Several students at Quakertown High School were taken into custody on Friday after a student walkout protesting federal immigration enforcement escalated into a confrontation that left at least one teenager bloodied and in handcuffs, according to witnesses and video footage from the scene.
School officials said the episode began shortly before noon, when dozens of students left campus without permission to demonstrate along Front Street in opposition to the policies of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What followed, according to videos posted widely on social media, was a chaotic scene involving students, an unidentified man, and local police officers.
By late afternoon, authorities had released few details about what prompted officers to intervene or how many students were detained.
In a letter to parents, Lisa Hoffman, the acting superintendent of the Quakertown Community School District, said 35 students left school grounds at about 11:30 a.m. to stage the protest. She said district officials were informed by the Quakertown Police Department that the students were “engaging in unsafe and disruptive behavior,” though she did not elaborate on what that behavior entailed.
The school also went on a short lockdown as a precaution, she said.
Quakertown police contradicted the account offered by school officials, saying in a statement that as many as 50 students were involved in the protest, which “began peacefully” but became dangerous when students entered traffic, threw snowballs, kicked cars, and damaged property, including a car’s sideview mirror.
“Officers issued additional warnings to maintain civil,” the statement said, before “confrontation escalated, and some individuals assaulted officers.”
Police said “five to six juveniles and one adult have been taken into custody,” but offered no additional information.
Videos circulating online offer a fragmented glimpse of the confrontation. In one clip, a man is seen grabbing a teenage girl and placing her in a chokehold. A male student rushes in and strikes the man, after which police officers move in and take the student into custody. Other footage shows protest signs scattered across the sidewalk, speckled with blood, and a teenage girl in handcuffs with blood visible along the side of her face.
A woman who was dining inside a restaurant along Front Street said she watched the confrontation unfold just outside the window.
“This man was easily twice her size,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “She couldn’t have been much more than 100 pounds.”
When a male student stepped in to help the girl, she said, the scene quickly spiraled. Another woman in the restaurant recalled that several adults — including police officers — forced the boy to the ground.
“The situation completely escalated,” said the second woman, who also asked not to be identified out of fear of reprisal. “There were multiple grown men getting in the faces of the children, spit flying out of their mouths.”
It remains unclear what role the man played in the altercation. Both women said they later saw him drive away from the scene in a police vehicle.
The statement by police made no mention of the man, nor did it include details about any injuries sustained by the students.
Messages seeking comment from the school district were not immediately returned Friday afternoon.
The Buck’s County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Friday that it was aware of the incident and was “gathering information.”
“We are committed to ensuring public safety and will provide updates if and when legally appropriate,” the office said.
By late afternoon, the number of students taken into custody had not been disclosed, and school officials had not said whether any would face disciplinary action.
Videos also showed papers and books scattered on the sidewalk next to dropped and bloodied signs. “These children were thrown around and brutalized by these officers,” said one of the women.
School officials had been aware of the planned student walk-out, according to the high school’s Facebook page, and canceled it Friday morning.
“While we respect students’ rights to express their views, our first priority is to ensure a safe and secure environment for all,” House Principal Jason D. Magditch wrote in a letter posted on the Facebook page. “At this time, we believe canceling the protest is the most appropriate course of action in the interest of student safety and well-being.”
A street shooting in Norristown last week led investigators to discover two sex-trafficking operations that transported women from New York to Montgomery County to engage in prostitution, prosecutors said Thursday.
A dispute between two men who ran rival enterprises erupted in gunfire on Feb. 13, police said, when one shot the other in the thigh during a confrontation on the 400 block of Sandy Street.
On Tuesday, authorities arrested both men.
Efran Flores-Rodriguez, 24, of Norristown, and Fernando Meza-Ramirez, 42, of Corona, Queens, are each charged with trafficking individuals and involuntary servitude. Flores-Rodriguez faces additional charges, including attempted murder, in connection with the shooting.
Officers responding to reports of gunfire found Meza-Ramirez inside a bullet-riddled Toyota RAV4, police said. He had been shot in the thigh.
Meza-Ramirez told police that a stolen white Acura TLX had followed him from Lafayette Street to Sandy Street. When he pulled over, he said, the sedan pulled up beside him and someone opened fire. A witness identified Flores-Rodriguez as the shooter, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
But investigators say the shooting exposed more than a personal feud.
At the hospital where Meza-Ramirez was treated, officers found business cards in his wallet bearing photographs of scantily clad women posing on beds, according to the affidavit.
Days later, on Feb. 17, police searched Flores-Rodriguez’s home and encountered a woman from Flushing, Queens, who told them she had worked as a prostitute under his direction last summer.
She said Flores-Rodriguez, whom she knew as “Guerro,” drove her to Norristown six days a week, provided her a room and charged clients $60 for 10-minute sexual encounters. She told police she sometimes had as many as 15 encounters a day and kept half the money he collected.
The woman said she also worked this year for Meza-Ramirez, whom she knew as “Leo,” under the same arrangement, according to the affidavit.
Both men were denied bail at arraignment and are being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.
Northampton police went to the first-floor condominium on Beacon Hill Drive for a welfare check onDolores Ingram, an 82-year-old grandmother of three known for gifting her sewn and crocheted creations to family, friends, and those in need.
Inside, officers found the living room in disarray, a heap of household items stacked haphazardly. They moved the things aside — a flipped-over futon, glass plates, a shattered aquarium that once housed two lizards — until they uncovered a bare foot. It was cold to the touch.
The body was that of Dolores Ingram, who authorities say died from blunt-force trauma, asphyxiation, and lacerations inflicted by her son, William Ingram, before he fled in her car.
On Wednesday, nearly two years later, a Bucks County judge sentenced WilliamIngram, 51, to 30 to 64 years in prison for killing her inside the home they shared.
Ingram pleaded guilty in December to third-degree murder in the June 2024 killing of his mother, as well as abuse of a corpse and related crimes. He also pleaded guilty to a string of drug offenses, including possession with intent to distribute.
Investigators said that as they continued searching the pile atop Dolores Ingram that day, they found approximately six pounds of marijuana and more than $53,000 in cash — proceeds, prosecutors said, from a marijuana and psilocybin distribution business that William Ingram ran from the home.
They also found the family’s pet reptiles dead on the floor.
“The money you threw on top of her was more than most people make in a year in this country,” said Bucks County Court Judge Stephen Corr, adding that it illustrated Ingram’s “disrespect” for his mother.
In court on Wednesday, Dolores Ingram’s two daughters described their mother as “generous” and “kind, a “good example of how to treat people.” She loved yard sales and thrift stores, they said. She also had “lifelong anxiety,” including over her son, who suffered from mental illness, they said.
Authorities initially charged Ingram with first-degree murder, which carries a potential life sentence. In exchange for a guilty plea to the lesser charge of third-degree murder, Bucks County prosecutors agreed to a sentence of 26 to 54 years in state prison.
Corr used his discretion when he sentenced Ingram to four to 10 years in prison for the drug crimes. He also sentenced Ingram to consecutive terms, calling the move “necessary” given the circumstances of the crimes and the need to “protect the community” from Ingram.
At the sentencing hearing, Downs asked Ingram if he missed his mother. “Yeah,” Ingram replied. He added: “I didn’t mean for this to happen. It doesn’t even seem real to me.”
Ingram denied hitting his mother and said he did not remember piling things on top of her. However, in an affidavit of probable cause for Ingram’s arrest, Northampton Township police said he confessed to hitting his mother in the head during an argument, then throwing “all this stuff” on top of her body.
Then, police said, Ingram stole his mother’s Honda Civic and drove to Washington. There, authorities said, he assaulted a local police officer while naked and was taken into custody about a day after the killing.
Downs asked the judge to sentence Ingram to 26 years, arguing that he would be 75 years old at his first chance at parole — an amount of time he called “significant” for a man Ingram’s age.
Prosecutor Monica Furber pressed for consecutive sentences. While she acknowledged Ingram’s mental illness, she countered that it “did not stop him in any way from running a criminal enterprise” or covering his mother’s body “in the drugs and proceeds.”
Before announcing the sentence, Corr said Ingram had “turned” on “the one person who was trying to help him.”
He added: “I hope you have an opportunity to grow while you spend what is likely the rest of your life in prison.”
A Norristown police sergeant who struck a naked, unarmed man with his patrol SUV last week has been charged with assault, official oppression, and related crimes, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Sgt. Daniel DeOrzio, 52, used unnecessary force in the Feb. 4 incident, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said. He was placed on administrative leave after the encounter.
Prosecutors said officers had been dispatched to the intersection of West Airy and Stanbridge Streets after reports that the naked man was yelling and damaging cars in the intersection. DeOrzio was among several officers who responded and, according to investigators, he positioned his police SUV behind a gray pickup truck blocking the roadway.
After ordering the truck removed, authorities said, DeOrzio accelerated and struck the man, who was standing in the intersection with his hands on his hips.
The impact sent the man airborne before he slammed onto the pavement, prosecutors said. He was taken to Main Line Health Paoli Hospital and released two days later.
Investigators concluded that DeOrzio, the highest-ranking officer at the scene, used unnecessary force and failed to attempt basic de-escalation tactics, including verbal commands, before resorting to violence, the district attorney said.
“This was not a necessary use of deadly force in this response incident,” Steele said in a statement.
The incident drew criticism at a public meeting last week, where Norristown Police Chief Mike Trail fielded questions from residents upset over the officer’s actions. Trail said he would like to form a mental health co-responder program that would pair officers with mental health experts to de-escalate future situations.
“People experiencing mental health behavioral episodes are more likely to … be subject to use of force by responding law enforcement officers because they lack the tools and the sophisticated training necessary to de-escalate,” he said.
DeOrzio turned himself in Tuesday morning and was arraigned. District Judge Cathleen Kelly Rebar set his bail at $100,000. DeOrzio could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hours before Ahmad Shareef was arrested for killing his wife, he called his mother and confessed.
“I cut her head off,” he told her, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
On Monday, Shareef, 37, was sentenced to 16 to 42 years in prison in the decapitation death of Leila Al Raheel inside the couple’s Northeast Philadelphia home. Shareef pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related crimes in the November 2022 slaying.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case like this,” said Common Pleas Court Judge Charles Ehrlich.
New details of the killing also surfaced during the hearing.
After Shareef confessed to his mother, she asked a neighbor to go to her son’s home in the 300 block of Magee Avenue and check on Al Raheel, according to the affidavit. The neighbor found Al Raheel dead in the dining room, she later told police.
Officers who responded to the house discovered Al Raheel’s headless body on the kitchen floor, the affidavit said. They found Shareef about four miles away, hiding in bushes in front of a house. His sweatpants, the document said, were stained red with blood.
Inside a police interview room, Shareef waived his Miranda rights, according to the affidavit. He told detectives he’d argued with Al Raheel after she had called him names.
Then, he said, he cut off her head with a kitchen knife.
In court Monday, the neighbor described how discovering Al Raheel’s body upended her life. She said she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “This isn’t something that time simply erases,” she said.
No one testified on Shareef’s behalf. His mother, who had been expected to appear, was ill and unable to attend, his defense attorney, Gregg Blender, said.
Al Raheel, who came to the U.S. with Shareef and his family in 2011, “has no family to speak on her behalf,” said the prosecutor, Maggie McDermott.
The judge imposed a sentence slightly below the prosecution’s request of 23 to 47 years, after Shareef’s attorney urged him to consider his client’s traumatic childhood and long-standing mental illness, which he said went largely untreated.
As a child, Shareef moved with his mother from Kuwait to Iraq and later to Syria, fleeing both war and abusive men who, Blender said, subjected them to violence. At the insistence of his family, Shareef later married Al Raheel, a neighbor, Blender said.
In the U.S., Shareef was treated repeatedly for mental health crises, Blender said. In 2012, he was hospitalized after striking himself and cutting his wrists, and in 2019, Blender said, Shareef stabbed himself in the neck.
Blender urged the judge to weigh what he described as his client’s “horrific upbringing” against what he acknowledged was “nothing less than a horrific crime.”
McDermott called the killing the “peak of domestic violence” and “unspeakably awful,” and warned that Shareef posed a continuing danger. If he was capable of such violence toward someone he loved, she argued, then even strangers were at risk.
Ehrlich said the sentence reflected both Shareef’s traumatic past and the threat he posed going forward.
“To sever a head with a kitchen knife takes a lot of effort,” he said. “Mr. Shareef, you have lived a life of horrors. I don’t think anyone in this courtroom disputes that.” The question, he added, was what needed to be done to protect others.
“I’m very concerned about the future — I’m going to be honest with you,” the judge said. “What happened to you as a child was not your fault. But people with this kind of damage can hurt others.”
After the slaying, neighbors told The Inquirer that several people had been living in the house, which had become an eyesore on the block. Shareef, they said, stood out: He behaved aggressively to other residents, and sometimes appeared outside wearing only underwear.
Since late 2016, police responded to more than 50 calls on the 300 block of Magee Street for domestic disturbances, reports of weapons, and other complaints. However, police would not disclose exact addresses, and it remains unclear how many of those calls — if any — originated from the home Shareef shared with Al Raheel, where she was eventually killed.
The city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections also confirmed that inspectors visited the house more than a year before Al Raheel was killed, following reports that the house’s garage was being used as a living space. But the inspectors weren’t able to gain access to the property, according to the department. Instead, they issued violations for weeds and combustible storage.
Two weeks after Kada Scott vanished, Philadelphia Police Detective Joseph Cremen stood over a patch of disturbed ground in a wooded stretch near an abandoned school in East Germantown.
He pushed aside a layer of loose twigs and pressed a six-foot branch into the soil. It sank only a few inches before stopping short.
That, Cremen testified Monday, was when he realized he’d found a shallow grave.
The Oct. 18 discovery ended a two-week search for Scott, 23, who disappeared on Oct. 4 after leaving the Chestnut Hill senior living center where she worked. An autopsy later determined that she had been shot in the head.
Cremen testified that the location of the grave was not discovered at random, but emerged from weeks of reviewing surveillance footage, digital data, and tips that helped authorities trace a path from the Awbury Arboretum to the wooded area where Scott was buried — and that linked her killing to Keon King, who is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes.
During a preliminary hearing Monday that stretched nearly five hours, prosecutors methodically laid out that evidence, replaying video after video on a courtroom TV as detectives testified about how they tracked Scott’s final movements and King’s efforts, they say, to conceal her death.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Common Pleas Court Judge Karen Simmons ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed and ordered it held for court.
An attorney for Scott’s parents, Brian Fritz, called the ruling a “first step” in getting justice for their daughter.
“Kada Scott’s family is grieving,” he said. “In fact, their grief is unimaginable. But, so is their commitment for accountability and justice for Kada.”
Detectives testified that surveillance cameras at the Awbury Arboretum recorded a silver hatchback vehicle pulling into a parking lot less than an hour before Scott’s Apple Watch transmitted its final location at 1:14 a.m. on Oct. 5. Footage from the same cameras appeared to show two men removing an object from the car and walking in the direction investigators later followed to Scott’s burial site.
An anonymous tip helped lead investigators into the woods nearby the Ada H.H. Lewis Middle School in East Germantown.
Kim Matthews (second from left), mother of Kada Scott, holds a image of her daughter before a Domestic Violence Awareness walk at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Oct. 26, 2025.
Additional street cameras, prosecutors said, captured the same hatchback parked in a driveway behind homes on the 2300 block of 74th Avenue. Moments later, video showed a sudden flash of light and flames as the car was set on fire, destroying what authorities believe may have been physical evidence inside.
Investigators did not rely on any single camera, prosecutors emphasized. Instead, detectives testified that they reconstructed the timeline by stitching together footage from dozens of surveillance systems across the city. That effort, they said, led them to King, 21.
Street cameras recorded a 1999 gold Toyota Camry registered to King traveling in the vicinity of the arboretum around the same times activity was captured there, they said. Police also tracked the movements of one of Scott’s Apple devices after she left work, comparing its location data with license plate readers and surveillance video, detective Robert Daly testified.
“Everywhere this device went, Mr. King’s car went,” Daly said.
Cell phone records presented at the hearing showed that King and Scott had exchanged text messages in the hours before her disappearance, Daly testified.
The last message Scott sent asked King to call her when he arrived at the senior living center. The final incoming call on her phone, at 10:12 p.m. on Oct. 4, was from King, according to police.
Before Simmons ruled, King’s defense attorney, Robert Gamburg, argued that the prosecution’s case relied too heavily on circumstantial evidence and failed to place his client directly at the scene of the killing.
The surveillance footage, he said, did not clearly identify any faces and could not establish who was inside and around the vehicles.
He also pointed to testimony from a senior living center employee who said she saw Scott leave work that night and noticed a dark-colored Jeep parked outside the facility, not a silver hatchback.
“There is absolutely nothing connecting this young man to what happened to Ms. Scott,” Gamburg said, urging the judge to dismiss the case.
“At this level, with this quantum of evidence, for this type of case, it should be discharged today,” he said.
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski countered that investigators had assembled a detailed and corroborated account of Scott’s final hours, one that showed not only King’s proximity to her disappearance, she said, but also steps taken afterward to destroy evidence.
“This isn’t coincidence,” she told the court. “It’s corroboration.”
Hours after authorities discovered three of his relatives dead in a Bucks County home, Kevin Castiglia confessed Monday to killing his parents in their sleep and then fatally stabbing his sister when she discovered their bodies, authorities said.
Castiglia, 55, is charged with three counts of criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes in the deaths of his father, Frederick, 90, his mother, Judith, 84, and his sister, Deborah, 53.
Northampton Township police arrested him Monday after he barricaded himself inside his parents’ home on Heather Road for more than five hours with their bodies inside. He was armed with bloody knives as officers surrounded the house and attempted to persuade him to surrender, authorities said.
After his arrest, Castiglia was taken to a local hospital, where, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest, he told a doctor, “I killed my parents in their sleep.” He also said he killed his sister “when she found them,” the affidavit said.
Later at police headquarters, investigators said, Castiglia told officers he had stabbed all three relatives to death.
Castiglia was being held without bail at the Bucks County Correctional Facility.
Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan speaks at a press conference.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Bucks County prosecutors declined to discuss a possible motive for the slayings. Deputy District Attorney Monica Furber, who is prosecuting the case, said investigators believe Castiglia killed his parents on Friday and his sister on Saturday.
Deborah Castiglia was a longtime teacher in the Centennial School District. She joined the district in 1999, teaching math at Klinger Middle School, according to an email school officials sent to students, parents, staff, and community members. In 2018, she joined the teaching staff of William Tennent High School.
She taught math students with “dedication, care, and compassion,” Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh wrote in the email. “Her loss is profoundly felt across our school community.”
The district is offering counseling and support services for students and staff, Lucabaugh added.
Castiglia’s parents, who had lived in the two-story redbrick home since 1970 and shared it with their son, had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary, Furber said.
Police were called to the home after Deborah Castiglia’s boyfriend reported that Kevin Castiglia had threatened him when he went to the house looking for her, authorities said. He grew concerned after he saw her vehicle parked in the driveway, but could find no footprints in the snow, District Attorney Joe Khan said at Wednesday’s news conference.
When officers arrived, Castiglia greeted them at the front door holding two knives, authorities said.
They used a Taser to try to subdue him — to no avail, according to the affidavit: He pulled the probes from his body and retreated into the house.
Bucks County Detectives and Police are at the Northampton Township home where three people died.
Authorities established a perimeter around the home as negotiators worked to bring the situation to a peaceful end. During the standoff, officers repeatedly attempted to communicate with Castiglia, urging him to come out of the house, police said. But he would not engage, the affidavit said.
A tactical team eventually broke into the house through the front door, as snipers positioned themselves in a nearby house to give on-the-ground officers cover.
“I had no idea what was happening,” said neighbor Erica Titlow, 35. Snipers used the second story of her home during the standoff, she said, calling them “polite” and “grateful.”
The standoff ended when officers took Castiglia into custody, authorities said. No officers were injured.
Police found Deborah Castiglia’s body in the kitchen. The bodies of Frederick and Judith Castiglia were discovered in their bedroom, according to the affidavit, not in the basement as police previously reported.
Furber said one weapon used in the killings was recovered inside the house. Investigators “don’t believe there was any kind of struggle” during the attacks, she said.
Khan praised law enforcement’s efforts to take Castiglia into custody. “Bringing him in alive, despite being faced with an armed and eventually barricaded individual, is truly remarkable,” he said.
Staff writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.
A Bucks County man was charged with homicide and related crimes late Tuesday after prosecutors said he killed his father, mother, and sister inside their parents’ Northampton Township home.
The charges came a day after authorities arrested Kevin Castiglia following an hourslong standoff at the home where his relatives were found dead.
Castiglia, 55, was taken into custody after he barricaded himself inside the two-story brick house at 26 Heather Road, where police later discovered the bodies of his 53-year-old sister, Deborah, in the kitchen and his parents, Frederick, 90, and Judith, 84, in the basement.
Authorities have not said how they died.
Castiglia is charged with three counts each of criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse, as well as making terroristic threats, and related crimes.
Police were dispatched to the house about 2:15 p.m. Monday after Deborah Castiglia’s boyfriend called 911 to report that Kevin Castiglia had threatened him with a large chef’s knife when he arrived at the home looking for his girlfriend, authorities said. The boyfriend told police Deborah Castiglia had been missing for several days, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her brother’s arrest.
After officers arrived, the affidavit said, Kevin Castiglia came to the front door armed with two knives, one of which an officer believed had blood on it.
According to the affidavit, Castiglia spoke incoherently and did not respond when officers asked about his family. He pointed the knives at the officers, who deployed Tasers to try to subdue him — without success, the document said.
Castiglia pulled the probes from his body before slamming the door shut and locking it, the affidavit said.
Officers called for a tactical team to break into the house. As police secured the area, neighbors were ordered to shelter in place.
Three found dead in Northampton
David Deleo, 41, was shoveling snow from his driveway when Northampton Township police arrived, he said in a phone interview Tuesday. Within minutes, he said, officers blocked off Heather Road. Police vehicles and emergency crews from neighboring towns and counties soon lined the street, surrounding the house and establishing a perimeter, he said.
From inside her home next door, Erica Titlow, 35, said she looked out a window and saw the man standing at the front door of the house, which has French doors with large glass panes. He was in his underwear, she said, with blood on his chest and stomach. Deleo said that he also saw the man and that he was holding a knife with blood on the blade.
“I had no idea what was happening,” Titlow said. “I thought maybe he was having some kind of mental breakdown and had hurt himself.”
After the man retreated from the doorway, police used a bullhorn to call out to him, Titlow said, urging him to come outside. He did not, and the standoff continued for several hours.
Officers surrounded the house but were unable to enter, Titlow said. Shortly before a SWAT team forced its way through the front door Monday evening, officers went door to door, asking Deleo and Titlow if snipers could use their second-floor windows to provide cover to officers on the ground. They agreed, they said.
Titlow said she spent more than an hour hiding in her basement with her 2-year-old daughter while snipers were positioned inside her home. “I didn’t want her to see any of it,” she said.
Even after officers entered the house, the man was not immediately removed, Deleo said. He watched as police deployed gas canisters inside the home and heard them detonate. Firefighters later connected a hose to a nearby hydrant and sprayed water into the house, according to Deleo and Titlow.
A Bucks County detective truck outside the home where three people died in Southampton on Monday.
Sometime after nightfall — the exact moment was difficult to recall, Titlow said — officers pulled the man from the house. He was restrained on a stretcher as authorities wheeled him away, she said.
By Tuesday morning, police were still at the scene, Titlow said, though the activity had slowed. “It’s a lot quieter now,” she said.
Staff writer Robert Moran contributed to this article.
A Philadelphia police officer opened fire on a man Monday night after the man critically injured another person in Hunting Park, police said. The man, police said, was not hit.
Officers were called about 8:30 p.m. to a Sunoco gas station in the 4100 block of North Broad Street for a report of a man with a gun, according to police Tuesday.
When they arrived, police said, the officers saw multiple men arguing. The men quickly left the gas station and walked toward the intersection of Broad and Jerome Streets, where the fight turned physical, police said.
A 29-year-old man drew a handgun and shot another man in the chest and groin. One of the officers fired at the alleged shooter, police said, but did not strike him.
The alleged shooter ran away, but the officer caught and arrested him in the 1300 block of Jerome Street, police said. Nearby, beneath a parked vehicle, officers found a 9mm handgun.
Paramedics took the victim to Temple University Hospital, where police said he was in critical condition Tuesday. His name was not released.
Police did not release the name of the alleged shooter, who had not yet been formally charged, they said.
The officer, a 36-year-old man with nine years on the police force, was not injured in the incident, police said. He has been placed on administrative duty pending an internal investigation, as per department policy when an officer discharges his gun.
Past a marble monument for a Civil War hero, down a grass path where toppled headstones disappear into ivy and weeds and faded miniature American flags droop, lies the underground vault of James Campbell, who died in 1913 and whose remains mayhave been among the dozens stolen in one of the largest grave desecration cases ever uncovered in Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Christian Gerlach,who was charged with more than 500 offenses earlier this month and is being held in jail in lieu of $1 million bail, is accused of methodically breaking into burial vaults and mausoleums at Mount Moriah Cemetery, prying open caskets and removing human remains from Campbell’s burial ground and at least 25 other sites across the sprawling Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough cemetery.
Inside Campbell’s vault, where his family members were also entombed 12 feet beneath the cemetery’s surface as early as 1872, investigators said they found three broken caskets, crumbled marble, and a discarded pry bar. Six sets of human remains, they said, were missing.
Authorities allege that Gerlach moved through the cemetery repeatedly, at all hours, accessing sealed burial sites and removing dozens of remains over several weekswithout being detected. Large sections of the cemetery, overgrown and rarely monitored, offered long stretches of isolation — conditions investigators say Gerlach may have exploited. And as law enforcement continues to sort through the evidence, local officials and cemetery advocates are pressing for changes to prevent this from happening again.
“We were too slow to move,” said Yeadon Mayor Rohan Hepkins. “Nobody thought such a dastardly act — such an inhumane and incomprehensible act — was possible.”
Hepkins last week joined state and local officials to discuss what can be done to protect the burial grounds, where an estimated 180,000 people are buried.
He and others expressed cautious resolve that the cemeterycould be secured well enough to prevent another violation of this scale.
“I wish I could tell loved ones that I’m not critically concerned, but I am,” said State Sen. Anthony Williams, who represents the district where Mount Moriah Cemetery is located and was one of the officials who gathered to discuss preventive measures. “But I don’t know that Mount Moriah will ever be restored to the condition that they buried their loved ones in.”
Mount Moriah Cemetery, a historic landmark abandoned by its last owner and under court receivership, has long been plagued by neglect and limited oversight.
Investigators say Gerlach’s crimes unfolded over the course of months, starting in the fall and ending on the night of Jan. 6, when Yeadon detectives arrested the Pennsylvania man as he attempted to leave the cemetery.
License plate readers and cell phone towers place Gerlach near or inside the cemetery during both daylight and darkness. On Christmas Eve, for example, the technologies captured Gerlach’s vehicle or phone at least three times between 12:28 a.m. and 12:54 p.m., court records show.
The day before, on Dec. 23, a Yeadon investigator working the case saw scratch marks on the heavy stone slab sealing the underground Zeigler family vault, as if, a detective wrote in an affidavit of probable cause for Gerlach’s arrest, it had been “marked” as a target. When the detective returned on Dec. 26, the stone had been broken and nine sets of human remains stolen.
Yeadon police, who investigated the crimes alongside other authorities, have since been inundated with hundreds of calls and emails from anguished family members seeking answers, Chief Henry Giammarcco said.
Rescuing Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah Cemetery opened in 1855. Its owners, the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, abandoned it in 2011, after years of mismanagement. The Friends of Mount Moriah, a volunteer-driven nonprofit, formed that same year with the goal of rescuing the grounds from vandalism, crime, and decay. In 2014, a Philadelphia judge appointed a receivership, the Mount Moriah Cemetery Preservation Corporation, to temporarily manage the cemetery until a permanent owner could be found.
More than a decade later, no permanent owner has emerged.
In 2018, the two groups and other stakeholders commissioned an ambitious strategic plan that called for stabilizing the cemetery’s finances, finding a permanent owner, and remaking Mount Moriah into a viable public space. The plan assumed significant investment and long-term stewardship. Neither materialized.
“There’s no clear revenue stream, and there’s significant infrastructure improvements and capital improvements that are required, on top of maintenance costs,” said Brian Abernathy, who served as chair of the preservation corporation when the plan was created.
At the time, Abernathy said, “there was a lot of hope and optimism about what we could accomplish with it. But the plan stalled over obstacles that persist today, he said, including enticing an owner when so many costly repairs are needed.
Under the court order, the corporation — a board composed of officials from Philadelphia and Yeadon, including Hepkins — is responsible for preserving the cemetery but has delegated day-to-day care to Friends of Mount Moriah.
Over the years, Friends of Mount Moriah made visible gains. Its 12-person board and volunteers hauled away abandoned cars, tires. and trash, righted toppled headstones, and uncovered burial vaults beneath thick vines, brush, and overgrowth.
“Until this happened,” said John Schmehl Jr., the group’s president, “security was not our first concern.”
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Yet thieves knew the grounds. Last year, Schmehl said, more than $14,000 worth of lawn equipment — including mowers, weed trimmers, and hand tools — was stolen from the cemetery garage. Friends of Mount Moriah entered the growing season without the equipment needed to keep large sections of the cemetery accessible, he said.
Now, the group is scrambling to implement security improvements across the cemetery’s more than 100 acres, including repairing dilapidated fencing, launching random patrols, and installing cameras on both the Philadelphia and Yeadon sides of the property. Fencing construction began last week. Schmehl said the group is seeking a private security company to monitor the cameras around the clock.
Cemetery volunteers dwindle
The backyard of 60-year-old Robin Pitts’ house overlooks the Springfield Avenue side of Mount Moriah, where her mother, brother, and extended family are buried.
As a child, Pitts said, she played kickball on an unfenced stretch of the cemetery near where Betsy Ross — the seamstress whose burial helped cement Mount Moriah’s place in American history — rested for more than a century.
Those memories later drew Pitts to volunteer with Friends of Mount Moriah for nearly two decades, she said. On Saturdays, she said, she grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for volunteers who picked up trash and mowed the grass along Springfield Avenue.
But during the pandemic, Pitts said, the grounds began to deteriorate beyond what volunteers could manage. “I thought, ‘Enough’s enough. I can’t do this anymore,’” she said. She stopped volunteering.
Last week, Pitts walked down a path choked with waist-high grass and weeds where she once mowed. She pointed past a tangle of barren hemlock blocking a path to a tree and several headstones — some toppled, others obscured by vines and brush. “We used to clean it all the way past there,” Pitts said. “Now nobody does.”
A shrinking volunteer base has slowed progress at the cemetery, Schmehl said. Some cleanup events draw just one volunteer. “It’s a struggle, to say the least,” he said, adding that entire sections of the cemetery “have been reclaimed by nature.”
Picture of dog waste discarded on the grounds of Mount Moriah Cemetery on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
The cemetery is now open just two days a week, Saturdays and Sundays.
The costs of needed improvements are also significant. By Thursday, Friends of Mount Moriah had spent more than $20,000 of its roughly $90,000 annual budget to begin fencing construction and repairs, and secure the mausoleums and vaults that had been desecrated in the recent crimes. Additional donations, Schmehl said, will be needed to sustain the effort.
As recently as spring 2023, Mount Moriah Cemetery Preservation Corp. held more than $400,000 in its endowment, according to a letter filed in Philadelphia Orphans’ Court. Aubrey Powers,the receivership’s chair, did not respond to questions concerning the receivership’s contributions to the Friends of Mount Moriah or what the corporation will do to helpaddress security or infrastructure needs.
As a condition of the receivership, the corporation must file semiannual reports to the court. A year ago, the only reference to security was a brief note stating that the receivership “continues to encourage the Philadelphia and Yeadon Police Departments to schedule patrols in and around Mount Moriah Cemetery more frequently to deter criminal activity.”
Hepkins said increased patrols would be part of a broader strategyto reduce criminal activity and restore oversight to the cemetery. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department said officers patrol the cemetery’s perimeter, not its grounds.
“There has to be some sort of intervention in order to rectify what’s happened at Mount Moriah,” Abernathy said. “And I just don’t know who’s going to provide that intervention.”
Whose remains are missing?
Hepkins on Wednesday climbed a steep hill from a small parking lot off Cobbs Creek Parkway to a cluster of mausoleums that Gerlach is accused of breaking into.
Yeadon Mayor Rohan Hepkins during a walking tour of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. Graves at the cemetery were allegedly robbed by Jonathan Christian Gerlach.
At the family mausoleum of John Hunter, a former president of the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, authorities allege Gerlach smashed through a sealed cinder-block doorway and shattered the marble floor. He then rappelled 10 feet into the crypt and removed the remains of 15-year-old Martha Hunter, who died in 1869.
He left behind a length of white rope and a screwdriver, authorities said.
Just feet away, in the mausoleum of wholesale grocer Jonathan Prichard, Gerlach pulled cinder block from a sealed window and rifled through five of nine caskets inside, investigators allege. The remains of 62-year-old Mary Prichard Steigleman, Prichard’s daughter, are now missing.
Nearby is the family vault of John McCullough, a Shakespearean actor who died in 1889. Beneath a towering monument etched with a line from Julius Caesar, authorities said they found two caskets disturbed, one tipped onto its side. Both were empty.
More than a week after Gerlach’s alleged break-in, bricks torn from the vault’s seal lay piled beside the entrance, and a foot-long hole exposed the floor below. Inside, wooden pallets that investigators believe Gerlach used to climb down cluttered the crypt.
The McCullough family burial tomb at Mount Moriah Cemetery, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. This and several other graves at this cemetery were allegedly broken into by Jonathan Christian Gerlach.
A short walk away is the cemetery’s naval plot, where rows of identical white headstones mark the graves of more than 2,000 Navy officers. It’s Hepkins’ favorite part of the cemetery, he said.
Hepkins once hoped to be buried at Mount Moriah, a place he called “godly.” Now, he said, “I have to reconsider. I want my bones held somewhere in sacred perpetuity.”
