At least 30 hurt after car hits crowd outside Los Angeles club, fire department says
At least seven people were in critical condition and six others were seriously injured, the fire department said in an online statement.
The incident, which took place outside a club called The Vermont, occurred just before 2 a.m. local time (0900 GMT), the fire and police departments said.
Captain Adam VanGerpen, a fire department spokesperson, was quoted by ABC News as saying the car apparently first careened into a taco truck outside the club and then through a valet stand and into a large group of people.
The Los Angeles Police Department said on X it was still investigating why the driver slammed into the crowd.
Officers responding to a radio call of an assault with a deadly weapon found the driver had been shot while being assaulted by onlookers, the police said, adding that he was taken to a hospital and his condition was unknown.
A man suspected of shooting the driver fled the scene on foot and possibly was armed with a silver revolver, the police said.
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Daily Mail
3 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Denise Richards' estranged husband Aaron Phypers reveals her alleged affair with 'marine lover' and their insane home life
Denise Richards has allegedly had a months-long fling with a former Special Forces soldier, who showered her with X-rated photos and videos - including a graphic clip that shows him naked and pleasuring himself. The actress's outraged estranged husband Aaron Phypers claimed he caught wind of his her alleged affair in April, and said she had promised to break it off but he catch her lying about another hook-up with 'lover Rudy Reyes' that took place at Hilton Garden Inn, Burbank, California, the following month. Phypers said his discovery of the 'tryst' then led to an explosive showdown over the July 4 holiday weekend, during which she 'smashed up' his phone, but she hit back at him with allegations of being the victim of domestic abuse. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Evidence? Phypers claims he discovered 107 raunchy texts between Richards and her 'Special Forces' lover on her phone in April Phypers filed for divorce the following Monday and was hit with an avalanche of abuse allegations from Richards in court papers, including that he'd given her a black eye. Phypers said: 'I'm broken-hearted and f***ing tired. Really, she's f***ed me up. 'We've been together nine years and for her to do that and to lie to me consistently - I'm totally tired and drained.' He said his relationship with Richards had been deteriorating for some time before their split, and worsened at the start of the year partly due to what he said was her insatiable appetite for prescription pills and tequila. Regarding the topic of pills, Phypers said of Richards: 'She's got a real problem. She mixes it too with booze and she stays up all night. 'She's there on her computer and taking stuff, then she hides the bottles. It's gotten out of hand, and I'm really concerned. 'She buys them in bottles of 500 pills. I don't know where she gets them from, but she always has them. 'I don't know what the market rate for those are but it's $10, $20, $30, $50 each pill. You do the math - a lot of money is going out the window for that.' Sordid location: Phypers shared what he said was a text conversation that revealed details of the multiple sordid hotel hook-ups his wife and her lover enjoyed Despite the alleged drugs and boozing, Phypers said the marriage muddled along until he claimed to have discovered 107 raunchy texts between Richards and Reyes on her phone, along with details of the multiple sordid hotel hook-ups they enjoyed. He said the discovery made clear to him that Richards was allegedly having an affair, which led him to file for divorce. The proceedings and tension between the couple were widely reported thereafter. He said: 'I just had this feeling that something was off because her behavior had changed - she was being kind of cool to me. 'I opened her phone - we both know each other's passwords - so I opened it up and then I went to her deleted texts and there were 107 of them between her and this guy. 'I went through them and it just broke my heart.' Of her alleged lover, Phypers added: 'As for him, he's really is a w**ker.' Richards met Reyes during her stint on Fox reality show Special Forces: World's Toughest Test. Reyes, a former Recon Marine, appeared as one of the show's presenters and 'directing staff' instructors. A review of what Phypers claims was their text messages revealed multiple discussions about setting up hotel sex sessions as well as scores of raunchy photos shared between each other. Along with graphic naked photos and videos of Richards' alleged soldier lover, there were also X-rated photos of the actress, including one of her exposing her breast. When he first discovered the fling, his wife apologized profusely and promised to break it off, according to Phypers. She also offered to let him look at her phone whenever he wants to 'rebuild trust' but, he said, she soon returned to making plans to meet up with her lover. Phypers said: 'When I first found out, it really stung but she offered to rebuild trust by letting me see her phone. 'Well, it turns out she's got another number, too, which I just found out about. 'It kills me. She's been setting up times to meet him out of town while creating fights with me.' The couple's showdown came after he said he discovered that the affair was still going on and he took photos of the raunchy conversations -at which point, Richards snatched his phone. Phypers said he later discovered the device 'smashed to powder' in the garbage can. He said: 'I run up to her and I go, "What the f***k did you do this for?" And she goes, "I did not do anything to your phone." Just denied it. 'And then I'm like, so it was Casper the Ghost? And she still denied it, so I ran out. I was in disbelief, and I took off. 'I just feel like I've been taken for a fool. It's been a nightmare. Just a huge nightmare.'
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
She fled Cuba for asylum – then was snatched from a US immigration courtroom
Jerome traveled a thousand miles from California to El Paso, Texas, so he could accompany Jenny to her immigration hearing. He and his wife had promised to take her after she had fled Cuba last December, after the government there had targeted her because she had reported on the country's deplorable conditions for her college radio station. Everything should have been fine. Jenny, 25, had entered the United States legally under one of Joe Biden's now-defunct programs, CBP One. By the end of the year, she could apply for a green card. But a few days before her hearing, Jerome started to feel like something was off. Jenny's court date had been abruptly moved from May to June with no explanation. Arrests at immigration courthouses peppered the news. And when Jenny went before the court, the government attorney assigned to try to deport her asked the judge to dismiss her case, arguing vaguely that circumstances had changed. Instead, the judge noted that Jenny was pursuing an asylum claim and scheduled her for another court date in August 2026 – the best possible outcome. 'She turned around and looked at me and smiled. And I smiled back, because she understood that she was free to go home,' Jerome said. But as Jenny left the courtroom and approached the elevator to leave, a crowd of government agents in masks converged on her and demanded she go with them. Just before she disappeared down a corridor with the phalanx of officers, she turned back to look at Jerome, her face stricken, silently pleading with him to do something. 'I said, 'She's legal. She's here legally. And you guys just don't care, do you? Nobody cares about this. You guys just like pulling people away like this,'' Jerome recalled telling the agents. 'And nobody said a word. They couldn't even look me in the eye,' he told the Guardian. Footage of her apprehension was taken by those advocating for her and shared with the Guardian. Now Jenny is languishing in immigration custody. Her hearing for August 2026 has been replaced with a date for next month when the government attorney might once again attempt to dismiss her case, and her case been transferred from a judge who grants a majority of asylum applications to one with a less than 22% approval rate. 'There's no heart, there's no compassion, there's no empathy, there's no anything. [It's] 'We're just going to yank this woman away from you, and we don't care,'' Jerome said. The Guardian is not using his or Jenny's full name for their safety. Similar scenes have played out again and again at immigration courthouses across the country for weeks, as people following the federal government's directions and attending their hearings are being scooped up and sent to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention. The unusual tactics are happening while Donald Trump and his deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, push for Ice to make at least 3,000 daily arrests – a tenfold increase from during Biden's last year in office. Ice agents have suddenly become regulars at immigration court, where they can easily find soft targets. At first, the officers appeared to focus arrests on a subset of migrants who had been in the US for fewer than two years, which the Trump administration argues makes them susceptible to a fast-tracked deportation scheme called expedited removal. Ice officers seem to confer with their agency's attorneys, who ask the judge to dismiss the migrants' cases, as they did with Jenny. And, if judges agree, the migrants are detained on their way out of court so that officials can reprocess them through expedited removal, which allows the federal government to repatriate people with far less due process, sometimes without even seeing another judge. But reporting by the Guardian has uncovered how Ice is casting a far wider net for its immigration court arrests and appears also to be targeting people such as Jenny whose cases are ongoing and have not been dismissed. The agency is also snatching up court attendees who have clearly been in the US for longer than two years – the maximum timeframe that according to US law determines whether someone can be placed in expedited removal – as well as those who have a pathway to remain in the country legally. After the migrants are apprehended, they're stuffed into often overcrowded, likely privately run detention centers, sometimes far from their US-based homes and families. They're put through high-stakes tests that will determine whether they have a future in the US, with limited access to attorneys. And as they endure inhospitable conditions in prisons and jails, the likelihood of them having both the will to keep fighting their case and the legal right to stay dwindles. 'To see individuals who are law-abiding and who have received a follow-up court date only to be greeted by a group of large men in masks and whisked away to an unknown location in a building is jarring. It breaks my understanding and conception of the United States having a lawful due process,' said Emily Miller, who is part of a larger volunteer group in El Paso trying to protect migrants as best they can. One woman Miller saw apprehended had come to the US legally, submitted her asylum petition the day of her hearing, and was given a follow-up court date by the judge before Ice detained her. 'My physical reaction was standing in the hallway shaking. My body just physically started shaking, out of shock and out of concern,' Miller said. 'I have lived in other countries where I've been a stranger in a strange land and did not speak the language or had limited language abilities. And as a woman, to be greeted by masked men is something we are taught to fear because of violence that could happen to us.' Elsewhere in Texas, at the San Antonio immigration court earlier this month, a toddler dressed in pink and white overalls ran gleefully around the drab waiting room. Far more chairs than people lined the room's perimeter, as if more attendees had been expected. A constantly multitasking employee at the front window bowed her head in frustration as the caller she was speaking to kept asking more questions. Self-help legal pamphlets hung on the wall – a reminder that the representation rate for people in immigration proceedings has plummeted in recent years, and the vast majority of migrants are navigating the deportation process with little to no expert help. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion In one of the courtrooms, a family took their seats before the judge. Their seven-year-old boy pulled his shirt over his nose, his arms inside the arm holes. The government attorney sitting with a can of Dr Pepper on her desk promptly told the judge she had a motion to introduce, even as the family filed their asylum applications. She wanted to dismiss their cases, she said, as it was no longer in the government's best interest to proceed. The judge said no. She scheduled the family for their final hearings just over a year later. And she warned them, carefully, that Ice might approach them as soon as they left her courtroom. What happened next, she said, was not in her control. Her last words to the family: 'Good luck.' Men in bulletproof vests were hanging around in the hallway, but the family safely made it into the elevator and left the courthouse for the parking lot. Stephanie Spiro, associate director of protection-based relief at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), said that for the most part, Ice is leaving families with children alone (with notable exceptions). It's 'single adults' they're after, people who often have loved ones in the US depending on them, but whose immigration cases involve them alone, she said. A few days later, two such adults – a man and a woman – separately went before a different immigration judge in San Antonio, whose courtroom had signs encouraging people to 'self-deport', the Trump administration's phrase for leaving the country voluntarily before being removed. The government attorney that day moved to dismiss both the man's and the woman's cases, which the judge granted, dismissing the man's case even before the government attorney had given a reason why. Using a Turkish interpreter, the judge then told the man it was likely that immigration authorities would try to put him into expedited removal – despite the fact that he had entered the US more than two years earlier. Soon after, the woman – who had been in the country for nearly four years – went before the court without a lawyer. The judge tried to explain to her what might happen if her case were dismissed, but as he finished, she admitted in Spanish: 'I haven't understood much of what you've told me.' The woman went on to say that she was deep in the process of applying for a visa for victims of serious crimes in the US – a visa that provides a pathway to citizenship. But the judge was upset with her for not also filing an asylum application, and he threatened to order her repatriated. It was the government attorney who 'saved' her, the judge said, by requesting the case be dismissed instead. As soon as the woman walked out of the courtroom, agents approached her and directed her out of the hallway, into a small room. Around the same time, outside the building, men wearing gaiters over their faces ushered a group of people into a white bus, presumably to be transported to detention. Spiro of the NIJC, meanwhile, works in Chicago and said she and fellow advocates have documented Ice officers in plainclothes coming to immigration court there with a list of whom they're targeting – and court attendees are apprehended whether or not their case is dismissed. 'People are getting detained regardless,' Spiro added. 'And once they're detained, it makes it just so much harder to put forth their claim.' Migrants picked up at the court in Chicago have been sent to Missouri, Florida and Texas – to detention spaces that still have capacity, but also to where judges are more likely to side with the Trump administration for speedier deportations. Many of them end up far from their loved ones, and a lag in Ice's publicly accessible online detainee locator has meant some of them have at times essentially disappeared. As word of mouth has spread among immigrant communities in Chicago about these arrests, the once bustling court has gone eerily quiet, Spiro said. That, in turn, could have its own serious consequences, as no-shows for hearings are often ordered deported. 'They don't want to leave their house because of the detentions that are happening,' Spiro said of Chicago's immigrants. 'So to go to court, and to go anywhere – they don't want to come to our office. To go anywhere where there's federal agents and where they know Ice is trying to detain you is just terrifying beyond, you know, most people's imagination.'
Daily Mail
33 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How one man scammed his way onto 120 FREE flights over six years by posing as a flight attendant
A man who posed as cabin crew and managed to fly for free 120 times has been convicted after finally being caught. Echoing Frank Abagnale Jr's escapades in the 1960s - when the then teenager famously posed as a Pan Am pilot and jetted around the world - Tiron Alexander managed to evade capture for six years. On June 5th, a federal jury in Florida convicted the former airline employee of entering into a secure area of an airport by false pretenses and wire fraud. From 2018 to 2024, the Florida-based 35-year-old accessed flights on an airline carrier's website that were reserved for cabin crew and pilots. Posing as a flight attendant, Alexander managed to board 34 flights with the carrier without detection, after being able to enter in cabin crew badge number details into the airline's flight application website. A statement on the website of the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida detailed his deception. It read: 'Alexander claimed through the airline carrier's website application process - a process that required an applicant to select whether they were a pilot or flight attendant and provide their employer, date of hire, and badge number information - that he worked for seven different airlines and had approximately 30 different badge numbers and dates of hire.' Further evidence found that he had taken a similar approach with three other airlines, with prosecutors believing the amount of flights he boarded by pretending to be a working flight attendant was around 120. After an investigation by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Alexander was arrested and convicted last month. The fraudster is scheduled to be sentenced on August 25th. Alexander had, according to the evidence submitted in court, worked for Delta for two years from 2010 to 2012 as a global ticketing support representative. He was also familiar with the role of flight attendant, having spent a year working for Atlantic Southeast Airlines from 2013 to 2014, while another stint in the skies saw him employed as cabin crew for US regional airline Republic Airways. Trial evidence also showed Alexander had posed as a flight attendant on three other airlines, and he had ultimately booked more than 120 free flights by claiming he was a flight attendant, according to the announcement. According to information published by Fortune, it's thought the frauds mostly took place from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The publication reports that screenshots suggest he was flying on Spirit Airlines, a Florida-based flyer. Alexander's deception appears straight out of the Frank W. Abagnale Jr. handbook, which inspired the 1980 book, 2002 blockbuster movie - starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and 2011 Broadway musical. Abagnale was a clever teen who posed as a Pan Am pilot to travel the world in the 1960s; he raked in $2.5 million passing off bad cheques – all while evading the FBI and Interpol. Once one of the most formidable forgers, Mr Abagnale has since changed his ways and now advises governments and businesses on cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams. Described as the 'ultimate conman' for managing to evade the FBI for years, last year he warned that AI will create a 'tsunami' of scammers just like him. 'Anything today can be replicated, duplicated, counterfeited, deep-faked, or AI-manipulated,' he said, adding: 'Technology breeds crime. It always has and always will.'
