Prepare for a chilling journey through the most shocking and disturbing criminal events of 2024. From high-profile shootings to unprecedented heists, this compilation explores the darkest moments that shook communities and made national headlines. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
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00:00It was a packed courtroom, which included religious leaders and advocates calling for a safer subway system after this crime shocked the city.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're breaking down the darkest, most disturbing crimes to have taken place in 2024.
00:14Given the extremely sensitive nature of the events to follow, viewer discretion is strongly advised.
00:20All I have heard is that they were a very reclusive family and they didn't really talk to people.
00:26So people that live around them don't really know them.
00:30The Easter Sunday heist.
00:32We are also following developing news involving a money mystery in the San Fernando Valley.
00:37Authorities are trying to track down the thieves who stole tens of millions of dollars in cash from a business on Easter Sunday.
00:44KTLA 5's Corinne Winter live in Sylmar with more on how all this went down.
00:48This Los Angeles robbery, which took place in the early hours of March 31st, reads like something out of a Hollywood heist movie like Heat or Ambulance.
00:56However, it was anything but.
00:58Thankfully, no one was injured or killed.
01:01But the burglar's haul of $20 million joins the exclusive but disreputable club of biggest ever heists carried out on American soil.
01:08This may have been the area those thieves actually walked through to get onto the property.
01:12It's a lot more remote here.
01:14It's actually right up next to a mobile home park.
01:17And take a look off into the distance.
01:19That's the hole that they entered through a short time ago.
01:22We saw workers out here patching that spot.
01:25The subject of the theft was a Guarda World facility in Sylmar, the northernmost city in L.A.
01:30County, located in the San Fernando Valley.
01:33Authorities later determined that the thieves entered through the roof and managed to avoid triggering any alarms.
01:39If nothing else, the perpetrators were extremely careful about covering their tracks.
01:44As of 2025, the crime remains unsolved.
01:47They will try to determine who had access to the facility, who was aware of the schedule that knew the money would be in the facility and how long it would be the security around the facility and how much time they would have to be able to gain access and be able to move that large amount of money.
02:06Tuskegee University.
02:07In response to the shooting, Tuskegee's president says a new head of security is already on the job, although he did not give any detail.
02:14We also learned today Tuskegee is no longer an open campus.
02:18Students, faculty and staff will be required from now on to show I.D.
02:22As devastating and destructive as they continue to be, there still exists confusion and confoundment as to what to do about mass shootings in the United States.
02:31Tragically and predictably, incidents such as these will appear more than once in our video today.
02:36Case in point, the November Tuskegee University shooting in which one person died and 16 more were injured.
02:43It's always, you know, that you're going to leave Tuskegee knowing that you had a good time.
02:47T says she is still in shock after witnessing a shooting on campus Sunday morning.
02:52She still has a scrape on her knee where she tried to escape the chaos.
02:56What should have been a joyful celebration was cut short in an instant.
02:59The shooting occurred as Tuskegee's 100th homecoming celebration was coming to an end and gunmen fired at on campus apartments at roughly 2 a.m.
03:08Two suspects were arrested and the parents of Latavion Johnson, who was killed, filed a lawsuit against the university, one of the shooters and more.
03:16The lawsuit also names the former chief of the Tuskegee University's police department to security companies and an employee of one company, Joliet, Illinois.
03:25The Will County coroner identifying the victims as the suspect's mother, 47-year-old Tamika Nance, his aunt, 38-year-old Christine Esters, who's a corrections officer at the Joliet Treatment Center,
03:36also killed 35-year-old William Esters, the suspect's uncle, also 31-year-old Joshua Nance, his brother, who was bedridden.
03:44Sometimes shootings and other crimes like the ones we're covering today raise more questions than they do answers.
03:50That is no more true than in the case of 23-year-old Romeo Nance, who killed nine people as part of a seemingly premeditated spree on January 21st, 2024.
04:00For reasons that law enforcement officials are still unable to ascertain, it became clear that all but one of Nance's victims was related to him.
04:08These included Nance's mother and uncle.
04:10Finally, the suspect's three sisters, 20-year-old Alexandria Nance, 16-year-old Alana Nance, and 14-year-old Angel Nance, all shot to death.
04:19We can't get inside his head. We just don't have any clue as to why he did what he did.
04:26Fitting into a common pattern for incidents such as these, the perpetrator took his own life the day after when approached by police officers.
04:33John Hansen, Nance's alleged accomplice, was arrested on three counts of murder, among other charges, that May.
04:39We do believe that the shootings at the 2200 block were the original shootings, and then the two random shootings took place shortly thereafter.
04:47Appalachee High School.
04:48He got on the bus with a backpack, and we believe he had concealed the firearm in the backpack.
04:54We know that he concealed it with some sort of something that he had wrapped around it, as if it was a project, a school project, if you will.
05:00He had obviously stored magazines and rounds in that backpack with it as well.
05:04The sheer horror of the facts of this September 2024 school shooting are disturbing enough on their own.
05:10In just six minutes, 14-year-old freshman Colt Gray killed four at the Winder, Georgia, high school, and nine more were injured.
05:17We know that he entered a bathroom, and he stayed in the bathroom for a few, several minutes.
05:23He took his backpack with him?
05:25Which is not unusual for a student to do if you go up front. Classes were not far off from changing at that point.
05:32The details that emerged in the wake of the shooting were nearly just as disturbing.
05:36Not only did Gray have a documented history of making violent threats online, he also had a preternatural obsession with other mass shooters.
05:43But his father, Colin Gray, was accused of having purchased the murder weapon for his son as a Christmas gift.
05:49Both Grays faced criminal charges.
05:51Four counts of felony murder for Colt, and two counts of second-degree murder for Colin, among others.
05:57And that question has been asked. Why didn't they shoot him?
06:00When he committed to putting the gun down and laying out in the prone position, as he was told to do so,
06:08that threat ends, we put him in handcuffs, and the threat's over at that point.
06:12Lakewood Church.
06:13The shots rang out just minutes before the Spanish-language service was set to begin at Lakewood.
06:19You could hear people in the video saying, calm down, calm down, in an effort to avoid further chaos as people run for cover.
06:26We also got another video that shows people running out of the service and police officers running towards the direction of gunfire.
06:33It is abundantly clear that no locations are safe from mass attacks.
06:37That was made apparent on February 11th, 2024,
06:40when 36-year-old Genesee Moreno opened fire on the non-denominational Lakewood Mega Church in Houston, Texas.
06:46Moreno was killed after a confrontation with two off-duty police officers,
06:50who fired on Moreno after she took aim at them with an AR-15.
06:54Three independent sources confirmed to KHOU's investigative reporter, Jeremy Rogalski,
06:59that the identity of the suspect is 36-year-old Hennessy Yvonne Moreno.
07:04Moreno also went by Jeffrey Escalante in the past.
07:07She has previous arrests for several crimes, including unlawful carrying a weapon.
07:12Although no one else died as a result of Moreno's actions,
07:15her 7-year-old son required emergency surgery to remove part of his brain's frontal lobe after being struck by a stray bullet.
07:22The deceased was mistakenly identified as a transgender woman by right-wing commentators
07:27after it was revealed that she had previously employed the alias Jeffrey Escalante,
07:31serving as an unwitting participant in the ongoing culture war.
07:34We do have reports she used multiple aliases, including Jeffrey Escalante.
07:41So she has utilized both male and female names.
07:45But through all of our investigation to this point, talking with individuals, interviews, documents,
07:52Houston Police Department reports, she has been identified this entire time as female.
07:58She, her.
08:00East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.
08:02We continue to follow the latest developments from East Lansdowne.
08:05The Delaware County District Attorney confirmed the remains of three people have been recovered
08:10from the burned-out home following the shootings and fire yesterday afternoon.
08:14Three more are still missing.
08:16Earlier, the DA said he believed the six missing people were presumed dead.
08:20Another case in which the deaths of those involved have precluded proper closure.
08:24Khan Van Lee took the lives of his nieces, brother, and sister-in-law
08:28before claiming his own in a brutal firefight with responding officers.
08:32After those officers had arrived on the scene,
08:34they were also forced to contend with a raging house fire that they suspected Lee was responsible for.
08:39Did she tell you how they got out?
08:41No, no, we don't know. Suddenly it happened so fast, okay?
08:45Nobody know what happening. Nobody know what happening.
08:49Suddenly he upset and he used a gun.
08:54Seemingly incited by an argument between Lee and one of his nieces,
08:57the shooter's mother revealed that she had no knowledge of her son's gun ownership
09:01and that she didn't believe him to be mentally ill.
09:04As such, it's unlikely that the surviving members of the family will be able to answer their many questions.
09:09And Lee also told me that the family moved here from Vietnam over 40 years ago
09:14and has been here in East Lansdowne ever since.
09:17She also says her son, Khan Lee, was 44 years old, recently divorced and out of work.
09:23She also says he had no history of mental illness.
09:27The Kansas City Parade.
09:28A mass shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl Victory Parade
09:31has left one person dead and nearly two dozen people with gunshot wounds.
09:35As we've seen on our list today, revelry and celebration can quickly turn into panic, fear and chaos.
09:41In this case, the setting was a Super Bowl victory parade for the victorious Kansas City Chiefs football team,
09:47having triumphed over the San Francisco 49ers.
09:50Shots rang out in the middle of the afternoon,
09:52in a crowd estimated to consist of one million participants, no less.
09:56We just heard this big, loud bang and everyone was just told to get down on the ground and get close.
10:03So I grabbed my son and we got close to the fence.
10:05Ultimately, 23 people were shot, with one of them, local radio DJ Lisa Lopez Galvan, dying at the scene.
10:12Two juvenile suspects were charged, and that March, three adults also faced charges.
10:17The source of the shooting appeared to result from an interpersonal dispute between those involved,
10:22as explained by the Kansas City Chief of Police.
10:25We have had 12 patients that we have treated, 11 of which are children, with nine gunshot wounds.
10:32None of those patients, all of those patients we expect to have a full recovery.
10:37The death of Lakin Riley.
10:38The murder case that became a flashpoint in the debate over immigration and border security in this country.
10:43A migrant in this country illegally, now on trial in the death of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student, Lakin Riley.
10:50And what the prosecution revealed today.
10:52It is undeniable that the end of 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student, Lakin Riley, is the stuff of nightmares.
10:59While jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia,
11:03Riley was murdered by undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra of Venezuela.
11:08While Ibarra was found guilty of all 10 charges against him and sentenced to life in prison without parole,
11:13Riley's killing sparked a conservative media firestorm that criticized President Joe Biden
11:18for his handling of illegal immigration and the Mexico-US border.
11:21Subsequently, January 7th, 2025, saw the passing of the Congressional Lakin Riley Act,
11:27which would mandate such immigrants detained by the federal government if convicted of certain crimes.
11:32The bill passed the House 216 to 48.
11:35You're taking a look at the breakdown of all of Georgia's 14 representatives and how they voted.
11:40You can see this vote is split down party lines, except for Democratic Representative Lucy McBath,
11:46who voted with Republicans in support of the legislation.
11:49The first assassination attempt against President Trump.
11:52That's a little bit old, that chart. That chart's a couple of months old.
11:562024 was, to put it lightly, an election year to remember.
12:00Not only did incumbent Joe Biden drop out of the presidential race after the primaries,
12:04leaving Vice President Kamala Harris to hold the bag,
12:07but then-former President Donald J. Trump was the target of not one, but two separate assassination attempts.
12:19While the second didn't end up firing a shot,
12:2120-year-old Thomas Crooks successfully clipped Trump's ear before being killed seconds later by the Secret Service.
12:26While the attempt was scary in itself,
12:28even more troubling is how little information exists about Crooks' decision to kill Trump.
12:33Any evidence that does exist has been found to be contradictory
12:36and largely unhelpful in understanding Crooks' psyche and motive.
12:40Based on the way he dressed, I mean, you know how kids are nowadays.
12:43If you don't fit in with the clique, they're going to come after you.
12:46And that's kind of like how he was.
12:48He would sit by himself, play games on his computer.
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13:09The man accused of setting a woman on fire on a subway train
13:11faced a judge at a Brooklyn criminal court today.
13:14A grand jury indicted him on multiple counts including murder and arson.
13:18Occurring just ahead of the new year, this December 22nd killing is tragically notable.
13:23Not just for the location in which it took place,
13:25but for the disturbing manner in which it was carried out.
13:28While sleeping on the F train of the New York City subway,
13:3157-year-old Dabrina Kawam was set on fire
13:34by undocumented Guatemalan immigrant Sebastián Zapata-Calil.
13:37So the family is going through a tough time.
13:41They are not known to be in the public eye.
13:44They don't like to be in the public eye.
13:46She was loved.
13:48She was not by herself.
13:50Even in that moment, she may have looked by herself.
13:52But there is a family who mourned her loss, who loved her.
13:56Kawam died instantly from her injuries
13:58and Zapata-Calil was arrested at Herald Square Station.
14:01The perpetrator claimed that he had no memory of the event
14:04as a result of heavy alcohol consumption.
14:06Kawam's murder brought about renewed attention to issues of safety and security
14:10aboard mass transit in New York.
14:12If convicted, Zapata faces the possibility of life behind bars without parole.
14:17The next court date here is set for March 12th.
14:20In Brooklyn, Natalie Dudridge, CBS News, New York.
14:23If you are in the United States and need someone to talk to,
14:26don't hesitate to contact the National Mental Health Hotline at 1-866-903-3787.
14:42For more stories, visit nyseagrant.org