Three U.S. Marines and their service dogs will walk approximately 100 miles from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to the Freedom Tower in Manhattan to honor two Marines who were killed in action.
The Marines will leave from Philadelphia on September 1 at 8 a.m. and will walk about 12 miles a day. They plan to arrive in New York City in time to participate in 9/11 memorial ceremonies with members of the FDNY.
“The Long Walk is going to be a great experience while honoring the memory of our fallen brothers,” said Steven Walls, formerly of Kilo Company 3rd Battalion 7th Marines.
Walls, along with Devon Richio and Andrew Einstein, each formerly of 4th Civil Affairs Group, are walking to honor Corporal John Thornton of Kilo Company, who was killed in action on February 25th, 2006 in Ramadi Iraq, and Staff Sergeant Christopher Diaz, a Military Working Dog Handler who was killed in action on September 28, 2011 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
The Marines won’t be making the 9-day journey alone. Their three dogs, Ava, Kyra, and Gunner, will accompany them. Each Marine received his dog through a different program and the dogs have been positive influences in the lives of the veterans.
“Without [Gunner], I don't know where I'd be today,” Einstein said. “He has given me the ability to do things I would have not been able to do without him. Having him by my side has drastically changed my life.”
The walk is about stepping away from the normality of civilian life and confronting PTSD by taking a Long Walk and dealing with the issues facing Global War on Terror Veterans, according to a press release.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Between 10 and 18 percent of veterans of the War on Terror are likely to have PTSD after they return and are at risk for other mental health problems like depression, which affects up to 25 percent of returning troops.
All proceeds raised, not used for the walk, will be split between an art scholarship in Corporal Thornton’s name and the Staff Sergeant Diaz Foundation, “The Dawgz Project”. Donations can be made to the Marines’ GoFundMe Account at http://www.gofundme.com/thelongwalkusmc.
A New Jersey mom gave birth to twins four months ahead of schedule -- while she was on vacation in Portugal -- and since then, she, her husband and her babies have faced unfathomable difficulties.
To say the last few months have been nightmarish for Kim Kirzow Spratt and her husband, Fred, would be an understatement. Since the twins were born on May 10, the family has lost one to illness and the other remains in the hospital overseas.
The couple is trying to get a medical transport to bring their baby to an American hospital. A GoFundMe account has raised over $52,000 of its $60,000 goal in just three months. You can read more about the family's plight and donate here.
The babies were due August 25.
Asbury Park Press has more on this tragic story.
Neighbors grabbed their kids and made them come indoors after someone unloaded a barrage of bullets Monday inside a crowded park in Philadelphia's most violent neighborhood.
18 bullets were fired. Two men were shot at Fairhill Square, a park bordered by Huntingdon Street, Lehigh Avenue, 4th and N. Lawrence Streets in Philly's Fairhill neighborhood — the most dangerous neighborhood in the city right now according to the latest crime statistics.
The shootings happened in the middle of the day around 1:30 p.m. when the park was full of people including children, out enjoying the last week of summer break before school begins.
Philadelphia police took the victims to Temple Hospital and were searching for the person or people responsible.
Recently, the city has seen a small spike in homicides overall and in this particular neighborhood, in the month of August alone, there were 40 violent crimes in Fairhill — 3 homicides, 5 rapes, 13 robberies and with Monday's shootings, 21 assaults according to crime data collected from the Philadelphia Police Department and curated by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Fairhill has a violent crime rate of 2.43 per 1,000 residents. Among the city's 55 distinct neighborhoods, that statistic makes Fairhill the riskiest place to live for violent crime.
If you look at violent crime over the year so far, Fairhill still holds the top spot with 7 homicides, 16 rapes, 18 robberies and 116 assaults.
The area is home to nearly 16,500 residents. The poverty rate is 62.4% with an average income is $21,145. One out of four people in Fairhill is unemployed. Nearly half the residents have no high school education. Four percent graduated college.
Chestnut Hill ranks as the neighborhood with the lowest rate of violent crime this year. No murders. One rape. 2 robberies and 5 assaults.
Organizers released the schedule and set times for the 4th annual Budweiser Made in America Festival on the Benjamin Frankiln Parkway Labor Day Weekend.
Beyonce, who performed at the Festival two years ago, will be the headliner Saturday while the Weeknd will headline Sunday night. Check out the full schedule below:
Police found three bodies inside an unlicensed funeral home in West Philadelphia Monday afternoon, according to investigators.
State investigators received a tip reporting Hawkins Funeral Service on the 5300 block of Vine Street was operating illegally. Police responded to the building where they found three bodies. Officials told NBC10 the bodies were not properly refrigerated with one of them embalmed in a coffin and two of them decomposing. Investigators also discovered a bag of human organs inside the building.
While Blair Hawkins, the director of the funeral home is licensed, the building, which is the former location of the Gaither and Kimble Funeral homes, is not, according to investigators.
"You have a responsibility to care for the dead as you are supposed to," said Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Walker. "You shouldn't cut corners in situations like this where you're using a building that you clearly know has been out of business for some time."
Hawkins told NBC10 the entire ordeal is a misunderstanding.
"The bodies, we have paperwork," Hawkins said. "They're gonna be cremated. They're authorized. We don't refrigerate bodies that are being cremated."
Investigators told NBC10 one of the bodies may not even belong to the funeral home. Hawkins insists however that the bodies are being properly taken care of.
"I have proper paperwork and authorizations," he said.
Police continue to investigate.
UPDATE: Dawkins' family announced the public can mourn and pay their respects Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 417 Howertown Road, Catasauqua. Wednesday's service at the church and the internment will be private.
Chocolate Thunder has gone back to Lovetron.
Longtime 76ers center Darryl Dawkins died Thursday at the age of 58.
The cause of death is said to be a heart attack, according to Dawkins' family. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday.
A Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest spokesperson confirmed to Comcast SportsNet that Dawkins died there on Thursday.
"It is with great sadness that we share the passing of our beloved husband and father, Darryl Dawkins, who succumbed today to a heart attack," his family said in a statement. "Darryl touched the hearts and spirits of so many with his big smile and personality, ferocious dunks, but more than anything, his huge, loving heart."
One of the most popular players in the history of the Sixers franchise and the NBA, Dawkins was the first player drafted by an NBA team straight out of high school when he left Maynard Evans High in Orlando, Fla. for the Sixers as the No. 5 overall pick in the 1975 draft.
Known as “Chocolate Thunder,” a nickname bestowed by Stevie Wonder, Dawkins claimed he was from the planet Lovetron. During the NBA offseason Dawkins said he returned to his home planet to practice “interplanetary funkmanship.”
Certainly some of the dunks Dawkins threw down as the Sixers battled the Celtics and Lakers for the NBA title were interplanetary. Dawkins was famous for shattering two backboards, which ushered in new technology to prevent the shattered glass.
The first of Dawkins’ epic dunks came at Kemper Arena in a game against the Kansas City Kings in November, 1979. Replays famously show Dawkins rising to throw down a two-handed tomahawk with the Kings’ Bill Robinzine ducking for cover as the glass splintered.
Dawkins named his dunk, “The Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump-Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam, Glass-Breaker-I-Am-Jam.”
“It was such a sight,” Julius Erving told The Philadelphia Inquirer after the game in 1979. “Glass was everywhere. Robinzine was under the basket and he was trying to get out of the way, he was running. And Darryl was in shock.”
Three weeks later Dawkins busted up a backboard at the Spectrum with a dunk he named the “Get-Out-of-the-Waying, Backboard-Swaying, Game-Delaying, If-You-Ain’t-Grooving-You-Best-Get-Moving Dunk.”
He had piles of names for his dunks, such as, "The Rim Wrecker," "The Go-Rilla," "The Look Out Below," "The In-Your-Face Disgrace," "The Cover Your Head," "The Yo-Mama" and "The Spine-Chiller Supreme."
Dawkins’ autobiography, Chocolate Thunder: The Uncensored Life and Times of Darryl Dawkins, chronicled his on-and-off court exploits with Julius Erving and detailed why he was so popular with his teammates and the fans.
It also documents the wild potential Dawkins’ NBA contemporaries raved about. At times opponents saw an unparalleled talent without the consistency to match. Former Penn star Dave Wohl, who played in the NBA against Dawkins and then coached him with the Nets, wrote an article for Sports Illustrated about Dawkins in April 1988.
The title: “Did Darryl Dawkins, Sir Slam, fail to live up to the great expectations of his fans and his NBA coaches? A former coach searches for answers.”
“There were times when he teased us with a hint of how he could dominate a game,” Wohl wrote. “And we went home in awe and yet sad because we knew of no spell to make it happen more frequently. But few players could make us feel that way even once.”
Wohl also captured Dawkins’ ability to bring humor to any situation. Once, Wohl wrote, coach Billy Cunningham stopped practice to yell at Dawkins because he was not giving it his best effort. Dawkins, chagrined, hung his head and promised the coach he would do better.
“And then as [Cunningham] walked away, [Dawkins] tripped him.”
Cunningham, like everyone else at practice, broke up laughing, Wohl wrote.
But lest anyone believe Dawkins was simply a larger-than-life character, don’t be fooled by his fun demeanor. Dawkins, a 6-foot-11 athlete, averaged 13.4 points and eight rebounds per game from 1977 to 1981 for the Sixers. He helped the team reach the NBA Finals in 1977, 1980 and 1982 and came well known for a fight he had with Portland’s enforcer Maurice Lucas during the ’77 Finals.
That fight left Sixers teammate Doug Collins with a scar under his left eye.
“Darryl swung at [the Blazers'] Bobby Gross and hit me,” Collins remembered. “I was the unintentional recipient. But later on, when Darryl and Luke squared off, it looked like something out of the 1920s, like John L. Sullivan bare-knuckling at halfcourt.”
Dawkins owns the seventh-best shooting percentage of all-time, hitting at a 57.2 percent clip. He also led the NBA in fouls three times.
However, prior to the 1982-83 season, the Sixers acquired Moses Malone and traded Dawkins and fellow center, Caldwell Jones. Dawkins went to divisional rival New Jersey for a draft pick that turned out to be Leo Rautins, and the Sixers won the NBA Championship.
From 1982 to 1987, Dawkins played for the Nets and averaged a career-best 16.8 points per game during the 1983-84 season. It was during the playoffs that year that Dawkins, Michael Ray Richardson and Buck Williams stunned the defending champion Sixers in the first round of the playoffs. Dawkins shot 58.7 percent from the field and connected on 14 of 16 free throws during the five-game upset.
But Dawkins could never get over the hump to win a championship. After the Sixers, his best chance came in 1989 when he appeared in 14 games for the champion Pistons, but injuries kept Dawkins on the sidelines. Following the 1989 season Dawkins played in Italy until 1994 before attempting a comeback with the Nuggets and Celtics.
After a stint in the CBA in 1995-96, Dawkins retired at age 39, save for a stint in the IBA for the Winnipeg Cyclones. He then turned his attention to coaching.
In recent years, Dawkins lived in the Allentown, Pa. area in South Whitehall Township. He has coached the Lehigh Carbon Community College men's basketball team since 2009 and also coached in the newest version of the ABA as well as the USBL team in the Lehigh Valley.
Dawkins is survived by his wife Janice, three children and a step-daughter.
"More than anything Darryl accomplished in his basketball career as the inimitable 'Chocolate Thunder,' he was most proud of his role and responsibility as a husband and father," the family said in a statement. "We ask that the public please respect our privacy as we grieve his loss."
One person was hurt after a car crashed through a pole and into an embankment in Doylestown, Bucks County Monday afternoon.
The car slammed into a pole on the 600 block of Ferry Road, bringing down wires. The car then went down an embankment and the driver was trapped inside.
Rescue crews were able to get the driver out. He or she was taken to the hospital. Officials have not yet revealed the victim's condition.
PECO crews are at the scene of the crash working on the damaged pole and wires.
The all-clear was given at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst after a suspicious package was found there Monday afternoon.
The package was discovered at Hangar 2 on the Lakehurst side of the base at 2:32 p.m. First responders investigated and a cordon of 500 feet was established around the area.
Investigators later determined the package was non-threatening and the alert was canceled at 4:50 p.m.
A Delaware mother is speaking out after she says her daughter’s school bus driver was late and got lost on the first day of classes Monday.
Katarina Paveza told NBC10 she was nearly two hours late for her first day at Dickinson High School in Wilmington, Delaware.
“It’s the first day of my new school and new program,” Katarina said.
The Red Clay School District has the Advanced Student Transportation Company handle its bussing for some students, including Katarina. Katarina says the bus was a half hour late picking her up in Pike Creek Monday morning. At that point parents of other kids on the route had taken them to school believing the bus wasn’t coming and only one other child was on board. Once she got on, Katarina says it got even worse.
“I was thinking, ‘Does this bus driver know where she’s going?’” Katarina said. “She would keep pulling over and looking down. I think she was looking down on the GPS or something.”
Katarina then called her mother, Maya Paveza.
“She said, ‘We’re still on the bus mommy,’” Paveza told NBC10. “And I said, ‘Where are you?’ She said, ‘Near Pennsylvania.’”
Realizing the bus wasn’t anywhere near the school, Paveza called the driver.
“I said, ‘Are you lost? I’ll come and guide if you want,’” Paveza said. “And she said, ‘No, I’m okay.’”
Paveza didn’t believe the driver however and had her daughter tell her exactly where they were. Paveza finally tracked the bus down and took Katarina to school herself, nearly two hours after classes began.
Officials with the Red Clay School District confirmed the bus driver was lost. They said they are working with the bus company to make sure the driver knows her route going forward. NBC10 also reached out to Advanced Student Transportation. While we have not yet heard back from them, Paveza says she spoke with a representative on the phone.
“The dispatcher was yelling and arguing with me saying, ‘Hey, it’s the first day of school, things happen. We’re running the route with her now,’” Paveza said. “Shouldn’t you have done that ahead of time?!”
Paveza says she will discuss a new transportation plan with her daughter for Tuesday.
“We don’t want our child on that bus again,” Paveza said. “We don’t want her with this driver.”
Last week, we examined reasons why the very nature of drug testing technology 2014 which cannot eliminate false positives and false negatives at the same time 2014 means it will never be a perfect mechanism for catching cheaters. This may come as no big to surprise to anyone who remembers the famous Nike commercial featuring video of Lance Armstrong taking a drug test. "What am I on?" Armstrong asks rhetorically. "I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day." He was also on a raft of drugs, yet passed hundreds of tests. Certainly, testing technologically has progressed since then and will continue to do so. But even if technological holes are closed, logistical loopholes may remain. Here are four holes large enough for Lance to ride a bike through:
When athletes take small doses of synthetic hormones, the window during which they might fail a test is very short 2014 often just hours. So it's critical that athletes don't know when the tests will occur. To facilitate year-round, unannounced testing of a limited number of top athletes, the World Anti-Doping Agency calls for "whereabouts requirements." Beginning in 2009, potential Olympians had to fill out forms letting anti-doping authorities know where they would be for at least one hour each day 2014 between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. 2014 for the next few months. (An athlete's whereabouts calendar can be altered, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency even has a mobile whereabouts app.) Still, athletes can miss three tests in 12 months before they face a sanction. It's only fair to give some wiggle room 2014 any idea where you'll be three Tuesdays from now? 2014 but it means athletes can sometimes avoid the testers by claiming to have stepped out briefly or that they didn't hear the doorbell. Or, as retired professional cyclist Tyler Hamilton 2014 and admitted former doper 2014 once succinctly summarized a low-tech method of chicanery: "We hid."
The World Anti-Doping Agency itself is not 2014 as is commonly misunderstood 2014 set up to drug test athletes around the world. WADA was launched just before the turn of the millennium to coordinate anti-doping efforts and rules around the world. The agency conducts research to better detect ever-more advanced doping, accredits labs that want to become certified for drug testing (and strips accreditations if labs don't maintain certain standards), and keeps the World Anti-Doping Code. The Code, includes the list of banned substances and the methods and rules for how anti-doping efforts should be conducted by sports federations and countries. It was implemented before the 2004 Olympics and has been updated several times. So WADA simply keeps the Code; it's up to the Olympic committees, national and international sports federations, and anti-doping bodies in each individual country to actually implement it. Typically glacial bureaucratic movement has ensued. In one prominent instance, Renee Anne Shirley, former executive director of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission, pointed out that limited staff and expired testing kits led to a total halt to JADCO's out-of-competition testing in the three months before the 2012 London Olympics. (Athletes were still subject to testing by international governing bodies.) Implementing agreed upon anti-doping practices is still a fairly new and definitely evolving venture for plenty of countries and sports organizations, and it's still a global patchwork.
It's an abbreviation for "Tuesday" to you, but any athlete who sees those letters immediately thinks "therapeutic use exemption." Athletes have to be allowed to care for their health, and the TUE system allows them to apply for permission to use substances or medical procedures that would normally be restricted, ranging from corticosteroids and stimulants to IVs. The trouble is that any process by which athletes can gain permission to use potentially performance enhancing drugs also provides a possible anti-doping loophole. Perhaps the most stunning recent TUE revelation was that Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez was actually given permission at one point to use synthetic testosterone, and then to use the drug clomiphene citrate, meant to boost testosterone in men who are not producing enough naturally. The Ultimate Fighting Championship also gave out a rash of exemptions for testosterone, with most athletes claiming they needed it because they had low testosterone for their age. In Olympic sports, an exemption for testosterone would be extraordinarily hard to come by. Simply low testosterone levels do not suffice; a rare condition 2014 like being born without testicles or having them removed 2014 would have to be present. But the prevalence of certain medications among athletes 2014 like corticosteroids, both injected for pain and inhaled for asthma 2014 has led some of the pros themselves to call for removal of the TUE process altogether, so that there would be no exemptions for otherwise restricted medication. As American distance runner Ben True recently put it: "I have a hard time with the idea that if you're that sick and need certain drugs that you're able to be at the top of the sport and race at the highest level. Maybe you just need to go home and rest and recover for a while."
Officials at IAAF 2014 track and field's international governing body 2014 were understandably a tad defensive after a recent report by London's Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD that a review of 12,000 leaked biological passport tests for track athletes from 2001 to 2012 found that around 15 percent of them were doping. The governing body has a lot to lose from the perception that cheating is rife and that many athletes get away with it. It falls in line with a host of recent scandals in pro sports in which the agency charged with rooting out cheaters was unsurprisingly "surprised." You didn't expect Sepp Blatter to lead the charge against corruption in World Cup soccer, did you? Or the UCI 2014 cycling's governing body 2014 to take down Lance Armstrong? Of course you didn't, just like you didn't expect Major League Baseball to interrupt the steroid-fueled home run chase 2014 which propelled baseball back to relevance after a devastating strike 2014 in order to bring you an important message about performance enhancing drugs.
Olympic sports are far better off than the MLB's of the world in this regard, as national anti-doping organizations 2014 in America, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the folks who did bust Lance 2014 do a lot of the heavy lifting. For example, they conduct out-of-competition testing, adjudicate violations, and even test foreign athletes who train in their countries. But sports federations themselves have a role as well, conducting in-competition testing (and some out-of-competition testing), educating athletes, and sanctioning rule violators. The irony, of course, is that the harder a sport attempts to police doping, the more commercial harm it suffers. A recent study found that the announcement of a performance enhancing drug violation in baseball temporarily reduces fan attendance. The NFL doesn't disclose the substance that a player tested positive for, so many football players who fail a test claim publicly that they forgot to get an exemption for their ADHD medication. So the NFL can never seem like it has an actual performance enhancing drug problem. It's a little like how the NHL stopped disclosing specific injuries (beyond "lower body injury" and "upper body injury") when concussions became a cause célèbre. That way fans aren't alerted to the frequency of concussions and the scope of the problem. It's the kind of behavior your local economist would predict: Sports officials who stand to lose money from drug and other scandals won't work to expose the internal problems of their sport. And as long as there are conflicts of interest in anti-doping, there are likely to be scandals akin to the reported cover-up of Russian runners' positive drug tests. Just last week, Lord Sebastian Coe was elected as the new president of the IAAF, and mentioned that conflicts of interest, both real and perceived, must be addressed. He then promptly drew criticism for making light of concerns over his own relationship with Nike 2014 the biggest corporate name in the sport 2014 for which he is a paid international ambassador. (Turns out Coe is also paid by a company that makes synthetic track surfaces, raising more questions over how serious he is about conflicts of interest.)
The good news is that the organizational and human problems are largely fixable, even while drug testing remains imperfect. The missed-tests provision could be tightened to allow fewer or even no misses, even if this meant that some athletes whose dogs actually were eating their homework when the drug testers showed up would surely be sanctioned. Perhaps a system mandating short suspensions for a single missed test would deter those who are intentionally avoiding anti-doping personnel while not excessively punishing those who have a legitimate excuse. Maybe there could even be a TUE-like system of applying for exemptions when a test is missed. Speaking of TUEs, that system could be tightened as well with more stringent evaluation of athletes' prescriptions. (And some athletes and national anti-doping organizations are calling for medications that don't require exemptions but that are widely used to gain a performance benefit 2014 like thyroid hormone 2014 to be restricted.) The tricky part in all of this is that it creates more logistical work and amplifies the off-the-field burden on athletes. And while athletes in Olympic sports must detail their whereabouts, requiring those in major pro sports 2014 with powerful players' unions 2014 to do the same is about as likely as the Jets winning the Super Bowl this year. So, as with testing technology in Olympic sports, the system is very far from perfect, but it's also the best one out there at the moment.
Michael J. Joyner is a physiologist and expert in human performance at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The views expressed here are his own. Follow him on Twitter at @DrMJoyner.
Correction: This story originally incorrectly stated that athletes can miss three tests in 18 months before facing a sanction. As of 2015, athletes can miss three tests in 12 months before facing a sanction.
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The driver in a hit-and-run that killed a two-year-old boy and injured his mother in Philadelphia earlier this year surrendered to police Monday afternoon, according to officials.
Miguel Colon, 22, turned himself in at police headquarters on 8th and race streets, investigators said.
The deadly hit-and-run happened on April 13 at Mascher Street and Lehigh Avenue.
David Alicea, 2, was killed and his mother, 19-year-old Josephine Rivera, was injured.
Investigators say Colon was driving the car that struck Alicea and his mom. An arrest warrant was issued for him Friday.
"I'm happy that he's behind bars now," Rivera told NBC10 Monday night. "Now my baby can rest in peace. I finally have justice for my son."
Police have not yet revealed the specific charges against Colon.
A Montgomery County attorney was arrested after he allegedly raped his own client.
On August 6 a woman told West Norriton Township Police that Vincent A. Cirillo, Jr., a local attorney she hired to represent her, raped her on August 3.
After an investigation, Cirillo was arrested and charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault and indecent assault. He was arraigned Monday and posted $100,000 bail. Cirillo waived his preliminary hearing, according to investigators.
Cirillo’s law firm is based in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Police are searching for a gunman who killed a man and injured another in Philadelphia early Monday evening.
A 37-year-old man and 28-year-old man were on the 1500 block of South Corlies Street at 5:49 p.m. when a gunman opened fire. The 37-year-old was struck once in the side while the 28-year-old was struck in the back.
They were both taken by police to Presbyterian Hospital. The 37-year-old died from his injuries while the 28-year-old is in critical condition.
No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered.
A baby in a stroller, child and an adult were all struck by a vehicle in Lakewood Township, New Jersey Monday night.
The victims were walking on River Avenue and Edgewood Court when they were hit by the vehicle. Police say the baby and child both suffered serious injuries. They have not yet revealed the adult's condition.
Police believe the striking vehicle remained at the scene.
This story is developing. Check back for updates.
Police are searching for a thief who was caught on surveillance video stealing a man’s Irish flag decorated with his family’s crest at a home in Aston Township over the weekend.
Police say the theft occurred at a house on the 600 block of Convent Road overnight between Saturday and Sunday. A home security camera captured the man, who was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, trying to pull out the flag pole.
“At first he tries to unscrew it and I guess he was unscrewing the wrong one,” said the flag’s owner Mark Dougherty.
The video shows the thief then twist the pole until it snaps. He then runs off down the street.
Dougherty and his father Paul Dougherty told NBC10 the flag bears their family crest, dating back decades.
“I was a little bit upset because of what it was,” Paul said. “It had a lot of meaning to us as a family.”
Paul said the flag meant a lot to his father and Mark’s grandfather.
“He flew that flag out here for years,” Paul said. “Any kind of Holiday he always had that flag out. When he was buried this year we folded it up and had that on the casket.”
Aston Police are currently analyzing the surveillance video. Mark insists he doesn’t care about charges however and just wants the flag back.
“We just want it back,” he said. “We’re not looking to press charges or go any further with that if we can get it back in one piece.”
If you have any information on the theft, please call the Aston Township Police Department at 610-497-2633.
A motorcyclist is in the hospital after he collided with a minivan in Philadelphia early Tuesday morning.
The crash happened about 1 a.m. at Broad and Ontario Streets in North Philadelphia.
Investigators say the motorcycle rider t-boned a minivan at the intersection.
The motorcyclist was taken to Temple University Hospital where he is listed in stable condition with head and neck injuries.
The driver of the minivan stopped at the scene.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
