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The president and CEO of The Associated Press said Sunday that the government's seizure of AP journalists' phone records was "unconstitutional" and already has had a chilling effect on newsgathering.

Gary Pruitt says the Justice Department's secret subpoena of reporters' phone records has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists.

The Justice Department disclosed the seizure of two months of phone records in a letter the AP received May 10. The letter did not state a reason, but prosecutors had said they were conducting a leaks investigation into how the AP learned about an al-Qaeda bomb plot in Yemen before it was made public last year. Pruitt said the AP story contradicted the government's claim at the time there was no terrorist plot.

Pruitt spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Earl Neikirk / Bristol Herald Courier via AP

Emergency personnel attend to the injured after a car veered into paradegoers in Damascus, Va., on Saturday, injuring dozens.

DAMASCUS, Va. -- An elderly driver plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain town and investigators were looking into whether he suffered a medical emergency before the accident.

About 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to superficial, but no fatalities were reported. Three of the worst injured were flown by helicopter to area hospitals. Their conditions weren't immediately available.

Another 12 to 15 victims were taken to hospitals by ambulance and the rest were treated at the scene, where some paramedics and other first-responders were participating in the parade.

It happened around 2:10 p.m. during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.

Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade and he had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past. Multiple witnesses described him as an elderly man.

Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.

"It is under investigation and charges may be placed," Nunley said.

Witnesses said the car had a handicapped parking sticker and it went more than 100 feet before coming to a stop.

"He was hitting hikers," said Vickie Harmon, a witness from Damascus. "I saw hikers just go everywhere."

Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.

"Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.

Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped.

"There's no single heroes. We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in," he said.

Nunley cited quick action by police, firefighters, paramedics and hikers to tend to the victims, including a volunteer firefighter who dove into the car to turn off the ignition. The firefighter, whose name wasn't released, suffered minor injuries.

Mayor Jack McCrady encouraged people to attend the festival on Sunday, its final day.

"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

McCrady said a donation fund was being set up to assist the injured, some of whom don't have medical insurance.

"We want to make sure they don't suffer any greater loss than they already have," he said. 

The New York college student who was shot during a home robbery early Friday was killed by police gunfire, officials said at a news conference Saturday.

Nassau Co. Police

Nassau County police on Saturday named 30-year-old Dalton Smith of Hempstead as the man who attempted to rob the off-campus home where Hofstra University junior Andrea Rebello was shot and killed.

According to NBC New York affiliate WNBC, Nassau County Police said Andrea Rebello, 21, was killed by police fire, not by the armed gunman attempting to rob the off-campus house where she lived with her twin sister, Jessica, and several other women.

Police identified Saturday the man allegedly involved in the home robbery as Dalton Smith, 30, of Hempstead.

According to WNBC, Rebello, a Hofstra University student, and Smith were both shot and killed as he was trying to back out of a rear door holding the woman in a headlock and pointing a gun to her head, police said. 

An officer fired eight rounds, seven of which hit the suspect and one that hit Rebello, police said, according to WNBC.

According to a police statement, officers responding to a robbery in progress arrived on scene at 2:30 a.m. to find Smith armed with a gun. Three female victims -- the two sister and a third woman -- and one male victim were held inside the home, according to police. Wearing a ski mask, Smith had forced his way inside the house, according to WNBC.

Smith allowed the third unidentified woman to leave, and she called 911, WNBC reported.

Police say Smith was on parole for robbery in the first degree and had an extensive criminal history that includes assault.

A warrant for his arrest was issued last month for absconding from parole.

Officials toured the scene of a two-train collision in Connecticut that injured dozens of people and halted rail traffic from New York to Boston on Friday.

Area hospitals reported seeing 70 people after the rush-hour collision. Two remained in critical condition on Saturday.

“The damage is absolutely staggering,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal told reporters on Saturday after a tour of the scene. “Ribbons on the sides of cars are torn away like ribbons of clothes. Tons of metal tossed around like toy things. The insides of cars are shattered.”

“We are fortunate that even more injuries were not the result of this very tragic and unfortunate accident,” Blumenthal said.

An eastbound Metro-North train derailed at 6:10 p.m. on Friday and was struck by a westbound train between the Bridgeport and Fairfield stations, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener told reporters on Saturday.

Investigators from the NTSB arrived in Connecticut at about 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and planned to begin documenting the scene of the crash, Weener said. Investigators planned to spend between seven to 10 days on scene, and will conduct interviews with the train’s crew members, passengers, and witnesses.

“We will not be determining the probable cause of the accident while we’re here on the scene, nor will we speculate on what may have caused the accident,” Weener said.

Later on Saturday, investigators said they had zeroed in on a fractured part of the rail line as being of particular interest. It has not been determined whether that fracture happened before or as a result of the accident, they said.

The FBI is no longer a part of the investigation, authorities said.

St. Vincent Hospital in Bridgeport, Conn. said on Saturday that it saw a total of 44 patients, six of whom were admitted for treatment. All those patients remained in the hospital on Saturday and were reported to be in stable condition.

Bridgeport Hospital saw a total of 26 patients and admitted three. Two of those patients were in critical condition a day after the accident, and a third was being held for further treatment.

Passengers who were on the two trains described the rending collision in vivid terms.

“We came to a sudden halt. We were jerked. There was smoke,” passenger Alex Cohen, a Canadian who was riding the westbound train toward New York, told NBC Connecticut.

“People were screaming, people were really nervous,” Cohen said. “We were pretty shaken up. They had to smash a window to get us out.”

A female conductor helped other passengers evacuate the train despite herself sustaining back injuries, authorities said at a press conference late Saturday afternoon.

The Metro-North train that departs New York City’s Grand Central Station for New Haven, Conn., at 4:41 p.m., with an estimated 300 passengers, derailed near the I-95 overpass in Bridgeport, MTA said in a statement. The train that leaves New Haven’s State Street station for Grand Central at 5:30 p.m., carrying about 400 passengers, struck the derailed train, the statement said.

Amtrak service between New York City and New Haven, Conn. remained suspended on Saturday following the accident, Amtrak said in a release. Trains would not run through Sunday, and the train service said it could not give an estimate on when schedules may return to normal.

Amtrak service between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., remained as scheduled, Amtrak said.

Metro-North, which runs between New York City and its northern suburbs in New York and Connecticut, is one of the busiest commuter rail services in the U.S. There are four tracks on that segment of the New Haven Line, an MTA statement said, but two are out of service for replacement of overhead wires.

There was "extensive damage" to the track and the wire from the collision, MTA said. The train cars will remain in place until the investigation is completed.

NBC News Carlo Dellaverson and M. Alex Johnson contributed to this report.

Related:

• 60 injured, five critically, as trains collide in Connecticut
  

This story was originally published on Sat May 18, 2013 11:31 AM EDT

A US Airways flight made a belly landing at Newark International Airport in the early morning hours on Saturday after the plane reported a problem with its landing gear, a spokesman for the airline said.

No injuries were reported after Express Flight 4560 landed just after 1 a.m. carrying 31 passengers and three crew from Philadelphia, US Airways spokesman Davien Anderson said in a statement. The De Havilland DASH-8 100 turboprop plane was operated by Piedmont Airlines, he said.

“Passengers were evacuated, transported to a terminal and loaded on buses,” Anderson said. “All passengers departed the airport shortly after the landing after being reunited with their belongings and baggage.”

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the emergency landing and assessing the extent of damage to the plane, the agency said on its Twitter feed on Saturday.

The plane declared an emergency after its left main landing gear failed to extend, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The FAA is also investigating the incident.

“The aircraft landed successfully on Runway 4L at about 1 a.m. The airport was closed until 2:55 a.m.,” the FAA said in a statement. “Runway 4L remained closed until 9:34 a.m.”

The aircraft sustained “minimal damage,” FAA spokesman Arlene Salec told NBC New York.

WNBC

An 82-year-old man is accused of killing his son and grandson in their home in a small Texas town.

Police in Fairview, Collin County, found the bodies of Paul Tanner Jr., 59, and Ryan Dawson Tanner, 23, shortly before noon Friday.

Paul Tanner's estranged wife called police after seeing a body slumped over in a chair inside the home in the 1300 block of Red Oak Trail.

The responding officers entered the home and confirmed that the person spotted through the window was deceased. While searching the home, officers discovered another body in a bedroom.

Police said both were shot in the head, most likely early this week.

More news from NBCDFW.com

The Tanners lived in the home with 82-year-old Paul Alexander Tanner Sr., who was later found at an Addison motel and taken into custody.

Police said the grandfather was unconcious when they found him and was treated at an area hospital.

Police said they know of only one domestic call to the home, and that it did not involve the grandfather.

NBC 5's Mark Schnyder contributed to this report.

Sixty people were injured, five of them critically, and rail traffic from New York to Boston was shut down after a Metro-North commuter train derailed and plowed into a second train Friday in Fairfield, Conn., Gov. Dan Malloy said.

An eastbound train derailed at 6:10 p.m. ET and struck a westbound train between the Fairfield and Bridgeport stations, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority official told NBC News.

"We have no reason to think it was anything other than an accident, but that has to be explored," Malloy said.

"We came to a sudden halt. We were jerked. There was smoke," Alex Cohen, a Canadian passenger on the westbound train en route to New York, told NBC Connecticut.

"People were screaming; people were really nervous. We were pretty shaken up. They had to smash a window to get us out," he said.

NBC Connecticut: 60 injured, five critically, in Metro-North train collision

Malloy said 60 people were transported to area hospitals, most of them with only minor injuries. Five, however, were critically injured, one of them very critically, he said.

The Metro-North train that departs New York City’s Grand Central Station for New Haven, Conn., at 4:41 p.m., with an estimated 300 passengers, derailed near the I-95 overpass in Bridgeport, MTA said in a statement. The train that leaves New Haven’s State Street station for Grand Central at 5:30 p.m., carrying about 400 passengers, struck the derailed train, the statement said.

There was no immediate word on what caused the derailment or how fast either train was going. That will be determined by the National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the investigation.

Amtrak services were suspended between New York and New Haven early Saturday, Amtrak said in a statement. Limited Northeast Regional services were available between Boston and New Haven, and all Amtrak services were operating normally between New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the statement said.

Metro-North, which runs between New York City and its northern suburbs in New York and Connecticut, is one of the busiest commuter rail services in the U.S. There are four tracks on that segment of the New Haven Line, MTA's statement said, but two are out of service for replacement of overhead wires.

There was "extensive damage" to the track and the wire from the collision, MTA said. The train cars will remain in place until the investigation is completed. MTA gave no estimate for the duration of the investigation or subsequent repairs.

Passengers should expect sharply curtailed service through the weekend and beyond, Malloy said. "We have a very old system on our Connecticut section. We're involved in hundreds of millions of dollars in replacement of that system.

"It will slow the recovery," he said. "Obviously, we don't have alternative tracks to go to."

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Christian Abraham / AP

Emergency workers arrive at the scene of a train collision Friday, May 17, in Fairfield, Conn. Rail traffic is expected to be snarled for several days.

This story was originally published on Fri May 17, 2013 7:18 PM EDT