Eleanor M. Kelley, 79, of Philadelphia, longtime French teacher at International Christian High School, onetime adjunct professor at Temple University, role model, mentor to many, and lifelong athlete, died Friday, Feb. 20, of complications from Parkinson’s disease at Rydal Park & Waters retirement community in Jenkintown.
An honors graduate at Abraham Lincoln High School and twice at Temple, Mrs. Kelley was a compassionate, faith-driven intellectual who excelled at languages, teaching, and friendship. She taught French for two years as an adjunct professor at Temple and then for 48 years, from 1972 to 2020, at Cedar Grove Christian Academy and its successor, International Christian High School.
She worked with thousands of students from around the world at International Christian in Olney and chaperoned nine trips to Paris with her French classes. She connected with students, they said in online tributes, by smiling often and singing songs and quoting the Bible in French.
Former students called her “intellectually challenging” and “fiery when it came to teaching French.” They said: “You never gave up on us.”
Mrs. Kelley was honored online by colleagues at International Christian High School.
Her achievements were recognized by educational organizations, and she told her husband, Bill: “I need to find new ways to challenge the students. I must avoid getting caught up in the routine of teaching.”
Nearly everyone called her Madame Kelley, and they dedicated three school yearbooks to her. Several of her online tributes were written in French. “Au revoir, Madame,” they said. “Merci.”
On Facebook, Benjamin Brittin, head administrator at International Christian, said: “Mrs. Kelley was a devoted co-worker, wise, fair-minded, loving, and faithful in her support of both students and colleagues.”
She also taught English and health, and was the school’s discipline administrator and director of the Honors Society. She served on school and church committees, and helped her husband coach the International Christian boys’ basketball team.
Mrs. Kelley played basketball and volleyball at Abraham Lincoln High School.
“She was one in a million,” a former school colleague said in a Facebook tribute. Another said: “I will never stop striving for the perfection you maintained with incredible grace.”
Mrs. Kelley played basketball and volleyball in high school, and later earned 10 medals and trophies at local running events. One time, her husband said, she slowed near the end of a race so a friend could pass her and win a medal.
She earned three awards for coaching the boys’ basketball team at International Christian, and she and her husband ran often in Wissahickon Valley Park and along Kelly Drive.
“Teaching was her passion, indeed a promissory gift to so many of her students,” her husband said. “She was a fisher of minds and souls who made ideas matter.”
Mrs. Kelley and her husband, Bill, married in 1972.
Eleanor Mary Tolia was born Feb. 12, l947, in Philadelphia. She enjoyed family vacations in Atlantic City when she was young and graduated summa cum laude from Abraham Lincoln High.
She met Bill Kelley when both were students at Temple, and they married in 1972. He was on his way to basketball practice one afternoon when he saw her in her father’s diner, and he stopped in to meet her.
They lived in Roxborough, and he doted on her for more than five decades, including daily visits to her bedside over the last year. At Temple, she earned summa cum laude bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French.
Mrs. Kelley and her husband made memorable trips to Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts and the Jersey Shore. She loved flowers and Italian food, adopted three stray cats, and framed and displayed all 54 of the poems her husband wrote for her every Christmas.
Mrs. Kelley “gifted me more of my humanity,” her husband said.
She usually mailed more than 125 Christmas cards and stayed in touch with former students who became old friends. She wrote letters to the editor of The Inquirer about local events, filled 30 albums with photos, and saved practically every note and letter she ever received.
Friends called her Ellie Kelley. “She showed more humanity than anyone I ever met,” her husband said. “She gifted me more of my humanity. She was my life. She was my hero.”
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Kelley is survived by a brother and other relatives.
Like most of his Rohingya people — stripped of citizenship by Myanmar’s ruling junta and targeted by a brutal 2017 genocide — Nurul Amin Shah Alam and his family spent the last decade yearning to breathe free.
A nomadic quest for liberty took Shah Alam, his wife, and the two youngest of his six children through the crowded camps of Bangladesh, on a boat escape to Malaysia, and finally to apparent refuge in the United States on Christmas Eve 2024.
But the 56-year-old immigrant was almost never free on American soil.
In February 2025, just 53 days after his family arrived in the refugee hub of Buffalo, Shah Alam — nearly blind, apparently lost, and using a curtain rod as a walking stick — found himself in an encounter with Buffalo police. He was tased during a scuffle that ended with the refugee charged with felony assault.
After one year behind bars and a plea deal, relatives paid his bail on Feb. 19, and then waited for hours at the Erie County, N.Y., lockup, only to learn he’d instead been handed over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on an immigration detainer.
During a frantic, five-day search on the streets of one of America’s coldest big cities, Shah Alam’s family and supporters were stunned to learn that Border Patrol agents — apparently after learning the stateless refugee could not be legally deported — drove this disabled and nearly sightless man with no phone to a Tim Horton’s doughnut shop and dumped him there, five miles from his family’s home.
As reactions and questions continue to surface over the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a visually impaired man who spent time in Border Patrol custody and was found dead Tuesday night, directions from the reported drop-off spot and where he was found place the two locations more…
“He never had freedom in his life,” Imran Fazal, a leader of the Rohingya diaspora in Buffalo who knows his family, told me by phone Wednesday night. “He came to this country because he wanted to experience freedom. He didn’t have that chance … He came to this nation that was supposed to save his life — and that nation destroyed his life.”
And now, abandoned on the subfreezing February streets of the snow capital of America. Because there is really only one point to the ethnic cleansing crusade that began with rabid Trump partisans waving their “Mass Deportation Now!” placards in a Milwaukee arena and ended with a cold, lonely corpse on Perry Street.
Somehow, in this downward spiral that has seen Americans grow accustomed to masked, heavily armed goons in tactical gear snatching day laborers or Uber drivers off once-placid urban streets, the abandonment and death of Shah Alam still hits like a gut punch to the soul of a once-welcoming nation. Yet, it somehow feels even more inhumane when viewed through the tortured prism of the Rohingya people, among the most persecuted ethnic minorities on earth.
Rohingya refugee children carry banners during a visit by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the Ukhiya camp in Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, in March 2025.
The roughly 1.4 million, mostly Muslim, Rohingya people in Myanmar, formerly Burma, have been targeted for repression by that nation’s Buddhist majority for decades, culminating in the stripping of their citizenship in 1982 and its military rulers driving hundreds of thousands across the border into Bangladesh during 2017’s brutal campaign.
In March 2022, during the Joe Biden administration, which was a brief window between the anti-refugee xenophobia of the two Trump presidencies, the U.S. government recognized the Rohingya as victims of genocide and, among other moves, expanded their resettlement opportunities in America. It’s estimated that at least 12,000 came to the United States during that short opening, and as many as 2,000 of them — perhaps lured by lower housing costs — have moved to Buffalo in the last couple of years.
It has not been an easy journey. Denied schooling in their native Myanmar and lacking a formal written script for their language, the majority of Rohingya who arrive in the United States are illiterate and unable to speak English.
The short, tragic American experience of Shah Alam reads like an allegory for the Rohingya plight on U.S. soil.
The version of what happened to him on the night of Feb. 15, 2025, as told to me by Fazal and also recounted by his family and lawyers in the media, is that Shah Alam, walking in his new neighborhood with the aid of that curtain rod and likely getting lost, took shelter under a porch perhaps without realizing he was on private property.
The woman who owned the property called the Buffalo police, who viewed the rod as a weapon and — when the non-English speaking Shah Alam failed to follow their commands — tased him and aggressively tried to arrest him. In a fight with the nearly blind immigrant whose awareness of the situation is in question, police said two officers suffered minor injuries. The ensuing criminal charges against Shah Alam — assault, trespassing, and possession of a weapon — were just the start of his Kafkaesque journey through American injustice.
Trump had just become the 47th president, and family members didn’t post bail at first, mainly because of fears the new regime would seek to deport him. Fazal said the already ailing Shah Alam lost considerable weight in his year behind bars, as much of the food didn’t meet his Muslim dietary restrictions.
Supported by the Rohingya diaspora community — Fazal said about 50 people attended one of his hearings — Shah Alam’s legal-aid attorneys eventually struck a misdemeanor plea deal. Then, on Feb. 19, family members arrived at the Erie County detention center expecting to take him home for a warm meal.
Breaking: A blind Burmese refugee named Nurul Shah Alam has been missing since Thurs. after Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a Tim Hortons, leaving him to walk home.
After a number of hours, Fazal said, the family called the police and said, “‘He was supposed to come here. He’s not coming.’ And they said, ‘You know, he was taken by the [U.S.] Customs and Border [Protection].’ And they said, ‘What?!’”
A CBP spokesperson told People magazine that Shah Alam was offered a “courtesy ride” from Border Patrol agents, “which he chose to accept to a coffee shop, determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station. … He showed no signs of distress, mobility issues, or disabilities requiring special assistance.”
In fact, Shah Alam — completely blind in one eye and with limited sight in the other, according to family members, who didn’t have a cell phone and had never used one — was five miles from his family’s current home. When his relatives and attorneys learned belatedly of the Tim Horton’s drop-off and could not find him, they filed a missing persons report that — in one final injustice — was, for a time, accidentally listed as resolved by an officer who mistakenly thought he was at an immigration detention site.
Instead, his body was found Tuesday night. The preliminary finding after an autopsy by the Erie County medical examiner is that Shah Alam died from medical causes and not from either exposure to the cold or intentional homicide. Nonetheless, his death is under investigation — yes, by the same Buffalo police who initiated this nightmare — and has sparked justifiable outrage from local officials like Buffalo Mayor Sean M. Ryan, who called the CBP actions “unprofessional and inhumane.”
That’s a gross understatement. It’s not just that Shah Alam’s abandonment and death is a new twist on the roughly 40 immigrants who’ve died in federal detention since the start of 2025 from a mix of medical neglect, suicidal despair, and at least one homicide, along with the eight people fatally shot by CBP or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All of it is proof that Trump’s immigration policy is written with the blood of innocents.
We also need to ask ourselves how and why a nation that so blithely uses the Statue of Liberty for everything from car insurance ads to a morally empty 250th birthday party is now repressing some of the most mistreated humans on earth — people who honestly believed America would offer the freedom they were denied in their nation of birth.
It’s a moral abomination to see the Hmong people who risked everything to side with the United States in Southeast Asia now dragged from their homes in Minnesota, or the Venezuelans who fled a strongman dictator only to be branded as criminal gang members, or the Haitians who escaped relentless violence only to now huddle in fear in heartland Ohio.
And now the Rohingya, who were able to survive a genocide and inhumane refugee camps some 8,000 miles away, only to now find themselves in a country that is building concentration camps and forging a 21st-century Trail of Tears.
Fazal — a 30-year-old recent Buffalo State grad whose seven-year stateless flight to freedom passed through Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia (where he was detained for 17 months in an immigration prison), Australia, and Papua New Guinea — told me he feels anger over Shah Alam’s death, but also guilt, because he has gained U.S. citizenship while Shah Alam did not.
“The system and the police should be accountable,” he said. “We need justice to be served.”
When this newest stain on human existence is finally over, there won’t be enough courtrooms to try every masked idiot who shot an unarmed protester, or beat up an immigrant and swore he “ran into a wall,” or slammed a brain-injured woman to the asphalt.
But years in prison would be too good for the soulless monsters who went on a doughnut run and left a good man to die. If there is any justice under God’s universe, they will be consigned for all ofeternity to a snowdrift as large as Lake Erie in an unending and fruitless quest for the warmth and liberty they deprived Nurul Amin Shah Alam.
One of the country’s most popular dance companies, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, is coming back to Philly this weekend, early in the company’s 20-city U.S. tour.
As of last summer, Ailey is led by Alicia Graf Mack, 47, who was a big star at Dance Theatre of Harlem and then the company she is now directing.
“I am very grateful to be back,” she said. “This year has been a very beautiful homecoming to a company that I love very deeply, and this organization has been part of my North Star since I was a child. [It’s been] part of my thought process about what I want to be when I grow up, and how I want to be, and how I want to express myself.”
Just before this, she was dean and director of the dance division of Juilliard School, where she worked closely with students and commissioned work for them to perform — including pieces by Philadelphia choreographers Rennie Harris and Matthew Neenan.
The tour coming to Philly this weekend also has a new Neenan piece, Difference Between.
“Matthew is someone that I’ve really admired for many years, and I know Matthew Rushing (Ailey’s associate artistic director) shares that same sentiment,” Graf Mack said. While working with Neenan at Juilliard, “I knew what a genius he is.”
Ailey is also bringing Jazz Island, a new work choreographed by Maija Garcia.
“It is a beautiful homage to Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade,” both of whom made works for Philadanco. “Carmen basically cofounded this company with her best friend, Alvin Ailey,” Graf Mack said.
Alvin Ailey dancer Ashley Kaylynn Green.
Graf Mack was born in San Jose, Calif., and grew up in Columbia, Md., about 120 miles south of Philly. Her mother was a professor at Howard University and also a model.
“At home she would exercise and move to music to stay in shape,” Graf Mack said. “I would follow her, and she was kind of like, ‘Wow, she really picks up moves very easily.’”
So at 2 1/2, Graf Mack started dance classes, “and I found my home there.”
Eventually she and her sister, Daisha (who would become a commercial dancer performing with Rihanna, TLC, and Beyoncé), became serious ballet students.
In the summers, Graf Mack would study at New York’s School of American Ballet or the American Ballet Theatre.
“One summer, I participated in international ballet competitions. I went to St. Petersburg, Russia, competed in the Vaganova Prix, and placed in the finals,” she said. “I think I was the only American and certainly the only Black person there.”
Despite an impressive career, Graf Mack met with some roadblocks. Three years after she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem, she developed ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease affecting her joints.
So she looked at new careers. She applied and got into Columbia University.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
She studied history and for three years, interned at JPMorgan, with all intentions of working for a bank. That firm was involved in arts institutions, and Graf Mack said she found her niche.
“That kind of sparked my love for arts administration. But actually after I graduated, I was moving a little bit more, and I thought I should try to dance [again].
“It was Carmen de Lavallade who told me, ‘Alicia, you can work at a bank any time in your life, but your time to dance is now.’ So I went back to Dance Theatre of Harlem for a year, and that’s when the company closed. It left 40-some Black ballet dancers without work.”
For a year, she found freelance work with top companies such as Complexions, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, as well as celebrity gigs with the likes of Beyoncé, John Legend, Andre 3000, Alicia Keys, and Jon Batiste.
In 2005, she joined Alvin Ailey. Three years into her tenure, her illness flared up again.
So she went back to school to earn a masters in nonprofit management from Washington University in St. Louis.
But then Jamison, her former boss and lifelong idol, was retiring from Ailey and asked Graf Mack to dance at her final performance. Battle watched from the wings and wanted her back in the company. She returned for three more years.
In 2014, a back injury finally ended her performance career and started her arts administration career.
“I feel like I have a very lived history of the legacy of the company,” Graf Mack said. “I’m very grateful to now keep the legacy moving forward.”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Feb. 27-March 1, Academy of Music. $36-$147. 215-893-1999 or ensembleartsphilly.org
CLEARWATER, Fla. — Aidan Miller isn’t on social media, so it wasn’t until his father sent along a television clip last Sunday that he realized Bryce Harper told Phillies fans everywhere that he’s injured.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool,’” Miller said with a laugh Thursday. “’He’s talking about me on the broadcast.’”
If anything, it speaks to how highly the face of the Phillies thinks of the 21-year-old top prospect that the status of Miller’s sore lower back is on Harper’s mind. Soon, though, Miller hopes Harper will be talking about him more for what he does on the field.
Miller’s work largely has been confined to the training room since the Grapefruit League schedule opened last weekend. He awoke one day last week, and his back was “super tight.” The feeling didn’t subside with treatment.
“We decided to take a couple of days off to just kind of let it relax, and now I’m kind of building back,” Miller said. “I feel like I’m in a better spot than I was. It’s getting better.”
The Phillies haven’t announced a timeline for Miller’s return, but they won’t rush him back.
“I still think I’m going to get into some games toward the end,” Miller said. “It’s definitely frustrating. I feel like it’s a big camp. Just really trying to stay present. My mind’s been spiraling a little like, ‘When am I going to get into games? Is it going to be next week? The week after?’ But I’m trying to just get better every day.”
The Phillies plan to give Aidan Miller reps this spring at shortstop, third base, and second when he’s healthy.
Miller was a long shot to make the Phillies’ opening day roster. But he was expected to get reps in spring training at third base and second base, in addition to shortstop, in preparation for a potential midseason call-up.
The root of the lower back soreness is unclear, according to Miller, who said it wasn’t a specific incident on the field. He said he felt similar soreness late last season. Miller was ticketed to play in the Arizona Fall League, but the Phillies told him to stay home. At the time, farm director Luke Murton said Miller had “some nagging things physically.”
“It went away for a little bit, and I thought it was gone,” Miller said. “Structurally, there’s nothing wrong there. It’s just, I think swinging a bat 100,000 times a year, we put a little bit of a toll on it. I think it’s just finding a good routine that could help me and prevent flare-ups in the future. I’m not worried about it at all.”
Aidan Miller is out for now with a sore back, according to Rob Thomson. Bryce Harper had hinted at it earlier on his TV interview.
Miller, whose spring training locker is sandwiched between those of Harper and J.T. Realmuto, said he has asked older teammates about best practices for dealing with similar issues.
“They’re texting people for me and trying to help me out,” Miller said. “They’ve been a huge help, just kind of bouncing questions off them.”
Miller, the Phillies’ first-round draft pick in 2023, has shot through the farm system over the last two years. Last season, he batted .264 with 27 doubles, 14 homers, 59 stolen bases, and an .825 OPS between double-A Reading and triple-A Lehigh Valley.
Law enforcement officials on Wednesday announced sweeping charges against 19 people affiliated with several Philadelphia gangs they say are responsible for shooting nearly three dozen people in two years.
The indictment caps a more than two-year investigation into the Young Bag Chasers, or YBC, and rival crews including CCK and the Parkside Killers. Authorities say the groups traded gunfire in brazen retaliatory shootings — sometimes on consecutive days, often in broad daylight, and at times on the same blocks over and over again.
Below is a breakdown of the shootings included in the indictment and the defendants charged in each case, according to prosecutors:
Sept. 21, 2022 — Shots are fired at 1400 N. 75th St. No one is struck.
YBC members Mark “Yak Yola” Johnson and Kasim Brown, aka “FSdaBender,” have been charged.
Police investigate a triple shooting in the 1500 block of N. 13th street, where an 8-year-old girl was grazed in the head by a bullet on Sept. 22, 2022.
YBC members Salahhuddin Carter, aka YFA4our, and Jymir “Lil Mir” Burbage have been charged.
Oct. 7, 2022 — Shots are fired at 3900 Wallace St. No one is struck.
YBC members Carter and Burbage have been charged.
Oct. 29, 2022 — Three people are shot at 3800 Aspen St.
YBC members Burbage and Jerwayne Haywood have been charged.
Nov. 30, 2022 — Shots are fired at 4300 Reno St. No one is struck.
YBC member Burbage has been charged.
In this music video filmed by Marlissa Monay, Tahjae Brooks sings his 2020 song “Hear Me Out.” Brooks, or “Jae100,” was a founder of YBC and the original face and talent of the group.
Dec. 5, 2022 — Tahjae Brooks, aka Jae100, is killed at 4300 Parrish St.
May 30, 2023 — Shots are fired at 5200 Jefferson St. No one is struck.
YBC members Burbage and Brown have been charged.
July 8, 2023 — Sharif King, 34, is killed at 5200 Jefferson St.
YBC members Stephen Weddington, Hall, and Johnson have been charged.
July 27, 2023 — Shots are fired at 100 Manton St. No one is struck.
CCK member Hasaan Stafford, aka “Saany Goon,” is charged. Kydair “Honcho” Strickland, a CCK/7th Street member who was killed in August 2024, was also involved, prosecutors said.
Oct. 5, 2023 — A 20-year-old man is shot at 5200 Jefferson St.
YBC members Weddington and Johnson have been charged.
Oct. 6, 2023 — A 20-year-old man is shot at 600 North Brooklyn St.
Parkside members Muhammad and Paul Beckwith are charged.
Oct. 10, 2023 — Shots are fired at 2100 N 53rd St. No one is struck.
YBC’s Weddington charged, and CCK affiliate Strickland also fired shots, prosecutors said.
Nov. 4, 2023 — Shots are fired at 1300 N 53rd St. No one is struck.
CCK’s Stafford is charged.
Dec. 7, 2023 — Zyir “Booga” Stafford is killed while leaving his work at McDonalds, at 29th and Clearfield Streets.
YBC’s Weddington and Burbage have been charged.
Zyir Stafford, a 22-year-old father of two, was shot and killed in December 2023. In this photo, he had just received his diploma from YES Philly High.
Dec. 11, 2023 — Shots are fired at 1400 S 56th St. No one is struck.
CCK’s Stafford, Stigall, and Nasir “Jefe” Wells — who is serving life in prison for a separate murder — have been charged.
Dec. 15, 2023 — Shots are fired at 2900 Girard Ave. No one is struck.
CCK’s Wells is charged.
Jan. 22, 2024 — Shots are fired at 1000 Arch St. No one is struck.
CCK’s Wells and Stafford are charged.
March 13, 2024 — Shots are fired at 4300 Lancaster Ave. No one is struck.
Parkside’s Muhammad is charged.
May 18, 2024 — Qaadir Cheeks, aka 55Qua, is killed at 5500 Baltimore Ave.
YBC’s Weddington, Burbage, Hamzah Curry, and Hasin “HassPNB” Muse, have been charged with murder. Tatiana Edwards has been charged with criminal conspiracy to murder after officials said she lured Cheeks outside to ultimately be shot.
Dec. 8, 2025 — A 24-year-old man is shot multiple times at 4800 Folsom St.
Hasaan Taylor, aka YBC Waters, who was recently released from federal custody, was arrested Wednesday and has been charged in the case outside of the grand jury indictment.
An employee of Radnor Middle School was arrested Thursday morning and charged with sexually assaulting a child in Texas, authorities say.
Michael Robinson, 43, was taken into custody by U.S. marshals and Radnor police a block from the Wayne middle school around 7:30 a.m., according to a spokesperson for the marshals service.
Robinson is a paraprofessional at Radnor Middle School, law enforcement officials said. He was wanted by Texas authorities in connection with the assault, which officials said occurred in 2024 after Robinson met the victim online.
A spokesperson for the Radnor Township School District said that it is cooperating with law enforcement and that it has not received information indicating that Robinson behaved inappropriately with Radnor students.
“Parents of the limited number of children to whom the employee was assigned were contacted by the administration immediately,” the spokesperson said, adding that Robinson has been placed on leave amid the investigation into his behavior.
Law enforcement officials said Robinson traveled to Tyler, Texas, to meet the victim, whom he assaulted over the course of a weekend.
He was indicted by prosecutors in Smith County, Texas, in December and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child under 15 years old.
Robinson is being held at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County, awaiting extradition to Texas.
A student protest in Quakertown last week escalated when officers attempted to detain a teenage girl, police say, setting off a struggle that ended with five teenagers charged and the police chief in the fray.
The protest quickly devolved into a melee in which students obstructed traffic, struck vehicles, and assaulted Chief Scott McElree as he tried to take one of the teens into custody, according to the affidavit of probable cause for the arrest of one of the students.
The document, obtained by The Inquirer, offers the most detailed account yet of what law enforcement officials say happened that day.
The protest took place Friday near the intersection of Juniper and Front Streets, where dozens of students had gathered to demonstrate against federal immigration enforcement actions.
According to the affidavit, officers were already monitoring the crowd when they observed students walking into roadways, throwing snowballs at vehicles, standing on benches, and, in one instance, kicking a white pickup truck and hitting its side mirror. Officers warned the students to remain peaceful, the document said.
At some point, the affidavit said, a teenage girl stepped into the street “numerous times, including in front of moving vehicles.” An officer approached her on the sidewalk and told her she would be detained. When the girl attempted to walk away, the officer grabbed her arm, the affidavit said, and was quickly surrounded by other students.
It was then, according to the document, that McElree intervened. The chief “attempted to make an arrest” of the girl, the affidavit said, but a teenage boy began pulling her away. McElree grabbed the boy, who “began resisting arrest by pulling away” and struck the chief in the ear with a cell phone, the affidavit said.
The document said several others joined in: One girl struck McElree on the left shoulder. A teenage boy hit him in the head and ribs before an officer took the boy to the ground. Another girl punched McElree with a closed fist, and a different student struck him in the head with a backpack, according to the affidavit.
McElree, who left the scene with blood on his face, later told officers that he went to a hospital for treatment, according to the affidavit.
Defense attorneys and witnesses have challenged the account officers detailed in the affidavit.
Five teenagers were charged with aggravated assault, which is a felony, and other misdemeanor offenses, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.
Quakertown police and Bucks County prosecutors have declined to release details of the arrests, including the students’ names and ages and the charges against them.
The teenagers were detained until Tuesday, when they appeared before a Bucks County judge. By late Thursday night , all five teenagers had been released.
Videos recorded by bystanders and obtained by The Inquirer show portions of the struggle from different angles. In one clip, McElree, who was dressed in plain clothes, appears to wrap his arm around a girl’s neck. Witnesses have said he did not identify himself as the police chief before engaging physically with the teenagers.
The affidavit makes no mention of a chokehold.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is investigating the incident. On Thursday, a spokesperson said the office was renewing “our request to the community for any footage, photos, or information that they may have to ensure a thorough investigation.” .
Timothy Prendergast, who represents the 15-year-old girl seen in videos being held in what appears to be a chokehold by McElree, questioned whether the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office can conduct an impartial investigation while prosecuting the teenagers.
“It’s hard to believe that a district attorney’s office — which has charged our clients with felonies, continues to argue for their detention, and has already labeled the chief a victim — will do an independent review of what happened,” he said.
Prendergast and Ed Angelo, who represents a different 15-year-old accused of striking McElree in the shoulder, said they plan to ask the Pennsylvania attorney general to intervene. “We need a truly independent investigation,” Prendergast said.
Prendergast said his client is the teenager accused in the affidavit of hitting McElree with her backpack. In video footage reviewed by The Inquirer, her backpack appears to remain on her back as McElree takes her to the ground.
Prendergast contended that affidavits of probable cause reflect law enforcement’s theory of a case, not established facts. “Probable causes are not for the truth of the matter,” he said. “They are for the commonwealth’s circling of the wagons — what their version of the facts are, which insulates their culpability in this matter.”
Angelo said that his client also denies hitting the chief and that the charges against her should be withdrawn. He said the situation escalated only after McElree inserted himself into the confrontation.
“I think it’s time for the adults to be adults and pull the plug on this,” Angelo said.
Another adult who entered the altercation was initially placed in handcuffs but was not charged. In one video, an officer can be heard telling the man that the person involved was McElree — suggesting the man did not realize he was grappling with the police chief.
McElree has not spoken publicly since the incident and has not returned phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
Some Quakertown residents have called for McElree’s ouster. Quakertown Community School District officials have said they expected to hear concerns from community members Thursday evening at a scheduled board meeting.
This article was updated to reflect new information that, as of late Thursday night, all teenagers had been released from custody.
Every Cure, a biotech nonprofit started by a University of Pennsylvania researcher, has landed $76 million in federal funding to advance its artificial intelligence match-making tool that identifies existing drugs to treat rare diseases.
Over the next three years, Philadelphia-based Every Cure will use the funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to pursue preclinical studies for at least 20 drugs that show promise for being repurposed for rare diseases with no other treatment options. The company will also pursue clinical trials to further test the safety and effectiveness of repurposing another 10 existing drugs.
The nonprofit was co-founded in 2022 by David Fajgenbaum, an associate professor at University of Pennsylvania, after his own experience with a rare disease.
He was diagnosed with Castleman disease as a medical student at Penn, and experimented in a campus lab with his own blood to try to find an off-label medication that could address his symptoms.
Every Cure’s AI tool expedites a drug discovery process that is otherwise often left to chance. When patients with rare diseases have few treatment options, doctors may scour medical journals or tap expert networks for leads on other drugs to try with mixed results.
The tool automates the process, using an algorithm to read massive biomedical data about diseases, medications, genes, and proteins. The tool looks for bits of data that diseases and medications may have in common that were previously unrecognized.
“This next phase will allow us to do the essential work of evaluating these potentially life-saving treatments in the lab and clinical trials, accelerating access to potential treatments for those who urgently need them,” Fajgenbaum, Every Cure’s President, said in a statement.
The new funding adds to $108 million in federal support the nonprofit has already received.
So many people packed into an East Whiteland Planning Commission meeting Wednesday in response to a data center project that the crowd exceededcapacity and forced township officials to reschedule the discussion.
The meeting will be tentatively rescheduled for March 9 at a larger venue, township officials said.
It was the second time this week that a strong public presence changed the course for local officials weighing data center projects. In North Coventry, the township supervisors took a vote Monday saying they would deny a data center project that had not yet been formally submitted after more than a hundred people packed into the meeting to object to it.
The developers, Sentinel Data Centers and Green Fig Land LLC, said the changes would also update the project to modern technology, saying the approved 2024 plan was outdated. Those changes would include removing two microwave towers, antenna yards, and ground-mounted cooling towers. It would also redesign cooling equipment to use waterless chillers.
Lou Colagreco, the attorney for the developer, told the board Wednesday construction would commence within the next couple of weeks, with groundwork underway, under the previously approved project. He urged the commission to recommend the amended plan to the township’s board of supervisors.
“We think that a yes vote … approves, at the end of the day, a better plan,” Colagreco said.
After some musical chairs — with the attendees scooting their chairs up to make more standing room at the back — the discussion came to a halt roughly a half hour into the meeting.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” planning commission chairwoman Deborah Abel said after a brief pause, “but we’ve just been told by the fire marshal that we cannot continue this meeting with this amount of people in the room.”
Attendees exceeded the room’s capacity of 98, with an additional 30 people in the lobby. Township officials sought to whittle the numbers down, saying people could watch the livestream at home, or stand in the lobby.
But residents chafed at the request, calling on the board to reschedule the meeting instead.
It represents a growing trend of residents packing into municipal meetings in Chester County to decry data center projects. More than 100 residents showed up at the North Coventry meeting Monday, speaking for more than an hour against a project that had not formally been submitted to the township. It surprised the developer, who decided to scrap it. In East Vincent, after months of public participation, the planning commission recommended that the township’s board of supervisors reject a proposal for the historic Pennhurst site.
The opposition from residents clashes with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has sought to draw more of this development to Pennsylvania. And while about 38% of Pennsylvanians said in a December survey they support data centers being built in the state, they were less likely to support data centers in their own backyards.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming out,” Abel told residents as she ended the meeting. “Sorry for the waste of time.”
Intermittent fasting, one of America’s most popular diet trends, may be no more effective than simply cutting calories for weight loss, a new review of research shows.
Researchers found little to no difference in the amount of weight loss acrossmore than 20 studies comparing intermittent fasting, an eating pattern that cycles between periods of eating and fasting, with traditional dietary advice (which calls for restricting calories or the types of foods eaten).
The findings were published this month in the Cochrane Library, home to evidence reviews that are considered the gold standard for evaluating health evidence.
“From the results of this review, it doesn’t look like intermittent fasting is any better than regular dietary advice,” said Diane Rigassio Radler, a co-author on the study and a clinical nutrition professor at Rutgers School of Health Professions.
The data came from 22 randomized controlled trials involving nearly 2,000 participants across Europe, North America, China, Australia, and South America. Interventions ranged from four weeks to six months long, and looked at participants’ outcomes up to a year later.
In six of the trials, participants were picked at random to either practice intermittent fasting or do nothing. The difference in weight loss between the two groups was so small that it was not considered “clinically meaningful,” Radler said.
People generally need to lose 5% of their body weight to see health benefits. When the research team pooled the results of studies, they found weight loss from intermittent fasting slightly exceededthat of the group that did nothing, but remained below the 5% threshold.
“Anecdotally, people have told me that [intermittent fasting] might work for them, but the reasons for doing these systematic reviews is so that you can pull the evidence and make a stronger conclusion based on facts,” Radler said.
The studies focused on people in the overweight or obese categories as measured by BMI, a calculation of a person’s body fat based on their height and weight. The relevance of the research findings to people in the healthy weight category remains unknown. (While widely used, BMI is often not a good predictor of an individual’s health, as people’s body types can vary widely depending on race, gender, and age.)
The Inquirer spoke with Radler, who is also a registered dietitian by training, about the findings of the study and its implications, in an interview that was lightlyedited for length and clarity.
What is the theory behind intermittent fasting?
From a physiological perspective, there’s sound science in terms of why fasting might have an edge over just calorie restriction alone.
Number one, it involves calorie restriction. It’s thought to increase fat metabolism. There’s some hormonal stuff going on. It may enhance insulin sensitivity. When you’re fasting, you’re going to be breaking down fatty acids, and those can produce a significant source of energy.
But from the available studies we were able to evaluate, the findings are that intermittent fasting was not really different [in terms of weight loss].
There’s the theoretical framework, and then there’s what happens when you put it into reality.
Instead of intermittent fasting, what would you recommend?
It’s individualized. It depends on where the patient’s at and what they feel that they want to do.
The cardinal rule of thumb is you create a calorie deficit, and whether that’s with restricted eating or increased energy expenditure (such as through exercise), or a combination of both, you’re looking to achieve calorie restriction over time. Generally, you’re going to probably sustain that for at least 12 weeks, and then look at some outcomes.
We found that people who work with a registered dietitian on a weekly or every other week basis have the most success in terms of achieving weight management.
Your study found that intermittent fasting wouldn’t necessarily be effective. But would it be harmful for people to do?
You have to look at people’s baseline and their other comorbidities if they have any. But generally, we didn’t find that there were adverse effects, according to the studies that measured that as an outcome.
When you fast, there’s a risk of dehydration and risk of low blood sugar, but generally, the studies that measured the adverse effects didn’t find significant differences.
Are there any gaps in the research that you think should be looked into further?
There could be room for more research with a wider diversity of subjects, because most of the studies were in high-income countries. We have to look at some of the cultural differences.
Also, research with longer durations. We were not able to find studies that went out beyond 12 months of outcomes.
