August 7, 2019 4:03 am
SHALER, Pa. – (WPXI) – A Shaler man is dead after being shot by police outside of his home in the Spencer Woods neighborhood. Police said they were called to the area for reports that the man, Donald Babbit, 49, was acting erratically. When officers arrived, they were informed Babbit had access to guns inside his home. Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said those officers set up a perimeter and began trying to contact him using a loud speaker. Babbit then allegedly walked toward officers waving a handgun in the air. After officers told him to put it down he pointed it at one of them, McDonough said. That’s when three officers shot Babbit and hit him multiple times. He was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead a short time later. Penn Hills School District issued a statement saying Babbit was a teacher in the district: “It is with deep regret that the Penn Hills School District shares the unexpected passing of PHHS teacher Don Babbit earlier today. Don was a beloved member of our staff and had the distinct reputation among students, families, and colleagues as being an exceptional teacher. He will be missed. No further information is available at this time.”
August 7, 2019 3:55 am
Funeral services have been set for a former Washington County resident who was gunned down in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio early Sunday morning. Services for 26-year-old Nicholas Cumer will be held at eleven o’clock on Saturday, August 10th in the Piatt and Barnhill Funeral Home at 420 Locust Avenue in Washington. Friends will be received from one to three and six to eight p.m. on Thursday and Friday. Cumer was a 2012 graduate of Washington High School and received his Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s degree from St. Francis University.
August 6, 2019 5:46 pm
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Letters and postcards the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick wrote to three men he allegedly sexually abused and harassed show how he groomed his victims, experts say.
Two abuse prevention experts reviewed the correspondence at the request of The Associated Press. They said McCarrick’s use of familiarity and boasts about his own power were ways he made the men feel special. AP is publishing the correspondence ahead of the promised release of the Vatican’s own report into who knew what and when about McCarrick’s misconduct.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in February. McCarrick denies the allegations. (Photo: CNN)
August 6, 2019 4:55 pm
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) – The FBI has opened an investigation into the Ohio mass shooting, citing the gunman’s interest in violent ideology. The head of the FBI’s Cincinnati field office says investigators will try to determine what ideologies influenced 24-year-old Connor Betts. Special Agent Todd Wickerham did not specifically say what the FBI was investigating, but said the agency is looking into who might have helped Betts, and why he chose the specific target of Dayton’s Oregon entertainment district. Dayton’s police chief says Betts had expressed “a desire to commit a mass shooting.” Betts was wearing a mask and body armor when he opened fire with an AR-15 style gun outside a strip of nightclubs in Dayton early Sunday. He killed his younger sister and eight others before officers fatally shot him less than 30 seconds into his rampage.
August 6, 2019 10:25 am
NEW YORK (AP) – Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has died. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. She was 88.
She was the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, awarded in 1993. The Swedish academy hailed her use of language and her “visionary force.” Her novel “Beloved,” in which a mother makes a tragic choice to murder her baby to save the girl from slavery, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. (Photo: Getty Images)
August 6, 2019 9:39 am
PITTSBURGH -(WPXI) – A barge struck a boat overnight on the Ohio River and three people had to be rescued, authorities said. The collision happened shortly after midnight Tuesday below the Point and above the West End Bridge. At one point, the boat was stuck under the front right side of the barge. According to public safety officials, the barge was empty and riding high, so the captain was not aware the boat was caught under it. When barges are empty, they float up and are 10-feet high, meaning the captain can’t see when something’s too close. But when barges are filled, the captain’s line of sight is OK. The barge was slowed and stopped after the captain saw and heard River Rescue’s lights and sirens, officials said. The three adults who were on the boat called 911. River Rescue got them onto the River Rescue boat and took them to the North Shore boathouse outside PNC Park. Paramedics then took them to a hospital to be evaluated. A woman who was on the boat said she and her two brothers had stopped on the river to charge their boat battery and none of them noticed the barge until it came right at them and slammed into the boat. The woman claims they blared their SOS horn, but the barge still pushed them down the river a couple hundred feet. She also says the lights on the boat were on at the time.
August 6, 2019 9:29 am
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) – Hundreds of people held vigil outside the National Rifle Association’s headquarters in Virginia for the dozens slain in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Gun control groups including March for Our Lives organized Monday’s “Vigil for Remembrance and Change,” which sought to honor the dead and call for stronger gun laws. The back-to-back weekend shootings cost a total of 31 lives and left more than 50 people wounded. Vigil attendees held moments of silence punctured by the recitation of victim names, including those gunned down in Chicago and the 13 black transgender women killed so far this year. Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton joined the crowd in decrying political inaction. The NRA has said it wouldn’t take part in “politicizing” the shootings, but would work to find solutions.
August 6, 2019 4:36 am
In a departure from contentious meetings for Cecil Township Supervisors, the most recent meeting was busy but very civil in tone. Highlighting a busy agenda was the passage of an ordinance to allow township fire departments to receive reimbursements for their expenditures from their rescue responses. Chief William Cass of the Cecil #1 Fire Company explained that all Cecil Twp Fire Companies are now authorized to seek reimbursement from insurance companies for services rendered during a rescue. These reimbursements are being sought for rescues when the companies are called out to assist victims especially on Interstate 79 where services are for victims of other places and not residents of the township. It is not the intent of the reimbursements to be used against residents. In other township business, supervisors created a Capital Parks Account to allow long term savings for park improvements. Chairperson Cindy Fisher explains that this account is different from the General Park Improvement Account as the monies deposited here will accrue from year to year and not get swept back into the township’s general fund at the end of the fiscal year. Upon creation of the account, supervisors authorized a $150,000 transfer from the General Park Improvement Account.
August 6, 2019 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Trump administration has frozen all Venezuelan government assets in a significant escalation of tensions with socialist leader Nicolas Maduro. The ban on Americans doing business with Venezuela’s government takes effect immediately. An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday cited Maduro’s continued “usurpation” of power and human rights abuses by those loyal to him. The order falls short of an outright trade embargo but represents the most crippling U.S. efforts to remove Maduro since the Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader in January. Previous sanctions have targeted Venezuela’s oil industry, the source of most of the country’s export revenue.
August 6, 2019 4:16 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s military says North Korea fired unidentified projectiles twice into the sea as it continues to ramp up weapons tests amid stalemated nuclear negotiations with the United States. The launches on Tuesday came a day after the U.S. and South Korean militaries started scaled-down joint military exercises despite warnings from the North that the drills could derail fragile nuclear diplomacy. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says the projectiles were launched from an area near the North’s western coast and flew cross-country before landing in waters off the country’s eastern coast. It didn’t immediately say how far the projectiles flew. The North last week conducted two test-firings of what it described as a new rocket artillery system and conducted a short-range ballistic missile launch on July 25.
