Zoom slaying ‘sad case’
Florida girl, 10, witnessed mother’s shooting during class
The 10-year-old girl had just joined her Zoom class Tuesday in Indiantown, Fla., when her teacher at Warfield Elementary noticed something was wrong.
There was cursing, a commotion and then what seemed to be a “domestic altercation,” police later said.
The teacher quickly muted the girl to shield other students who were logging on.
But moments later, the teacher said she saw the girl throw her hands over her ears. Then the screen went dark.
What started as an heated argument between her mother Maribel Rosado Morales, 32, and her mom’s ex-boyfriend Donald J. Williams, 27, quickly escalated when Williams shot Morales multiple times, police said. Morales died at a hospital. Williams was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and other felonies, Martin County
Sheriff William Snyder said at a news conference Tuesday.
Like millions of students preparing to start school as the novel coronavirus continues its spread, the girl was home attending classes over Zoom when she and five other children in the house witnessed the killing, police said.
“It’s a sad case, it’s a terrible case and we’re doing the best we can to try to make sense of what occurred, at least forensically,” Snyder said.
The incident began just after 8 a.m. Tuesday, when Williams, who police said did not appear to have forcibly entered the home, confronted Morales about a video on Facebook.
“He said she actually started to smile at him and he became enraged,” Snyder said.
Williams took out a gun he had stolen and shot Morales multiple times, police said.
The 10-year-old’s computer was hit by a projectile, police said. Three of Morales’s other children were at the home during the incident as well as two cousins who live across the street. Their ages range from 10 to 17, police said.
BEIRUT — A top U.S. diplomat said Thursday that the FBI would join a probe of the massive Beirut explosion that killed at least 172 people, urging change in Lebanon to “make sure something like this never happens again.”
On a tour of a demolished Beirut neighbourhood, U.S. undersecretary for political affairs David Hale said
Lebanon needed “economic and fiscal reforms, an end to dysfunctional governance and to empty promises.”
The explosion at Beirut’s port injured 6,000 people and forced about 300,000 from their homes in the Lebanese capital. Some 30-40 people remain missing.
Authorities have blamed the Aug. 4 blast on a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored for years at the port without safety measures.
“The FBI will soon join Lebanese and international investigators at the invitation of the Lebanese to help answer questions about the circumstances that led up to this explosion,” Hale said.
Crushing debt
Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said the investigation will look into whether the cause was negligence, an accident or possibly “external interference.”
Aoun has asked France for satellite imagery. A U.K. navy vessel was also deployed to Beirut to survey the site.
An Israeli seismological expert said Thursday that the explosion was preceded by a series of blasts, the last of which was a combustion of fireworks. Authorities have estimated losses from the blast at $15 billion, a bill Lebanon cannot pay: It already defaulted on its enormous sovereign debt in March and International Monetary Fund talks have stalled.
Humanitarian aid has poured in, but foreign countries that once helped have made clear they will not give funds to help Lebanon out of economic collapse without reforms to tackle state corruption and waste.
Hale, the No. 3 U.S. diplomat, said Washington would back any new government that “reflects the will of the people” and enacts reforms.
The fallout from the explosion forced the cabinet to resign this week.