Oklahoma authorities searching for two missing teenagers have discovered the bodies of seven people at a property.
Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice said the bodies were believed to include those of 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer, along with Jesse McFadden, a registered sex offender authorities had said the teenagers were seen travelling with.
He said the state medical examiner will have to confirm the identities of the victims, but “we believe that we have found the persons”.
“Our hearts go out to the families and friends, schoolmates and everyone else.”
He said the other bodies likely included members of McFadden’s family. He declined to provide further details, including how the seven died.
Image: Jesse McFadden. Pic: Oklahoma Department of Corrections
It comes after officials issued an amber alert early on Monday saying the two teenagers were missing, but it was called off later the same day after the bodies were discovered at the property near the city of Henryetta.
“Brittany was an outgoing person,” her father, Nathan Brewer told television station KOTV.
“She was actually selected to be Miss Henryetta coming up in July for the National Miss Pageant in Tulsa, and now she ain’t gonna make it because she’s dead. She’s gone.”
The Oklahoma Sex Offender registry shows a Jesse Lee McFadden, 39, living at the address where the bodies were found.
Advertisement
Oklahoma Department of Corrections prison records show McFadden was convicted of first-degree rape in 2003 and released in October 2020.
Court records show he was scheduled to go on trial on Monday on charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and possession of child pornography.
Henryetta Public Schools said in a post on its website: “At this time we are all grieving over the tragedy of the loss of several of our students.
“Our hearts are hurting, and we have considered what would be best for our students in the coming days. We will have school, and this will be an extremely difficult day.”
Gerald Davidson, a spokesman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, said an individual on Monday told the violent crime task force in the Okmulgee County District Attorney’s office that the two girls might be in the presence of someone at the property on Holly Road just outside of Henryetta.
Sheriff’s deputies went to the scene twice. The first time, they did not make contact with anyone, but on their second visit they discovered evidence that led them to the bodies, he added.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.
“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.
“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.
The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.
The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:26
TV advert deepens trade rift between Trump and Canada
In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”
The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.
The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.
The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.
He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.
Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.
Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.
The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.
Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.
He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.
The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.
Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.
Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.
The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.
Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.
Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.
US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.
The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.
The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.
No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:50
Trump-Xi meeting: Three key takeaways
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
6:44
Is Trump trying to topple Maduro?
The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.
It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.
Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.
Image: US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.
A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.
The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.
In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.