeling isolated, anxious, having trouble sleeping and more. If you or someone you know is Deaf or hard of hearing, the Disaster Distress Helpline offers a direct videophone option.
This free service for ASL users is answered 24/7 by trained crisis workers fluent in ASL and can be accessed using any videophone-enabled device and dialing 1-800-985-5990 or at https://bit.ly/3CEwnNT
———
U.S. classified documents leaked online
ABC News reported that there were many top-secret documents from the U.S. intelligence community that were leaked on the internet.
Many of the documents had to do with the war in Ukraine. Some of them are maps of the battlefield in Ukraine. Others had statistics about Ukrainian troop levels and the equipment they received from the U.S. Some documents showed the U.S. was able to tap in on the Russian military’s communications and preparations for the war. Other documents showed that the U.S. may have been spying on internal communications within the Ukrainian government and the South Korean government.
The Department of Justice said it has opened a criminal investigation to find out who posted the classified documents on the internet and why. Some news reports said it seemed like a group of people who were playing online video games had an argument and someone with access to the documents posted them to prove their points. ABC News said there may be hundreds of U.S. personnel who would have access to classified documents.
Cartoonist Al Jaffee dies at age 102
Cartoonist Al Jaffee, who is best known for his work with the satirical publication Mad Magazine, passed away at the age of 102 in Manhattan on Monday.
He worked as a cartoonist from 1942 to 2020 and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a comic artist.
Jaffee is the one who came up with the Mad fold-in, a feature on the magazine’s inside back page where you could view an illustration with a question and when you folded it in half, you would see a different drawing that gave a sarcastic response to the question.
Mad Magazine said Jaffee was a humble and kind creator and that he shaped the fabric of the magazine.
Gang of 8 has access to Trump, Biden, Pence classified documents
Punchbowl News reported that the Biden administration has started giving the Congressional “Gang of Eight” — who are the leaders of both parties from the Senate and the House and the leaders of intelligence committees in both chambers — access to the classified documents that were recovered from the homes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence.
Congressional leaders have been pushing the Department of Justice to get access to the documents for months, saying they needed to do their jobs as overseers of the intelligence community. The DOJ said the documents couldn’t be turned over because there are ongoing investigations into Trump and Biden on their handling of classified documents. But now there is some kind of deal in place to provide access.
There were about 300 classified documents that were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. There were about 20 documents that were recovered from Biden’s former office and home.
It is not clear if the congressional leaders can look at all of the documents now or only a portion of them.
That is all the top stories for today. I will be out of the office for a week and Callie Frye will cover Top Stories. I’ll see you later and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/us/connor-sturgeon-louisville-bank-mass-shooting/index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/leaked-us-secret-documents/story?id=98482192
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/04/11/russia-volcano-erupts-shiveluch/11639657002/
https://punchbowl.news/newsletter/
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/al-jaffee-dies-intl-scli/index.html