Police are searching for a man accused of stalking and groping a teen girl in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood.

A 16-year-old girl told police she was leaving a corner store near Manheim Street and Wayne Avenue Sunday around 2:30 p.m. when a man followed her as she walked out and yelled lewd comments toward her.

“She said what he said to her and I’m just too much of a lady to even repeat it,” the girl’s mother, who did not want to be identified, told NBC10.

The man also asked the girl if she lived in the area and how old she was, police said. When the girl told him she was 16-years-old, the man continued to follow and talk to her. Surveillance video shows the man stalking her as she tries to walk away.

The girl said she stopped at the corner of Manheim and Pulaski Avenue when the man groped her.

“He grabbed her butt,” the girl’s mother said. “Not no little soft touch. He reached out and grabbed her butt and held onto her butt.”

The teen was eventually able to flee from the suspect. 

“When she called me, she was absolutely traumatized,” the girl’s mother said. “I couldn’t even understand what she was saying. All I knew is I had to get to her.”

Investigators say the man was also involved in several other incidents in the city. The girl, who we are not identifying, told NBC10 she spoke with other women who’ve had similar run-ins with him. 

“I’m totally shocked that somebody is so bold and so vicious and so nasty that they would just do this in broad daylight,” the girl’s mother said.

The suspect is described as a bald, clean shaven, heavy-set and light skinned black male, standing 5-foot-6 and weighing 200 pounds between the ages of 35 and 42. He was last seen wearing a black sport type jacket, gray jeans, black sneakers and thick prescription glasses.

If you have any information on his whereabouts, please call the Special Victims Unit at (215) 685-3251.

The American soldier can still remember the black smoke's effect during his time Balad Air Force Base in Iraq.

"You could just taste it," the former intelligence officer said in an interview. "It was like this sickening thing that burnt the back of your throat."

It's a recollection shared by tens of thousands of soldiers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who served on the desert bases of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is the description of the taste of a burn pit, which was for years the term used for a giant military garbage disposal.

"And that’s smoke from our lovely trash pile here on Anaconda,” another soldier can be heard saying in a video shot from another base.

More than 11,500 healthcare claims by military personnel have been submitted to the Veterans Administration, yet only two in 10 have been approved.

Congress and researchers are taking notice.

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Veteran Chad Baer, who is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, wants the V.A. to revamp its burn pit registry. There are currently 170,000 participants on the list.

"It's a pretty flawed tool," Baer said.

The V.A. should be collecting data for soldiers that includes proximity to burn pits, what was being burned in the pits and other soldiers who worked with the veteran in question.

"The V.A. can go from being. A laggard who's constantly getting beat up by the media to kind of a leader," Baer said.

Last year, several former soldiers and medical doctors spoke to NBC10 Investigators about their experiences with burn pits: large holes dug by crews who then filled the pits with trash and lit them on fire with jet fuel. For many soldiers deployed to the desert and living on bases adjacent to the debris disposal, the billowing black smoke was just part of their daily life.

Some now say exposure to these pits has adversely affected their long term health. Their submitted claims blame burn pits for chronic illnesses.

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., has authored several bills to get better medical care for those affected by burn pits.

"If we don't know what was burned, then we won't be able to identify the health risks in order to outreach to our veterans," said Ruiz, who is a medical doctor.

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A spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs said in a statement last November, "VA doctors treat all manner of Veterans health issues and the department continually looks at medical research and follows trends related to medical conditions affecting Veterans."

Army National Guard officer Cindy Aman is one of the former soldiers who remembers the smoke, the smell, the coughing.

She served in Iraq in the early 2000s. Once she returned home to Delaware, she began to notice new symptoms: shortness of breath, fatigue. More than two years later, she was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease called constrictive bronchiolitis.

She blames it on her near-constant exposure to burn pits, and told NBC10 that her fight for care has been "the longest journey ever."

Aman is among more than 9,600 vets who have submitted claims for illnesses they blame on burn pits, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Less than a quarter of them have, like Aman, have had their claims granted as of Aug. 30, 2018, the VA said.

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In 2014, Congress mandated that the VA create a burn pit registry. So far, more than 157,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have reported symptoms on the voluntary registry. But the VA still says it isn’t ready to place all blame on the pits.

“There are still questions that we don’t have good answers for,” Dr. Drew Helmer, director of the Army-Related Illness and Injury Study Center for the VA in East Orange, New Jersey.

But Aman thinks the clock is ticking on veterans’ health.

“They’re saying it’s, you know, the new Agent Orange," she said, referring to an herbicide used during the Vietnam War to clear jungles that has since been linked to leukemia, lymphoma, and cancer in exposed veterans.

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"Agent Orange took 35 years to have recognition," Aman said. "Here we don’t – I’m not waiting 35 years. God, we have veterans that are too sick to wait for 35 years. That’s not fair."

Melissa Bryant, who works with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association, said her group is pushing a bill called the Burn Pit Accountability Act – legislation that would hold the Department of Defense accountable for the health of its service members before they leave the military.

“Never before has the DoD looked to be accountable for the toxic exposures that we face,” said Bryant. “We’re already 17 years into this. So something’s gotta give.”

The VA said in a statement from a spokesman that every claim is "will be adjudicated using the latest scientific and medical evidence available."

"VA has granted service connection for various ailments associated with burn pits, and does so on an individual, case-by-case basis after review of a Veteran’s case," department spokesman Rick Fox said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

The Veterans Affairs Department's Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry is available online at https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/burnpits/registry.asp

Two veterans' advocacy groups are also working to raise awareness and on behalf of vets: Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran of America and BurnPits360.

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A Philadelphia man pleaded guilty to shooting and killing a victim in a quiet Delaware County community less than an hour after firing 17 shots at two men.

Derrick Rollins, 25, was convicted Thursday of murder, attempted homicide and aggravated assault.

On July 29, 2017, Rollins shot John Le, 29, in the chest and hand outside a building on the 2300 block of Haverford Road in Haverford Township. Le was taken to Lankenau Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

About a half hour before Le’s murder, Rollins tried to kill two men in Philadelphia’s Overbrook Park section. He fired 17 shots before fleeing the scene.

Rollins spent weeks on the run after Le’s death before being captured in Georgia in August, 2017.

Rollins’ sentencing will take place on April 12.

At least 49 are dead and one man is charged in two mass shootings at New Zealand mosuqes Friday. We are learning more about the attacks.

March is Women’s History Month and to celebrate the National Youth Foundation is hosting the Born to Make HERstory Girls Rally on Saturday at Philadelphia City Hall. Sophia Hanson and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown stopped by the NBC10 studio to talk about the event.

Investigators are trying to piece together a shooting involving a police officer trenton late Thursday night.

It was a breezy, unexpected commute for riders on board a New York-bound NJ Transit bus that was on the move with an open front door, according to a commuter.

A Twitter user posted a video on social media with the caption “Lovely ride with @NJTRANSIT #NJTransit” on Thursday in which the front door of a bus is seen almost wide open while traveling.

The Twitter user and bus rider, Geoffrey Blueman, says the video was taken about two weeks ago on Feb. 27 around 8 a.m. and shows a Route 159 bus from Cliffside Park to New York City. The video captures the open front door of the moving bus making its way through was appears to be a residential street.

NJ Transit contacted Blueman via Twitter shortly after the video was posted to say the issue "has already been reported to the garage."

Blueman told NBC 4 New York that the bus was packed with all seats filled and people standing. 

According to Blueman, "the door would alternately close fully or stay jammed open after each stop."

Blueman says he frequently rides the bus but he hasn't encountered the door being jammed open before this incident.

"We are thoroughly looking into this matter," NJ Transit spokesman Jim Smith said in a statement. "A bus should not be operating with the doors partly open at any time. We encourage the customer who recorded the video to contact us as any additional information such as a bus number will assist in our investigation."

NBC10 and Telemundo 62 are hosting a phone bank in an effort to make sure every child has a family. Learn how you can become a foster parent on Tuesday. Staci Boyd and Jose Pacheco stopped by the NBC10 studio to talk about the foster phone bank and the great need for foster parents in the City of Brotherly Love.

Before Bob Dylan performed the first show of The Met Philadelphia's grand reopening, Live Nation - which undertook the more-than-100-year-old former opera house's renovation - made a promise: to donate part of the ticket sales to local schools. Now, it's following up on that pledge.

On Friday, the events promoter and venue operator is donating $23,000 to the School District of Philadelphia. The move fulfills part of Live Nation's pledge to donate 25 cents of every ticket sold at The Met to Philadelphia schools.

The donation is set to be presented at Strawberry Mansion High School. It's an inspired choice, given that one of the school's most famous alumni is none other than Philly rapper and criminal justice reform activist Meek Mill. Not only that, but Friday is also the start of Meek Mill Weekend in the city, and the rapper is performing shows at The Met on both Friday and Saturday night.

The cash from this donation and future donations will go to The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which will disperse it to schools around the district, according to Live Nation.

Strawberry Mansion High School will use its share toward its Destined to Achieve Successful Heights (DASH) program, which has developed a music business curriculum currently being piloted at the school.

Friday's temperatures had plenty of us outside with no jacket on, but what kind of temperatures will this weekend bring? NBC10 meteorologist Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz has your forecast.

There could soon be less leeway for New Jersey drivers who overstay their welcome at parking meters. Pat Battle reports.

A new directive limiting local law enforcement's cooperation with federal immigration authorities is going into effect in New Jersey, but the feds are threatening to respond with even more immigration raids in the state. 

The "Immigrant Trust Directive," announced last year by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, aims to strengthen the trust between immigrants and local law enforcement in the state. Among other actions, the directive prevents police departments and corrections officers from honoring immigration authorities' requests to detain people beyond their scheduled date of release.

Yet, if threats coming from Immigration and Customs Enforcement are to be believed, the new guidelines could lead to more arrests by the federal agency. That could undermine the entire purpose of the attorney general's policy.

ICE issued its warning shot almost immediately after Grewal announced the directive late last year.

"The probability is that at-large arrests and worksite enforcement operations, which already exist, will likely increase due to the fact that ICE ERO will no longer have the cooperation of the jails related to immigration enforcement," ICE spokesman Emilio Dabul wrote in a statement to NBC10. 

Jeffrey DeCristofaro, executive director of the Camden Center for Social Justice, said that while the immigrants his group works with are largely concerned about getting caught up during targeted enforcement operations — in which ICE is looking for a specific person — the threat of at-large raids is still real.

"You don't want to be the person that keeps someone from going about their daily life ... but my obligation is also to give them truthful information," DeCristofaro said.

The directive and ICE's response highlight a philosophical rift between federal immigration authorities and so-called sanctuary communities around the nation: to ICE, ridding communities of undocumented immigrants increases safety; to advocates, empowering these same undocumented immigrants to aid in criminal investigations is what makes communities safer.

ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence has said the directive "undermines public safety and hinders ICE from performing its federally-mandated mission."

Yet Grewal has argued the opposite, that a fear of harsh immigration policies drives people "into the shadows" and that his directive will draw them out and encourage them to cooperate with police.

Though the attorney general emphasized that the new policies will not make New Jersey a so-called sanctuary state for undocumented individuals who commit crimes, the change does mimic actions by other cities and states that do consider themselves sanctuaries and have moved to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents since President Donald Trump took office.

As part of the New Jersey directive, police departments and corrections officers will not be allowed to continue to hold those arrested for minor offenses past their original release dates, even if ICE submits an immigration detainer request.

Agencies will still be allowed to notify ICE of inmates' pending release if they have committed a serious crime like murder, rape, arson, assault or domestic violence, but officers will only be allowed to keep those inmates in custody until 11:59 p.m. the day of their scheduled release.

Furthermore, unless granted permission by the state attorney general, law enforcement agencies are prevented from entering into or renewing Section 287(g) agreements with federal authorities, which allow state local agencies to enforce federal civil immigration laws.

New Jersey currently has three agencies adhering to such agreements: the Cape May County, Monmoth County and Salem County sheriff's offices. All three agreements are set to expire June 30 of this year.

The refusal to honor detainer requests is a major sticking point which ICE has repeatedly capitalized on. In news releases, the agency often highlights brutal crimes committed after undocumented immigrants were released from local jails.

In one of those releases, the agency highlighted a Mexican man who was released from the Middlesex County Jail and allegedly went on to kill three people in Missouri. In Philadelphia, ICE said an Honduran man raped a child after being released from Philadelphia Department of Prisons. In North Carolina, a different Mexican man and convicted sex offender posed a "public safety threat" after being released from jail, according to the agency.

In each case, ICE highlighted local law enforcement's prior refusal to honor immigration detainers and used that to suggest that undocumented immigrants pose a threat to communities.

Yet studies show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, and DeCristofaro sees ICE's methods as creating fear by way of focusing on isolated cases.

"It's fearmongering in two ways: it creates fear in the nonimmigrant community, and it creates fear within the immigrant community and makes them afraid to interact with law enforcement to improve the communities," he said.

And while Attorney General Grewal's directive looks to allay those fears in a state with one of the largest undocumented immigrant populations in the nation, whether it will work remains to be seen. His office did not respond to questions about whether ICE's threat of more raids could mean his policy backfires.

For now, DeCristofaro said, many of the immigrants he and his group work with remain hopeful but skeptical.

"I think the idea behind it as absolutely, positively solid, valid and helpful for the community. I think it's just gonna take a little time for it to get down to the community level," he said.

After dozens of people were killed in two mosque shootings in New Zealand, local professors and officials are taking a look at how social media is involved in these massacres. Specifically, some social media companies are concerned with these tragic events being livestreamed on the platforms.

Two days after a mother and her infant son were found dead inside a Delaware apartment, questions remain about how the boy died.

Laura Connell killed herself inside a unit of the Stonehurst Garden Apartments on the 100 block of Richards Avenue in Newport, Delaware, New Castle County police said Friday. 

The bodies of the 45-year-old woman and her 18-month-old son, Walton Connell, were discovered shortly before 9 a.m. Wednesday, police said.

Connell's death was ruled a suicide by gunshot, investigators said.

Walton wasn't shot, police said. The boy's cause and manner of death need further investigation by the Delaware Division of Forensic Science.

New Castle County Police didn't reveal any further details about a motive for the deaths.

Two women who were spotted Wednesday crying outside the crime scene told NBC10 the victims had lived at the apartment for the past three months.

New Castle County said the Division of Police Victim Services Unit at (302)-395-8000 is available to offer support and resources to any victims or witnesses to a violent crime or anyone who has lost a loved one suddenly and need assistance.

SUICIDE PREVENTION HELP: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-8255) is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Have you ever considered fostering a child? Philadelphia officials say they need your help, and they're here to guide you every step of the way.

Philadelphia and its surrounding counties always have something going on. Whether it’s St. Patrick’s Day, restaurant week, strolling a garden or catching a film, this area is full of spring fun even before spring begins We’ve found the top (and affordable) choices of what to do this weekend, March 15 to 17, in Philly and New Jersey.

March 15 to 17

What: King of Prussia Restaurant Week

Enjoy discounted lunches and dinners during this foodie favorite week at participating restaurants.

Where: Various locations in King of Prussia

When: through Sunday

Cost: Between $10 to $40

What: Orchid Extravaganza at Longwood Gardens

Stroll through the indoor gardens and witness the beauty of the rarest of flowers.

Where: Longwood Gardens, 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, Pa.

When: through March 24

Cost: Varies

What: St. Pat's Boardwalk 10 miler and 5K run

Wear your green and celebrate St. Patrick's Day and spring with a run on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

Where: LandShark Bar & Grill Atlantic City, 1133 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, NJ

When: Saturday at 10 a.m.

Cost: Free to watch

What: St. Paddy's Day at Springfest

This indoor/outdoor St. Patrick's Day event will have beer, food trucks, live music, Irish music and of course green beer!

Where: Xfinity Live!, 1100 Pattison Avenue, Philadelphia

When: Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m.

Cost: Starts at $45

What: Israeli Film Festival

This month-long festival celebrates and shares the Israeli experience and culture through films.

Where: Saturday through April 7

When: Various theaters in Philadelphia

Cost: Varies

What: Storytelling in the Gallery

Children ages 6 to 10 will enjoy this story telling time outside while they learn about Japanese folklore.

Where: Grounds for Sculpture, 80 Sculptors Way, Hamilton, NJ

When: Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to noon

Cost: Pre-registration is free with park admission; Day of is $5 per family plus per person park admission

What: St. Patrick’s Day in Philadelphia

Bar crawls, parties and live music can be found throughout the city. There will be Sunday Masses and church services.

Where: Various Philadelphia locations

When: Sunday

Leaders and residents in the Philadelphia region responded with grief, resilience and heightened security after a pair of mosque shootings left dozens dead in New Zealand.

The shooting left 49 people dead after a gunman opened fire at two separate mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. As leaders extended their condolences, the Philadelphia Police Department promised frequent checks on the city's mosques and other houses of worship.

"Philadelphia stands with New Zealand and those affected by the horrific terrorist attack at two mosques. Our hearts are with you. Arohanui," Mayor Jim Kenney wrote on Twitter, using a Maori word that translates roughly to "with deep affection."

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native and former Delaware representative, also expressed his sympathies.

"Whether it is antisemitism in Pittsburgh, racism in Charlottesville, or the xenophobia and Islamophobia today in Christchurch, violent hate is on the march at home and abroad. We cannot stand by as mosques are turned into murder scenes," Biden Tweeted.

Though the massacre happened thousands of miles away, it resonated deeply with Philadelphia's Muslim community.

At the Muslim American Society in North Philadelphia, a school and mosque, teachers held an assembly to try to explain to young students what happened in New Zealand. "How do you talk to others about this? We just have to be strong and ... represent who we are, not hide and move forward from this," said teacher Yasmin Sherif.

In front of a sea of children, many of them girls sporting pink hijabs, jackets and backpacks, an 8-year-old fifth-grader took the microphone, encouraging his peers to not bow to hatred or fear.

"You can't hide yourself," he said. "You need to wear your hijab with pride, wear your thobe with pride. You can't hide."

NBC10 and Telemundo62 are once again hosting a phone bank for families interested in learning more about providing foster care. Thousands of children over the age of 12 need foster care.

One person is dead and another is missing after a fire swept through a home in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday evening, firefighters said.

Two brothers lived in the house on the 3200 block of Birch Road, according to neighbors, who added that they were reclusive.

Three firefighters were hurt at the scene, Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said. Their injuries were minor to moderate, but all were expected to be okay, he said.

Check back soon for more details on this breaking news story.

A Ventnor police sergeant and South Jersey firefighters are among seven people indicted in an alleged $50 million health care fraud scheme. The same investigation has produced nearly two dozen guilty pleas already.