Coroner rules Gabby Petito death a homicide – National & International News – WED 22Sept2021

Coroner rules Gabby Petito death a homicide. Federal eviction moratorium effort revived in Congress. Misinformation led Haitians to camp under TX bridge.

NATIONAL NEWS

Coroner rules Gabby Petito death a homicide

Brent Blue, the coroner for Teton County, Wyoming, has confirmed that remains found in Grand Teton National Park over the weekend are those of Gabby Petito. Blue also concluded that Ms. Petito died by homicide, but did not release a specific cause of death.

Meanwhile in Florida, Brian Laundrie, Ms. Petito’s fiancé and the key “person of interest” in her death, has been missing for over a week. According to Laundrie’s parents, Brian took off alone last Tuesday for a nearby 24,000-acre nature reserve, which police began searching when his parents eventually reported him missing on Friday. Laundrie had refused to cooperate with police or speak to Ms. Petito’s family before disappearing.

The FBI says that tips from members of the public were “vital” to their success in locating Ms. Petito’s body in the 480-square mile Grand Teton National Park. Some in the media have derided the FBI’s reliance on tips, but in truth, such cases are often difficult to crack without help from members of the public. The media exposure this case has received has generated numerous tips from people who saw Petito and Laundrie during their trek through Idaho and Wyoming.

Another bizarre mystery connected in this case surfaced when reporters entered the area where Ms. Petito’s remains were found. Journalists noted what appears to be a “memorial” of sorts, made up of river rocks embedded in the ground in the shape of a cross. It’s unclear how long the cross has been there. It may possibly be the work of a member of the recovery team, members of the public, or perhaps Brian Laundrie.

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Federal eviction moratorium effort revived in Congress

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) will introduce legislation this week to empower the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reinstate a federal eviction moratorium during a public health emergency.

Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration and CDC could not extend the federal eviction moratorium without an act of Congress. Democratic leadership in both houses declined to even hold a vote, with the excuse that they didn’t have the votes to support it. The inaction by Congressional Democrats forced President Biden to unilaterally extend the moratorium to give more time for states to distribute rental assistance money. Eventually, a group of landlords managed to have the Supreme Court overturn the moratorium.

Warren and Bush’s Keeping Renters Safe Act would amend Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act which empowers the the federal government to respond to public health crises. The legislators want to add language to allow the HHS and CDC to bar landlords from evicting tenants during public health emergencies, on the groups that evictions can exacerbate the spread of communicable disease.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Misinformation led Haitians to camp under TX bridge

For the last few weeks, as many as 15,000 migrants (mostly Haitians) have been sheltering under a border bridge in Del Rio, TX. This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began deporting some of the migrants back to Haiti. About 4000 have returned so far. Video from the Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince has shown some returnees acting out angrily at the realization that they had been repatriated. Some migrants apparently did not know they were being deported to Haiti.

Many of the Haitians at Del Rio have not lived in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Most have been living and working in South American countries like Chile and Brazil. Since the start of the pandemic, work opportunities have dried up in the host countries. But what drove thousands of Haitians to make the perilous trek across thousands of miles of inhospitable terrain en masse remains a mystery.

Grassroots or misinformation campaign?

Reuters reporter Alexandra Ulmer in Del Rio explains that some Haitians are receiving specific instructions in Creole from other Haitians through WhatApp on how to get to Del Rio and how to evade U.S. and Mexican authorities along the way. Ulmer has described this as a well-organized grassroots effort to guide Haitians to the U.S.

Other reports indicate that many of the Haitians may have fallen victim to rampant misinformation. Some believed that the border crossing at Del Rio was “open” and that they could cross into the U.S. legally. Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald has seen “a lack of understanding that they crossed illegally, irregularly into the United States. They really are under the impression that what they did was sanctioned”.

Charles also explained that, “A number of [migrants] have said that they ended up there because people said, hey, if I had a child in Chile, I can get [Temporary Protected Status] in the United States. Or somebody says, [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken said to come. Where people are getting this information, it’s unclear. But they were guided by this idea that they would welcomed into the United States”.

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