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Police seek suspect, offer reward after series of shootings across Charlotte, North Carolina
North Carolina police are searching for a suspect in a series of five shootings in the Charlotte area that officials believe are connected.
Police responded to the first reported shooting at around 1:05 a.m. on Tuesday, July 9. A man inside his vehicle had a gunshot wound and was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim, identified by CBS News affiliate WBTV as Mustaffa Muhammad, 58, is believed to have been shot by someone driving by, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said.
Several more shooting incidents were reported in the next half hour. A bicyclist called police to say that he had been shot at around 1:09 a.m., and another victim’s car was struck by gunfire “a short time later.” Neither person was injured.
Officers also responded to a party where a group of individuals said a person in a vehicle had fired multiple rounds in their direction at around 1:11 a.m. No one at the party was shot, but a nearby home was struck and a woman inside sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
At 1:25 a.m., police responded to a another report from a cyclist who was shot and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Nearby, another home had been struck by gunfire, with no injuries reported.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
The injured woman and cyclist were both transferred to Charlotte’s Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center, police said.
Police said that because of the time and locations of the reported shootings, they believe the incidents are “could be connected.” Police have not publicly identified a possible suspect, and no arrests have been made. No information about the weapons used is available.
“It’s nerve-racking. You know, thinking that someone can just drive past or, you know, if we’re driving somewhere, someone can do something like that to us or our kids,” an anonymous parent told WBTV.
The department told WBTV that it is investigating tips that came in on Wednesday afternoon. A $10,000 reward is being offered for any information that leads to an arrest.
A press conference is expected to be held on Thursday afternoon.
The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a journalism trade publication reported Wednesday.
Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview that she resigned because the Times was remaining silent on the contest in “dangerous times.”
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
In a post on the social media platform X that did not directly mention the resignation, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong said the board was asked to do a factual analysis of the policies of Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump during their time at the White House.
Additionally, “The board was asked to provide (its) understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years,” he wrote. “In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.”
Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018, said the board “chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that the board had intended to endorse Harris and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial.
A LA Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
The LA Times Guild Unit Council & Bargaining Committee said it was “deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race.”
“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the guild said in a statement. “We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our members.”
Trump’s campaign jumped on Garza’s departure, saying the state’s largest newspaper had declined to endorse the Democratic ticket after backing Harris in her previous races for U.S. Senate and state attorney general.
Her exit comes about 10 months after then-Executive Editor Kevin Merida left the paper in what was called a “mutually agreed” upon departure. At the time, the news organization said it had fallen well short of its digital subscriber goals and needed a revenue boost to sustain the newsroom and its digital operations.
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The secretary of state’s office was the target of an unsuccessful cyberattack earlier this month, the agency confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday.
An official with the secretary of state’s office said the attack was an attempt to crash the absentee voting website, and it was discovered when the agency noticed a spike in attempts to access the site nine days ago, on Oct. 14. There were over 420,000 attempts made from around the world, which the official said was a coordinated attempt to make the website crash.
Security experts were ultimately able to thwart the attack. The secretary of state’s office said it still does not know who was behind the attack but suggested it may have been a foreign country.
Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the office, wrote Thursday evening in a social media post that “this was a big win for our cyber security team and our partners. We work everyday to protect Georgia voters and our systems.” In a separate post, he said, “The attack was detected and mitigated quickly.” CNN first reported the cyberattack attempt.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is aware of the cyberattack and worked with the Georgia secretary of state’s office in the aftermath of the incident, sources confirmed to CBS News. The FBI has not responded to a request for comment.
Georgia voters have also been showing up for early voting, which began on Oct. 15. Early voters shattered records this year for the presidential election, the secretary of state’s office said, more than doubling early voting figures from 2020 on the first day, with 310,000 ballots cast, compared with 136,739 on the first day of early voting in 2020.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger predicted there would be record turnout in Georgia this year, telling CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday, “You look at the turnout — we’re almost pushing 1.4 million who’ve already voted early or who we’ve accepted their absentee ballots.”
Nicole Sganga and
contributed to this report.
