A New Jersey man has been accused of drinking and driving -- while behind the wheel of a backhoe.
The 56-year-old man was arrested Tuesday afternoon after police in South Brunswick said they got calls about a man driving the construction equipment while drinking a beer.
An officer spotted the backhoe swerving in and out of his lane and pulled the vehicle over, according to police.
The officer smelled alcohol when he approached the driver, according to police. he also found bottles of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and vodka in the backhoe. The driver then allegedly told police he didn't have a valid license, and the officer cuffed him after a field sobriety test.
The driver was charged with driving while intoxicated, careless driving, failing to maintain a lane and having an open container of alcohol.
The driver had seven prior DWI convictions dating back to 1980.
An elementary school razed by a devastating fire in 2014 has been rebuilt, and will soon open again to hundreds of schoolchildren.
The devastating fire destroyed the James Monroe Elementary School in Edison on a cold March Saturday two-and-a-half years ago.
While a prosecutor's investigation concluded a cigarette discarded by the school's custodian of the time probably caused the fire, there was never enough evidence to take him to court.
Showing NBC 4 New York through the new school on Wednesday, superintendent Richard O'Malley described how teachers had been hard at work preparing it for the children.
Principal Lynda Zapoticzny said the school had retained its sense of community through the rebuild.
"This was a building that we lost but we were still all together, we were still all a community, so wherever we traveled we were still a school" she said.
Now the school is all but fire proof, administrators say, and it will open in a couple of weeks.
Two armed men carjacked a driver in the parking lot of a popular South Philadelphia shopping center overnight and wound up ditching the car in Delaware County.
The gunmen approached the driver in the Walmart parking lot along Christopher Columbus Boulevard just after midnight, said Philadelphia Police.
The victim luckily wasn’t injured as the suspects drove off, said police.
Police used the victim’s cellphone and surveillance cameras to track the car through West Philadelphia and into Upper Darby in Delco, said police.
Upper Darby Police found the carjacked vehicle along Long Lane – a shotgun still inside – more than 10 miles away, said investigators.
The victim identified the suspects who were arrested and awaiting charges, said police.
Surveillance cameras captured a man breaking into a restaurant along a busy Montgomery County road earlier this week.
The man robbed Ban Ban Asian Bistro along Old York Road near the Edge Hill Road overpass in Abington around 11:15 p.m. Sunday night, said Abington Township Police.
Cars can be seen driving by as the man appears to test the business’ front door. The eatery was closed at the time.
The guy then found a shovel nearby and smashed a window to gain entry, said police. He proceeded to grab the cash register and empty it behind the eatery.
The guy ran off north on Old York Road, ditching the shovel in a nearby yard, said investigators.
Police asked anyone who recognizes the thief to call 267-536-1100 and select option 3.
A sure sign of winter in the greater Philadelphia region arrived Thursday as skiers and snowboarders returned to the slopes of Camelback Mountain in the Pocono Mountains.
The Tannersville slope opened its 53rd ski season with limited trails open Thursday morning but seeing skiers back on the mountain had people excited.
"We’re experiencing ideal snowmaking conditions and have been running the snowguns around the clock, allowing us to open more terrain literally day after day," said Camelback vice president of sales & marketing Brian Czarnecki. "We’ll open Thursday with really fantastic conditions due to the man-made snow and the near foot of snow that has fallen already this season. With ideal snowmaking temperatures into late next week we anticipate excellent conditions and a fully opened mountain for the Christmas Holiday week."
The plan is to open their Snowtubing Park – claimed to be the nation’s largest – on Saturday.
Other Poconos-area ski slopes also welcomed back skiers this week. Elk Mountain in Union Dale opened Tuesday; Blue Mountain in Palmerton and Shawnee Mountain in east Stroudsburg opened Wednesday; and Jack Frost/Big Boulder in White Haven also opened Thursday. And, Spring Mountain in Spring Mount planned to open Saturday.
Stay safe on the slopes this season.
With just over a month until his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump is selling membership cards to the event, though it's not exactly clear what the cards offer.
A page on the Donald J. Trump for President site offers the cards in exchange for a donation, suggesting amounts from $35 to $2,700, the federal limit for an individual political donation. The site doesn't say what benefits being a card-carrying inauguration member conveys.
"The bearer of this card is committed to helping advance President Donald Trump's agenda to Make America Great Again!" reads a rendering of the back of the card, visible in a short video on the site.
The webpage informs potential buyers that "our official membership rollout begins on Inauguration Day." On Thursday, it warned contributors that they only have until 11:59 p.m. to pay for the "exclusive" cards before they were sent to printers.
Contributors can vote for their favorite of two inaugural membership card designs. One is deep blue and features an inaugural seal showing the White House above the names "Trump" and "Pence." The other is a photo of Trump waving to an audience at an event. Neither design provides information about how the cards will be used on January 20.
NBC reached out to the Trump transition team for comment about what privileges cardholders will enjoy during inauguration.
As of Monday, Trump added a link to his Twitter bio selling "inaugural membership cards," according to reports in Fortune and the Verge; the link to DonaldJTrump.com in the bio Thursday redirected to the page selling the cards.
This is reportedly not the first time Trump has made IDs available to his supporters.
The Trump campaign offered donors "gold executive membership cards" over the summer for showing their support, the Verge reported. The asking price was originally $200, but by August they had devalued to $35, according to Fortune. The fundraising move was criticized online, as the shiny gold cards served no actual function.
Jane Broderson and four other Lower Merion residents trekked to Harrisburg on Thursday for a state appeals court hearing on the township school district's recent tax increase.
Broderson and the other residents actually are in favor of a tax hike that was thrown out three months ago by a Montgomery County judge. The group, who call themselves "Save LMSD," said the rejection in late August of a 4.4 percent increase jeopardizes the affluent town's ability to "provide the best possible education to students."
"He wants no kindergarten, no AP classes, no honors program, no athletics," Broderson said of attorney Arthur Wolk, who successfully sued to have the tax rescinded. "That is not what we want."
The hearing once again pitted the district against three taxpayers who claim school officials have mischaracterized district finances -- to taxpayers and state oversight officials alike -- for the last decade while building up large reserves.
Lower Merion's attorney Alicia Hickok, hired for the appeal, argued that the case so far has relied on a "mistaken characterization" of district spending and savings put forth by Wolk during the initial case before Common Pleas Judge Joseph Smyth and again Thursday.
She also argued that Smyth sidestepped the authority of local elected officials and state oversight.
"Judge Smyth said he could second-guess the (Pennsylvania) Department (of Education. But he doesn't have the authority to do that," Hickok said.
The residents shook their heads as Wolk in turn told a three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court that he took the district to court for reasons bigger than the tax bills of himself and the two other taxpayers named as plaintiffs.
"In fact, I represent 20,000 taxpayers," Wolk, a township resident, told the panel, referring to all of Lower Merion's property owners who pay school taxes.
A ruling by the panel of judges is not expected until the new year. Based on their questioning of Hickok and Wolk, the two sides said there could be several outcomes. In addition to Lower Merion's appeal to have its tax increase reinstated at the rate adopted in the summer, the judges are considering two motions by Wolk to: reject the appeal based on procedural technicalities in the aftermath of Smyth's ruling; and ignore briefs filed by three state education associations, including the Pennsylvania teachers' union, in support of Lower Merion.
The groups claim Smyth's ruling amounts to "judicial meddling" in the affairs of an elected body that acted within its constitutionally protected powers.
