CBS News
New murder charge for North Dakota man who ran over teen
A North Dakota man accused in the fatal hit-and-run of a teenager after a small-town street dance is now charged with murder, after prosecutors say he intentionally ran over the 18-year-old, according to upgraded charges made public Friday.
Shannon Brandt, 41, was initially charged with criminal vehicular homicide in the Sept. 18 killing of Cayler Ellingson, but that charge has been dropped. The new charge — murder with a dangerous weapon — is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison upon conviction. Brandt is also charged with leaving the scene of a crash that resulted in death.
According to a probable cause affidavit released Friday, Brandt told a 911 dispatcher that if it was a total accident he wouldn’t be so scared, “but I know it was more than that.”
Brandt initially told authorities that there had been a political argument and that Ellingson was part of a “Republican extremist group.” Many conservatives took to social media to decry the alleged motive in Ellingson’s death. But investigators have said the case was not political in nature and that there is no evidence to support Brandt’s claim that Ellingson was a Republican extremist.
Brandt’s attorney, Mark Friese, said Friday that he would not comment yet because the Ellingson family is grieving, the community is in mourning, and he hasn’t received all of the case background.
The hit-and-run occurred early Sunday, after a Saturday night street dance in McHenry, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Bismarck. According to an initial probable cause affidavit, Brandt told investigators that he struck Ellingson “because he had a political argument with the pedestrian and believed the pedestrian was calling people to come get him.”
But a new probable cause affidavit released Friday says Brandt called 911 and told a dispatcher that he hit a man with his SUV, and he asked for an ambulance. While Brandt was on the phone, he “made comments regarding the incident being intentional and not an accident,” the affidavit said.
He allegedly asked the dispatcher if he was going to go to prison. He told the dispatcher that Ellingson wasn’t going to let him go and “I hit him and I didn’t mean to and he’s subdued I was scared to death but he’s subdued, he can’t do anything to me now.”
Brandt later said: “I almost oh god, I almost just runaway but I thought jeez obviously if it was a total accident I wouldn’t be scared but I know it was more than that,” according to the affidavit.
Brandt told the dispatcher that Ellingson had called others and Brandt was worried they were on their way. Brandt said Ellingson also wouldn’t let him leave and called someone to come “handle him,” the affidavit said. The investigation showed that the only calls Ellingson placed before the accident were to his mom and dad.
The affidavit says that in one of the phone calls, Ellingson asked his mother if she knew who Brandt was. In another, Ellingson told his mother that maybe he should call his cousins or “posse.” His mother told him that he didn’t need to do that and she was on her way to pick him up. She told investigators that at that point, she didn’t know if her son felt threatened.
Ellingson’s mother received another call at 2:42 a.m. in which Ellingson said someone was after him.
“Sheri Ellingson said the phone call dropped and that was last time she spoke with C.E.,” the affidavit says.
Before investigators arrived, Brandt left the scene and went to his home in Glenfield. Authorities arrived to find him visibly intoxicated, the affidavit said. Officials have said that a breath test showed Brandt’s blood alcohol level was above the legal limit to drive.
The highway patrol’s investigation shows no acceleration marks or skid marks in the gravel alley where Ellingson was hit. Investigators also found little to no damage on the front of Brandt’s SUV, according to the affidavit.
An autopsy showed Ellingson was on the ground when he received his fatal injuries, which indicates “the injuries weren’t caused from being struck by Shannon Brandt’s vehicle and were caused by being run over,” the affidavit says.
CBS News
D.C. police release bodycam footage showing fatal shooting of man, prompting calls for justice from community
Bodycam footage of D.C. police fatally shooting a 26-year-old man from Southeast D.C. was released Monday, prompting calls for justice from the community.
Justin Robinson was killed by two police officers on Sunday, Sept. 1 at approximately 5:30 a.m. in Southeast D.C. after authorities responded to a report of a crash, according to police reports.
Two bodycam videos and a “community briefing” explaining the shooting were published Monday evening by the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police. The first two videos – approximately 20 minutes each – show the incident from two different police body cameras.
Footage shows armed police surrounding Robinson’s car, which appears to have crashed into a McDonald’s. Robinson was unresponsive when officers arrived, the police report says, and officers said they saw a firearm inside of his car.
“We got movement” one of the officers can be heard saying in the video, followed by “sir, keep your hand off the gun.”
Officers approach the vehicle with their guns drawn, footage shows, one starts yelling repeatedly at Robinson to put his hands up. The officer then thrusts his gun into the window of the driver’s seat threatening to shoot Robinson in the face. Robinson then appears to reach up towards the gun and the officer opens fire, shooting several rounds at Robinson.
Police said in a statement officers approached Robinson with their service weapons drawn and he grabbed one of the officer’s guns.
Brandon Burrell, the family’s attorney, confirmed to CBS News that Robinson “naturally attempted” to move the gun away and said in response police fired 10 bullets. He said police continued to fire even after they moved out of reach, “this was police brutality.”
Robinson was a violence interrupter for Cure the Streets, a program run by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General “aimed at reducing gun violence,” Burrell said. CBS News reached out to Cure the Streets but has not heard back.
“His family is devastated and grieving,” Burrell said. “The community wants justice for Justin and that’s what Justin deserves.”
The release of the footage Monday night sparked outcry on social media and on the ground in the nation’s Capital where people gathered to protest on Tuesday as documented by CBS affiliate WUSA9 and The Washington Post. Users shared the hashtag #Justiceforjustin on X to call attention to the shooting.
A statement from the Metropolitan Police Department posted on their website says seven people were arrested in the department’s seventh district in southeast D.C. as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. Police said they continue to maintain a presence in the area “out of an abundance of caution.” An MPD spokesperson did not clarify the status of the protests, how big the protests were, or if they are still ongoing when asked by CBS News.
Robinson’s family reviewed the bodycam after he was killed and originally said they did not want the footage to be released, according to Chief Pamela Smith, who spoke Monday night at a press conference. Robinson’s sister Tralicia told local CBS affiliate WUSA9 that they were reluctant because they found out the footage would be redacted.
Burrell reached out Saturday to inform police they would like the videos to be released, according to Smith. Police said that the shooting remains under investigation and the two officers involved have been placed on administrative leave.
Smith said Monday that MPD’s internal affairs division will also conduct an administrative review of the incident to see if there were any violations of policy.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX crew trainer Sarah Gillis plan to open the forward hatch of their Polaris Dawn spacecraft early Thursday to take turns floating outside in the first non-government spacewalk in the history of space exploration.
With crewmates Anna Menon and Scott Poteet monitoring safety tethers and umbilicals inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Isaacman and Gillis plan to float out into open space after depressurizing the spacecraft around 2:23 a.m. EDT, using a scaffold-like “Skywalker” assembly extending from the hatch for stability.
While their feet will be just outside the hatch, they will not “free float” away from the Crew Dragon. Their SpaceX-designed pressure suits are not equipped with their own oxygen supply or other life support equipment and rely on the 12-foot-long umbilicals to deliver air, power and communications.
SpaceX
As Isaacman and then Gillis float just outside the hatch, they will test the comfort and mobility of their pressurized extra-vehicular activity, or EVA, suits, moving their arms, hands and legs through a series of positions to find out how much effort is required to carry out basic tasks.
“We’re going to make use of various mobility aids the SpaceX team has engineered, and it’ll look like we’re doing a little bit of a dance,” Isaacman said before launch. “The idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about this suit and get it back to the engineers to inform future suit design evolutions.”
Cameras mounted inside and outside the Crew Dragon, along with others attached to the spacewalkers’ suits, are expected to provide spectacular views of space and the Earth below as the ship sails through an elliptical orbit with a low point of 121 miles and a high point of 458 miles — 200 miles higher than the International Space Station.
The goal of the exercise is to eventually perfect low-cost, easy-to-manufacture spacesuits for use by future commercial astronauts flying to the moon or Mars aboard SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship rockets.
“I think that this journey of creating affordable EVA suits that can be scaled up into mass production is a very worthwhile one,” said Isaacman, who chartered SpaceX’s first fully commercial flight to orbit in 2021. “There’s going to be an armada of Starships arriving on Mars at some point in the future, and those people are going to have to be able to get out of it and walk around and and do important things.”
Isaacman, Poteet, Menon and Gillis blasted off Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The crew accomplished the first major goal of the flight right off the bat, climbing to an altitude of 870 miles — higher than any piloted spacecraft since the Apollo moon program 60 years ago.
The high point, or apogee, of the orbit then was lowered to 458 miles for the spacewalk and the remainder of the five-day mission.
To prevent decompression sickness, also known as the bends, during the crew’s transition from sea-level pressure to the reduced 5 psi pressure in their spacesuits and back, flight controllers began a 45-hour process shortly after launch to boost oxygen levels in the cabin while slowly decreasing air pressure to help remove nitrogen from the crew’s bloodstreams.
“We don’t anticipate experiencing (the bends), because a ton of robust preparation has gone into developing this pre-breathe protocol, significantly reducing that risk,” said Menon, a former biomedical flight controller for NASA. “But we’re prepared if we need it.”
SpaceX
The Crew Dragon does not have an airlock and its life support system was not designed to support spacewalks. Required modifications included “adding a lot more oxygen to the spacecraft so that we can feed oxygen to four suits through umbilicals for the full duration of the spacewalk,” Gillis said.
“There have been upgrades and additions to the environmental sensing suite in the spacecraft to make sure we have really good insight, both before, during and after exposure to vacuum. And … an entirely new system, a nitrogen repress system” to boost the cabin back up to normal pressure after the spacewalk.
Along with the Skywalker scaffold, which extends just beyond the forward hatch, a motor drive system was added to assist with hatch opening and closing and upgraded seals were put in place to ensure an airtight fit.
NASA astronaut Ed White carried out the first U.S. spacewalk on June 3, 1965, floating free of his Gemini 4 capsule at the end of a long tether. Since then, NASA astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, Chinese taikonauts and astronauts from space station partner nations have carried out more than 470 government-sponsored spacewalks.
Isaacman said iconic photos of White floating outside his Gemini capsule against the backdrop of Earth and space were inspirational, but he and Gillis ruled out floating free of the Crew Dragon. And that’s by design.
“We’re not going to be doing the Ed White float,” Isaacman told CBS News before launch. “That might look cool, but it doesn’t really help SpaceX learn a lot about the performance (of the spacesuit). It’s not very useful or helpful for figuring out how to be able to to work in a suit.”
To that end, he and Gillis will work through a “matrix” of planned motions to get a feel for how the suit’s multiple joints move while pressurized, to test the performance of an innovative heads-up display in the helmet, better understand how the air-cooled suits deal with the extreme temperatures of space and a variety of other factors.
SpaceX
The suit “includes all sorts of technology, including a heads-up display, a helmet camera, an entirely new architecture for joint mobility,” Gillis said. “There’s thermal insulation throughout the suit, including a copper and indium tin oxide visor that both provides thermal protection and solar protection.”
In addition, she said, “there’s all sorts of redundancy, both in the oxygen supply feed to the suit, as well as all of the valves, all of the seals across the suit. It’s an incredible suit.”
The heads-up display, which will project critical data on the lower left side of the helmet visor, is a feature NASA’s decades old space station suits do not have.
“During the EVA, we’ll have insight into our suit, pressure, temperature, relative humidity and then also an understanding of how much oxygen we’ve used throughout the EVA. So some key pieces of telemetry right there. And it’s it’s really cool (that) with any lighting you can still see it.”
The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three planned by Isaacman in cooperation with Musk. The second flight will be another Crew Dragon mission while the third will be the first piloted flight of SpaceX’s huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket, now under development in Texas.
It’s not known how much Isaacman is paying for the flights or how much SpaceX funded on its own. Asked if he could share any details, the entrepreneur, jet pilot and adventurer said “not a chance.”
The mission, SpaceX’s fifth commercial Crew Dragon flight to orbit and its 14th including NASA flights, is expected to last five days, ending with splashdown off the coast of Florida.
Samsung
The Discover Samsung fall sale is in full swing, offering major discounts on must-have home appliances, including top-rated refrigerators. You can save up to $1,400 on select models and earn $100 in Samsung Credit for future purchases, plus get two years of Samsung Care+ for just $1.
Shoppers can also unlock additional savings with bundle deals: get $100 off two, $250 off three or $500 off four eligible appliances. Plus, save an extra $100 when you include a Bespoke refrigerator in your qualifying package.
These on-sale fridges feature the latest amenities including smart touch screens, adjustable shelves, flex drawers that can cool and freeze, water and ice dispensers and so much more.
Keep reading to discover the best refrigerator deals at the Discover Samsung fall sale.
Samsung Bespoke Flex 4-door refrigerator: Save $1,615
Samsung
Here’s a cutting-edge, four-door refrigerator with a 29-cubic-foot capacity. There’s even a beverage zone. A full-depth or counter-depth version of the fridge is available.
Enjoy a whopping $1,615 off this normally $4,114 appliance, so you will pay just $2,499. For just $1 more, you get two years of Samsung Care+. Installation of the fridge is being offered for free, as is the haul away of your old appliance. As a bonus, you get a $100 Samsung credit good toward the future purchase of an appliance.
One great feature: Interchangeable outer panels that allow you to pick its color and design.
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
The Samsung refrigerator features a customizable design with interchangeable outer panels, allowing you to choose the perfect color and style. Plus, with its spacious 29-cubic-foot capacity and convenient beverage zone.
Samsung Bespoke side-by-side 28 cubic feet refrigerator: $1,499 (save $800)
Samsung
Right now, you can save a quick $800 on this already-affordable refrigerator from Samsung. This model offers side-by-side doors and a 28-cubic-foot capacity. Key features include a beverage center, dual action ice maker, auto open door and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Choose between white glass or stainless steel. You can purchase this fridge today for $1,499. Installation of the fridge is being offered for free. Plus, you get a $100 Samsung credit good toward the future purchase of an appliance as a bonus.
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
This option offers a spacious 28-cubic-foot capacity and side-by-side doors, making it perfect for families. The built-in beverage center, dual ice maker and Wi-Fi connectivity offer added convenience.
Smart 4-door Flex refrigerator with beverage center and dual ice maker: Save $380
Samsung
This Bespoke four-door flex refrigerator is one of CBS Essentials’s bestselling fridges ever. The 4.5-star-rated fridge features recessed handles for a sleek design. The top-rated kitchen appliance features a concealed beverage center with a water dispenser, an autofill water pitcher and an ice maker. It’s on sale now for $3,419 (regularly $3,799).
“This is the sleekest and most efficient fridge yet,” a Samsung reviewer says. “I was hesitant to give up my crushed ice, but the ice bits (smaller cubes) are perfect for iced coffee. Ice trays are easily accessible too.”
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
It boasts a sleek flat panel door design with recessed handles that seamlessly blend into your kitchen. Customize your refrigerator with interchangeable door panels, available in various colors and two finishes. The lower-right storage space can be adjusted as a refrigerator or freezer, with five settings included.
Bespoke 4-door French door refrigerator with Family Hub: Save $1,215
Samsung
You can save $1,215 on the Samsung Bespoke 4-door French door refrigerator with Family Hub during Samsung’s Discover Samsung fall sale. The 23-cubic-foot fridge features a touch screen technology called Family Hub that can control your phone, computer, TV, smart doorbell, Nest thermostat and Samsung home appliances. It can share photos, stream music and more.
The Family Hub feature lets you see inside your fridge from anywhere (via your connected device), search recipes based on what you have on hand, plan weekly meals and even send cooking instructions to your Samsung smart oven.
It also features filtered water in two ways. Choose from an internal dispenser or a built-in pitcher that automatically refills, with the option to infuse with a flavor. Its FlexZone drawer is customizable with five different temperature settings.
Bespoke Samsung refrigerators feature a customizable exterior.
Get this fridge for just $3,099, reduced from $4,314.
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
It offers a touchscreen with serious smarts. The FlexZone drawer can refrigerate or soft freeze your food and snacks. Plus, enjoy two years of refrigerator warranty coverage for parts and labor on Bespoke refrigerator models.
Samsung side-by-side refrigerator with touch screen Family Hub: $658 off
Samsung
This 26.7-cubic-foot fridge includes Samsung’s Family Hub touchscreen. You can use it to control your phone, computer, TV, smart doorbell, Nest thermostat and Samsung home appliances. It can share photos, stream music and more. When it comes to having a lot of food options, refrigerator storage space is essential. This side-by-side model features an in-door ice maker and adjustable shelves, so you’ll have tons of room inside the appliance. Multi-vent technology keeps a consistent temperature on every shelf and items evenly cooled.
“We really like this fridge, starting from outside it looks modern and cool. inside it is also roomy and offers plenty of space,” a Samsung customer says. “The fridge is quiet while it works. The filter is easy to change and the fridge lets you know when it needs to be changed. We really like having a smart fridge, can play music or videos, read recipes or articles while in the kitchen. The app is also useful to communicate with the fridge and see inside from afar.”
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
It offers a ton of space inside, plus it has adjustable shelves. The exterior features Samsung’s must-have touchscreen technology. It includes a year of refrigerator warranty coverage for parts and labor.
Samsung Bespoke French door refrigerator: Save $1,215
Samsung
The Samsung Bespoke French door refrigerator comes with a built-in interior Beverage Center that features a water dispenser and an AutoFill water pitcher. It includes a dual ice maker with cubed ice and ice bites. You can customize the color of the four panels to fit your kitchen. Choose from classic black and stainless steel or add a pop of color to your kitchen with light blue, orange, blush pink, yellow and more color options.
The refrigerator typically retails for $3,514, but today you can score it for $2,299. Plus, you can also score some additional savings when you bundle two or more appliances at Samsung during the sales event: Save an extra $100 off two, $250 off three or $500 off four eligible appliances.
Why we like this Samsung refrigerator:
You can choose from one of Samsung’s sixteen design options or customize the color and design yourself for a truly unique look. It comes with a two-year Bespoke warranty, a five-year sealed system warranty and a ten-year compressor warranty. You can customize the temperature of the middle drawers.
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