RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A chef at a restaurant in North Carolina's capital who authorities suspect shot a co-worker after which himself has died from his injuries, police announced Sunday.

George Colom Jr., 34, who was listed as the chief chef at Coquette Brasserie, was in critical condition at a hospital afterward Friday morning shootings within the restaurant. Police identified Colom when his death was announced. Another worker, described by police as a bystander, who was injured Friday was treated and released from a hospital.

According to police, the shootings seemed to be the results of an argument. Police said on Sunday that “further information will be released in due course.”

Jonathan Aguilar Vega, Coquette's wounded worker, said WRAL-TV after the shooting that he still had a bullet in his hand.

“We had our daily meeting before the shift started. One of our employees brought a cake to celebrate a bartender's birthday. She cut the cake and moments later I was shot,” said Vega, whom the station known as Aguilar. He said that “nobody there had any reason to hate (Colom) or dislike him or have anything personal against him.”

The shooting victim who died Friday was identified by police as Jonathan Mark Schaffer, 26. According to his LinkedIn profile, Schaffer had worked within the restaurant industry for several years, most recently at Urban Food Group, Coquette's parent company.

“He was just a kind and beautiful soul,” Katie Carrigan said of her late manager and friend.

Colom's father, George Colom Sr., released a family statement Saturday anticipating his son's impending death and expressing sadness and pain for those shot.

“My son will die soon and we just want to bury him in peace. No further questions or comments will be addressed,” the statement said.

The shootings in North Hills, a well-liked shopping and dining district north of Raleigh, led to heavy traffic delays midday Friday while police investigated the incident. Some nearby schools were also placed on lockdown after the shootings.

Originally published: January 19, 2025 at 10:20 am PST

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FRANKFORT, Kentucky — Authorities consider the body of a person suspected of shooting and wounding five people on a Kentucky highway has been found.

Lt. Col. Phillip “PJ” Burnett said the body found Wednesday is believed to be that of Joseph Couch of Woodbine, Kentucky.

Burnett said accessories found on the body led her to consider it was him.

Authorities said the body was found after a lengthy search within the rugged and hilly terrain of southeastern Kentucky where the Sept. 7 attack occurred.

Investigators were working to discover the body, State Police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington said earlier in a social media post. It was found near the Interstate 75 exit near London, a town of about 8,000 people about 75 miles south of Lexington.

The highway shootings sent rural areas into turmoil, causing some schools to shut for several days and switch to online classes while authorities urged area residents to be vigilant. On Tuesday, schools within the district where the shooting occurred reopened with additional police protection.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called the shooting “an act of violence and evil.”

A dozen vehicles were hit when the gunman fired 20 to 30 shots near a highway exit, causing chaos. Authorities rushed to the scene after being alerted around 5:30 p.m. The five victims survived the attack, but some suffered serious injuries.

After sending the text message promising to “kill a lot of people” before the attack, Couch sent one other one saying, “I'm going to kill myself after this,” investigators said within the affidavit. The document doesn’t describe the connection between Couch and the lady who received the text message. However, Couch and the lady have one child together but were never married, in accordance with an attorney who handled custody of the couple and their son, born in 2016.

Investigators found Couch's abandoned vehicle near the crime scene and a semi-automatic weapon that investigators consider was utilized in the shooting. An army-style duffel bag found had “Couch” handwritten on it and a phone believed to belong to Couch was also found, however the battery had been removed.

According to authorities, he bought the AR-15 weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a London gun store a number of hours before the shooting.

Couch had a military background within the Army Reserve. The U.S. Army said he served as a combat engineer from 2013 to 2019. He was a personal when he left and had no deployments.

The search focused on a densely wooded area about eight miles north of London, which a state police official described as “a walk through the jungle.” Aided by helicopters and drones, search teams on the bottom battled cliffs, sinkholes, caves, waterways and dense undergrowth.

Authorities said they were inundated with suggestions from the general public and were following up on each one. When the bottom search was suspended overnight, specially trained officers were deployed at strategic locations within the forest to forestall the gunman from leaving the realm.

On Tuesday, authorities said they were withdrawing search forces from the forest to extend patrols in surrounding communities to calm residents' fears.

Since the shooting, police have received greater than 400 suggestions, most of which pointed to areas outside the extensive forest that was the main focus of the search.

crime

WASHINGTON (AP) — The gunman within the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump searched online for events hosted by each Trump and President Joe Biden and viewed the Pennsylvania campaign rally where he opened fire last month as a “target of opportunity,” a senior FBI official said Wednesday.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Trump from a close-by rooftop before being killed by a Secret Service sniper, had done extensive research for an attack before the shooting, a spread of events or targets, including events involving the present and former president, said Kevin Rojek, special agent in control of the FBI's Pittsburgh field office.

The latest details emerged as FBI officials said in the newest in a series of briefings on the investigation that, despite conducting nearly 1,000 interviews, that they had not yet found a motive for the July 13 attack in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We have a clear idea of ​​the mentality, but cannot make any final statements about the motive at this point,” said Rojek.

CHICAGO – The suspected gunman within the July 4 mass murder in Highland Park, Illinois, on Wednesday rejected a plea deal that will have resulted in a life sentence.

Assistant District Attorney Ben Dillon said Robert Crimo III will plead guilty to seven counts of murder and 48 counts of aggravated assault. He can be sentenced to life in prison without parole and a further 30 years for every count of aggravated assault.

When asked if he would comply with the confession, Crimo surprisingly didn’t answer. His lawyers took a break to debate the cope with him again.

The deputies had brought Crimo into the courtroom in a wheelchair. He looked sullen and stared straight ahead.

After consulting along with his lawyers outside the courtroom, Crimo was pushed back inside and refused to comply with the confession. When asked if he agreed to the conditions outlined by the prosecution, he said, “No.”

He was then escorted out of the courtroom because the hearing for the day ended. The case is scheduled to be heard in February 2025.

Following the agreement, the victims and their families were expected to present emotional testimony about how the shooting affected them before Judge Victoria Rossetti announced the sentence.

State Attorney Eric Rinehart had previously stated that his office had contacted those affected before agreeing to the plea.

“We continue to work with victims and survivors as the situation evolves,” he said.

The Lake County Sheriff's Office said additional officers could be available for sentencing.

Crimo was charged with 117 felonies. Prosecutors said he climbed atop a store in downtown Highland Park and fired a high-powered rifle at the group gathered for the parade.

Police say he disguised himself as a lady to flee through the panicked crowd and drove to Wisconsin before returning to Illinois later that day, where a North Chicago police officer pursued and arrested him. He has been in jail ever since.

Killed within the tragedy were Kevin and Irina McCarthy, parents protecting their then two-year-old son Aiden, who survived.

Others killed included Katherine Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park; Stephen Straus, 88, of Highland Park; Jacquelyn “Jacki” Sundheim, 63, of Highland Park; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Morelos, Mexico; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, of Waukegan.

Among the roughly 4 dozen injured was Cooper Roberts, who was eight years old on the time and was paralyzed within the shooting. His twin brother Luke was also injured.

The Roberts family had previously said in a press release that the injured were “shaken but alive and able to hold on.”

rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com

kmaiarf@yahoo.com

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH-Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist and lawyer whose biting cynicism and controversial positions on high-profile deaths similar to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy captured the eye of prosecutors and tv viewers alike, died Monday. He was 93.

Wecht's death was announced by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, which didn’t release the cause or location of death, saying only that he “died peacefully.”

Wecht's near-meteoric rise to fame began in 1964, three years after he re-entered civilian life following a temporary stint at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, Wecht was working as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County and as a pathologist at a hospital in Pittsburgh.

The request got here from a bunch of forensic scientists: review the Warren Commission report, which concluded that Lee Harvey single-handedly assassinated Oswald Kennedy. And Wecht did just that along with his usual thoroughness – the start of a lifelong obsession with proving his theory that a couple of shooter was involved within the murder.

After reviewing autopsy documents, noting that the president's brain was missing, and watching amateur video of the assassination, Wecht concluded that a single bullet was involved within the attack, killing Kennedy and the governor of Texas injured. John Connally was “absolute nonsense.”

Wecht's lecture demonstration, during which he detailed his theory that it was inconceivable for a single bullet to cause the damage it did that November day in Dallas, was included in Oliver Stone's film “JFK” after the director consulted with him had. It became the famous court scene that showed the trail of the “miracle ball”.

Attorney F. Lee Bailey called Wecht the “key leader in the challenge” to the Warren report. Wecht's verbal altercation with Senator Arlen Specter, a commission staffer, also became public knowledge, culminating within the accusation in his book “Cause of Death” that the politician's support for the one bullet theory was “a stupid, pseudoscientific fallacy.” preferably.”

But somehow Wecht and Specter overcame their differences and developed something of a friendship, with the senator defending the pathologist during a grueling, five-year legal battle that cost him much of his life savings and ended in 2009.

In the end, Wecht emerged victorious, even as a series of legal maneuvers and court decisions forced prosecutors to drop all fraud and theft charges against him in a case involving allegations that he abdicated his public position as a doctor Allegheny County exploited auditors to expand its multimillion-dollar private practice.

Wecht's openness about Kennedy's assassination and the publicity it generated later made him the go-to pathologist for dozens of other high-profile cases, from Elvis Presley to JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen whose death remains unsolved to this day.

In the murder trial of school principal Jean Harris, who is accused of murdering “Scarsdale Diet” Dr. Herman Tarnower was accused, Wecht testified unsuccessfully for the defense. His testimony in the trial of Claus von Bülow may have helped acquit von Bülow of the charge that he attempted to kill his heiress Sunny.

After studying Elvis' autopsy report, Wecht concluded that the King of Rock likely died of an overdose rather than heart disease and shared his findings on national television. His findings led Tennessee authorities to reopen the case in 1994, but in the end the official cause of death remained unchanged.

In the months leading up to the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1994, Wecht was a frequent guest on talk shows, speculating on the “Today” and “Good Morning America” ​​shows about the significance of blood samples and other evidence.

When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Wecht went on air again and discussed the deadly mix of drugs and tranquilizers that killed the King of Pop.

Although Wecht spent more than five decades dealing with death on an almost daily basis, he managed to remain overall optimistic, his hearty laugh resonated deep in his belly, and he often humored himself with his own, sometimes offensive and biting jokes.

“I want to be alive when I die. Think about it,” Wecht said. “I mean, okay, what is life?”

The key to dying, he said, is acknowledging those you love, because when you die they will no longer be there.

“I will be away from my wife, my children, my grandchildren and one day my great-grandchildren. That’s what death means to me,” Wecht said.

“I want it to go on forever.”

However, Wecht was always a realist and took the time to detail many of his cases in six books. In “Cause of Death” – a book by Wecht, his son Benjamin and Mark Curriden, a former writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Morning News – attorney Alan Dershowitz praised the pathologist as the “Sherlock Holmes of forensic science.” .”

The son of a grocer, Wecht attended elementary school on the University of Pittsburgh and later earned degrees in medicine and law from the identical school. He served twice as Allegheny County coroner and accomplished his second term in 2006, when he resigned after being accused of fraud and theft.

His first term in office from 1970 to 1980 was also tense. At that point, he was also accused of using county morgues for his private forensic work as a medical expert. After a lengthy legal battle, he paid $200,000 in compensation. He also served a four-year term as an Allegheny County commissioner.

A run for the US Senate against John Heinz III. in 1982 was unsuccessful.

Survivors include his wife, Sigrid, and their 4 children, David, a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; Daniel, clinical professor within the Department of Neurosurgery on the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Benjamin, freelance author and teacher; Ingrid, a health care provider specializing in obstetrics and gynecology; and 11 grandchildren.