How a three-year-old TikTok post helped capture a suspect in an unsolved murder
CNN
Joana Peca was gunned down in St. Petersburg, Florida, in July 2021 in front of her two young children. Last week police arrested a suspect – her ex-boyfriend – in Mexico after someone spotted him in a TikTok video.
Eleni Peca’s phone buzzed with a call she had feared would never come. The man accused of killing her only child, Joana Peca, three years ago in St. Petersburg, Florida, had finally been captured. US Marshals arrested him in Mexico City after a TikTok user recognized him from a photo in a video, said the detective on the other end of the line. The suspect, Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams, had just been extradited to the United States, police told her. Authorities had waited until he was in custody in Pinellas County to notify her family. Peca was in disbelief when she got the call Friday from detective Brian Bilbrey of the St. Petersburg Police Department. Overwhelmed with emotion, she excused herself to gather her thoughts. “I can’t explain the feeling I had that moment. It was the combination of happiness and pain,” she said at a news conference Tuesday. “I remember going like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God! Are you sure?’ I was going back and forth around the house.”
Even after a press conference Thursday morning from the new leader of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Tom Homan, it’s still not clear exactly how much the mission will change in the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s killing.
As the Trump administration prepared late last year for the US military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a handful of officials began studying the US approach to oil resources in Iraq following the 2003 US invasion.
Bipartisan senators blocked a massive spending bill Thursday, as eleventh-hour talks continue to avoid a costly partial government shutdown that looms at the week’s end.
After weeks of nationwide protests, Iran’s Supreme Leader ordered a violent crackdown that left thousands dead. President Trump, who had urged demonstrators to remain in the streets, ultimately did not intervene — a decision that now shapes the narrow set of options before him.
As tensions between the US and Cuba rise to the highest levels since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the mood was grim at a recent staff meeting at the US Embassy in Havana.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar launched a Democratic bid for governor on Thursday, pledging to unify her state and move beyond a deadly battle with the federal government over immigration.
White House Border czar Tom Homan will address the press in Minneapolis after being sent to take the reins on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. President Donald Trump dispatched Homan following the fatal shooting of two US citizens in Minneapolis. Follow for live updates
Vague descriptions of presidential signing ceremonies, policy meetings and industry executive sit downs — mostly behind closed doors — began peppering President Donald Trump’s public schedule at the end of last year.
Stephen Miller has sought this week to distance himself from the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis. But Miller has been the architect of Trump’s aggressive deportation push.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping deployment of National Guard troops to several major cities across the United States cost taxpayers approximately $496 million from June through December last year, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
President Donald Trump is weighing a major new strike on Iran after preliminary discussions between Washington and Tehran over limiting the country’s nuclear program and ballistic missile production failed to make progress, according to people familiar with the matter.
The White House and Senate leaders are moving closer to a deal to avert a government shutdown but are seeking to resolve final sticking points in eleventh-hour negotiations ahead of Friday’s deadline, according to several sources familiar with the talks.
More than a million fewer people have signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage for 2026, according to federal data released Wednesday. The drop comes after the expiration of the enhanced federal premium subsidies caused monthly payments to skyrocket for many enrollees.