Federal investigators pieced together a timeline for the deadly helicopter crash that killed two longtime friends in Hammonton, N.J., last month.
The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on Wednesday detailing the helicopter crash that led to the deaths ofpilots Kenneth Kirsch, 65, from Carneys Point, and Michael Greenberg, 71, of Sewell. Their aircrafts collided midair on Dec. 29. The two had been known to enjoy their flights together for years.
According to preliminary data, Kirsch and Greenberg started their flight session at the Vineland-Downstown Airport, departing at 9:48 a.m. The pilots, in separate aircrafts, flew in parallel paths to Hammonton Municipal Airport, arriving 10 minutes later.
Investigators are still trying to determine what happened next;there is no preliminary real-time GPS data on their subsequent flight out of Hammonton Municipal Airport.
The preliminary report confirmed Kirsch and Greenberg flew out of the Hammonton airport and collided at 11:24 a.m., almost an hour-and-a-half after they arrived at the airport.
During that time before their final flight, the two men stopped by Apron Cafe, a breakfast spot overlooking Hammonton Municipal Airport’s runway, the owner told The Inquirer. Minutes after they left, Apron Cafe patrons and staff could see one of the helicopters spiraling, engulfed in flames in the distance.
“I looked up, and I could see in the distance the one spiraling down, and then I see the other one coming down,” said the cafe’s owner, Sal Silipino. “It was hard to believe that they were crashing.”
While no data from the aircraft is available, surveillance video captured the fatal crash as it happened, according to the NTSB. The helicopters flew close together shortly before the accident.
Slightly staggered from one another, and heading in the same direction in what investigators liken to a “formation flight,” the helicopters “converged until they contacted each other.”
Investigators say one helicopter immediately began a tumbling descent to the ground, while the other pitched up sharply before leveling out. However, shortly after leveling off, the helicopter began spinning clockwise before descending rapidly to the terrain.
Kirsch was flying an Enstrom F-28A helicopter, and Greenberg, an Enstrom 280C. Both were operating the aircraft for personal flights.
The crash site was 1.5 miles southwest of Hammonton Municipal Airport and included a 1,211-foot debris path, with paint chips, main rotor blades, and the tail cone of one of the helicopters.
Kirsch’s aircraft was found split in half with the tail cone only held together by one tail rotor control cable, according to the report. There were no signs of fire in Kirsch’s helicopter. Major sections of Greenberg’s aircraft were destroyed by a post-impact fire, with the tail cone relatively intact.
The wreckage was recovered and retained for further examination by the NTSB. Investigators noted these were preliminary details, and the cause of the crash is yet to be determined.
A typical NTSB investigation can last one to two years.
As the September evening inched along, the line of residents waiting their turn for the microphone held steady. Filing down the auditorium aisles at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, they were armed with questions about a new gas plant slated for their community.
Sitting quietly in the audience was John Dudash. For decades he’s lived in Homer City, a southwestern Pennsylvania town that was once home to the largest coal-fired power plant in the state. The plant, which shares its name with the town, closed nearly three years ago after years of financial distress.
Dudash, 89, has lived in the shadow of its smokestacks — said to be the tallest in the country before they were demolished — for much of his life. At its peak, the Homer City power plant employed hundreds of people and could deploy about 2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power 2 million homes.
It was also a major source of air pollution, spewing sulfur dioxide and mercury, both of which pose serious health risks. Today, Dudash wonders if the pollution might have exacerbated the lung issues that claimed his wife’s life six years ago.
The proposed gas plant, expected to be up and running in 2027, will replace the old coal-fired power station, but with more than double the energy output — 4.5 gigawatts of energy. The new plant also will have the potential to emit 17.5 million tons of planet-heating greenhouse gasses per year, the equivalent of putting millions of cars on the road.
And it will serve a new purpose: Rather than primarily sending electrons to the regional grid to power homes or businesses, the new power plant will exist mainly to feed data centers planned on the site.
As the hearing wore on that September night, Dudash, a conservationist, did not stand to speak; instead, he sat quietly, taking mental notes. The next morning, he emailed two staffers at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
“First of all, the project will not be stopped,” he began, with resignation. He went on to offer a few caveats — among them, advice about air monitoring.
His letter reached the agency alongside more than 550 comments on a key air permit for the proposed plant, a testament to the project’s complexity. After the permit was approved Nov. 18, Dudash’s prediction began to look remarkably accurate — though the Homer City plant still has about a dozen additional permits awaiting approval before the project can be completed, including one that would impact several acres of wetlands and hundreds of feet of a local stream.
Though it is among many energy sites popping up to power the artificial-intelligence boom across Pennsylvania, the Homer City facility is unique for its size, its advertised economic potential — the owners have promised the project will generate more than 10,000 construction-related jobs — and for its likely environmental impact. It has earned the backing of President Donald Trump, who called it “the largest plant of its kind in the world,” a distinction its owners could not verify. There was a buzz in town in late October when Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, visited, though it was unclear what drew him to Homer City.
“I don’t really trust the people who are coming in to build and run the place,” Dudash said. “I do not agree with the artificial-intelligence portion of it.”
“They’re going to have to sacrifice the environment for these jobs,” he added. “In Appalachia, we’ve been doing that for years.”
The Homer City proposal
When the old plant sputtered to a close in 2023, it left the surrounding community — which was built on the local abundance of coal — in search of an economic lifeline. Now, the data center boom sweeping the country brings promise of such a rebirth for communities like Homer City — though this promise is one that some experts say may be less than billed. And, it comes with risks.
The new power plant will be much larger than its predecessor and is permitted to emit more than twice as much of some pollutants as its predecessor did. The data center, or centers, it powers would also consume a tremendous amount of water — perhaps more than its host townships can spare, some fear.
Homer City, Pa., once a vibrant thoroughfare during coal’s heyday, was completely empty of pedestrians on an afternoon in 2024.
Artificial intelligence requires vast amounts of electricity and has the potential to offer a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry. Though some in the community are sanguine about the promise of jobs, expertssay the reality for many living around data centers may fall short. Some are left wondering exactly who the new plant is for — them or some faraway tech companies.
The Homer City project is far from alone in its emergence: The nonprofit Fractracker has identified 39 planned data centers in the works across Pennsylvania. Tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon are moving in, alongside others intrigued by the state’s rich legacy of power production, deep natural gas reserves, and generous subsidies. In July, Republican U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, from eastern Pennsylvania, held a conference in Pittsburgh during which companies announced more than $90 billion in data center investments and related energy infrastructure.
This tech boom largely has bipartisan support, including from Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who said at a June press conference that he is committed to “ensuring the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania.” Legislators in Harrisburg, meanwhile, are introducing bills that would both spur the burgeoning industry and give it guardrails.
The extent to which the Homer City facility’s owners have lobbied for supportive legislation is not clear. The company’s lobbying registration with the Pennsylvania Department of State goes back only to January 2025. It has, however, spent at the local level. In November, for instance, the company gave a community nonprofit $25,000 for a holiday food drive. It also urged state utility regulators, who are drafting a policy on data centers, to issue one that does not saddle data centers with costs that might “push” them out of state.
The Homer City proposal is the brainchild of the same private equity owners that closed the plant in 2023 — after years of financial difficulty and two bankruptcies. Two firms own close to 90% of the plant, with New York City-based Knighthead Capital Management holding the vast majority of that. It’s part of a wave of private equity investment in the data center industry. In March, the owners, operating under an LLC called Homer City Redevelopment, toppled the plant’s signature smokestacks. A few weeks later, they announced that the plant would reopen with a data center customer, or suite of customers, to be announced as soon as 2026.
Critics fear the new plant will require a lot more water than its predecessor. The supercomputers that data centers house whirr away around the clock, and need to be routinely cooled down. Some data center companies have introduced recycled water into their systems. Homer City Redevelopment has not said if their data center clients will be among them.
How to handle the water
In 2014, U.S. data centers used 21.2 billion liters of water, enough to fill nearly 9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. That number tripled by 2023, with the vast majority of the water consumed by “hyperscale,” or large, facilities like Homer City. In states like Colorado, where water use has, for decades, been meticulously planned and negotiated, data centers are threatening to strain such finely tuned systems.
Dudash, the longtime Homer City resident, is concerned about a similar fate. “I’m not sure how they’re going to handle the water,” he told Capital & Main after the September hearing.
The power plant has, since 1968, been allotted an uncapped amount of water from Two Lick Reservoir, a 5 billion gallon, dammed-off portion of a creek that the plant’s former owners built explicitly for its use.
The power plant shares the water with a utility that serves two local communities — Indiana Borough and the broader White Township — as part of a 1988 drought management plan to prevent and respond to catastrophic weather conditions. The borough of Homer City gets its water from Yellow Creek, a tributary of Two Lick Creek, which serves the reservoir and picks up the slack in the event of a drought.
“Should the Two Lick Creek Reservoir be emptied, [the water utility] would not be able to provide sufficient water to protect public health and safety in their service area,” the drought management plan reads.
In 1985, the delicate system between Two Lick and Yellow Creek was strained when the then-Homer City plant drew so much water from the reservoir that it led to a drought. “Had a significant rainfall not occurred … the reservoir may have faced total depletion,” the drought management plan reads.
A report from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection shows that the water utility drawing from Two Lick has, in recent years, routinely used nearly half its allotted amount. But critics fear that allocation could be at risk once a data center opens and starts drawing water.
Robin Gorman, a spokesperson for Homer City Redevelopment, told Capital & Main that it plans to leave cooling and water-use decisions to its data center clients, making it unclear how much water will be needed to keep all the computers running, or where that water would come from.
Rob Nymick, Homer City’s former borough manager, who serves as manager of the Central Indiana County Water Authority, told Capital & Main that he is confident local municipalities can share water resources with the planned gas plant. But the data centers could be a different story.
“I do know that data centers do require a tremendous amount of water,” Nymick said. “That’s something we probably cannot provide.”
Nymick said that community officials are operating with “limited knowledge,” and that during the handful of meetings they have held with Homer City Redevelopment, “The only thing that they wanted to discuss is the actual power plant.”
Eric Barker, who grew up in Homer City, attended the September hearing with restrained optimism. “The power plant was a source of pride and is a source of pride for the community,” he said. “There’s not too many large employers in Indiana County,” he added.
But he found little comfort at the September hearing.
The Department of Environmental Protection “seemed woefully, woefully, comically underprepared,” Barker said, citing a response he received to a question about the types of pollutants that would increase under the new Homer City proposal, compared to what was emitted by the old plant. Barker was told the agency would look into it and get back to him.
“Some questions and concerns were raised at the public meeting regarding the plan approval about matters beyond the limited scope of the meeting,” said Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Tom Decker in a statement. “Interested parties are encouraged to look to the DEP’s extensive website, including its community page dedicated to the Homer City project, for resources addressing such questions and concerns.”
Despite the questions that followed, the department, on the whole, signaled satisfaction with the Homer City plant’s air permit application at the hearing. “What’s being proposed is what we consider state-of-the-art emission controls,” said Dave Balog, environmental engineering manager at the department’s northwest regional office.
Environmental nonprofits Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Council, the Sierra Club, and Earthjustice countered in a 44-page comment on a draft of the key air permit that the application does not incorporate the best tools for mitigating pollutants such as ammonia, which is known to cause respiratory issues and other health risks. The Department of Environmental Protection agreed with Homer City Redevelopment’s analyses of its best available technology, and the permit was granted.
‘We’re fighting for our survival’
As Homer City’s smokestacks imploded and fell to the ground last March, leaving only a gray cloud, Dudash wondered what particulates might be in the dusty mix. While there were rumors in town that asbestos might be among them, the Department of Environmental Protection told Capital & Main that the site was inspected for the substance before it was demolished and none was found.
Still, coal dust, fly ash, and silica particulates are all possible during such implosions, an agency representative said. In the months since, residents have complained of repeated blasts from the site rattling their houses. As of January, the blasts occurred daily.
But the particulates that drift from the old plant during the blasts may pale in comparison to the carbon dioxide emissions the new power plant is predicted to release. The key air permit the Department of Environmental Protection issued to the facility allows it to release up to 17.5 million tons of the heat-trapping gas per year — the equivalent of putting 3.6 million gas-powered vehicles on the road annually. In 2010, according to federal data, the plant emitted just over 11 million tons of greenhouse gasses. In 2023, when it was operating at a fraction of its capacity, it emitted 1.3 million.
In their comment to regulators, the nonprofit environmental groups said that the carbon dioxide emissions would be triple those of any polluting facility in the state, representing 6% of Pennsylvania’s total emissions. The new plant will also emit sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, two classes of respiratory irritants, but at rates lower than the old plant. The nonprofit Clean Air Council condemned regulators’ issuance of the air permit, calling it a “death sentence.” Along with PennFuture and the Sierra Club, the council appealed the permit in December.
The owners said the emissions from the new plant will result in a 35%-40% reduction in carbon dioxide compared to the old plant, but the calculation does not account for the new plant’s larger size. Instead, it is per-megawatt hour, meaning per unit of energy generated. Natural gas is less emissions-intensive than coal when burned, but because the Homer City plant will generate more than double the energy of its predecessor, its overall emissions profile is expected to be higher.
As the state grapples with extreme weather events such as flooding due to global warming, locking in carbon emissions is the wrong direction to go, the environmental nonprofits argue. On an annual basis, the plant will be permitted to emit hundreds of tons of respiratory irritants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, and dozens of tons of formaldehyde, a carcinogen. It will also emit health-harming compounds like toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene.
Additional emissions are likely to come from the natural gas drilling that will be required to power the site.
In 2024, Nymick told Capital & Main that the borough was struggling to find a new economic engine. “We’re fighting for our survival,” he said at the time. Data center industry advocates contend that the data center gold rush will be a boon for communities like Homer City, where boarded-up storefronts line the main street.
“For every one job in a data center, six jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy,” said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, at a hearing in the state Capitol in October.
The smokestacks of the former coal-fired Homer City Generating Station crumble in a planned demolition to make way for a new natural gas-fired power plant in Homer City, Pa., in early 2025.
Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at nonprofit think tank the Ohio River Valley Institute, said the reality isn’t that rosy. The average data center employs as few as 10 people and as many as 110, per his own calculations based in part on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The computers inside them can generally run on their own with limited maintenance.
Even in a rural county like Indiana, O’Leary said, “One hundred is a rounding error. It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they’re paid $200,000 a year. It’s not enough to make a significant change in the status of the local economy.”
In a recent report on the data center boom in natural gas economies in Appalachia, O’Leary said gas-powered data centers represent the combination of “three non-labor-intensive industries” — fracking, power plants, and data centers. “Stacking [them] on top of each other does not alter the underlying dynamic which ties them together.”
Ron Airhart, a former coal miner and executive assistant to the secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America, is more optimistic about the economic potential of the new Homer City facility.
Still, he concedes that it will never be what the old plant was. “Yes, building a gas-fired power plant is going to create a lot of construction jobs, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “But once it’s done, how many actual employees are you going to have working there?”
He quickly added, “But, I’m glad they are doing something with the old power plant there.”
Gorman told Capital & Main that Homer City Redevelopment and its construction partner, Kiewit, are planning to hire from local unions and building trades. They foresee 10,000 construction jobs. They also anticipate the site will create 1,000 “direct and indirect” permanent jobs, including those hired at the facility itself and those brought aboard for supportive positions, such as suppliers.
“From start to finish, the Homer City Energy Campus will be developed in partnership with skilled local craftsmen and will bring quality, good-paying jobs back to the Homer City community,” Gorman said.
O’Leary said the jobs numbers such as those projected by the Data Center Coalition are inflated, similar to the employment projections made before the fracking boom in rural Appalachia. He said such projections are a detriment to communities, in part because taxpayers shoulder the cost of subsidies to attract the industry to the state, such as a sales and use tax exemption for data centers that Pennsylvania codified in 2021. Gov. Shapiro has estimated that the credit will expand to about $50 million per year for the next five years.
Local residents are also burdened with rising utility bills. The surging demand for electricity is straining the region’s power supplies, increasing what utilities pay for electricity. New power plants coming onto the grid must install transmission equipment, the costs of which they share with consumers. These economic factors, in sum, could outweigh the benefits of the new jobs the data center creates, O’Leary said.
Earlier this year, the grid operator for the region that encompasses Pennsylvania, PJM, saw electricity prices surge by roughly 1,000% from two years ago. Some of that cost is expected to be passed onto customers.
“We have a problem, and that problem is real, and it is exponential electricity load growth causing exponential price increases for consumers,” said Patrick Cicero, former consumer advocate for the state of Pennsylvania and now an attorney for the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, at the October hearing in Harrisburg.
“In the context of Grandma vs. Google,” Cicero said, referring to older residents faced with high bills, “Grandma should win every day. That should be the policy statement of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Federal and state lawmakers are still determining how and whether to regulate the additional costs that data centers pass onto consumers, including for fees associated with transmission throughout the grid. A bill that would create such a process while establishing renewable energy mandates for data centers is now being weighed by Pennsylvania representatives.
Dennis Wamsted, energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, predicts such costs add complications for data centers, and has argued that their demand as a whole is overblown. Supply chain delays spurred by surging demand for turbines, including those that Homer City will be using, could also create additional costs and lag times, he said.
“If there is an AI bubble and it bursts,” he said, “you would have built all this capacity that wasn’t needed.”
Homer City’s owners said the plant is better positioned than others in the industry since it isn’t starting from scratch.
“Much of the critical infrastructure for the project is already in place from the legacy Homer City coal plant, including transmission lines connected to the PJM and NYISO power grids, substations, and water access,” Gorman, the spokesperson, said.
Communities on the front lines of these projects would be the first hurt by a project that fails to materialize.
But in Homer City, it’s clear that there’s an appetite for the promise of a new, job-producing industry, regardless of hurdles.
At the September hearing, many in the crowd wore neon shirts with union logos — a signal of the region’s fierce pride in its industrial past, and deep thirst for an economic boon. After an evening peppered with skepticism over the plant, Shawn Steffee, a business agent at the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, stepped to the microphone.
“Everybody speaking about jobs,” he cried, “there will be jobs, and there will be local jobs.”
As he walked away, the room filled with applause — the loudest of the night.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that starting Feb. 1 he will deny federal funding to any states that are home to local governments resisting his administration’s immigration policies, expanding on previous threats to cut off resources to the so-called sanctuary cities themselves.
Such an action could have far-reaching impacts across the U.S., potentially even in places that aren’t particularly friendly to noncitizens.
Two previous efforts by Trump to cut off some funding for sanctuary jurisdictions were shut down by courts.
Trump unveiled the concept this time late in a speech Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, without offering specifics.
“Starting Feb. 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens and it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come,” he said. “So we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities.”
Back in Washington, Trump was asked by reporters what kind of funding would be affected on Feb. 1: “You’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be significant.”
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Courts have rejected the idea before
In an executive orders last year, the president directed federal officials to withhold money from sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to shield people in the country illegally from deportation.
A California-based federal judge struck it down despite government lawyers saying it was too early to stop the plan when no action had been taken and no specific conditions had been laid out.
In Trump’s first term in office, in 2017, courts struck down his effort to cut funding to the cities.
Some of the details are tricky
The Justice Department last year published a list of three dozen states, cities and counties that it considers to be sanctuary jurisdictions.
The list is overwhelmingly made up of places where the governments are controlled by Democrats, including the states of California, Connecticut and New York, cities such as Boston and New York and counties including Baltimore County, Maryland, and Cook County, Illinois.
That list replaced an earlier, longer one that was met with pushback from officials who said it wasn’t clear why their jurisdictions were on it.
The administration has been threatening funding in specific places
The federal government has moved to halt funding for a variety of programs in recent weeks and is already facing legal challenges.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned states that have refused to provide data on recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program money that they’ll be docked administrative funds. A court fight over the request for information was already underway before the threat came. Money hasn’t been stopped yet.
The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services said last week that it was halting money from five Democratic-led states for daycare subsidies and other aid to low-income families with children over unspecified suspicions about fraud. A court put that on hold
The administration has tried to use additional financial pressure against Minnesota, a state where it has also sent a wave of federal officers in an immigration crackdown. The Agriculture Department has said it’s freezing funding in the state — but without laying out many details.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also told Minnesota last week that it intends to withhold $515 million every three months from 14 Medicaid programs that were deemed “high risk” after rejecting a corrective action plan it demanded because of fraud allegations. The amount is equivalent to one-fourth of the federal money for those programs. State officials said Tuesday that they’re appealing.
It’s a longstanding question: Where does South Jersey start? Is the dividing line the same as where Eagles fans stop and Giants fans begin? Is it based on your area code? Is there someother sign that you’ve crossed from the North to the South?
The Inquirer is posing that very question to readers, along with one other hotly debated item: Is there such a thing as Central Jersey?
A high-end gym is taking over the former Buy Buy Baby space in the Ellisburg Shopping Center. Club Studio Fitness is expected to open a 30,240-square-foot gym in spring 2027. Club Studio Fitness, the boutique-style gym from parent company LA Fitness, is known for its premium amenities like cryotherapy and red-light therapy, a juice bar, stretch stations, and locker rooms, in addition to its fitness and wellness offerings. Memberships at Club Studio Fitness’ only other New Jersey location, in Edgewater, range from $189 to $249 per month.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the township is hosting two service events in the coming week. On Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., volunteers will help with trail maintenance throughout Croft Farm. And on Monday, kids 11 to 17 can participate in a youth leadership workshop with the police department. Advanced registration is required.
Two Cherry Hill residents are among the 2026 Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal recipients, awarded by Camden County. Artist Giselle Brown and Col. Ted Gallagher, director of veterans affairs for Camden County, will be recognized alongside nine other recipients next Wednesday. Brown is a 17-year-old whose work has been recognized at the local, state, and national level, and Gallagher is a decorated 28-year military veteran who went on to work at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services before joining the county.
Broadway show Suffs is currently in town and has two South Jersey connections, one far less obvious than the other. The touring musical, which is at the Academy of Music through Sunday, was created by playwright, composer, and actor Shaina Taub, whose mother is a Cherry Hill native. It follows the suffrage movement and centers on South Jersey Quaker activist Alice Paul, who was born in Mount Laurel. The Inquirer’s Rosa Cartagena dives into what inspired the Tony Award-winning production.
Washington, D.C.-based Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies has named a new principal to its Cherry Hill office. Braxton Plummer will help grow the government relations firm’s practice throughout New Jersey and the region.
Park Royal Orthodontics recently opened at 921 Haddonfield Rd. at Towne Place at Garden State Park. The practice offers orthodontic care for all ages.
A clarification: We notedin last week’s newsletter thatAppliances Outlet will be moving into the space occupied by Whole Hog Cafe and Wine Legend. Appliances Outlet will only take over part of the space, and neither of the current businesses are slated to close.
🏫 Schools Briefing
There are no classes Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
There will be a preschool information session next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at West’s new auditorium.
Chick’s Deli got a shout-out from BestofNJ.com as one of the best sandwich shops in New Jersey. The website noted specialty sandwiches like the chicken cheesesteak with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone “really shine.” It also suggested trying the mushroom cheesesteak.
🎳 Things to Do
♒ Napkin Wars: Battle of the Zodiac!: Represent your zodiac sign during this fun “napkin war” party, where three DJs will spin tunes. ⏰ Saturday, Jan. 17, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. 💵 $19.03 📍 Vera
👩⚕️ Game Plan for Wellness: Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital’s community health expo will include wellness stations and tables, healthcare screenings, cooking and exercise demos, and more. ⏰ Sunday, Jan. 18, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. 💵 Free 📍 Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital
🧁 Valentine’s Day Cupcake Decorating: Registration opens tomorrow for this event geared toward kids in sixth through 12th grade. ⏰ Sunday, Feb. 8, 2-3:30 p.m. 💵 Free 📍 Cherry Hill Public Library
The kitchen island has cabinetry which contrasts with the slate-gray cabinets throughout the rest of the space.
Located in the Olde Springs neighborhood, this four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom home blends classic and modern design elements. Its first floor features include a dining room, a multipurpose room with a tiled fireplace, a laundry and mudroom, and an open-concept kitchen and living room. The kitchen has a large island with white cabinetry that contrasts with the slate-gray cabinets throughout the rest of the space and matches the subway tile backsplash. It opens into a two-story living room. The bedrooms are upstairs, including a primary suite with a double vanity and soaking tub.
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This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Lush landscaping and public art will soon line Broad Street, impromptu performances may pop up, and vehicular traffic will be calmed with a new Avenue of the Arts south streetscape about to take shape.
The project — estimated to take $150 million and a decade to realize — will begin modestly.
The groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday morning in front of the Kimmel Center and was attended by more than 200 dignitaries, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, and other members of City Council, state representatives, and officials from groups along the Avenue of the Arts.
The actual construction is slated to start at the end of January on a small portion of the project: remaking the median strip between Spruce and Pine Streets. That phase is expected to be completed by June.
In 2027, after the end of an anticipated swell in tourism and street activity during the Semiquincentennial, sidewalk beautification will begin on both the east and west sides of that block.
Eventually, pending funding, all of the blocks between City Hall and Washington Avenue will be remade.
Looking north toward City Hall, a rendering shows the completed first phase of a South Broad Street streetscape project slated to break ground in January 2026.
The current streetscape of planters, pavers, and retro light fixtures was designed and installed more than three decades ago. In addition to the wear and tear of the existing scheme, the thinking around public space has evolved since then, said Carl Dranoff, board chair of Avenue of the Arts, Inc., which is overseeing the project.
“It’s become somewhat aged and dog-eared,” said Dranoff. “In 1993 you didn’t need to have outdoor cafes. We need to activate the street, not just make it palatable. We have the opportunity to really elevate the Avenue of the Arts into one of the world’s great streets.”
The project was announced in July 2024 at $100 million, but inflation and a more detailed cost analysis has now put the total price tag at about $150 million — $15 million per block. These numbers include not just the planters, lighting, public art, street furniture, and aesthetic elements, but also infrastructure work beneath the surface, said Dranoff.
“A lot of it is things you don’t see. There’s a lot of underground construction,” he said. “Right now water is leaking from the median strip into the subway concourse. One of the reasons we got support from SEPTA and PennDot and [the Philadelphia] Streets [Dept.], is as we are building the median strips, we are improving deficiencies in the street in each block.”
In addition, some utilities will have to be moved. One PECO relocation, for instance, will cost the project $250,000, he said.
Dranoff has a vested interest in the vitality of the Avenue of the Arts. He has led several development projects on South Broad Street, including Arthaus, which is on the same block as the first phase of the new streetscape, and, one block south, Symphony House. He compares the investment in the new streetscape to the ones made in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia Navy Yard, Kimmel Center, and Schuylkill River Trail.
“If we don’t make investments in the future, which are going to increase revenue and population, we are relegating ourselves to second-place status.”
The new $15 million streetscape in the block from Spruce to Pine, which includes a $1 million endowment fund to underwrite maintenance, native-species plants, a rainwater-collection cistern, lighting, curved raised planting beds, public art, seating, way-finding devices, and artist-designed banners.
Of the $15 million needed, $5 million has been raised so far: $3 million from the city over two budget years, $1 million from the state, and $1 million from private donors. Other funding requests are pending, which planners call “very promising.”
A sidewalk garden on the east side of Broad Street between Pine and Spruce Streets is planned for installation in 2027 as part of a new Avenue of the Arts streetscape.
Dranoff says that construction of the median between Spruce and Pine — which is the block occupied by the Kimmel Center and defunct University of the Arts — won’t cause “a lot of disruption. They’re only working business hours, not on weekends.” Any blocked lanes will be reopened after work is done for the day, he said.
The next block to be redesigned hasn’t been decided, but it will likely be north of Spruce Street, Dranoff said. “Part of it will depend on funding. If we get a donor, someone whose offices are near the Academy of Music and is donating $15 million for that block to be next, we might accommodate that,” he said.
Funding for the entire project is expected to be a mix of public money, corporate and individual donations, and foundation support, he said.
The goal isn’t to have the mile-plus between City Hall and Washington Avenue end up with a streetscape that looks uniform, Dranoff said. Instead, design firms Gensler and OJB Landscape Architecture may come up with different ideas for different blocks.
“You don’t need a master plan that’s set for 10 blocks. Every block is different, the institutions are different. It lends itself to block-by-block planning tied together by a common theme.”
Dranoff said once the block from Spruce to Pine is done, it will show the potential, which he expects will spur fundraising to complete the streetscape for the entire Avenue of the Arts south.
“The difference between now and the first block being finished is, you’re going to be driving down a tree-lined boulevard.”
The article has been updated with details from the groundbreaking ceremony.
We’ve asked where South Philly starts, and about the Eagles-Steelers divide, but now it's time to answer an even more controversial question: Where does South Jersey end and North Jersey begin?
It’s a toughie, even entire movies have tried to answer this question. Is it just Eagles country vs. Giants country? Or maybe area code based? Turnpike exits? Or just simple geography of towns and counties? We want to hear from you.
story continues after advertisement
Use the sliders below to draw the dividing line. Submit your pick and see how other Inquirer readers voted.
The Rest of New Jersey
Central Jersey
South Jersey
You think South Jersey includes south_city_marker.
If we averaged out the votes from Inquirer readers, South Jersey would include south_city_average.
We’re not done yet, though. Now you’ve told us where South Jersey starts, we have another question for you: If it exists, where does Central Jersey start?
selection_answer
Of those that voted, central_votes believe there is a Central Jersey. The average Inquirer reader placed north_city_average in North Jersey and central_city_avg in Central Jersey.
Thank you for taking our quiz. If you want to weigh in more (like Pork Roll or Taylor Ham) let us know!
Staff Contributors
Design, Development, and Reporting: Garland Fordice
Editing: Sam Morris
Copy Editing: Brian Leighton
Illustration: Julia Duarte
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When Cherelle L. Parker was a City Council member, she championed a strict residency rule that required city employees to live in Philadelphia for at least a year before being hired.
Amid protest movements for criminal justice reform in 2020, Parker said stricter residency requirements would diversify a police force that has long been whiter than the makeup of the city, and ensure that officers contribute to the tax base.
“It makes good common sense and good economic sense for the police policing Philadelphia to be Philadelphians,” she said then.
But today, under now-Mayor Parker, more police live outside Philadelphia than ever before.
About one-third of the police department’s 6,363 full-time staffers live elsewhere. That share — more than 2,000 employees — has roughly doubled since 2017, the last time The Inquirer conducted a similar analysis.
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Today, the percentage of nonresidents is even higher among the top brass: Nearly half of all captains, lieutenants, and inspectors live outside the city, according to a review of the most recent available city payroll data.
Even Commissioner Kevin Bethel keeps a home in Montgomery County, despite officially residing in a smaller Northwest Philadelphia house that he owns with his daughter.
Most municipal employees are still required to live within city limits. Across the city’s 28,000-strong workforce, nearly 3,200 full-time employees listed home addresses elsewhere as of last fall. Most of them — more than 2,500 — are members of the police or fire departments, whose unions secured relaxed residency rules for their workers in contract negotiations. About a quarter of the fire department now lives outside the city.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel speak before the start of a news conference.
Proponents of residency rules in City Hall have long argued they improve rapport between law enforcement and the communities they serve, because officers who have a stake in the city may engage in more respectful policing.
But experts who study public safety say there is little evidence that residency requirements improve policing or trust. Some say the rules can backfire, resulting in lesser quality recruits because the department must hire from a smaller applicant pool.
A survey of 800 municipalities last year found that residency requirements only modestly improved diversity and had no measurable effect on police performance or crime rates.
“It’s a simple solution thrown at a complex problem,” said Fritz Umbach, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It doesn’t have the impact people think it will.”
Parker, a Philadelphia native who lives in the East Mount Airy neighborhood, says she would still prefer all municipal employees live in the city.
“When I grew up in Philadelphia, it was a badge of honor to have police officers and firefighters and paramedics who were from our neighborhood,” she said in a statement. “They were part of the fabric of our community. I don’t apologize for wanting that to be the standard for our city.”
‘Where they lay their heads at night’
What qualifies as “residency” can be a little pliable.
Along with his wife, Bethel purchased a 3,600-square-foot home in Montgomery County in 2017 for over a half-million dollars. Although he initially satisfied the residency rule by leasing a downtown apartment after being named commissioner by Parker in late 2023, he would not have met the pre-residency requirement the mayor championed for other city employees while she was on Council.
Today, voter registration and payroll data shows that Bethel resides in a modest, 1,800-square-foot rowhouse in Northwest Philadelphia, which he purchased with his daughter last year. While police sources said it was common for Bethel to sleep in the city given his long work hours, his wife is still listed as a voter in Montgomery County.
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel speaks during the 22nd District community meeting at the Honickman Learning Center on Dec. 2, 2025.
Sgt. Eric Gripp, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement that Bethel is a full-time resident of Philadelphia, and that while he owns a property outside the city, his “main residence” is the home in Northwest Philly.
Although sources say it was not unheard of for rank-and-file officers to use leased apartments to satisfy the requirement on paper, Gripp said “only a small number” of residency violations had required formal disciplinary action following an investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs Division.
That likely owes to officers’ increasing ability to reside elsewhere legally. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which represents thousands of active and retired Philadelphia Police officers, won a contract provision in 2009 allowing officers to live outside the city after serving on the force for at least five years.
The union didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Few of the cops who left the city went very far.
While Northeast Philly and Roxborough remain the choice neighborhoods for city police, the top destinations for recent transplants were three zip codes covering Southampton, and Bensalem and Warminster Townships, according to city payroll data.
A few officers went much farther than the collar counties.
Robert McDonnell Jr., a police officer in West Philadelphia’s 19th district with 33 years on the force, has an official address at a home in rural Osceola Mills, Pa., about 45 minutes north of Altoona in Centre County.
A person who answered a phone number associated with McDonnell — who earned $124,000 last year between his salary, overtime, and bonus pay — declined to speak to a reporter.
Asked about the seven-hour round-trip commute McDonnell’s nominal residence could entail, Gripp said the department doesn’t regulate the manner in which employees travel to and from work.
“Our members serve this city with dedication every day,” he said, “regardless of where they lay their heads at night.”
A long and winding history
Versions of residency rules can be found as far back as the 19th century, when police recruits were required to live in the districts they sought to work in.
But when Mayor Joseph S. Clark pushed to reform the city charter in the 1950s, he sought to abolish the rules as an impediment to hiring, saying “there should be no tariff on brains or ability.”
Instead, City Council successfully fought to expand the restrictions. And, for more than five decades, the city required most of its potential employees to have lived in Philadelphia for a year — or obtain special waivers that, in practice, were reserved for the most highly specialized city jobs, like medical staff.
Many other big cities enacted similar measures either to curb middle-class flight following World War II or to prioritize the hiring of local residents. But the restrictions were frequently blamed for causing chronic staff shortages of certain hard-to-fill city jobs.
Officers Azieme Lindsey (from left), Charles T. Jackson, and Dalisa M. Carter taking their oaths in 2023.
Citing a police recruit shortage in 2008, former Mayor Michael A. Nutter successfully stripped out the prehiring residency requirement for cadets. Recruits were required only to move into the city once they joined the force.
A year later, the police union attempted to have the residency requirement struck from its contract entirely.
Nutter’s administration objected. But an arbitration panel approved a compromise policy to allow officers to live elsewhere in Pennsylvania after five years on the job. By 2016, firefighters and sheriff’s deputies secured similar concessions.
But experts say there’s little research showing that to be true.
“I am unsure if requiring officers to reside in the city is a requirement supported by evidence,” said Anjelica Hendricks, an assistant law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who worked for the city’s Police Advisory Commission. “Especially if that rule requires a city to sacrifice something else during contract negotiations.”
FOP leaders have long opposed the rule and said it was partly to blame for the department’s unprecedented recruitment crisis and a yearslong short-staffing problem that peaked in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, facing nearly 1,500 unfilled police jobs, former Mayor Jim Kenney loosened the prehire residency rule for the police department again, allowing the force to take on cadets who lived outside the city, so long as they moved into Philadelphia within a year-and-a-half of being hired.
Since then, recruiting has rebounded somewhat, which police officials attribute to a variety of tactics, including both the eased residency rules and hiring bonuses. The force is still short 20% of its budgeted staffing and operating with 1,200 fewer officers than it did 10 years ago.
Umbach, the John Jay professor, said the impact on recruiting is obvious: Requiring officers to live in a city where the cost of living may be higher than elsewhere amounts to a pay cut, which shrinks candidate pools.
“Whenever you lower the standards or lower the appeal of the job, you’re going to end up with people who cause you problems down the road,” he said. “A pay cut is just that.”
HARRISBURG — As the rural reporter at The Inquirer for about the last decade, I’ve cuddled bear cubs, rattlesnakes, and alligators, trembled in fear at horses, and been punched by the scent of deer urine farms.
Still, nothing scares me more than the mushroom burger at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
I haven’t really missed a show since I began covering rural Pennsylvania, and I probably never will, regardless. If you’ve been there, you know. If you haven’t, take my advice from last year: Pull your kids out of school, and go there this week. The show runs through Saturday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, and it’s free to get in. It’s an agricultural spectacle you’ll never forget, a place to see show rabbits, hogs, goats, and cows, all while learning where your food comes from.
It’s also a place to eat, with a gargantuan food hall filled with offerings I’m still uncovering. Shannon Powers, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture I pester often during the show, smartly said she didn’t have a favorite meal there.
“But on a cold day, a cup of trout chowder hits the spot,” she told me.
Trout stew? Who knew? There’s also goat stew.
There’s a mind-boggling number of things on the menu at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg.
I do have favorites, though, including the sugared German almonds I end my day with every year. I went on opening day, Saturday (never go on opening day), and took my daughter, sampling some old standbys and interviewing folks about some popular foods there.
4-H brisket sandwich
As a man of tradition, if I like a certain item on a menu, I’ll get it over and over again, for the rest of my life. I still have dreams about the ’90s-era Wawa hot roast beef and cheese sandwiches I ate religiously.
Anyhow, I get a brisket sandwich every year from a 4-H stand that’s actually not in the food hall but rather the main hall, where the famous butter sculpture is. Get a map, seriously. You’ll need it.
Look for the pig in the Main Hall, and you’ll find the 4-H brisket sandwich, plus pork chops on a stick.
Brisket has a special place in my heart. I ate it for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, and this year, I paid $14 for thick-sliced brisket on a roll, which I slathered in BBQ sauce, while squatting on the floor.
Then, I followed it up with a flu shot, another Farm Show tradition.
This sandwich was not better than my holiday briskets, but I’m easy. Almost everything I’m willing to eat is “pretty good.”
I assumed proceeds of the sales go to Pennsylvania 4-H clubs. The folks cutting the brisket didn’t know, though my receipt credits the Pennsylvania Livestock Association.
If you want to save a few bucks at the 4-H booth, the pork chop on a stick is $8.
Mushroom burger
I know mushrooms grow underground, and that Chester County is one of the nation’s top producers, but I assumed they come from even deeper places.
Pennsylvania is the nation’s top producer of mushrooms, most of them coming from Chester and Berks Counties.
I’m not a fan and can’t be convinced, though I did have somewhat of a revelation about the mushroom burgers for sale at the Mushroom Growers of Pennsylvania booth.
They are “blended” with beef, specifically for big babies like me.
“It’s an introduction, an easy introduction. It’s 75% ground beef and 25% chopped mushrooms,” said Gale Ferranto, of Mushroom Farmers of Pennsylvania. “Would you like to try one?”
I declined.
There are more mushroom offerings, too, something called a “mushroom salad,” which I probably wouldn’t eat for less than $500.
“Somebody back home in Philly wanted the mushroom salad. She’s pregnant, like 7 months pregnant, so you have to do what she says,” said attendee Mark Soffa.
Grilled cheese
The Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association offers up a lot of food during the week, and when I saw grilled cheeses — a parent’s best friend — I grabbed one for my daughter, along with a chocolate milk.
The combo is wallet-friendly, too, just $7.
“Chocolate milk comes from brown cows,” I told my daughter.
She’s too smart for that joke and rolled her eyes, like her mother.
The PA Dairymen’s Association sells grilled cheese, cheese cubes, and, of course, the ubiquitous milkshakes.
The grilled cheese crew actually had crockpots full of melted butter, slathering white bread before sending it off to the grill. You can choose American or pepper jack.
“We’ll at least make a few thousand today,” the cashier told me. “We made 500 yesterday, and that was a half day.”
My daughter’s verdict: “Very gooey.”
Pierogies and sweet potatoes
I’m cheating a bit here, including two items from the PA Cooperative Potato Growers, Inc., which is the oldest potato cooperative in the United States.
I planned on focusing entirely on the sweet potato, which is swimming in butter and brown sugar, with some cinnamon on the side. It’s basically a dessert.
The sweet potato at the Pennsylvania Farm Show is basically a dessert.
My Polish heritage requires that I never turn down a pierogi, though, or never fail to mention their wholesome goodness. I grew up on them, in the way other folks may have grown up on mac and cheese or PB&J. I actually prefer mine fried a bit, but the Farm Show serves them drowning in butter and onions: 5 for $4.
You can’t really mess up a pierogi, particularly in the Keystone State.
“These aren’t like Maryland pierogies,” a woman from Maryland told me.
The potato growers told me they sell 6 tons of baking potatoes at the show, plus 8 to 10 tons for french fries, and about 1.5 tons of sweet potatoes.
Plus, there are potato doughnuts.
The milkshakes
The most well-known must-have item at the Pennsylvania Farm Show are the milkshakes offered up by the Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association since 1953.
Three generations with 10 milkshakes at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
On Saturday, the lines were a bit bonkers, more than 100 deep on each of the dozen or so cash registers in the various locations where they’re sold at the farm show complex. I’ve had them before, and I’ll say they are “thick and creamy” as advertised.
Are they different than any other soft-serve-style milkshake in America? I have to work with these people, so yes, I’ll say they’re different.
A colleague who had a milkshake at the Farm Show told me she didn’t “get the hype.”
I ran into a mother and daughter who had ordered 10 of them.
Either way, you have to have one while you’re there.
MINNEAPOLIS — Federal officers dropped tear gas and sprayed eye irritant at activists Tuesday during another day of confrontations in Minneapolis, while students miles away walked out of a suburban school to protest the Trump administration’s bold immigration sweeps.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an immigration agent reached the local U.S. Attorney’s Office: At least five prosecutors have resigned amid controversy over how the U.S. Justice Department is handling the investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Separately, a Justice Department official said Wednesday there’s no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation. An FBI probe of Renee Good’s death is ongoing.
Strife between federal agents and the public continues to boil, six days since Good was shot in the head while driving off in her Honda Pilot. At one scene, gas clouds filled a Minneapolis street near where she died. A man scrubbed his eyes with snow and screamed for help after agents in a Jeep sprayed an orange irritant and drove off.
It’s common for people to boo, taunt and blow orange whistles when they spot heavily armed immigration agents passing through in unmarked vehicles or walking the streets, all part of a grassroots effort to warn the neighborhood and remind the government that they’re watching.
“Who doesn’t have a whistle?” a man with a bag of them yelled.
Brita Anderson, who lives nearby and came to support neighborhood friends, said she was “incensed” to see agents in tactical gear and gas masks, and wondered about their purpose.
“It felt like the only reason they’d come here is to harass people,” Anderson said.
In Brooklyn Park, Minn., students protesting the immigration enforcement operation walked out of school, as students in other communities have done this week.
Good’s death has ripple effect
The departures in the U.S. Attorney’s Office include First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling prosecution of public fraud schemes in the state, according to people who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued President Donald Trump’s administration Monday to halt or limit the surge.
The lawsuit says Homeland Security is violating the First Amendment and other constitutional protections by focusing on a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants.
“What we are seeing is thousands — plural — thousands of federal agents coming into our city. And, yeah, they’re having a tremendous impact on day-to-day life,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.
A judge set a status conference for Wednesday.
Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December and is vowing to not back down. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the lawsuit, accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety.
Trump defiant
In a social media post, Trump defended the aggressive immigration enforcement actions being carried out across Minneapolis as part of his deportation agenda.
The president asserted in the post that the anti-ICE activity is also shifting the spotlight away from alleged fraud in the state and said, “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
Trump blames what he calls “professional agitators” for the widespread protests. He has not provided evidence to support his claims.
In response, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted on X: “Trump admits that this is nothing but political retribution. Minnesota voted against him three times and now he’s punishing us – putting lives at risk and wasting enormous resources in the process.”
ICE tactics on docket
In a different lawsuit, a judge said she would rule by Thursday or Friday on a request to restrict the use of force, such as chemical irritants, on people who are observing and recording agents’ activities. Government attorneys argued that officers must protect themselves.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the immigration agent who shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, saying he acted in self-defense. But that explanation has been widely panned by Frey, Walz, and others based on videos of the confrontation.
State and local authorities are urging the public to share video and any other evidence as they seek to separately investigate Good’s death after federal authorities insisted they would approach it alone and not share information.
In Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is proposing that the state ban civil immigration enforcement around courthouses, hospitals, health clinics, schools, churches and other places. She is hoping to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, a fellow Democrat, who is not running for a third term.
“We can take a look at that, but I think banning things absolutely will ramp up the actions of our folks in Washington, D.C.,” Evers said, referring to the Trump administration. “They don’t tend to approach those things appropriately.”
David Zandstra, the former Marple Township pastor acquitted last year in the 1975 murder of an 8-year-old girl in Delaware County, has died, and a federal lawsuit has been filed alleging misconduct by two Pennsylvania State Police investigators in the case.
The lawsuit said the 85-year-old Zandstra, who lived in Georgia, “has passed and his family seek redress for this extreme and immoral prosecution.”
No further information about his death was included in the complaint. The Delaware County Daily Times, citing his death certificate, reported that Zandstra died Dec. 15 at a hospice, and the cause of death was skin cancer.
Mark Much, one of Zandstra’s lawyers during the trial but who is not an attorney on the lawsuit, said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday night that “Zandstra passed away last month, peacefully, and surrounded by his loving family.”
Much said that Zandstra “was a God-fearing man, unsuspecting and trustful of law enforcement, naive of their unscrupulous interrogation tactics, all in the name of ‘solving’ a cold case.”
The defendants in the lawsuit, filed Jan. 10 in Philadelphia, are Andrew Martin and Eugene Tray, who were the most recent state police investigators for Gretchen Harrington’s murder.
Gretchen Harrington, 8, was found dead in 1975.
Tray declined to comment on the lawsuit. Martin could not be reached for comment.
The plaintiff is Margaret Zandstra, the administrator of the estate of David Zandstra, who allegedly had his civil rights violated by the defendants, the lawsuit states.
Zandstra, who was held in custody for 18 months, was found not guilty in January 2025 by a Delaware County jury of murder and kidnapping in the killing of Gretchen Harrington. The jury took about an hour to deliberate after a four-day trial.
In 2023, Zandstra was charged after he confessed to driving Gretchen to a secluded section of Ridley Creek State Park and beating her to death. The lawsuit says the investigators “illegally coerced an admission of guilt from Mr. Zandstra, a then-83-year-old stroke and cancer survivor.”
Mark Much argued during the trial that state police investigators had coerced and manipulated Zandstra into confessing to a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime and DNA found on Gretchen’s clothing belonged to two unidentified men and one unidentified woman.
Testimony during the trial revealed that before Zandstra’s confession, the state police had developed several other suspects in the decades since Gretchen’s body was found.
The lawsuit provides alleged details about what the investigators did before finally going after Zandstra.
“These Defendants caused evidence of the alternative suspects and Mr. Zandstra’s exclusion as a contributor of DNA to be withheld until the eve of trial, after Mr. Zandstra had been incarcerated and his cancer had returned and gone untreated,” according to the complaint.
Zandstra was the pastor at Trinity Chapel in Marple Township, a Christian reform church near the Harrington family home. On Aug. 15, 1975, Gretchen was last seen walking to the church for the final session of vacation Bible school before disappearing.
Her unclothed body was found two months later near a walking trail in Ridley Creek State Park. An autopsy revealed she died from blunt-force trauma to the head.
Deputy District Attorney Geoff Paine said during the trial that two state police investigators interviewed Zandstra after a woman who was a lifelong friend of Zandstra’s daughter told police in 2022 that he had groped her at a sleepover at his home in 1975, days before Gretchen’s disappearance. At the time, Paine said, the woman was the same age as Gretchen and looked like Gretchen.
Much told the jury that another suspect who was investigated was Gretchen’s sister, Zoe Harrington, who in 2021 claimed to have killed her sister with a rock during an incident involving her father, who was also a pastor, and members of the congregation he led.
Much said the state police at one point considered Harold Harrington, Gretchen’s father, a potential suspect. Harold Harrington died in 2021.
The prosecutor told the jury that Zoe Harrington’s confession wasn’t credible because she had a history of mental-health illness.
According to the lawsuit, Andrew Martin, one of the defendants, went to the first assistant district attorney in Montgomery County to seek a court order to allow a secretly recorded conversation between Zoe Harrington and her father, who was in poor health at the time.
After several interviews with Zoe Harrington — including with another state trooper who is not named as a defendant — Martin signed an application to the court for a wiretap authorization on Aug. 9, 2021, according to the lawsuit. The next day, however, Zoe Harrington allegedly backed out because she said she was too afraid.
The lawsuit states that when Martin and Tray provided their sworn affidavit supporting the arrest of Zandstra, they summarized their August 2021 activity in the investigation as: “On Aug. 9, 2021, investigators conducted an interview of Zoey HARRINGTON (sister of Gretchen HARRINGTON) relative to this investigation. Zoe HARRINGTON related that ZANDSTRA was the minister at the time, and his daughter was Gretchen’s best friend.”
The lawsuit also says the state police had another suspect, Richard Bailey, who was investigated in 2017. Bailey was a convicted child rapist and kidnapper, who was seen a mile from where Gretchen disappeared on the day she was abducted. Bailey died in state prison in the 1990s.
