A Virginia teen who admitted in court that he wanted to join ISIS pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted murder and related offenses for a stabbing attack last year on a Florence Township police officer, Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw said Friday.
Fasihullah Safar, 17, of Alexandria, Va., was charged as an adult and will be sentenced to 18 years in prison under a plea deal, Bradshaw said. He is scheduled to be formally sentenced on March 26 in Superior Court in Mount Holly.
The police officer who was stabbed several times in the chest was wearing a ballistic vest that prevented more significant injuries, Bradshaw said.
On March 21, 2025, Safar, who was 16 at the time, was driving a stolen vehicle when he intentionally caused a crash with another vehicle, Bradshaw said. A Florence police vehicle responding to the scene was then struck multiple times by Safar’s vehicle.
Safar’s vehicle became inoperable on Route 130 near Station Road. When officers arrived, Safar charged them while armed with a knife, Bradshaw said. Besides the officer who was stabbed, suffering a laceration to his torso and facial injuries, two other officers sustained minor injuries. During the struggle, Safar also cut himself.
In court, Safar admitted that in the months before the confrontation, he had begun following the Islamic State organization, Bradshaw said. Safar had indicated on social media that he planned to join the group.
Safar admitted that he shouted “Allahu akbar” during the confrontation with police, and that he intended to kill one of the officers, Bradshaw said.
Prior to the violent encounter with police in Florence Township, he was being sought by authorities, including the FBI, after he allegedly trespassed at a school in Fredericksburg, Va., causing the local district to close all schools.
A school resource officer approached Safar, who then fled and later allegedly stole a vehicle.
One report later said Safar had been investigated by the FBI after the teen allegedly posed on social media with what appeared to be a firearm.
Brace yourself for the cold, Philadelphians, because the first double-digit snowfall in 10 years is potentially heading our way, followed by sub-freezing temperatures that could last the rest of the month.
Since nowhere is safe from the cold, here are some tips on how to keep yourself from freezing and your property from damage (no burst pipes in sight):
Staying indoors is the best way to keep frostbite and hypothermia at bay, but some must brave the temperature for work, other needs, or emergencies, as even waiting for the bus can take longer if SEPTA experiences storm-related service delays.
With temperatures forecast in the teens and lower 20s, it is important to keep an eye on your core temperature.
When you rapidly lose heat or stay wet for too long, it can cause hypothermia, even indoors. This can affect your brain and body, causing slurred speech, confusion, clumsiness, and extreme tiredness.
Continued exposure to the cold can cause frostbite, as blood stops reaching your fingers, nose, ears, and extremities properly. You can get frostbite even under winter clothing, and it can lead to losing the affected body parts. If you start feeling tingling, numbness, or your skin looks gray or pale, head indoors.
Frostbite can happen without hypothermia symptoms, and vice versa. Children, older adults, and people with circulation issues are especially at risk
To prevent both afflictions, stay dry, covered, and layered up, keeping your skin from being exposed.
Four out of five warming centers reached capacity on Thursday, but the city plans to open more and add beds as needed.
The warming centers remain open at select libraries from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. And shelter beds have been added under the Code Blue declaration.
Some recreation centers will also serve as warming centers from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Find the selected libraries and recreation centers closest to you on the city’s interactive map of warming centers.
Folks in need of a warm place can go to their local police precinct to be transported to the nearest warming center.
Broken bones and head trauma are no fun. Stay grounded by wearing footwear with enough traction (no sneakers or dress shoes), or traction cleats.
You can’t control the city roads, but salting your sidewalk properly can help avoid starting your day on the ground, or worse, in the emergency room. As you walk, make sure to lean slightly forward and take shorter steps. You may look like a penguin, but it’s worth it to avoid the pain and medical bills.
Much like your body, your home also loses heat in the cold, putting pipes at risk for freezing and bursting. Disconnecting garden hoses and shutting off the valve that feeds them, and keeping faucets slightly open and running can prevent expensive repairs.
Pipes will begin to freeze when a thermostat is at 39 degrees and lower. Maintaining the thermostat at 50 degrees or above is ideal.
Though they won’t burst, cars get cold too, reducing battery power and creating a risk of being left stranded, especially if the battery is older than two or three years.
Be ready to jump-start your car. Jumper cables and a portable jumper pack can be helpful. Remember, red clamps to the positive post of the dead battery; black clamps to the negative post of the working battery and to the unpainted metal surface on the engine of the dead car.
But the Rochester, N.Y.-based supermarket chain won’t say whether it’s collecting biometricdata on shoppers at eight Philly-area stores. There are Wegmans stores in Cherry Hill and Mount Laurel in New Jersey and in Glen Mills, Malvern, King of Prussia, Collegeville, Warrington, and North Wales in Pennsylvania.
Patrons at some New York City Wegmans locations learned earlier this month that the supermarket chain had begun to collect, retain, store, and share data on their faces, eyes, and voices. The information, Wegmans said, was being used for “safety purposes.”
“This is information that can be used to identify or help identify you,” a sign posted at Wegmans in New York City said, according to reporting from the online news site Gothamist. “We use facial recognition technology to protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees, and do not lease, trade or otherwise profit from the transfer of biometric identifier information.”
Wegmans does not “get into the specific measures used at each store” for “safety and security purposes,” Wegmans spokesperson Marcie Rivera said in an email.
Rivera said Wegmans has deployed cameras equipped with facial recognition technology in “a small fraction of our stores that exhibit an elevated risk.” Wegmans is using the technology in a “handful of states.” It posted mandated signage in New York City to comply with local regulations, Rivera said.
Wegmans has previously said that the surveillance software is used to help identify individuals who “pose a risk to our people, customers, or operation.”
Biometric surveillance is becoming increasingly common but is not yet widespread, said Gus Hurwitz, senior fellow and academic director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at Penn’s Carey Law School.
Companies that use biometric surveillance do so for a number of reasons, but seldom tell consumers what their data is being collected for. Data collection can help companies understand what consumers are purchasing and how they’re moving through stores, Hurwitz said. Biometric data collection can also be used for dynamic pricing, when retailers change prices in real-time depending on a number of factors, including time of day, demand, weather, and consumer behavior.
Hurwitz said it’s important to distinguish between real-time and non-real-time biometric screening. Non-real-time screening has been happening for decades in the form of security cameras and other data collection tools, often used for market research purposes.
Real-time screening, however, is a newer frontier with a far murkier regulatory landscape.
Businesses in New York City that collect biometric data are required to post signage notifying customers, per a 2021 city law, however the agency in charge of implementing the law has no enforcement mechanism for noncompliant businesses, a city official told Gothamist.
A bipartisan bill regulating biometric data collection is currently moving through the Pennsylvania legislature. A recently introduced bill in the New Jersey Legislature would require any entity collecting biometric information to post a “clear and conspicuous notice” at every entryway to their business, like in New York City.
Hurwitz said we’re “still very much in the development era of these sorts of technologies,” and that he expects more and more government entities to hone in on regulating them in the near future.
Based on what the computers and their human interpreters are saying, a key question this weekend will be whether measuring the snow in the Philly region will require a ruler or a yardstick.
This no doubt will be a moving target, but on Friday morning, the National Weather Service in Mount Holly was seeing eight to 14 inches for Philly, said meteorologist Alex Staarmann. Several inches were possible even at the Jersey Shore.
Friday AM Update: A major winter storm is still expected to impact the region Sat Night through Mon Morning. The primary change with this update is a slight reduction in snow totals across the Delmarva into southeastern NJ due to increasing sleet/freezing rain potential. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/OqV4a5QiHW
A wild card would be a potentially unpleasant atmospheric parfait that would add ice to the mix on Sunday, and computer models Friday were suggesting that mixing was likely near I-95 and in Delaware and South Jersey. However, the weather service expects that to yield to all snow Sunday night.
While this is all quite a complicated meteorological setup, in essence Arctic air is pressing southward and it is going to interact with an impressively juicy storm to the south.
“Having the Arctic front come through before the onset of wintry precipitation, that’s really concerning,” said Ray Kruzdlo, the staff hydrologist in the weather service office, where “it’s all hands on deck.”
Below-zero windchills are expected Saturday morning, prompting a cold-weather advisory, and temperatures in Philly may stay below freezing the rest of the month.
What time will the snow start and end?
The timing and duration of precipitation aren’t among the strong suits of computer models.
The weather service’s winter storm watch, which covers the entire region, all of Delaware, and most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, is in effect from 7 p.m. Saturday until 1 p.m. Monday.
The daytime Saturday “looks fine if you have to get out,” said Tom Kines, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc.
The weather service is listing the likeliest starting time as the early morning hours of Sunday, with snow likely into the early morning hours of Monday.
Sunday is going to be one of the colder days of the winter with temperatures in the teens and lower 20s. The weather service introduces the possibility of freezing rain and sleet by 1 p.m., with a forecast temperature of 19 degrees.
Yes, it can rain when it’s below 20 degrees at the surface, and precipitation doesn’t get much more dangerous.
Snow and sleet, liquid that freezes on the way down, can at least provide traction on the roads. Rain that freezes on contact becomes an ice sheet. Also, when freezing rain accumulates on fallen snow it can bring down trees and power lines.
Peco has heard the storm rumors (who hasn’t?) and will have crews on call through the weekend, said spokesperson Candace Womack.
The threat of ice is related to the possibility of warm layers of air, borne on onshore winds from the ocean, at levels of the atmosphere where precipitation is formed.
That could well happen Sunday as the coastal storm intensifies, said Kruzdlo, and winds build from the Northeast, perhaps gusting past 20 mph. Any rain or sleet would encounter very cold air at the surface, locked and dammed in place by the Appalachian Mountains.
“That’s the complexity of living where we are so close to the ocean,” Kruzdlo said. “We have tens of thousands of observations at the surface,” he added, but data from the upper atmosphere is wanting, adding challenges to forecasting changeovers.
Along the I-95 corridor, storms of purely snow are the exceptions, Kruzdlo said.
One of the more notable busts occurred in January 2015 when forecasts called for an I-95 East Coast snowstorm so ferocious that the mayor of New York imposed a curfew.
His boss at the time, weather service head Louis Uccellini, said no apology was necessary: Science has its limits. Busts have been known to happen in the battle of science against nonlinear.
This time around, meteorologists are all but certain something “impactful” is going to happen.
Said Kruzdlo, the slim chance of this storm “not being significant is leaving us.”
A month and a half after Collingswood’s mayor defiantly disagreed with a solicitor’s opinion that she should recuse herself from a vote to grant an ambulance-services contract to Virtua Health, which employs her husband, Daniela Solano-Ward signed a settlement agreement nullifying the vote and recusing herself from the matter.
The shift followed a lawsuit filed by James Maley, who sits alongside Solano-Ward on the South Jersey borough’s three-person commissioners board, accusing the mayor of a conflict of interest. The lawsuit asked a judge to discard a Dec. 1 vote outsourcing Collingswood’s EMS services to Virtua Health.
A Superior Court of Camden County judge, Francisco Dominguez, issued a temporary restraining order on Jan. 5 prohibiting Collingswood from executing the contract with Virtua or making changes to the borough’s EMS services.
The borough settled the lawsuit Jan. 16, in an agreement that voided the contract with Virtua, and requires Solano-Ward to recuse herself from all EMS-related matters, according to a copy of the settlement obtained by The Inquirer.
The settlement instructs Maley and Commissioner Amy Henderson Riley, Solano-Ward’s political ally and the borough’s director of public safety, to devise a plan to select an independent consultant to assist in deciding the future of Collingswood EMS services and a schedule for a public process.
“Today’s settlement allows us to move forward as an elected body in a way that reflects the values of Collingswood,” Maley said in a statement. “My concerns in filing this action were rooted in two core principles: avoiding conflicts of interest under the law and ensuring that major decisions, especially those involving essential services like Fire and EMS, are made with full public awareness and engagement.”
Solano-Ward confirmed she would limit her involvement with the EMS process moving forward, but said she trusted Henderson Riley and Maley to “roll up their sleeves and work together to find a resolution in a timely manner.”
The catalyst for the dispute was concerns that Solano-Ward heard from the borough’s fire chief over his department’s lack of capacity to respond to the 4,000 calls it receives annually, the mayor said in a December commissioners meeting. The emergency medical services generate $450,000 a year, the lawsuit says.
The mayor held a meeting with Collingswood’s fire chief in August, the suit says, and brought her husband, a Virtua critical-care physician, Jared Ward. He does not hold leadership positions in the South Jersey health system.
Virtua was one of two entities that responded to a request for proposals to provide ambulance services for the borough.
At the Dec. 1 commissionersmeeting, Solano-Ward defended her husband’s involvement, saying the borough does not have a medical officer and she wanted to be sure no question went unasked.
“We reached out to our attorney and he agreed that there could be a conflict of interest,” the mayor said in the meeting. “To which I respectfully disagree and I will be voting on the matter.”
The commissioner’s board approved the contract in a 2-1 vote, with Maley opposing. Before the vote, the former long-time mayor, who held the position from 1997 until May, expressed outrage at the lack of transparency during the process and Solano-Ward’s participation.
“It’s absurd, it is wrong, it’s unethical,” Maley said.
The contentious lawsuit spilled into the January commissioners meeting, in which residents seemed divided on the issue. Some complained about the perceived lack of transparency by Solano-Ward in the decision to privatize the borough’s EMS department, while others accused Maley of neglecting the ambulance services during his tenure as mayor.
The French developer of South Jersey’s first large-scale AI data center made his case to residents on Wednesday, saying his massive under-construction facility will benefit them in ways unprecedented in the emerging industry.
But at a contentious town hall, several residents said they’re not taking his word for it, especially given the timing at which the developer was asking for their input.
“You couldn’t do this before the building was built?” asked one resident, who spoke during public comment but declined to give their name. “You kind of took our voice away.”
Located on South Lincoln Avenue, off State Route 55, the site was formerly a private industrial park.
DataOne, a French company that manages advanced data centers, is the owner, operator, and builder. Its client, Nebius Group, an Amsterdam-based AI-infrastructure company, will operate the center’s internal technology, which will fuel Microsoft’s AI tools.
Located on South Lincoln Avenue, off State Route 55, the site was formerly a private industrial park. It was sold to DataOne in a private transaction, the details of which Charles-Antoine Beyney, DataOne’s founder and chief executive officer, declined to disclose.
At city council meetings and on social media, some residents have voiced concerns about the environmental, financial, and quality-of-life impacts of the site. Prior to Wednesday’s meeting, residents were prompted to submit questions online that were then addressed in a presentation. Dozens also took to the mic afterward.
Beyney said he understood their concerns, but they don’t apply to his center, which will use “breakthrough” technology to reduce its environmental impact.
“Most of the data centers that are being built today suck, big time,” Beyney said Wednesday. “They consume water. They pollute. They are extremely not efficient. This is clearly not what we are building here.”
“No freaking way am I am going to do what the entire industry is doing … just killing our communities and killing our lungs to make money,” he added.
Developers tout promises of data centers
Data centers house the technology needed to fuel increasingly sophisticated AI tools. In recent years, they have been proliferating across the country and the region.
In June, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced a $20 billion investment by Amazon in Pennsylvania data centers in Salem Township and Falls Township.
A 560,000-square-foot data center is being built in Logan Township, Gloucester County, and is set to have a capacity of up to 150 megawatts once completed in early 2027, according to the website of its designer, Energy Concepts. There are also smaller, specialized data centers in Atlantic City and Pennsauken, according to Data Center Map.
In Vineland, Beyney said his gas-powered center will have nearly net-zero emissions, not consume water while cooling the equipment, and generate 85% of its own power. He told residents: “You will not see your bill for electricity going and skyrocketing.”
Opponents of data centers worry their electric bills will rise due to the centers. The developer in Vineland says that won’t happen in South Jersey.
The facility will be 100% privately funded, he said, after the company turned down a nearly $6.2 million loan from the city amid resident backlash. The loan was approved at a December council meeting, and Beyney said DataOne would have paid about $450,000 in interest, money that could have gone back into the community.
“That’s a shame,” Beyney said, “but we follow the people.”
At a meeting next week, Vineland City Council could approve a PILOT agreement that would give DataOne tax breaks on the new construction in exchange for payments to the city.
Beyney said DataOne plans to be a good neighbor. Across the street from the data center, he said they will build a vertical farm — which grows crops indoors using technology — and provide free fruits and vegetables to Vineland residents in need.
Residents voice concerns about Vineland data center
Several residents expressed skepticism, and even anger, about Beyney’s data-center promises, noting that Cumberland County already has plenty of farms.
Regarding the data center itself, they asked how Beyney could be so confident about new technology, questioned the objectivity of his data, and accused him of taking advantage of a city where nearly 14% of residents live below the poverty line.
Beyney denied the allegations.
At least one resident said he was moved by Beyney’s assurances.
“I was a really big critic of [the data center all along], but I think what you said tonight has alleviated a lot of my concerns,” said Steve Brown, who lives about a mile away from the data center. He still had one gripe, however: The noise.
“What I hear every night when I wake up at 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning is this rumble off in the distance,” Brown said. “When I get out of my car every day when I get home, I hear it.”
Brown invited Beyney and his team to come hear the noise from his kitchen or back patio. Beyney said they would do so, and promised to get the sound attenuated as soon as possible, certainly by the end of the project’s construction.
The details are likely to remain elusive well into the weekend, but on Wednesday evidence was accumulating that the Philadelphia region could become a winter wonderland for the remainder of January.
“We’re definitely going to get some snow,” said Alex Staarmann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, which probably won’t make a first accumulation guess until Thursday afternoon. Snow could begin as early as Saturday night and continue into Monday.
The weather service Thursday posted a winter-storm watch for the entire region — for all of Delaware and most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey — in effect from 7 p.m. Saturday until 1 p.m. Monday.
At the weather office, “It’s all hands on deck,” said agency hydrologist Ray Kruzdlo Thursday. The “outside chance” that the region would be spared a major storm “is leaving us.”
AccuWeather Inc. is calling for 6 to 10 inches for Philly, very much subject to change, said senior meteorologist Bob Larsen.
Several inches of snow would be all but certain, the weather service said. Philadelphia could have a 75% chance of a foot or more, based on analysis of a blend of computer models, and a 50-50 shot of 18 inches or more. However, the individual models are having their usual squabbles, with the American being the snowiest.
Risk of a big winter storm continues to grow, tho uncertainty remains on how much snow falls, & any poss. mixing with ice &/or rain. Consider your plan of action regarding a large snow storm. Travel may be very difficult Sunday, even Monday. Further clarity as we get it. pic.twitter.com/6FWtwqzoDu
In any event, Staarmann said: “It could be a significant storm for most of the region.”
And that applies to the rest of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. AccuWeather Inc. estimated that snow and ice during the weekend could affect half the nation’s population.
Said Stephen Morgan, a meteorologist with Fox Weather: “It’s one of the most sprawling systems we’ve seen in several years.”
Predictably, computer models have been using the map as a Ouija board, moving around the zones of the expected heaviest snows.
Earlier in the week, it appeared that the region would be near the northern edge of the snowfall; on Wednesday, however, the models bumped the snow north, increasing the chances that snow could mix with sleet and freezing rain in Delaware and South Jersey.
The snow could mix with sleet at the height of the storm even in the Philly region, the weather service said. That would hold down accumulations: Sleet is slow to accumulate. Conversely, since it is pure ice, it is slower to melt.
Should any rain get mixed in, it would freeze on contact: The upper air may be warmer, but temperatures at the surface are forecast to be mostly in the teens Sunday.
The amounts of snow and mixing would depend on the track of a storm that is forecast to develop off the Texas Gulf Coast and track through the Tennessee Valley and off the Mid-Atlantic coast on Sunday. That track ultimately will be determined by other moving parts in the atmosphere.
As the storm intensifies, its onshore winds would import warmer air into the upper atmosphere, changing the snow to sleet and/or freezing rain, but the surface layers would remain quite cold, Larsen said.
Despite the potential mixing, it is at least possible that Philly will get its first double-digit snowfall since Jan. 22, 2018, said Paul Dorian, a meteorologist with Arcfield Weather, based in Valley Forge.
In the short term, Thursday may be a day to savor. It’s heading into the mid-40s, with nothing falling from the skies. The cold begins to filter in Friday, and highs will be in the teens Saturday.
After the precipitation shuts off Sunday night or Monday, whatever has fallen won’t be in a hurry to disappear, Staarmann said.
Temperatures might not get above freezing for several days after the snow stops, he said. Wind chills are expected to be in the single digits Monday morning, and below zero Tuesday.
“This overall very cold weather pattern is likely to continue into next weekend, potentially beyond,” the weather service said.
A 60-year-old man has been accused through an indictment of drugging and sexually molesting two men who at different times rented a room from him at his home, Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw said Wednesday.
Craig M. Cardella, of Mansfield Township, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday at his arraignment in Superior Court in Mount Holly. He was charged by indictment in December with multiple counts of kidnapping, aggravated criminal sexual contact, and related offenses.
Robert M. Perry, Cardella’s lawyer, declined to comment Wednesday evening.
The charges involved two victims during separate time periods, Bradshaw said.
In late 2024, a man renting a room from Cardella contacted Mansfield Township police and said he awakened at night to find Cardella in bed with him, holding a mask over his mouth and nose and touching him sexually, Bradshaw said.
A search warrant was obtained for Cardella’s home and a safe was discovered in a closet that contained two bottles of chloroform, along with prescription sleep medication, medical masks, a camcorder and digital storage devices, Bradshaw said.
Prosecutors allege that Cardella used the chloroform to prevent his victims from waking while they were being molested.
Anyone who believes they were victimized by Cardella can contact Detective Ken Allen at allen@mansfieldpd.org.
Hours before leaving office, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday signed legislation that could make it easier for commercial real estate projects in Camden to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax incentives.
One planned development that could benefit is the Beacon Building, a proposed 25-story office tower downtown on the northwest corner of Broadway and Martin Luther King Boulevard, The Inquirer previously reported.
Murphy approved the bill and dozens of others on the final day of his second term, shortly before fellow Democrat Mikie Sherrill was sworn in as governor. Another newly signed law authorizes up to $300 million in tax breaks to renovate the Prudential Center in Newark, home of the New Jersey Devils. The hockey team is owned by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Camden-focused law makes changes to the state’s gap-financing program, known as Aspire, which authorizes up to $400 million in corporate tax credits over 10 years for “transformative” redevelopment projects that have a total cost of $150 million and meet other requirements.
To qualify for the incentives, most commercial projects must generate a net positive benefit to the state, based on the Economic Development Authority’s economic modeling. The new law exempts certain projects from that “net benefit test.”
The law applies to redevelopment projects located in a “government-restricted municipality” — as described in the Aspire program’s statute — “which municipality is also designated as the county seat of a county of the second class.” In addition, the project must be located in “close proximity” to a “multimodal transportation hub,” an institution of higher education, and a licensed healthcare facility that “serves underrepresented populations.”
A rendering of the 25-story Beacon Building proposed for the northwest corner of Broadway and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Camden. It would be the tallest building ever constructed in the city.
The site of the proposed Beacon Building is across the street from the Walter Rand Transportation Center and Cooper University Hospital. Rutgers’ Camden campus is also nearby. Lawmakers said projects in New Brunswick and Trenton could also qualify for exemptions under the law.
Development firm Gilbane is leading the project with the Camden County Improvement Authority. Gilbane has yet to announce any commitments from tenants.
Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D., Camden), who sponsored the legislation, has said it wasn’t written with a specific project in mind but rather to remove a barrier to investment in South Jersey.
Critics said that the law removes a key safeguard meant to protect taxpayers and that it represented an about-face for Murphy, who earlier in his tenure sought to reform corporate incentive programs.
“Just in terms of the governor signing the bill, this is a massive disappointment,” said Antoinette Miles, state director of the New Jersey Working Families Party.
“Broadly, if there’s a so-called transformative project that can’t pass the net benefit test, maybe it isn’t so transformative,” she said.
Murphy’s office announced the bill signing without commenting on it, though he has previously cheered state investment in Camden. Any Aspire tax incentives must be approved by the state’s Economic Development Authority.
What would you do to find a long-lost piece of a parent’s past? One Cherry Hill teen has spent four years on such a quest. Here’s why. Also this week, work is underway for a 64-unit affordable apartment project, plus there are more changes at the mall.
Cherry Hill High School East junior Charlotte Astor is on the hunt for a copy of her mom’s long-lost demo.
A Cherry Hill teenager has embarked on an unlikely journey to find a demo tape her mom recorded with her hardcore band more than 30 years ago.
Charlotte Astor, a 16-year-old East student, has gone down something of a rabbit hole in search of a tangible connection to her mom’s youth, turning up leads across the country.
Everything Astor knows about her 47-year-old mom is from stories, but she wants something more. Astor’s quest has connected her with hundreds of people who have tried to help locate one of just a few dozens copies of the tape, made shortly before the group broke up.
Township tax bills for the first half of 2026 will be sent out Friday, and residents will have extra time to pay them due to the delayed mailing. There will bean extended grace period until Feb. 18.
Work is underway to clear a vacant former residential property at 1991 Route 70 East near Wexford Leas Swim Club. A developer plans to build 64 affordable apartments, including 52 senior independent-living apartments and 12 units for those needing supportive care. (70 and 73)
A few mall updates: The Dick’s House of Sport is starting to take shape, with steel framing now rising at the site of the former One Cherry Hill office building. The 120,000-square-foot store is slated to open sometime this year. And inside the mall, plus-size women’s clothing brand Torrid and accessories and apparel retailer Michael Kors recently closed their doors. (42 Freeway)
The township is hosting two meetings in the next week where residents 55 and older can provide feedback on the ongoing senior needs assessment. About a third of the township’s residents are 55 and older, so officials want to understand their specific needs. The meetings will take place at the library tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
🏫 Schools Briefing
There’s a preschool information session tonight at 6:30 p.m. at West’s new auditorium. And on Tuesday, the Board of Education will host a meeting at 6:30 p.m. See the district’s full calendar here.
The school district is currently looking to expand its experiential learning program for seniors and is seeking businesses to offer internship-like experiences. Juniors apply and interview for positions and the program runs from September to March. Learn more about the program here.
🍽️ On our Plate
Multinational bakery chain Paris Baguette is targeting a March 15 opening for its Garden State Park location. Known for its pastries, breads, and cakes, the cafe will be located at 951 Haddonfield Rd. next to Nordstrom Rack. (South Jersey Food Scene)
🛼 Soda Pop Boba Skate Party: K-Pop fans won’t want to miss this themed skate party, which will feature the popular Korean music, along with Top 40 hits. Popping boba flights will also be available for $9. ⏰ Friday, Jan. 23, 6:30-9:30 p.m. 💵 $14 admission, plus $6 skate rental 📍Hot Wheelz
☪️ Create and Celebrate: Kids ages 7 to 12 can make crafts inspired by Muslim culture and traditions as part of the library’s Muslim Heritage Month for Kids series. Registration is required. ⏰ Saturday, Jan. 24, 10 a.m.-noon 💵 Free 📍Cherry Hill Public Library
🎶 Wicked Drag Brunch: Performers will dress as characters from the iconic Broadway show-turned-movie and belt out favorite tunes. ⏰ Sunday, Jan. 25, 2:30-5 p.m. 💵 $19.03 📍Vera
This five-bedroom Voken Tract home has undergone a full makeover, giving it a sleek and bright interior offset by black accents. The home has a living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a wine bar, and an open-concept dining and sitting area that flows into the kitchen, which features a 12-foot island, white cabinetry, quartz countertops, a stone-tiled backsplash, and professional-grade appliances. There are five bedrooms, including a primary suite with a walk-in closet, soaking tub, and double vanity. Other features include a finished basement, an in-ground pool, and outdoor dining and entertaining areas.
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