Shaveyla Howard: Search ongoing for missing teen on Chicago's West Side
CHICAGO - A search is underway for a missing 15-year-old girl last seen on Chicago's West Side, police said.
What we know
Shaveyla Howard was last heard from on April 17 and was last seen in the 4700 block of West Washington Blvd, according to Chicago police.
She is Black, 4 feet 11 inches tall, with brown eyes and black hair.
Further details on her disappearance haven't been released.
What you can do
Anyone with more information on Howard's whereabouts is urged to contact the Area Five Special Victims Unit at 312-746-6554.
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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
'Forgiveness is between him and God:' Families reflect on decade since Charleston church massacre
'Forgiveness is between him and God:' Families reflect on decade since Charleston church massacre Show Caption Hide Caption Mother Emanuel AME churchgoer's legacy remembered seven years after tragic shooting Melvin Graham reflects on the life and legacy of his sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, on the seventh anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME mass shooting. Josh Morgan, USA TODAY Melvin Graham sat on the right of the arena with other families and listened as Barack Obama read the names of the nine churchgoers who were killed by a White supremacist at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. He heard Obama call the name of his younger sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd. That was emotional enough. But at one point, the then-president broke out singing, 'Amazing Grace.'' Pastors, families, choir members joined in. 'That's one of those moments when you just wanted to break out and cry,'' recalled Graham, who had heard and sung the hymn plenty times over the years. 'Not in the context of having lost a loved one.'' The shooting 10 years ago at Emanuel AME Church, a historic Black church also known as 'Mother Emanuel," shocked the nation. Members− including Cynthia, a librarian − were at Bible study that June 17 evening when a White man they had welcomed later fatally shot nine of them. Five others survived. Some family members called Obama's presence days later at a funeral service and his rendition of the hymn a poignant moment as the country grappled with the horror of people gunned down in church. 'Even though this happened to Black people in a church… It felt like that sent a message of 'This could happen to anybody,' '' said Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother, Ethel Lee Lance, was among the Emanuel Nine. "The sympathy from the country was overwhelming.' The nation was also gripped by some of the families publicly forgiving the shooter. But in the decade since the massacre, the families and others have been troubled by other deadly attacks against people because of their race, ethnicity or faith. And while they continue to demand justice for loved ones they lost, they also call for more efforts to prevent gun violence and tamp down on divisiveness plaguing the country. Families and community leaders hope commemorating the 10th anniversary will lead to more action. To mark the anniversary, Mother Emanuel will host a series of events, including a service June 17, during what it called 'Acts of Amazing Grace Month.'' The Graham family held a memorial service June 12 for Cynthia at the church, followed by a town hall, 'The Way Forward,' to discuss efforts to heal and take action a decade later. 'It is a moment for us to move from mourning to commemoration,'' Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of the International African American Museum in Charleston, told USA TODAY. 'But that move comes with the real responsibility and we've got to ask: So, what now? We have a moral obligation to do more than remember that moment – we must learn from it and use those lessons of history to inform our future.'' 'Move from mourning to commemoration' Across Charleston, there are monuments and tributes to honor the Emanuel Nine, including wooden benches with their names on them at a park near the church. More: 'We've slipped into forgetfulness': Charleston church shooting survivors demand gun control There are also scholarships, foundations and memorial gardens named in their honor. A library has been renamed the Cynthia Graham Hurd/St. Andrews Library. Construction is underway for the Emanuel Nine Memorial at the church. Church officials hope it will provide a space to help with healing. 'They're being memorialized and they're being remembered,'' said Graham, adding that racial attacks still happen. 'But we have to put a stop to this.'' 'Someone is going to act on the lie – again' Attacks against people because of their faith, race or ethnicity have continued since the shooting at Mother Emanuel. In 2022, 10 Black shoppers were killed by a white supremacist at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. While some communities have condemned such attacks, overt racist rhetoric, including against immigrants, have ramped up, said Holly Fisher-Hickman, a history professor at Bowie State University in Maryland. Beyond Trump administration policies, such as travel bans including from African countries and challenges to birthright citizenship, people are more vocal about attacking other communities, she said. 'It's worse,'' Fisher-Hickman said. "Now we have someone who is blatantly saying it's okay to do what you feel.' Graham said national leaders should take the lead to condemn divisive rhetoric. He hopes the commemorations remind people of the harm that can come from it. 'The undercurrent for this to happen is right there,'' Graham said. 'Someone is going to believe the lie and someone is going to act on the lie – again.'' 'Forgiveness is between him and God' Risher was as surprised as others when some family members, including her own, told Dylann Roof they forgave him during a court hearing soon after the shooting. 'They just felt compelled and the words just came out of their mouths,'' recalled Risher, who believes God intervened. She called the public forgiveness significant because it 'set the tone of what was going to go on in Charleston.' The community rallied. It took Risher, who also lost a childhood friend and two cousins in the church shooting, more time to forgive. "I'm like, 'Oh, hell no,'' she said. It was two years later during a sermon at an interfaith service in Virginia, before Risher said she was moved to publicly forgive Roof. 'God allowed me to work it out in my own time,' said Risher, author of "For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness after the Charleston Massacre.'' Over the last decade, she has been an advocate for gun violence prevention and abolishing the death penalty. Last month, families of the Emanuel Nine joined a Zoom call with a victim's advocate to get an update on Roof's appeals. Roof, who was 21 at the time of the church shooting, was one of three prisoners on federal death row not given a commutation on his sentence by President Joe Biden last December. Historically, the African American community has given grace to others, said Fisher-Hickman. But some today don't feel that way. 'Now, people are saying, 'I'm not giving any more grace, grace has run out,'' she said. While some families of the Emanuel Nine have expressed forgiveness, not everyone has. 'Forgiveness is between him and God,'' Graham said. 'You can't execute my sister and say, 'Forgive me,'' he said. 'He planned the day, the time and the moment of my sister's death.'' Instead, he said, the family is pressing for lawmakers to adopt stricter gun laws and keep the memory of the Emanuel Nine alive. Graham's brother, Malcolm, recently released a book, 'The Way Forward: Keeping the Faith and Doing the Work Amid Hatred and Violence.'' 'We don't want to be the angry Black family,'' said Melvin Graham. "But we have to stand up for what's right.'' Remembering their names The Rev. Clementa Pickney, 41, senior pastor at Mother Emanuel and state senator The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, associate pastor, high school coach Cynthia Graham Hurd, 54, long-time librarian, branch manager Susie Jackson, 87, church trustee, member of the choir Ethel Lee Lance, 70, sexton, long-time member of Mother Emanuel DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, minister at the church, admissions coordinator, singer Tywanza Sanders, 26, recent college graduate, aspiring rapper Daniel Simmons, Sr., 74, retired pastor, Army veteran, Purple Heart recipient Myra Thompson, 59, teacher, counselor, church trustee
Indianapolis Star
13 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
IMPD responds after video of arrest in downtown Indy sparks criticisms
Multiple videos circulating on social media June 15 depict an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer shooting a man with a high-pressure air launcher before tackling him to the ground in downtown Indianapolis. The videos caused some in the community to question whether the IMPD officer used excessive force and if the department would hold the officer accountable, leading IMPD to release a statement saying the incident would undergo a "thorough administrative review." "It's important to note that the videos currently circulating capture only a portion of the incident and what was occurring in the area at the time," the department's statement read. "We are continuing to gather information about what led up to and followed the events depicted in the video clips." A video shared on social media starts by showing a Black man attempting to walk away from an IMPD officer, while asking the officer "why are you walking up with that," pointing to a weapon in the officer's hands. The officer can then be seen putting his hand on the man's chest and slightly pushing the man back. The man then slaps the officer's hand, after which the officer shoots him three times with a TIB90 Pepper Ball launcher from Sabre Red — a projectile weapon that law enforcement describe as nonlethal. "Are you serious? What am I doing," the man says after being shot, according to the video. The officer can then be seen grabbing the man as he tries to tackle him to the ground. At one point, the officer yells at the man to "get on the ground," before pushing him to the ground. That's when three other IMPD officers can be seen getting on top of the man as they try to detain him. While the man is on the ground, another officer can be seen punching him multiple times, before he goes motionless for a few seconds as police attempt to place handcuffs on him. In the video, a bystander can be heard yelling, "What is they doing. They're beating the f--- out of him." Police then sit the man up before taking him away, according to the video. Shortly after 4 p.m. June 15, IMPD released a statement about the videos, acknowledging the department had seen them and offering preliminary details of what officers say took place. Shortly after bars in downtown Indianapolis closed for the night, officers in IMPD's event response group were working to manage a large crowd that had formed after two men started to fight one another, shortly before 3:30 a.m., according to the statement. Officers intervened and separated the two men after giving verbal orders, police said. One of the men then attempted to walk away from the altercation, while the other remained. That's when the man seen in the video allegedly "squared his shoulders" towards an officer, according to police. This prompted the officer to stick out his hand to create some distance from the man before the man slapped his hand away, the statement read. The officer then fired three shots at the man, as depicted in the video. The department said the officer threw the man to the ground because he believed the man was attempting to flee, and another officer punched the man three times in order to "gain control" of the situation. IMPD has not released the names of the officers involved. The man was preliminarily charged with disorderly conduct, battery of a public safety official, resisting law enforcement and possession of marijuana, according to police. Police later determined the man was armed, and officers recovered a weapon on the ground after he was taken into custody. The department noted the incident will go through the administrative review process to determine if the office's use of force was reasonable.
Los Angeles Times
16 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Political violence is threaded through recent U.S. history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the last two months alone: the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.; the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages; and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. Here is a sampling of other attacks before that — the assassination of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City late last year; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign last year; the 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories; and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) by a gunman at a congressional softball game practice. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews was trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, including presidential assassinations dating to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynchings and other violence aimed at Black people in the South, and the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the last few years, however, have reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when political leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has closed units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. One of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.' Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump 'No Kings' parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boelter had apparently once been reappointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures falsely theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' No prominent Republican ever denounced the Pelosi assault, and GOP leaders including Trump joked about the attack at public events in its aftermath. On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. After mocking the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, Trump on Saturday joined in the bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric toward his political opponents, whom he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the last week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,' he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.' Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.
