It’s Thursday, April 14th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Police have arrested a woman who they said murdered her two young children Tuesday night at an apartment in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood.
Miami Police officials said they had received several 911 calls at around 8 p.m. from a woman who appeared to be in distress and in a crisis. The woman had been continuously calling 911 but never said why she was calling, officials said. When officers responded to a home in the 100 block of Northeast 75th Street, they found 41-year-old Odette Joassaint, who allegedly told police "Come get them, I don’t want them anymore." As officers searched the apartment, they found Joassaint's two children, a 5-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy, tied up in a bedroom. Miami Fire Rescue attempted to save the children's lives, but they were both pronounced dead that the scene.
No. 2 - The man accused of shooting 10 people on a Brooklyn subway train was arrested Wednesday and charged with a federal terrorism offense after the suspect called police to come get him, law enforcement officials said.
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Frank R. James, 62, was taken into custody about 30 hours after the violence on a rush-hour train, which left people around the city on edge. James was due to appear in court Thursday on a charge that pertains to terrorist or other violent attacks against mass transit systems and carries a sentence of up to life in prison, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. In recent months, James railed in videos on his YouTube channel about racism and violence in the U.S. and about his struggles with mental health care in New York City, and he criticized Adams' policies on mental health and subway safety.
No. 3 - The sentencing of confessed Parkland school mass murderer Nikolas Cruz may be delayed two more weeks.
It was scheduled to begin May 31 and continue through September. Now, it might begin June 13. Late Wednesday, defense attorneys asked for more time to depose new expert witnesses brought in by the prosecution. Concerned about delays to the delicate jury selection timetable, Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer said she would take yet another look at the calendar before deciding. Earlier in the day, three more women abruptly left the court proceedings, two men suffered health problems, and one man was kept apart from the jury pool for being belligerent in the final day of jury pre-selection for the sentencing of Cruz.
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No. 4 - The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is extending the nationwide mask requirement for airplanes and public transit for 15 days as it monitors an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was extending the order, which was set to expire on April 18, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the U.S. “In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency said in a statement. When the Transportation Security Administration, which enforces the rule for planes, buses, trains and transit hubs, extended the requirement last month, it said the CDC had been hoping to roll out a more flexible masking strategy that would have replaced the nationwide requirement.
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No. 5 - Emergency preparedness officials on Wednesday warned Floridians not to get complacent during the upcoming hurricane season, particularly in coastal areas that haven't experienced strong storms recently.
Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center, said they worried that many Floridians living in coastal communities had gotten complacent about making hurricane preparations since there hadn't lived through major storms in recent years. Forecasters at Colorado State University are predicting that the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will have 19 named storms and nine hurricanes, slightly higher than the yearly average for the past three decades. The season starts in June and ends in November.
No. 6 - After spending the first week of the 2022 regular season on the road, the Miami Marlins return home Thursday for their first game of the season inside loanDepot park.
In addition to kicking off the home slate of games, the Marlins hope to turn around what could be called a lackluster start to the season that was supposed to be one of high hopes for the Fish. Fans will be allowed to enter at 4:30 p.m. with pregame ceremonies starting at 6 p.m. What do you need to know if you’re planning on heading down to Miami for Thursday’s opener or any of the games this season? Click here for a complete breakdown.
