Jeff Legwold covers the Denver Broncos at ESPN. He has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years and also assists with NFL draft coverage, joining ESPN in 2013. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999, too. Jeff previously covered the Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans at previous stops prior to ESPN.
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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — The Denver Broncos excused outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper from their mandatory minicamp this week after he was arrested twice in a seven-day span on multiple domestic violence charges, including one felony.
“He’s taking this time, obviously, he’s got to work on himself,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said after Tuesday’s practice. “The club is very much in tuned to the league office, local authorities here, and we’ve had several meetings. Clearly from an ownership standpoint, head coach, organizationally, there’s a bar that we have, and an expectation that we have, that’s very high. We’ll consider all of that as we continue to gather the information … we’re continuing to go through that process, and we take it very seriously.”
The 28-year-old Cooper, who practiced during the team’s OTAs the previous two weeks, was first arrested June 4 by police in Parker, Colorado, after an argument and confrontation with his girlfriend. He faced multiple charges from that arrest, one of which was upgraded to felony second-degree assault Wednesday. Cooper was arrested again Thursday on multiple charges that included harassment.
Cooper’s girlfriend also was arrested on June 4, but her single charge of criminal mischief was dropped Tuesday.
Cooper appeared in Douglas County (Colorado) Court on Friday and was released on a personal recognizance bond and ordered to abide by a strict “no contact” protection order. He also must have prior court approval for any travel outside of Colorado.
On Tuesday, the Broncos opened their mandatory minicamp, the only offseason activity players can be fined for missing. It is scheduled to run through Thursday to close their offseason program.
Cooper’s long-term future with the team remains a question. The Broncos will open training camp in the last week of July. Cooper is scheduled for motions hearings on July 6 and July 14 (one for each arrest), with a jury trial scheduled to begin July 22.
When asked Tuesday if the Broncos were going to let the legal process reach a conclusion before the team made a decision on Cooper’s future, Payton said: “There’s a process period from the league and that involves the local law enforcement. We’ll continue to gather that information.”
Cooper also could face a suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. A league spokesman said last week the NFL was monitoring the case.
Any agreement allowing Iran to charge fees in the Strait of Hormuz would set a “dangerous precedent” for global trade, Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of the shipping giant Maersk, said in an interview this week.
Iran has threatened to monetize its continuing control of the strait, the door to the Persian Gulf. Now with the United States and Iran moving toward an agreement to restore transit in the gulf, whether Iran can charge for passage remains an outstanding issue. President Trump has said that ships cannot be subject to any tolls, in accordance with international law. Iran has said it will impose fees, something that it did not do before the war.
The preliminary deal, expected to be signed by both sides on Friday in Switzerland, would start a 60-day cease-fire while negotiators hash out what to do about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, its proxy war with Israel and other issues. Neither country has publicly released the text of the deal.
Mr. Clerc, 54, said any provision that allowed Iran to charge for passage would “create, in my book, a very dangerous precedent.”
“If any geographical point can be suddenly weaponized and leveraged for money, and then closed again at the whim of a certain government or authorities, of course, that’s for us — it’s a concerning development,” he said. “You have to wonder then what’s next.”
Iran’s threats have shifted how companies and countries view the world’s vital maritime points. There is no cheaper way to move goods than by sea. But, Mr. Clerc said, “if people start to weaponize certain routes, it’s going to quickly erode this.”
A career shaped by maritime crises
Mr. Clerc, born and raised in Rossens, a village in Switzerland, has spent his career at Maersk. In 2023, soon after he became chief executive, the Iranian-backed Houthis escalated their attacks on the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important shipping routes. The attacks upended global trade, forcing ships to avoid the Suez Canal and reroute an extra 4,000 miles around Africa. Even today, most container ships are adding 10 or more days of travel to avoid the Red Sea.
Mr. Clerc’s office overlooks a stretch of the Copenhagen harbor that is a short walk from the Little Mermaid, the city’s famous waterfront sculpture inspired by the 1837 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. A base for Denmark’s navy is just across the harbor, and in the summer, the Danish royal family’s 257-foot-long yacht is often moored in the waters outside the office.
Maersk, the second-largest shipping container company by capacity, has sailed ships through every major maritime trade chokepoint across the globe. Founded in 1904, the company operates more than 700 owned or chartered vessels and brought in $54 billion in revenue last year. Its ships carry goods from Asia to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, between Europe and North America, and between China and the Persian Gulf.
Hope that trade routes may emerge from months of lockdown
Fourteen vessels went through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, more than on any day so far this month, according to Windward, a maritime analysis firm. The traffic was a sign that ship operators were feeling more confident after the United States and Iran announced a cease-fire deal, the firm said.
Among the ships that exited the strait were at least two Iranian supertankers, which left the perimeter of the U.S. Navy blockade with a combined 3.8 million barrels of Iranian oil, according to TankerTrackers, a maritime data company. They were Iran’s first crude oil exports in two months.
Still, far fewer ships were moving than the 130 ships that went through the strait daily before the war. Major shipping companies said they would wait for more clarity on the agreement before deciding to move their ships.
One of Maersk’s ships, the Alliance Fairfax, got out of the Persian Gulf in May under U.S. protection, but the company has deemed it too risky for the other ships to leave.
Mr. Clerc said he would not allow any of Maersk’s five ships to pass through the strait until it was clear what routes they should take to avoid sea mines. He would also need assurances from Iran that it would not attack.
“There’s been a couple of times where it was declared open and was not really open, so we don’t want to find out by having our people in harm’s way that it’s not open,” Mr. Clerc said. More than 100 seafarers are on board the five stranded ships. Since the war began, drones hit Maersk terminals in Bahrain and Oman. Two ships were also hit — one by shrapnel and debris, and another in the hull by a drone, he said.
With access to the Persian Gulf cut off, Maersk employed workarounds. It has delivered 44,000 containers of goods such as furniture, electronics and food to Gulf countries by rail and truck. Cargo is unloaded from ships at the Red Sea port of Jeddah, from where it is driven across Saudi Arabia to Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. Truckers have come for the work from Jordan, Iraq and Turkey to meet high demand. Other products are unloaded in Salalah, Oman, and driven to the United Arab Emirates.
But the land routes cost Maersk about $1,000 extra per container. Over time, this will lead to an erosion of profits for retailers and higher costs for consumers, Mr. Clerc said.
Whatever the terms of any final agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has shown that it can create a global chokehold on trade through attacks, imposing a blockade on ships or charging for passage. The last three months are likely to leave a lasting effect on the way trade is conducted around the world.
“There are certain threats and things that once you’ve put that on the table, once it’s been there, it’s just not the same anymore,” Mr. Clerc said.
SpaceX may have held the biggest initial public offering of all time, but Wall Street may be expecting something even bigger from Elon Musk, the rocket company’s chief executive.
Many of his fans and investors expect him to merge SpaceX with Tesla, the maker of electric cars where he is also chief executive, joining most of his businesses into a single roughly $4 trillion tech conglomerate, a sort of Elon, Inc.
Investors, analysts and even a top SpaceX executive have talked about the merits of such a deal on social media, in research notes and in a TV interview. The two companies have long shared executives and other resources and are jointly developing multibillion dollar projects.
Because Mr. Musk controls SpaceX and is Tesla’s largest shareholder, he would essentially be making a deal with himself. That would raise legal issues and probably prompt lawsuits claiming that he ran roughshod over the interests of other shareholders.
But no legal action is likely to stop Mr. Musk, legal experts say. Corporate law in Texas, where Tesla and SpaceX have their corporate domiciles, makes it very difficult for unhappy investors to challenge management decisions.
Tesla relocated to Texas from Delaware last year after Mr. Musk expressed dismay about a state court ruling — later overturned — that challenged a 2018 pay package that helped pad the fortune of the world’s richest person. SpaceX moved to the Lone Star state, from Delaware, in 2024.
“Basically he’s gotten to the point where he can do almost anything he wishes,” said Charles Elson, the founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
In Delaware, any aggrieved shareholder can take a company to court. To file a lawsuit in Texas, shareholders must hold at least 3 percent of a company’s stock.
The only shareholders likely to come close to that threshold are large investment firms like Vanguard and Fidelity that do not usually engage in such lawsuits.
Shareholders can band together to form a 3 percent bloc, but even that is a formidable hurdle. At Tesla’s current market value of $1.5 trillion, dissident investors would have to collectively own shares worth $45 billion.
“You’re looking at a truly huge amount of stock,” said James Spindler, a professor of corporate law at the University of Texas School of Law. “This is a pretty big impediment.”
Tesla and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. A representative of Tesla’s board of directors declined to comment. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Experts expect that SpaceX, as the larger company by market valuation, would offer to trade its shares for Tesla shares to form the new company.
The sprawling conglomerate’s activities would potentially include rocket building; artificial intelligence; the satellite internet service, Starlink; electric car and truck manufacturing; battery production; solar energy hardware; and the social media site, X. Products under development across the two companies include orbital data centers, self-driving taxis and humanoid robots.
Under Texas law two-thirds of Tesla shareholders would have to approve the merger. Mr. Musk already controls about 20 percent of the votes. Many of the remaining shareholders have a deep admiration for Mr. Musk and recently approved a pay package worth almost a trillion dollars, if he meets ambitious goals.
Tesla’s board of directors also has a history of backing Mr. Musk’s ideas. The carmaker and SpaceX have long had some of the same people on their boards, many of whom have long friendships or business relationships with Mr. Musk.
“He’s got this cheering section who will follow him to the gates of Hades or gates of heaven, wherever he leads them,” Mr. Elson said.
But if the terms of an acquisition are too favorable to SpaceX, Tesla shareholders could balk, Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School, said.
“There is going to be a limit to how much he can lowball the Tesla shareholders before he starts to lose the room,” Mr. Talley said, referring to Mr. Musk.
Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, has not discouraged merger talk. Combining SpaceX and Tesla “might make Elon’s life a little easier,” she told CNBC last week. “There’s no question that there are synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures.”
SpaceX’s regulatory filings acknowledge the possibility of a merger, warning that acquisitions or partnerships “may present significant challenges, including aligning operations, systems, and cultures, which could result in inefficiencies, increased costs, or failure to realize anticipated benefits.”
The rocket company already has various links to Tesla. They plan to jointly produce A.I. chips at a proposed factory called Terafab and develop A.I. software through another project called Macrohard.
Tesla had also invested in xAI, Mr. Musk’s A.I. company, which was merged with SpaceX earlier this year, and sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of batteries and cars to the rocket maker over the last two years, according to SpaceX’s I.P.O. filing.
“We plan to explore other areas of strategic collaboration with Tesla in the future,” the document said.
From a SpaceX perspective, any merger would need the blessing of only one person: Mr. Musk. The trillionaire has more than 82 percent of the shareholder votes in his company because he owns a special class of share that gives him 10 votes to every one vote assigned to the class of shares other investors own. The company also has entered into various agreements designed to preserve his power.
Brian Quinn, a professor at Boston College Law School, said that because Mr. Musk had such a large share of votes at SpaceX, acquiring Tesla, which does not have two classes of stock, would potentially allow him to keep majority voting control over a combined company.
“If you think that the next thing to happen is that SpaceX will acquire Tesla, having a buffer is valuable,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s large voting stake in SpaceX.
Some investment managers who own Tesla and SpaceX shares say a merger just makes sense.
Tesla’s expertise in semiconductors and data center construction would mesh with SpaceX’s plans to build data centers in space, said Tasha Keeney, director of investment analysis and institutional strategies at ARK Investment Management. Ark’s funds own both stocks.
SpaceX has reduced the cost of sending cargo into space, a prerequisite to building solar-powered orbiting data centers. If SpaceX succeeds in proving the space data center concept, Ms. Keeney said, its A.I. unit would gain a competitive advantage against Anthropic, OpenAI and other companies in artificial intelligence.
But she said that ARK Invest would prefer that the merger take place after Tesla has become the dominant company in self-driving taxis. Tesla has been testing small numbers of such taxis in Texas and San Francisco and has begun manufacturing a Cybercab designed to operate without a driver.
“It would be good for shareholders to see that take off before the merger,” Ms. Keeney said. “But we think it makes sense in general.”
Lawyers, politicians and some shareholders will probably try to block the merger, even if doing so would be difficult.
Shareholders might claim fraud in federal court if they can demonstrate that Mr. Musk or the Tesla or SpaceX boards withheld information ahead of shareholder votes. But such a suit would probably succeed only if the merged company is a flop and shareholders lose money, experts said.
“As long as he keeps running the business well and the stock price keeps going up, that is a pretty good bar to bringing a securities fraud suit,” Mr. Spindler of the University of Texas said.
Federal regulators could, in theory, try to block the merger on antitrust grounds because both companies are in the artificial intelligence business.
Regulators could also object on national security grounds. “It’s hard to ignore the national security implications for a deal involving two significant companies that combine A.I., robotics, communications and space,” Mr. Talley said.
But U.S. regulators are unlikely to object while Donald Trump is president, Mr. Talley added. Mr. Musk has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican candidates, including Mr. Trump, and the administration has declined to challenge several other big deals.
European officials could also try to raise antitrust objections to the deal, as they have with Google, Meta and Apple. But it might be tough to prove that a combined SpaceX and Tesla would dominate any industry.
Probably the biggest obstacle to a merger would be plunging share prices.
“When it’s a bull market everybody’s pretty happy because everybody’s making money,” Mr. Elson, the Delaware governance expert, said.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
UniQure plans to seek FDA approval of its experimental gene therapy for Huntington’s disease, the company said Wednesday, months after previous agency leaders criticized the evidence backing the application.
UniQure said the FDA in a recent meeting communicated that a three-year analysis from a Phase 1/2 study would support an accelerated approval of UniQure’s gene therapy for Huntington’s, a rare hereditary disease that gradually destroys nerve cells in the brain. As a result of the meeting, UniQure plans to submit its application to the FDA in the third quarter of this year.
Shares of UniQure soared 70% on Wednesday.
The new FDA guidance represents a stunning reversal from March, when the regulator told Uniqure that its clinical trial data wouldn’t support an application and publicly criticized the company. UniQure became a prime example in a series of reversals where companies said the FDA had changed its previous guidance, hitting rare disease drugmakers especially hard. Many of those decisions happened under former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who left the agency in May.
In a February interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, then-Commissioner Makary described UniQure’s treatment without naming it, saying the agency was pressured to approve it even though it showed “no benefit.” Then UniQure said the FDA couldn’t agree that data from a clinical trial comparing UniQure’s gene therapy to an external control are sufficient to support an application.
A senior FDA official at the time confirmed to reporters that the FDA wanted UniQure to run a placebo-controlled trial to prove its therapy “actually helps people.” The gene therapy is administered directly into the brain through an hours-long surgery, and UniQure has said it would be unethical to make people undergo a sham procedure.
Instead, the company compared the progression of people who received the treatment to the typical progression of Huntington’s disease using an outside database. Using that approach, UniQure’s gene therapy slowed disease progression by 75% in a Phase 1/2 trial.
Huntington’s disease, also known as Huntington’s chorea, is a neurodegenerative disease due to a mutation in the huntingtin gene, HTT.
With the FDA’s blessing, UniQure now plans to use the same data that came under scrutiny to support its application. An accelerated approval would allow UniQure’s treatment to come to market on the condition that the company prove the benefit in another study.
UniQure on Wednesday said the FDA wants to align on that study’s design, including comparing the treatment to the current standard of care rather than a sham procedure. UniQure said it’s committed to conducting that study and expects to finalize those plans before submitting its application.
UniQure isn’t the only company to see its fortunes reverse following the departure of Makary and other senior leaders, including former Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director Vinay Prasad and former Center for Drug Evaluation and Research director Tracy Beth Høeg. Replimune recently announced it would seek approval of its experimental melanoma drug for a third time.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Rex Heuermann, the Long Island serial killer who has admitted to the murders of eight women between 1993 and 2010, will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Judge Timothy Mazzei on Wednesday handed down three consecutive sentences of life with no parole followed by four consecutive sentences of 25 to life — the maximum possible under New York law.
Heuermann, 62, spoke in court before he was sentenced.
“I’m responsible,” he said. “The words I would say have no meaning.”
Rex Heuermann pleads guilty in court to the murders of eight women during a 17-year killing spree on Long Island.(James Carbone/Newsday)
One of the victims’ families told him to speak up. Mazzei stepped in and said: “I know that you’re sorry you got caught. I assume you’re sorry for what you did to your wife and children…Are you at least a little bit sorry for what you did to these eight women?”
Heuermann nodded yes and said he is.
“You’re a disgusting and despicable small man, if you’re a man at all,” Mazzei said. “And you’re a coward.”
After giving him the maximum possible sentence, Mazzei told bailiffs to “get him out of here.”
Heuermann pleaded guilty to seven of the murders on April 8 and confessed to an uncharged eighth.
The victims were found concealed across different parts of Long Island, from the Hamptons to Gilgo Beach. Some were dismembered. All had been strangled.
They have been identified as Sandra Costilla, 28, found in North Sea; Karen Vergata, 34, found on Fire Island and near Tobay Beach; Valerie Mack, 24, found in Manorville and along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach; Jessica Taylor, 20, found in Manorville and along Ocean Parkway — and the so-called Gilgo Four, who were all found just east of Gilgo Beach in the brush north of Ocean Parkway. They were Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27.
Concerns of a serial killer first emerged in late 2010 after the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old woman who placed panicked 911 calls from the Oak Beach community before vanishing into the surrounding marsh.
It would be more than a decade before police closed in on Heuermann as a suspect. They initially charged him with killing three of the Gilgo Four. By the time he pleaded guilty in April, he was accused of seven murders.
Rex Heuermann is led into Arthur M. Cromarty Criminal Complex in Riverhead, N.Y., on Friday, July 14, 2023.(Matt Agudo/Splash for Fox News Digital)
Authorities uncovered damning evidence along the way. Prosecutors have alleged that he transferred DNA from his ex-wife and daughter to some of the victims. Detectives recovered a computer file where Heuermann kept notes on how to get away with crimes, including supplies for his kill kits, the locations of traffic cameras and a reminder to use push-pins to hang a drop cloth, rather than tape.
His family has not been accused of assisting in any of the crimes – they were out of town during each murder, according to court documents.
Shannan Gilbert’s remains were found near Oak Beach, N.Y., on Dec. 13, 2011. She vanished in May 2010, kicking off a search that unearthed the Gilgo Beach murders.(Gilbert family)
Three other victims found in the area haven’t been linked to Heuermann.
Andrew Dykes, a 66-year-old from Florida, has been charged with the 1997 murders of Tanya Denise Jackson, 27, and their 2-year-old daughter, Tatiana Marie Dykes.
There is also an unidentified “Asian Doe” whose skeletal remains were discovered wearing women’s clothing near Gilgo Beach in 2011 during the search for Gilbert.
He is believed to be of southern Chinese ancestry and was between 17 and 23 at the time of his death, which investigators estimate came in April 2006 or earlier.
At World Cup matches, fans are increasingly seen not just with national flags and team jerseys, but also with gourd cups and metal straws, sharing sips of yerba mate as they passionately support their teams.
This caffeinated beverage, a cultural staple in several South American nations, has transcended its origins, spreading globally with soccer’s multicultural reach. Its popularity has surged even in the United States, becoming a preferred drink for star athletes both on and off the field.
Yerba mate has evolved into a globally savored beverage (AFP via Getty Images)
The cultural phenomenon was evident when Argentina, the reigning World Cup champions, arrived at their Kansas City, Missouri, hotel. Fans gathered outside, pouring and sharing yerba mate from traditional gourd cups, using metal bombillas – the distinctive straws that filter the steeped leaves. Further illustrating its growing appeal, Cafe Corazon, a major Midwest importer of yerba mate, saw a line of fans in sky blue-and-white striped jerseys stretching almost out the door on Monday, ahead of Argentina’s inaugural World Cup match.
Dulcinea Herrera, a co-owner of Cafe Corazon, noted the surge in demand: “Our mate has been flying off the shelves. So a lot of people have been coming in to try it. People who aren’t Argentinian want to just have that experience. And we have a lot of Argentinians coming in saying, ‘Oh, this reminds me of home.’”
The drink’s status is further elevated by its endorsement from many of the World Cup’s most celebrated figures, including Uruguay’s Luis Suarez and Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Messi famously solidified yerba mate’s place in sports lore by posting a photo of himself holding a mate cup in one hand and the World Cup trophy in the other after his team’s victory in 2022.
Mate, your way
From its ancient origins among Indigenous communities and South American gauchos, yerba mate has evolved into a globally savored beverage, with diverse cultures adding their unique interpretations, according to Christine Folch, a cultural anthropologist at Duke University and author of “The Book of Yerba Mate.”
Across regions like Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil, preferences for mate vessels and preparation methods serve as distinct cultural identifiers. Folch herself boasts an extensive collection of mate cups, ranging from those crafted from cow hooves and horns to intricately hand-stitched, leather-wrapped metal cups and traditional gourds.
The drink’s journey saw it gain significant popularity in Syria and Lebanon during the early 20th century, explaining why traditional dried mate leaves are often found in Middle Eastern grocery stores across the U.S. In the American market, mate is frequently sold in refrigerated cans, marketed as a natural energy drink and infused with fruit flavors. Some Cuban Americans enjoy a sweetened and carbonated version, while in Berlin, Club Mate is a popular carbonated mixer, often combined with alcohol.
Traditionally, the leaves are smoked during preparation, imparting a distinctive smoky overtone alongside its strong grassy, earthy flavor. Many drinkers report that mate provides an energizing boost without the jitters often associated with coffee.
For those looking to order with confidence, the correct pronunciation is MAH-teh, not to be confused with a sports teammate.
Sip and share
Yerba mate, a traditional South American beverage, is more than just a drink; it’s a powerful symbol of connection and community. Often enjoyed in social settings, its communal nature is central to its appeal. “When somebody offers you mate and you accept, what you have done is you have stepped into a relationship. So it’s a way of bonding with people,” explains Folch, highlighting the profound social contract inherent in sharing the brew.
Yerba mate, a traditional South American beverage, is more than just a drink; it’s a powerful symbol of connection and community (Getty Images)
This cultural ritual was evident in Kansas City, where Sebastian Cufre and his Argentinian-born father, Rene, joined fellow Argentina fans at Cafe Corazon, sharing a cup of mate among their tables. Sebastian described the practice as “something that you pass around during the games.” He is quick to distinguish this authentic experience from commercially canned versions. “Honestly, I don’t even consider that to be mate,” Cufre stated, adding, “That’s like a completely different class of beverage.”
Regardless of personal preference, enthusiasts hope North American audiences will embrace yerba mate’s social essence. Whether encountered in a cafe, restaurant, or at a watch party, fans encourage giving the shared cup a chance. Fernando Villagran, originally from Salta, Argentina, and traveling from California to support his team, encapsulates this sentiment: “It’s not only a drink, but a social thing. It is about friendship.”
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A 23-year-old man was taken into custody in Philadelphia Tuesday night in connection with the shooting at Wilmington Hospital in Delaware that left one person dead and another injured, police said.
The suspected shooter has been identified as John Wallace-Bey of New Castle, Delaware.
Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos said in a news conference Tuesday night officers responded to the shooting on the 500 block of West 14th Street at Wilmington Hospital around 3:30 p.m.
Wilmington, Delaware, Police Department
Police said they found two gunshot victims, and one of them died. The surviving victim is in “critical but stable” condition Wednesday, according to police. Both victims are 19 years old.
Campos declined to answer questions Tuesday about whether Wallace-Bey worked or used to work for the hospital.
Wallace-Bey is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and multiple gun charges. Police said the shooting was a targeted and isolated incident.
A suspect is on the run after shooting two people, including one fatally, at Wilmington Hospital in Delaware Tuesday, police said.
CBS News Philadelphia
Wilmington Hospital was on lockdown for several hours, but it has since been lifted. The campus has reopened.
ChristianaCare, which runs the hospital, said the emergency department diverted patients from the hospital when the shooting happened.
ChristianaCare said it’s working closely with law enforcement as the investigation into the shooting continues.
“Our hearts are with the victims, their families and loved ones, and everyone affected by today’s violence,” Jennifer Schwartz, Esq., the incoming president and CEO of ChristianaCare, said in a statement. “This is a tragic and deeply painful moment for our community.”
Employee at Wilmington Hospital says shooting sounded like firecrackers
Brian Pfeffer, a patient guide at Wilmington Hospital, was in the emergency room when the shooting happened. He said he heard two shots that sounded like firecrackers and then ran out of the hospital.
“Overwhelming emotion, just like, honestly, get out,” he said. “I know that sounds horrible, but that’s what they train us to do — get out. Schools, hospitals, there are a lot of people who came in here to be safe, and now you have this stuff happening. It’s scary, very scary.”
Pfeffer said he heard the shots come from the ground floor of the hospital and called the shooting “scary” for everyone involved.
“I don’t have the answers, I’m not a politician, but someone needs to figure something out,” he said. “This a problem in America. You don’t hear about this anywhere else. There’s gotta be something done. I’m looking at the camera. You guys got to do something. This is unacceptable.”
Lydia Jones’ daughter works at Wilmington Hospital and said she was going to switch cars with her daughter when the shooting happened.
Jones’ daughter was locked inside a room at the hospital as SWAT went room to room to search for the shooter. She was eventually reunited with her daughter.
“It’s very scary … it’s the world that we live in,” Jones said.
Officials react to Wilmington Hospital shooting
Wilmington Mayor John Carney called the shooting at the hospital “senseless.”
“I want to offer my thoughts and prayers for the employees at Wilmington Hospital who I know experienced a terrible day today,” Carney said. “It’s hard to know what they were thinking as they were barricaded in rooms across the hospital as our law enforcement teams went through and cleared each of the floors.”
Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer said at Tuesday’s news conference that the shooting hits him close to home because his wife works within the ChristianaCare health system.
“Today is a sobering reminder that nobody is immune from the devastation of gun violence,” Meyer said.
Rep. Sarah McBride said she was praying for everyone at Wilmington Hospital.
“I am aware of reports of a shooting at Wilmington Hospital,” McBride wrote. “As we await more information, I’m praying for the patients and providers who were on site.”
Sen. Chris Coons said Tuesday he was closely monitoring the shooting.
“I’m praying for everyone’s safety, including patients, health care workers, first responders, and law enforcement officers,” Coons wrote. “Please continue to follow updates from local officials.”
Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester said she was briefed on the shooting at Wilmington Hospital.
“As we wait for further information, I’m praying for our community and grateful for the swift and ongoing law enforcement response,” Blunt Rochester wrote.
In ancient Siberian graves, scientists have discovered the oldest traces of one of humanity’s greatest enemies. Examining skeletons of hunter-gatherers who lived 5,500 years ago, the researchers have isolated DNA from the bacteria that cause the plague.
The findings suggest that the plague, which would later devastate Europe in the “Black Death,” was already a lethal threat early in human history. That would be a big change from the earlier view of scientists: that these bacteria were originally relatively mild, and only later produced deadly outbreaks.
“It doesn’t fit the model,” said Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen and an author of the study published on Wednesday. “But we have to accept the data.”
The bacteria that cause the plague, called Yersinia pestis, mostly live today in rodents. Fleas take up the bacteria in their bites and pass them along to other animals. If those fleas happen to bite people, the victims develop swellings in their lymph nodes, called buboes, and risk about a 50 percent chance of death in a matter of days.
Across the world today, a few hundred people contract the plague each year. But historians have chronicled enormous epidemics from the Roman Empire onward. The disease seemed to be intimately tied to the rise of farming and cities.
Rats were drawn to stores of grain and other foods, bringing them into close contact with people. Fleas jumping from the rats could pass the bacteria to people. And then fleas on people could spread the disease further, starting an epidemic.
About 30 years ago, geneticists began adding fresh evidence to this history. As it turned out, when people die of plague, their bodies may contain so much bacteria that some travel into teeth and bone.
There, the DNA can survive for thousands of years. In 2015, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues set a new record for ancient Yersinia DNA, finding it in 5,000-year-old teeth. It was a surprising discovery in many ways.
For starters, the people who had this early form of the plague were not city dwellers or even farmers. They were nomadic pastoralists who herded cattle and sheep on horseback across the steppes in what is now Russia and Ukraine.
Moreover, these early Yersinia lacked crucial genetic adaptations found in more recent strains, mutations that account for the bacteria’s deadliness today. Stranger yet, they did not carry a gene that today’s Yersinia need to survive in fleas.
Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues came up with new hypotheses to explain what they had found: Maybe plague first spilled over to humans not on farms or in cities, but in the grasslands of Central Asia, as herders and livestock came into contact with wild infected rodents.
But if that were true, humans at the time could not have been infected by fleas. And it appeared that this early form of Yersinia was mild. The evidence suggested that over 1,000 years passed before the bacteria evolved into an epidemic-causing, flea-driven threat.
More recently, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues examined the bones of hunter-gatherers interred in cemeteries near Lake Baikal. The researchers obtained DNA from the teeth of 46 skeletons at three sites, discovering Yersinia DNA in 18 individuals. The oldest dated back 5,500 years, a new record.
But the great age of these bacteria was just one remarkable finding. The victims here were not herders or farmers, but nomads who moved in small groups across the Siberian landscape, catching fish, hunting game and collecting plants for food.
The deadliness of the bacteria was unexpected. The researchers found plague DNA in 39 percent of the hunter-gatherers they studied, which is about the same detection rate in studies of the remains of people who died in the Black Death.
The results hint at a devastating die-off among ancient Siberians.
“To the best of my knowledge, it’s the first evidence that these early strains of plague were in fact deadly,” Dr. Willerslev said. “This actually was a dangerous thing.”
He and his colleague also found some telling clues about the plague’s victims. A striking number were children. Many of the dead belonged to the same families or were close relatives.
Comparing the ages of the cemeteries, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues concluded that plague hit the region, disappeared and returned in another outbreak a few centuries later.
But that’s not to say the plague was limited to that region. The DNA of the Lake Baikal Yersinia is most similar to that in a sample isolated in 2021 about 3,000 miles to the west, from the teeth of a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer in what’s now Latvia.
“Higher population density and animal domestication were not an essential condition for severe outbreaks,” said Alexander Herbig, a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Willerslev said that he and his colleagues did not have any obvious explanations for how a lethal plague could have struck hunter-gatherers who were spread over thousands of miles for centuries — without the help of fleas.
They suggested that rodents across Asia and Europe had harbored the bacteria, which somehow jumped directly to people.
Other experts disagreed. “That’s a big leap with no evidence,” said David Wagner, a microbial geneticist at Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the study.
Not only does Yersinia today need fleas to cross from rodents to people, he observed, but the pathogen also depends on them to jump from one rodent to another.
Dr. Wagner favors another possibility: The plague originally spread directly between people. It’s a form of transmission that happens today from time to time, known as pneumonic plague.
People dying of the plague build up so much bacteria that it gets into their lungs, and they cough the germs into the air. Bystanders may inhale the Yersinia-laced respiratory droplets and become infected.
“If you don’t get treated, it’s a death sentence,” Dr. Wagner said.
