“Duck Dynasty” star Bella Robertson is engaged to Jacob Mayo.
— FOX News
Author: Michelle Dryden
Police stand outside Arden Fair Mall after a shooting that left one person dead and another critically injured, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020, in Sacramento, Calif. The mall was evacuated in the midst of Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days. Police later said the suspect had fled and there was no active threat to the mall. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Police are looking for a gunman who shot and killed two teens at a Northern California mall in the midst of Black Friday, sending shoppers running for safety, authorities said.
Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento was evacuated shortly after 6 p.m. when shots were fired near one of the mall’s entrances, police spokesman Karl Chan said.
A 19-year-old man was found dead at the mall and a 17-year-old boy was found critically wounded at a bank outside of the mall. He was taken to the hospital and succumbed to his injuries several hours later, police told the Sacramento Bee on Saturday.
Workers at the mall said they heard up to a dozen shots.
“Heard a couple of shots go off, didn’t really think anything of it,” Antwon Martinez said. “And more and more kept going off, so everyone started running toward our back room. … Everyone just started running.”
He said customers and workers evacuated through the corridors and stairways in the back of the mall.
The coronavirus pandemic kept crowds thinner than usual on Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the newspaper reported.
Chan said the shooting appeared to be a targeted and isolated attack, though he didn’t disclose the gunman’s motive. Police said they were looking for a suspect in his 20s.
Other details of the shooting weren’t immediately released but Chan urged people who may have witnessed the shooting to come forward and said the mall’s security camera footage will be examined by homicide detectives.
“We do know that the mall does have a pretty robust surveillance footage,” he said.
Gun assaults and homicides have surged in the California capital, as well as in Los Angeles and other cities. About 40 homicides have been reported this year.
“We are deeply concerned by the increase in gun violence in Sacramento and other cities during the pandemic, and have supported increasing our efforts to reach young people at risk,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg tweeted. “A gun is never the answer.”
— Associated Press
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Researchers believe the vessel is the Caroline Eddy, a ship built during the Civil War and wrecked in 1880. “It was a sea like a mountain,” its captain recounted at the time.
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Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, visits Umm Rakouba refugee camp sheltering people who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in Qadarif, eastern Sudan, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The Ethiopian military on Saturday began an offensive in the Tigray regional capital in its quest to arrest the region’s defiant leaders.
Tigray TV announced the shelling midday in Mekele, a city of a half-million people. A report from the city confirmed it.
The Tigray leader could not immediately be reached. Ethiopia’s government did not immediately comment.
Ethiopia’s government had warned Mekele residents there would be “no mercy” if they didn’t move away from the leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in time.
Communications remain largely severed to the Tigray region of some 6 million people, making it difficult to verify claims by the warring sides in the conflict between Ethiopia’s government and the TPLF, which once dominated the country’s ruling coalition but was sidelined under new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Abiy has rejected dialogue with the TPLF. Each government regards the other as illegal.
The offensive on the densely populated city, and the threat of civilian deaths, has alarmed the international community. The United Nations said people were fleeing Mekele as forces closed in. Abiy’s government has said it will take care to avoid harming civilians in the tank-led assault.
As Ethiopian forces moved in, Maj. Gen. Hassan Ibrahim vowed to capture the city “on all fronts.”
“It is possible that some of the wanted people may go to their families or neighboring areas and try to hide for few days. But our armed forces after seizing the control of Mekele city will be tasked to hunt down and capture these criminals one by one wherever they may be,” he said in comments carried by the Ethiopian News Agency.
The Tigray region has been almost entirely cut off from the outside world since Nov. 4, when Abiy announced a military offensive in response to a TPLF attack on a military base. Humanitarians have said at least hundreds of people have been killed.
The fighting threatens to destabilize Ethiopia, which has been described as the linchpin of the strategic Horn of Africa.
With transport links cut, food and other supplies are running out in Tigray, home to 6 million people, and the United Nations has asked for immediate and unimpeded access for aid.
Multiple crises are growing. More than 40,000 refugees have fled for Sudan, where people struggle to give them food, shelter and care. One humanitarian agency says hospitals in Tigray are running out of drugs. And fighting near camps of Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia has put them in the line of fire.
Worryingly, refugees in Sudan have told The Associated Press that Ethiopian forces near the border are impeding people from leaving. Reporters from the AP have seen that crossings have slowed to a trickle in recent days. Ethiopia’s government has not commented on that.
— Associated Press