Author: CNN

Olivia McMillan described receiving an emotional last text from her friend Justin Shilling on the day a shooter opened fire at Oxford High School in 2021.

McMillan said when her class heard gunshots coming from the hallway, she sent a text to her group chat, which Shilling was a part of.

Shilling texted back that he was in the bathroom with shooter Ethan Crumbley, she said. The last text his friends received from him said, “I love you guys,” she told the court on Friday at Crumbley’s sentencing hearing. McMillan later found out her friend was dead.

She said she was thankful to have Shilling as a friend. He always tried to make others laugh, helped with homework and wished his friends luck on their sporting events.

On the day of the shooting, the class initially thought the loud bangs were just someone slamming lockers or pulling a prank in the hall, McMillan said.

“I don’t know when my brain flipped and knew that I was in danger and began to move desks, tables, chairs, filing cabinets to barricade the door,” she said.

For the days after the shooting, McMillan said she still believed Shilling was going to be OK and thought about all of the high school events they had ahead of them.

She said from the day she met Shilling she knew she wanted to be his friend. As the two got closer, McMillan said he became like family. 

“I knew he was going to be in my life for years to come, I just didn’t know it was only going to be as a memory,” McMillan said.

Olivia McMillan described receiving an emotional last text from her friend Justin Shilling on the day a shooter opened fire at Oxford High School in 2021.

McMillan said when her class heard gunshots coming from the hallway, she sent a text to her group chat, which Shilling was a part of.

Shilling texted back that he was in the bathroom with shooter Ethan Crumbley, she said. The last text his friends received from him said, “I love you guys,” she told the court on Friday at Crumbley’s sentencing hearing. McMillan later found out her friend was dead.

She said she was thankful to have Shilling as a friend. He always tried to make others laugh, helped with homework and wished his friends luck on their sporting events.

On the day of the shooting, the class initially thought the loud bangs were just someone slamming lockers or pulling a prank in the hall, McMillan said.

“I don’t know when my brain flipped and knew that I was in danger and began to move desks, tables, chairs, filing cabinets to barricade the door,” she said.

For the days after the shooting, McMillan said she still believed Shilling was going to be OK and thought about all of the high school events they had ahead of them.

She said from the day she met Shilling she knew she wanted to be his friend. As the two got closer, McMillan said he became like family. 

“I knew he was going to be in my life for years to come, I just didn’t know it was only going to be as a memory,” McMillan said.

Editor’s Note: The following story includes graphic material. Audience discretion is advised.

The scene inside the Al-Nasr hospital ICU ward is chilling. The tiny bodies of babies, several still attached to wires and tubes that were meant to keep them alive, decomposing in their hospital beds. Milk bottles and spare diapers still next to them on the sheets.

The video inside the hospital was filmed on November 27 by Mohamed Baalousha, a Gaza reporter for UAE-based news outlet Al Mashhad. He shared an unblurred version with CNN, which shows the remains of at least four infants.

Three of them appear to be still connected to hospital machines. The bodies of the babies appear to be darkening and disintegrating from decay, with little more than skeletons left in some of the beds. Flies and maggots are visibly crawling across the skin of one child.

The circumstances around one of the most horrifying videos to emerge from the war in Gaza remain unclear, but after days of piecing together available information, using interviews, published statements and video, a chaotic scene can been painted of hospital staff trying to protect their most vulnerable patients, caught in the middle of a raging battle – waiting for help that never arrived.

Here is what CNN found: CNN geolocated the video to the hospital in northern Gaza. This area has been largely unreachable to journalists in recent weeks due to the intensity of fighting but during the seven-day truce, Baalousha says he was able to access the hospital to film what was left there.

From early November, the Al-Nasr and Al-Rantisi children’s hospitals, which form part of the same complex, had become the frontline of fighting between Israeli and Hamas forces.

In public statements and interviews, several medical staff and health officials from Al-Nasr said they had to hurriedly evacuate the hospital on November 10, under the direction of Israeli forces.

Medical staff described having to leave young children behind in the ICU because they had no means to safely move them.

A doctor associated with the hospital, who did not want to be named, told CNN that two of the children – a two-year-old and a nine-month-old baby – had died shortly before the evacuation but that three children were left alive still connected to respirators. One of those left alive was two months old. Several of the infants in the ICU had been suffering from genetic disorders, according to the doctor.

The condition of those left behind alive – both at the time the fighting reached the hospital and when the evacuation took place – remains unclear.

Read more about what we know about the evacuated ICU in Gaza

Editor’s Note: Since this story was published, Pursehouse was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to a spokesperson with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

CNN
 — 

A man was convicted Thursday of killing his former girlfriend, Amie Harwick, a sex therapist who was once engaged to comedian Drew Carey, by throwing her over a balcony in February 2020.

Gareth Pursehouse, 45, was found guilty by a jury of one count of murder and first-degree residential burglary with a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Harwick was a former Playboy model who advocated for sex workers and supported a non-profit that subsidized mental health care for performers in the adult industry.

Pursehouse faces a maximum life sentence in state prison without the possibility of parole, according to a news release from the district attorney.

Autopsy results showed the primary cause of death as blunt force injuries to the head and torso from a fall after an altercation, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner said at the time of her death.

Evidence of “manual strangulation” also was found, CNN reported previously.

“Today, justice has been served for Amie Harwick and her loved ones who have endured unimaginable pain throughout this terrible ordeal,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement. “Our thoughts and support remain with them as they begin to heal.”

CNN reached out to Pursehouse’s attorney for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Harwick, who specialized in family and sex counseling, had filed a restraining order against Pursehouse, police said, but it had expired.

When LAPD officers responded to reports of a “woman screaming,” they met Harwick’s roommate in the street who told them Harwick was being assaulted inside the home.

They found her beneath a third-story balcony, where she was “gravely injured” and unresponsive, LAPD said. An investigation showed forced entry into the home and a struggle upstairs.

Harwick became engaged to Carey, host of “The Price is Right,” in 2018. The pair split less than a year later.

“Amie and I had a love that people are lucky to have once in a lifetime,” Carey said in a statement to CNN at the time of her death. “She was positive force in the world, a tireless and unapologetic champion for women, and passionate about her work as a therapist.”

Editor’s Note: Lindsay Shiver of Thomasville, Georgia, pleaded not guilty on Friday, Dec. 8, to killing her estranged husband in a Bahamian court during her formal arraignment.

CNN
 — 

American Lindsay Shiver, accused of conspiring to kill her husband with two co-defendants in the Bahamas, was granted bail of $100,000 by a Bahamian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday.

She will be outfitted with an electronic monitoring device and must comply with an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. As Shiver walked into court wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt, spectators yelled questions but it did not appear she replied to anyone.

Shiver must report to the Cable Beach Police Station in Nassau three times per week. She must also not come within 100 feet of her husband, as part of her bail conditions.

When Bahamian Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson finished laying out the conditions of Shiver’s bail, Shiver responded with a soft “OK.” After Shiver picks up her electronic monitoring device, she will be allowed to go to her new residence without returning to jail, her attorney Ian Cargill told CNN on Wednesday.

Shiver’s alleged co-conspirators, Terrance Adrian Bethel, 28, and Farron Newbold Jr., 29, had previously been released on $20,000 bail, Cargill told CNN on Friday.

Shiver, 36, of Thomasville, Georgia, is accused of unsuccessfully conspiring with the two Bahamas natives to kill her husband, Robert Shiver, on July 16 while on the Abaco Islands, months after the couple filed for divorce.

Police in the Bahamas successfully foiled the plot by acting on information found on a phone recovered during a separate criminal inquiry into a recent break-in at a local business, a Bahamian police source told CNN.

The defendants were arraigned last month, according to court documents. They were not required to enter pleas at that hearing.

Lindsay and Robert Shiver had filed for divorce in April, court records indicate.

Robert Shiver filed for divorce on April 5, and Lindsay Shiver filed for divorce the following day, according to the complaint listed on the Thomas County, Georgia, Clerk of Courts website.

Robert Shiver lists Lindsay’s “adulterous conduct” as a reason for divorce, saying the marriage is irrevocably broken, according to the filings viewed by CNN. The filing from Lindsay Shiver says she has “incurred debt beyond her means to pay,” and asks that her husband be made to pay.

Robert Shiver is an insurance executive and former Auburn University football player, court records and his company’s website show. Lindsay Shiver also attended Auburn University, according to social media posts.

Lindsay Shiver’s next court appearance is slated for October 5.

CNN has reached out to attorneys representing each of them in the divorce case.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Bahamian Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson.

The US economy notched another solid month of job growth, with an added lift from actors and autoworkers coming off the picket lines.

The largest employment gains last month came in health care and government, which added an estimated 93,200 and 49,000 jobs, respectively. Manufacturing saw a boost, too, largely because of the return of striking autoworkers, which lifted motor vehicles and parts employment by 30,000 jobs.

Additionally, the resolution in the Screen Actors Guild strike against Hollywood studios resulted in 17,200 jobs added in the motion picture and sound recording industries.

In total, the BLS was anticipating a net gain of 35,000 workers returning after strikes: The agency estimated that 61,000 workers were absent from the labor market due to labor disputes, versus 96,000 the month before.

Taking into account those one-time gains, the underlying rate of job growth is likely around 160,000 jobs per month, which aligns with the 2019 average, wrote Julia Pollak, senior economist at ZipRecruiter.

A month earlier, those effects swung the other way.

“Some of the weakness last month may have been illusory, just due to the strikes,” Pollak told CNN earlier this week in an interview.

The United Auto Workers union, in an unprecedented and successful action, went on strike against the Big Three automakers of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis from mid-September through the end of October.

October’s employment report included 33,200 jobs counted as lost in the motor vehicles and parts industry. BLS attributed those declines to strike activity: The agency’s strike report for that month counted 25,300 Ford, GM and Stellantis workers on strike.

Additionally, the BLS strike report for November indicated that strikes ended for 16,000 SAG-AFTRA workers after the actors union and Hollywood studios reached an agreement in the early part of last month

CNN
 — 

Here’s a look at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. On December 14, 2012, six adults and 20 children were killed by Adam Lanza, who had earlier killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their home.

Birth date: April 22, 1992

Death date: December 14, 2012

Birth place: Kingston, New Hampshire

Birth name: Adam Lanza

Father: Peter Lanza, an accountant

Mother: Nancy (Champion) Lanza

Lanza’s parents were divorced in September 2009.

A 2014 report by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate described Lanza as a young man with deteriorating mental health who had a fascination with mass shootings.

Weapons found at the scene were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza.

Lanza used a Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifle during the shooting spree. Three weapons were found next to his body; the semiautomatic .223-caliber rifle made by Bushmaster, and two handguns. An Izhmash Saiga-12, 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun was found in his car.

December 14, 2012 – At an unknown time, 20-year-old Adam Lanza kills his mother Nancy, 52, with a .22 caliber Savage Mark II rifle. Lanza then drives his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary, about five miles away.

At approximately 9:30 a.m., Lanza arrives at Sandy Hook Elementary, a school with about 700 students. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, had installed a new security system that required every visitor to ring the front entrance’s doorbell for admittance. Lanza shoots his way through the entrance.

Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach step out to the hall to see what is going on, and are followed by Vice Principal Natalie Hammond. Hochsprung and Sherlach are killed, and Hammond is injured.

The first 911 calls to police are made at approximately 9:30 a.m. Police and first responders arrive approximately five minutes later.

Lanza enters the classroom of substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau. Lanza kills 14 children as well as Rousseau and a teacher’s aide.

He then enters the classroom of teacher Victoria Soto. Six children in the room, as well as Soto and a teacher’s aide, are killed. Lanza dies by suicide in the same classroom, ending the rampage in less than 11 minutes.

At about 3:15 p.m., an emotional President Barack Obama gives a televised address, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” He orders flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other federal buildings.

December 15, 2012 – Connecticut State Police release the names of the victims: six adult women and 12 girls and eight boys, all ages six and seven.

December 16, 2012 – Obama visits with the relatives of those who were killed. He also attends an interfaith vigil. “We can’t tolerate this anymore,” he says. “These tragedies must end, and to end them we must change.”

December 17, 2012 – Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy announces a statewide moment of silence on December 21. He also requests that bells be tolled 26 times in memory of the victims.

December 18, 2012 – Newtown Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson announces Sandy Hook students will remain out of school until January. At that time, they will be taught in a converted middle school.

January 8, 2013 – Malloy announces the names of the people who will serve on the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, to review current policy and make recommendations on public safety, mental health and violence prevention policies.

March 2013 – A new police report reveals Lanza possessed a list of 500 of the world’s most notorious mass murderers, and was trying to rack up the greatest number of kills in history.

November 25, 2013 – Connecticut state officials release a report closing the investigation into the shooting and confirm that Lanza had no assistance and was the only shooter.

December 4, 2013 – Audio recordings of the 911 calls from Sandy Hook Elementary are released.

December 27, 2013 – The final report on the investigation into the shooting is released.

November 21, 2014 – The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, as directed by the State Child Fatality Review Panel, releases a report profiling Lanza’s developmental and educational history. The report notes “missed opportunities” by Lanza’s mother, the school district and multiple health care providers. It identifies “warning signs, red flags, or other lessons” that could be learned.

December 15, 2014 – The families of nine children killed, along with one teacher who survived the attack, file a wrongful death suit against the manufacturers and distributors of the Bushmaster rifle, as well as the retail store and dealer who sold the firearm used in the shooting.

March 6, 2015 – The final report of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission is released.

December 17, 2015 – In a final agreement, 16 plaintiffs will share in a $1.5 million settlement against the estate of Nancy Lanza. The plaintiffs are from eight separate lawsuits filed in early 2015.

April 14, 2016 – A superior court judge rules that the wrongful death suit against gun manufacturers can proceed. The judge denies a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that firearms companies have limited liability when their products are used by criminals, according to a federal law passed in 2005.

October 14, 2016 – Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismisses a lawsuit that families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims had filed against a gun manufacturer, invoking a federal statute known as PLCAA, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The law prohibits lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors if their firearms were used in the commission of a criminal act.

November 15, 2016 – The Sandy Hook families file an appeal, asking the Connecticut Supreme Court to consider their case against the gun manufacturer.

March 14, 2019 – The Connecticut Supreme Court rules that the families of the Sandy Hook victims can go forward with their lawsuit against Remington, which makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting.

April 5, 2019 – Remington files an appeal with the US Supreme Court, asking the high court to decide on the state’s interpretation of a federal statute that grants gun manufacturers immunity from any lawsuit related to injuries that result from criminal misuse of their product.

November 12, 2019 – The US Supreme Court declines to take up the Remington appeal.

July 27, 2021 – Remington offers nearly $33 million to nine families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in a proposed lawsuit settlement.

November 15, 2021 – The families suing InfoWars founder Alex Jones win a case against him after a judge rules that Jones, and the entities owned by him, are liable by default in the defamation case against them. Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis cites the defendants’ “willful noncompliance” with the discovery process as her core reasoning behind the ruling. The case stems from past claims that the 2012 mass shooting was staged. Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting was real.

February 15, 2022 – A settlement is reached between the nine families of victims killed and the now-bankrupt Remington and its four insurers, according to court records. The plaintiffs’ attorneys say the $73 million settlement also includes “thousands of pages of internal company documents that prove Remington’s wrongdoing and carry important lessons for helping to prevent future mass shootings.”

August 4, 2022 – A jury decides that Jones will have to pay Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim, a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages.

October 12, 2022 – A Connecticut jury decides Jones should pay eight family members of Sandy Hook shooting victims and one first responder $965 million in compensatory damages caused by his lies regarding the shooting. On November 10, a Connecticut judge orders Jones to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages.

November 13, 2022 – The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial, designed by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo, is unveiled publicly in Newtown, Connecticut.

October 19, 2023 – A federal bankruptcy judge rules that bankruptcy proceedings will not shield Jones from more than $1.1 billion in damages he owes the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims.

November 22, 2023 – In a court document, the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims offer Jones a “path out of bankruptcy” if he pays them a “small fraction” of the more than $1 billion he owes in damages, which could help resolve the bankruptcy cases of both Jones and Free Speech Systems. The families suggest Jones pay at least $85 million over 10 years — $8.5 million per year for a decade, in addition to half of any annual income over $9 million, “with a proportionate reduction of liabilities for each year of full payment.”

The Victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Allison Wyatt, 6
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
Anne Marie Murphy, 52 (Teacher)
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Catherine Hubbard, 6
Charlotte Bacon, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Daniel Barden, 7
Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47 (Principal)
Dylan Hockley, 6
Emilie Parker, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Jack Pinto, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Jesse Lewis, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Lauren Rousseau, 30 (Teacher)
Madeleine Hsu, 6
Mary Sherlach, 56 (Psychologist)
Noah Pozner, 6
Olivia Engel, 6
Rachel D’Avino, 29, (Therapist)
Victoria Soto, 27 (Teacher)