By RUSS BYNUM

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A Guatemalan driver fleeing a Georgia traffic stop by federal immigration officers crashed into another vehicle, killing a teacher who was headed to work, authorities and school officials said.

Related Articles

New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras, the indulgent conclusion of Carnival season

There was ‘a bridge called Jesse Jackson’ across decades of civil rights advocacy

Stephen Colbert says network lawyers pulled James Talarico interview over FCC equal time fears

Police credit a good Samaritan for ending a deadly shooting at a Rhode Island ice rink

Elevate Prize winners gain more than $300K in funding. They learn to better tell their own stories

Oscar Vasquez Lopez, the driver accused of causing the Monday crash just outside of Savannah, remained jailed Tuesday on charges including vehicular homicide, reckless driving and driving without a valid license. Lopez, 38, is in the U.S. illegally, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration officers were looking for Lopez to enforce an immigration judge’s 2024 deportation order, ICE spokesperson Lindsay Williams said Tuesday, noting that Lopez has no other criminal history.

Lopez pulled over when ICE officers used sirens and blue lights to initiate a traffic stop, but then drove away when they approached his vehicle, Williams said. Lopez made a U-turn and ran a stop light before he crashed, ICE said in a news release.

Asked if the ICE officers chased Lopez, Williams said: “Chased? I wouldn’t say that. They followed him until he crashed.”

Williams said he didn’t know how far Lopez fled before he crashed.

Savannah-Chatham County school officials identified the woman killed as Linda Davis, a special education teacher at Herman W. Hesse K-8 School.

Davis was beloved by the school community, Principal Alonna McMullen said.

“She dedicated her career to ensuring that every child felt supported, valued, and capable of success,” McMullen said in a news release. “Her kindness, patience, and enthusiasm created a nurturing environment for her students and inspired those around her.”

The crash happened less than a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) from the school. Though students were off Monday for Presidents Day, teachers reported to work. Davis was driving to school when she was killed, school system spokesperson Sheila Blanco said.

Chatham County jail records didn’t list an attorney for Lopez as of Tuesday or show whether he had been granted bond. His case also didn’t appear yet in online court records.

Federal immigration officers have faced increased scrutiny for their aggressive tactics during the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration, especially since they shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, blamed “politicians and the media constantly demonizing ICE officers and encouraging those here illegally to resist arrest.”

Chatham County police said in a statement that they were unaware of the ICE operation and traffic stop before the deadly crash.

Local officials questioned whether Davis’ death might have been prevented.

“I’ve always been and remain very concerned about the activities of ICE in cities, particularly where they’re not coordinating or communicating,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, a former police officer, told reporters Tuesday.

“What this individual was wanted for, did it necessitate the end result?” Johnson said.

Chester Ellis, chairman of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners, noted that county police are constrained by a policy that allows vehicle pursuits only when officers believe a suspect has committed or is attempting to commit a violent felony.

“The no-chase policy is to help protect our citizens more than it is anything else,” Ellis told WTOC-TV. “So there may have been a different way to corner the individual so that he could not run, or that he could not cause the accident that took the life of Dr. Davis.”

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has issued new subpoenas in a Florida-based investigation into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump and the U.S. government response to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Related Articles

Strikes on 3 more alleged drug boats kill 11 people, US military says

Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues

Stephen Colbert says network lawyers pulled James Talarico interview over FCC equal time fears

Trump administration ordered to restore George Washington slavery exhibit it removed in Philadelphia

Feds formally exclude MN officials from Alex Pretti shooting investigation

An initial wave of subpoenas in November asked recipients for documents related to the preparation of a U.S. intelligence community assessment that detailed a sweeping, multi-prong effort by Moscow to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Though the first subpoenas requested documents from the months surrounding the January 2017 publication of the Obama administration intelligence assessment, the latest subpoenas seek any records from the years since then, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to discuss a non-public demand from investigators.

The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday.

The subpoenas reflect continued investigative activity in one of several criminal inquiries the Justice Department has undertaken into Trump’s political opponents. An array of former intelligence and law enforcement officials have received subpoenas in the investigation. Lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan, who helped oversee the drafting of the assessment and who has been called “crooked as hell” by Trump, have said they have been informed he is a target but have not been told of any “legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation.”

The intelligence community assessment, published in the final days of the Obama administration, found that Russia had developed a “clear preference” for Trump in the 2016 election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign with goals of undermining confidence in American democracy and harming Clinton’s chance for victory.

That conclusion, and a related investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia to sway the outcome of the election, have long been among the Republican president’s chief grievances and he has vowed retribution against the government officials involved in the inquiries. Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by the Trump administration Justice Department last year on false statement and obstruction charges, but the case was later dismissed.

Multiple government reports, including bipartisan congressional reviews and a criminal investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller, have found that Russia interfered in Trump’s favor through a hack-and-leak operation of Democratic emails as well as a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord and swaying American public opinion. Mueller’s report found that the Trump campaign actively welcomed the Russian help, but it did not establish that Russian operatives and Trump or his associates conspired to tip the election in his favor.

The Trump administration has freshly scrutinized the intelligence community assessment in part because a classified version of it incorporated in its annex a summary of the “Steele dossier,” a compilation of Democratic-funded opposition research that was assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele and was later turned over to the FBI. That research into Trump’s potential links to Russia included uncorroborated rumors and salacious gossip, and Trump has long held up its weaknesses in an effort to discredit the entire Russia investigation.

A declassified CIA tradecraft review ordered by current Director John Ratcliffe and released last July faults Brennan’s oversight of the assessment.

The review does not challenge the conclusion of Russian election interference but chides Brennan for the fact that the classified version referenced the Steele dossier.

Brennan testified to Congress, and also wrote in his memoir, that he was opposed to citing the dossier in the intelligence assessment since neither its substance nor sources had been validated, and he has said the dossier did not inform the judgments of the assessment. He maintains the FBI pushed for its inclusion.

The new CIA review seeks to cast Brennan’s views in a different light, asserting that he “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” and brushed aside concerns over the dossier because he believed it conformed “with existing theories.” It quotes him, without context, as having stated in writing that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

In a letter last December addressed to the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida, where the investigation is based, Brennan’s lawyers challenged the underpinnings of the investigation, questioning what basis prosecutors had for opening the inquiry in Florida and saying they had received no clarity from prosecutors about what potential crimes were even being investigated.

“While it is mystifying how the prosecutors could possibly believe there is any legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation, they have done nothing to explain that mystery,” the lawyers said.

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

Lindsey Vonn is home — or at least on home soil.

After a week in an Italian hospital and four surgeries on her fractured left leg, the American Alpine skiing star and St. Paul native posted on social media Monday night that she has made it back across the Atlantic.

“Haven’t stood on my feet in over a week…been immobile in a hospital bed since my race,” she wrote in a post on X. “And although I’m not yet able to stand, being back on home soil feels amazing. Huge thank you to everyone in Italy for taking care of me.”

The post came a little more than a day after Vonn posted a reel of her friends and family getting her cleaned up for her re-entry into civilization. They washed her hair and massaged her cheeks and her good right leg and essentially made her look like Lindsey Vonn again, or something like that.

And that came a little more than 24 hours after Vonn reported that her fourth surgery of the week went well enough to get her approved to head back home. She has said her road to recovery is long — and one she has travelled many times during her career.

Vonn, 41, fell 13 seconds into her downhill run on Feb. 8 at the Winter Olympics, a race she attempted despite rupturing her left anterior cruciate ligament nine days before. She cut a turn too tight, hooked a gate in midair, and never had a chance of landing safely after that. Vonn had come out of retirement in 2024 to attempt a comeback after having a successful partial right knee replacement surgery.

That comeback was a smashing success. Vonn once again became the world’s dominant downhill skier. But what always made Vonn great, that willingness to take risks and ski right on the edge of recklessness — and sometimes over it — also made her prone to crashing and serious injuries.

That’s what unfolded in the downhill race in what was supposed to be the culmination of her comeback.

In the week since the crash, Vonn has become a symbol of bravery and an inspiration — and also a lightning rod for criticism from people who think she behaved recklessly by trying to ski through a serious injury.

She has said she does not want anyone’s empathy or pity. That is not what her story is about, she insisted.

“I hope instead it gives you strength to keep fighting, because that is what I am doing and that is what I will continue to do. Always,” she wrote last week, claiming that she was healthier in the downhill starting hut than she had been at many other moments in her career.

Her words in her first post the day after the crash will likely live in a lot of fans’ memories for a long time.

“I dreamt. I tried. I jumped,” she wrote.

Related Articles

Vonn preparing to head home for more surgeries

Vonn says she has complex leg fracture, needs multiple surgeries

Should Lindsey Vonn have been allowed to race?

Vonn’s Olympic fall: Breaking it all down

Vonn’s legacy was built on pushing the limits

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said Tuesday that it carried out strikes on three boats accused of smuggling drugs in Latin American waters, killing 11 people in one of the deadliest days of the Trump administration’s monthslong campaign.

Related Articles

Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues

Stephen Colbert says network lawyers pulled James Talarico interview over FCC equal time fears

Trump administration ordered to restore George Washington slavery exhibit it removed in Philadelphia

Feds formally exclude MN officials from Alex Pretti shooting investigation

NAACP asks judge to protect against ‘misuse’ of voter data seized by FBI in Georgia’s Fulton County

The series of strikes conducted Monday brought the death toll to at least 145 people since the administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels since early September.

Like most of the military’s statements on the 42 known strikes, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. It said two vessels carrying four people each were struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean, while a third boat with three people was hit in the Caribbean Sea. The military did not provide evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs but posted videos that showed boats being destroyed.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”