A freshman football player at Villanova University has been charged with rape and sexual assault stemming from a December incident on campus, a university spokesperson said Sunday.
D’Hani Cobbs, 20, faces charges of rape, sexual assault, and related offenses in Delaware County, court records show. He is accused of assaulting another student on Dec. 7, the university said in a statement, which did not provide any additional details about the alleged incident. The arrest was first reported by student newspaper The Villanovan.
Cobbs was arraigned Friday and held on $250,000 bail, according to court records.
A university spokesperson said school leaders reported the incident to law enforcement and “removed” Cobbs from campus shortly after the incident in December.
“Sexual violence of any kind is not tolerated on our campus and we are committed to both supporting the victim and fostering a safe environment for all of our students,” the university said in the statement.
A player bio page on Villanova’s website was out of service with an error message on Sunday, but according to social media and sports news outlets, Cobbs graduated from Camden High School in 2025 and played wide receiver at Villanova. Recruiters for the Villanova Wildcats posted a “welcome to the family” message on social media after recruiting Cobbs in December 2024.
An attorney for Cobbs did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
In the mid-2010s, well after he was already a convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein began closely following the sexual assault case against another prominent figure: Philadelphia-born actor and comedian Bill Cosby.
Among the millions of documents released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice — in the latest tranche of what’s become known as the Epstein files — are emails detailing a neighborly relationship between the disgraced financier and the entertainer, who both owned townhouses on East 71st Street in Manhattan.
Epstein and his representatives corresponded with Cosby, invited him to dinner parties, and at one point sought to retain Cosby’s personal chef as his own.
When Cosby’s prosecution gained steam in 2015, Epstein and his inner circle became devout followers of the legal proceedings in Montgomery County, where Cosby was ultimately sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for sexual assault. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2021 after Cosby served nearly three years.) Emails indicate Epstein often saw parallels to his own ongoing legal issues — and also viewed the Cosby case as a valuable distraction from his own misconduct in the news.
“im getting bad press again,” Epstein wrote to a friend in January 2015, days after a new legal development emerged against him in Florida. “as i predicted. now that cosby was off the sex headline they need to resuurect a new one.”
Before their separate criminal troubles escalated, the two men were neighbors, living among other Wall Street elites and big Hollywood names. On Jan. 4, 2013, Epstein ordered his assistant to deliver a typo-strewn dinner invitation to Cosby’s home, with a who’s-who guest list.
“Take this note to bull cosby s house. dear neighbor. woody allen, lewis black, bobbly slayton are having, dinner at my house, thought you might like to join. a neighborhood event,” Epstein said.
Days later, another person, whose name has been redacted from the records, wrote Epstein to say that he heard Cosby was traveling and could not attend the Jan. 23 dinner. “Otherwise, he would have loved to come,” the person wrote, relaying a secondhand message through Cosby’s “house man.”
Attempts to reach Cosby on Sunday were not successful.
Epstein’s interest in Cosby’s case was intertwined with his apparent desire to do business with the comedian. Between 2017 and 2018, he had his real estate broker aggressively pursue Cosby’s team about buying his house across the street from Epstein’s own seven-story home.
Around October 2017, Richard Kahn, a lawyer who worked closely with Epstein, sent the financier an email with the subject line “Bill Cosby is reportedly going broke paying for multiple legal bills.” Epstein asked his New York-based real estate broker David Mitchell to begin looking into purchasing “the Cosby house.”
For more than a year between Cosby’s trial and retrial in Montgomery County, Epstein hounded Mitchell for updates on Cosby’s interest in selling the residence. He even emailed a former New York Times reporter in 2018, saying that he was “trying to buy Cosby.”
Cosby’s attorney eventually told Mitchell the property wasn’t for sale, emails show, but that a good offer might “get a conversation started.” Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Cosby, now 88, went into foreclosure on both of his Manhattan homes. He listed the East 71st Street address for sale in 2025 for $29 million.
In Cosby, Epstein sees parallel
The records show that by 2015, Epstein and his inner circle were trading emails of news stories about Cosby and analyzing court filings from litigation against the entertainer.
As the case mounted, Epstein and his longtime friend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, looked for rulings that they could use in their own favor.
“Does the new Cosby information cause any issues for you?” someone, whose name is redacted in the files, wrote to Epstein in July 2015. The email was sent shortly after Montgomery County prosecutors reopened a criminal investigation against Cosby for the 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand.
In October that year, Epstein emailed Maxwell with a judicial memorandum responding to a motion to get one of the sexual assault lawsuits against Cosby thrown out. (Maxwell’s attorneys would later use Cosby’s overturned conviction in 2021 to argue for the dismissal of her own sex trafficking case.)
Others in Epstein’s network were interested in Cosby as well. Epstein’s accountant emailed him a link to a news story about Cosby’s arrest in December 2015 and continued to send his client updates on the trial over the next several years.
At one point, the case even kindled a creative idea. Epstein emailed film producer Barry Josephson in 2015 with an idea for a movie that was “a fictionalized account of what happens to people falsely accused,” taking inspiration from the Cosby case as well as debunked sexual assault allegations on college campuses that occurred years prior.
“Few willing to stand up and say that these girls are liars,” Epstein wrote. (Josephson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.)
Allen has faced public criticism for his relationship with Previn — a daughter adopted by his former partner, actress Mia Farrow. Farrow also publicly accused him of sexual abuse of their adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, which Allen has repeatedly denied.
In May 2016, while inviting Previn to dinner with Noam Chomsky via email, Epstein offered a seemingly unsolicited take on the Cosby case.
“Whether guilty or not, [he’s] being burned at the stake,” Epstein wrote.
“They all want blood,” Previn responded.
The topic dominated their email correspondence for the next two years.
Allen, now 90, also took the side of Cosby in conversations with Epstein.
“[He] is being persecuted. Ok, even if he’s guilty no one died,” the filmmaker wrote in a 2016 exchange with Epstein. “He’s been publicly humiliated, stripped of honors at schools, forced to cancel comedy tour, dropped from tv series that was in the works, old show taken off the air. Do they want his head on a pike?”
The Inquirer messaged Allen’s last known publicist for comment on Sunday and did not receive an immediate response.
Epstein committed suicide in a Manhattan jail following his 2019 arrest on child sex trafficking charges.
Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein once inquired about buying a private plane from University of Pennsylvania megadonor and Wharton School adviser Marc Rowan, emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice show.
The exchange, which appears among the three million documents unsealed Friday, occurred in early 2016, at a time when Epstein was corresponding with several executives from Apollo Global Management, the New York-based private equity firm Rowan cofounded in 1990 and where he now serves as CEO.
Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff emailed Rowan’s office on Jan. 12 and asked for details about Rowan’s private plane: “Jeffrey is asking if he could get the details of Marc’s plane for sale…the hours, photos, any pertinent information! Possible?”
It was not clear whether Rowan ever personally followed up on the plane offer, which was first reported by Bloomberg News, but a representative for the jet company offered Epstein the Gulfstream G450 for $18.9 million, noting it was in “immaculate condition.” The plane ultimately was sold to another buyer, according to Bloomberg.
A spokesperson for Rowan declined to comment Friday.
Beyond his success on Wall Street, Rowan has become a powerful and controversial force at Penn, where he serves as chairman of the advisory board at the Wharton School. The billionaire executive donated more than $10 million to the school last year, and led a campaign to oust former Penn president Liz Magill and board chair Scott L. Bok over the school’s handling of antisemitism on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
While Rowan’s business relationship with Epstein has not been widely reported, Epstein had a long history with Rowan’s predecessor and fellow cofounder at Apollo, Leon Black. Black was one of the few Wall Street bosses who stood by Epstein after his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting sex from a minor, according to the New York Times. He stepped down as CEO and chairman of the company in 2021 after it came to light that he had paid Epstein more than $158 million in adviser fees over the years.
A week prior to the plane inquiry, Rowan had breakfast at Epstein’s home in New York City — at Rowan’s request, emails show. The two financiers were engaged in some kind of investment together, the details of which are not entirely clear in the DOJ emails. The documents do not indicate Rowan and Epstein discussed anything other than business.
In February 2016, a month after the plane inquiry, Epstein emailed Rowan to ask him for a phone call, though he did not say what about.
Rowan’s name appears in Epstein’s emails dating back to 2013, including a proposed meeting that year at Epstein’s New York City residence involving Black and another Apollo cofounder, Josh Harris.
Harris, who also owns the Sixers, and Epstein also corresponded multiple times over several years, although a Harris spokesperson said he sought to avoid meeting with Epstein to prevent him from forming a formal relationship with Apollo.
Rowan, in contrast, appears to have sought Epstein out for meetings, like the one that took place prior to Epstein’s plane offer.
“Marc said if Jeffrey wants an early breakfast that will work for him,” an Apollo assistant wrote to Epstein’s handler. “He will bring coffee!”
This story has been updated to clarify Epstein’s relationship with Apollo Global Management.
Peco responded to the smell of gas at the Bristol Health & Rehab Center more than two hours before an explosion that killed three people and injured at least 20 others just days before Christmas. Yet in initial findings released Wednesday, federal investigators said the public utility company did not fully stop the gas flow to the facility until an hour and a half after the catastrophic blast.
According to an investigative summary released by the National Transportation Safety Board, a maintenance director at the nursing home reported the odor coming from the basement boiler room around 11 a.m. A technician with Peco responded by 11:50 a.m. and identified the source — a leak in the gas meter valve.
The technician called for backup to assist with the repair, and a meter services technician arrived about 1:20 p.m. The explosion occurred less than an hour later, at 2:15 p.m. A Peco emergency crew fully isolated the gas at 3:50 p.m., as first responders were pulling victims from the rubble.
The NTSB’s initial findings provide the most concrete timeline yet of what happened in the lead-up to the Dec. 23 tragedy that rattled Lower Bucks County and raised questions about the actions of both the public utility company and the nursing home’s operator.
Peco spokesperson Candice Womer said in a statement Wednesday that the company has begun reevaluating response protocols and prioritizing the movement of indoor gas meters to the outdoors, in an effort to meet “the highest standards of safety and reliability.”
The initial findings do not fault or exonerate any parties in the blast, and NTSB officials said the investigation remains ongoing.
Investigators work the scene at Bristol Health & Rehab Center the day after the explosion
Carin O’Donnell, an attorney with Stark & Stark who is representing victims in a lawsuit, said the initial findings demonstrated that Peco gambled with everyone’s safety by not shutting off the flow of gas to the facility sooner.
“Clearly, Peco knew there was a leak, and rather than terminate the gas, they sent their repairmen in while the gas line was still pressurized,” O’Donnell said. “It’s like sending them in with a lit cigarette and a match.”
At least two separate lawsuits alleging negligence have been filed against Peco and Saber Healthcare Group, the Ohio-based nursing home operator that runs the facility.
Residents and staff told The Inquirer they had detected a heavy gas odor inside the 174-bed facility early that morning, yet no building-wide evacuation order was given to residents.
During interviews, NTSB officials heard from people in the facility that the smell could be detected from the basement up to the second floor of the building.
The safety board did not address whether an evacuation should have been done. Investigators noted the Peco foreman and the meter services technician had “had less than 1 year of experience in their current roles.”
Zachary Shamberg, chief of government affairs at Saber, cast the NTSB’s initial findings as exculpatory. He said in a statement that facility staff “acted promptly” while “Peco technicians unsuccessfully attempted to repair their gas line.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Peco initially reported arriving at the facility around 2 p.m. and later changed the timeline to “hours” before the blast that occurred just after 2:15 p.m.
First responders encountered chaos. People ran from the partially collapsed nursing home, many bleeding and injured. Police and firefighters helped others escape from the wreckage while contending with a second blast and fire that ignited after the initial explosion.
Two people were pronounced dead in the aftermath of the blast: Muthoni Nduthu, 52, of Bristol, who worked at the facility as a nurse for over a decade, and a resident at the facility whom police identified as Ann Ready. Another resident, 66-year-old Patricia Merro, died two weeks later from her injuries.
The sisters of Felistus Muthoni Nduthu-Ndegwa speak at her funeral at St. Ephrem Church in Bensalem. The 52-year-old nurse was killed in an explosion at Bristol Health and Rehab.
The nursing home, previously known as Silver Lake, had been acquired by Saber Healthcare Group and renamed Bristol Health & Rehab Center three weeks before the explosion.
Under the facility’s previous operator, the Cincinnati-based CommuniCare Health Services, the nursing home had been cited repeatedly for substandard care and facility management.
Federal regulators gave the facility a one-star rating, and CommuniCare was fined more than $418,000 in 2024, records show, due to ongoing violations. Two months before the explosion, state inspectors cited the facility for lacking a fire safety plan, failing to maintain extinguishers, and having hallways and doors that could not contain smoke.
A representative for Saber said last month the company had begun addressing those problems after taking over the facility in early December.
After the blast, Peco tested the ground outside the nursing home and detected gas in the ground. The safety board said it continues to analyze physical evidence gathered from the scene and did not provide a timeline on delivering a final report.
To hear Anthony Hudgins tell it, overtime fraud at the Philadelphia Fire Department is so brazen that some employees continued abusing the system even after officials started investigating them.
A paramedic was billing the city for overtime hours last May, Hudgins, the former first deputy fire commissioner, contends. But according to a federal lawsuit Hudgins filed Wednesday, there was one problem: That employee was luxuriating on a Norwegian Cruise at the time, not on the clock as a paramedic.
The alleged deception took place after The Inquirer reported that the city was investigating overtime abuse within the 2,800-member fire department and, at the same time, investigating Hudgins over a series of sexual harassment complaints made against him — claims Hudgins says were false and made by employees he’d reported for overtime abuse.
In his complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Hudgins accuses paramedics, the firefighters union president, and top city officials of defamation, subjecting him to a “bad faith” investigation, and ultimately forcing the department veteran of 31 years to lose his rank and take a $75,000 pay cut.
The dueling misconduct investigations have roiled the fire department since late 2024, and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration has declined to release the findings from either probe. Hudgins was demoted last fall.
Hudgins’ lawsuit claims that findings from the sexual harassment investigation conducted by the law firm Campbell Durrant cleared him of “verbal misconduct” and found that he had “hugged co-workers.” The complaint states that Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson told Hudgins that the investigators found: “You were just being you.”
The lawsuit did acknowledge that Parker’s administration found that Hudgins had violated the city’s sexual harassment policy and demoted him as a result. Women who lodged complaints against Hudgins said that his conduct included unwanted touching, inappropriate comments, and intimidation tactics, The Inquirer reported last year.
However, Hudgins contended in his lawsuit that the overtime review conducted by Inspector General Alexander DeSantis concluded that two of the women who’d accused him of misconduct were “proven fraudsters” who also recruited other women to file complaints.
Hudgins claimed that the overtime probe was completed in September. DeSantis told The Inquirer last month that the investigation is “still ongoing and may be for some time.” DeSantis declined further comment Thursday.
Because Parker’s administration and DeSantis have continued to decline to release the results of their investigations, it is difficult to confirm Hudgins’ account.
Parker’s administration declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, Hudgins called for an overtime review in fall 2024 after hearing that paramedic Jacqulyn Murphy had lodged a disproportionately high number of overtime shifts that year. While her peers averaged about 24 overtime payments, Murphy had accrued 238, more than 80% of them without the necessary approval forms, Hudgins claimed.
The department’s payroll supervisor, Marian Farris, rubber-stamped the overtime approvals, according to Hudgins’ complaint. Hudgins alerted Fire Commissioner Thompson.
But before he could finish his review, he asserts, Murphy and Farris retaliated by filing sexual harassment complaints against him and encouraging other female employees to do the same — including Tabitha Boyle, Christina Quinones, and Dana Jackson, who are also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Requests for their comments were not returned Thursday.
Murphy, now a defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. Payroll records show she was the ninth highest overtime earner in the department in 2024, more than doubling her $94,549 base salary.
The city paid Campbell Durrant $30,000 to conduct interviews and investigate the claims against Hudgins, who was reassigned to remote work and, later, forced to take a leave of absence.
The city has taken The Inquirer to court to block the release of overtime records related to the overtime investigation, claiming their public disclosure would jeopardize the integrity of the probe led by The Office of the Inspector General, the city’s fraud prevention watchdog.
Hudgins, in his lawsuit, claims to have seen the results of that investigation. According to his complaint, the OIG produced its findings to the city and found that Murphy and Farris had both conspired to defraud the city.
According to the complaint, the OIG report stated Murphy had received an undisclosed sum of overtime pay and then “consistently” paid Farris via CashApp. The payments occurred biweekly for at least six months in 2024.
Farris left the department in March 2025. In a phone interview Thursday, she denied any scheme involving payments with Murphy. Investigators found CashApp receipts on Murphy’s email account, but Farris said those were innocent transactions.
“It ain’t a good thing to say, but Jackie was somebody I could borrow money from when I was in Atlantic City, or I could babysit her son for her or something like that,” Farris said. “I get CashApps from my mother. I’m not doing anything fraudulent with my mother.”
Hudgins’ complaint also accused Murphy of continuing to bilk the overtime system even after Farris left the department last year.
The fire department did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint. Michael Bresnan, president of Local 22 of the International Fire Fighters and Paramedics Union, was also named as a defendant in the suit. He declined to comment Thursday.
Per the complaint, Hudgins received a phone call from Thompson in July, who told him the law firm found no wrongdoing and that he could return to work, saying, essentially:
“Good news! You’re coming back to work. You were just being you.”
Staff writer Samantha Melamed contributed to this article.
Two former Philadelphia homicide detectives were sentenced Wednesday to a combined three years of probation for lying about their knowledge of DNA evidence during the retrial of a man they helped convict of murder 35 years ago.
Common Pleas Court Judge Lucretia Clemons imposed a two-year probation sentence for Manuel Santiago, 76, and one-year sentence for Frank Jastrzembski, 78. The retired detectives will not be required to meet with probation officers.
The sentencing punctuates an unusual case in which prosecutors accused three retired Philadelphia police officers of fabricating evidence in a decades-old homicide case, and later perjuring themselves when testifying about that evidence under oath. A grueling eight-day trial in March revisited the 1991 murder of 77-year-old Louis Talley in Nicetown and the 2016 retrial of Anthony Wright, the man police helped send to prison for the crime.
The jury ultimately rejected the larger conspiracy built by prosecutors that the detectives had framed Wright, but found both Santiago and Jastrzembski guilty of misdemeanor false swearing and found Santiago guilty on an additional count of perjury, a felony. A third detective who worked on the case, Martin Devlin, was acquitted of all charges.
Santiago’s attorney, Fortunado Perri Jr., thanked Clemons for the “appropriate” sentence on Wednesday. Steve Patton, an attorney for Jastrzembski, reiterated that the jury had acquitted his client of planting evidence and described the conviction as a matter of “technical knowledge.”
“We’re pleased with that outcome and thankful for the judge’s careful consideration of the facts of this case,” Patton said.
In an interview Wednesday, Krasner blasted what he described as lenient sentencing guidelines for lying under oath in Pennsylvania. Probation is the recommended sentence for a false swearing conviction, while the maximum recommended penalty for perjury is nine months.
“Those sentencing guidelines are disgraceful,” Krasner said, while also acknowledging the two defendants are both now in their 70s and have health issues.
Former Philadelphia Police Detective Frank Jastrzembski leaves the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia on March 17, 2025.
At trial, Krasner’s top prosecutors contended that the three detectives had conspired to frame Wright for Talley’s murder, extracted a false confession from him, and planted evidence in his home.
Santiago was acquitted of perjury in connection with his testimony about Wright’s murder confession, while Jastrzembski was acquitted of perjury and related charges for his testimony about a search warrant he executed at Wright’s home — charges that hinged on prosecutors’ ability to prove the detectives had wholly fabricated evidence.
Instead, the convictions centered on what Santiago and Jastrzembski knew about the evidence against Wright when they testified at his 2016 retrial. The two detectives were instrumental in building the original case against Wright in 1991, and later sought to send him back to prison — even after DNA evidence implicated another man in Talley’s murder. Wright’s conviction was overturned in 2014 based on the strength of that forensic science.
When prosecutors under former District Attorney Seth Williams charged Wright a second time — under suspicion that he had acted with an accomplice — Santiago and Jastrzembski were briefed on the new DNA information. The results pointed to a known crack user who lived near Talley in Nicetown, a man who had since died in a prison.
Under oath at Wright’s retrial, however, Santiago and Jastrzembski denied knowing the DNA evidence implicated another suspect.
Wright was acquitted and later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and won a $9.85 million settlement. During sworn depositions in that case, Santiago and Jastrzembski were questioned about the DNA evidence and gave answers that prosecutors said contradicted their earlier trial testimony.
The perjury trial in March at times resembled a second retrial for Wright, with defense attorneys accusing him of getting away with Talley’s murder. Wright proclaimed his innocence.
Following the jury’s verdict, Krasner insisted that the detectives had framed Wright, and he criticized his predecessor’s decision to retry the man after his conviction was overturned.
Around 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, Samuel “Bull” Thomas pushed his older brother in a wheelchair down the first floor of the Bristol Health & Rehab Center.
As they rolled down the hallway, the 49-year-old Levittown resident smelled gas.
“People were still in there working, and there was a gas smell,” Thomas said Thursday. “There were people sitting behind desks — people just still walking around, like they were neglecting the smell.”
Moments later, Thomas and his brother arrived at the facility’s barbershop, where Thomas, a part-time barber, had cut his brother’s hair every two weeks. The Thomases are a close-knit family, and the nursing home had become their gathering place since Lamont “Bubs” Thomas, 59, suffered from a stroke several months ago.
Nearby stood the brothers’ nephew, Terence Aldridge, 42, who had started a job in the facility kitchen four days prior. Their sister, Terence’s mom, was on her way.
But within seconds, the visit turned catastrophic. As Samuel Thomas opened the door to the barbershop area and began to maneuver his brother’s wheelchair through the door, the building pancaked.
The force of the blast knocked his work boots off. The floor collapsed beneath the men, the ceiling fell on top of them, and they were soon fighting for each other’s lives in the basement below.
While crashing through the floor to the basement, Thomas gripped his brother’s wheelchair so tight he could feel his hands bleeding.Flames roared, while water from a burst pipe gushed around them.
“If I would have let him go, he would have fallen on his head in the basement,” Thomas said. “All this water was pouring down on my face.”
Wheelchairs and devastation on Christmas morning at the Bristol Health & Rehab Center, two days after the fatal explosion.
The three members of the Thomas family were among the 20 people injured in the fatal explosion that rocked the Lower Bucks County nursing facility. And while much remains unknown about what caused the blast, families of the victims like the Thomases spent the Christmas holiday gathered around hospital beds throughout the Philadelphia region, questioning the tragedy that occurred and counting their blessings.
Muthoni Nduthu, a 52-year-old nurse at the facility and mother to three sons, was killed in the blast. A second person who was killed, a resident at the nursing home, has not been identified. Saber Healthcare Group, which took over as the nursing home operator three weeks ago, said the company is evaluating its evacuation procedures.
“I’m alive,” Samuel Thomas said, in a Thursday interview from his bed at Lower Bucks Hospital. “That’s all I can say — I’m alive.”
Three days ago, that wasn’t guaranteed.
A ‘circus’ of chaos
Helen Middlebrook, 58, was driving to the nursing home that afternoon for her daily visit with her “Bubs.” She would have been there with her brothers and son Terence when the building erupted, but by a stroke of luck, she had forgotten something at home and turned the car around.
Back at home in Croydon, she got a panicked call.
A violent blast. Nursing home in flames. People trapped under the wreckage.
She rushed back to Tower Road where she was faced with a chaotic “circus.” As she scrambled to locate her brothers and son, going from ambulance to ambulance, she said she became hysterical.
Samuel Thomas — his legs mangled — managed to drag himself and his brother to a stairwell landing, where first responders were able to rescue them, he recounted Thursday from the hospital.
His brother, whose injuries were the most severe, was in critical condition at the scene.
Middlebrook rejoiced when she heard her brothers were still alive. But she could not find her son.
Investigators work the scene at Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Wednesday. Two people were killed and a number were injured in the explosion on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials said that, in the confusion after the explosion, the injured were whisked off to numerous area hospitals. A second explosion that followed the initial blast added to the chaotic response effort.
For four hours, Middlebrook searched emergency rooms in anguish for her “Papoose,” Terence’s family nickname.
She braced for the worst.
“My thought [was] that he was in the building, trapped or dead,” she said. “But God is good.”
Middlebrook and her husband found her son at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, safe and breathing on a ventilator. Aldridge sustained cuts all over his body and lung damage due to smoke inhalation. He is expected to recover.
Samuel Thomas underwent surgery Wednesday on both legs, which were crushed by heavy wooden beams after the blast. He broke his right femur and fractured his ankle.
Lamont Thomas remains in critical condition at Temple University Hospital, his family members said. His spine is broken, the bones in his face are fractured, and he suffered severe burns. He had surgery on Thursday afternoon, his family said.
For now, Middlebrook said she would withhold speculation about who was at fault.
“We’re just praying everything goes the way it should go,” she said, in an interview on Thursday as she rushed between hospitals to see her brothers and son on Christmas.
“It’s a really bad situation.”
Questions mount over blast
On Thursday morning, the two-acre campus at Bristol Health & Rehab Center sat deserted, save for local police officers stationed around the fenced-in nursing home.
There is no clear timeline for answers as to what caused the devastating explosion.
A Peco technician was called to the nursing facility and was there working in the basement shortly after 2 p.m. when the blast occurred. Some experts have already questioned why residents were not evacuated at the first smell of gas, in accordance with Peco’s own directives.
Peco referred questions to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency that is now leading the investigation.
Bristol Health & Rehab Center, formerly the Silver Lake Health Center, was cited repeatedly for substandard healthcare and unsafe building conditions under the management of CommuniCare Health Services, according to federal and state inspection records. Saber Healthcare Group acquired the facility home three weeks ago and gave it a new name. The company said it was working to fix deficiencies prior to the explosion.
A Saber representative said the company relocated about 120 residents to local hospitals and other assisted living facilities, while the investigators work to determine what led up to the explosion.
Peco, in its initial statement on Tuesday, said the gas technician had been called to the nursing home that afternoon due to the odor of gas. On Wednesday, Peco changed the timeline and said technicians had, in fact, arrived at the site hours earlier.
In a statement to The Inquirer Thursday, Peco president and CEO David Vahos said the company is committed to safety and deploys “considerable resources to inspect, maintain, and upgrade” its 14,000-mile network of gas lines.
While the NTSB is known for investigating high-profile transit accidents involving trains and aircraft, the agency sometimes intercedes after incidents involving gas pipelines.
An NTSB spokesperson said Wednesday that it could take days to clear a safe path in the debris and begin inspecting the gas line that fed the facility. The agency would “not determine or speculate about the cause of the accident” until the physical evidence had been gathered and analyzed from the scene.
Twenty-four hours after two gas explosions ripped through a Bucks County nursing home, the dead and injured had been identified, survivors were accounted for, and the cleanup was underway. But unanswered questions about the blast’s cause mounted.
On Wednesday morning, Peco provided a drastically different account of when its crews responded to reports of a gas odor on Tuesday, saying technicians had actually arrived hours — not minutes — before the blast at Bristol Health & Rehab Center.
Then, the energy company went silent, declining to answer any additional questions as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over a sprawling investigation that will also involve other federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
Meanwhile, the new operator of the 174-bed nursing home, Saber Healthcare Group, is also coming under scrutiny amid questions about the poorly maintained facility on Tower Road that it took over from another provider just three weeks ago.
It could take months to get answers about what caused, and who is at fault for, the blast that killed two people and left 19 hospitalized, one in critical condition.
Experts and attorneys told The Inquirer the investigation will likely focus heavily on the actions of Peco and the nursing home’s operators.
“If the facility doesn’t maintain the equipment and the gas in their own facility, then they would be responsible,” said Robert Mongeluzzi, an attorney who has represented victims of gas explosions. “If there were reports of the gas leak, and Peco is notified and the facility isn’t cleared … there’s going to be responsibility on both of them.”
Windows and debris at the site of the Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Wednesday.
In a statement, the NTSB said investigators will not be able to fully evaluate the natural gas service line until “a safe path is cleared.” That effort alone could take several days. The agency provided no timeline for its initial findings.
Saber Healthcare Group took over operations at the nursing home on Dec. 1. Prior to that, the facility had been managed by another privately run for-profit healthcare company, the Ohio-based CommuniCare Health Services.
CommuniCare, which had operated the home since 2021, racked up a long list of code violations for unsafe building conditions and substandard healthcare. Just two months ago, state inspectors cited the facility for lacking a fire safety plan, failing to maintain extinguishers, and allowing conditions that would cause poor smoke ventilation.
Federal inspection records also show numerous citations over previous years for substandard healthcare, poor infection control, and mismanaged medical records, earning the facility a one-star rating. CommuniCare incurred more than $418,000 in fines due to violations in 2024, records show.
“We have worked to improve and fix prior issues, and we will continue that work in the wake of this tragedy,” Saber said in a statement Tuesday.
Attorneys watching the news unfold questioned whether Saber should have evacuated residents sooner on Tuesday. Peco’s own guidelines urge people who smell gas to evacuate the building immediately.
“If you or I smelled gas in our apartment or house, we’d be like, ‘Where is it?’ You have to get everybody out,” said Ian Norris, an attorney at Philadelphia-based McEldrew Purtell who has sued Saber and other nursing home operators accused of negligence. “In a nursing home, you have a higher standard of care. They are dependent residents who are there on the basis that they need help.”
A Saber representative said the company was looking into the evacuation procedures. In its statement Tuesday, the company said “facility personnel reported a gas smell” to Peco. The statement made no mention of an evacuation effort.
The smell was confined to the kitchen area of the nursing home, according to the Saber representative.
A Peco gas technician arrived at the nursing home on Tuesday afternoon. He was working alone in the basement below the kitchen area to address the issue, and as he went to his truck to retrieve more tools, the building erupted, said Larry Anastasi, president of IBEW Local 614, the union that represents Peco workers.
Whether Peco’s gas lines played a role in the blast remains unknown. But the utility company’s aging gas infrastructure will likely come under closer inspection as the probe progresses, according to attorneys with knowledge of investigations following such explosions.
One detail that became clear Wednesday was that Peco’s gas meter was located in the basement of the nursing home — not outside and aboveground as required by a 2011 order from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC).
The PUC, like Peco, declined to comment and referred questions to the NTSB.
Workers set up fencing at Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Wednesday.
While the age and condition of the gas line near the nursing home were not clear, Peco has acknowledged it had 742 miles of substandard gas lines across the state — including cast iron, plastic, and uncoated steel piping — that needed replacing. The lines accounted for 5% of Peco’s gas service but 82% of leaks, according to a report from the PUC.
Peco plans call for all of those lines to be replaced by 2035 and to invest roughly $6 billion to inspect, modernize, and perform maintenance on all of its systems over the next five years.
Richard Kuprewicz, an expert on gas pipeline safety and investigations, said it is too early to tell if Peco or the nursing home acted improperly. He warned against jumping to conclusions the day after the explosions.
“We just don’t have the facts on this,” Kuprewicz said. “The tragedy is they had an explosion from a gas release that they knew was occurring. People will raise questions about this for months.”
In the immediate aftermath Tuesday evening, Peco spokesperson Greg Smore said in a statement that the company’s crews had responded to the nursing home “shortly after 2 p.m.” Tuesday and that while they were on site, the explosion occurred. The blast was reported just before 2:20 p.m. Tuesday, according to Bristol Fire Chief Kevin Dippolito.
But in a revised statement Wednesday morning, the company backtracked, saying its crews actually arrived “a few hours” before the explosion. It would not provide a specific time.
Peco said it shut off natural gas and electric service “to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents.” But, again, it would not say when.
Depending on where the gas leak was, Kuprewicz said, significant amounts of gas could continue to seep out after a shutoff.
“There isn’t one standard answer for all this,” he said. “Even when you shut it off, it doesn’t [always] stop flowing.”
Inquirer staff writers Samantha Melamed and Barbara Laker contributed to this article.
The word was out among Chester County teens: West Grove Smoke Shop wasn’t checking IDs.
“Many students frequented it,” a student told a Pennsylvania State Police officer investigating how scores of local high schoolers were getting their hands on an array of marijuana products. “So many, in fact, that there were long lines at the smoke shop after school.”
The tip — revealed in a grand jury report released in October — launched one of the largest stings of smoke shops in Pennsylvania this year. While those shops are allowed to sell hemp-based THC products that fall below a certain potency threshold, undercover detectives found widespread deception. After investigators made purchases from 19 stores in Chester, Delaware, and Lancaster Counties, lab tests determined all but one were selling unregulated marijuana falsely labeled as hemp.
It was a striking, if rare, example of local law enforcement cracking down on smoke shops selling hemp-based THC products, which an Inquirer investigation this year found are often just black market weed, sometimes contaminated with harmful toxins and chemicals. Several teens in Chester County told police they got sick from such products, with one landing in the hospital.
A view looking into the front window of the former West Grove Smoke Shop in West Grove, on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025.
Confusion over federal hemp law, and the inability of lawmakers in Harrisburg to pass regulations in a state lacking a recreational cannabis program, has led to smoke shops popping up all over Pennsylvania. But the emerging effort to police these shops has so far been inconsistent and haphazard.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson has advanced a series of bills designed to crack down on scofflaw operators, who typically pull fraudulent grocery store licenses to open up shop. An Inquirer analysis found that the city has taken a stricter approach to smoke shops that operate under grocery store permits while peddling drug products and paraphernalia — with investigators doubling violations for improper licensing over the last two years.
“[It] marks important progress in the city’s efforts to better enforce against illegal smoke shops and nuisance businesses devastating our neighborhoods,” Gilmore Richardson said.
But block after city block, smoke shops remain open and continue to operate with relative impunity — sometimes within view of a similar shop that authorities have closed down.
Many use thinly veiled references in their names, such as “High Time Convenience” or “Hi Baby,” the latter featuring a logo meant to resemble the popular RAW rolling paper brand. Since 2022, nearly 100 zoning permits filed by the Frankford-based permit expediter Tina Accounting & Tax Services on behalf of would-be grocery store proprietors were later cited by inspectors as invalid, an Inquirer analysis found. (“There is no assumption that they are aware that these businesses may later become nuisance businesses,” a city official said.)
With the city short of investigators, many shops simply reopen even after they are shut down. Philadelphia has cited at least 42 stores, many of them smoke shops, for resuming operations after receiving an official shutdown order from inspectors over the last two years. One store, Market Mini Mart, located in the shadow of the 52nd Street El station, was cited 10 times for illegally reopening, records show.
City officials said the lack of a specific “smoke shop” permit makes it difficult to track the scope of the problem. Yet an Inquirer analysis of the city’s list of top 35 “nuisances businesses” found more than a third either had “smoke shop” in their names or advertised drug paraphernalia.
Going after technical violations remains one of the few tools available to local authorities, short of conducting raids and lab tests to determine if the over-the-counter products comply with federal law.
The supply line for smoke shops, however, could dry up next year. A provision in a federal spending bill would ban intoxicating THC products derived from hemp nationally, potentially closing a loophole that has created a glut of these quasi-legal products across the country.
The grand jury investigation acknowledged that the growing number of smoke shops presents a daunting challenge. The lead investigator in the Chester County case “quickly realized the sheer number was overwhelming, and many stores were interconnected, operating across multiple counties,” according to the grand jury report.
That investigation resulted in the September arrest of Satish Parsa, 33, the owner of three establishments, including the West Grove Smoke Shop, a redbrick storefront that now sits empty. Parsa faces more than 60 counts of drug trafficking and related charges, according to court records.
His attorney, Elliot Marc Cohen, said Parsa, who has pleaded not guilty, intends to “vigorously” fight the prosecution.
Ellie Siegel, CEO of Longview Strategic, a Philadelphia-area cannabis consultancy firm, argued that selective enforcement is ineffective.
When the federal ban goes into effect late next year, she reasoned, many smoke shops will shut down as the supply line dries up, while others will attempt to pivot toward the regulated marijuana market.
“The manufacturers won’t have a way to manufacture the intoxicating hemp products they’re making now,” she said. “It’s the closing of a loophole.”
A sample of hemp-based THC flower that was purchased by The Inquirer and sent for lab testing this summer.
The rise and fall of the Philly smoke shop
In interviews with about a half dozen Philly-area smoke shop owners over the last month, several told The Inquirer that they are bracing for closure, saying survival is nearly impossible in an already saturated market.
Others said they are confident they can endure.
On South Street, more than a dozen smoke shops crowd the mile-long stretch east of Broad Street. The longtime operator of Munchies Reloaded recalled thriving years when bongs and pipes brought in roughly $600,000 annually, before he expanded into hemp.
Now, he said, business has plunged nearly 80%. City inspectors have increasingly fined and shuttered stores for selling glassware used for smoking. Those items are easier to classify as “drug paraphernalia” prohibited by city codes, rather than quasi-legal hemp, which is superseded by federal laws.
“There used to be good money in it,” said the store owner, who declined to give his name. “Now there is no money.”
Smoke shops proliferated during the pandemic, often launched by marijuana enthusiasts, immigrant entrepreneurs, or small grocers looking to replace revenue lost to increasingly strict tobacco sale regulations.
Pedestrians walk along South Street by Two J’s Pushin’ Weight shop in Philadelphia, on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025.
Some shop owners have migrated to Philadelphia from the New York City area, lured by lower rents and higher demand in a state without legal recreational cannabis. A business permit for Green Broad Smokeshop on Broad Street, for instance, lists an owner based in Queens.
At the peak, a single shop could net between $250,000 and $1 million annually, depending on foot traffic and product line, according to two owners who spoke with The Inquirer on the condition they not be named so they could speak frankly about their businesses. Low overhead and high demand made for a tempting copycat model — a cheap pound of hemp might cost $600 in bulk but retail for more than $5,500.
On the same block as Munchies Reloaded, Abtein Jaeger and his brother in January opened Two J’s Pushin’ Weight. Jaeger said he sources high-grade hemp from West Coast farmers, positioning his store as a premium dispensary amid competitors selling a lower-quality product.
He said he is upbeat about surviving a potential crackdown on stores like his next year.
“It’s not the worst thing in the world,” Jaeger, 34, said.
He added that he would comply with any testing requirements and try to apply for a license, and that he already enforces a 21-plus age limit.
Reforming the Wild West of weed
Unlike in state-run cannabis programs, which mandate costly contaminant testing, hemp products need only carry a certificate of authenticity showing the flower tested under 0.3% Delta-9 THC at harvest.
The Inquirer, in its investigation earlier this year, commissioned a lab to test 10 products. Nine of them exceeded that limit, and most were tainted with banned pesticides, harmful mold, or heavy metals. Manufacturers had also used forged certificates to make their products appear safe and legitimate, The Inquirer found.
But the complexity of federal drug law makes it difficult to prove products are illegal, as many hemp-based products use THC variants like Delta-8 or Delta-10 that are not specifically banned.
For now, most shop owners say, local police leave them alone. Undercover stings, like those led in the suburbs, remain rare because they demand expensive lab testing and significant resources.
One South Street establishment has a singular strategy for surviving a potential crackdown.
South Street Cannabis Museum, whose logo includes a Liberty Bell festooned with marijuana leaves, exhibits a small collection of Reefer Madness-era newsprint, historical pamphlets, and other weed-themed memorabilia.
Exterior view of South Street Cannabis Museum in Philadelphia, on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025.
“We are a museum, first and foremost, where we can engage with the public about the history, science, culture, and art of cannabis,” said owner Kristopher Wesolowski, 42, a former neuroscience lab manager and event planner, who pivoted into hemp sales after the pandemic.
The back half of the museum is a gift shop where visitors can buy hemp-derived THC flower under glass display cases.
“It’s almost like a simulated dispensary,” Wesolowski said. “But it’s not like some spot where people can just go and get high. … You can get historically stoned at our museum, in a sense.”
Like other proprietors, Wesolowski said the hemp industry has been “screaming for regulation,” as “bad actors” gave well-intentioned store owners a bad name.
But he also cautioned that overregulation would only create new problems, like increasing demand for unpredictable designer drugs on the black market.
“When you close one door, another will open,” he said. “And that one might be a little bit more dangerous.”
A former top-ranking deputy with the Philadelphia Fire Department has been demoted amid two ongoing investigations into sexual harassment and overtime abuse, The Inquirer has learned.
Former Deputy Commissioner for Operations Anthony Hudgins — who had been the second-highest ranking official in the 2,800-member department — was recently downgraded to deputy fire chief and reassigned to the Incident Safety Office, according to spokespeople with the city and fire department. The demotion cut his annual salary by nearly 25%, from $202,550 to $155,106, payroll records show.
Hudgins was the subject of an array of sexual harassment allegations, which led the city to hire an outside law firm to investigate the claims and interview department personnel. In a May interview with The Inquirer, Hudgins called the probe baseless and claimed he was targeted with false allegations after uncovering rampant overtime fraud. He acknowledged that as fewer than10 employees had lodged complaints against him. The city inked a $35,000 contract with the law firm Campbell Durrant to investigate the allegations.
Hudgins, a 31-year department veteran, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After publication, Hudgins’ attorney, Amanda N. Martinez, sent a statement saying that Hudgins“remains committed to assisting the City with any legitimate investigation into the overtime fraud that he brought to light.”
She added that Hudgins is “reviewing the details surrounding the City’s actions and all defamatory statements made against him by individuals” and will “pursue all available legal remedies under the law necessary to protect Mr. Hudgins’ reputation and employment rights.”
The fire department has for decades faced allegations of pervasive sexual misconduct, and yet the Hudgins probe is significant in that it targeted a top-ranking department official. Although they acknowledged that Hudgins had been demoted, spokespeople for the city and fire department declined to confirm whether any of the allegations against him had been substantiated, citing the city’s policy to not discuss personnel issues.
Fire department leadership did not elaborate on the results of the investigation. A request for comment from Mayor Cherelle L. Parker resulted in a prepared statement from City Solicitor Renee Garcia, who said the city “takes any allegations of sexual harassment or fraud, including overtime fraud, very seriously.”
“We investigate any such allegations thoroughly and, if misconduct is found, we will take appropriate action to implement any warranted discipline expeditiously,” Garcia said.
The city has also declined to reveal whether any fire department employees have faced discipline as a result of the related investigation into alleged overtime abuse. Inspector General Alexander DeSantis — who as far back as January launched a probe into the overtime fraud claims — said his office’s investigation is “still ongoing and may be for some time.” He described the probe as “active” but declined to elaborate.
City officials have declined to release public records that would shed light on some of the fire department’s top overtime earners — and are taking The Inquirer to court in an effort to keep those records hidden.
In an affidavit submitted to the Office of Open Records, the agency that enforces state open-records laws, DeSantis argued that releasing the records to The Inquirer would jeopardize his office’s investigation and that it could not release the files “without identifying or implying who may be directly involved in this investigation.” Records related to noncriminal investigations are exempt from release under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law.
The Office of Open Records ruled in May that The Inquirer is entitled to receive the records, which cannot be withheld simply because the OIG opened an investigation.
The city again declined to release the overtime sheets and instead appealed the OOR ruling to the Court of Common Pleas. In a 21-page brief filed in that case, attorneys for the city urged the court to vacate the OOR’s ruling on the grounds that releasing the records would raise questions about “the efficacy of investigations, witness confidentiality, and harm to reputation.”
The OIG probe has yet to publicly reveal any findings. DeSantis offered no timeline for its conclusion, and the results may not be made public even after the investigation ends.
The OIG’s stated mission is to “keep City government free from fraud, corruption, and misconduct,” but the office rarely releases specifics related to the outcome of its fraud investigations. Instead, it publishes an annual report summarizing the office’s work from the previous year.
The OIG has yet to release that report for 2024.
Staff writers Samantha Melamed and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly characterized the total number of employees that Hudgins said may have filed complaints against him.
