ABC11 Eyewitness News - Eyewitness News at 11pm - September 18, 2026

Episode Date: September 19, 2026

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Right now, live coverage from your local news leader, preparing you for tomorrow starting tonight and your first alert forecast. Here's what's happening where you live. This is ABC 11 eyewitness news. Tonight on eyewitness news after multiple incidents of racial harassment on UNC's campus, Congressman Valerie Fushi is raising some safety concerns. We're hearing from some of those students who have dealt with this harassment as they tell us about their concerns with the university's response. But first here at 11 tonight, we're taking a look at your first alert weather forecast after severe storms made their way through Central North Carolina this evening causing damage in some places. We're glad you're joining us here for the news at 11. I'm Steve Daniels. And I'm Lauren Johnson. Today was a scorcher as we saw temperatures yet again rise into the 90s and the strong humidity made its return as well. While a level one risk was in place earlier for damaging winds, that threat has now passed.

And tonight we're drier with only a few spotty showers expected overnight. Let's get you over to meteorologist Cruz Medina. or look at your first alert weather forecast. Cruise, what are people expecting for the weekend? Well, it's trending dryer, which is a good thing. But looking back at what we saw this evening, this is not how you want to start off a weekend. We had multiple damage reports,

including parts of the triangle, especially eastern Wake County, down into Johnson, Harnett County, and into the sandhills. Back in the western portion, areas like Chatham County, Lee and Moore counties, really taking the brunt of some of the damaging winds caused by severe thunderstorms earlier today.

So thankfully it is a little quieter. We still have some cloud cover lingering and a few very spotty showers out there tonight. Through the rest of tonight, there could be a few more of those that pop up as well. Tipters are not going to cool down much. So anytime you have cloud cover in place, it almost acts like a blanket. It does not allow the atmosphere to cool down that much. So that's what we're going to see for tonight. South winds will keep us around 70 degrees to start the day tomorrow. It's going to be mostly cloudy when you wake up. There could be a spotty shower in the morning. I mentioned that rain chance trending down right now at about 30%. That's down from 40% earlier.

And then in the afternoon, we're expecting to see brighter skies. So there will be at least some peaks of sun in the mix. Still some cloud cover holding on. But by the time we get into Sunday, it's looking much, much brighter and better. It'll also be warmer. So you're not a fan of the lower 80s. We've got some upper 80s in the forecast. But we've also got some fall temperatures in next week's forecast.

We'll be talking about that coming up in just minutes. Back to you. We'll see you then. Take a moment. Download that free eyewitness news app. It'll help you track those changing weather conditions on the go to get started. Search for ABC 11 in your phone's app store. New here at 11 after two racially motivated incidents at UNC Chapel Hill. Triangle Congresswoman Valerie Fushi is stepping in now. We've been following these cases very closely. The first happened at the end of August when police say Keegan Wilson disturbed black students and made some racially charged threats. The other case happened days earlier when Taiwanese students were racially harassed by a group of white men during. a campus tour. Jemice Price joining us live in the triangle tonight after talking with students who say they were harassed. Jamies, it sounds like they're still processing what they experienced. Exactly, Steve.

And now those students are getting a lot of support. Some of that support coming from the Congresswoman Representative Valerie Fouchi. Those students really want to know why this happened and what's being done to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now, we have covered both of those racially motivated instances that happened on campus. We are also demanding answers and now the Congresswoman is doing the same. Our campus shouldn't be like this. Chao Zhang Lu is still trying to find the words after he says he was racially harassed on campus.

This is really tough to process for me. We shouldn't tolerate racial harassment on our campus. Full stop. It happened on August 29th after a welcome party hosted by the UNC Taiwanese Student Association. Following the party, a group of students went on a group of students went on a tour of the campus and it brought him here. I spoke to some of those students Friday night who were on the tour and they said what happened next has rattled international students on campus. We passed this this alley there is five or six

male and white male that appears to be like undergrad student that walk back us and then as they walk back us they try to mimic the monkey like so they put their hands on the ground and walk towards us. That never comes through my mind that someone would do this kind of harassment on our campus. The students say they contacted the university compliance office and UNC police. They were told there is video of the ordeal. Police has a footage.

So we are in the limbo like, okay, our police still working on it. Then it's hard for us to first try to figure out what kind of resources that we can use. This is one of two racially charged incidents that happened on campus this semester. The other involved black students who were harassed at Green Law Hall. Now U.S. Congresswoman Valerie Fushi is calling on the university chancellor Lee Roberts to address the problems. We are also very appreciate Congresswoman Fushi has reiterated again and then we affirmed, we validate that with the Taiwanese Student Association. These incidents are not tolerable in our community.

Fushi sent this letter where she asked directly, how is your administration working to make sure students, particularly students of color, feel safe on campus? It's a question students are also asking. We wish we can have a more open protocol on how you see you deal with this kind of hate harassment incident on campus. And tonight we did hear back from a university spokesperson who said protecting the safety and the well-being of our campus community remains a critical priority. They also acknowledge receiving the letter from Congresswoman Fushi and appreciates the engagement and plans to respond soon.

Jimmy's Price, ABC 11, eyewitnesses. And the students say that University of Police have that video, so let's hope that leads to an investigation and some results, some resolve for these students. Yeah, hard to hear them speaking about that experience. James, thank you. The UNC Chapel Hill graduate student charged with killing her professor on campus now knows his fate. Tiley Shee appeared in Orange County Court today for a competency hearing. Two experts testified about his mental state at the time of the shooting three years after UNC professor Zizi Shan was killed on campus. Tiley Shee will have the murder charge against him dismissed.

In court, two doctors testified extensively about she's mental state before, during, and after that shooting. described paranoia, hallucinations, and a delusional belief system involving Yon. District Attorney Jeff Neiman says both the state and defense presented expert opinions, asserting she could not understand the wrongfulness of his actions. The judge found she not guilty by reason of insanity. He will be involuntarily committed to a state hospital for an indefinite period. A Wake County family is in mourning tonight after their young soldier died this week when a Humvee rolled over during the training exercise in Texas. The Army says private First class Ethan Brewer died Monday while he was riding in a front line ambulance during a training exercise.

The rollover incident also injured another soldier. Brewer graduated from Apex High School in 2025 before joining the Army as a medic. Brewer started serving at Fort Hood in early 2026. Military experts say they've seen an uptick of injuries tied to training exercises in recent years. It actually did surprise me for that type of vehicle. Usually I've seen other kind of vehicles rollover, but a home vehicle. is so low and wide. We actually have one. And I know that top that goes on the medic vehicles, you know, depending on those rate of speed and how they cut the wheel.

The other soldier injured during the rollover has been released from the hospital. Army officials say they are still investigating the incident. New here at 11, a person riding a bike was hit by a car tonight on the east side of Raleigh. It happened at the intersection of Newbern Avenue and Treywick Road right outside the belt line this this evening. The person was taken to wake med with non-life threatening injuries. Raleigh police are now investigating and will bring you updates as we learn more. Today Durham formally introduced Stephanie Martis as the new police chief. Chief Martis was officially sworn in with her mother and son by her side at the Deepak.

She has nearly 25 years of service with the Greensboro Police Department where she had a number of positions eventually becoming assistant chief. She honored the lives of everyone killed in Durham this year by saying their names at this ceremony. This is what she had to say to Durham residents. as she moves into this new role. To the community of Durham, you have welcomed me with open arms. I truly believe that the Lord has prepared me for such a time as this. This city, this community, it's vibrant. Chief Marta says she chose today for her swearing-in ceremony because it's her son Jackson's 20th birthday.

She's the department 17th chief and fourth female chief. In Raleigh, a community is coming together using poetry as a way of helping people heal from trauma. On stage at the juiced juice bar in the Washington-Darris neighborhood, people are processing their trauma in a safe space. They gather around a makeshift stage and one-by-one people who have survived shootings and prison, addiction and abuse, stand up and tell the room exactly what they've been through. Geraldine Al-Shame, a longtime community advocate, helps organize these nights of spoken word. I want people to know that there is a place that they can come and don't have to be shy about the trauma that they've been through. The thing about trauma is, you know, healing comes with conversation. Healing comes with getting it out.

The spoken word nights at Juist help people leave their burdens right there on stage and find community in an unlikely place. Very therapeutic for everyone who makes it up there to the stage. and grabs the microphone. A special gathering. Still to come at 11, AI, creeping into just about every part of our lives. And one Wake County school says they're not going to fight this. We're learning more about WICTEC's move to add AI to the curriculum of every one of their disciplines.

And speaking of AI tonight, we're learning it may have caused a close call for the U.S. military. The latest on faulty AI-assisted intel that almost kicked off a geopolitical conflict. And Cruz is with us to give us a little lesson about fall. All right. 70s tonight. And if you're looking forward to 70s for highs, we've got some of those in the seven-day forecast. But just a heads up, the official start of fall is next Tuesday at 805. That's September 22nd. And we've got the fall temperatures to match. The details coming up in your seven-day

forecast. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement. And nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury.

When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us

and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Well, love it or hate it, AI is here to stay and it's creeping into more and more parts of our daily lives. So one Wake County School says we're going to teach students how to ride this wave.

Here's how Wake Tech is preparing kids for a future that's already arrived. And the new run an analysis based on that information. I think it's impacted my career decisions quite a bit. I mean, it's something you really need to look forward towards the future. Like, will my career actually be there when I graduate? AI is creeping into almost every job.

That's why at Wake Tech, they're looking to thread AI into the curriculum of every discipline. Artificial intelligence is a ubiquitous technology. It's not something that just a few people use, a technology that is a, you know, We're not creating a new AI program, although we have many AI courses, but we are attempting to thread throughout the different programs at Wake Tech. Last year at Wake Tech, we had 76,000 total students, half that many degree students. But if you look, we had students across 33 disciplines take some type of AI course. Trim that part away. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see it. These architecture students are learning how to use AI in their process. They, along with their professors,

realize ignoring the changes coming to the job market is not preparing for the future. You don't want to be 100% dependent on AI, but you don't want to outright just refuse it either because it is a tool that can help you. Professors are trying to take a more active approach in showing students how to use AI as a tool to improve their work. One of these new strategies and design and techniques and tools and software that I need to know that other people don't know. And that makes them an even stronger candidate for working in a design office. Careers like architecture have gone through a lot of changes. Massive offices filled with mechanical pencils and paper are replaced by desktop computers and CAD programs. While artificial intelligence is a huge disruptor, there are still lessons from the past,

and even parts of the industry are coming to Wake Tech to learn from the students themselves. We had an auto desk, which is the people who own auto-cass. had Revit and a lot of programs that we use within our program come in and answer a lot of questions about how they're tackling the AI problem or how they're integrating it with their systems. And it was really eye-opening to see how the people who are actually making the software that we're using are starting to tackle that question. That's easier. President Scott Rawl says he hears a lot of concerns about artificial intelligence,

but he feels the most important thing to do in higher education is to learn how to ride the weight. What I do think is we want our students at Wake Tech to be riding on the top of that wave, not pulled over by the wave. And so what we have to do as a jobs-focused college is we have to be very flexible, which is our nature. There are going to be some program areas that have to be shifted. From baking to biotech, there is an AI aspect of it that has to be threaded into those programs. And President Rawls says it's important to not just create AI users in these programs, but AI problem solvers because he believes artificial intelligence can be a tool, but it can also be a crutch. As the country grapples with a surge of anti-Data Center sentiment at both the local and state level, a Chatham County judge is now ruled against the county's data center moratorium. According to our news gathering partners at the news and observer, Chatham County judge, John Morris decided a Sanford company is entitled to proceed with its 750 megawatt data center plan.

and Moncure. It comes after a 12-month moratorium was enacted in February. A future hearing will now determine how much the county owes the developer and damages and legal fees. The Chatham County attorney says the county is disappointed about the rule. New at 11, we're learning tonight. The U.S. military almost took action against a Chinese ship earlier this year. Intelligence officials believed it was carrying components of a nuclear weapons program. According to sources, military planes were in the air and armed troops were preparing to board the ship. And officials discovered the intelligence report their mission was based on was written with the help of AI with inaccurate information. The report was entirely false, according to one source.

And if the military had carried out the action, it could have risked starting a war. The Pentagon has not commented on that report. In our your voice, your vote coverage tonight. Next week, Vice President J.D. Vance is traveling here to North Carolina holding a rally for Republican candidates on Monday, hoping to drum up support for them ahead of the November 3rd midterm election. Vancey is heading to Greensboro for an 11 a.m. event at the Corey Convention Center. People wanting to attend do need to sign up online in advance. All right. The weekend's here. The heat's here. The humidity's here. The rain's been here. We got everything to talk about. We have a little bit of everything, but we got some good weather on the other side of the weekend.

It'll feel like fall soon, right, Cruz? We're going to introduce a whole other season. Yeah, good. Good. Good. The seven-day forecast. Let's do it. This weekend won't be as hot as what we saw today where we got into the mid-90s. We're expecting 80s for both Saturday and Sunday. The rain chance for tomorrow continues to trend downward. Still expecting a spotty shower or two throughout the first half of your Saturday. Outside of that, mostly cloudy with highs reaching to low to mid-80s. Sunday, a little warmer, mid-to- Upper 80s, partly cloudy, and that should be a completely dry day.

So if you're eyeing outdoor plans, I'd say either tomorrow afternoon or any time throughout Sunday, we'll do just fine. For tonight, any of the rain that we've had around today continues to push to our south. So there's very few spotty showers out there, even some breaks in the clouds. But first alert predictor shows that through tonight, the cloud cover is going to remain in place. Here's that spoty shower chance heading out the door. So for you early risers, I'd say that's the best chance to see some rain right around six or seven in the morning. By the time we get into the afternoon, we should see the cloud start to break apart a bit. And that will allow temperatures to at least push into the mid 80s.

For the second half of the day, we expect much, much quieter conditions. So again, if you're going to be outside tomorrow, the afternoon hours are your best bet to avoid any rain. In the morning, can't completely rule out seeing some showers, but by next week, showers are going to become a daily occurrence. So into the Monday, Tuesday timeframe, we're looking at not only showers then, but also some storms. We'll have that same front that passed through today. That's going to retreat back to our north. That'll come back down to the south. I know that sounds crazy, but that's what we're expecting Monday and Tuesday.

That's going to drive the heat down. So it starts off pretty warm next week. Once the rain gets going, we should see temperature's come down gradually and that front will pass through Tuesday night and into Wednesday. So over the next seven days, the rainfall that we're expecting

is looking pretty impressive at this point and we really need it. The latest drop monitor, not looking good for our region. You can see the potential here from one to possibly even two inches of rain. It's really going to depend on exactly where that front tracks as we go throughout the week.

But right now, it is looking wet. Again, it'll be warm starting the week. A bit humid as well. So Monday, almost feeling like a true summer day, 89 degrees, scattered showers and storms. Tuesday still unsettled. That is the first official day of fall. I told you through the middle of the week, we'd get the fall feeling. Temperatures will be in the 70s on Wednesday and Thursday.

Those days will both still feature a rain chance. But toward the end of the week, we have some dry weather returning. So what I can say with certainty, there's literally something for. everyone in this seven-day forecast. Whatever you want, it's right there, huh? Good, just got to wait for it. Cruz, thank you. Still ahead. We're highlighting all things in C-made.

Tonight, the spotlight is shining on a homegrown music festival. We've got the latest on why that festival manages to attract bands from all around the world. When West Jeffers took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. It's time for our weekly spotlight on the people

and products that are North Carolina Maine. And today we're taking you to a farm outside Chapel Hill for a music festival you may not know about. It's called Prague Day, a two-day celebration of progressive rock music held every year at Story Brook Farm between Chapel Hill and Carbro. In the past, bands have traveled here from as far away as Sweden and Italy and Venezuela to play in the festival. So we had to ask one of the festivals founding organizers what exactly is progressive rock. Frank Zappa once said, well, it's all the stuff that doesn't sound like everything else. And that's really the, that's really kind of still the best, I think, a definition of what it is. Prague Day is the longest continuously running progressive rock festival anywhere in the world.

And it happens right here in the trial. This in this year, guys, that'll be different. Yes, it will. Trey, thank you. And thank you at home for watching. That's going to do it for us here tonight. here tonight. Remember ABC 11, I witness news is always on at ABC11.com, Disney Plus, and wherever you stream. We'll see you back here Monday night at 11th.