A man with an assault rifle and other weapons exchanged gunfire with officers Tuesday at an Atlanta-area elementary school before surrendering, a police chief said, with dramatic overhead television footage capturing the young students racing out of the building, being escorted by teachers and police to safety. No one was injured.
Just a week into the new school year, more than 800 students in pre-kindergarten to fifth grade were evacuated from Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, a few miles east of Atlanta. They sat outside along a fence in a field for a time until school buses came to take them to their waiting parents and other relatives at a nearby Wal-Mart.
When the first bus arrived about three hours after the shooting, cheers erupted in the store parking lot from relieved relatives, several of them sobbing.
The suspect, identified later as 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill, fired at least a half-dozen shots from the rifle from inside McNair at officers who were swarming the campus outside, the chief said. Officers returned fire when the man was alone and they had a clear shot, DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric L. Alexander said at a news conference. Hill surrendered shortly after and several weapons were found, though it wasn't clear how many, Alexander said. Police had no motive.
Though the school has a system where visitors must be buzzed in by staff, the gunman may have slipped inside behind someone authorized to be there, Alexander said. The suspect, who had no clear ties to the school, never got past the front office, where he held one or two employees captive for a time, the chief said. Hill, who had address listed about three miles from the school, is charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. There was no information on a possible court date.
A woman in the office called WSB-TV to say the gunman asked her to contact the Atlanta station and police. WSB said during the call, shots were heard in the background. Assignment editor Lacey Lecroy said she spoke with the woman who said she was alone with the man and his gun was visible.
"It didn't take long to know that this woman was serious," Lecroy said. "Shots were one of the last things I heard. I was so worried for her."
School clerk Antoinette Tuff in an interview on ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer" said she worked to convince the gunman to put down his weapons and ammunition.
"He told me he was sorry for what he was doing. He was willing to die," Tuff told ABC.
She told him her life story, about how her marriage fell apart after 33 years and the "roller coaster" of opening her own business.
"I told him, 'OK, we all have situations in our lives," she said. "It was going to be OK. If I could recover, he could, too."
Then Tuff said she asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack on the floor.
"I told the police he was giving himself up. I just talked him through it," she said.
A woman answering the phone at a number listed for Hill in court records said she was his mother but said it wasn't a good time and rushed off the phone.
In the latest attack, militants ambushed and killed 25 Egyptian policemen on Monday on a road in northern Sinai, Egyptian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media. The militants forced two vehicles carrying policemen on leave to stop, ordered the men out and made them lie on the ground before they shot them to death, the officials said.
Early this month, Israel briefly closed its airport in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, next to the border with Sinai, in response to unspecified security warnings. The following day, five men believed to be Islamic militants were killed in what Egyptian security official told the AP in Cairo was an Israeli drone attack. The site of the strike was about five kilometers (three miles) inside Egypt. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief journalists.
Israel has maintained official silence about the strike, likely out of concerns about exposing Egypt's military to domestic public backlash over a strike on Egyptian soil. Egypt's government celebrates its battles fought against Israel over Sinai and despite the 1979 peace deal, many in Egypt still view the Jewish state with suspicion.
A week after the suspected drone strike, Israel intercepted an incoming rocket fired from Sinai at Eilat. An al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility for the rocket attack.
Under the terms of the peace accord, Egypt must coordinate its military operations in northern Sinai with Israel. The Israelis are believed to have granted every request by Egypt to bring additional forces into the region, as long as all operations were closely coordinated. An international force helps monitor the terms of the treaty.
Israeli lawmaker Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister and military chief of staff, said it was essential that peace and order be restored in Egypt.
"The issue of the peace treaty with Egypt is Israel's highest interest. As long as the violence, and the confrontation between the army and the civilians and the bloodshed there increases, it endangers the peace treaty. We have an interest that life there is quiet," he told Channel 2 TV.
The U.S. and European Union have criticized Egypt's crackdown on Morsi's supporters.
President Barack Obama has suspended a planned military exercise with Egypt, and U.S. Sen. John McCain has led a chorus of voices urging a halt in the $1.3 billion in military aid the U.S. sends to Egypt each year.
"For us to sit by and watch this happen is a violation of everything that we stood for," the Republican senator told CNN. "We're not sticking with our values."
Obama has not made a decision. But suggestions like McCain's have raised concerns in Israel that tough U.S. action could shake the alliance with Egypt — and even prompt Egypt to retaliate against Israel.
"The Israeli and Egyptian security establishments are operating inside a bubble and, for the time being, there are no signs that relations between them have cooled," wrote Alex Fishman, a military affairs commentator for the Yediot Ahronot daily. "But the Egyptian street is beginning to press, and the current regime is going to have to toss it a bone. Regrettably, it is going to be an Israeli bone it tosses."
Israeli officials say the peace accord remains intact, and dismiss speculation that it could be threatened.
Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador in Egypt, told the AP the scenario of the Camp David accords unraveling was highly unlikely. He said it was highly doubtful the United States would cut off aid to Egypt and even if it did, he could not envision Egypt canceling the peace treaty.
"They have no interest in engaging in another conflict they have neither the time nor the energy for," he said. "They need us now, with or without American aid."
Israel is quietly and carefully watching the turmoil in neighboring Egypt while maintaining close contacts with the Egyptian military amid concerns that the escalating crisis could weaken their common battle against Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula, officials said.
As the week's death toll in Egypt rises, this alliance has put Israel in a delicate position. Wary of being seen as taking sides in the Egyptian military's standoff against Islamist supporters of the ousted president, Israel also needs the Egyptian army to maintain quiet along their shared border — and to preserve a historic peace treaty.
The 1979 peace treaty, Israel's first with an Arab country, has been a cornerstone of regional security for three decades. It has allowed Israel to divert resources to volatile fronts with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. For Egypt, it opened the way to billions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
Although diplomatic relations have never been close, the two militaries have had a good working relationship. These ties have only strengthened since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising two and a half years ago. With both armies battling extremist Jihadi groups in the Sinai Peninsula, near the Israeli border, Israeli security officials often say that relations with their Egyptian counterparts are stronger than ever.
With so much at stake, Israel has remained quiet since the Egyptian military ousted Mubarak's Islamist successor, Mohammed Morsi, in a coup on July 3. Morsi, who became Egypt's first democratically elected president, hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group considered the parent organization of militant Palestinian Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip and is a bitter enemy of Israel.
Israel has not commented on this week's bloodshed, in which the Egyptian troops killed hundreds of Morsi's supporters who were rallying against the coup and demanding that he be reinstated.
"Israel does not have to support the (Egyptian) regime, especially not publicly. It is not our place to defend all the measures taken, this is not our business," said Giora Eiland, a former chairman of Israel's National Security Council.
At the same time, Eiland suggested that international condemnations of the Egyptian military's actions have been excessive. He said Israeli and Western interests are "much closer" to the interests of Egypt's military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi and his secular allies.
"Even if we don't share the same values, we can share the same interests," he said. "The Israeli interest is quite clear. We want a stable regime in Egypt."
"In the end of the day, the U.S. has to realize the real potential, reliable partner is the combination of the coalition of secular people in Egypt and the current military regime," he added.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office declined comment but Israeli defense officials confirmed to The Associated Press that security cooperation with Egypt has continued over the past week.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the topic was discussed last week with the visiting chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of State, Gen. Martin Dempsey. They refused to discuss the content of the discussions.
The Israeli and Egyptian armies have worked closely in recent years to contain the common threat posed by al-Qaida-linked groups operating in Sinai. These groups have stepped up their activities since Mubarak was toppled, and even more so since Morsi was deposed.
A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.
Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers," after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.
Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including "grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises," Smith's statement said. She said the police didn't produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn't be identified. According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested -- for outstanding traffic violations.
The city of Arlington said in a statement that the code citations were issued to the farm following complaints by neighbors, who were "concerned that the conditions" at the farm "interfere with the useful enjoyment of their properties and are detrimental to property values and community appearance." The police SWAT raid came after "the Arlington Police Department received a number of complaints that the same property owner was cultivating marijuana plants on the premises," the city's statement said. "No cultivated marijuana plants were located on the premises," the statement acknowledged.
The raid on the Garden of Eden farm appears to be the latest example of police departments using SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics to enforce less serious crimes. A Fox television affiliate reported this week, for example, that police in St. Louis County, Mo., brought out the SWAT team to serve an administrative warrant. The report went on to explain that all felony warrants are served with a SWAT team, regardless whether the crime being alleged involves violence.
In recent years, SWAT teams have been called out to perform regulatory alcohol inspections at a bar in Manassas Park, Va.; to raid bars for suspected underage drinking in New Haven, Conn.; to raid a gay bar in Atlanta where police suspected customers and employees were having public sex; and to perform license inspections at barbershops in Orlando, Fla.
Other raids have been conducted on food co-ops and Amish farms suspected of selling unpasteurized milk products. The federal government has for years been conducting raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them, even though the businesses operate openly and are unlikely to pose any threat to the safety of federal enforcers.
Republican officials are looking to promote a fresh group of diverse rising stars to help resolve their election woes, while frustrated party elders insist that all Republicans must offer more solutions for the nation's most pressing issues.
The calls for change come nine months after a painful 2012 election in which the GOP lost the presidential race and a handful of close Senate contests. A tug of war over the Republican Party's future is on display as conservative activists and party leaders from across the country gather in Boston this week for the Republican National Committee's annual summer meeting.
"We have to get beyond being anti-Obama," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared at the gathering Wednesday, offering a particularly harsh critique of Republican strategy on health care.
Gingrich said congressional Republicans would have "zero answer" for how to replace the president's health care overhaul when asked, despite their having voted repeatedly to repeal the measure.
"We are caught right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we're negative and as long as we're vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don't have to learn anything. And so we don't," Gingrich said. "This is a very deep problem."
While there is little sign of GOP unity on solutions for immigration, health care or a looming budget standoff, RNC officials are launching a program to highlight a new generation of Republican leaders — largely younger and more ethnically diverse — to help broaden the party's appeal among women and minorities, groups that overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama in the last election. The program supplements an ongoing effort to expand Republican outreach among minority communities across the country.
Women voted for Obama by an 11-point margin in 2012, and they have not backed a GOP candidate for president since Ronald Reagan's successful bid for re-election in 1984. Although last year's nominee, Mitt Romney, improved on John McCain's margin of victory among whites in 2008, Romney fared worse than McCain among Hispanic and Asian voters, who make up a growing share of the U.S. population.
The RNC on Thursday was introducing the first four members of its "Rising Stars" program:
—Karin Agness, founder and president of the Network of enlightened Women, or NeW. The Indiana native started the organization for conservative university women in 2004 while at the University of Virginia.
—Scott G. Erickson, a San Jose, Calif., police officer for 15 years and a writer for The Foundry, the blog of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
—Marilinda Garcia, a Hispanic and New Hampshire state representative first elected at 23. Now in her fourth term, she serves on the executive board of the immigration reform group Americans by Choice.
—T.W. Shannon, an African-American and speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The Lawton native is a business consultant and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.