Month: October 2022

President Joe Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced their intention to work together to help the state rebuild after touring damage from Hurricane Ian on Wednesday afternoon. The two leaders momentarily put politics aside in response to the historic storm, which was one of Florida’s deadliest and costliest in decades after making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.

Biden spoke with local residents affected by the storm, offering support to residents as he toured the damaged area filled with debris, fallen trees, downed electric lines and boats and yachts in piles. Speaking at a press conference in Fort Myers, Biden announced new relief efforts to help Florida residents and businesses rebuild.  Biden said: “Today, we have one job and only one job. That is to make sure the people of Florida get everything they need to fully recover.”

Biden and DeSantis said they spoke several times before and after the storm hit as Biden issued emergency declarations. DeSantis discussed the state’s cooperative efforts with the White House, noting that federal funds have been allocated to help his state recover from Ian: “I want to thank President Biden and Jill Biden as well as Administrator Deanne Criswell for coming down here looking at a really really significant damage here in Lee County and there’s other places where you have really significant damage as well outside of this general area. We were very fortunate to have good coordination with the White House and with FEMA from the very beginning of this.”

The president’s visit comes amid a rising death toll in Florida, and just two days after he traveled to Puerto Rico to survey Hurricane Fiona’s damage. In the wake of that storm, he announced he was sending tens of millions of dollars to help prepare the island for future storms.

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According to officials and preliminary autopsy results, a student at Purdue University was stabbed to death inside his dorm room on campus early Wednesday, and the suspect – the victim’s roommate- has been arrested in connection with the crime.

The victim, identified as 20-year-old Varun Manish Chheda, was a senior at Purdue studying data science. His roommate, identified as 22-year-old Ji Min Sha, was a junior majoring in cybersecurity and originally from Seoul, South Korea.  During a news conference held near McCutcheon Hall, the residential building on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus where Chheda was killed, police said that Sha currently faces a murder charge for his alleged involvement in his roommate’s death, and is being held without bond in Tippecanoe County Jail.

According to the Tippecanoe County Coroner’s Office, a preliminary autopsy found that Chheda’s death was caused by “multiple sharp force traumatic injuries”. The suspected manner of death is homicide, with the final autopsy report pending results of a toxicology test.

Mitch Daniels, the university president, addressed the student’s death said in a statement: “I write to let you know that early this morning, one of our students was killed in his residence hall room,” noting that the student’s roommate reported the incident to police and was taken into custody as a suspect.“This is as tragic an event as we can imagine happening on our campus and our hearts and thoughts go out to all of those affected by this terrible event. We do not have all the details yet. Our Purdue University Police Department is conducting a thorough investigation of this incident so that we all may learn more about what transpired.”

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Federal authorities have expanded the investigation into a series of killings that have shaken the city of Stockton California. Police linked two more shootings to those of five killed between July 8 and Sept. 27, saying they may be “interconnected.” A combination of video surveillance or ballistics led authorities to conclude that those slayings and the two additional shootings, including one in Oakland, are connected. Stockton police spokesperson Joe Silva said: “Last night was the new link that expanded to Oakland Our officers are going back to more old cases we have, and they’re also, obviously, reaching out to other regional law enforcement agencies to see if they’ve had any type of similar cases.”

The San Joaquin County medical examiner’s office identified the five victims of the July through September shootings as: 35-year-old Paul Alexander Yaw of Stockton, who died July 8; 43-year-old Salvador Debudey Jr., 43 of Stockton, who died Aug. 11; 21-year-old Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez of Stockton, who died Aug. 30; 52-year-old Juan Cruz of Stockton, who died Sept. 21; and 54-year-old Lawrence Lopez Sr. of Stockton, who died Sept. 27.

The two new cases are comprised of a Latino man, who was fatally shot just before 4:20 a.m. on April 10, 2021, in Oakland. Days later, a 46-year-old Black woman was shot at 3:20 a.m. on April 16 in the area of Park and Union streets in Stockton. The woman in the Stockton shooting survived her injuries; her name was not released.

Stockton is a city of about 322,000 residents, which saw 39 homicides in 2021 and 43 so far this year. In all seven shootings, it appears to be the victims were alone and ambushed in darkness. Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said that a $95,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to an arrest in the series of killings, all of which happened in areas with few security cameras. An unidentified person recorded on grainy security video could be a suspect or a witness, police said, and other people may be involved in the attacks.

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