WJPA News

BUTLER, Pa. — Nearly two weeks after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the FBI has confirmed he was struck in the ear by a bullet. Gunman Thomas Crooks fired shots at Trump during his rally at Butler Farm Show on July 13.A former firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was killed. Two other men were injured in the shooting.Crooks was shot and killed by law enforcement. The FBI confirmed in a statement Friday: “What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.” Friday afternoon, Trump announced he would return to Butler and host a rally in honor of the shooting victims.

VERSAILLES, Pa. – A McMurray man is facing charges that include criminal homicide and assault of a law enforcement officer. The charges were filed against 40 year old Robert Kail in connection with a stabbing in Versailles that left a man dead and two other people taken to a local hospital. It happened around 8 p.m at a home along Worthington Street. First responders found a man on the porch of a duplex. He had been stabbed multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim was later identified by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office as Vincent Bazzone, 38. A man in the adjacent home was also stabbed and a woman was assaulted. They were both taken to a local hospital. Initial investigation shows Bazzone and Kail were involved in an altercation that led up to the stabbing. Police say Kail then went into the attached home and got into an altercation with the residents, stabbing the man and assaulting the woman, before driving away. The car was found in McKeesport and Kail was arrested. While he was being taken into custody, police say he fought with officers. An officer and a police K-9 were injured in the fight. Kail was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Washington County Coroner Tim Warco says a Cecil Township man died in a tractor accident Wednesday night.  Warco says eighty-six-year-old Robert Cowden was the operator and sole occupant of a tractor that went over a hillside in the one-hundred block of Ciaffoni Road around seven-thirty.  Warco says his death is being investigated as a medical emergency and is being handled by the Cecil Township Police Department.  Meanwhile, an autopsy  is pending.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A key question is looming for Vice President Kamala Harris as she edges closer to gaining the Democratic presidential nomination: Can she turn the Biden-Harris economic record into a political advantage in a way that President Joe Biden failed to do? In some ways, her task would seem straightforward: The administration oversaw a vigorous rebound from the pandemic recession, one that shrank the U.S. unemployment rate to a half-century low of 3.4% in early 2023. Yet the cumulative jump in average prices over the past three years — roughly 20%, only partly offset by higher paychecks — has contributed to a general unease about the country’s direction.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s military has ordered the evacuation of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it’s planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis. Saturday’s evacuation order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It’s the second evacuation issued this week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

California’s largest active fire has exploded in size, growing rapidly amid bone-dry fuel and threatening thousands of homes as firefighters scramble to meet the danger. The Park Fire’s intensity and rapid spread Friday evening led fire officials to make unwelcome comparisons to the monstrous Camp Fire, which burned out of control in nearby Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes. More than 130 structures have been destroyed by this fire so far, and thousands more remain threatened. Communities elsewhere in the U.S. West and Canada were under siege Friday, from a fast-moving blaze in rural Idaho to a new blaze that was causing evacuations in eastern Washington.