CBS News
Suspect dead after shooting at Northern California school; 2 students hurt, sheriff’s office says
PALERMO – Authorities say a suspect is dead and two students are hurt after a shooting at a school in the Northern California community of Palermo on Wednesday.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office says the incident happened around 1 p.m. at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists.
One person was found by deputies with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with the sheriff’s office confirming that the suspected shooter had died. Two students were also found shot; their conditions were not known at this time, the sheriff’s office says, but both have been taken to local hospitals.
The suspect has not been identified at this time. It’s also unclear if the shooting was random, the sheriff’s office says, but it doesn’t appear that the suspect had a connection to the campus.
Parents are being told to meet their children at the Oroville Church of the Nazarene at 2238 Monte Vista Avenue.
Due to the investigation, California Highway Patrol is diverting northbound traffic on Highway 70 at E. Gridley Road west to Highway 99. Southbound Highway 70 is also closed at Power House Hill Road, with traffic being diverted to Lone Tree Road.
The school serves about 35 students from kindergarten to eighth grade.
Palermo is a town about 25 miles north of Marysville and 65 miles north of Sacramento.
CBS News
Who is Daniel Penny? What we know about the man charged in Jordan Neely’s death
NEW YORK — Daniel Penny is standing trial in New York City in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on the subway last spring.
Jury deliberations are underway, as five men and seven women weigh whether Penny is guilty of second-degree manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death.
If convicted on the manslaughter charge, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Here’s everything we’ve learned about Penny over the course of the case.
Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran
Penny served four years with the U.S. Marine Corps, and his platoon sergeants testified at trial. They spoke about the Marine Corps values of honor, courage and commitment, saying if a member does not uphold those values, they will not be promoted.
Penny’s attorneys asked if he had a reputation of being “calm and peaceful,” to which one sergeant replied, “absolutely.”
“You have to be someone who displays empathy above reproach,” he said.
Another sergeant added if you “give him a task, I know it’s going to be completed and done right.”
Penny’s martial arts instructor from the Marine Corps, Joseph Caballer, also testified about the chokehold he used on Neely, saying Marines are trained not to hold a choke longer than five seconds. On cross examination, the instructor said five seconds is not applicable in the real-world and each “situation dictates.”
Caballer said properly applying a choke would “render your aggressor unconscious,” then Marines are told to release pressure immediately, otherwise it “could lead to injury or death.”
He went on to testify about the differences between a “blood choke” and an “air choke,” and walked the jury through video of the chokehold that was used, frame by frame. In one particular shot, Caballer said it appeared Penny’s forearm was pressing against Neely’s trachea.
“Is this an improper blood choke?” prosecutors asked.
“Yeah,” Caballer said.
“Is it potentially lethal?” prosecutors asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” Caballer said.
On cross, Caballer said it was hard to tell if pressure was being applied at certain times and that during a struggle, arm placements can shift. Caballer added he couldn’t tell from the video whether Penny was ever applying a “full” blood or air choke.
Going to school for architecture
After leaving the Marines, Penny took time to travel and then applied to colleges, his mother, Gina, said on the stand. He was 24 years old at the time of the incident.
His mother said he was pursuing a degree in architecture from the New York City College of Technology and planned to later transfer. He was living at an apartment in the East Village, teaching swim lessons at a gym and working at a restaurant in Brooklyn.
She also said he was taught honesty, humility and kindness growing up, did well in school and sports, and played the bass in a couple Long Island orchestras. She looked at him while testifying, saying she loved him with all her heart.
“Of course I would be here for my son,” she said.
Penny spoke in a video statement after the incident
Penny released a video statement through his attorney in the days following the deadly encounter. He said he was acting in self-defense as Neely acted erratically on an F train in SoHo.
“The three main threats that he repeated over and over was, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ ‘I’m prepared to go to jail for life,’ and ‘I’m willing to die,'” Penny said in the video. “I was scared for myself, but I looked around, I saw women and children. He was yelling in their faces … I didn’t want to be put in that situation, but I couldn’t just sit still and let him carry out these threats.”
He said he was not trying to kill Neely and race was not a factor.
“Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true. I was trying to restrain him. You can see in the video, there’s a clear rise and fall of his chest,” said Penny. “I didn’t see a Black man threatening passengers. I saw a man threatening passengers, a lot of whom were people of color.”
Penny was charged 11 days after the incident and released on $100,000 bail. An online fundraiser was set up to help with his legal expenses, garnering more than $3,222,053 to date.
Who was Jordan Neely?
Neely was a 30-year-old subway performer known for his Michael Jackson impersonations.
Records show he struggled with homelessness and mental illness after his mother was murdered in 2007.
“When they choked Jordan, they put their arms around all of us. All of us have the right to live,” Rev. Al Sharpton said at his funeral.
His death sparked days of protests and questions about how New York City responds to people in mental health crisis.
“Jordan was not annoying someone on the train. Jordan was screaming for help,” Sharpton continued. “We keep criminalizing people with mental illness.”
“Jordan was a New Yorker. He was loved. He was cared for. He was seen by this community. He contributed to this community,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“We can’t just say you’re allowed to choke someone to death, and that Jordan Neely’s life mattered,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said. “We gotta talk about how he died, why he died that way, and also the failures that happened long before that.”
CBS News New York learned Neely agreed to out-patient mental health treatment as part of a plea deal in a prior arrest, but he left the program within a matter of weeks. As a result, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
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What to know about Syria’s rekindled civil war
Syrian rebel forces were approaching the country’s third largest city of Homs on Friday, a human rights group that monitors the war reported, raising the prospect of the country’s capital city Damascus being cut off from coastal areas that are a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has relied on a network of sources on the ground to closely monitor the war since it started in 2011, said rebel forces had advanced to only about three miles from the city, and that regime soldiers had withdrawn from a number of nearby towns and villages in response to their advance.
SOHR said Assad’s forces had carried out airstrikes on water infrastructure in a nearby city and on a highway, but no casualties were reported.
What is happening with the war in Syria?
Thousands of people were fleeing from the area amid the dramatic escalation in the civil war, which had simmered without major advances by either side for years, until the rebels mounted a shock offensive about two weeks ago
The rebels took complete control of another city, Hama, and about a week after they began a sweeping raid across the north of the country. The first major prize in their offensive was seizing control of Aleppo a week ago, which was long Syria’s second most populous city.
Their sudden advance has taken many watching the long-simmering conflict by surprise, and SOHR says over 820 people have been killed since it started, including more than 100 civilians.
Syrian rebels say objective “remains the overthrow” of Assad
The war in Syria began in 2011 when a pro-democracy uprising calling for the end of Assad’s long reign escalated quickly into a brutal civil war. Since then, the conflict has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced some 12 million from their homes.
The war appeared to have stalled after Assad’s government regained control over many cities with the help of Russia and Iran, in addition to the powerful Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Some northern and eastern areas of the country have remained under the control of Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed rebel groups. The current offensive, however, has been led largely by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), which has tried to publicly distance itself from its jihadist roots as a regional branch of al Qaeda.
With other conflicts currently occupying Assad’s backers Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the rebel forces are believed to have seen an opportunity to renew their fight against his army.
The leader of HTS told CNN in a recent interview that the goal of the offensive is to remove Assad from power.
“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime,” Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani told CNN. “The seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it… the Iranians attempted to revive the regime, buying it time, and later the Russians also tried to prop it up. But the truth remains: this regime is dead.”
Syrian rebel offensive worsens humanitarian crisis
Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the recent fighting, many of them heading to Raqqa province, which is held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Despite a deal to allow safe passage for those fleeing Aleppo province, SDF sources told CBS News that over 120 vehicles carrying hundreds of civilians were attacked by different Syrian Islamist groups on their journey. Local authorities say the humanitarian situation for those arriving in safe areas is dire.
Some 136 schools in Raqqa and 63 schools in the city of Tabqqa have been turned into makeshift shelters for IDPs. Raqqa Stadium, which was once used as a prison by ISIS militants when they controlled the territory, has also been turned into a camp to offer displaced civilians some shelter from the cold weather.
“The situation is catastrophic,” Zhwan Mullah, a member of the local crisis response team, told CBS News. “The number of IDPs is much larger than we can assist. U.N. and NGO support so far has been very insignificant.”
Saeed Muhammad Hassan, 53, fled to Raqqa from near Aleppo. On his way, he was separated from his wife, Sabah. Hassan, like an increasing number of civilians who’ve been separated from loved ones during their evacuation from areas hit by the fighting, approached local radio stations to put out an appeal to be reunited with Sabah.
“Many people are approaching us via different channels, looking for missing family members who have gone silent on the road to safety,” Sirwan Haji Birko, the head ARTA FM radio, told CBS News. “We try to help as much as we can to find missing ones, on radio and on our social media platforms.”