The family of the ice hockey player who died after his throat was slashed by a skate during a game have said they knew he was “really in trouble” as soon as it happened.
The American player Adam Johnson’s aunt Kari was watching him play for the Nottingham Panthers via a livestream with his father and grandmother when he was fatally injured last Saturday.
“It was terrible, it was horrific, we didn’t know what to do,” she told Sky News from Minnesota in the US. There was “nothing we could do”, she said.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:21
‘He was such a kind soul’
The 29-year-old had been playing at Sheffield Arena during his team’s derby clash against Sheffield Steelers last Saturday when the freak accident happened – and he died of his injuries in hospital.
A vigil is being held this evening at the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, where the Panthers are based. Neither the Panthers nor the Steelers are playing this weekend.
“It means a lot to us to see how much everybody thought of our boy,” Ms Johnson said of the vigil. “He liked it there [Nottingham], he thought the fans were great, he was meeting some of them and really enjoying it.
“It means a lot to our family. It means the world.”
She described watching the game via a livestream with his family, and how they “knew right away he was in trouble”.
One of his teammates eventually got hold of his phone and called Johnson’s father, saying he would keep in touch.
After hearing Johnson had died, his aunt said: “We all just broke down – it was a mess, it was a nightmare, it was like it wasn’t real. We were in shock, we couldn’t believe this was happening.”
Ms Johnson described her nephew as a “kind soul” and a “private kid” who would “never would have wanted to be in the limelight like this”.
He simply wanted to be “good at hockey and have fun”, she said, adding that he was “having the time of his life in the UK” and was planning to get engaged to his girlfriend.
Ms Johnson thinks they should be. “When kids start playing in youth hockey, if you get them used to wearing it it’s just going to be like any other piece of equipment,” she said.
A funeral will be held on Sunday in Johnson’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged and nearly 10,000 are without power after a tornado smashed through parts of Omaha, in the US state of Nebraska.
A number of tornadoes were reported in the state but the worst hit the suburbs to the northwest of the city, which has a population of 485,000.
The homes damaged were mostly in the Elkhorn area, police said, and emergency workers were going door-to-door to help people trapped in the debris.
Elkhorn residents Pat and Kim Woods said they took shelter when the tornado was about 200 yards away.
“We could hear it coming through,” Mr Woods said.
“When we came up, our fence was gone and we looked to the northwest and the whole neighbourhood’s gone.”
Mrs Woods added: “The whole neighbourhood just to the north of us is pretty flattened.”
More on Nebraska
Related Topics:
But while some homes in the area were destroyed, others appeared untouched.
There were no reports of deaths but a number of people suffered minor injuries, according to Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer, who added: “People had warnings of this and that saved lives.”
One of the other tornados passed through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city’s airport, which was closed for almost an hour.
Passengers were sent to storm shelters, according to Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy.
The terminal was not affected but other airport buildings “sustained damage”.
The airport has now reopened, although flight delays are expected late into Friday.
The tornado then crossed the Missouri River into Iowa, where damage reports are still coming through.
Daniel Fienhold, who owns a steakhouse in Crescent, Iowa, said he watched the weather from outside with his daughter and employees.
“It started raining, and then it started hailing, and then all the clouds started to kind of swirl and come together, and as soon as the wind started to pick up, that’s when I headed for the basement, but we never saw it,” he said.
Three workers at an industrial plant were injured when another tornado struck near the Nebraska city of Lincoln on Friday afternoon.
The building collapsed with around 70 people inside and several had to be rescued from the debris.
The weekend is not likely to bring any relief – The Weather Service has issued tornado watches across parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
Student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza continue to spread across the US, following last week’s arrest of more than 100 demonstrators at Columbia University.
There have been nearly 550 protest-related arrests in the past week at major US universities, according to a tally by news agency Reuters.
The students want universities to cut ties with companies helping Israel’s war in Gaza and, in some cases, with Israel itself.
Some universities have called in police to end the demonstrations, resulting in clashes and arrests, while others appear to be biding their time as the academic semester enters its final days.
The University of Southern California cancelled its main graduation ceremony, set for 10 May, after the arrests of 93 people at the Los Angeles campus on Wednesday.
At Boston’s Emerson College, 108 people were arrested overnight with video showing students linking arms to resist officers, who then moved forcefully through the crowd, throwing some students to the ground.
Student protester Ocean Muir said: “There were just more cops on all sides.
More from US
“It felt like we were being slowly pushed in and crushed.”
She said police lifted her by her arms and legs to carry her away and she was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
Advertisement
At Emory University’s Atlanta campus, 28 people were detained and the local branch of activist group Jewish Voice For Peace said police used tear gas and tasers on protesters.
Police there admitted using “chemical irritants” but denied using rubber bullets.
Cheryl Elliott, Emory’s vice president for public safety, said the aim was to clear the area of a “disruptive encampment while holding individuals accountable to the law” but human rights groups questioned the “apparent use of excessive force” against free speech.
Charges were dropped, meanwhile, against 46 of the 60 people detained by police at the University of Texas.
At Indiana University Bloomington, police with shields and batons shoved into a line of protesters, arresting 33 people.
At City College of New York, police officers retreated from protests, to cheers from the hundreds of students gathered on the lawn on the Harlem campus.
At California State Polytechnic University in Humboldt, students have been barricaded in a campus building since Monday, with staff trying to negotiate.
At University of Connecticut one protester was arrested and tents torn down, while protests continued at Stanford University and the New Jersey campus of Princeton University.
Police cleared tents and arrested more than 100 people last week but students put the tents up again in an area where graduation ceremonies will be held in a few weeks.
The administration has given protesters until Friday to leave.
There have been accusations that some pro-Palestinian protesters have harassed or abused Jewish students but protesters blame outsiders trying to infiltrate and malign their movement.
Protest leaders admit there has been abuse directed at Jewish students but insist the protests are not antisemitic.
Some of the universities have seen counter-protests from Israel supporters.
The hearing at the Supreme Court concerned the 6 January riots, election subversion and Trump’s alleged involvement. It is a crime against democracy, at the serious end of the legal jeopardy he faces.
His lawyers argued he should be shielded by immunity from prosecution for what he did while acting as president.
The prosecution’s case is that he was acting as a private citizen, not in an official capacity.
Trump wasn’t present at the hearing in Washington DC, but he will have liked what he heard.
Advertisement
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
The prevailing legal assessment is that discussions with the nine-judge panel indicate that, while they didn’t necessarily agree with his argument for immunity, they have enough questions to delay the prosecution further.
A majority appear to think that presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for their official actions, even if the exact parameters are unclear.
What is clear is that if the trial court is instructed to determine which of Trump’s allegedly illegal acts qualify for immunity as official acts, it will be an extended process that could easily push the trial beyond the November election.
Such a scenario would suit Trump. The less criminal exposure he has before America votes, the better for him.
If he can push the trial past November, and win back the White House, he can use the power of office to make the charges go away.
The New York hush money trial is the only one of four criminal prosecutions to have begun.
The Supreme Court appears set to shorten the odds on it being the only one before America goes to the polls.
It is the pressing matter of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the man who would be president, and it’s a race against time.
This stress test of the fundamentals of American democracy and rule of law gets ever more stressful.