Category Archives: Philadelphia

Philadelphia shooting suspect will face charges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

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The gunman is suspected of killing his stepmother, his sister, and the mother of his children before being arrested in New Jersey

The suspect involved in the fatal shootings of three people outside a Philadelphia-area suburb on Saturday morning has been arrested and will face charges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, authorities said on Sunday.

According to authorities, 26-year-old Andre Gordon was found near a house in Trenton, New Jersey, after carrying out two separate shootings. Police had surrounded the home for hours in the belief that he was there, but Gordon apparently slipped out before the police cordon went up. He was arrested at around 5 pm, unarmed, when he was spotted walking down a street a few blocks away, police said.

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Eight students injured in fourth consecutive shooting in Philadelphia

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At least one student, a 16-year-old who was hit nine times, was critically wounded while waiting at a bus stop on Wednesday

Police say eight Philadelphia high school students waiting to board a city bus after classes Wednesday were wounded by gunshots from suspects who jumped from a car and opened fire, the fourth shooting on the transit system in as many days.

The previous three shootings each involved a fatality. At least one student was critically wounded at the bus stop, a 16-year-old who was hit nine times, Kevin Bethel, the city’s police commissioner, said at a news conference. The others were in stable condition.

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Trump launches gold high top sneaker line a day after $350m court ruling

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‘Never Surrender High-Tops’ cost $399 and arrive on the market just after judge hands former US president huge penalty

Donald Trump has launched his own sneaker brand, a day after a New York judge ordered him to pay $354.9m in penalties for fraudulently overstating his net worth to dupe lenders.

“I’ve wanted to do this a long time,” the former US president said, as he unveiled what he called the first official Trump footwear at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia, a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.”

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Teen murder suspect who escaped from US hospital caught with handcuff key in pocket

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Shane Pryor, 17, awaiting trial over October 2020 homicide, escaped from Children’s hospital of Philadelphia last week

A teenager awaiting trial in a homicide case who escaped outside a Philadelphia hospital last week was captured on Sunday – with a handcuff key in one of his pockets, police said.

The key that Shane Pryor had on him at the time of his arrest is used to get out of restraints. But there is no evidence he ever used it, said Robert Clark of the US Marshals Service, who caught Pryor, according to the local news outlet WTXF.

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‘Good boy’: dog saves Philadelphia neighborhood from potentially explosive gas leak

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Kobe the husky becomes internet hero for video of him digging hole in concrete – leading his owner to detect presence of gas

Some dogs earn the affectionate title of “good boy” for obeying their owners’ commands to sit or fetch. Others earn it by saving their neighborhoods from grappling with a potentially explosive gas leak days before Christmas.

Philadelphia’s Kobe the husky belongs in the latter category, according to a viral Instagram video published by his owner that has vaulted him to the status of internet hero.

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White House condemns ‘antisemitic’ rally outside Philadelphia falafel shop

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Deputy press secretary says protest at Goldie, owned by American Israeli chef Michael Solomonov, ‘completely unjustifiable’

The White House has condemned events outside an Israeli-style falafel shop in Philadelphia that became the focus of marchers at a “Flood Philly for Gaza” rally who chanted, “You can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” on Sunday.

It was “antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy”, said the deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates.

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Cherelle Parker becomes first woman elected mayor of Philadelphia

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Parker, who served for 10 years as state representative, promised to make Philly the ‘safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation’

Cherelle Parker was elected as Philadelphia’s 100th mayor on Tuesday, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

Voters were also choosing a new leader for Allegheny county, which is home to Pittsburgh. The races will set the electoral stage for 2024, when Pennsylvania will be a presidential battleground state, with candidates taking lessons about how Democrats see crime and the strength of progressives in local races into the next election cycle.

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Panera adds warnings about caffeinated lemonade after suit over student’s death

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Family sued after Sarah Katz died last year after drinking Charged Lemonade, apparently unaware of soda’s high caffeine content

Panera Bread restaurants have displayed new warnings about its highly caffeinated lemonade, days after a lawsuit filed by the family of a university student who died after drinking the beverage.

Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a congenital heart condition, died last year just hours after drinking Panera’s Charged Lemonade, having apparently been unaware of the soda’s extremely highly caffeine content, according to the wrongful death suit.

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Chunk of change: four charged with stealing millions of US dimes from truck

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Defendants allegedly left coins scattered across parking lot after breaking into truck and taking 10-cent pieces worth $234,500

Robberies in the US are a dime a dozen, but one in particular had investigators perplexed. Now, more details about a scandal involving the theft of dimes by the million, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, have been released by federal authorities.

A newly unsealed indictment charges that on the evening of 13 April, four Philadelphia men made off with $234,500 – made up of more than 2m dimes – after breaking into a tractor-trailer carrying the coins. The truck driver, who had pulled into a parking lot to sleep at the time of the heist, had picked up the dimes from the US Mint and was headed to Miami. There was $750,000 worth of dimes in the truck before the robbery – a shipment that weighed about six tons and cost a pretty penny.

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JoAnne A Epps, acting president of Temple University, dies aged 72

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Epps, who died suddenly Tuesday, previously was the law school dean and provost

JoAnne A Epps, the acting president of Temple University, died Tuesday shortly after becoming ill on stage during a memorial service, officials said, describing her loss as a gut punch and struggling through emotion as they recalled her nearly four decades of service.

Epps was attending a memorial service at the university for Charles L Blockson, a curator of a collection of African American artifacts, when she suffered what a doctor speaking at a news conference described as a “sudden episode”.

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Philadelphia police change narrative in killing of Eddie Irizarry by officers

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Authorities had earlier claimed the 27-year-old had lunged at officers with a knife, but now say he never stepped out of his car

Philadelphia’s police commissioner said on Wednesday that a police officer who shot and killed a driver who was sitting in his car last week in north Philadelphia is being suspended and will be fired.

Danielle Outlaw said that officer Mark Dial will be suspended with intent to dismiss him in 30 days for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the 14 August shooting death of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry.

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Fourth of July overshadowed by 16 mass shootings across US

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Fifteen people were killed and 94 injured across 13 states as well as Washington DC

From the nation’s capital to Fort Worth, Texas, from Florin, California, in the west to the Bronx, New York, in the east, the Fourth of July long weekend in the US was overshadowed by 16 mass shootings in which 15 people were killed and nearly 100 injured.

The Gun Violence Archive, an authoritative database on gun violence in America, calculated the grim tally using its definition of a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people excluding the shooter are killed or injured by firearms.

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Biden decries gun violence as shootings across US mar Fourth of July festivities

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At least 15 people shot dead across the country in mass shootings so far on the holiday weekend celebrating the US’s independence

A long holiday weekend of bloodshed has intensified after a heavily armed gunman in a bulletproof vest opened fire on the streets of Philadelphia on the eve of Fourth of July celebrations, in yet another mass shooting in the US, killing five people and wounding two boys before surrendering to the police.

Across the country, Texas was entering the holiday to news that another shooting had killed three people, in Fort Worth, occurring just before midnight amid a gathering in a parking lot that also wounded eight.

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Joe Biden rallies with union workers in Philadelphia: ‘You built America’

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President enlists support of union members against GOP tax cuts for the wealthy at first political rally of 2024 re-election campaign

At his first political rally since announcing his re-election campaign for president in April, Joe Biden told a crowd of labor union supporters: “Wall Street didn’t build America – you did.”

“If the investment bankers of this country went on strike tomorrow, no one would notice,” Biden said on Saturday during a speech which alluded to his blue-collar childhood roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Renewing his longstanding vocal support for labor unions, he continued: “If this room didn’t show up to work tomorrow, the whole country would come to a grinding halt, so tell me – who matters more in America?”

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No goodbye for Toodles after poodle revived with Narcan following overdose

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Emergency veterinarians in Philadelphia save dog’s life after suspected accidental drug overdose

A poodle in Pennsylvania called Toodles was successfully revived with Narcan after an apparent accidental drug overdose, local animal welfare experts said.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said they received a call last week from Blue Pearl Emergency Animal Hospital in Philadelphia saying a dog was brought to them showing symptoms of an overdose.

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2 million dimes worth $200,000 stolen from Philadelphia truck, police say

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Police searching for ‘10 or more males’ in black clothing and gray hoodies, as well as white Chrysler 300 and dark pickup truck

Approximately 2m dimes, or the equivalent of $200,000, were taken from a tractor trailer in a parking lot of the Philadelphia Mills shopping mall complex in northeast Philadelphia on Thursday morning.

According to police, the truck driver had picked up $750,000 worth of dimes from the US Mint in Philadelphia and then parked the truck in the mall parking lot on Wednesday evening. The driver had planned on transporting the dimes, which were organized into 15 pallets that contained $50,000 each, to Florida, CBS reports.

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Philadelphians rush to buy bottled water despite officials claiming water is safe after spill

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Residents show skepticism to officials insisting tap water is uncontaminated after chemical spill in the Delaware River

Residents in Philadelphia and nearby have been buying bottled water after a chemical spill upstream in the Delaware River in neighboring Bucks county, despite officials latest advisory insisting tap water was safe to drink at least up to midnight Monday.

The concerns came after a leak late Friday evening at the Trinseo Altuglas chemical facility in Bristol Township spilled between 8,100 and 12,000 gallons of a water-based latex finishing solution into the river, Bucks county health officials said Sunday.

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Trump’s golf course photo with Philadelphia mob boss raises questions

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Spokesman won’t say if ex-president knows Joseph ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino, saying he ‘takes countless photos with people’

A spokesperson for Donald Trump would not say if the former president knew a notorious Philadelphia mobster, after the two men were photographed together at a Trump-owned golf club earlier this month.

“President Trump takes countless photos with people,” the spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer, which obtained the picture of Trump and Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino standing together and making thumbs-up gestures.

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Philadelphia’s rising Democratic star on another school shooting: ‘I can’t become resigned to it’

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Malcolm Kenyatta talks to the Guardian about why the deadly incident at Roxborough high school hit him like a ‘gut punch’

A day after a shooting killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded four other children following a football scrimmage at Philadelphia’s Roxborough high school, Malcolm Kenyatta visited his alma mater to talk to students and staffers for the first time in more than a year.

It had been well over a decade since Kenyatta, a 32-year-old Black state legislator in Pennsylvania representing north Philadelphia, roamed those same halls as an ambitious student-body president. One of Pennsylvania’s youngest legislators and its first openly gay lawmaker of color, since he was elected in 2018, Kenyatta has advocated for reducing gun violence in a state where Republicans have long dominated the legislature despite having a Democratic governor.

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Ivy League university set to rebury skulls of Black people kept for centuries

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University of Pennsylvania houses remains at Penn Museum, where they form collection once used to justify white supremacy

The University of Pennsylvania is moving ahead with the reburial of the cranial remains of at least 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls have been kept for almost two centuries in a notorious anthropological collection used to justify white supremacy in the run-up to the US civil war.

The Ivy League university is petitioning the Philadelphia orphans’ court for permission to rebury the skulls in the city’s historic African American Eden cemetery. Should the ceremony go ahead, it would amount to one of the most significant restorative processes for Black remains in America in the wake of the racial reckoning following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

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