SAN FRANCISCO — The stretches in solitary confinement inside a detention center in the mountains of Virginia were what broke him, the Honduran teen said. The guards stopped bringing food, he said. One time they let him out, and a group of them came at him. So many guards were kicking him in the gut, he said, he couldn’t breathe.
“I was just crying and praying to see my mother one more time,” said the 18-year-old immigrant, who gave his firsthand account to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared the government might retaliate against him for speaking publicly. “I ended up getting put in solitary confinement for no reason.”
The teen’s experience echoes abuse claims by other children whose accounts are included in a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that guards at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Staunton, Virginia, beat them, locked them up for long periods in solitary confinement and left them nude and shivering in concrete cells. He arrived at Shenandoah in the summer of 2016 when he was 16 years old — during part of the time period covered by allegations in the lawsuit, which spans both the Obama and Trump administrations.
The center’s director has denied that children were abused at the facility. The facility and its attorney did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for details about the teen’s case.
A federal judge on Wednesday allowed the lawsuit to represent all Latino migrant children who are or will be detained at Shenandoah who have been, are or will be subject to the center’s disciplinary practices and have needed or will need mental health treatment while detained there.
NEW YORK — The video clip, shared widely on social media, shows a candidate in disbelief: It captures the moment Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez realizes that, at age 28, she has beaten a 10-term congressman in a Democratic primary.
Wide-eyed, she covers her mouth with her hands and appears to scream “Oh, my God!”
A day later, a more poised Ocasio-Cortez seemed to have moved on from shock to ambition. She spent Wednesday morning telling reporters of her hope of going to Washington “with an entire caucus of newly elected progressives” who aren’t beholden to corporate donors and are willing to shake things up.
“I’m hoping that more candidates like me are victorious in their primaries and I hope that we can focus on getting money out of politics and championing the social economic and racial justice and rights of all working class Americans,” she said.
On her wish list are lots of things unlikely to pass a Congress held by either Republicans or centrist Democrats. They include tuition-free public college, a $15 federal minimum wage, an expansion of the Medicare program to include people of all ages, a universal jobs guarantee and abolishing the country’s immigration law enforcement agency.
PITTSBURGH — A white police officer was charged Wednesday with homicide in the death of an unarmed black teenager who was shot in the back while fleeing a traffic stop, a shooting that has fueled daily protests around Pittsburgh.
Prosecutors cited officer Michael Rosfeld’s inconsistent statements about whether he saw a gun in the teen’s hand.
The officer first told investigators that the teen turned his hand toward him when he ran from the car and the officer “saw something dark he perceived as a gun,” according to the criminal complaint .
During a second recap of last week’s shooting, Rosfeld told investigators he did not see a gun and he was not sure if the teen’s arm was pointed at him when he fired at 17-year-old Antwon Rose Jr.
The 30-year-old officer had been sworn in just hours before the June 19 shooting in East Pittsburgh, a small town near the city, after working at the police department for a couple weeks. After being charged, he turned himself in and was released on $250,000 bond.
From Associated Press