Tag: pennsylvania

Democrat Gettysburg Mayor Who Ran Local Gay Pride Organization Steps Down After Being Arrested for Child Sex Crimes

Gettysburg Borough Mayor Chad-Alan Carr, a Democrat who ran the local Gay Pride organization, has stepped down after being arrested for child sex crimes.

Carr, 41, served as mayor until earlier this month, when he left office citing a “personal legal matter.”

The disgraced politician also stepped down as president of Gettysburg Pride, an LGBTQ advocacy group he helped promote in the historic Pennsylvania town known for its Civil War battlefield.

Pennsylvania State Police announced the arrest during a press conference on March 13, following a Childline report received on February 24.

The charges include two felony counts for photographing or filming sexual acts and knowingly depicting them on a computer, plus one misdemeanor count of corruption of minors.

According to court documents, Carr allegedly groomed a 16-year-old boy he met through high school musical productions in Gettysburg around 2011-2013.

The victim, now an adult, reported that Carr solicited explicit photos, engaged in video sex acts via Skype, and shared his own nude images while pressuring the teen for more.

Carr reportedly described the interactions as “late-night talks.”

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Is This the Scandal That Dooms Josh Shapiro’s Presidential Ambitions?

Josh Shapiro has spent years polishing his image, positioning himself as a potential presidential candidate. He hasn’t quite figured out that his party will never nominate a Jew for president, so you would think he’d still try to keep up appearances and pretend to be a decent human being before he starts his presidential campaign next year.

Instead, he’s making headlines for something extremely unflattering: a backyard land grab that truly destroys his statesman image and makes him out to be more like a corrupt governor abusing his position to get what he wants.

“Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s neighbors are suing the Democrat, accusing him of stealing a slice of their land to erect an eight-foot-high security fence around his private residence in an ‘outrageous abuse of power,’” reports the New York Post. “The neighbors, Jeremy and Simone Mock, are currently duking it out with the governor in court over a 2,900 square foot parcel of land located between their two homes in Abington, Montgomery County, court papers show.”

It gets worse. Shapiro is essentially claiming squatter’s rights on the land.

The Mocks alleged in a lawsuit filed last month that Shapiro and his wife, Lori, unlawfully seized the stretch of land after initial negotiations to buy it from them went up in flames.

Shapiro claimed in a countersuit that he owns the disputed land due, citing an “adverse possession” loophole that makes it his because he has maintained the sliver of property for decades.

The land-grab tit-for-tat kicked off last year when the Shapiros first sought to erect the huge fence and upgrade security following an arson attack on the governor’s official residence in Harrisburg while they were all sleeping inside on April 13.

“This is a case of squatters’ rights, which is the colloquial term for the legal doctrine known as adverse possession,” attorney Chad Cummings told Realtor.com. “Where a person continuously maintains possession of another’s property openly, visibly, and notoriously for a set period of time, which varies by state, the squatter can file a court action to ask the court to recognize the squatter—the ‘adverse possessor’—as the legal owner through a quiet title action.”

Think it can’t get worse? Well, it does.

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Parents of alleged ISIS-loving NYC bomb thrower own $2.5M Pennsylvania home, are naturalized citizens from Afghanistan

The parents of one of the alleged ISIS-loving wannabe terrorists who tried to detonate an IED near Gracie Mansion own a gorgeous, $2.25 million home – a sign they seized the American Dream after arriving from Afghanistan decades ago, The Post has learned.

Alleged teen bomber Ibrahim Kayumi’s family home is a 5,800-square-foot manse with six bedrooms and five bathrooms in scenic Newtown, Pennsylvania, records show.

Kayumi, 19, and his friend Emir Balat, 18, traveled from the blissful enclave of McMansions in Bucks County to the Big Apple, where they allegedly hurled homemade bombs at a racist agitator’s anti-Muslim protest outside the mayoral residence on the Upper East Side Saturday, according to police and prosecutors.

The stunning attempted bombing – which NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was being investigated as an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism” – shocked Kayumi’s neighbors.

“This is not the kind of place you think of when you think Islamic terror,” one neighbor, Kathy, said Monday. “This is Americana, here. It’s middle class, but in the best way.

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Farmer Hailed as Hero for Rejecting Huge Payment to Turn His Land Into a Giant Data Center

The immense hype surrounding AI has caused enormous data centers to crop up across the country, triggering significant opposition. It’s not just the loss of land: enormous power needs are pushing the grid into meltdown and driving up local electricity prices, catching the attention of politicians and their irate constituents.

One 86-year-old farmer in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, has heard enough. As local Fox affiliate WPMT reports, Mervin Raudabaugh, who has farmed the surrounding land for more than 60 years, turned down more than $15 million from data center developers in a package deal that involved three neighboring property owners as well.

The farmer was offered $60,000 per acre to build a data center on his property. But giving up his family legacy wasn’t in the cards for him.

“I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told WPMT. “That was the bottom line. It really wasn’t so much the economic end of it. I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.”

Instead, he sold the development rights in December for just under $2 million to a conservation trust, taking a significant loss but guaranteeing that it would stay farmland in perpetuity.

Users on social media called him a “legend,” and argued he had “more integrity than the whole government.”

“Now that is a real hero in these gutless times!” another user tweeted.

“$15M is huge, but clean water, quiet land, and legacy don’t have a price tag,” another user argued.

The sheer amount of land being earmarked to construct enormous energy and water-sucking data centers is remarkable. A data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is set to take up 600 acres, which could cost local residents their land, as ABC News reported this week. Another octogenarian farmer, the 83-year-old Tom Uttech, who has lived on his 52-acre Wisconsin property for almost 40 years, told the broadcaster that he “couldn’t believe” that a local utility company was looking to build “power lines that are 300 or something feet tall, taller than apparently the Statue of Liberty,” through his land to power the data center.

Per ABC, there are more than 3,000 data centers in the US, a number that will soon grow by 1,200 more, which are currently being constructed.

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‘Quiet’ Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed 3-month-old son, threw him in the snow as part of ‘sacrifice’

A “quiet” Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed his baby son and tossed his tiny, injured body into the snow last week as part of a “sacrifice,” prosecutors chillingly revealed Thursday.

Michael Phillips, 44, was arrested after police responded to a call about a stabbing on Wednesday at an apartment complex in Coatesville just before 11:40 a.m., according to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

After arriving at the home, police discovered that Phillips had allegedly stabbed his 3-month-old son in the abdomen after the infant’s mother said he made comments about “having to sacrifice the baby” and had come at her with a knife, the DA said.

Philips allegedly tried to stab his baby son several times, but only managed to strike him once, the mother told police.

After the father launched the alleged freak assault, the terrified mother grabbed the injured child and her 9-year-old son to flee the residence, prosecutors added.

As the older son ran to get help, Philips allegedly followed the mother outside, grabbed the baby from her arms, and “threw the infant in the snow.”

The mother heroically “used her body to shield her child from further harm” until first responders arrived at the scene.

Officers quickly got the infant medical attention and flew him to a local hospital in “very serious condition,” according to the Coatesville police department.

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Small Pennsylvania town locked in bitter dispute as billionaire buys up village to revamp under his control

Residents of a wealthy Pennsylvania village confronted developers this week after learning that a billionaire has quietly bought up much of the town’s commercial core, fueling fears that one family now wields outsized control over its future.

The backlash centers on Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, whose family has spent more than $15 million acquiring homes, storefronts, and civic properties in Gladwyne, a community of just under 5,000 residents and where median home prices top $2.3 million.

At a packed public meeting in a school auditorium, developers working with Yass unveiled their first detailed redevelopment plans for the village center.

The moment that drew both applause and skepticism from residents alarmed by shuttered businesses, rising rents, and unanswered questions about the scope of the billionaire-backed project.

Standing before the crowd, Andre Golsorkhi, founder and CEO of design firm Haldon House, unveiled a sweeping redevelopment plan crafted in partnership with Yass and his wife, Janine. 

Golsorkhi framed the effort as a ‘community impact project,’ insisting the billionaire family’s intentions were rooted in preservation rather than profit.

But for a town already rattled by closed storefronts, the presentation drew plenty of suspicion and unease.

Over the past several years, Haldon House and the Yass family have acquired multiple properties clustered around the intersection of Youngs Ford and Righters Mill Roads – effectively Gladwyne’s commercial heart.

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100 skulls and mummified body parts found in a Pennsylvania grave robbery case, police say

Bones and skulls visible in the back seat of a car near an abandoned cemetery on Philadelphia’s outskirts led police to a basement filled with body parts, which authorities say were hoarded by a man now accused of stealing about 100 sets of human remains.

Officers say a Tuesday night arrest culminated a monthslong investigation into break-ins at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where at least 26 mausoleums and vaults had been forced open since early November.

Investigators later searched the Ephrata home and storage unit of Jonathan Christ Gerlach, 34, and reported finding more than 100 human skulls, long bones, mummified hands and feet, two decomposing torsos and other skeletal items.

“They were in various states. Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.

Most were in the basement, authorities said, and they also recovered jewelry believed to be linked to the graves. In one case, a pacemaker was still attached.

Police say Gerlach targeted mausoleums and underground vaults at the 1855 cemetery. It’s considered the country’s largest abandoned burial ground, according to Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, which helps maintain the 160-acre landmark in Yeadon that’s home to an estimated 150,000 gravesites.

Police had been looking into the string of burglaries when an investigator checked Gerlach’s vehicle plates and found he had been near Yeadon repeatedly during the period when the burglaries occurred. Police say the break-ins centered on sealed vaults and mausoleums containing older burials, which had been smashed open or had stonework damaged to reach the remains inside.

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PA Police Commissioner Appointed by Democrat Governor Jumps to FBI Despite the Final Butler Report Still Locked Away

The Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Attorney’s Office celebrated what it called a victory for transparency when state prosecutors secured court approval to release a set of grand-jury-subpoenaed records to Congress. The order was made public during the busy holiday season allowing the Department of Justice to share pre-existing business records from the investigation of accused shooter Thomas  Matthew  Crooks in connection with the July  13, 2024  assassination attempt on then former President Donald J. Trump in Butler, PA.

During the Congressional hearings about the assassination attempt Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, captured the mood starkly saying “There were critical failures of security at the event in Butler. It is important that we learn from these failures to better provide safety.” Federal attorneys now frame this document release as proof that law enforcement is being transparent.  Really?

Despite this ruling, at the same time, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) continue to withhold its report on the Butler investigation, quietly leaning on provisions of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, especially Section 708(b)(16), which classifies “criminal investigative records” as exempt from public release. That legal shield allows the state to bury internal memos, communications, and even full reports without ever disclosing investigative results.  Meanwhile, nothing has been publicly released to date that proves accused shooter, Thomas  Matthew  Crooks, actually fired the shots at the rally.

The story of the Butler assassination attempt continually returns to one image: an elevated roof, with a clear line of sight, left effectively unguarded. Press accounts of official findings describe “stunning security failures” and “the unguarded roof, easily within shooting distance of the rally” where the gunman positioned himself, failures that congressional and independent reviews admit never should have happened. And, most importantly, no ballistic report has ever been made public.

The roof of the AGR Building, and everything that went wrong beneath it, sits squarely with the responsibility of Commissioner  Christopher  L. Paris, the PSP chief during the Butler attempted assassination.  Appointed by Governor Josh Shapiro in 2023, Paris testified before Congress about “stunning” lapses.  In news, again during the busy holiday season, Paris announced he would retire on  January 2, 2026, to take a position with the Federal Bureau of  Investigation (FBI). The Paris transition to the FBI, with Pennsylvania’s official Butler report still locked away, leaves questions regarding transparency, accountability and motive.

For Ablechild, as a national nonprofit fighting to expose behavioral-health industry links to violence, this is proof that “transparency” is selective. When violent bloodshed occurs, a school shooting, an assassination, a sudden act of mass violence, behavioral health usually is behind it, and the key records always stay sealed.

Ablechild argues that the public deserves answers about the family of accused shooter  Thomas  Matthew  Crooks, whose parents are both licensed behavioral-health professionals in Pennsylvania.  It is impossible to understand the Butler violence without examining that connection. Crooks’ parents should have no problem providing all medical, mental-health, and school records. Asking whether their work within the behavioral-health system influenced how warning signs were handled or ignored is common sense.  Material facts, such as whether Crooks had a treatment or medication history, any contact with state-funded behavioral-health programs, or was involved in any experimental clinical drug or device trials?  All of this critical data remains hidden under seal.

Ablechild calls this secrecy a public betrayal. The Department of Justice can proudly release selected documents to Congress, but the FBI and PSP keep their most revealing material out of public reach. Even basic questions are still unanswered, such as who authorized the body to remain on the AGR roof overnight while the medical examiner was ordered to return the following morning to identify the alleged shooter.

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Wilkes-Barre, PA man arrested on terrorism-related charges after bomb-making materials found at his home

A Pennsylvania man was arrested in Wilkes-Barre after a counterterrorism investigation determined him to be attempting to possess or manufacture weapons of mass destruction.

24-year-old Saleh Edwards was arrested and charged with criminal attempt to possess or manufacture weapons of mass destruction. The investigation was launched by city police and the FBI after a report of suspicious activity.

According to a report by WNEP, investigators executed a court-authorized search of Edwards’ home on Sunday. Court documents related to the case remain sealed, leaving limited public information about what authorities allegedly discovered during the search. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for January 6, when additional details may be released. 

Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce told the outlet that a motive has not been identified and authorities do not yet know what Edwards allegedly planned to do with the explosive device. He said the investigation began after a neighbor raised concerns about suspicious activity at the residence.

During the search, Saint Clair Street was blocked off as police, county detectives, and FBI special agents searched the home. Sanguedolce described the case as a “joint counterterrorism investigation” involving multiple agencies.

Edwards was arraigned on Sunday and denied bail by Judge Donald L. Whittaker, who cited concerns about public safety. Edwards is currently being held at a county jail.

The arrest comes months after a separate, unrelated incident in Pennsylvania, in which a man who brought firearms to a “No Kings” protest in Chester County later pleaded guilty after explosive devices were found at his residence.

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Pennsylvania High Court Rules Police Can Access Google Searches Without Warrant

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a new definition of “reasonable expectation.” According to the justices, it’s no longer reasonable to assume that what you type into Google is yours to keep.

In a decision that reads like a love letter to the surveillance economy, the court ruled that police were within their rights to access a convicted rapist’s search history without a warrant. The reasoning is that everyone knows they’re being watched anyway.

The opinion, issued Tuesday, leaned on the idea that the public has already surrendered its privacy to Silicon Valley.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

“It is common knowledge that websites, internet-based applications, and internet service providers collect, and then sell, user data,” the court said, as if mass exploitation of personal information had become a civic tradition.

Because that practice is so widely known, the court concluded, users cannot reasonably expect privacy. In other words, if corporations do it first, the government gets a free pass.

The case traces back to a rape and home invasion investigation that had gone cold. In a final effort, police asked Google to identify anyone who searched for the victim’s address the week before the crime. Google obliged. The search came from an IP address linked to John Edward Kurtz, later convicted in the case.

It’s hard to argue with the result; no one’s defending a rapist, but the method drew a line through an already fading concept: digital privacy.

Investigators didn’t start with a suspect; they started with everyone. That’s the quiet power of a “reverse keyword search,” a dragnet that scoops up the thoughts of every user who happens to type a particular phrase.

The justices pointed to Google’s own privacy policy as a kind of consent form. “In the case before us, Google went beyond subtle indicators,” they wrote. “Google expressly informed its users that one should not expect any privacy when using its services.”

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