A Philadelphia high school was put on lockdown for a short time on Friday after a person arrived at the campus with a gun, police said.
The incident occurred at the Kensington Urban High School located at 2051 E. Cumblerand St just before 10:30 a.m., officials said.
The gunman left school property soon after authorities learned of the weapon, authorities said.
No one was hurt.
Police are searching for the suspect.
Philadelphia is retooling its arsenal to fight winter weather by rolling out new equipment, deploying spotters and piloting tracking technology in the wake of last year's record-breaking season.
The first of the changes will be an expansion of the Philadelphia Streets Department's brining operation. A salt and water mixture, brine is sprayed onto streets before snow or ice falls to prevent the precipitation from bonding to the asphalt.
"It buys us some time to get out there and salt and it does help with the melting process,” said Stephen Lorenz, the city’s chief highway engineer.
The city will double its ability to store brine at manufacturing yards in Northeast and Northwest Philadelphia — going from a capacity of 20,000 gallons to about 40,000 gallons.
“We can make the brine, store more brine so that way we don’t have the trucks sitting around waiting for the brine to brew,” Lorenz said.
Getting salt on the streets as quickly as possible is obviously important, but doesn’t always happen as fast as it could. Last winter, trucks servicing South Philadelphia had to make treks out to a salt yard in Southwest Philadelphia or another section of the city to load up.
The travel wasted time and gas. “Plus, there are a lot of smaller trucks being used to get down the narrower streets, so they can’t hold as much salt,” Lorenz said.
The fix? Building a temporary salt yard under Interstate 95 near Oregon Avenue.
Officials are working out details on how to store the salt and keep it secure. Lorenz said they need to make sure no one walks away with buckets of salt they don’t own.
“We’re going to try and do it this year and see if it works and if it does we’re going to make some sort of permanent improvement,” he said.
The Streets Department services 2,500 miles of road with a fleet of 85 trucks and staff of 150 working six days a week. And Lorenz said that’s still not enough.
Officials employed help from some 70 outside contractors last winter to salt and plow the roads and supplement the fleet. Lorenz said this winter the city will rely more heavily on these contractors to help in the fight.
Knowing where the equipment is working and where it's really needed can be a challenge, so now the department is piloting a GPS tracking system and launching a spotter network to keep tabs on both.
“We get the call saying Henry Avenue hasn’t been touched yet. We can bring it up on the screen and see ‘When’s the last time a truck went up Henry Avenue? It came up four hours ago. OK wait a minute, why is it icing up again?’ We need to either deploy another truck out there or we’ll send one of these regional spotters out there,” Lorenz explained.
Spotters will be dispatched based on calls the Streets Department receives from police, firefighters and citizens through the city’s 311 call center. They will use a tablet application, currently under development, to record road conditions and take photos, Lorenz said.
Each entry gets timestamped and saved into a database that can be called up for review.
“It’s good that people are telling us how it is, but now that you have your own visual to see how things are, you know that you can call up the supervisors of a certain area and say ‘Look Broad Street looks pretty good, let’s trade efforts on other roadways,’” he said.
The spotter’s records will also help with accountability for both staff and residents.
Lorenz said the department has been unfairly dinged by homeowners who say their streets haven’t been plowed. But, in reality he says, it’s the residents who threw snow from cars and the sidewalks back into the roadway. That’s illegal in Philadelphia.
“If folks say my street wasn’t plowed or wasn’t salted. Well, I’ve got a timestamp that says, yes I did send a salt truck down the street,” he said.
The GPS tracking will be used on eight trucks including several contractor vehicles, Lorenz said. He did not have a number for how many spotters will be working.
Looking past this winter, the Streets Department is investing in equipment to spread wet salt — basically rock salt that has been sprayed with water before it hits the street.
Crews will install water tanks with spray nozzles on five trucks to begin making the switch. Each tank costs $10,000, but Lorenz said reduces the amount of salt needed. That’s because spraying the mineral limits how much it bounces once it hits the pavement so that the actual roadways and not the curbs and gutters get covered.
“We’ve found, what we’ve already known for years, that we have the driest gutters in the country in doing so,” he said.
Contact Vince Lattanzio at 610.668.5532, vince.lattanzio@nbcuni.com or follow @VinceLattanzio on Twitter.
A man surrendered to police Thursday night -- about three weeks after he allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl in an Upper Darby home and then walked her to school the next day.
Twenty-one-year-old Tarell Gatling, of the 300 block of Richfield Road, Upper Darby, met the girl on Nov. 19 near Walnut and 69th streets after she had run away, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.
The suspect brought her to his home, where he made her dinner, gave her a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and told her to "get comfortable," Chitwood said.
The child fell asleep and Gatling, who had disrobed, began touching her depite the girl telling him to stop, he said.
"She fell asleep and when she woke up he raped her," Chitwood told the Delaware County Daily Times. "In the morning, she got dressed and he walked her to school."
The girl's mother located her daughter at school the next day and took her to a local hospital before she was tranferred to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for a sexual assault examination.
Gatling faces multiple charges including the rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, indecent assault of a child less than age 13, corrution of minors and other related offenses.
A local hospital, located a short distance from the home where missing college student Shane Montgomery grew up, is hosting a bake sale Friday to help keep attention on the 21-year-old who disappeared early Thanksgiving morning, after a night out with friends.
The bake sale will take place in the lobby of Roxborough Memorial Hospital, which is located at 5800 Ridge Ave., from 9am to 12 p.m.
Ribbons in the Roxborough native's favorite color -- green -- will be handed out and all donations collected will benefit the family. Green ribbons are also associated with missing children.
Shane, a West Chester University senior and Roman Catholic High School alum, was last seen around 1:45 a.m. on Thanksgiving when he was asked to leave Kildare's Irish Pub on Main Street in Manayunk.
Reports indicated one of the bars' bouncers spotted the missing student about an hour after he left the Main Street pub, but investigators determined the sighting was not Shane after reviewing surveillance video from the area.
Shane's parents, Kevin and Karen Montgomery, appeared on the Today Show Thursday, telling host Matt Lauer about the massive search effort and how difficult their lives have been since they first reported their son missing.
"I always knew Shane was a special kid," Karen said. "Your kids are always very special to you. I've kind of always questioned my parenting skills and I've come to the conclusion that I didn't do such a bad job with Shane and I hope that we find him soon."
Philadelphia police do not suspect foul play, although his disappearance is considered suspicious. Authorities have used K-9s, helicopters and marine units to search Manayunk and Roxborough, as well as the Schuylkill River, which borders Main Street.
The FBI joined the search efforts Saturday and posted digital billboards over the holiday weekend in hopes of locating Shane. The federal organization's task force is often involved when a missing persons case has "suspicious circumstances," an FBI spokesperson said.
A reward for information about Shane's whereabouts climbed to $40,000 Thursday, a day after his West Chester University classmates held a candlelight vigil to show support for the search.
Shane, who weighs about 140 pounds and stands 5-foot-11-inches tall, was wearing a buttoned- down gray shirt, gray hoodie and jeans when he left the bar. He also has a unique Celtic cross tattoo on his shoulder.
"We're waiting for him to walk in the door, but you realize that each hour goes... it's just harder and harder," said Kevin, Shane's father.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Philadelphia Police at 215-686-3353/54 or the FBI at 215-418-4000.
Philadelphia Police are releasing details on Friday about an arrest in bank fraud scam.
Officials did not share any additional information ahead of a 11 a.m. news conference.
You can watch that live in the video box above.
Hundreds of Philadelphia high school students walked out of class Friday carrying signs as part of a rally in protest of the recent grand jury decisions about the deaths of the unarmed, black father, Eric Garner, and the unarmed, black teen, Michael Brown.
Students from the Kensington Health Science Academy began streaming out of the school building shrtly after 10:30 a.m.
Other students from around the city staged a similar walk out -- all in response to the decisions, made by two separate grand juries, not to indict Darren Wilson and Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
Pantaleo was caught on camera putting Eric Garner, a Staten Island father of six, in a chokehold. Garner, who could be heard shouting that he was having trouble breathing, later died.
Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson earlier this year.
Neither office was charged.
Philadelphia rapper Beanie Sigel was shot after an apparent fight outside a Jersey Shore home, police tell NBC10. His attorney believes the rapper was not the intended target.
The shooting happened around 9:20 a.m. Friday outside the home where he lives along the 800 block of Spruce Avenue in Pleasantville, New Jersey, police said.
"From the first appearance, it would appear that there was some sort of altercation next to that property," Pleasantville Police Chief Jose Ruiz said.
Sigel, whose real name is Dwight Grant, was hit in the stomach by a bullet that traveled out his back, police said. He was taken to a hospital and underwent surgery, Sigel's attorney, Fortunato Perri, Jr., told NBC10.
Sigel remains sedated and in critical condition following that procedure, officials said.
Perri, Jr. said the 40-year-old rapper had just returned home from dropping his kids off at school when he came upon the fight near his house. The attorney said it appears Sigel was an unintended victim in the shooting.
"The whole thing is a tragedy," a cousin of Sigel's wife said. She refused to give her name. "It's just very sad and I just ask that everybody keep our family in prayer and that he pulls through."
Another victim, 22-year-old Umar Salahuddin, was injured in the altercation, but was not shot, police said. He is being questioned by detectives, but has not been cooperative, according to authorities. His family owns the home where the shooting took place.
A gray car riddled with bullet holes that has been linked to the shooting was found two blocks from the scene, police said. They took a man in for questioning after he jumped out of the gray car. The driver of the car fled as they grabbed the other man, police said.
Police were also searching for a Honda minivan in connection with the shooting. They found that van -- empty -- just before 8 p.m. Friday at Washington and Hampton aves.
Sigel was released from federal prison in August after serving a two-year sentence for tax evasion. The Internal Revenue Service said he owed more than $728,000 in back taxes.
He was moved to a halfway house in Philadelphia after his release and then was transitioned into home monitoring. His probation ends on Saturday, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The rapper was wearing a monitoring bracelet on his ankle at the time of the shooting, police said.
In 2013, Sigel was also sentenced to six to 23 months in prison after pleading guilty to a drug possession charge in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Sigel was formerly signed to Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records before the two rappers broke ties following a public fight. He had three albums that reached the top five on the Billboard charts.
He had a concert dubbed "Beanie Sigel: The Return" scheduled for Dec. 18 at the Theater of the Living Arts on South Street.
This isn't the first time Sigel was shot. He was hit in the arm during a 2006 shooting in Philadelphia.
NBC10's Ted Greenberg contributed to this report.
Contact Vince Lattanzio at 610.668.5532, vince.lattanzio@nbcuni.com or follow @VinceLattanzio on Twitter.
The National Weather Service is monitoring a coastal storm that may impact the Delaware Valley early next week, bringing a chance of snow.
Meanwhile we are trackign a wet start to the weekend. Most of our area started to see rain Friday afternoon. The rain will continue Saturday with the heaviest downpours expected in the late afternoon and evening.
"The heaviest rain will fall between 3 and 8 p.m.," said NBC10 First Alert Chief Meteorlogist Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz.
The rain comes to an end overnight and the sunshine will return Sunday, along with a cold wind. Temperatures will top out in the low 40s but the gusts will make it feel even colder.
By the time the Eagles take the field to take on the Seahawks, the temperature will be 46 with wind gusts up to 25 mph. By the end of the game, temps will drop into the 30s.
Tracking a Nor'easter:
Rain returns late Monday as a Nor'easter develops off the coast.
The track of the storm will determine whether we see snow, rain or a wintry mix.
The areas with the best chance of seeing snow are north and west of Philadelphia, according to Hurricane.
NBC10 First Alert Meteorologists will continue to monitor the system over the weekend.
A Montgomery County mom is accused of torching the home of her neighbor -- a detective -- in retaliation for her son's arrest.
Donna M. Krupp, 52, was taken into police custody Thursday, the same day the detective's Lower Pottsgrove Township house was set on fire.
The arson appears to be the culmination of six months of resentment, according to court records.
Investigators say Krupp blamed Limerick Detective Ernie Morris for her son's June arrest by Pennsylvania state police. Although Detective Morris was not involved in the case, investigators say Krupp was convinced he told state police where to find her son, Joshua Beauseigneur, who was wanted for an outstanding traffic violation.
Krupp was so angry, police say they warned her to stay away from Morris. The detective also hired an attorney to essentially tell Krupp if she couldn't act neighborly, to ignore Morris and his wife. Instead, she allegedly continued to confront the detective, often late at night when he returned home from work.
"When her son was arrested, she couldn't accept that and that's when she started the other harassment," said neighbor Terri Pope.
In November, Morris installed a video surveillance system after someone egged his car and put sugar in the fuel tank. Investigators say those same cameras captured Krupp setting fire to the detective's porch Thursday while he and his family were away at Disney World. The home was engulfed when firefighters arrived.
Krupp, 52, was charged Friday with arson, recklessly endangering another person, risking a catastrophe and possession of an instrument of crime. Her bail was set at $1 million cash bail.
Jessica Padgett's stepfather videotaped himself having sex with Padgett -- after he'd killed her -- according to Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli.
"So there's a videotape of him abusing the corpse sexually," Morganelli told The Morning Call.
This new information means that Graf will not face the death penalty if he's convicted. Desecration of a corpse is not an aggravating factor in Pennsylvania, as opposed to sexual assault while a victim is alive.
Graf was in his first public appearance in court when this fact was revealed. He requested a public defender but was denied because of his wealth.
"I just don’t want to take away the funds from the family," added Graf. He now plans to hire an attorney.
Graf is charged with shooting Padgett on Nov. 21 and hiding her body behind a shed on his property, amidst a frantic search by her friends and family. A "Help find Jessica Padgett” Facebook page garnered over 8,000 members as of publication.
An online fundraiser for Padgett’s children has received nearly 300 donations in just over a week, totaling over $11,000.
Police found evidence of marijuana dealing on Graf’s property, but at this time the drugs are not expected to be connected to Padgett’s death. Graf is being held without bail in Northampton County Prison.
A man was behind the wheel when he was gunned down causing him to crash his car into a house in the city's Point Breeze section early Friday night.
The 46-year-old man was shot 14 times with bullets hitting him in the head and stomach while he was driving on the 1500 block of S. Cleveland St. just before 6 p.m. The hail of bullets caused the victim to crash his car into a nearby home, police said.
No one inside the house was injured and the man was transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he was pronounced dead a few minutes later, according to authorities.
Police believe the shots may have been fired from a nearby house.
An investigation is underway. Anyone with information is urged to reach out to Philadelphia Police.
A drunk driver struck and killed a man early Saturday morning as he was walking along the Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, police said.
A 54-year-old man hit the 40-year-old pedestrian, who was walking in the travel lane, on the Boulevard near Bennett Road in the city's Somerton neighborhood around 12:30 a.m., officials said.
Police charged the driver, who remained at the scene, with driving under the influence.
The accident is under investigation.
No word yet on the victim's identity.
A Philadelphia firefighter was heading to a fire early Saturday morning when his car collided with another vehicle only a few blocks from the blaze.
The crash occurred near the intersection of Jasper and East Atlantic streets in the Kensington section of the city around 2 a.m. -- moments after crews responded to the house fire on the 3300 block of Jasper Street, near East Wensley Street, officials said.
It is unclear if the Battalion Chief was hurt in the crash. The woman driving the other vehicle -- an unlicensed driver -- was taken to a local hospital for treatment, authorities said. The severity of her injuries is unknown.
The house fire was placed under control at 2:25 a.m. No one was hurt in the blaze.
A man was shot in the hip early Saturday morning.
The victim was struck on the 2500 block of North Patton Street in the city's Strawberry Mansion neighborhood around 2:15 a.m., police said.
The man was taken to a local hospital and is in stable condition, according to reports.
No arrests have been made.
At least two people were hurt Saturday morning in a crash on Lincoln Drive in Philadelphia.
Three cars collided along Lincoln Drive near Gypsy Lane in the city's East Falls neighborhood around 7:30 a.m., according to reports.
Two people were taken to Temple University Hospital, but the severity of their injuries is uknown.
Authorites shut down Lincoln Drive between Gypsy Lane and Rittenhouse Street for about two hours after the crash.
More than a dozen people on a Philadelphia-bound flight received medical treatment in Rome, where the plane made an emergency landing early Saturday morning, NBC News reported.
Two passengers and 14 crew members began to feel sick, leading to U.S. Airways flight US797 to make an "unscheduled landing," said Martha Thomas, a spokesman for American Airlines, which merged with U.S. Airways last year.
Reports of an odor in the cabin preceded the landing. All 16 people were treated at a clinic at Rome's Fiumicino Airport.
The Airbus A330, which was carrying 129 passengers, 10 flight attendants and four pilots, departed Israel late Friday night.
"The aircraft landed safely and all passengers were re-accommodated on other flights," Thomas said.
An AFP agency report indicated the crew and passengers were suffering from red eyes and nausea.
