A woman is recovering after she was injured during a house fire in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia.
The fire started at a home on the 3600 block of N. Marvine Street at 6:47 p.m. Tuesday. After firefighters brought the blaze under control they found an injured 24-year-old woman inside. She was taken to Temple University Hospital where she is currently in stable condition.
Neighbors told NBC10 the woman has special needs and they're grateful that the firefighters responded quickly.
"They pulled her out," said Lawrence Burgess. "They went into the smoke and did their jobs."
Officials have not yet determined the cause of the blaze though they believe it started in the back of the house.
"This is the first fire I responded to," said Philadelphia's newest fire commissioner Adam Thiel. "We actually had a higher than normal amount of fires in the past couple days."
Firefighters in New Jersey rescued a dog that became stranded on an island of debris in a pond Tuesday after chasing a flock of geese.
Captain Joe Coletta of the Bloomfield Fire Department waded into waist-high water to rescue the pooch from Clarks Pond behind the local middle school.
A video of the rescue shows the dog standing atop floating tree branches and other debris and carefully walking toward Coletta, who climbs out of a rowboat to retrieve the dog.
The dog, named Iggy, had been stranded for about an hour. His owner Carlos Velez told NBC 4 New York he had been walking him next to the school field when Iggy spotted some geese, got free of his leash and chased them all the way into the pond filled with muck and debris.
Velez was frantic.
"The neighbor called the fire department while I was screaming," he said.
Coletta jumped into the water not knowing how deep it was.
"I had a good guy with me, he would have come and got me," he said, shrugging off the danger.
It was shallow enough, and finally Iggy came over to him.
"You could see he was exhausted, it was trudging through. His legs kept getting stuck and I think that's when he kind of said, 'I'm going to give up and come to you,'" he said.
Coletta says he's saved plenty of cats and even ducklings. But this was his first dog rescue.
An Easton Area High School substitute teacher surrendered to authorities Tuesday after being accused of having sex with a student in a cemetery earlier this month.
Police allegedly found 49-year-old Kelly Aldinger having sex with the 17-year-old in a vehicle parked at the Easton Cemetery around 1 p.m. back on May 6.
According to police, Aldinger has known the victim for awhile and began the relationship when the teen, who is a junior at Easton High, was her student about 18 months ago.
The cemetery manager said the property has had issues with vandalism, drugs, and prostitution, but called the most recent case remarkably disturbing. The cemetery has plans to install cameras, along with adding more patrols, to keep the area safe.
Aldinger faces felony sex assault charges.
It was not immediately clear if Aldinger has an attorney.
A feud boiled over early Wednesday leaving Philadelphia Police looking for one 19-year-old as another teenager fought for his life after being shot while investigating a fire set outside his home.
The incident began shortly after midnight when a family living along Lebanon Avenue near 57th Street in the city’s Overbrook neighborhood came outside to investigate a folding chair on fire on their front porch.
“More than likely the incendiary device was thrown on the front porch that caused the fire and the victim then came out to investigate,” said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small. “That’s when he was confronted by the shooter.”
The gunman – identified by witnesses as a 19-year-old who lives nearby – then opened fire at close range, striking the victim three times in the torso, said police.
Police rushed the man to Penn Presbyterian Hospital where he underwent surgery in critical condition overnight.
Small said that investigators believe the arson was to get the attention of the two men and two women inside the home so that he could attack the teen. The victims tried to shut the door but the gunman continued to fire through the front door, leaving three bullet holes in the door.
Investigators didn’t identify the suspect as they continued to search for him Wednesday morning. [[379931631, C]]
The shooting/arson was part of a violent night in the city as a 38-year-old man was shot and killed along the 3100 block of Clifford Street in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood.
Police in Montgomery County have a warning for residents: if you see a black bear, keep away and call police.
The bear was last seen near Souderton Area High School along Lower Road around noon Tuesday, said Franconia Township Police. Investigators even released a grainy photo of the animal near some trees.
“Attempts to (tranquilize) it were unsuccessful,” police said on Facebook. “If it is spotted call 911 and report its location. DO NOT APPROACH THE BEAR. LET IT GO and it will move on. It is as afraid of you as you may be of it.” [[379924221, C]]
Police described the bear as being around 2 years old and weighing between 125 to 150 pounds.
This wasn’t the only recent bear sighting in the Philadelphia region. A bear turned up along the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia last Friday and someone spotted a bear at the Penn Oaks Golf Club in Thornbury Township, Chester County over the weekend.
The game commission isn’t sure if it’s the same bear moving around the area or multiple animals.
Congress is set to vote on Wednesday on a measure that could cause 3 million children nationwide -- including about 200,000 in the tri-state area -- to lose access to free school meals if it passes.
The bill, which would reauthorize the National School Lunch and Child Nutrition acts, includes a proposal that would increase the threshold at which school lunch is offered universally at a school.
Currently, through a measure called "community eligibility," a school's entire student body is eligible for free lunches if at least 40 percent of students qualify. The proposed bill would increase that threshold to 60 percent, putting millions of children across the United States at risk of losing meal access.
The measure could potentially put students in some of the country's poorest communities at risk for missing meals, according to a report issued last month by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
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Locally, School District of Philadelphia schools, where 100 percent of students qualify for free lunches according to state statistics, likely would not be affected. But Archdiocese of Philadelphia schools -- and schools in Delaware and New Jersey -- could potentially suffer cuts.
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In Pennsylvania overall, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report estimates that 240 schools that have adopted the community eligibility program -- bringing free lunches to more than 132,000 students -- would be affected. In New Jersey, an estimated 29,300 students at 62 schools would be at risk and in Delaware, some 38,000 students in 73 schools could potentially lose their access to school meals.
The report says the measure that allowed schools to opt-in their entire student bodies for school meals simplified administration of the program for schools and decreased the stigma around low-income students getting meals at school, increasing student participation and helping to improve their diets, behavior and academic achievements.
Students are automatically qualified for the school meal program if their families receive the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (colloquially known as SNAP or food stamps), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program or similar programs. The center report said if the measure is passed, although the schools with the poorest students would likely not see changes to their programs, schools that serve lower-income communities would still suffer.
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"The schools that would no longer qualify for community eligibility serve predominantly low-income students in some of our highest-poverty communities," the report reads. "And, in schools with such high concentrations of poverty, students who don't qualify for free or reduced-price meals are typically not much better off than those who do qualify."
The Pennsylvania Medical Society launched an education effort Tuesday to help physicians and patients find treatment alternatives to highly addictive painkillers in an effort to stem a tide of overdoses and addiction.
In a Capitol news conference, the society's president, Dr. Scott Shapiro, referenced one of the state's former mottos, "State of Independence," and said Pennsylvania has become the "State of Dependence."
"We have come to rely too heavily on using opioids for pain," Shapiro said.
Dr. David Talenti, the medical society's chairman, said 80 percent of heroin addicts started out on an opioid prescription.
The doctors' group recommended steps that physicians should take and posted prescribing guidelines and other materials online . It also said it planned an online advertising effort.
The steps for physicians include helping get treatment for patients who have a substance use disorder. That recommendation comes as the state and federal governments look to pump millions more dollars into creating new treatment slots.
According to the data firm IMS Health, nearly 10.4 million prescriptions for opioid medications were filled for patients in Pennsylvania in 2015. That was down from 11.3 million in 2013, and Talenti said physicians in Pennsylvania have significantly improved their awareness of the problem in the past three years.
Three years ago, physician education about the opioid addiction problem was "weak," Talenti said.
"I think in the last three years they're coming up to speed," Talenti said.
A 2012 analysis of data cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that Pennsylvania's rate of painkiller prescriptions was in the top half of states.
Gov. Tom Wolf's administration said heroin and opioid overdoses are now Pennsylvania's leading cause of accidental deaths. It counted nearly 2,500 overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2014 and estimated that the 2015 total will surpass that.
NBC10 personalities will be at the home of the Phillies Wednesday afternoon for the second-annual Citizens Bank Weather Education Day Presented by NBC10 First Alert Weather.
NBC10 First Alert Weather team members Bill Henley, Sheena Parveen, Violeta Yas and chief meteorologist (and huge Phillies fan) Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz will provide an educational experience focused on weather that all students will enjoy. Hundreds of busloads of area students -- about 11,000 rally-towel-waving children in total -- came to the ballpark for the demonstrations before the Phils faced the Miami Marlins.
"Students of all ages will enjoy this ultimate field trip experience filled with both learning and fun," said the Phillies.
Even if you couldn't make it down to the ballpark you could still check out the educational fun by watching LIVE on this page and following NBC10 on Facebook and Twitter.
The weather programs got underway around 10:30 a.m. and the first pitch of the game is at 1:05 p.m.
Cheesesteaks. South Street. Boyz II Men. People breaking out into soulful song.
It doesn’t get more Philly than that.
Those forces of Brotherly Love-dom collided at 3 a.m. Friday inside Jim's Steaks as a line of joyful partiers came together to show their Philly pride by channeling our most-famous boy band.
The (slightly off-key) result is enough to remind us all that our city, despite all the typical challenges, is like no other.
Singer Johnny Showcase, of "Johnny Showcase & The Mystic Ticket," posted a video of the sing-a-long to Facebook.
New York may never sleep, but Philly knows how to close out a night.
A woman whose son's body was found after she said he disappeared at a New Jersey carnival 25 years ago has been found guilty of killing the 5-year-old.
Michelle Lodzinski, formerly of Perth Amboy, was found guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday morning in the death of Timothy Wiltsey, who Lodzinski said went missing while they were at a carnival in Sayreville on May 25, 1991.
She later changed her story and said that Wiltsey had been kidnapped.
His body was found in a marshy, remote part of an industrial park in Edison nearly a year later, on April, 23, 1992.
The verdict comes after several weeks of testimony.
Lodzinski was arrested in 2014 in Florida, where she was living, and had denied any role in her son's disappearance or killing.
The mother's arrest came after a cold-case review helped launch a new investigation.
First-degree murder is punishable by 30 years to life in prison in New Jersey.
The Middlesex County prosecutor at the time of Tomothy’s disappearance said following Lodzinski's 2014 arrest that he wasn’t surprised and detectives had never stopped working the case.
"We didn't have sufficient evidence at the time to pull the trigger," Alan Rockoff previously told The Associated Press. "There was no direct smoking gun here."
Lodzinski's brother, Michael Lodzinski, said that that "what was right was done today" but added that the family is devastated by the conviction.
"We're devastated by this, right from the beginning it was a no-win situation for the family," he said.
