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Saturday News on WRAL - Saturday, June 29, 2024
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We're not really going to see a break from this heat, probably until we get into Monday. We're going to get a cold front coming through tomorrow, another heat advisory on the way for us and feels like value is comparable to what we're seeing out there right now. We currently feel like 106 though in Raleigh, Durham 108 in Rocky Mount, that is actually what's going to say, that's our high spot, 109 in Clinton is definitely going to be very, very hot for us in the next couple of hours. Keep that heat in mind, here's a look at tomorrow where we still feel like 109 at three o'clock actual air temperatures there in the low to mid 90s. The difference tomorrow though, I know we have just a few spotty showers and some spots out there this evening, very minimal. The difference tomorrow though, we introduce a severe storm risk and this has continued to further sag a little bit further to the south here, including the city of Durham. It does not include Raleigh right now, but what that's saying is after about one o'clock tomorrow afternoon, we could see some of these showers and storms becoming a little bit stronger with some gusty winds as our primary threat. We start the morning off dry, no problems out there, any church services, things like that, you're looking good. We get into the afternoon, there's lunchtime that starts to push on farther to the south and you can see some of those cells looking a little bit more potent if they were to get going and they move on through by about eight to nine o'clock tomorrow evening. So that's something we'll be watching closely, it is much needed rainfall, we're hoping that the severe limits will stay pretty low. In the tropics, Julian, we now have Hurricane Barrel, very, very active out there, we're going to go over the latest track with this and show you yet another system right behind this here coming up in a few minutes. All right, thanks Anthony, well folks, we're definitely filling the heat today, but some still tried to get out for some fun activities. WRL's Carly Hayes is live in downtown Raleigh at the food truck rodeo that's wrapping up right now and Carly, how do people do in all of that heat today? Well, Julian, it is hot, it is humid and it's not hard to see where the frozen drinks are, all you have to do is look at the long lines out here even as the food truck rodeo is wrapping up. But we are in dangerous temperatures right now, Wake County EMS is events where people are out in the sun for long periods of time. I mean, it's prone to heat emergencies and we have seen EMS responding to some heat illnesses while we've been here, Raleigh police and Raleigh fire also monitoring out and about and some businesses, they're stepping up to help out in this heat. Hydrate Medical we've seen has water bottle fill up stations on every block and food trucks are increasing the amount of water and ice that they keep on hand. I just came back from a break, literally it is boiling out here. So it's like everybody's got to stay hydrated, sit down, put a cool bottle to your neck which I had to do, so we're just trying to stay safe so we can keep selling. You know, from these frozen food truck businesses, this heat is actually helping out their business as people are looking for good ways to cool off. Carly Haynes, WRL News, live in Raleigh. Gotta stay cool out there. Well, in a long way to move Saturday, Durham Public Schools named a new superintendent. Anthony Lewis currently is the superintendent of Lawrence Kansas Schools and will be taking the top job. There he is right there. Now as WRL's Eric Miller reports, the decision comes after a rough school year for Durham Public Schools marked by clashes with staff and the early exit of the last permanent superintendent. The final vote came in a closed door meeting Saturday morning. Durham's board of education unanimously approving Dr. Anthony Lewis as the next superintendent of DPS. He wants Durham Public Schools to be the best. He talked about being a premier educational system. Board Chair Bettina Amstead says Lewis' track record as an educator, both in Kansas, where he served as a superintendent of the Lawrence School System for six years, and as a principal and educator in Alabama, put him over the top. We really want the people to hear and Durham is that we've been listening, we've been learning. Durham's mayor Leonardo Williams agreed, releasing a statement, reading in part, our community operates at its best when the city, county and Durham Public Schools are all led by strong leaders. Lewis joins DPS after what's been a turbulent school year, marked by months of clashes between the district and classified staff over promised pay increases, clashes that led to thousands of Durham students missing days of school and amid the turmoil to abrupt resignations. First, the district's chief financial officer in January, then the last permanent superintendent Dr. Paskel Mumbanga in February. In a statement released by DPS Saturday, Anthony Lewis wrote, "While many great things are happening in this district, I'm ready to work to continue and accelerate those successes. The community also recognizes some challenges remain that we must and will address directly." Eric Miller, WRL News. All right, we have a little bit more for you. Durham Public School officials say they plan to introduce Lewis to the community on Monday. We also reached out to the Durham Association of Educators, the group that organized many of the actions by classified staff. A representative told us it's too early to comment on Lewis's selection. Let's go to this. Three people are recovering from serious but non-life threatening injuries after an early morning shooting in Raleigh. It happened shortly before 5 a.m. at the shopping center on East Millbrook Road, near the Atlantic Avenue intersection. This video is from the W.R.A.L. breaking news tracker around 5-15 this morning. Police say there is no suspect at the time. Juvenile is recovering after being shot in the face and police say they believe it was another juvenile who shot them. Rocky Mountain Police say this happened at a home on Madison Street at about eight o'clock last night. They say the shooting appeared to be accidental. The minor who was shot knew the shooter and police say the suspect is known to law enforcement. They are seeking juvenile petitions in this case. The man at the center of a deadly DWI crash that killed a Garner family of three is in jail tonight and has his first court appearance on Monday. 25-year-old Jordan Porter was released from the hospital yesterday. His charges include three counts of felony death by motor vehicle, maintaining a vehicle for controlled substances, and transporting an open container of alcohol after consuming just to name a few. Porter's bond is currently set at $3 million. Officers say Porter was under the influence when he caused a crash on Memorial Day, killing Tyler Campbell, his wife Susan, and their eight-year-old son Miles. Police say he was driving 85 miles an hour in a 45-mile-per-hour zone. That terrible crash left Garner police shaking and saddened. They and many other law enforcement agencies across the state are currently conducting the Fourth of July, booze it, and lose it campaign. Drivers can expect to see more police presence on North Carolina roads until July 7. The Fayetteville Police Department held a peace in the streets march today. Let's take a closer look. Members of the Police Department and people from the community came together to march against violence. People held signs saying things like, "Give peace a chance," and put down the guns. Among the crowd was Von Dockery, the father of eight-year-old Genesis Dockery, who died after being shot by an 11-year-old. Dockery has become outspoken about gun violence and gun safety in our state. And his daughter's story was featured in the WRL documentary Unsafe North Carolina Kids Dying from Guns. You can watch the whole thing on WRLDock.com. All right, we still have more to talk about. The Fourth of July is just five days away. Can you believe that? And plenty of people are already celebrating this weekend. Just ahead, we'll share guidance from the experts to make sure the fun doesn't turn into a terrible tragedy. Also ahead, a colorful exposition in downtown Raleigh where talented artists create their masterpieces brick by tiny plastics of brick. You slept through your alarm, missed the train, and your breakfast sandwich. And cold sounds like you could use some luck. I'm Victoria Cash, and Luckyland is where people go every day to get lucky. At Luckyland, you can play over a hundred casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Go to Luckylandslots.com and get lucky today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, Boyd. We're prohibited by law. 18-plus terms and conditions apply. Ah, welcome back, you see, Durham right there, a little cloudy, but still, want sizzling out there. But once again, welcome back to countries getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July this week. How about that? With preparations underway, CB Cotton shares with medical and fire experts want you to know to stay safe. As we gear up for Fourth of July celebrations, medical experts and fire officials are urging some precautions. Every year, fireworks lead to thousands of people getting hurt. Almost half of them. Children. About 38% of the people that have addressed their issues in the hospital have had fingers or hands, issues with hands, whether it's getting blown off or partway blown off. According to data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, last year, eight people died from firework-related injuries. Overall, nearly 10,000 were hurt, about 700 of those injuries coming from sparklers, which are often falsely believed to be safe for kids. It doesn't take much to catch the clothing on fire. If I put that up in scam or second, 30-degree burns immediately. So how do you stay safe? Experts say it's best to leave the flashy light displays to the professionals. But if you do decide to handle fireworks, be smart about it. Check with your local fire and police departments on what is legal in your area. Keep a fire extinguisher and bucket of water close by. Be sure to ignite fireworks in an open area and never anywhere near dry leaves or trees. The most important thing is to have the person who's doing the fireworks, the sober person for the evening. And if you use sparklers, consider what you're wearing. Wanna wear tight clothing, not loose-fitting clothing around a fire source, that can then expand to burn anywhere on the body. These same tips apply to fire pits and grills, which can also be dangerous if left unattended. In New York, CB Cotton, WRAL News. Ford Liberty got the Fourth of July celebrations started early today with Fourth at the Fort. The doors opened at three for full evening of fun. There was a demonstration from the Golden Knights parachute team, fun for the kids at Kitty Land, and several concerts were happening this evening. Maddie and Tay took the stage at six o'clock tonight. That's right there on the stage right now. The playing white tees and flow rider will perform later. The evening ends with a fireworks show at 9.45, Fourth at the Fort, is free and open to the public. Well, we know you are counting down, and we are counting down as well. We are counting down the days to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with the games less than a month away. Team USA is narrowing down its roster. Trials for gymnastics and track and field continue this week. Jada Green, all the way from Durham, I should say right here in Durham, is competing in the woman's javelin throw final tomorrow. Tonight, she shared with me how she's maintaining her focus. This continue to trust the process, there's definitely going to be heels and mountains that you have to climb, and climb is definitely hard. Yeah, just trying to, yeah, just continue to trust yourself, believe in yourself. Just try to have people around you that's continuing or willing to push you to get to where you want to be. Making Hillside proud right there, that's a Hillside graduate. Now, Green competes in the final tomorrow at 7.10pm. You can see how she does and watch the final events of Team USA track and build Olympics finals on WRL at 7.30 tomorrow evening, it will be fun. The Brick Universe Lego Convention is happening at the Raleigh Convention Center all this weekend. Day one of the excitement wrapped up at 5 this evening, Lego artists exhibit their work, giving fans the chance to talk to the artists, as well as hear their presentations and unleash their creativity in building zones and meet other local fans. It allows me to actually express my creativity as an extension of my engineering work because I design buildings and so forth all the time as an engineer and so it translates into my Lego work. All right, what are you waiting for? Get on out there. The last day of the convention is tomorrow. You can still get tickets for either of the two sessions. One runs from ten to one, the other from two to five. So creative. Anthony, is that rain I see coming? It's a white lake right there. Little bit. Yeah, we need some rain. And I don't think it's going to be much this evening. Tomorrow, those are going to be our day if we kind of need to get things aired out a little bit, which we do. And I'll show you that here in just a second. There is, though, our beautiful white lake camera. I love looking at this because it just has a lot of meteorology going on in this. First of all, we have the clouds off in the distance, the puffy cumulus clouds, big old cumulonimbus cloud right there. You can see as we kind of geek out over that one, it's really dark. The rain coming down, likely just a shower at this point. If there's lightning out there, of course, if you're at the lake, you want to come inside. I'm not seeing much evidence of that though right now. These are what we call air mass thunderstorms. So they don't move much. It's just the rising air. And then once it kind of kills itself on out, it just dies on out. And that's kind of what we're looking out there as far as the shower and storm activity that we're currently seeing out there. Look at kind of where we're seeing that coverage. Goldsboro, Smithfield, Wilson. There's not much of it, just some spotty showers and thunderstorms. It's not going to amount too much, but tomorrow is going to be our day for that. 106 is what it currently feels like in Raleigh and Durham, 102 in Fayetteville, 104 in Clinton. Goldsboro, everyone's hot. And it continues for us as we get into our Sunday. It'll feel like 109 tomorrow afternoon. That is enough. 105 is the cutoff for a heat advisory. So that's going to be another story for us tomorrow, along with the shower and storm chances. However, it's due to a cold front coming through, and you can see it does bring at least some milder weather there, Monday, Tuesday. By the time we get to 4th of July, yeah, it's still going to be steaming out there across the area as a good word for it, scorching across most of North Carolina. We'll look at, though, what tomorrow brings. We have a severe storm risk outline, including Durham. This does not include the city of Raleigh. Everyone has a chance for some strong to severe storms tomorrow between about 1 o'clock and 8 o'clock. That's the timing that I think is going to be kind of a decent shot for us, at least at seeing some storms with some gusty winds. That would be our primary threat tomorrow. The morning will start off totally fine, no issues for you out there. We continue to go as we head through the day, rather. You can see just kind of a mix of sun and clouds, maybe a stray shower or so at that point, lunchtime. We get into the afternoon, though. It starts to get a little bit more active, especially there's 4 o'clock. You can see scattered showers and storms coming through. Some of those could be on the stronger side. So if it's going to be a good afternoon, if you're hanging at home and just kind of can enjoy the rain, that's going to be what we're looking at. Not a total washout, though, for us tomorrow, and that kind of pushes on out. And then by the time we get to tomorrow evening, we should be a lot quieter. In the tropics, we are not quiet at all. Hurricane Beryl is designated here this afternoon. This is the farthest east that we have ever seen in a hurricane in the Atlantic and in the month of June. We are well ahead of schedule. We normally don't see our first hurricane in the Atlantic until August. And so this is just going to show how warm that water is. 75 mile per hour winds. This one is likely to head toward the Caribbean, could be a pretty strong one here as we get toward the Windward Islands and then some weakening into the Caribbean. We're going to watch this one closely to see kind of what it does. I do anticipate those some further weakening as it gets into the Caribbean. Still a hurricane, though. Still going to be pretty impactful there. 84 on Monday, 87 Tuesday, June. We go to 99 July 4th, 100 degrees on Friday, so that heat is really not letting up any time soon. No, it's not. All right. Thank you. Let's get right to it. Lewis Soccer. Soccer. 2012. A young soccer player watched Team USA compete in London at the Olympics and thought, "Wow, I'd love to be a part of this someday." 12 years later, her name is Casey Murphy. She plays for the NC courage, and she will be in Paris. We hear her reaction to getting on Team USA next in sports. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over 100 social casino style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin, so go to luckylandslots.com, that's luckylandslots.com, and get lucky today. At Lucky Land, the trade horn inside the sphere in Las Vegas screamed often for the Carolina Hurricanes during the 2024 NHL draft. How often are we talking? The canes changed their profile picture on X to that trade alert logo. This Carolina traded three times its first round pick for two second round picks to the Blackhawks, a second round pick for two later picks to the Columbus Blue Jackets and Buddy Don Waddell, and finally, a third round pick to Chicago again, this time for a third round pick in 2025. When the dust cleared, there were 10 picks for the Hurricanes to make. I'm not going to sit here and read every single one of these, because I would probably even get bored of hearing myself talk that much. These picks came in the second round, second round, third round, fourth round, and fifth round. And to the next group we go, fifth round, three in the sixth round, one in the seventh round. This full list, as well as some short descriptions, are on the front page of WREL SportsFan.com. A few notes here. Three come from the Swedish Hockey Leagues, six come from Russian Hockey Leagues, and one comes from Canada, a Quebec League, specifically. His name is Justin Poirier. He's shorter at five foot eight inches, but he loves the back of the net. Check this out. He's the first 17 year old to score 50 plus goals in the QMJHL, since Sydney Crosby. We'll hear from 99.9 of the fans, Adam Gold, and on Fox 50 and WREL tonight as we gear up for NHL free agency, which starts Monday at noon. Let's go ahead and turn to the pitch now. First it was the World Cup, and now for the first time in her career, NC Courage goalkeeper Casey Murphy is representing Team USA in the Olympics. It's a moment that's been in the back of her mind for a long, long time. It's overwhelming, like I'm so excited, and I think that since I was little, I dreamed of reppin, reppin U.S. In 2012, a young soccer team watched Team USA play in London at the Olympics. One player, a young goalkeeper, soaked in the moment. So he had our faces painted, and we were all teenagers. Twelve years later, that young goalkeeper, the best in NC Courage history, waited for a call, letting her know she would be on Team USA. I like could not focus, to be honest, like I went to yoga in the morning, I could not focus in yoga class, I went to lunch, I could not focus at lunch, but the call came later on in the afternoon, and then to be honest, I kind of just flocked out after that. I was just so excited, trying to play it cool, but obviously it was like the best call ever. NC Courage head coach Sean Neha says they're proud of all of their players, but for Murphy, this is special. In my own case, since she was 16, 17, I coached her in the U20 World Cup, so to see her grow to where she's at now, you know, it's a credit to her, her dedication, her commitment, her discipline, it's a great honor for her, and I know her as a club and as players and staff where we're really proud of her. Who knows? Maybe in 12 years, we'll find out Murphy helped to inspire another generation watching in Paris. So it's kind of crazy to think that now, like, I'll be on the field, and there'll be all the fans in the stadium, like, rooting for us. Murphy and the Courage will play tonight at 7.30pm on ION against the Washington Spirit, Julian. All right, thank you, and thanks for joining us tonight. Stay tuned now for NBC Nightly News, followed by on the record at 7pm. 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