At least two people were killed and 17 others injured, including seven children, after a building collapsed in Brooklyn, with additional victims feared trapped beneath the rubble.

The three-story residential building came down onto an open construction site at about 4pm on Wednesday along Bedford Avenue in Flatbush.

Several people, including construction workers at the site, were trapped when the structure suddenly collapsed, according to the FDNY.

At least two victims were pronounced dead, while approximately 10 others were taken to hospitals with critical and non-life-threatening injuries, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a press conference.

‘This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation,’ Mamdani said, describing the collapse as ‘devastating.’

Officials said 17 people were injured, including seven children and one firefighter.

The full number of injured victims remained unclear, and investigators had not determined what caused the collapse, FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito said.

More than 250 fire and EMS personnel rushed to the scene. FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore warned that rescue work at a collapse site is highly dangerous.

‘Every move is choreographed and critically important to patient outcomes and member safety,’ she said Wednesday night, adding that crews ‘have been working methodically and haven’t stopped since they arrived this afternoon.’

The structure began collapsing at about 4pm on Wednesday along Bedford Avenue in Flatbush

Victims were rescued from the rubble and taken away from the scene on stretchers

An NYPD spokesperson told the Daily Mail that five people had been removed from the rubble and taken to Kings County Hospital

One person remained trapped beneath the debris but was communicating with first responders after the collapse. He was brought out on a stretcher at around 4.45pm.

Two more people were pulled from the rubble shortly after 6.30pm, NBC 4 reported.

Video from the scene showed firefighters carrying victims from the debris and placing them on stretchers. Other images showed clothing hanging inside rooms exposed by the collapse.

Firefighters searched through the debris by hand while rescue dogs worked alongside them to look for survivors.

‘It’s devastating. It’s absolutely devastating,’ a resident named Bria told NewsNation.

‘I mean, this community is very close-knit, it’s very tight… I’m at a loss for words.’

She told reporter Marcus Espinoza that she also lives in an older building, adding that ‘this could have happened to any of us.’

A construction worker embraces a child at the scene of the partial building collapse

The New York City Department of Buildings said inspectors were at the scene ‘assisting with recovery operations and conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings’

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‘You just hope that people are taking care of their properties, and everything is staying up to code so stuff like this doesn’t happen,’ Bria said.

‘We just want safety in our homes.’

The collapsed building was constructed in the 1930s.

The mixed-use structure had apartments above a business on the ground floor. Officials urged people to avoid the area, warning of road closures and traffic delays.

The New York City Department of Buildings said its inspectors were at the scene ‘assisting with recovery operations and conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings.’

The building stood at the edge of a lot where a separate one-story structure had been demolished for a construction project, The Associated Press reported.

A person is taken away on a stretcher after the building collapsed

Firefighters respond to the building collapse in the Flatbush neighborhood

Excavation work had been underway at the site before the collapse, and the fallen building filled the construction area with bricks and wood, according to the report.

A neighboring building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure remained standing, although parts of its walls were ripped away. The damage exposed rooms, including a bedroom and closets containing clothing.

Anderson Velez, who lived in the collapsed building, told the New York Post that he was at work when his wife called to say their two children, aged 7 and 2, were trapped beneath the rubble.

‘She called me when the building collapsed while she was inside with rubble on top of her. She was screaming for someone to help get my son out and then the call cut off,’ he told the outlet.

Velez said he later learned that his wife and children had been rescued and were alive.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani addresses the devastating building collapse on Wednesday night

Emergency crews continued searching into the night after the building collapse

Mamdani said earlier on X that his office would release information ‘as soon as we can confirm it.’

‘As emergency operations continue, please join me in holding our neighbors and the members of this community in our hearts,’ he wrote.

Governor Kathy Hochul said: ‘My heart breaks for the family who lost a loved one in today’s building collapse in Brooklyn. I’m keeping them in my thoughts and praying for everyone affected.’

‘My administration has reached out and offered its full support as authorities investigate what happened,’ she added.

This is breaking news – Updates to follow.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) appeared close to tears Wednesday as she apologized for missing a crucial House vote on a resolution seeking to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth, blaming Washington’s notorious rush-hour congestion.

House Republicans defeated Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) impeachment effort Tuesday by a 211-204 vote. Stansbury was among 11 Democrats who were absent when the vote took place.

“Let me start by saying, I am so sorry,” Stansbury said in a video recorded outside the Capitol and shared on social media. “There is no one who is more disappointed in myself than me that I was not here the moment that gavel dropped.”

Still, the New Mexico Democrat argued that her presence likely would not have changed the outcome given the numbers in Congress.

“While I know it is my responsibility to be here, and I know I should have been there, we did not have the numbers to move forward with impeaching Pete Hegseth at this moment,” Stansbury said. She also noted that any impeachment would then go to the Senate, where conviction would require a two-thirds majority.

Stansbury said severe traffic prevented her from reaching the Capitol in time for the long-scheduled 5:30 p.m. vote.

“As the vote was approaching, I ran back to my car,” she said, without specifying where she had been. “I got in my car and began driving toward the Capitol. As I approached, it was rush hour on Independence Avenue, one of the lanes had been closed, and I was stuck in the right-hand lane.”

She said she could see the Capitol from her vehicle and directed her staff to contact the House floor to explain that the traffic outside was “horrific.”

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“There were other members who were stuck in it, and just at that moment, as I was approaching the Capitol, there was a police motorcade that escorted a bus off campus and blocked traffic in both directions,” Stansbury said. She nevertheless acknowledged, “I should have been there sooner.”

“I understand that it is my responsibility, and I am sincerely sorry, but there were definitely factors that were out of my control,” she added.

Stansbury was not the only Democrat to point to traffic as the reason for missing the vote.

Reps. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), John Jackson (D-Ill.), Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) and Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) also appeared to have been caught in the same traffic backup.

According to Axios, Stansbury and several other Democrats were attending an Elect Democratic Women PAC reception at a nearby restaurant around the time of the Hegseth impeachment vote.

The outlet reported that at least one lawmaker abandoned their vehicle and walked to the Capitol to get there in time.

Seven Republicans also missed the vote.

JonBenét Ramsey’s father is pushing back against reports that the Colorado prosecutor now overseeing his daughter’s cold-case murder would not have cleared the Ramsey family as suspects if he had been in office when a predecessor did so in 2008. His comments came as the family revealed that investigators delivered an encouraging update earlier this year.

“After 30 years, if they still think I am guilty, then please file charges, and we will settle this in court based on facts and evidence,” John Ramsey told News Media Wednesday. He was responding to remarks from Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who recently told local reporters that he “would not have” publicly excluded the family as suspects, as former District Attorney Mary Lacy did in 2008.

“They can’t selectively apply the unknown male DNA both ways,” Ramsey said. “They have cleared a number of interesting suspects based on their DNA not matching unidentified male No. 1 DNA recovered from JonBenét’s person.”

John Ramsey speaks with News Media in Las Vegas in April 2022. He is the father of JonBenét Ramsey, the Colorado 6-year-old whose murder on Dec. 26, 1996, remains unsolved nearly 30 years later. (Michael Ruiz/News Media)

Dougherty declined a News Media interview request Wednesday. His office said he planned to release video of his local interview online after concerns that his comments had been taken out of context beneath a headline that read, “Boulder County DA says Ramseys shouldn’t have been cleared in JonBenét’s murder.”

“I’ve never ruled out people in a case that’s unsolved,” he told local reporters Tuesday, according to The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper. “Doing right by the victim demands that I remain open-minded and committed to following the evidence wherever it leads.”

JonBenét Ramsey pictured in an undated portrait. The Colorado 6-year-old was found dead in her home Dec. 26, 1996, in one of America’s most high-profile unsolved cases. (Splash News)

Retired FBI agent Jason Pack, who has followed the case for decades, described Dougherty’s position as a standard investigative approach.

“If new evidence challenges an assumption made years ago, they need to take another look,” he told News Media. “That doesn’t mean accusing somebody all over again. It means being willing to let the evidence change the direction of the investigation.”

According to the Boulder City medical examiner, the 6-year-old died from strangulation and head trauma. Her family reported her missing, then discovered her body in the basement of their home the following day, Dec. 26, 1996.

Since then, investigators have reviewed more than 20,000 tips and hundreds of pieces of evidence. They have also compared previously collected DNA with more than 750 “reference samples.”

Either they believe they have the killer’s DNA — or not.

As News Media has previously reported, initial DNA testing did not link JonBenét’s immediate family to the evidence. Police nevertheless continued to consider her parents potential suspects for years.

“Either they believe they have the killer’s DNA or not,” the family patriarch said. “This problem of selective use of evidence to try and fit things to their opinion rather than use evidence to solve the crime has been the problem from the beginning.”

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The home in Boulder, Colorado, where JonBenét Ramsey was murdered in December 1996 is pictured Aug. 17, 2006. Investigators have said renewed DNA testing has raised hopes of solving the decades-old cold case. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

As recently as last year, police still possessed some untested DNA collected from the 1996 crime scene. John Ramsey has urged authorities to use modern investigative genetic genealogy techniques to pursue additional leads.

JonBenét’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, said the family received an encouraging update from Boulder police earlier this year.

Investigators told the family that evidence had been sent to a laboratory for testing late last year, he told News Media Wednesday. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the testing or disclosed any results, but he suggested it involved DNA.

“We met with them in February 2026, and they had this new message of hope and optimism,” he said. “We took that to mean they were close to sending something off for SNP testing.”

Even so, he said he does not know whether authorities will announce a significant development before the 30th anniversary of JonBenét’s death in December.

“I think if they were super close, they would not be talking to the press,” he said. “Six to 12 months, being super optimistic. Two to five years, no problem.”

Some experts believe DNA evidence could have excluded the family during the investigation’s early weeks. Others maintain that no suspect is truly ruled out until a case is solved.

The late Colorado Springs Detective Lou Smit returned from retirement in 1997 at the request of the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office to assist with the case. He argued that an intruder, rather than a family member, was the most likely perpetrator.

Smit left the investigation in 1998, citing tensions with the Boulder Police Department, which had focused on the Ramsey family as suspects.

“I strongly disagree with anyone saying the Ramseys should not have been cleared,” said John Anderson, a friend of Smit’s and a former El Paso County sheriff who wrote a book about the case.

Multiple potential suspects have surfaced during the nearly three decades since JonBenét’s death, but the case remains unsolved.

Federal prosecutors allegedly sought to recruit a former security aide to Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as an informant while building a potential criminal case against the Minnesota lawmaker.

Abdullahi Mohamed, who briefly worked on Omar’s security detail during an overseas trip, was allegedly offered assistance with his immigration case in return for information that could damage the congresswoman.

According to The New York Times, Mohamed’s attorney, Bruce Rivers, said investigators pressured his client for months to provide details about Omar’s immigration history, marriages and finances.

Rivers also made the extraordinary claim that prosecutors repeatedly told him the investigation was being overseen directly from the White House.

Officials allegedly described the inquiry as “100 percent being run by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave,” a reference to the White House address.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my almost 28 years practicing law in federal court,” Rivers told The Times.

The allegations offer a fresh look at the Justice Department’s investigation of Omar, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing and accused President Donald Trump’s administration of pursuing her for political reasons.

Among the issues under scrutiny is Omar’s 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Investigators have examined whether the marriage was arranged to help a man believed to be her brother secure a green card.

Abdullahi Mohamed, who briefly served on the Minnesota Democrat’s security detail during an overseas trip, was allegedly offered immigration assistance in exchange for potentially damaging information about the congresswoman

Homeland Security officers stand beside unmarked vehicles during a search of Omar’s Washington residence on October 12

Congress has increased taxpayer-funded security for lawmakers, allowing House members to spend as much as $20,000 per month on personal protection, or up to $240,000 a year

Omar has repeatedly rejected the allegations.

Mohamed’s case began in October 2025, after he applied for a green card following his marriage to an American woman in Minnesota.

At a routine immigration interview, officials asked whether he had worked for the Somali government or interacted with American politicians and government officials.

Mohamed answered no, although he had briefly provided security for Omar during a visit to Puntland in northeastern Somalia and had visited her Capitol Hill office.

Rivers said his client’s limited English skills left him unable to fully understand the questions.

His green card application was rejected. Then, in February, the Justice Department notified him that he was under criminal investigation for allegedly lying under oath to a government official.

The felony charge carries a possible sentence of up to five years in prison.

In March, prosecutors summoned Mohamed to a proffer session, a meeting in which investigators question a potential witness about information relevant to an investigation.

Rivers said prosecutors questioned him about Omar’s journey from Somalia, her marital history and an alleged $10,000 payment involving the congresswoman and one of Mohamed’s brothers.

Investigators allegedly characterized the payment as a possible bribe.

According to Rivers, prosecutors offered to help keep Mohamed from being deported if he supplied damaging information about Omar.

Mohamed’s green card application was allegedly denied, and in February the Justice Department notified him that he was under criminal investigation for allegedly lying under oath to a government official

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Mohamed’s attorney, Bruce Rivers, said federal prosecutors questioned his client about Omar’s immigration journey from Somalia, her marriages and a possible $10,000 payment involving the congresswoman and one of Mohamed’s brothers

A man is tackled after spraying an unidentified substance at Omar during a town hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 27

“The overarching theme was ‘give us everything and anything,’” Rivers said, describing the session as a “fishing expedition.”

Mohamed reportedly told investigators that he had no incriminating information about the congresswoman.

He later questioned his brother about the $10,000 payment and was told it had been used to repay a loan, Rivers said.

After Mohamed declined to cooperate, prosecutors secured a grand jury indictment against him in April.

The case shifted course several months later, in September.

Mohamed appeared before a grand jury in Washington on September 3. Rivers said prosecutors granted him immunity for statements that could potentially incriminate him.

The next day, prosecutors asked the court to dismiss the indictment, saying there was no longer a federal interest in pursuing the case because Mohamed had entered deportation proceedings.

He subsequently left the United States for Kenya, leaving his American wife behind.

Omar’s spokesperson told The New York Times that the congresswoman had never directly employed Mohamed and denounced the alleged attempt to recruit him

Rivers alleged that prosecutors repeatedly told him the investigation into Omar was being directed from the White House, describing it as “100% being run by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave”

At a March event launching an anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance, Trump called Omar “one of the ringleaders” and said he hoped she would be investigated

Omar’s spokesperson told The New York Times that the congresswoman had never directly employed Mohamed and condemned the alleged recruitment effort.

“This is a staggering abuse of presidential power and a blatant weaponization of the full federal government to intimidate political opponents,” Rogers said.

In a statement, the department said the matter was “completely unrelated to any current investigations.”

The new allegations follow an October search of Omar’s Washington home by federal agents, as well as subpoenas ordering several people close to her to testify before a grand jury.

Trump has repeatedly called for an investigation into allegations involving Omar’s immigration history.

During a March event launching an anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance, Trump referred to Omar as “one of the ringleaders” and said he wanted her investigated.

Vance later said he had spoken with senior White House adviser Stephen Miller about holding Omar accountable for alleged immigration fraud. Miller was promoted to chief of staff last week.

Omar, who won a fifth term in Congress last week, has denied wrongdoing and characterized the investigation as political persecution.

The White House has not publicly confirmed Rivers’ claim that prosecutors were acting under direction from the administration.

The Daily Mail contacted the Justice Department and the White House for comment. 

Parents in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood are pressing New York City officials and Mayor Zohran Mamdani for answers about a proposed 200-bed men’s homeless shelter planned just one block from a local middle school.

Teachers, families and community members gathered Monday night to protest the shelter, which is expected to open in 2028 on East 108th Street, near Science and Medicine Middle School 366 on East 107th Street.

New York City Council member Mercedes Narcisse, who represents the 46th District, joined the demonstration and sharply criticized the city’s Department of Social Services, according to News 12 Brooklyn.

“You want to put it next to a school — a middle school for God’s sake! These are our children! Shame!” Narcisse said.

Narcisse said the DSS notified her about the proposal last week but did not ask for her input, despite her role representing the affected community.

News 12 Brooklyn reported that the Canarsie facility is part of a larger city initiative to establish 12 new homeless shelters, including three locations in Brooklyn.

Narcisse has asked to meet with the DSS commissioner Thursday to address residents’ concerns. Protesters, however, are urging Mayor Mamdani to attend the meeting himself.

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“I asked for the commissioner, but now, my community says the mayor,” Narcisse said.

DSS confirmed that additional shelters are planned throughout New York City and said community involvement is built into the site-selection process.

“Notifying elected officials and community boards is a part of the public process around siting new shelters. Notification is the beginning of a process that includes opportunity for community engagement,” DSS told Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital contacted Science and Medicine Middle School 366, Narcisse’s office and Mamdani’s office for comment, but none had responded at the time of publication.

The Canarsie protest comes amid a series of demonstrations around New York City over proposed men’s homeless shelters. Residents have repeatedly argued that officials are not providing enough community input before moving forward.

In July, the New York Post reported that the city transferred 110 single homeless men into a former family shelter in Brooklyn. The report said the Department of Homeless Services did not conduct criminal background checks on the men before the move.