A man was hospitalized Wednesday morning and in critical condition after being shot by police in North Philadelphia.
Two officers responded to a 911 call for a “person screaming” on the 1800 block of North Bailey Street about 2:50 a.m. Wednesday. Upon arriving, police said, they found a man, 31, armed with a knife, standing over a 30-year-old woman.
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, the man moved toward police, jumping over a sofa while still armed, which led one officer to shoot the man once in the chest. The man was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he underwent surgery.
Police said the woman was not injured.
The case is now under investigation by the police department’s officer-involved shooting investigation unit and internal affairs bureau, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. Under police protocol, the officer who shot the man has been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
In 2025, Philadelphians said goodbye to a beloved group of broadcasters, radio personalities, sports heroes, and public servants who left their mark on a city they all loved.
Some were Philly natives, including former Eagles general manager Jim Murray. Others, including beloved WMMR host Pierre Robert, were transplants who made Philly their adopted home. But all left their mark on the city and across the region.
Pierre Robert
Former WMMR host Pierre Robert, seen in his studio in 2024.
A native of Northern California, Mr. Robert joined WMMR as an on-air host in 1981. He arrived in the city after his previous station, San Francisco’s KSAN, switched to an “urban cowboy” format, prompting him to make the cross-country drive to Philadelphia in a Volkswagen van.
At WMMR, Mr. Robert initially hosted on the weekends, but quickly moved to the midday slot — a position he held for more than four decades up until his death.
— Nick Vadala, Dan DeLuca
Bernie Parent
Former Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent, seen at his home in 2024.
Bernie Parent, the stone-wall Flyers goalie for the consecutive Stanley Cup championship teams for the Broad Street Bullies in the 1970s, died in September. He was 80.
A Hall of Famer, Mr. Parent clinched both championships with shutouts in the final game as he blanked the Boston Bruins, 1-0, in 1974 and the Buffalo Sabres, 2-0, in 1975. Mr. Parent played 10 of his 13 NHL seasons with the Flyers and also spent a season in the World Hockey League with the Philadelphia Blazers. He retired in 1979 at 34 years old after suffering an eye injury during a game against the New York Rangers.
He grew up in Montreal and spoke French as his first language before becoming a cultlike figure at the Spectrum as cars throughout the region had “Only the Lord Saves More Than Bernie Parent” bumper stickers.
— Matt Breen
David Lynch
David Lynch, seen here at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles in 2019.
David Lynch, the visionary director behind such movies as Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man and the twisted TV show Twin Peaks, died in January of complications from emphysema. He was 78.
Mr. Lynch was born in Missoula, Mont., but ended up in Philadelphia to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1965 at age 19. It was here he developed an interest in filmmaking as a way to see his paintings move.
He created his first short films in Philadelphia, which he described both as “a filthy city” and “his greatest influence” as an artist. Ultimately, he moved to Los Angeles to make his first feature film, Eraserhead, though he called the film “my Philadelphia Story.”
— Rob Tornoe
Ryne Sandberg
Former Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg, seen here at spring training in 2018.
Ryne Sandberg, the Hall of Fame second baseman who started his career with the Phillies but was traded shortly after to the Chicago Cubs in one of the city’s most regrettable trades, died in July of complications from cancer. He was 65.
Mr. Sandberg played 15 seasons in Chicago and became an icon for the Cubs, simply known as “Ryno,” after being traded there in January 1982.
He was a 10-time All-Star, won nine Gold Glove awards, and was the National League’s MVP in 1984. Mr. Sandberg was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005 and returned to the Phillies in 2011 as a minor-league manager and, later, the big-league manager.
— Matt Breen
Bob Uecker
Bob Uecker, seen here before a Brewers game in 2024.
Bob Uecker, a former Phillies catcher who later became a Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers and was dubbed “Mr. Baseball” by Johnny Carson for his acting roles in several movies and TV shows, died in January. He was 90.
Mr. Uecker spent just six seasons in the major league, two with the Phillies, but the talent that would make him a Hall of Fame broadcaster — wit, self-deprecation, and the timing of a stand-up comic — were evident.
His first broadcasting gig was in Atlanta, and he started calling Milwaukee Brewers games in 1971. Before that, he called Phillies games: Mr. Uecker used to sit in the bullpen at Connie Mack Stadium and deliver play-by-play commentary into a beer cup.
— Matt Breen and Rob Tornoe
Harry Donahue
Harry Donahue, seen here at Temple University in 2020.
Harry Donahue, 77, a longtime KYW Newsradio anchor and the play-by-play voice of Temple University men’s basketball and football for decades, died in October after a fight with cancer.
His was a voice that generations of people in Philadelphia and beyond grew up with in the mornings as they listened for announcements about snow days and, later, for a wide array of sports.
— Robert Moran
Alan Rubenstein
Judge Rubenstein, then Bucks County district attorney, talks to the media about a drug case in 1998.
Alan M. Rubenstein, a retired senior judge on Bucks County Common Pleas Court and the longest-serving district attorney in Bucks County history, died in August of complications from several ailments at his home in Holland, Bucks County. He was 79.
For 50 years, from his hiring as an assistant district attorney in 1972 to his retirement as senior judge a few years ago, Judge Rubenstein represented Bucks County residents at countless crime scenes and news conferences, in courtrooms, and on committees. He served 14 years, from 1986 to 1999, as district attorney in Bucks County, longer than any DA before him, and then 23 years as a judge and senior judge on Bucks County Court.
“His impact on Bucks County will be felt for generations,” outgoing Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said in a tribute. U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.) said on Facebook: “Alan Rubenstein has never been just a name. It has stood as a symbol of justice, strength, and integrity.”
— Gary Miles
Orien Reid Nix
Orien Reid Nix, seen here being inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2018
Orien Reid Nix, 79, of King of Prussia, retired Hall of Fame reporter for KYW-TV and WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, owner of Consumer Connection media consulting company, the first Black and female chair of the international board of the Alzheimer’s Association, former social worker, mentor, and volunteer, died in June of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Charismatic, telegenic, empathetic, and driven by a lifelong desire to serve, Mrs. Reid Nix worked as a consumer service and investigative TV reporter for Channels 3 and 10 in Philadelphia for 26 years, from 1973 to her retirement in 1998. She anchored consumer service segments, including the popular Market Basket Report, that affected viewers’ lives and aired investigations on healthcare issues, price gouging, fraud, and food safety concerns.
— Gary Miles
Dave Frankel
Dave Frankel in an undated publicity photo.
Dave Frankel, 67, a popular TV weatherman on WPVI (now 6abc) who later became a lawyer, died in February after a long battle with a neurodegenerative disease.
Mr. Frankel grew up in Monmouth County, N.J., graduated in 1979 from Dartmouth College, and was planning to attend Dickinson School of Law to become a lawyer like his father. But an internship at a local TV station in Vermont turned into a news anchor job and a broadcast career that lasted until the early 2000s.
— Robert Moran
Lee Elia
Former Phillies manager Lee Elia, seen here being ejected from a game in 1987.
Lee Elia, the Philadelphia native who managed the Phillies after coaching third base for the 1980 World Series champions and once famously ranted against the fans who sat in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, died in July. He was 87.
Mr. Elia’s baseball career spanned more than 50 seasons. He managed his hometown Phillies in 1987 and 1988 after managing the Chicago Cubs in 1982 and 1983.
After his playing career was cut shot by a knee injury, Mr. Elia joined Dallas Green’s Phillies staff before the 1980 season and was coaching third base when Manny Trillo delivered a crucial triple in the clinching game of the National League Championship Series. Mr. Elia was so excited that he bit Trillo’s arm after he slid.
— Matt Breen
Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman, seen here playing at the Curtis Institute of Music Orchestra Concert at Verizon Hall in 2006.
Gary Graffman, a celebrated concert pianist and the former president of the Curtis Institute of Music, died in December in New York. He was 97.
The New York City-born pianist arrived at Curtis at age 7. He graduated at age 17 and played roughly 100 concerts a year between the ages of 20 and 50 before retiring from touring due to a compromised right hand. Diagnosed with focal dystonia (a neurological disorder), he went on to premiere works for the left hand by Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom.
Mr. Graffman returned to Curtis as a teacher in 1980, became director in 1986, and was named the president of the conservatory in 1995, with a teaching studio encompassing nearly 50 students, including Yuja Wang and Lang Lang among others. He performed on numerous occasions with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1947 to 2003.
— David Patrick Stearns
Len Stevens
Len Stevens was the co-founder of WPHL-TV Channel 17.
Len Stevens, the cofounder of WPHL-TV (Channel 17) and a member of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame, died in September of kidney failure. He was 94.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Stevens was a natural entrepreneur. He won an audition to be a TV announcer with Dick Clark on WFIL-TV in the 1950s, persuaded The Tonight Show and NBC to air Alpo dog food ads in the 1960s, co-owned and managed the popular Library singles club on City Avenue in the 1970s and ’80s, and later turned the nascent sale of “vertical real estate” on towers and rooftops into big business.
He and partner Aaron Katz established the Philadelphia Broadcasting Co. in 1964 and launched WPHL-TV on Sept. 17, 1965. At first, their ultrahigh frequency station, known now as PHL17, challenged the dominant very high frequency networks on a shoestring budget. But, thanks largely to Mr. Stevens’ advertising contacts and programming ideas, Channel 17 went on to air Phillies, 76ers, and Big Five college basketball games, the popular Wee Willie Webber Colorful Cartoon Club, Ultraman, and other memorable shows in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
— Gary Miles
Jim Murray
Former Eagles general manager Jim Murray (left), seen here with Dick Vermeil and owner Leonard Tose following the 1980 NFC championship game in January 1981.
Jim Murray, the former Eagles general manager who hired Dick Vermeil and helped the franchise return to prominence while also opening the first Ronald McDonald House, died in August at home in Bryn Mawr surrounded by his family. He was 87.
Mr. Murray grew up in a rowhouse on Brooklyn Street in West Philadelphia and watched the Eagles at Franklin Field. The Eagles hired him in 1969 as a publicist, and Leonard Tose, then the Eagles’ owner, named him the general manager in 1974. Mr. Murray was just 36 years old and the decision was ridiculed.
But Mr. Murray — who was known for his wit and generosity — made a series of moves to bring the Eagles back to relevance, including hiring Vermeil and acquiring players like Bill Bergey and Ron Jaworski. The Eagles made the playoffs in 1978 and reached their first Super Bowl in January 1981. The Eagles, with Murray as the GM, were finally back.
— Matt Breen
Michael Days
Philadelphia Daily News Editor Michael Days celebrates with the newsroom after word of the Pulitzer win.
Michael Days, a pillar of Philadelphia journalism who championed young Black journalists and led the Daily News during its 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative reporting, died in October after falling ill. He was 72.
A graduate of Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, Mr. Days worked at the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers before joining the Daily News as a reporter in 1986, where he ultimately became editor in 2005, the first Black person to lead the paper in its 90-year history. In 2011, Mr. Days was named managing editor of The Inquirer, where he held several management roles until he retired in October 2020.
As editor of the Daily News, Mr. Days played an essential role in the decisions that would lead to its 2010 Pulitzer Prize, including whether to move forward with a story about a Philadelphia Police Department narcotics officer that a company lawyer said stood a good chance of getting them sued.
“He said, ‘I trust my reporters, I believe in my reporters, and we’re running with it,’” recounted Inquirer senior health reporter Wendy Ruderman, who reported the piece with colleague Barbara Laker. That story revealed a deep dysfunction within the police department, Ruderman said, and led to the newspaper’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize win.
— Brett Sholtis
Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy, seen here in 2002.
Tom McCarthy, an award-winning theater, film, and TV actor, longtime president of the local chapter of the Screen Actors Guild, former theater company board member, mentor, and veteran, died in May of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his home in Sea Isle City. He was 88.
The Overbrook native quit his job as a bartender in 1965, sharpened his acting skills for a decade at Hedgerow Theatre Company in Rose Valley and other local venues, and, at 42, went on to earn memorable roles in major movies and TV shows.
In the 1980s, he played a police officer with John Travolta in the movie Blow Out and a gardener with Andrew McCarthy in Mannequin. In 1998, he was a witness with Denzel Washington in Fallen. In 2011, he was a small-town mayor with Lea Thompson in Mayor Cupcake. Over the course of his career, Mr. McCarthy acted with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Cloris Leachman, Robert Redford, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman, and other big stars.
— Gary Miles
Carol Saline
Carol Saline, seen here at her Philadelphia home in 2021.
Carol Saline, a longtime senior writer at Philadelphia Magazine, the best-selling author of Sisters, Mothers & Daughters, and Best Friends, and a prolific broadcaster, died in August of acute myeloid leukemia. She was 86.
On TV, she hosted a cooking show and a talk show, was a panelist on a local public affairs program, and guested on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, and other national shows. On radio, she hosted the Carol Saline Show on WDVT-AM.
In June, she wrote to The Inquirer, saying: “I am contacting you because I am entering hospice care and will likely die in the next few weeks. … I wanted you to know me, not only my accomplishments but who I am as a person.
“I want to go out,” she ended her email, “with a glass of Champagne in one hand, a balloon in the other, singing (off key) ‘Whoopee! It’s been a great ride!’”
— Gary Miles
Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick, seen here before a concert at the 2002 Festival of Philadelphia Composers.
Richard Wernick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, acclaimed conductor, and retired Irving Fine Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, died in April 25 of age-associated decline at his Haverford home. He was 91.
Professor Wernick was prolific and celebrated as a composer. He wrote hundreds of scores over six decades and appeared on more than a dozen records, and his Visions of Terror and Wonder for a mezzo-soprano and orchestra won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for music. In 1991, his String Quartet No. 4 made him the first two-time winner of the Kennedy Center’s Friedheim Award for new American music.
“Wernick’s orchestral music has power and brilliance, an emphasis on register, space, and scale,” Lesley Valdes, former Inquirer classical music critic, said in 1990.
— Gary Miles
Dorie Lenz
Dorie Lenz, seen here on Channel 17 in 2015.
Dorie Lenz, a pioneering TV broadcaster and the longtime director of public affairs for WPHL-TV (Channel 17), died in January of age-associated ailments at her home in New York. She was 101.
A Philadelphia native, Ms. Lenz broke into TV as a 10-year-old in a local children’s show and spent 30 years, from 1970 to 2000, as director of public affairs and a program host at Channel 17, now PHL17. She specialized in detailed public service campaigns on hot-button social issues and earned two Emmys in 1988 for her program Caring for the Frail Elderly.
Ms. Lenz interviewed newsmakers of all kinds on the public affairs programs Delaware Valley Forum, New Jersey Forum, and Community Close Up. Viewers and TV insiders hailed her as a champion and watchdog for the community. She also talked to Phillies players before games in the 1970s on her 10-minute Dorie Lenz Show.
— Gary Miles
Jay Sigel
Jay Sigel, seen here after winning the Georgia-Pacific Grand Champions title in 2006.
Jay Sigel, one of the winningest amateur golfers of all time and an eight-time PGA senior tour champion, died in April of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
For more than 40 years, from 1961, when he won the International Jaycee Junior Golf Tournament as an 18-year-old, to 2003, when he captured the Bayer Advantage Celebrity Pro-Am title at 60, the Berwyn native was one of the winningest amateur and senior golfers in the world. Mr. Sigel won consecutive U.S. Amateur titles in 1982 and ’83 and three U.S. Mid-Amateur championships between 1983 and ’87, and remains the only golfer to win the amateur and mid-amateur titles in the same year.
He won the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship 11 times, five straight from 1972 to ’76, and the Pennsylvania Open Championship for pros and amateurs four times. He also won the 1979 British Amateur Championship and, between 1975 and 1999, played for the U.S. team in a record nine Walker Cup tournaments against Britain and Ireland.
— Gary Miles
Mark Frisby
Mark Frisby, seen here in the former newsroom of the Daily News in 2007.
Mark Frisby, the former publisher of the Daily News and associate publisher of The Inquirer, died in September of takayasu arteritis, an inflammatory disease, at his home in Gloucester County. He was 64.
Mr. Frisby joined The Inquirer and Daily News in November 2006 as executive vice president of production, labor, and purchasing. He was recruited from the Courier-Post by then-publisher Brian Tierney, and he went on to serve as publisher of the Daily News from 2007 to 2016 and associate publisher for operations of The Inquirer and Daily News from 2014 to his retirement in 2016.
Mr. Frisby was one of the highest-ranking Black executives in the company’s history, and he told the Daily News in 2006 that “local ownership over here was the big attraction for me.” Michael Days, then the Daily News editor, said in 2007: “This cat is really the real deal.”
— Gary Miles
Leon Bates
Leon Bates, seen here at the Settlement Music School in Germantown in 2018.
Leon Bates, a concert pianist whose musical authority and far-reaching versatility took him to the world’s greatest concert halls, died in November after a seven-year decline from Parkinson’s disease. He was 76.
The career of Mr. Bates, a leading figure in the generation of Black pianists who followed the early-1960s breakthrough of Andre Watts, encompassed Ravel, Gershwin, and Bartok over 10 concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra between 1970 and 2002. He played three recitals with Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and taught master classes at Temple University, where he also gave recitals at the Temple Performing Arts Center.
In his WRTI-FM radio show, titled Notes on Philadelphia, during the 1990s, Mr. Bates was what Charles Abramovic, chair of keyboard studies at Temple University, described as “beautifully articulate and a wonderful interviewer. The warmth of personality came out. He was such a natural with that.”
— David Patrick Stearns
Lacy McCrary
Lacy McCrary in an undated photo.
Lacy McCrary, a former Inquirer reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize at the Akron Beacon Journal, died in March of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was 91.
Mr. McCrary, a Morrisville, Bucks County native, won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize in local general or spot news reporting as part of the Beacon Journal’s coverage of the May 4, 1970, student protest killings at Kent State University.
He joined The Inquirer in 1973 and covered the courts, politics, and news of all sorts until his retirement in 2000. He notably wrote about unhealthy conditions and fire hazards in Pennsylvania and New Jersey boardinghouses in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and those reports earned public acclaim and resulted in new regulations to correct deadly oversights.
— Gary Miles
Roberta Fallon
Roberta Fallon, seen here in an undated photo.
Roberta Fallon, 76, cofounder, editor, and longtime executive director of the online Artblog and adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University, died in December at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of injuries she suffered after being hit by a car. She was 76.
Described by family and friends as empathetic, energetic, and creative, Ms. Fallon and fellow artist Libby Rosof cofounded Artblog in 2003. For nearly 22 years, until the blog became inactive in June, Ms. Fallon posted commentary, stories, interviews, reviews, videos, podcasts, and other content that chronicled the eclectic art world in Philadelphia.
— Gary Miles
Benita Valente
BENI26P Gerald S. Williams 10/18/00 2011 Pine st. Philadelphia-based soprano Benita Valente has sung all over the world. At age 65, she is making her Oct. 29 performance with the Mendelssohn Club at the Academy of Music her last. 1 of 3: Benita goes over some music at the piano in her upstairs music room.
Benita Valente, a revered lyric soprano whose voice thrilled listeners with its purity and seeming effortlessness, died in October at home in Philadelphia. She was 91.
In a remarkable four-decade career, Ms. Valente appeared on the opera stage, in chamber music, and with orchestras. In the intimate genre of lieder — especially songs by Schubert and Brahms — she was considered one of America’s great recitalists.
Philadelphia juries issued only three verdicts of $10 million or more in 2025, less than a third of the so-called nuclear verdicts awarded in 2024. The decline was so pronounced, it knocked the city’s Court of Common Pleas from the top spot on an annual “judicial hellhole” list.
The overall amount doled out by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jurors declined by more than $3 billion this year compared to 2024, according to court data up to Dec. 19. The nearly $120 million awarded in 74 plaintiff verdicts represents largely a return to pre-pandemic norm.
Even the American Tort Reform Foundation, a group tied to an association that advocates for reform of civil litigation and represents business interests, took notice. Last year, the foundation blasted Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, along with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as the nation’s top “judicial hellhole.”
In the 2025-26 report, the Philadelphia court was dethroned and ranked fifth. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had its own entry this year, making the group’s “watch list.”)
“2025 did not bring the same level of activity, but this decline is not the result of positive reforms or improved legal activity, but rather a reduction of trials,” the report says on the fewer number of large verdicts in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
This year had roughly 70 fewer trials that went to verdict, and no mass tort trials at all.
Mass tort is the umbrella name for how courts handle a large volume of cases that all allege similar injuries. For example, the dozens of lawsuits in Philadelphia accusing Roundup weedkiller of causing blood cancer. The cases are consolidated under one judge, and “bellwether trials” are held to get a sense of what the cost of a global settlement might be, if an agreement is ever reached.
Mass tort trials are scheduled for 2026, starting in January, and with them large verdicts could trend up again.
Attorneys say there is more to the story than counting trials, as the large verdicts of 2024 and 2023 shaped how cases are handled behind the scenes. And fewer large verdicts don’t necessarily mean that defendants in Philadelphia are paying less.
Robert J. Mongeluzzi, the founder of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, said defendants and insurers are agreeing to large settlements before any verdicts are delivered.
“Defendants and their insurance carriers have resolved catastrophic cases by offering tens of millions of dollars to resolve these cases in advance of trial,” Mongeluzzi said via email.
John Hare, a defense attorney with Marshall Dennehey, said that the large verdicts of recent years are prompting defendants to pay more, and more often, than they otherwise would.
“There is a correlation between a rise in nuclear verdicts and a rise in nuclear settlements,” Hare said.
The attorney also credits the court’s effort to mediate settlements in medical malpractice cases as one driver of the decline. But the key context is the historically high verdicts in 2023 and 2024, Hare said.
“I don’t think the era of nuclear verdicts is over,” he said.
The Trump administration made sweeping changes in 2025, leading to layoffs, resignations, and early retirements.
Employees and supporters at a Philadelphia rally for EPA workers being put on leave after signing a letter critical of the Trump administration on July 9, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
For many federal workers, 2025 has been a year of massive change in the workplace. And for thousands of them, it was the year they quit working for the U.S. government.
That’s the result of the Trump Administration’s efforts to shrink and reshape the federal workforce through a deferred resignation program called “Fork in the Road.” First offered in January, it allowed employees to resign and stay on government payrolls through Sept. 30.
If they didn’t resign, they were told, there was no assurance their job would still be around.
After the “Fork in the Road” offer, President Donald Trump’s administration continued to shake up the federal workforce, with moves including layoffs, dismantling federal worker unions, and overhauling workplace policies.
Here’s a look back on how these changes have impacted Philadelphia-area federal employees this year.
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on Jan. 20 after his inauguration. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington PostJabin Botsford
Elon Musk during a trip with President Donald Trump to the NCAA Division I Men’s Wrestling Championship at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
DOGE was tasked with reducing government spending and streamlining bureaucracy by July 4, 2026, encouraging mass layoffs and upheaval within the federal government.
Jan. 28
Trump administration offers a new resignation program
Federal workers received an email directly from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s human resources agency, offering the opportunity to resign while continuing getting paid for several months. The agency encouraged federal workers to go from “lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Protestors hold signs at the Save Our Services day of action event at Independence Mall in Philadelphia on Feb. 19. They gathered to protest Elon Musk's push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Local workers and supporters gathered in subfreezing temperatures near Independence National Historical Park to protest the layoffs and other workforce shakeups.
On Feb. 26, a memo from OPM and the Office of Management and Budget gave agencies a March 13 deadline for submitting additional layoff and reorganization plans.
Musk said in a post on X that not responding to the email would be seen as a resignation, but some members of the Trump’s administration later said responding was voluntary.
March 5
Pa. government looks to hire federal workers
Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order to streamline the hiring process for former federal employees. Nearly two weeks later, hundreds had applied.
Gov. Josh Shapiro delivers his budget address in February 2025.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
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March 7
Trump administration starts stripping union rights
The Department of Homeland Security canceled union rights for Transportation Security Administration employees. TSA union leaders and workers at the Philadelphia International Airport said the change caused morale to plummet.
TSA worker Devone Calloway at the Philadelphia International Airport soon after DHS revoked TSA employees' collective bargaining rights.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
A few weeks later, Trump issued an executive order to end union rights for federal workers across agencies, and union dues stopped being deducted from worker paychecks.
April 2
State officials express concerns over federal layoffs in Pa.
“What we’re seeing right now, in the last 72 days, is an unprecedented assault on organized labor, on working people, on working families and on Pennsylvanians of all different political stripes, from every single corner of our commonwealth,” said state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) at a hearing. “It is an attack on their ability to have access to the necessary government services that they depend on every single day.”
Andrew Kreider, an environmental protection specialist at the EPA's Region 3 office, holds a sign reading “Thank You EPA” at a solidarity march around City Hall on March 25.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
In a late Friday email, the IRS asked employees to share their resumes so leaders could “determine [their] qualifications.” That included over 3,600 employees from the agency’s office at 30th and Market Streets.
IRS Union Rep. Alex Jay Berman, in front of the Philadelphia IRS building at 30th and Market Streets in April 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
April and May
Philly’s understaffed National Park Service faces “workforce optimization”
NPS workers were asked in late April to upload their resumes amid plans for “workforce optimization.” But administrative staff had already left the regional office in Philadelphia, leaving others to take on their work. At Independence National Historical Park, staffing was an issue even before the start of the second Trump administration, workers said.
At Independence National Park, a ranger casts shadow as they walk along S. 6th Street at Market Street in June.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
“To work well, to perform, you have to be happy, you have to enjoy what you’re doing,” said Ed Welch, president of AFGE Local 2058, which represents employees at the NPS in Philadelphia. “There’s a horrible oppressiveness in government now, and it‘s unnecessary.”
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May 5
Philly-based VA workers return to offices full-time
Following orders from the VA, employees started coming in to work in-person full time but found challenges including insufficient parking and concerns about the confidentiality of work in a shared space.
Theresa Heard attends a rally of VA employees at the VA Medical Center in West Philadelphia in June 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
During a February protest in Philadelphia, retired federal worker Roseanne Sarkissian of Philadelphia holds a sign showing Elon Musk and the phrase “This man is not our boss.”Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
DOGE, Musk said, is “like a way of life.” The agency remains part of Trump’s government.
Late May
Laid-off employees return to work
Workers who’d been laid off across agencies were reinstated and placed on administrative leave following court rulings. As of late May, the “vast majority” of several hundred Philly-area IRS workers, who lost their jobs in the probationary worker layoff were back at work, union leader Alex Jay Berman estimated.
Yolanda Cowan, Mayra Gonzalez, and Michael Rosado were among the Philadelphia IRS workers who lost their jobs when probationary employees were laid off in February. Here, in February, they posed for a selfie outside the IRS offices.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
June 1
Over 100 federal workers find work for the Pa. government
By the first week of June, the state had hired 119 former federal employees across 22 agencies, according to Daniel Egan, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Office of Administration.
July 7
VA cancels mass layoffs after many employees leave voluntarily
The VA said it would forgo plans to cut the workforce by 15% after about 17,000 people left through the deferred resignation program, retirement and other attrition. The agency was on pace to have 30,000 fewer employees by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
A rally of VA employees at the VA Medical Center in West Philadelphia on June 5, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
August
Federal agencies cancel union contracts
Employees at the VA, the EPA, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are stripped of their union contracts.
Brad Starnes, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3631, which represents EPA employees in Pennsylvania, Delaware and several other mid-Atlantic states.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
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September
Thousands have left federal government employment
A few weeks before deferred resignations were expected to drop off payroll, new data showed the scope of the workforce shrinkage through mid-2025. In Pennsylvania, there were 2,600 fewer federal workers by the end of July than at the start of 2025.
Meanwhile, media reports said the government planned to call back some employees who took the deferred resignation program at the IRS and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Sept. 24
White House threatens mass firings if shutdown occurs
Federal agencies were asked to prepare plans to fire workers if legislation is not passed to keep the government open past Oct. 1. Philadelphia-area union leaders said they would push back on this effort, even as the Trump administration has moved to curtail their collective bargaining rights.
Oct. 1
A federal government shutdown begins
Lawmakers were unable to reach a deal to keep the government open, causing a shutdown. Agencies shared plans for how many employees were expected to continue working without pay and how many would be sent home on furlough. Air traffic controllers and TSA agents at Philadelphia International Airport, continued to work and so did employees at Philadelphia’s Social Security Administration building at Third and Spring Garden.
The Liberty Bell Center is closed Oct. 1, 2025 in Independence National Historical Park due to the federal government shutdown.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Mid to late October
Unemployment claims increase in Pa. and N.J.
Uncertain when their next paycheck would arrive, federal workers applied to SNAP, put their mortgage payments on hold, negotiated with utility companies, and cut back on costs. At PHL, a food pantry was set up for airport government employees impacted by the shutdown. It served some 250 employees in its first two days.
Many federal workers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey filed for unemployment benefits.
Nov. 12
The end of the longest shutdown in history
Lawmakers reached a deal to reopen the government and keep it funded through Jan. 30, and President Donald Trump signed the legislation. The shutdown lasted 43 days, making it the longest in the country’s history.
The deal included protections from mass layoffs through Sept. 2026, and reversal of firings made during the shutdown — the administration sent 4,000 layoff notices during that time. Still, some worried about another potential government shutdown after Jan. 30.
December
Data on impact of resignations is still to come
Workers who took the government’s deferred resignation offer were expected to drop off federal payroll after Sept. 30, and be reflected in employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Amid the shutdown, federal data releases were canceled or delayed. Insight on how many people have left the federal government since September is now expected in January.
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Staff Contributors
Reporting: Ariana Perez-Castells and Fallon Roth
Editing: Lizzy McLellan Ravitch and Erica Palan
Digital editing: Lizzy McLellan Ravitch
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Marsha Levick took her seat at a conference table at the Juvenile Law Center on a recent Wednesday for what would be one of her last meetings. She walked colleagues through the basic principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1989 treaty that laid out, in clear terms, what the world said it owed young people.
At the heart of the treaty is a simple idea: A child’s best interests come first — even when that child enters the justice system. It has been ratified by all but one of the U.N.’s member nations: the U.S. And in many of those 196other countries,Levick said, children younger than 14 cannot be prosecuted at all.
“Wait,” a staffer interjected. “Kids younger than 14 aren’t in the justice system?”
“I know,” Levick said. “It’s very different.”
Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and cofounder of the Juvenile Law Center, speaks with staff on Dec. 17.
For 50 years, Levick, 74, has been one of the most persistent and influential voices in the American juvenile justice system, a driving force in turning what was once a niche legal specialty into a national civil rights movement. Colleagues credit her with helping to rewrite how courts view children — persuading judges, including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, to treat youth not as miniature adults but as citizens with distinct constitutional protections and needs.
Levick will step down Wednesday from her position as chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center, the Philadelphia-based organization she helped build from a walk-in legal clinic in 1975 into a national leader in children’s rights.
Her departure coincides with the center’s 50th anniversary. At a celebration gala in May, the nonprofit honored Levick with a leadership award that recognized her body of work.
Levick’s career ranged from representing individual teenagers to steering landmark litigation that forced states to overhaul abusive practices. She helped lead the Juvenile Law Center’s response to the “kids for cash” scandal in Luzerne County. She coauthored briefs in a series of U.S. Supreme Court victories that throttled the harshest punishments for kids, including life in prison.
But Levick is also stepping down at what she calls a “dark moment” forcivil liberties in America — a time when rights once thought settled are being rolled back.
Levick was in law school in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. In the years that followed, a constellation of rights — from marriage equality to access to contraception — also expanded.
Roe was overturned, however, in 2022. Since then, other decisions have also chipped away at affirmative action in colleges and LGBTQ+ protections.
“It’s hard to convey the shock that it imposes,” Levick said in a recent interview. “Now, 50 years later, you’re pushing the rock back up the hill.”
She made clear she was unsparing with herself, quick to point out what she perceived as shortcomings. “There were high moments for sure,” she said. “But I am not foolishly happy about that. I’m shocked that that’s all we could do. That’s as far as we got.”
Yet even as fresh battles loom, colleagues say the groundwork Levick has laid will guide the Juvenile Law Center’s mission and the broader fight for children’s rights for years to come.
Jessica Feierman, the center’s senior managing director, will step into Levick’s role. “It is a huge privilege and also an immense responsibility,” she said. “In this moment of attacks on civil rights and children’s rights, it’s even more vital that we build on the victories of the last 50 years.”
From Philadelphia to the U.S. Supreme Court
Raised in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, Levick discovered early the charge of using her voice, first as a girl who demanded a recount in an elementary school election and won the presidency, and later as a teenager who inhaled The Feminine Mystique and the feminist writers who followed. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from what is now Temple University Beasley School of Law.
She cofounded the Juvenile Law Center in 1975 with three law school classmates: Bob Schwartz, a classical music aficionado and part-time semi-pro baseball umpire; Phil Margolis, a vegetarian and free spirit; and Judy Chomsky, a mother of two and passionate Vietnam War resister.
Seven years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that juveniles were entitled to due process. That decision cracked open an untapped field, Levick said, to buildwith her classmates a new kind of civil rights practice focused on children.
For the first year, they worked out of the Chestnut Street office of Chomsky’s husband, a cardiologist, carving out space in his waiting room and sidestepping an exam room on the days he saw patients.
In its earliest years, the center took on individual cases for children. One of Levick’s first clients was in Montgomery County, a teen girl who had participated in a protest at a nuclear plant and who was arrested and charged with trespassing, she said.
But the center struggled financially. The founding partners laid themselves off at one point, Levick said, so they could keep paying the few employees they had hired: a divorced mother who worked as a receptionist; their first lawyer, Anita DeFrantz, who was an Olympic rower; and a social worker.
In 1982, Levick quit the center to become the legal director of the national NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now Legal Momentum. By the time she left there six years later, she had become its executive director.
At the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Levick said, she learned how to build national cases — coordinating multistate litigation and filing amicus briefs in federal courts. By the time she returned to the Juvenile Law Center in 1995, after a stint at a small Paoli firm, she had come to believe that individual wins, while necessary, would not be enough to create lasting change.
The center’s mission became more focused on appellate litigation and national advocacy, setting the stage for children’s rights to reach state supreme courts and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hundreds of juveniles resentenced, released
In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, Levick cowrote in a brief that social science research on youth development should inform constitutional law. Children, she also wrote, have a greater capacity to change.
“We just pushed ourselves into the center of it,” Levick said. “We were like, ‘We’re here. We’re writing the amicus brief.’”
The high court overturned decades of precedent when it ruled in Roper that the Eighth Amendment forbids the death penalty for juveniles. Five years later, in Graham v. Florida, it barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles in non-homicide cases, after reading another brief Levick coauthored.
In 2012, Levick helped persuade the court to end mandatory life-without-parole sentences for youths convicted of homicide in Miller v. Alabama. And in 2016, she served as cocounsel in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the case that made the Miller decision retroactive across the country.
Since then, hundreds of juveniles — including nearly 500 in Pennsylvania — have been resentenced or released from prison. One of them: Donnell Drinks, freed in 2018 after 27 years.
The first time Drinks met Levick, he hugged her. “I couldn’t believe how small she was, because of her presence, her legal prowess, has all been so enormous,” recalled Drinks, who works as a leadership and engagement coordinator at the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.Levick is 5-foot-3.
Those cases brought Levick into courtrooms across the state, often alongside public defenders. One of them, Bradley S. Bridge, a retired Philadelphia public defender who worked with her on dozens of resentencings, called Levick a “zealous advocate” who “always saw the big picture.”
Her ability, he said, “to think toward the future, I think, was most glorious.”
Levick agreed that looking ahead had always been part of her work. “We always tried to look around the corner,” she said.
One of those moments came in 2008, when she and her colleagues began fielding troubling calls from Luzerne County — the first hints of what would become the “kids-for-cash” scandal.
Seeing more in the ‘kids-for-cash’ scandal
In 2007, Laurene Transue called the Juvenile Law Center. Her daughter, 14-year-old Hillary Transue, had been ordered to serve three months in a detention facility after she created a Myspace page mocking her school principal, she said at the time.
“We saw in that one phone call something that was clearly much bigger,” Levick said.
In fact, it was one of the most egregious judicial corruption cases in modern American history: Two Luzerne County judges had accepted kickbacks in exchange for sentencing thousands of juveniles — many for minor misbehavior — to extended stays in private detention centers.
“It was kind of like, if I may, what the f— in my mind,” Levick recalled.
Levick and the center petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ultimately threw out and expunged thousands of adjudications. They later helped families pursue civil damages, with the help of other firms. The judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were convicted of federal crimes and sentenced to long prison terms; President Joe Biden commuted Conahan’s sentence in 2024.
Hillary Transue now serves on the Juvenile Law Center’s board.
Transue told The Inquirer that as a teenager she believed that “highly educated” adults in “positions of authority” were “mean, nasty people who were out to hurt you.” But Levick, she said, “brushed up against my perception of adults” and proved her wrong.
“I think she’s a goddamn superhero,” Transue said recently.
Marsha Levick (center) stands with staffers at the Juvenile Law Center earlier this month.
Among the successes, Levick still sees failures
Despite the victories, Levick is quick to cite the cases she lost. “I’ve had successes. I’ve also failed many times,” she said.
She still thinks about clients like Jamie Silvonek, sentenced to 35 years to life in prison after killing her mother, whose early release Levick has fought for but has not yet won, or a recent bid to expand parole access for people convicted as juveniles that fell flat in Florida.
Those losses have hardened her view of how deeply punishment is embedded in American law. “I feel like punishment is in our bones,” she said. “The way that we think about crime is that it is always followed by punishment.”
That instinct, she said, has left behind people who could have thrived outside prison — including juvenile lifers who will never be released. One of them is Silvonek, whom Levick described as brilliant and warm. “I want her to be able to share that warmth and joy with her family and with her community, who are all behind her,” Levick said.
“We lost what they had to give,” she added.
Levick isn’t done yet
Levick, who is married with two adult daughters, is not leaving the field. She will become the Phyllis Beck chair at Temple’s Beasley School of Law, a post once held by her cofounder Bob Schwartz, and will teach constitutional law to first-year students.
She feels newly urgent about the course. “I am outraged at the degree to which the law has been perverted by the current moment, and I think I still can say and do something about that,” she said. “I think that the things that motivate me include outrage.”
She expects much of the future progress in youth justice to come from state supreme courts rather than the U.S. Supreme Court — a shift she sees as pragmatic, not pessimistic. Washington State Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, who has heard Levick argue successfully before her, called her a fearless litigator. “She’s an extraordinary appellate lawyer,” Yu, who is also retiring Wednesday, said in an interview.“It’s almost instinctual to her.”
And even now, Levick said, she has hope.
“We’re not going to abolish the juvenile justice system in America, but we could transform it radically,” Levick said. “I believe that. But it takes more than just lawyers to care. It takes more than the community to care. It takes people in positions of power to care. And that’s the hard part.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a legal advocacy group at which Levick worked. She worked at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. The story also misstated the year Laurene Transue called the Juvenile Law Center; she called the law center in 2007.
A soggy, gloomy Monday was expected to give way to a blusterous Tuesday that brings a wind advisory as gusts of up to 50 mph blow their way into the Philadelphia region ahead of the New Year.
Strong winds arrived behind a cold front that descended upon the Philly area Monday afternoon, dropping temperatures from the 50s into the 30s. The gusts arrived amid a wind advisory issued by the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly in effect through 1 p.m. Tuesday, with sustained wind speeds of up to 25 mph expected.
“There could be some lulls in the morning, but there is no clear signal as to when we will see the lowest lulls” in wind speed Tuesday, said Sarah Johnson, a meteorologist with the weather service. “It will pretty much be windy all through the morning into midday.”
With gusts potentially reaching into the 50-mph range, Johnson said, the primary concern for Philly-area residents was power outages caused by downed trees and broken tree limbs. That element will especially be a possibility following Monday’s rainy weather, which softened the ground in the area and primed it for potential treefall that could also bring down power lines.
Peco, meanwhile, has said that it is aware of the wind advisory, and that its crews are actively monitoring weather conditions while remaining ready to respond to potential outages. The company on social media also advised residents to steer clear of downed power lines and report outages on its website.
Johnson also noted that the high winds posed a risk to loose objects outdoors, such as holiday decorations and light furniture. Those items, she said, should be secured or taken indoors to keep them from potentially being lost or causing damage should they be taken away in a strong wind.
Additionally, Tuesday’s forecast strong winds could create challenges for drivers — particularly those behind the wheels of “high-profile vehicles” like SUVs, trucks, and other large cars. Essentially, the larger a vehicle is, or the higher off the ground it sits, the more it is apt to be pushed around in high winds, she said.
“The closer you are to the ground, the less likely you are to be impacted by high winds,” Johnson said.
Tuesday’s windy weather, meanwhile, is not an uncommon occurrence for December in the Philadelphia region, Johnson added. Strong cold fronts are known to bring with them windy conditions as temperatures drop — and the cold is likely to remain throughout the week as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day come and go.
“It is normal for us to have the strongest temperature gradients — the biggest difference in temperature — in the winter seasons,” she said. “We tend to see those from late fall through early spring — pretty much prime season.”
The strongest winds are likely to move out later Tuesday, but Wednesday is expected to remain somewhat breezy, with gusts possibly reaching up to 20 mph. Those winds, however, fall well short of the wind forecast for Tuesday.
That may be welcome news for New Year’s Eve revelers set to ring in 2026 at Philadelphia’s first New Year’s Eve concert Wednesday. The concert, set to kick off at 8 p.m. on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, will feature performances by LL Cool J, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Los Angeles rock band Dorothy, and Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts graduate Adam Blackstone.
Though Tuesday’s windy weather will likely abate in time for the holiday, colder temperatures with a high around 32 degrees are expected Wednesday, so attendees ought to bundle up. New Year’s Day on Thursday fits a similar description, with highs hovering near freezing and breezes up to 20 mph, Johnson said. There is only a slight chance of “lingering light snow or flurries,” according to weather service forecasts.
“It’s likely to be dry, but cold and maybe breezy” the first day of 2026, Johnson said.
Philly is a square kind of city. Plots and constructions fit between the perpendicular streets that form the blocks that feed the city’s grid.
Modern architecture reshaped some squares into rectangles. Nevertheless, the grid system persists, helping Philadelphians navigate.
But blocks aren’t an exact science, andsome don’t have an easily understandable name. Trying to figure out what areas encompass a block police and news outlets sometimes use to describe incidents, a reader asked Curious Philly, The Inquirer’s forum for questions about the city and region: What makes something a unit block in Philadelphia?
For Jeffry Doshna, associate professor of city planning and community development at Temple University, a unit block is a term associated with cities that operate on a grid. It refers to a particular block where the house numbers are less than a 100.
“When we say the 900 block of Girard Avenue, that would be the buildings between Ninth and 10th Streets on Girard,” Doshna said. “It’s a way to designate which block it is based on the numbering.”
However, the words “unit block” stop being used when house numbers exceed 99, according to the professor.
“Unit block is 0 to 99; the 100 block is 100 to 199; the 200 block is 200 to 299. It goes up as high as we have street numbers in the city,” Doshna said.
In the past year, Philadelphians may have heard the phrase “unit block” on news stories, describing an area where an incident happened without providing the specific house number. In September, a man was shot in West Philadelphia, with police reporting the shooting location as the “unit block of North Frazier Street.”
This doesn’t apply just for cities with widespread grid systems like Philly. Right before Christmas, a Bucks County man was struck by a wood chipper in Lower Southampton Township. Authorities reported the incident as on “the unit block of Valley View Road.”
“It’s just a way for us to say ‘where,’ to let people know what block something happened on, without giving a specific address,” Doshna said.
As Philadelphia rings in 2026 on Thursday, Jan. 1, knowing what’s open and closed can help you plan your day. From city services and trash collection (delayed one day) to grocery stores, pharmacies, and retailers, many places will operate on modified hours or be closed.
Whether you’re knocking out errands, grabbing last-minute essentials, or easing into the new year, here’s what to know about New Year’s Day across the region.
City government offices
❌ City of Philadelphia government offices will be closed Thursday, Jan. 1.
Free Library of Philadelphia
❌ The Free Library will be closed Thursday, Jan. 1.
Food sites
✅ / ❌ Holidays may impact hours of operation. Visit phila.gov/food to view specific site schedules and call ahead before visiting.
Trash collection
❌ No trash or recycling collection on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1. Collection will be picked up one day behind the regular schedule all week. To find your trash and recycling collection day, go to phila.gov.
Police found the body of the woman with the crystal pendant necklace stuffed beneath a wooden pallet in an overgrown lot in Frankford one night last June. She had been shot once between the eyes, and wore only a sports bra, with her pants and underwear tangled around her ankles.
Days in the stifling heat had left her face unrecognizable, nearly mummified.
Still, Homicide Detective Richard Bova could see traces of the beautiful young woman she had been. She was small, about 100 pounds, with long dark hair tinted red at the ends. Her nails were painted pale pink. She wore small gold hoops in her ears.
But he didn’t know her name. And for 90 days, the absence of that essential fact stalled everything.
A victim’s identity is the foundation on which a homicide case is built. Without it, detectives cannot retrace a person’s final moments or home in on who might have wanted them dead and why. For three months, Bova and his partner scoured surveillance footage, checked missing-persons reports, and ran down every faint lead, eager to put a name to the woman beneath the pallet.
At the same time, in a small house in Northeast Philadelphia, a family was searching, too.
Olga Sarancha hadn’t heard from her 22-year-old daughter, Anastasiya Stangret, in weeks and was growing worried. Stangret had struggled with an opioid addiction in recent months, but never went more than a few days without speaking to her mother or sister.
Olga Sarancha (left) and her daughter, Dasha Stangret, speak of the pain of the death of her eldest daughter, Anastasiya, at their Northeast Philadelphia home. Dasha wears a bracelet featuring Pandora charms gifted by her sister.
Through July and August that summer, Sarancha and her youngest daughter, Dasha, tried to report Stangret missing, but they said they were repeatedly rebuffed by police who turned them away and urged them to search Kensington instead.
So they kept checking hospitals, calling Stangret’s boyfriend, and driving through the dark streets of Kensington — looking for any sign that she was still alive.
It was not until mid-September that the family was able to file a missing-persons report. Only then did Bova learn the name of his victim.
But by then, he said, the crucial early window in the investigation had closed — critical surveillance footage, which resets every 30 days, was gone. Cell phone data and physical evidence were harder to trace.
Still, for 18 months, Bova has worked to solve the case, and for 18 months, Stangret’s mother and younger sister have grieved silently, haunted by the horrors of her final moments and the fear that her killer might never be caught.
Philadelphia’s homicide detectives this year are experiencing unprecedented twin phenomena: The city is on pace to record its fewest killings in 60 years, and detectives are solving new cases at a near-record high.
But those gains do not erase the reality that hundreds of killings in recent years remain unresolved — each one leaving families suspended in despair, and detectives asking themselves what more they could have done.
In this case, extensive interviews with Bova and Stangret’s family offer a window into how a case can stall even when a detective puts dozens of hours into an investigation — and what that stall costs.
Bova has a suspect: a 58-year-old man with a lengthy criminal record who he believes had grown infatuated with Stangret as he traded drugs for suboxone and sex with her. But the evidence is largely circumstantial. He needs a witness.
And Stangret’s family needs closure — and reassurance that the life of the young woman, despite her struggles, mattered.
“Everybody has something going on in their life,” said Dasha Stangret, 23. “It doesn’t make her a bad person, and it’s not what she deserved.”
Anastasiya Stangret, left, celebrated her 20th birthday with her mother in 2022.
Becoming Anna
Anastasiya Stangret was born in Lviv, Ukraine, on Nov. 15, 2001. Her family immigrated to Northeast Philadelphia when she was 8 and Dasha was 7.
The sisters were inseparable for most of their childhood. They cuddled under weighted blankets with cups of tea. They put on fluffy robes and did each other’s eyebrows and nails.
Anna was bubbly, polite, and gentle, her family said. She enjoyed working with the elderly, and after graduating from George Washington High School, she earned certifications in phlebotomy and cardiology care. She volunteered at a nearby food bank, translated for Ukrainian and Russian immigrants, and later worked at a rehabilitation facility, where she gave patients manicures in her free time.
Sisters Dasha, left, and Anastasiya Stangret were inseparable as children. They dressed up as princesses for Halloween in 2008.Dasha, left, and Anastasiya Stangret at their first day of school in Philadelphia after emigrating from Ukraine.
“Anna always worked really hard,” Dasha Stangret said. “I looked up to her.”
But her sister was also quietly struggling with a drug addiction.
Her challenges began when she was 12, her mother said, after she was hit by a car while crossing the street to catch the school bus. She suffered a serious concussion, Sarancha said, and afterward struggled with PTSD, anxiety, and depression.
About a year later, as her anxiety worsened, a doctor prescribed her Xanax, her mother said. Not long after, she started experimenting with drugs with friends, her sister said — first weed, then Percocet.
She hid her drug use from her family until her early 20s, when she became addicted to opioids.
She sought help in January 2024 and began drug treatment. But her progress was fleeting. She returned to living with her boyfriend of a few years, who they later learned also used drugs, and she became harder to get in touch with, her mother said.
When Sarancha’s birthday, June 18, came and passed in 2024 without word from her daughter, the family grew increasingly concerned.
Anastasiya Stangret was kind, gentle, and polite.
They checked in with Stangret’s boyfriend, they said, but for weeks, he made excuses for her absence. He told them that she was at a friend’s house and had lost her phone, that she was in rehab, that she was at the hospital.
On July 27, Sarancha and her daughter visited the 7th Police District in Northeast Philly to report Anna missing, but they said an officer told them to go home and call 911 to file a report.
Two officers responded to their home that day. The family explained their concerns — Stangret was not returning calls or texts, and her boyfriend was acting strange. But the officers, they said, told them they could not take the missing-persons report because Stangret no longer lived with them. They recommended that the family go to Kensington and look for her.
Through August, the family visited a nearby hospital looking for Stangret, only to be turned away. Sarancha, 46, and her husband drove through the streets of Kensington without success. They continued to contact the boyfriend, but received no information.
They wanted to believe that she was OK.
On Sept. 12, they visited Northeast Detectives to try to file a missing-persons report again, but they said an officer said that was not the right place to make the report. They left confused. Dasha Stangret called the district again that day, but she said the officer on the phone again told her that she should go to Kensington and look for her sister.
That the family was discouraged from filing a report — or that they were turned away — is a violation of Philadelphia police policy.
“When in doubt, the report will be taken,” the department’s directive reads.
Finally, on the night of Sept. 12, Dasha Stangret again called 911, and an officer came to the house and took the missing-persons report. For the first time, they said, they felt like they were being taken seriously.
A few days later, Dasha Stangret called the detective assigned to the case and asked if there was any information. He asked her to open her laptop and visit a website for missing and unidentified persons.
Scroll down, he told her, and look at the photos under case No. 124809.
On the screen was her sister’s jewelry.
Dasha Stangret gifted this necklace to her sister for her birthday one year. Police released the image after Anastasiya’s body was found last June, in a hope that someone would recognize it and identify her. Dasha did not see the photo until September 2024.Olga Sarancha gifted these gold earrings, handmade in Ukraine, to her eldest child on her birthday a few years ago. Police released this image after they recovered the earrings on Anna’s body, hoping it could lead them to her identity.
A detective’s hunch
Three months into Bova’s quest to identify the woman under the pallet — of watching hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and chasing fleeting missing-persons leads — dental records confirmed that the victim was Stangret.
After meeting with her family, Bova questioned the young woman’s boyfriend.
He told the detective he and Stangret had met a man under the El at the Arrott Transit Center in Frankford sometime in June, Bova said, and that the man gave them drugs in exchange for suboxone and, later, sex with Stangret.
But the man had grown infatuated with Stangret, he said, and after she left his house, he started threatening her in Facebook messages, ordering her to return and saying that if anybody got in his way, he would hurt them.
The man lived in a rooming house on Penn Street — almost directly in front of the overgrown lot where Stangret’s body was found. Surveillance video showed Stangret walking inside the rowhouse with him just before 7 p.m. on June 18, Bova said, but video never showed her coming back out.
Police searched the man’s apartment but found nothing to link him to the crime — no blood, no gun, no forensic evidence that Stangret had ever been inside. The suspect had deleted most of the texts and calls in his phone from June, July, and August, Bova said, and because nearly four months had passed, they could no longer get precise phone location data.
He said that, at this point, he does not believe the boyfriend was involved with her death, and that he came up with excuses because he was afraid to face her family.
Surveillance cameras facing the lot where Stangret was found didn’t show anyone entering the brush with a body. Neighbors and residents of the rooming house said they didn’t know or hear anything, he said. And a woman seen on camera pacing the block and talking with the suspect the night they believed Stangret was killed also said she had no information.
The detective is stuck, he said.
“Is it enough for an arrest? Sure,” Bova said of the circumstantial evidence against the suspect. “But our focus is securing a conviction.”
Bova’s theory is that the man, angry that Stangret wanted to leave, shot her in the head. Because the house has no back door, he believes the man then lowered her body out of the second-floor window, used cardboard to drag her through the brush, and then hid her under a pallet.
Anastasiya Stangret’s body was found in the back of this vacant lot, on the 4700 block of Griscom Street, in June 2024.
He is sure that someone has information that could help the case — that the suspect may have bragged about what happened, that a neighbor heard a gunshot or saw Stangret’s body being taken into the lot.
There is a $20,000 reward for anyone who has information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
“The hardest part is patience,” he said. “I’m looking for any tips, any information.”
Bova has worked in homicide for five years. As with all detectives, he said, some cases stick with him more than others. Stangret’s is one of them.
“Anna means a lot,” he said. “This is a young girl. We all have children. I have daughters. For her to be thrown in an empty lot and left, to see her life not matter like that, it’s horrifying to me and to us as a unit.”
“It eats me alive,” he said, “that I don’t have answers for them and I’m not finishing what was started.”
Dasha Stangret is reflected in the memorial at the grave of her sister, Anastasiya, in William Penn Cemetery.
‘I love you. I miss you’
Stangret’s family suffers every day — the guilt of wondering whether they could have done more to get her help, the anger that her boyfriend didn’t raise his concerns sooner, the fear of knowing the man who killed her is still out there.
Dasha Stangret, a graphic design student at Community College of Philadelphia, finds it difficult to talk about her sister at length without trembling. It’s as if the grief has sunk into her bones.
In July, she asked a police officer to drive her to the lot where her sister’s body was found. She sat for almost an hour, crying, placing flowers, searching for a way to feel closer to her.
“I cannot sleep, I cannot live,” Olga Sarancha said of the pain of losing her daughter.
Sarancha struggles to sleep. She wakes up early in the mornings and rereads old text messages with her daughter. She pulls herself together to care for her 6-year-old son, Max, whose memories of his oldest sister fade daily.
On a recent day, Dasha Stangret and her mother visited her sister’s grave at William Penn Cemetery. They fluffed up the fresh roses, rearranged the tiny fairy garden around her headstone, and lit a candle.
Stangret began to cry — and shake. Her mother took her arm.
“I love you. I miss you,” Stangret told her sister. “I hope you’re happy, wherever you are.”
And nearly 20 miles south, inside the homicide unit, Bova continues to review the files of the case, waiting for the results of another DNA test, hoping for a witness who may never come.
If you have information about this crime, contact the Homicide Unit at 215-686-3334 or submit a confidential tip by texting 773847 or emailing tips@phillypolice.com.
Olga Sarancha (right) and her daughter Dasha visit the grave of her older daughter Anastasiya Stangret in William Penn Cemetery. “It feels out of body. Like a dream, a movie, like it’s not real,” Dasha said of losing her sister.
In May, Donald Frank packed a bag and left his home in Wake Forest, N.C. His destination sat about 390 miles to the south, in Georgia, where he was scheduled to undergo a series of grueling medical evaluations.
Doctors spent two days testing his memory, attention span, language comprehension, and visual-spatial perception skills, to gauge the extent of a neurocognitive illness that had gradually eroded the contours of his everyday life.
A separate consultation with a neurologist resulted in a new diagnosis: Frank, a 60-year-old former San Diego Chargers defensive back, had Parkinson’s disease.
Frank believes that his health woes can be traced to the countless brain-rattling collisions that he absorbed during his six-year professional football career. But over the last seven years, the NFL’s controversial concussion settlement program has on four occasions denied Frank’s quest to be paid for the brain trauma that he sustained.
Nevertheless, he decided to make the case once more. Frank included the results of the May neuropsychological tests, and the Parkinson’s diagnosis, in a claim that he submitted to the settlement program.
Then he waited. And worried.
Donald Frank and his girlfriend, Deirdre Brown, learned in early November that the NFL’s concussion settlement program had agreed to pay Frank $1.4 million as he battles Parkinson’s disease.
The settlement program has doled out more than $1.6 billion, yet not every former football player who applies for a payment is compensated. Some, including members of the 1980 Philadelphia Eagles, have faced long delays and demoralizing denials.
The Inquirer found that Frank’s case is an extreme outlier. More than 4,400 ex-NFL players have submitted claims with the program, but only two others have received as many as four rejections.
On Nov. 4, Frank’s girlfriend, Deirdre Brown, opened an email from the settlement program’s claims department.
“Notice of monetary award claim determination,” read the first line.
Her eyes traced familiar details about Frank’s case and his medical history, then arrived at something new: an award for $1.4 million.
“It was a breath of fresh air,” Frank said, “considering all the years I’ve gone through this.”
From a small college to the pros
Frank followed an unlikely path to the NFL.
As a strong safety at a Division II college, North Carolina’s Winston-Salem State University, he attracted little attention from scouts. He had a bodybuilder’s physique, though, and could run the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds.
Those attributes persuaded the Chargers to take a flier on Frank in 1990 and sign him as an undrafted free agent. That same year, the team selected linebacker Junior Seau with their No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
Frank made the team and quickly impressed coaches with his knack for game-changing interceptions, prompting the Los Angeles Times to liken his rise — from relative obscurity to an NFL roster — to a fairy tale.
Frank, like so many players from prior generations, didn’t realize that the violent collisions he experienced each year — during practices and in training camp, throughout the regular season and playoffs — could cause long-term neurological harm.
Donald Frank’s 102-yard interception return for a touchdown helped the Chargers defeat the Los Angeles Raiders on Oct. 31, 1993.
“When you got knocked out, or got your bell rung, they would put smelling salts to your nose to wake you up,” Frank previously told The Inquirer. “I don’t even remember there being an attempt to evaluate you. It was always, ‘OK, just let him sit on the bench for a minute to clear his head.’”
By 1993, Frank earned a role as a starting cornerback. That season, during a Halloween game against the Los Angeles Raiders, Frank intercepted a pass from Raiders quarterback Jeff Hostetler and returned it 102 yards for a touchdown.
For an undrafted athlete, it was a moment of remarkable personal triumph.
Just two years later, Frank reached the end of his NFL career. He was hindered by a back injury and had grown wary of hitting his head.
But there was another nagging problem that Frank initially kept to himself: On even simple defensive plays, he could no longer remember what he was supposed to do.
Confusion, then clarity
Frank’s memory problems began to deepen in 2008, according to medical records previously viewed by The Inquirer, and he grappled with depression and unpredictable mood swings.
He stopped driving and had to rely on Brown to help care for him on a daily basis.
In 2012, Seau, Frank’s old Chargers teammate, died by suicide at age 43. Researchers discovered that he had the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has been found in the brains of hundreds of former football players, including former Eagles Andre Waters, Max Runager, Frank LeMaster, Guy Morriss, and Maxie Baughan.
Dozens of ex-players had sued the NFL a year earlier in California and Pennsylvania, accusing the league of downplaying the risks of repeated brain injuries. The number of plaintiffs climbed into the thousands — Frank among them — and the cases were consolidated in Philadelphia federal court.
Three years later, the NFL settled the case.
The league admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to fund, for 65 years, a program that would pay retired players who developed neurocognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).
Donald Frank signed with the Chargers as an undrafted free agent in 1990. “My attitude, coming from where I came from, was basically, ‘You got to do everything you can to stay here,’” said Frank, 60. “And I was a physical player.”
In 2016, the chair of Duke University’s Department of Neurology evaluated Frank and determined that he had a “major neurocognitive disorder,” according to the medical records.
That same year, the NFL awarded Frank a benefit through the league’s 88 Plan, which provides financial reimbursements for medical care for players who have dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or Parkinson’s. (The league spends more than $20 million a year on such reimbursements.)
Despite the seemingly widespread agreement that Frank suffered from a serious illness, he found little success navigating the concussion settlement program.
Retired players are required to be evaluated by doctors who belong to a network managed by a third-party company, BrownGreer LLC, and to have a diagnosis that meets the settlement program’s three tiers of cognitive impairment: level 1.0 for moderate decline; level 1.5 for early dementia; level 2.0 for severe cognitive decline.
Frank submitted three claims for a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, but an appeals panel rejected each, noting that his test results were not consistent with the disease.
The denials sank Frank into depressive spirals and made him question whether he should abandon his crusade to be paid by the settlement program.
“It felt like a big confusion,” Frank said. “[The doctors] couldn’t get a grip on what was going on with me.”
Clarity finally arrived earlier this year, when his attorney asked Frank if he had ever experienced any tremors or shakes.
“I said, ‘Yes, I do,’” Frank recalled. “I told Dee a year ago, maybe two years, that I experienced some tremors in my right hand. I just never paid it no mind.”
After a neurologist and a movement disorder specialist each confirmed that Frank had Parkinson’s, he began taking medication meant to alleviate symptoms.
“It felt like an immediate release of pressure off my brain,” he said. “I felt like the tremors weren’t bothering me as much.”
Frank has noticed something else, too: a sense of optimism and gratitude that has pierced the frustration and uncertainty that had clouded his life for so long.
The concussion settlement program is scheduled to deliver its payment to him in January, and his daughter and 6-year-old grandson have moved in with him, filling his house with the welcome sound of busy lives and laughter.
“I’m looking forward to more hours with my grandson. I’m looking forward to the future,” Frank said. “I’m thankful.”
