A passenger in an SUV was killed and the driver was critically injured when the vehicle struck a SEPTA bus late Wednesday afternoon in Southwest Philadelphia, police said.
Just before 4:20 p.m., a 2019 Honda HR-V heading north on Island Avenue in the area of Buist Avenue hit the rear of a SEPTA bus also traveling north on Island, police said. A third vehicle then hit the rear of the Honda.
Medics transported the two people from the Honda to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The passenger, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at 5:20 p.m. The driver was listed in critical condition.
No other injuries were reported.
The cause of the crash was under police investigation.
Nearly two dozen residents and Quakertown taxpayers confronted the borough council at a public meeting Wednesday night, castigating its members for refusing to discipline the town’s police chief and demanding that they take action before leaving the room.
The backlash was the latest fallout from a Feb. 20 student protest against federal immigration enforcement that began as a walkout from Quakertown Community High School and ended in a confrontation between Police Chief Scott McElree and a group of teenagers. The encounter, which was captured on video, led to the arrests of several teenagers and prompted an investigation by the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.
Wednesday’s meeting, which stretched to nearly two hours as speakers stepped to the podium one by one, laid bare a community in turmoil. Residents described fear, anger, and embarrassment that their small town had become a national flashpoint. By the end of the night, council members had made no motion and held no discussion about potential discipline for McElree.
Council President Donald Rosenberger opened the meeting by telling the audience that the nine-member council — eight men and one woman — would not consider action against McElree or comment until the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office completes its investigation.
McElree, 72, also serves as the borough’s manager, a role that includes overseeing the police department and managing public records.
A parent holds a sign outside the Quakertown School Board meeting on Feb. 26 in Quakertown, Pa. Critics who addressed the board accused the district of not doing enough to support the students arrested during last week’s ICE protest.
Outside the locked doors of the borough hall before the meeting, more than three dozen people — adults and teenagers — gathered holding handmade signs. One woman had scrawled “peaceful protester” across a flattened cardboard box in black marker. Beneath it she wrote: “Don’t put me in a chokehold, mmkay?”
Inside the crowded chamber, speakers urged council members to reckon with the national attention now focused on the town and warned that their response — or lack of one — would shape voters’ decisions in November.
Nearly every speaker who addressed the council called for McElree to be fired and criminally charged.
Joseph Rittenhouse, who said his niece was among those arrested after the clash, told council members that images of her bloodied face were now among the first results people see when they search for “Quakertown” online.
“We are national news. If you’re OK with that, I don’t think any of us are going to be OK with you sitting up there” when voters go to the polls, Rittenhouse said.
Ileana Ramos of Quakertown speaks during a council meeting as members of the community speak out against the actions of Police Chief Scott McElree on Wednesday night in Quakertown.
A handful of people who identified themselves as immigrants or women of color said the episode had shaken their sense of safety in the community, leaving them worried about how they or their children might be treated.
“It leaves me breathless as to how this is possible in America,” said Illeana Ramos. “Everyone is scared.”
Laura Foster, who leads Upper Bucks United, a civic group that has organized demonstrations since the altercation, said the council’s refusal to act had forced residents to step into a role that should belong to elected leaders.
“You are failing to act as leaders in this community,” Foster said. “I don’t need to be doing this. You should be doing this.”
Only one resident spoke in support of McElree.
Caroline DeVenuto said officers had been “sent on a fool’s errand” when they were called to respond to a gathering of teenagers, and blamed parents for allowing the situation to spiral.
“It’s time for parents to grow up and discipline their children like the rest of us,” she said.
DeVenuto also criticized news coverage of the confrontation, calling portrayals of McElree and the police department “slander and deceit.”
Residents and advocates first called for disciplinary action against McElree at a borough council meeting three days after the Feb. 20 confrontation. By Thursday, a petition seeking his resignation had drawn more than 12,000 signatures, though it was unclear how many of the signers live in the borough.
Videos recorded by bystanders and reviewed by The Inquirer show McElree grappling with several students, at one point wrapping his arm around a teenage girl’s neck before taking her to the ground. McElree, who was not in uniform at the time, left the scene bleeding, the videos showed.
Five teenagers were charged with aggravated assault, a felony, and related offenses. They are on house arrest with ankle monitors, their attorneys said.
In the affidavit of probable cause for the arrest of one of the teenagers, officers wrote that McElree had been attempting to take a student into custody when the encounter escalated. A teenage boy struck him in the ear, the affidavit said, and others hit him in the shoulder and ribs.
The document does not mention a chokehold.
According to the affidavit, McElree sought medical treatment for undisclosed injuries. More than a week later, he began a workers’ compensation leave, the borough’s attorney said.
At least three defense attorneys have asked the Pennsylvania attorney general to assume control of both the investigation and the prosecution, and to dismiss the charges.
In an email last week, lawyer Ed Angelo wrote that the affidavit “rendered only allegations that were damning to the children, but left out the assaultive behavior of the chief of police — behavior the children fought to protect themselves from.” He called the prosecution “an obvious and unacceptable conflict of interest.”
On Friday, the attorney general’s office declined to intervene, saying in an email that “it would be inappropriate for our office to engage” in the investigation or the case.
A 35-year-old man was fatally shot while trying to drive away from an altercation with another man Wednesday night in the Castor section of Northeast Philadelphia, police said.
Just after 7:10 p.m., police were called to the area of Summerdale and Magee Avenues and found the victim lying on the ground next to an SUV with the engine still running, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.
The man, who had at least one gunshot wound to his back, was transported to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:47 p.m., Small said.
The SUV was parked outside a neighborhood store, and the victim and another man were inside the store when an argument occurred, Small said.
The victim got into the driver’s seat of the SUV and the other man started shooting through the front passenger-side door, Small said.
The shooter then ran from the scene.
Police were told that both men were regular customers at the store, Small said.
The victim was found lying next the front driver-side door with a handgun on the ground next to him.
Police believe the gun belonged to the victim, Small said.
Police recovered three spent shell casings next to the passenger door as well as three live rounds.
A former Bucks County man who claimed he was covered by pardons given by President Donald Trump to supporters who tried to overturn the 2020 election was found guilty Wednesday by a federal jury in Philadelphia of voting twice for Trump in 2020.
Matthew Laiss, 32, was charged by indictment in September of one count of voting more than once in a federal election and one count of voter fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 10 and faces a maximum of five years in prison on both counts.
Laiss, who prosecutors said is currently a resident of Bethehem, Pa., had been a resident of — and was registered to vote in — Ottsville, Bucks County, from at least 2012 to around August 2020, prosecutors said. Laiss then moved to Frostproof, Fla., where he obtained a driver’s license and registered to vote there.
Around Oct. 31, 2020, Laiss filled out and returned a mail-in Pennsylvania ballot, then on Nov. 3, 2020, Laiss went to a polling place in Florida and voted again.
“Casting a ballot in more than one jurisdiction undermines public trust and dilutes the votes of others. Our office will continue to protect the integrity of federal elections and hold accountable those who violate the law,” Metcalf said.
The case was investigated by the FBI, with assistance from the Pennsylvania Department of State, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff.
Federal defenders who represented Laiss could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.
Laiss was not among the 77 people Trump listed when specifying who would receive relief, but Laiss’ lawyers said the proclamation’s preamble included language making it applicable to “all United States citizens” for conduct, voting, or advocacy surrounding the contest.
His lawyers wrote that Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mark Meadows were all explicitly pardoned for “exponentially more egregious alleged conduct.” Extending relief to them while denying it to Laiss, his lawyers wrote, “would be outrageous.”
Prosecutors said they checked with Trump’s Office of the Pardon Attorney and were told that the lawyers there did not believe the pardon proclamation applied to Laiss.
In January, Leeson ruled against Laiss’ motion to dismiss the indictment, explaining that the court was without jurisdiction to decide the matter because Laiss had not applied to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, or had received a certificate of pardon.
At least four people were critically injured after a large explosion destroyed a commercial production building Wednesday afternoon in Logan Township, N.J.
Gloucester County Emergency Management quickly asked people within a two-mile radius of the explosion at 617 Heron Dr. to shelter in place, but the request was later lifted. About 7,200 people live within two miles of the explosion.
“It was a terrible tragedy,” Logan Township Police Chief Joseph Flatley said at an evening news conference.
However, he added: “The community is safe. There are no ongoing hazards.”
The explosion occurred just after 2:35 p.m. and firefighters who were first on the scene said at least two people had been severely burned, and the building had collapsed with a ruptured propane tank still burning.
Map of building explosion in Logan Twp., Gloucester County.
Cooper University Hospital received three patients, said Cooper spokesperson Wendy A. Marano.
Rebecca Forand, spokesperson for the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, said a total of four people were hospitalized in critical condition. A fifth person in a neighboring building experienced a medical incident, Forand said.
It was unclear how many people were in the building, but “as far as we know, the owners of the business have told us that they believe everyone is accounted,” Forand said.
“We are assisting in the investigation. It does not look like there’s any criminal activity,” she added.
A large amount of propane was being stored on the facility’s premises, which she said was used in the production processes of the company that used the building, called Savita Naturals. The company describes itself on its website as a “provider of specialty oil extractions and related services.”
The cause of the explosion, however, remains under investigation. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection was notified of the situation, and officials from the Bureau of Emergency Response were heading to the scene, Forand noted.
“Fire and HazMat Units remain on location monitoring a burn off of additional fuel product stored on-site and continue to conduct air monitoring in the community,” Gloucester County Emergency Management said on social media.
A worker in a nearby business described the shock of the first large explosion.
“I thought a bomb hit us,” said the worker, who asked not to be identified because his employer had not authorized him to speak to a reporter.
He and his fellow employees were evacuated and saw the building with the explosion had been destroyed and a wall of the neighboring building had been knocked down.
The worker said he saw a man whose clothes were on fire “rolling on the ground.” The man ripped his shirt off while other people pulled his pants off. The man then got up wearing only his underwear. His injuries didn’t appear to be serious, the worker said.
Residents across the region said the explosion shook their houses. At Fish2Coral, a fish and aquatic supply shop in Swedesboro, things fell off the shelves, alarms went off, and part of the interior ceiling collapsed.
“We didn’t know where it came from,” said store manager Brian Makowski. “It felt like something hit our building.”
Fish2Coral is located only half a mile from the explosion site. “If I was outside, it probably would’ve knocked me over,” he said.
Propane is a highly flammable gas that can decrease the amount of oxygen in the air in high concentrations, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. It is naturally colorless and odorless, but typically has an odorant added to aid in detection. Symptoms of airborne exposure may include headache and dizziness, as well as fainting, and contact with it in its liquefied gas form is capable of causing frostbite.
The company notes online that it was founded about 35 years ago as a processor in the cocoa and chocolate industry, but has since expanded to include a range of products. Savita also indicates online that “production of cocoa butter remains our core business.”
Among the other products for which Savita says it provides services is CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating compound found in hemp and marijuana that has risen in prominence in recent years. An article on the company’s website from 2019 indicates that flammable solvents like butane, propane, and ethanol are popular choices in cannabis-related extractions.
Savita notes online that propane has been its “solvent of choice” for botanical extractions since 1996, as it “produces the highest yields at intermediate cost without sacrificing quality.”
— Staff writer Emily Bloch contributed to this article.
Chester County’s prison warden will round out a new leadership team after the county’s top official left his job earlier this week.
Howard Holland, who has served as prison warden for the county since April 2024 and was its acting warden for eight months before that, has been appointed as acting deputy county administrator for operations and will complete a team of three newly named top county officials, the county announced this week.
“I have always advocated for improved government processes, and I’ve been particularly pleased by the changes Mr. Holland has undertaken at the prison,” County Commissioner Eric Roe said in a statement. “I’m happy to have him join our leadership team, and I look forward to his continued contributions as a manager and leader at the County level.”
The administrative team oversees 2,600 staff members and a roughly $730 million annual budget. Members are appointed by the county’s three elected commissioners.
The change comes just days after the county’s top official, David Byerman, left the job, and a new county administrator, Erik Walschburger, was named.Holland anddeputy county administratorMegan Moser, whose role was renamed this week, will work under Walschburger.
Walschburger most recently was the county’s deputy administrator, a role he had held since 2022 overseeing internal day-to-day operations. Moser, who joined the county in 2025, has been involved with the county’s response to multiple election errors in recent months.
The county’s announcement on Wednesday made no mention of Byerman. A county spokesperson earlier this week declined to give a reason for his departure.
AsChester County shifts its personnel, it is reverting back to job titles it had used previously, retiring its use of “chief executive officer,” “chief operations officer,” and “chief experience officer” — a change it made roughly a year ago — for the more traditional title of county administrator and two deputies.
Holland comes to the job after a more than 30-year career in law enforcement, working as a police officer, a special county detective, and an adviser to the county’s prison board. He was the chief of police for seven years in Downingtown.
His most recent job came with an electric start: The day he became acting prison warden, convicted murderer Danilo Cavalcante escaped the prison, resulting in a two-week search. Since that incident, Holland made changes to limit the risk of escape, and promised to add additional security measures to the facility.
With Holland’s move to county government, the Chester County Prison Board of Inspectors has appointed Brian Sheller as acting warden, county officials said. Sheller has been deputy warden since 2024, and served as the Parkesburg chief of police for more than 30 years.
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.
SEPTA expects to receive about $5.5 million from a federal appropriation to offset the cost of providing transit service in Philadelphia during the FIFA World Cup.
The regional transportation authority projects it will spend $21.5 million for additional transit runs and extended service hours during the World Cup as well as a the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday, officials said.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced about $100 million in funding to 11 cities and regions hosting FIFA championship matches, apportioned by formula.
“We are going to pull out all the stops to serve those big events — while also not missing a beat for our riders who rely on SEPTA every day,“ General Manager Scott Sauer said in a statement. He thanked the region’s congressional delegation and U.S. DOT for the ”much-needed investment to support this historic year.“
SEPTA said it would spend $18 million for overtime for transit operators and Transit Police, cleaning expenses, longer customer service hours and ambassadors to help people navigate the system.
Other extra operating costs for the events:
$1 million on safety and security, for portable surveillance equipment and a communications system to send police where they’re needed most.
$825,000 for signage, including World Cup branded signage, website and app upgrades to help visitors get around, as well as translation services.
Another $1.3 million will be spent on support services, SEPTA said.
Congress earmarked the money to help World Cup host cities and regions in this year’s federal budget, but improvements are required to benefit the general public, not just soccer fans.
“With the world coming to Philadelphia in 2026, we have a responsibility to be ready,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa) said.
The federal largesse will “strengthen our transit system so it can handle the surge in ridership during the World Cup,” Boyle said. “Just as importantly, these improvements will benefit Philadelphians long after the tournament.”
In addition to the extra spending on operations, SEPTA said it is investing about $30 million for infrastructure upgrades in advance of 2026 events, including improvements at Broad Street Line and Market-Frankford Line rail stations expected to be primary hubs for event goers.
The projects include:
Roof replacement and platform resurfacing at NRG Station on the Broad Street Line, which serves Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Ballpark, where the Major League All-Star game will be held this summer.
Upgrades to the Second Street Station headhouse on the Market-Frankford Line.
Fern Rock Transportation Center lighting and painting.
Realignment of the fare line at City Hall Station on the BSL, as well as platform resurfacing and new LED lighting.
WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Five Republicans joined Democrats to support the subpoena proposed by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina in a sign of continued frustration with the department’s review and release of a tranche of documents regarding the disgraced financier.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the subpoena.
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recently sat with lawmakers on the committee for their own depositions over the former Democratic president’s connections to Epstein from more than two decades ago.
Could the white E-ZPass transponder on your windshield become a relic?
Well, not yet.
But New Jersey Turnpike officials will soon test out E-ZPass stickers in turnpike authority fleet vehicles, spokesperson Tom Feeney said Wednesday. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority also operates the Garden State Parkway.
“If there are no problems,” Feeney added, “we will make a plan to introduce them to NJ E-ZPass customers.”
Drivers approach the Williamstown entrance ramp to the Atlantic City Expressway in 2022.
Both devices are equipped with digital chips, which are read by overhead gantries on the highways. The technology allows drivers to keep moving and be digitally charged for tolls.
This week, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation rolled out E-ZPass stickers, free of charge for new customers and those who need to replace their transponders, according to several local news reports.
Massachusetts officials estimate the switch will save the state more than $7 million a year, since the stickers’ production cost is a fraction of the cost of the transponders, according to a recent report from WBUR, the Boston NPR affiliate.
In New Jersey, officials spent $8.4 million in 2022 to replace the batteries of 920,000 E-ZPass transponders, according to NJ.com.
News of the Garden State’s E-ZPass sticker test comes two months after the Atlantic City Expressway went cashless, with the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike set to follow. Across the river, the Pennsylvania Turnpike has been cashless since 2020.
Climate change’s rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said.
Researchers studied hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments, calculating that about 90% of them underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of 1 foot, according to Wednesday’s study in the journal Nature. The problem arises far more frequently in the Global South, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia, and less in Europe and along the Atlantic coasts.
The cause is a mismatch between the way sea and land altitudes are measured, said study coauthor Philip Minderhoud, a hydrogeology professor at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. And he attributed that to a “methodological blind spot” between the different ways those two things are measured.
Each way measures its own areas properly, he said. But where sea meets land, there are a lot of factors that often do not get accounted for when satellites and land-based models are used. Studies that calculate sea level rise impact usually “do not look at the actual measured sea level, so they used this zero-meter” figure as a starting point, said lead author Katharina Seeger of the University of Padua in Italy. In some places in the Indo-Pacific, the figure is close to 1 meter, or about 3 feet, Minderhoud said.
One simple way to understand that is that many studies assume sea levels without waves or currents, when the reality at the water’s edge is of oceans constantly roiled by wind, tides, currents, changing temperatures, and things like El Niño, Minderhoud and Seeger said.
Adjusting to a more accurate coastal height baseline means that if seas rise by a little more than 3 feet — as some studies suggest will happen by the end of the century — waters could inundate up to 37% more land and threaten 77 million to 132 million more people, the study said.
That would trigger problems in planning and paying for the impacts of a warming world.
People at risk
“You have a lot of people here for whom the risk of extreme flooding is much higher than people thought,” said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, who was not part of the study. Southeast Asia, where the study finds the biggest discrepancy, has the most people already threatened by sea level rise, he said.
Minderhoud pointed to island nations in that region as an area where the reality of discrepancy hits home.
For 17-year-old climate activist Vepaiamele Trief, the projections are not abstract. On her island home in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, the shoreline has visibly retreated within her short lifetime, with beaches eroded, coastal trees uprooted, and some homes now barely 3 feet from the sea at high tide. On her grandmother’s island of Ambae, a coastal road from the airport to her village has been rerouted inland because of encroaching water. Graves have been submerged and entire ways of life feel under threat.
“These studies, they aren’t just words on a paper. They aren’t just numbers. They’re people’s actual livelihoods,” she said. “Put yourself in the shoes of our coastal communities — their lives are going to be completely overturned because of sea level rise and climate change.”
Paying attention to the starting point
This new study is pretty much about what is the truth on the ground.
Calculations that may be correct for the seas overall or for the land are not quite right at that key intersection point of water and land, Seeger and Minderhoud said. That is especially true in the Pacific.
“To understand how much higher a piece of land is than the water, you need to know the land elevation and the water elevation. And what this paper says the vast majority of studies have done is to just assume that zero in your land elevation data set is the level of the water — when, in fact, it’s not,” said sea level rise expert Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central. His 2019 study was one of the few the new paper said got it right.
“It’s just the baseline that you start from that people are getting wrong,” said Strauss, who was not part of the research.
Maybe not so bad, some scientists say
Other outside scientists said that Minderhoud and Seeger may be making too much of the problem.
“I think they’re exaggerating the implications for impact studies a bit — the problem is actually well understood, albeit addressed in a way that could probably be improved,” said Gonéri Le Cozannet, a scientist at the French geological survey. Most local planners know their coastal issues and plan accordingly, Rutgers University sea level expert Robert Kopp said.
That’s true in Vietnam, in the high-impact area, Minderhoud said. Officials there have an accurate sense of elevation, he said.
The findings come as a new UNESCO report warns of major gaps in understanding how much carbon the ocean absorbs. That report said that models differ by 10% to 20% in estimating the size of that carbon sink, raising questions about the accuracy of global climate projections that rely on them.
Together, the studies suggest governments may be planning for coastal and climate risks with an incomplete picture of how the ocean is changing.
“When the ocean comes closer, it takes away more than just the land we used to enjoy,” said Thompson Natuoivi, a climate advocate for Save the Children Vanuatu.
“Sea level rise is not just changing our coastline, it’s changing our lives. We are not talking about the future — we’re talking about the right now.”
