Police records indicate that Cornell University fraternity members accused of gang rape allegedly sought to suppress a witness and shield Chi Phi’s reputation.

The Ivy League university has faced mounting criticism since a woman identified in court documents as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit last month. She alleges that seven Chi Phi members coerced her into taking drugs and sexually assaulted her at an off-campus residence in 2024.

Prosecutors previously concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue criminal sexual assault charges. Cornell opened a Title IX investigation in 2025 and subsequently closed the fraternity.

Among the seven accused men, Matthew Ingalls and Jonathan Newell were expelled. Winston Lee and Gillio Lopes were suspended and have since returned to the university. Diego Sarabia, who had already graduated, was barred from campus. Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar were found not responsible for sexual activity allegations and received penalties that did not include expulsion or suspension.

All seven men have denied wrongdoing.

The lawsuit has triggered national scrutiny of the case and the way it was handled by authorities. On Wednesday, students planned a seven-hour sit-in, with each hour representing one of the accused fraternity members.

The student coalition protesting Cornell’s response to the allegations gathered at Toni Morrison Dining Hall at 1:30 p.m. ET and planned to remain there until 8:30 p.m.

The demonstration followed the disclosure of records showing that Cornell police received a tip alleging the fraternity members attempted to discourage a potential witness from speaking out after Jane Doe filed a police report.

According to school records reviewed by ABC News, Chi Phi members allegedly urged a potential witness to remain silent after a campus-wide alert reported a rape on November 8, 2024. The message reportedly warned that “the reputation of all involved and the frat would be ruined.”

The woman later brought the alleged attempt to silence her to police.

“Chi Phi held a meeting essentially to get all of the men on the same page about what happened. I know for a fact there are group messages about the situation,” the witness allegedly told investigators.

She said the fraternity members characterized the encounter as a “consensual orgy” while worrying that it “would be bad for [their] image.”

In a police interview, one of two fraternity members questioned about the allegations said the incident was discussed during a regularly scheduled chapter meeting.

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“We didn’t have a meeting about it specifically,” he said. “It was our weekly chapter meeting. We got through a bunch of stuff.”

Text messages also show fraternity leaders contacted Ingalls after the alert and asked, “When was the last time you spoke to [Jane Doe]?”

“Yesterday… what’s the plan of action?” Ingalls responded. “Should I call [her]? I don’t think she would have reported this.”

Jane Doe claimed the night of October 19, 2024, began with underage drinking at several bars with sorority sisters before she was then invited to an afterparty at the Chi Phi fraternity house, and she ‘stumbled alone’ to meet up with her friend, Ingalls.

She said she then agreed to have sex with Ingalls and another man, but alleged that she was pressured to snort ketamine and smoke marijuana as she became heavily intoxicated.

Jane Doe alleged that she became disoriented as other men joined in, all while the men sent a message to the Chi Phi Snapchat group to say there was ‘free p***y upstairs’ in an invite for others to enter the room as well.

The messages also allegedly included an invitation to ‘walk in and whip it out,’ the lawsuit claims.

She said the horrific night ended at around 5.45am on October 20, 2024, when she lost consciousness and eventually returned to her sorority house.

Three weeks later, she reported the incident to the police, but prosecutors declined to bring charges, citing ‘insufficient evidence.’

During Cornell’s Title IX investigation, Ingalls claimed that he was assaulted by Jane Doe. 

‘After all, you received information that I was sodomized by her while I was incapacitated back in November, and you never once thought to alert me of my rights under these procedures as a survivor of this assault?’ Ingalls wrote in an email.

‘The very fact that I had to bring this to your attention now in February confirms my worst fears: That this process is rolled [sic] with gender discrimination.’

An elderly train passenger in Oregon has been acquitted of attempted murder after shooting a homeless man who allegedly exposed himself and threatened to rape the passenger’s partner.

Michael Grover Phill, 71, said he acted in self-defense when he shot 40-year-old Lance Hicks on a MAX train in North Portland. Hicks had threatened Phill and his legally blind partner, according to testimony reported by The Oregonian.

Hicks, who had a history of mental illness, boarded the train and approached the couple while exposing himself and making threats.

“All of the crotch of his pants is cut out, and his penis is in his hand, and he’s snarling,” Phill told a judge earlier this month at Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland.

During the frightening encounter in the early hours of Jan. 30, Hicks also threatened to rob Phill and sexually assault his partner.

The couple stood up and attempted to leave, but Hicks continued moving toward them. Phill then pulled a handgun from his jacket, shot Hicks once in the thigh and fled the train.

Phill testified that he shouted, “Do not run up on me!” as Hicks continued approaching before he fired.

“I’m sorry to say that I had to [shoot him]. I didn’t want to,” Phill told his defense attorney, Henry Oostrom-Shah.

Phill faced charges of attempted murder, assault, unlawful use of a weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He could have received about 10 years in prison.

The jury declined to convict him for the shooting, but found him guilty of the firearm possession charges.

At a sentencing hearing last week, Phill received roughly two years in prison. Oostrom-Shah had asked for probation without jail or prison, citing Phill’s age, poor health and the fact that a decade had passed since his last felony conviction.

“I can’t and won’t punish him for the actual shooting. But I do believe that simply having the gun in his possession … may have emboldened him to do things that a reasonable person wouldn’t have done otherwise,” Judge Eric Dahlin said while sentencing Phill.

Phill wears an eyepatch because of glaucoma and a cataract. During the trial, he told the judge that he fired to protect his partner, who is under 5 feet tall, weighs less than 100 pounds and is legally blind after losing her peripheral vision.

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He said he began carrying a gun after being attacked in the past, including three times during his 50 years in Portland and once in California, when a man struck him in the head with an empty 40-ounce beer bottle.

“On the transportation system, you know it seems you run into all types of crazy people,” Phill said.

After the shooting, Phill testified that he tossed the gun into bushes and removed his coat in an effort to avoid detection. A Portland police officer spotted him, however, and he was later arrested.

Phill said his previous convictions made him reluctant to get himself—or Hicks—into further trouble.

“I ain’t no rat, you know. So I was just trying to get away from him,” he said, adding that he had been frightened.

“Black men accused of shooting in Portland late at night? I’ve had my difficulties, you know my past with the law, so it wasn’t going to be good,” Phill told the judge.

Firearms are prohibited aboard TriMet trains.

“This shooting on TriMet never would have happened had Mr. Phill not possessed a firearm,” Deputy District Attorney Branden Meadows said in a statement.

“Perhaps he would have made better choices that evening,” he added, noting that Phill could have alerted security officers who had been on board the train, or pressed the call button.

Hicks wasn’t charged with any crimes, including indecent exposure, by prosecutors over his actions that night.

His apparent mental health problems would have made it difficult to prove he intended to expose his genitals on the train that night, Meadows said.

In 2023, Hicks was convicted of public indecency on a MAX train in Hillsboro after the operator said he saw Hicks expose himself and masturbate.

Hicks was not able to give police an interview due to what cops called his confused mental state, and he did not testify at trial or attend last week’s sentencing hearing.

Three years after Israel suffered the deadliest massacre in its history, Eliya Cohen took the stage at the United Nations to describe 505 days in Hamas captivity. Standing beside him was his newlywed wife, Ziv Abud, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre. Together, they sought to convey to some of the world’s leading diplomats what they had endured.

“They didn’t let me change clothes or get a shower, even eat or drink,” Cohen said. “They chained me with heavy iron chains by my leg.” He spoke during an emotional discussion moderated by Dr. Phil McGraw at Israel’s U.N. commemoration on Tuesday.

Cohen said the lights were left on to keep hostages from sleeping, while captors repeatedly entered during the night, screaming to terrify them. They were not allowed to use a restroom, he said, and there were moments when simply staying alive seemed nearly impossible.

To endure the captivity, Cohen said he repeatedly pushed his thoughts away from the violence and focused instead on the possibility of going home.

“Don’t think about the violence. Don’t think about the torture. Don’t think about everything,” Cohen recalled telling himself. “Just continue, stay strong. And maybe one day, you will come back home to your family.”

Cohen was one of 251 people abducted during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, in which roughly 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel, including at homes and at the Nova music festival. The assault became the deadliest single day in Israel’s history. Cohen said he personally lost 48 people he knew.

His wife, Ziv, survived another chapter of the same tragedy.

Abud and Cohen arrived at the Nova festival shortly before dawn with her 19-year-old nephew, Amit, and his girlfriend, Karin. When the attack began, they eventually sought shelter in a roadside bunker intended for about eight people. Instead, 29 people crowded inside.

Abud told the U.N. audience that more than 40 terrorists later attacked the shelter with grenades and gunfire. One man inside repeatedly picked up grenades and threw them back outside until he was killed, she said.

As the assault continued, Cohen used bodies to shield Abud, an action she said ultimately saved her life.

“I lost my consciousness. Eliya was kidnapped,” Abud said. “And after seven hours, I woke up in the shelter. I found myself in a pile of bodies.”

She stopped briefly as she fought back tears. “It wasn’t even bodies. It was body parts.”

Abud said she then discovered that Amit and Karin had been killed. “I needed to sit with the bodies for seven more hours,” she said. Rescuers eventually reached her; she was one of only seven people from the shelter to survive.

“We were four people that went to the festival from the same house,” Abud said. “And I’m the only one that came back home that night.”

For 505 days, Abud campaigned for Cohen’s release without knowing whether the man she loved would ever return. During his captivity, Cohen said, he believed Abud had been killed.

The couple married several weeks before Tuesday’s ceremony.

“But now he’s here,” Abud said. “And I can look forward to the future after we got married.”

She said she hoped the years ahead would include “kids and family because we are here and we survived. And we need to live a normal life,” she said.

Another Oct. 7 survivor who addressed the diplomats was Oriya Berlin, a young Israeli visual intelligence observer who had arrived at a base in the Gaza border area just two days before the attack.

Berlin said she woke on the morning of Oct. 7 believing she was hearing a thunderstorm.

“Outside, thousands of missiles were raining down with a single objective: to destroy my life and the lives of my friends,” she said.

Berlin and four other soldiers ran barefoot and in pajamas into a small shelter. They were unarmed. She said the women initially believed the incursion would resemble scenarios they had studied during training — a small squad that Israeli forces could quickly contain.

Seconds later, she said, they heard vehicles and gunfire. Berlin described roughly 60 heavily armed terrorists attacking the base. At one point, she said, a message appeared in the unit’s WhatsApp group telling soldiers to shout “IDF” in Hebrew so Israeli troops could find them. The broken Hebrew immediately raised suspicions that a terrorist had taken a soldier’s phone.

They remained silent.

Berlin said they then heard another group shouting for soldiers to identify themselves, followed by a burst of gunfire and silence.

Ten hours after the attack began, she said, special forces finally reached them.

Berlin said that after learning how many of her friends had been murdered or kidnapped, she could not remain at home. Although she was offered the opportunity to leave military service, Berlin said she refused and returned as an observer for another six months before later moving into the IDF Public Diplomacy Office.

“I wanted the world to see that the IDF is not just an intimidating military force on a television screen,” she said. “It was also a 5’2″ fake blonde girl like me who simply wanted to protect her home, her family, and her friends.”

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She said she has since spoken before audiences ranging from international organizations to high school students who told her “I was wasting their time because of their deep-seated anti-Israel hostility.” “But I stayed,” Berlin said. “I spoke because the truth demands a voice.”

Berlin said her decision to continue speaking was rooted in the friends who did not survive.

Before the ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz met privately with Cohen and Abud, asking Cohen how he was feeling physically and telling the couple how good it was to see them “healthy and alive.”

Minutes later, from the stage, Waltz became visibly emotional as he recounted a part of Cohen’s captivity that he said he had been unable to get out of his mind.

Waltz said that on the night before Cohen’s release, Hamas tried to make him record a propaganda video claiming he had been treated well. “He refused,” Waltz said. “He held firm. He said no.”

Waltz said Hamas again tried to turn Cohen’s release into propaganda the following day, placing him before cameras and instructing him to raise his hands.

“He refused again,” Waltz said. “Eliya, we salute you. I salute you,” Waltz continued. “You are a proud, strong Jew. You’re undefeated, man” he said with his voice breaking.

The hostage crisis stretched over two years and several rounds of negotiations, releases and rescue operations. Waltz told News Media after Tuesday’s ceremony that he wanted the commemoration to acknowledge both the loss of Oct. 7 and how much had changed since.

“October 7th, 2023, was their 9/11, was their Pearl Harbor,” Waltz said. “More Jews were brutally massacred that day than any day since the Holocaust.”

He said it was important “to recognize the loss” and “hear directly from the survivors,” but also to take stock of the region three years later.

“We have President Trump’s 20-point peace plan. We have a U.N. resolution establishing the International Stabilization Force,” Waltz told News Media. “He’s determined to not repeat what’s happened so often in the past, where Hamas rebuilds, Iran rearms, they attack again, and you have this devastation all over again.”

Waltz pointed to broader shifts across the Middle East.

“Iran is on its back foot. Lebanon has hope, Syria has hope. Iraq has hope,” he said.

He said he hoped the commemoration could combine “remembrance, the perspective, and I think charting, trying to chart a path of hope and peace for the future.”

From the stage, Waltz argued that Oct. 7 had produced the opposite strategic result from what Iran and its allies sought. “October 7 completely, and I think irreversibly, has backfired on Iran and all of their terrorist proxies,” he said, pointing to changes in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and the expansion of Israel’s regional relationships.

He ended with a message to the audience: “America will stand with the Jewish people.”

“Be strong. Be resilient. Be wise,” Waltz said. “And know that what you’re doing is right. Stand with your moral compass and know that this administration, the United States of America, stands with you.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon used the gathering — attended by ambassadors and diplomats from multiple countries — to turn his attention to the institution hosting it.

“Even in this building, the U.N. is trying to demonize and isolate Israel,” Danon said. “They have turned the victim into the accused, comparing our IDF soldiers to Hamas terrorists.”

Danon said he has been told by colleagues that he takes criticism of Israel at the U.N. ‘too personally’.

“Indeed, it is personal,” he responded. “My daughter is serving right now in the IDF. My son served as an officer in the IDF,” Danon said. “He was supposed to be on the Re’im base next to Gaza on October 7th. The last minute, he was released home for the holiday.”

“That’s why it’s personal,” Danon said. “The U.N. tries to demonize all of our sons and daughters, our lions and lionesses who give everything so we can freely live in our homeland. So yes, it is personal. It’s personal for all of us.”

For Cohen and Abud, however, the event eventually returned from geopolitics to something much smaller: the possibility of an ordinary future.

Abud said they hoped to have children and build a family despite knowing that Oct. 7 and the 505 days that followed would remain part of their lives.

Cohen, asked by McGraw what he would say if the terrorists who abducted and tortured him were watching, needed only a few words.

“I won,” Cohen said.

“I won and I’m here.”

He then turned his message outward.

“Stay proud to be Jewish,” Cohen said. “And stay proud to be Israeli.”

“We are here to stay.”

A former CDC chief has voiced concern that the suspected plague infection reported in Russia may involve a laboratory-altered strain rather than naturally occurring bacteria.

Dr Robert Redfield, who headed the agency during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, discussed the case on NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports. “My concern goes beyond the woman who became ill,” he said, pointing instead to the scale of the official response.

Redfield noted that pneumonic plague is exceptionally uncommon and can become fatal within a day, yet it does not typically pass easily between people. He said Russian authorities had responded forcefully by shutting five hospitals and placing more than 200 individuals in isolation.

“That is not how I would expect a case of pneumonic plague to be handled,” he said, adding that the response made him question whether the infection involved a naturally occurring, or “wild-type,” strain.

Redfield also said it would be unusual for a laboratory worker to die from wild-type plague, the term used for an unmodified form of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the disease.

“If she was working in a plague laboratory and there had been an accident, established procedures would normally have required antibiotics within 24 hours of exposure,” he said. “She would probably have responded well to that treatment.”

He suggested that a strain engineered to resist standard antibiotics could offer another explanation. Redfield referred to past Russian biological weapons research, saying that changes to an organism’s antibiotic susceptibility “might explain why treatment did not work.”

International concern grew last week after reports identified the patient as Darya Shipilova, 28, a worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia. She was reportedly said to have accidentally shattered a test tube containing live bacteria linked to pneumonic plague.

According to reports, more than 200 people who may have been in contact with her were quarantined. Five hospitals in the area, including a maternity facility, were also reportedly closed or placed under restrictions.

Russian officials have said Shipilova died from “unidentified pneumonia.” They have also reported that some of her colleagues tested positive for Covid-19 or were suffering from the common cold.

However, accounts from regional media and comments attributed to local officials have fueled speculation that she had pneumonic plague. The illness is caused by Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium associated with the Black Death that killed millions across medieval Europe.

So far, no evidence has confirmed that Shipilova was infected with a genetically manipulated form of plague.

Siberia Realities, the Siberian service of the US-funded broadcaster Radio Liberty, reported that Shipilova was admitted to hospital on September 29. Doctors initially believed she had severe Covid-19 and placed her on a ventilator. She died three days later, on October 2.

It remains unknown whether she was given antibiotics, which can be highly effective against plague when treatment begins promptly.

Russian epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov told Echo FM, a Berlin-based station regarded as one of the country’s few remaining independent radio outlets, that doctors may have misdiagnosed the illness. He noted that no plague case had reportedly been recorded in the region for at least ten years.

The circumstances surrounding Shipilova’s illness are also disputed, with different reports offering conflicting accounts.

Some local outlets have claimed she was exposed after breaking a test tube at the research facility. But the Russian Telegram channel Mash reported a different version, saying she became ill after returning from a work trip to Buryatia, a neighboring region located near Irkutsk and the institute.

Local media has since claimed that a second person has died of the plague in the Irkutsk region, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.

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Speaking today, US President Donald Trump, following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has said he is confident that the case was not caused by a manipulated strain of the plague. 

He told reporters at the White House: ‘We don’t think so. We’re going to find out.’

He added that Russian officials had assured him the situation was ‘very much under control’ but that they were ‘not saying much.’ 

Speaking at the WSJ health summit in Washington DC today, CDC director Erica Schwartz said she was ‘very confident’ that the threat to the US from the suspected plague outbreak was ‘extremely low.’

Amid fears that the suspected outbreak could spread, some countries along Russia’s border have started to tighten health controls for new entrants.

Yesterday, the US Embassy in Moscow renewed its advice not to travel to the country, saying in a statement posted online: ‘The State Department’s Level 4 Travel Advisory (Do Not Travel) for Russia remains in place and states US citizens currently in Russia should depart immediately. 

‘US citizens planning travel to Russia are again strongly advised not to travel to Russia due to risk of wrongful detention and security concerns.’

Internationally, the World Health Organization and other health bodies have appealed to Russia for more information about the suspected plague case.

The Irkutsk facility at the center of the reported fatality sits within a much broader Soviet-era scientific infrastructure that has links to military research.

During the 1970s and 1980s, reports suggest that Soviet scientists studied natural strains of the plague at the research center that could have military uses.

Dr Ken Alibek, a top researcher in Russia’s germ-warfare machine before defecting to the US in 1992, told the Daily Mail that the Soviet Union was previously working to create antibiotic-resistant versions of the plague bacterium for a potential bioweapon.

‘If amongst people who are quarantining, you’ll see more people dying, it can be antibiotic resistant,’ Alibek said.

Plague can take several forms, but its most dangerous is pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and causes them to fill with blood and fluid, leaving someone struggling to breathe.

Without early treatment, it is nearly always fatal.

Symptoms erupt within a day of infection and doctors warn that the bacteria can be spread from person to person via respiratory transmission.

But scientists say it is rare for it to spread between people. The CDC says sustained face-to-face contact with an infected person is needed for it to spread through the air. 

The infection is also normally easily treated using antibiotics, although these need to be administered early to ensure they are effective.

About 1,000 to 2,000 cases of plague are recorded globally each year, which can also be spread by fleas and by handling the carcasses of wild animals that have been infected with the bacterium that causes the disease. 

It is not clear how many of these patients die from the disease. 

In Russia, cases have previously been reported in its Far East where the Yersinia pestis pathogen is endemic. 

In July, Mongolia’s National Center for Zoonotic Diseases (NCZD) confirmed a human plague case in Khovd province in the western part of the country. The center warned that 17 out of 21 provinces in the country were classified as plague-risk areas. 

In the US, the CDC says that about seven cases of the plague are recorded every year, mostly in northern New Mexico and Arizona where the ‘Black Death’ bacterium infects small mammals. It is not clear how many of these cases are fatal.

A man riding a “two-wheeled device” was fatally struck by a pickup truck during the Wednesday morning rush in the Bronx, police said.

The unidentified man was traveling west on East 145th Street in Mott Haven when a pickup truck heading south on Brook Avenue hit him at about 8:25 a.m., according to police.

He suffered severe head and body injuries and was taken to Lincoln Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The 55-year-old pickup truck driver remained at the scene and had not been charged immediately, police said.

Authorities had not yet determined whether the victim was riding a bicycle, scooter or moped.

His name was withheld pending notification of his family.

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The Bronx crash came two days after a 71-year-old bicyclist was killed in Central Park after colliding with a dog that was running loose, police said.

Douglas Adams was riding north on the East Drive near East 84th Street at about 8:20 a.m. Monday when he struck the unleashed Golden Retriever as it darted into the roadway, police and sources said.

The collision sent Adams over his handlebars and headfirst onto the pavement, police said.

He was rushed to Weill Cornell Medical Center but could not be saved.

The latest fatality also followed the death of a delivery worker last week, when a dump truck struck her e-bike in Herald Square and fled the scene, according to police and an advocacy group.

The truck hit the 50-year-old cyclist on the morning of Sept. 28 as both she and the driver traveled west on West 34th Street near Seventh Avenue, police said.

The woman was making a delivery on a JOCO rental e-bike and was pronounced dead at the scene.