The Justice Department is sending subpoenas and using a recently convened grand jury in Seattle as it broadens a criminal investigation into the door plug that blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane in January, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

The separation of the fuselage panel from an Alaska Airlines flight shortly after takeoff scared passengers at 16,000 feet and required an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon. According to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, four bolts intended to hold the door plug in place before the panel blew off were missing.

This month it was reported that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Boeing, which reinstalled the door plug during maintenance in Renton, Washington, before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines in October.

The subpoenas and use of the grand jury were reported earlier Friday by Bloomberg.

The Jan. 5 mid-air incident led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground more than 170 Max 9 planes, which were then inspected for construction defects. Boeing said it agreed with the FAA’s decision and promised to cooperate. The company has said safety is its top priority.

The Max 9s have since resumed flights, but questions remain about the malfunction. A grand jury could be asked to decide whether a criminal charge is warranted. A likely focus would be on repairs to the Alaska Airlines plane’s rivets, which are often used to connect and secure aircraft parts, by workers at Boeing’s Renton plant.

The episode has brought Boeing under renewed scrutiny. The company made grim headlines in 2018 and 2019 when two crashes of another 737 model, the Max 8, killed 346 people. A maximum of 8 aircraft were grounded for almost two years. The company subsequently spent more than $2.5 billion to settle a criminal charge that Boeing had defrauded the FAA, and the company’s CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, was fired.

Under his replacement, Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s shares have risen even as the company struggles to meet airline demands. Production of the 737 Max fell to about half of Boeing’s targets last year as the company was plagued by supply chain issues with key suppliers and problems with fuselages.

Now the company is facing much bigger challenges. Two days after the door plug incident, Mr. Calhoun sent a memo to employees stating that “while we have made progress in recent years in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes, situations like this remind us that we must be focused continue to improve every day.”

New York state attorneys wrapped up their case against the National Rifle Association on Thursday, ending a closely watched civil standoff in which leaders of the nation's most prominent gun rights group were accused of financial misconduct and corruption.

Over the past six weeks, attorneys for New York Attorney General Letitia James have outlined a case that portrays the NRA as a mismanaged organization with little loyalty to its mission to defend the Second Amendment or to the gun owners who have that right appreciate. Monica Connell, representing the attorney general's office, began her closing arguments Thursday by comparing the defendants to children who grabbed cookies from a jar and were “caught with crumbs on their faces and shirts.”

At the heart of the case was the state's portrayal of the group's former leader, Wayne LaPierre, as a benevolent financier who used NRA funds to pay for private jets, luxury vacations and the occasional ride on a superyacht.

“This case is about corruption: misuse of money spent on airplanes, black cars, five-star hotels, hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits, multimillion-dollar deals with insiders, payments to loyal board members and widespread violations of internal controls.” Ms. Connell said to the nearly full Manhattan courtroom.

The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Friday.

Mr. LaPierre, 74, resigned just before the trial began in New York, ending more than three decades as head of the organization. Nevertheless, he had testified in the case and agreed to expensive travel and other benefits. He also spent many days in the front row of the courtroom, as government lawyers — and even his own — described his sometimes troubled leadership of the group.

Defendants, in addition to Mr. LaPierre, included John Frazer, the NRA's general counsel; Woody Phillips, a former chief financial officer; and the NRA itself.

Ms. James is seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages and wants to ban the individual defendants from working in New York nonprofits. Ms. James has special jurisdiction over the NRA because it was founded as a nonprofit in New York 148 years ago.

In closing arguments on Thursday, Mr. LaPierre's attorney, Kent Correll, focused on his client's successes within the organization. Mr. LaPierre had been working to broaden the group's appeal amid challenges from states seeking to implement gun control measures, Mr. Correll said, and did not know what was going on inside the nonprofit.

“He was on a journey to build relationships because he knows that's what he's good at,” Mr. Correll said. He also attacked Ms. James, saying she had “created a hostile environment for organizations she doesn't like.”

Mr. Correll defended Mr. LaPierre's status within the NRA, noting his outsized role in recruiting celebrities to secure donations, trying to convince jurors that the private flights were necessary for Mr. LaPierre to make such connections lay.

“He understood influencers before 'influencers' became a word,” he said.

The trial, in state Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen's courtroom, featured well-known figures from the last three decades of American politics, including Oliver North, a former NRA president who once rose to fame as an architect of American politics. Iran-contra affairand Mr. LaPierre himself, one of the most outspoken defenders of the Second Amendment.

The other defendants sought to distance themselves from Mr. LaPierre, including Mr. Frazer, whose lawyer, William Fleming, emphasized his client's course correction through Mr. LaPierre's leadership.

“John Frazer is the epitome of good faith,” Mr. Fleming said.

Ms. James, a Democrat, filed the case in 2020, alleging a series of fraudulent activities by Mr. LaPierre and other NRA officials, including diverting millions of dollars in NRA funding for personal use, awarding contracts to close associates and relatives, and “It appears they are handing out lucrative no-show contracts to former employees to buy their silence and continued loyalty.”

The state's lawyers seemed skeptical that NRA officials had realized the error of their ways, with Ms. Connell saying the group only began making course corrections after they knew it was being investigated. She compared their actions to burglary and said even burglars who return stolen items should be held accountable.

“That is the behavior they chose,” she said, noting that when Mr. LaPierre resigned from the organization, he walked away with “no discipline, no suspension.”

Mr. LaPierre said earlier in the lawsuit that he had made governance changes while he was head of the NRA and had paid back about $300,000 to the group in April 2021.

Much has changed since Ms. James began investigating the NRA four years ago. The organization, once a lobbying giant courted by presidential candidates, has seen its influence decline.

Membership has fallen from almost six million five years ago to 4.2 million. According to internal audits, the organization's revenues have fallen 44 percent since 2016 and legal costs have risen to tens of millions of dollars per year.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg will convene a grand jury Tuesday to hear evidence against a group of men caught on video attacking police officers in Times Square last month, he said in a statement.

Mr. Bragg was criticized when his office did not seek bail for most of the seven men initially arrested, prompting a judge to release them last week. He has since raised concerns about whether all perpetrators had been correctly identified.

A law enforcement official said all of the men were migrants who had been in the country less than a year, and that four have fled the city since their arraignment, using bus tickets they bought with the help of a church group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“They should be out on bond in Rikers right now,” John Chell, chief of police patrol, said Wednesday of the men charged in the attack. 'Do you want to know why our officers are being attacked? There are no consequences.”

Mr Bragg on Friday defended the decision not to seek bail for most of the men in what he called a “despicable” attack, adding: “We make decisions based on the evidence we have in front of us at the time.”

In a joint statement with Police Commissioner Edward Caban, Mr Bragg said on Saturday: “It is clear from video and other evidence that some of the most culpable individuals have not yet been identified or arrested.”

“We will work tirelessly with the Manhattan District Attorney's office to identify and arrest every person who participated in this event,” Mr. Caban added.

Mr. Bragg said Friday that proper identification is required to “secure a conviction, get accountability and send the right people to prison,” emphasizing the phrase “right people.” His office has already decided not to prosecute one of the men initially arrested, citing a lack of evidence.

The case and the outrage over Mr Bragg's handling of it touch on several current issues. This includes criticism of New York's bail reform laws, which prohibit judges from imposing bail for most non-violent crimes, and the waning patience of many New Yorkers in footing the bill for the care of the nearly 70,000 migrants housed in city shelters.

Most of the men arrested in the attack were charged with felonies, which remain eligible for bail even under changes to New York State's bail law, but were nevertheless released without bail.

The firestorm recalled previous episodes involving Mr. Bragg's office in which the district attorney failed to proactively address politically charged cases and policy decisions. Mr. Bragg has faced pushback from both Democrats and Republicans in such cases, often responding well after the criticism began.

Governor Kathy Hochul said at a news conference Wednesday that she was “looking for judges and prosecutors to do the right thing” in the case. On Thursday, she said of all the migrants found responsible for the attacks: “Take them all and send them back.”

The attack happened on Jan. 27 at 8:30 p.m., when an officer and a lieutenant tried to disperse a disorderly group outside the migrant shelter at the Candler Building on 42nd Street near Seventh Avenue, police said.

A 45 second surveillance video released by police shows the officers talking to several men and then all parties walking away. The video then cuts to the lieutenant and the officer trying to arrest a man wearing a yellow jacket or sweater.

Soon the officers are on the ground with the man in yellow, trying to arrest him. As they struggled, several other men punched, kicked and pushed the officers, who were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

That night, four men were arrested and charged with assault on a police officer and gang assault. A fifth was arrested Monday and charged with attempted assault on an officer. Two others were arrested Wednesday and charged with assault and robbery, including Yohenry Brito, 24, who was identified as the man in yellow who resisted arrest.

The only man for whom prosecutors sought bail was Mr. Brito, who was ordered held at Rikers Island on $15,000 bail. Prosecutors said in court papers that Mr. Brito had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in September and had two outstanding warrants issued for his arrest.

The men the law enforcement official said fled the city were Yorman Reveron, 24; Darwin Andres Gomez-Izquiel, 19; Wilson Juarez, 21; Kelvin Servita Arocha, 19. The official said they were all living in migrant shelters.

The influx of migrants – more than 170,000 of whom have entered the city since the beginning of 2022 – appears to have had little impact on crime and public safety. Last year, the city saw a significant drop in most violent crimes, including homicides. But the number of crimes has risen by 6 percent compared to 2022, and the number of attacks on police officers has risen by almost 20 percent to 2,235.

Former President Donald J. Trump was ordered by a Manhattan jury on Friday to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-long rape, attacks he continued in social media posts, at press conferences and even in the middle of the trial itself.

Ms. Carroll's lawyers had argued that a large reward was needed to prevent Mr. Trump from continuing to attack her. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury responded by awarding Ms. Carroll $65 million in damages, finding that Mr. Trump had acted with malice. On a recent day, he posted more than 40 mocking messages about Ms. Carroll on his Truth Social website.

On Friday, Mr. Trump had already left the courtroom for the day when the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, called the nine-member jury shortly after 4:30 p.m. and warned the lawyers: “We're not going to have any outbursts.” Nine minutes later the verdict was delivered, after which there was total silence in the courtroom.

In addition to the $65 million, jurors awarded Ms. Carroll $18.3 million in damages for her suffering. Trump's lawyers slumped in their chairs as the dollar figures were read out. The jury was dismissed and Ms. Carroll, 80, hugged her lawyers. A few minutes later, she walked out of the courthouse arm in arm with her legal team, beaming for the cameras.

“This is a huge victory for every woman who has stood up when she has been knocked down and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to hold a woman down,” Ms. Carroll said in a statement, profusely thanking her lawyers.

Mr Trump, who had earlier walked out of the courtroom during Ms Carroll's lawyer's closing argument, said in a Truth Social post that the verdict was “absolutely ridiculous”.

“Our justice system is out of control and is being used as a political weapon,” he said, vowing to appeal. “They took away all First Amendment rights.”

It is striking that he did not attack Ms Carroll.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, combined complaints about Judge Kaplan's handling of the case with slogans, echoing Mr. Trump's claims that he was being mistreated by a corrupt system. “We didn't win today,” she told reporters, “but we will win.”

Mr. Trump's appeal will likely prevent Ms. Carroll from receiving the money she is entitled to anytime soon.

Ms. Carroll's lead attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan, said the verdict “proves that the law applies to everyone in our country, even the wealthy, even the famous and even former presidents.”

The verdict far eclipsed the $5 million that a separate jury awarded Ms. Carroll last spring after finding that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and assaulted her in October 2022 at a Truth Social post had defamed. The verdict came after Mr. Trump attended nearly every day of the latest trial and testified briefly this week.

Judge Kaplan, who presided over both trials, had ruled that the jury's findings from last May would be carried over into the current one, limiting the second jury's focus solely on damages. Mr. Trump, who is running for president again, was not allowed to go beyond this issue in his testimony. On Thursday, outside the jury's presence, the judge asked Ms. Habba for a preview of that testimony. “I want to know everything he's going to say,” the judge said.

Ultimately, Mr. Trump, through his actions and words, was his own worst enemy. During the trial, he attacked Ms. Carroll online and insulted her during a campaign stop in New Hampshire last week. In court, the judge warned Mr. Trump that he could be disbarred after Ms. Carroll's lawyers complained that he muttered “scam” and “witch hunt” loud enough for jurors to hear.

In their closing arguments on Friday, Ms. Carroll's lawyers, Ms. Kaplan and Shawn G. Crowley, used Trump's presence in court as a weapon against him. Ms Crowley said his actions demonstrated his belief he could get away with anything, including continuing to defame Ms Carroll.

“You have seen how he has behaved throughout this process,” Ms Crowley said. 'You heard him. He was seen standing up and walking out of the courtroom as Ms. Kaplan was speaking. Rules don't apply to Donald Trump.”

There could be even more financial damage for Mr. Trump. He is still awaiting the outcome of a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that concluded this month. Attorney General Letitia James has asked a judge to fine Trump about $370 million.

The former president also faces four criminal charges, at least one of which is expected to go to trial before the November elections. His civil cases will soon be over, but the bigger threat – a total of 91 charges – still lurks.

Friday's verdict was a coda to two weeks of political success for Trump. He completed a win in Iowa and New Hampshire in the first two 2024 presidential candidate states, cementing himself as the likely Republican nominee.

He has used his courtroom appearances as a fundamental part of his campaign, portraying himself as a political martyr targeted on all sides by Democratic law enforcement officials, as well as Ms. Carroll. His loss to her will most likely linger for a while.

During the trial, Ms. Carroll testified that Trump's repeated taunts and lashings had mobilized many of his supporters. She said she faced a barrage of attacks on social media and in her email inbox that scared her and “shattered” her reputation as a valued advice columnist for Elle magazine.

Ms Carroll told the jury she had been attacked on Twitter and Facebook. “I was living in a new universe,” she said.

The trial lasted about five days over two weeks and was marked by repeated clashes between Mr. Trump's lawyers and Judge Kaplan, who is known for his command of the courtroom. The former president's testimony was eagerly anticipated for days, but he was on the stand for less than five minutes Thursday, and his testimony was notable for how little he ultimately said.

On Friday, Ms. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, asked the jury in a clear and methodical summary to award Ms. Carroll enough money to help her restore her reputation and compensate her for the emotional damage caused by the attacks. Mr Trump had inflicted. .

Ms. Kaplan also emphasized that Mr. Trump could afford significant damages, which come into play when a defendant's conduct is deemed to have been particularly malicious. She cited a video clip played for the jury in which he estimated that his brand alone was worth “maybe $10 billion” and that the value of several of his properties was $14 billion.

“Donald Trump is worth billions of dollars,” Ms. Kaplan told the jury.

“The law says that in making that assessment you can take into account both Donald Trump's wealth and his malicious and hateful conduct,” Ms. Kaplan said, adding: “Now is the time to call him out and now it is time to make him pay dearly for it.”

Mr. Trump was not present to hear her. After scoffing, muttering and shaking his head for the first few minutes of Ms. Kaplan's closing argument, Mr. Trump wordlessly rose from the defense table, turned and left the 26th-floor courtroom. Ms. Kaplan continued to address the jury as if no gross breach of decorum had occurred.

“The record will show that Mr. Trump just stood up and left the courtroom,” Judge Kaplan said.

Mr. Trump returned about 75 minutes later, as his lawyer, Ms. Habba, began her summons.

Mr. Trump's lawyers have cast Ms. Carroll as a fame-hungry writer who tried to create an ever-shrinking profile when she first made her accusation against Mr. Trump in a 2019 book excerpt in New York magazine about an encounter which she says traumatized her. decades.

Ms. Habba, her voice loud and heavy, her tone mocking and sarcastic, argued that Ms. Carroll's reputation, far from being damaged, had been improved as a result of the president's statements. And she said Ms. Carroll's lawyers had not proven that the barrage of threats and defamatory statements the writer received were in response to Mr. Trump's statements.

“No causation,” Ms. Habba thundered, adding: “President Trump has no more control over the thoughts and feelings of social media users than he does over the weather.”

Ms. Crowley, in an animated and impassioned rebuttal to Ms. Habba, rejected her claim that Mr. Trump's statements did not trigger the threats Ms. Carroll received. “There couldn't be clearer evidence of causation,” Ms Crowley said.

The jurors remained attentive during the closing arguments. One of them looked intently at Ms. Kaplan during much of her summary; others alternated between looking at the lawyers, staring at the evidence on the screens, and taking notes.

During the summaries, Mr. Trump's account on his Truth Social website posted about 16 messages in 15 minutes, mostly attacking Judge Kaplan and Ms. Carroll with his signature insults — the kind of insults that have now become very expensive.

Ms. Kaplan said in her closing argument that the only thing that could get Trump to stop his attacks would be making it too expensive for him to continue.

The jury seems to agree in its verdict.

Olivia Bensimon, Anusha Bayya, Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher And Michael Gold reporting contributed.

A jury in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday awarded $85 million to nine people who suffered losses from wildfires that destroyed communities and burned millions of acres in September 2020. The verdict is the latest development against electric utility PacifiCorp over its responsibility for the disaster . to burn.

Last June, a jury found PacifiCorp liable for damages for failing to cut power to its 600,000 customers despite warnings from the governor's then-chief of staff and top fire officials. according to the Associated Press. The jury awarded approximately $90 million to 17 plaintiffs in the case, and found that PacifiCorp was also liable to a broader group of thousands of homeowners affected by the fires.

Tuesday's verdict, which followed a six-day trial this month, was the first case “focused exclusively on the harm of individuals” after last year's class-action verdict, according to lawyers for the nine plaintiffs. Additional trials were expected in February and April.

The utility could face billions of dollars in liability to homeowners.

PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, said in a statement that it expects post-judgment judgments and insurance payments to bring its share of the verdict to just under $79 million, and that it plans to appeal the case.

“The growing threat of wildfires to communities and businesses is greater than to any single company or sector,” PacifiCorp said in a statement.

Tuesday's verdict included more than $6 million in economic and $56 million in non-economic damages, plus additional punitive damages, Nick Rosinia, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said in a statement.

The September 2020 wildfires killed at least nine people and burned more than five million hectares in three states. Exceptionally dry conditions, combined with unusually strong and hot easterly winds, caused the wildfires to burn out of control.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said a jury in Portland heard three days of testimony from victims of the fires, which started on September 7, 2020. A man described how he and his wife jumped into a river near their property while the flames enveloped their houses. At home. Another survivor, a 101-year-old World War II veteran, said he had lost his home and decades of memories, Mr. Rosinia said.

The next compensation trial is scheduled for February 26 and will seek compensation for another nine people affected by the fires, as well as for Upward Bound Camp, a program for people with special needs that was also destroyed by the flames.

Ethan Crumbley, who was often left home alone, texted his mother in March 2021 that he had seen a demon in their house, a demon hurling dishes across the kitchen. Days later, his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, discussed how their teenage son was “excited and excited,” weighing whether to give him Xanax.

The following November, James Crumbley, ignoring what seemed like warning signs that Ethan was having mental health problems, bought his son a semiautomatic pistol. Ethan, then 15, used the gun to kill four Oxford High School students, the worst school shooting in Michigan history.

On Tuesday, 45-year-old Jennifer Crumbley will appear in court charged with involuntary manslaughter for the deaths — new territory when it comes to prosecuting school shootings. James Crumbley, 47, faces a separate trial scheduled for March also on charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the killings.

While adults have been prosecuted before when children commit violent crimes, the Oxford High School case goes a step further by attempting to hold parents criminally liable for an intentional mass shooting. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen D. McDonald has said the Crumbleys are guilty for giving their son access to a gun while ignoring warnings that he was in trouble.

Both parents have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers have said they had no idea Ethan was capable of such violence.

“One of the fundamental principles of American criminal law is that you are not responsible for someone else's actions,” said Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. But Mr Yankah said the Crumbleys provided perfect evidence to test that principle, pointing to what he called a “damning” set of facts against the couple.

“It is difficult to think of a set of facts that are more inviting for prosecution,” he said.

Extensive trial testimony and court documents have portrayed the couple as negligent parents. They drank heavily, fought loudly in front of Ethan, and often left him home alone, despite his shaky mental health.

After James Crumbley bought the gun, his wife took Ethan to the shooting range.

When a teacher reported seeing Ethan searching for ammunition online, his mother didn't seem concerned.

“LOL I'm not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”

On the day of the attack, after a teacher found Ethan with a violent drawing depicting a shooting, his parents refused a school counselor's request to take him home.

After their son's arrest, the Crumbleys appeared to flee to avoid prosecution and police discovered them hiding in the basement of a Detroit art studio. (Attorneys for the parents said the Crumbleys had not fled, but had left town for their own safety, and planned to return for the arraignment.)

It is unclear whether Ethan, now 17, will be called to testify, but his lawyers said they will advise him to invoke his right to remain silent. Ethan appeals his life sentence without parole.

Unable to post $1 million combined bail, the parents have been held in the Oakland County Jail for more than two years. Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl A. Matthews will preside over both trials, which will take place separately at the couple's request.

Since the shooting on Nov. 30, 2021, Ms. McDonald, the prosecutor in affluent Oakland County, outside Detroit, has turned gun violence into a personal crusade. In an interview shortly after the shooting, Ms. McDonald said she saw the attack as an opportunity to promote responsible gun ownership.

She also formed a committee to study ways to prevent gun violence. Spurred in part by the shooting, the Michigan Legislature recently passed a measure requiring gun owners to store their firearms in a locked container when a minor is likely to be on the premises. Ethan said the gun he used was unlocked.

In 2000, Arthur Busch, a former prosecutor in nearby Flint, Michigan, handled a school shooting case there. Kayla Rolland, a first-grader in a suburb near Flint, was shot and killed by a six-year-old classmate.

Prosecutors said the boy, who found the gun in a home where he lived with relatives, treated the weapon as if it were a toy. His uncle, who was charged with involuntary manslaughter for leaving the gun accessible, pleaded no contest and spent two years and five months in prison before being released on probation.

Still, Mr. Busch said the Crumbley case could be difficult to prosecute.

“The fact that they bought him a gun when he was having serious mental health issues is pretty reckless,” Mr. Busch said. “But the more the public looks at this, I think there are parents who might say, 'That could be me. I have an insolent, oppositional child and I'm liable for that? That doesn't seem fair to me. ''

The district attorney in Uvalde, Texas, has said for months that she planned to convene a grand jury to consider evidence from the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, with the possibility that criminal charges could result from the botched police response to the massacre.

The district attorney, Christina Mitchell, said in an email in December that she would “dissect the Texas Rangers investigation” into the shooting “and then present it to a Uvalde County grand jury for review.”

It emerged on Friday that selection for the grand jury had begun, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The investigation would likely take months.

Word that the grand jury had been convened, first reported by Uvalde's news leadercame a day after the Justice Department released a 600-page report that found broad and “unimaginable” failures that delayed the response and subsequent medical care to victims after the mass shooting.

Ms. Mitchell's investigation had been anticipated by relatives of the shooting victims and survivors, who have long said that a near-total breakdown of police protocols by about 370 police officers could have worsened the outcome of a shooting. 19 children and two teachers dead.

The grand jury could be asked to determine whether any of the officers broke the law by waiting 77 minutes to confront the teenage gunman, who holed up in two connected classrooms while some children from one of the classrooms called 911 for help .

Although police officers have occasionally been charged and convicted for their actions during deadly encounters, criminal charges against police officers who failed to protect the public remain rare. According to police experts, the law generally does not require people to put themselves in harm's way, even if training instructs them to do so.

Ms. Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Twelve jurors had been selected to serve on the grand jury on Friday, according to the person familiar with the case; they were expected to hear evidence in the coming days.

Two months before the massacre, Uvalde School District Police Department officers had completed active shooter training, including guidelines calling for them to immediately confront a gunman to prevent more bloodshed. “A first responder who is unwilling to put the lives of innocents ahead of their own safety should consider another career field,” the guidelines say.

Some of the first officers on the scene initially walked toward the door leading to one of the classrooms where the gunman had opened fire, but they were fired upon. That's when they were captured on camera waiting outside in the hallway. The local school's police chief had classified the incident as a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter situation, which would have called for a more aggressive approach.

Federal border agents eventually confronted the gunman and killed him.

At a media briefing Thursday in Uvalde, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said “lives would have been saved and people would have survived” if officers had acted more quickly to confront the gunman.

Mr. Garland said the protocols call for responding officers to “immediately enter the room to restrain the shooter using whatever weapons and tools the officers have.”

Blame for the delayed police confrontation with the shooter has shifted since the day of the shooting. Shortly after the tragedy, top state police official Steven McCraw pointed the finger at local school police chief Pete Arredondo. It then emerged that state police officers were also among those who failed to actively confront the shooter. In its report, the Justice Department focused largely on Mr. Arredondo's decisions, finding that his decisions delayed the response.

Mr. Arredondo, who says he has become a “sacrificial lamb” in the situation, has said he acted to save as many lives as possible, including those of students in nearby classrooms who may have been injured by crossfire.

J. David Goodman contributed reporting from Houston.

An Ohio grand jury declined Thursday to indict a woman who miscarried a nonviable fetus at home on charges of abuse of a corpse. unfounded and could endanger other patients.

The woman, Brittany Watts, 34, of Warren, Ohio, was arrested in October after passing a fetus in her bathroom and attempting to flush the remains down the toilet. Prosecutors in Trumbull County had charged Ms. Watts under an extremely rare interpretation of a state law.

The grand jury returned what is known as a no bill, meaning it chose not to file charges. The case had been before a Trumbull County grand jury since November. Ms Watts had pleaded not guilty.

Had she been charged and convicted, Ms. Watts could have faced up to a year in prison.

Traci Timko, Ms. Watts’ attorney, said she was incredibly relieved and “grateful that justice was served.”

“I am glad that Brittany is now able to heal through all of this and I hope and believe that her story will be an impetus for change,” she said.

The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office released the grand jury’s special report Thursday afternoon and said it would release a statement on the case later Thursday or Friday, but declined to comment further.

Ms. Timko said that when she called Ms. Watts, she was quiet at first and then started crying.

“It was just an emotional rollercoaster she was on,” Ms. Timko said.

A GoFundMe account has raised about $235,000 for Ms. Watts, a receptionist at a medical office, Ms. Timko said.

“She is known all over the country,” she says. “Three months ago, her circle consisted of her mother, her church and the people she worked with. It is quite a revolution.”

Ms. Watts was admitted to the hospital with vaginal bleeding on September 19 when she was just over 21 weeks pregnant, just before the 22 weeks that would have made the pregnancy a viable one under Ohio law. Doctors determined that her waters had ruptured prematurely and that the fetus was not viable. After several visits to a hospital with long wait times, Ms. Timko said, Ms. Watts passed the tissue at home.

The hospital notified Warren City police of the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus,” according to a coroner’s report. Police found the fetus hiding in her bathroom toilet, the report said. The police removed the entire toilet from her home and took it to the morgue to retrieve the fetus.

The autopsy report revealed that the fetus had died in utero – before delivery – due to complications resulting from premature rupture of the membranes.

Police charged Ms. Watts on October 5 with felony abuse of a corpse.

This is a development story.

A jury in Washington state decided Monday that Monsanto must pay $857 million to former students and parent volunteers who said they were exposed to dangerous chemicals made by the company at a school and later fell ill, court records show.

The Seattle Superior Court jury said Monsanto must pay $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages to five students who attended Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, northeast of Seattle, and two parents who had volunteered there.

The former students and parents said they were made ill by chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that had leaked from lighting fixtures at the school, Mr. Jones said. The chemicals in the fixtures are made by Monsanto, which bought Bayer in 2018.

The verdict, which will be reviewed by a judge, would add to billions of dollars in similar awards awarded by juries that have bedeviled Bayer in the years since it took over Monsanto.

Henry Jones, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an email Monday after the verdict: “No one who heard this evidence would ever trade places with any of these people in exchange for all the money the jury awarded.”

Monsanto said in a statement Monday that it planned to appeal the verdict to overturn the “constitutionally excessive damages awarded.”

“The objective evidence in this case, including blood, air and other tests, demonstrates that the plaintiffs were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs, and that PCBs could not have caused their alleged injuries,” the company said.

The plaintiffs include former students and parent volunteers who worked at the Sky Valley Education Center beginning in 2005, court documents show. They claim they suffered neurological, neurophysiological, endocrine and autoimmune problems after being exposed to chemicals at school, according to court documents.

The Monroe School District, which includes Sky Valley Education Center, in Washington state did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.

PCBs were once regularly found in commercial products and industrial equipment, such as lighting, until they were banned in the United States in 1979 over concerns that they would harm people and the environment, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Products containing PCBs are no longer commercially produced in the United States, but the chemicals may still be present in products made before they were banned, according to the EPA.

According to the EPA, there is compelling evidence that PCBs can cause cancer in animals and harm their immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. The chemicals are classified as “probably carcinogenic” to humans, according to the agency.

Since Bayer acquired Monsanto, the company has faced costly legal battles over concerns about harmful chemicals produced by Monsanto, such as Roundup, the herbicide.

Bayer agreed to pay $10 billion in 2020 to settle claims that Roundup caused cancer, one of the largest such settlements. The company has said it has set aside another $6 billion for pending lawsuits and other lawsuits that could be filed later.