November 7, 2021 1:45 am
HOUSTON (AP) — Authorities said they would watch video, interview witnesses and review concert protocols to determine how eight people died at a Houston music festival when fans suddenly surged toward the stage to watch rapper Travis Scott. City officials said Saturday they were in the early stages of investigating the pandemonium that unfolded Friday evening at Astroworld, a sold-out, two-day event in NRG Park with an estimated 50,000 people in attendance. One attendee said that as a timer clicked down to the start of Scott’s performance, the crowd pushed forward. A woman said she was so desperate to get out that she bit a man on the shoulder to get him to move. The dead ranged in age from 14 to 27, and 13 people were still hospitalized Saturday, Mayor Sylvester Turner said. He called the disaster “a tragedy on many different levels” and said it was too early to draw conclusions about what went wrong. Dozens were injured.
November 7, 2021 1:41 am
PITTSBURGH (WPXI)— A University of Pittsburgh basketball player is facing charges after police said he assaulted an officer in Pittsburgh’s South Side early Saturday morning. The incident occurred in the 1700 block of E. Carson St. just after 1 a.m., police said. Officers responded to a call from a tow truck driver, who was attempting to tow a vehicle and the owner had become “extremely angry.” The owner, identified as Ithiel Horton, 21, of New Jersey, then punched a responding officer in the face, causing a laceration to his lip. He then ran from the officer before being arrested. He was charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, and is currently being held in the Allegheny County Jail. Horton is a a third-year guard and Pitt’s leading returning scorer from last season, with an 8.9 points-per-game average and a shooting percentage of 37.1 beyond the 3-point range. He appeared in all 22 games and started 18
November 7, 2021 1:40 am
SOUTH STRABANE, Pa. (WPXI) — A woman said that she was strip-searched on the side of Interstate 70 in South Strabane by the state police this summer after being pulled over for traveling 5 mph over the speed limit. Holly Elish, 34, of Bentleyville, said in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that she was heading home from work on June 27 when she was pulled over for speeding. Elish pulled over, and when Trooper Brian Rousseau approached her car, she gave him her identification, the complaint said. Rousseau returned to his vehicle for a few minutes, and then walked back to Elish’s passenger side window, the lawsuit said, where he asked her consent to search the vehicle. Elish refused, and Rousseau replied “something like ‘he had the right to search her vehicle,’” the complaint said. Around the same time, another trooper, who is unnamed in the complaint, arrived and spoke with Rousseau outside of Elish’s hearing. The troopers then asked Elish to exit her vehicle and again asked for permission to search it. Nothing was found in the search, and after at least 15 minutes, two more troopers arrived, including a woman. It was then that she was strip-searched. First, the trooper physically and visually inspected Elish’s breasts, the lawsuit said, then she directed Elish to pull down her pants and underwear to her ankles and “‘squat’ to the ground, during which she bent down to the ground with one knee and performed a visual cavity inspection.”
November 7, 2021 1:11 am
MCKEESPORT (WPXI) – An arrest has been made in the murder of 26-year-old Karli Short. Short, of McKeesport, died in September. Short was five months pregnant when she was murdered. Through their investigation, detectives determined that the father of the unborn child, 25-year-old Isaac Smith of McKeesport, was responsible for the killing. With the assistance of the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office, detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Smith charging him with criminal homicide and homicide of an unborn child. Smith was arrested by Allegheny County Homicide Detectives and Pleasant Hills Police at approximately 7:00 pm on Friday. Smith will be housed at the Allegheny County Jail to await arraignment.
November 6, 2021 10:47 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is hailing Congress’ passage of his $1 trillion infrastructure package as a “monumental step forward for the nation.” This, after fractious fellow Democrats resolved a months-long standoff in their ranks to finally seal the deal. The package is a historic investment by any measure, one that Biden compares in its breadth to the building of the interstate highway system in the last century or the transcontinental railroad the century before. Approval of the bill sends it to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose party got a cold shoulder from voters in this past week’s off-year elections.
November 6, 2021 9:20 am
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) – A Taliban security official says two suspects have been arrested in connection with the killings of four women whose bodies were found in a house in northern Afghanistan. A co-worker of one of the victims identified her as a 29-year-old civil society activist who had been trying to flee Taliban rule. The Taliban official said Saturday that the suspects confessed they had lured the women to the house, and that their case would be referred to a court. The official did not say if the suspects also confessed to the killings. The Taliban have said they would allow people to leave Afghanistan, provided they have the required travel documents.
November 6, 2021 9:18 am
BERLIN (AP) – Police in Germany say a knife attack on a high-speed train has injured several people. Local police said a man has been arrested in connection with the Saturday morning attack at the train station in Seubersdorf. Police say multiple people were injured but they were unable to provide a specific number. So far, there is no information available about the attacker or possible motives. The train in question, one of Germany’s high-speed ICE trains, was traveling between the Bavarian cities of Regensburg and Nuremberg at the time of the attack. Germany’s interior minister said the background behind the “terrible” attack was “still unclear” and is “now being clarified.
November 6, 2021 9:16 am
HOUSTON (AP) – Officials in Texas say at least eight people are dead and numerous others are injured following a surge of the crowd during a performance by rapper Travis Scott at the Astroworld music festival Friday night. The Houston fire chief told reporters that the crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage, which caused some people to panic. The show was called off shortly after people began suffering injuries. The fire chief says 17 people were transported to hospitals, including 11 people who were in cardiac arrest. An estimated 50,000 people attended the festival. Drake had also joined Scott on-stage at the concert, which was livestreamed by Apple Music.
November 6, 2021 7:54 am
BOSTON (AP) – A former athletics official at the University of Southern California has pleaded guilty to her role in the college admissions bribery scandal. The Boston Globe reports that Donna Heinel made her plea Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston to one count of honest services wire fraud. She is the California school’s former senior associate athletic director. Court documents show that prosecutors agreed to drop several other charges in exchange for her guilty plea. An indictment accused Heinel of taking bribes to designate students as recruited athletes even though they weren’t qualified.
November 6, 2021 7:53 am
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The astronauts who will depart the International Space Station on Sunday will be stuck using diapers on the way home. That’s because the toilet in their SpaceX capsule is broken. NASA astronaut Megan McArthur says it’s just one of many challenges she and the others faced during their six-month mission. NASA and SpaceX decided Friday to bring McArthur and her three crewmates back before launching their replacements. That launch already has been delayed more than a week by bad weather and a minor medical issue involving one of the crew. SpaceX and NASA are now targeting Wednesday night at the earliest for the launch.