Tag: pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Police Charge Metaphysical Shop Owner With Practicing Witchcraft and No, We Aren’t Kidding

We have become accustomed in modern times to the term “witch-hunt” being metaphorical but a practicing witch with a retail shop has become an actual target of the police for “suspicions of witchcraft” charges, despite the fact that this is the year 2023. Her crime? Fortune-telling, in the form of tarot readings. The state has a history of persecuting witches though, back to the very founder William Penn who participated in hearings against two women accused of bewitching livestock to not produce and appearing in spectral form. Basically, in the years between 1683 and right now nobody has bothered to ask if this law is useful, so it remains there to be enforced whenever the police feel like some good ol’ fashioned religious persecution.

The shop owner, @thestitchingwitch, received an email from the Borough Manager alerting her that a recent article about her business had alerted the Chief of Police himself to her allegedly illegal activities. Social media became instantly outraged on her behalf because Americans expect to have religious freedom to practice whatever they choose. It’s also very specifically targeted from the perspective of those at all familiar with the Keystone State, famous for having a groundhog predict the future weather every February 2nd. 

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Family of girl, 8, who died in her mother’s arms after being shot in the back by cops at Philadelphia high school game awarded $11M settlement

The family of an eight-year-old girl who was killed in a shooting incident involving police outside a Pennsylvania high school football game in August 2021 has reached an $11 million settlement. 

The resolution was agreed upon in federal court more than two years after the incident that lead to the death of Fanta Bility outside Academy Park High School in Sharon Hill, north of Philadelphia. Three others were also injured during the incident. 

The Delaware County District Attorney’s Office previously reported that the shooting incident resulted from teenagers engaging in gunfire during an argument.

The teens fired 25 shots toward a car and crowd of people leaving the football game in the small borough near Philadelphia International Airport. 

It prompted three police officers stationed nearby to discharge their firearms.

Tragically, Fanta lost her life because of a single gunshot wound to her torso.

Authorities later determined that it was police gunfire that led to her death.

Ballistics testing could not determine which officer fired the shot that killed her, but a grand jury recommended that all three face charges after they fired a total of 25 rounds.

‘There is no amount of money that will ever bring Fanta back or erase the horrible tragedy of what occurred on August 27, 2021, from our minds,’ Fanta’s mother Tenneh Kromah said in a statement on NBC News. 

‘We hope to move on and focus specifically on the Fanta Bility Foundation and keeping Fanta’s name and legacy alive.’

The law firm representing the family said they hoped the settlement would provide some ‘measure of justice and accountability to those whose lives were forever changed’ by the incident.

The three officers involved, Sean Dolan, 27, Devon Smith, 36, and Brian Devaney, 43, were fired from the police department and faced charges of voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless endangerment in connection with the incident that occurred on August 27, 2021. 

The officers told investigators they thought a car driving toward them was the likely source of the gunfire, prompting them to return fire.

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Pennsylvania Officials Won’t Give Medical Marijuana Patients Access To Edibles—For Now

Officials tasked with monitoring the state’s medical marijuana program said this week edibles don’t belong in Pennsylvania’s marketplace.

Concerns about safety, efficacy and legal enforcement gave members of the Medical Marijuana Advisory Board pause. Six abstained from voting on the recommendation at all during its Wednesday meeting. Only two members supported the proposal, while two more rejected it.

The vote came after a discussion about the growing popularity of “troches,” an ingestible form of THC that resembles a cough drop. Dispensaries market the product alongside tinctures, which users absorb sublingually.

Supporters say some patients dislike the respiratory and digestive side effects that come from other forms of medical marijuana, including vaping cartridges, flowers, pills, and concentrates. Edibles offer a viable alternative.

Critics argue, however, that traditional edibles offered in other states come with a higher risk of poisoning, particularly in children, because of deceptive packaging and underestimated potency.

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Harvard morgue theft ring stole body parts, sold human flesh to be used as leather, officials say  

Members of a macabre theft ring swiped human remains from the Harvard Medical School morgue in Boston and sold the body parts to a nationwide network of buyers, officials said Wednesday.

Indictments handed up by a grand jury in Scranton, Pennsylvania, targeted morgue manager Cedric Lodge, 55, and his wife, Denise Lodge, 63, who live in Goffstown, New Hampshire.

Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Massachusetts, and Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pennsylvania, were also indicted. Maclean owns and operates a store called Kat’s Creepy Creations, officials said.

They’re all accused of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods.  

“At times, Cedric Lodge allowed Maclean and Taylor to enter the morgue at Harvard Medical School and examine cadavers to choose what to purchase,” federal prosecutors said in a statement. “On some occasions, Taylor transported stolen remains back to Pennsylvania. On other occasions, the Lodges shipped stolen remains to Taylor and others out of state.”

Cedric Lodge “stole dissected portions of donated cadavers, including, for example, heads, brains, skin, bones, and other human remains, without the knowledge or permission of HMS,” according to the indictment.

He and his wife would reach out to buyers through websites and cellphones “regarding the sales of stolen human remains,” the court papers say.

The 15-page indictment doesn’t go into extended detail about what the body parts were purchased for, but it does mention that Maclean shipped human skin to a man in Pennsylvania “and engaged in his services to tan the skin to create leather.”

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Pennsylvania Dem Threatens To Withhold Funding From University of Pittsburgh Over Conservative Speakers

A Pennsylvania lawmaker on Tuesday issued what free speech advocates are calling a veiled threat to withhold funding from the University of Pittsburgh over the school’s decision to allow several conservative speakers on campus.

During an appropriations hearing on university funding, Pennsylvania state representative La’Tasha Mayes (D.) demanded that Pitt disinvite Cabot Phillips, Riley Gaines, and Michael Knowles from upcoming campus events. All three speakers have a history of “targeting transgender students,” Mayes claimed—especially Knowles, whom she accused of saying that “transgender people should be eradicated.”

Mayes called on university chancellor Patrick Gallagher, who was at the hearing to request additional funding from the state, to “cancel the speakers who are coming to campus”—implying that she might vote against his request if he did not. Mayes did not respond to a request for comment.

The exchange alarmed Speech First, a legal nonprofit focused on First Amendment issues, which called Mayes’s remarks an “abuse of power.”

“The state is saying that if the university doesn’t violate its students’ First Amendment rights, then their funding could be at risk,” Cherise Trump, Speech First’s executive director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Lawmakers shouldn’t be using veiled threats to hold funding over universities simply because they don’t like a person who was invited to speak.”

The shakedown highlights the growing willingness of progressive lawmakers to target offensive speech, in part by putting pressure on universities that permit it. In January 2022, for example, Democrats in both the Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania State Senate urged the University of Pennsylvania to fire Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who has drawn fire for her views on race and immigration. Other Democrats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Maryland senator Ben Cardin, have falsely claimed that “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment.

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AI tool used to spot child abuse allegedly targets parents with disabilities

Since 2016, social workers in a Pennsylvania county have relied on an algorithm to help them determine which child welfare calls warrant further investigation. Now, the Justice Department is reportedly scrutinizing the controversial family-screening tool over concerns that using the algorithm may be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by allegedly discriminating against families with disabilities, the Associated Press reported, including families with mental health issues.

Three anonymous sources broke their confidentiality agreements with the Justice Department, confirming to AP that civil rights attorneys have been fielding complaints since last fall and have grown increasingly concerned about alleged biases built into the Allegheny County Family Screening Tool. While the full scope of the Justice Department’s alleged scrutiny is currently unknown, the Civil Rights Division is seemingly interested in learning more about how using the data-driven tool could potentially be hardening historical systemic biases against people with disabilities.

The county describes its predictive risk modeling tool as a preferred resource to reduce human error for social workers benefiting from the algorithm’s rapid analysis of “hundreds of data elements for each person involved in an allegation of child maltreatment.” That includes “data points tied to disabilities in children, parents, and other members of local households,” Allegheny County told AP. Those data points contribute to an overall risk score that helps determine if a child should be removed from their home.

Although the county told AP that social workers can override the tool’s recommendations and that the algorithm has been updated “several times” to remove disabilities-related data points, critics worry that the screening tool may still be automating discrimination. This is particularly concerning because the Pennsylvania algorithm has inspired similar tools used in California and Colorado, AP reported. Oregon stopped using its family-screening tool over similar concerns that its algorithm may be exacerbating racial biases in its child welfare data.

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New Details Emerge in Deaths of Daughter and Parents in Pennsylvania As Coroner Releases Findings

Three people found dead Wednesday from gunshot wounds to their heads planned their murder-suicide deaths, York County, Pennsylvania’s coroner determined.

York County Coroner Pamela Gay identified the three deceased as James Daub, 62, Deborah Daub, 59, and their 26-year-old daughter, Morgan Daub.

Based on a detailed investigation and evidence found at the scene, the coroner determined all three family members had preplanned their deaths. Communications from the family members was among the evidence, according to an ABC27 report.

Dr. Gay said in a statement that the three family members were found dead in the back yard of their 2098 Loman Avenue residence in West Manchester Township.

The daughter posted a video to YouTube the day before the three were found dead that consisted of just the phrase: “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

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Pennsylvania AG Announces Arrest in ‘Widespread’ Ballot Fraud Operation Days After Midterm Elections

Only days after a midterm election that dragged on for days beyond Election Day, Pennsylvania’s attorney announced the arrest of a Democratic consultant for orchestrating ‘widespread’ ballot fraud that included forging thousands of signatures.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Wednesday announced the arrest of Rasheen Crews, a Philadelphia-based Democratic consultant, for charges related to forging signatures on nomination petitions to get his clients on the ballot for the 2019 Democratic primary races in Philadelphia.

“In advance of the 2023 municipal elections, this arrest is an important reminder that interfering with the integrity of our elections is a serious crime,” said AG Shapiro. “By soliciting and organizing the wide scale forgery of signatures, the defendant undermined the democratic process and Philadelphians’ right to a free and fair election. My office is dedicated to upholding the integrity of the election process across the Commonwealth, to ensure everyone can participate in Pennsylvania’s future.”

It is telling that the Attorney General waited until after the 2023 midterm elections to announce the arrest for the 2019 crimes. If the announcement had come earlier, it would have drawn much more scrutiny to a Pennsylvania election process that was far from regular.

“An investigation by the Office of Attorney General found that in 2019, multiple candidates hired Crews to help them obtain the requisite amount of signatures needed for their nomination petitions for the Democratic primary races. Crews recruited individuals to help with the petition work, bringing them to a hotel room and asking them to write names, addresses, and forged signatures on multiple petitions,” Shapiro’s office announed on the arrest. “Crews then had these petitions notarized and filed with the Pennsylvania Department of State on behalf of his clients.”

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Ellen Greenberg ‘suicide’: Pennsylvania court hears arguments in family’s bid to overrule medical examiner

For more than a decade, the family of a woman stabbed 20 times — including 10 from behind — has battled to have the Philadelphia medical examiner’s ruling that her death was a suicide overturned.

Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old teacher, was found covered in bruises and stabbed to death in her apartment during a blizzard more than a decade ago. Despite the blood-soaked crime scene, evidence her body had been moved and stab wounds to the back of her skull, investigators found “no evidence of a struggle in the kitchen area or anywhere else in the apartment.”

Dr. Marlon Osbourne, a former pathologist at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Philadelphia, initially ruled the death a homicide, based on the injuries, then backtracked and revised the manner of death to suicide after conferring with city police, according to a civil lawsuit from Greenberg’s family.

An appeals court heard arguments in a civil lawsuit this week and will decide whether it can move to trial.

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Good Samaritan Killed by Violent Cop While Rendering Aid to Shooting Victim

Kenneth Vineyard, 48, is the type of man who would run up to a complete stranger who lay bleeding on the ground and do anything he could to help him. In fact, that is exactly what he did on Sunday when a shooting unfolded in a Walmart parking lot. Unfortunately for Vineyard, however, this would be his last act of kindness thanks to Pennsylvania’s finest — who killed him for it.

Vineyard’s family is now demanding justice after an officer with the Center Township Police Department walked up to Vineyard as he helped a complete stranger and killed him.

“This appears to be another instance of senseless police violence,” said attorney Joel Sansone, according to KDKA.

According to police, Vineyard was at the Monaca Walmart with his fiancé on Sunday afternoon when gunfire erupted in the parking lot. Vineyard was not involved in the shooting. Police said Rashaun Smith, 20, was shot in the abdomen by Yeshua Bratcher, 23, and Vineyard simply ran up to Smith and began rendering aid.

“As the victim of that shooting lay bleeding, a Good Samaritan named Kenneth Vineyard rushed to the victim to render aid,” said Sansone.

Vineyard stopped Smith’s bleeding until paramedics arrived. When paramedics began helping Smith, Vineyard backed away and let them work. That’s when a man in plainclothes — who was a Center Township police officer — approached Vineyard and began barking orders.

Vineyard told the officer that he had just helped the shooting victim and was trying to make his way back to his fiancé. The officer couldn’t have cared less, however, and violently attacked Vineyard, according to Sansone. The officer reportedly shoved Vineyard to the pavement so hard that it killed him.

“The unidentified man insisted Mr. Vineyard step away and violently pushed Mr. Vineyard to the ground where he struck his head on the pavement,” Sansone said.

According to Sansone, Vineyard’s fiancé began chest compressions immediately while the first responders on the scene jumped in to help as well but he had no pulse. Vineyard was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Sansone says he has video of the officer shoving Vineyard as well as witness statements that corroborate his claims. “We want the name of the individual who caused this death and we intend to sue him and possibly others,” said Sansone.

“This officer should be immediately suspended pending the outcome of this investigation if the facts are as I’ve been told. He should be arrested and charged with manslaughter at the very least,” he added.

Although state police claim to be investigating the attack, the officer involved has yet to even be interviewed. Yeshua Bratcher, however, has been found, arrested, and charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and a firearms violation.

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