Two men are in the hospital after a double shooting at a basketball court in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city.
The 22-year-old man and 29-year-old man were at a basketball game with over a dozen other people on 27th and Clearfield streets around 8 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman opened fire.
The 22-year-old was struck once in the chest, once in the left side and twice in the head. The 29-year-old was also struck several times. Both men were taken to Temple University Hospital. The 22-year-old is in stable condition while the 29-year-old is critical but stable.
No arrests have been made. Police continue to investigate.
A Delaware man was arrested at the mall while he was allegedly carrying nearly 1300 bags of heroin.
Lavar Jackson, 25, was arrested at the Christiana Mall in Newark, Delaware Sept. 16 after a brief struggle with drug unit detectives, investigators said. Jackson, who was the focus of an investigation targeting heroin sales, had 1299 bags of heroin and approximately $500 in suspected drug sale proceeds at the time, according to officials.
Police later determined Jackson had rented a unit at a local storage facility where he allegedly held weapons and more drugs. On Sept. 17, detectives obtained a search warrant and searched through the unit. They found an additional 2472 bags of heroin, a Mossberg 12 gauge sawed off shotgun, a .357 caliber revolver, a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, a .44 magnum revolver, a .380 semiautomatic handgun, a 9mm revolver, ammunition and material used to store large amounts of heroin, investigators said.
Police also determined two of the seized firearms had been reported stolen to the New Castle County Police and Maryland State Police.
Jackson is a convicted felon and prohibited from owning a firearm, investigators said. He is charged with drug dealing, possession of heroin, possession of a firearm by a person prohibited and other related offenses.
Jackson was arraigned at the New Castle County Court of Common Pleas and committed to the Howard Young Correctional Institution for lack of $254,000 cash bail related to the Sept. 16 arrest and $382,500 secured bail in relation to the Sept. 17 search warrant.
A candlelight vigil was held for the slain friend of a rising Philadelphia boxer with Olympic aspirations.
Friends and family gathered at 21st and Conlyn streets in Philadelphia around 7 p.m. Tuesday to mourn 21-year-old Sadiqq Grant.
Grant was on the 5900 block of North 17th Street Monday around 4:20 p.m. when an unidentified gunman pulled out a semiautomatic weapon and fired at least 21 shots, according to investigators.
Grant was struck in the cheek and chest. He was taken to the Einstein Medical Center where he was later pronounced dead. Police say bullets also struck the corner of an occupied home on 17th Street and Nedro Avenue as well as an unattended car. No one else was injured in the shooting however.
The suspect, who police say was wearing a grey shirt, ran through an alley after the shooting. Police are currently looking at several surveillance cameras in the area.
Grant was a close friend of Darmani Rock, a 19-year-old Golden Glove winner and the number one amateur super heavyweight boxer in the world. Rock, who also won a gold medal at the 2014 Youth World Championships, is working to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
Rock posted about the candlelight vigil for his friend on his Twitter page.
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University of Delaware police say what was originally believed to be “nooses” hanging from a tree on campus were actually leftover lantern decorations.
Officials say a hate crime investigation ended when it was determined the items were paper lantern decorations leftover from an event that was held on campus on September 16.
“The items that were left in the tree were part of a decoration from a paper lantern that was used during an event held on The Green that was a UD-sanctioned event,” University of Delaware Police Chief Patrick Ogden said Wednesday morning.
It was determined that the paper lantern decorations were removed from the tree, but the strings were never taken down, leading to them being mistaken for nooses.
"We received several reports from students who said they had seen the materials hanging in the tree. I am confident that we have determined the origin of these items,” Ogden said.
Chief Ogden said a campus alert about the suspected hate crime prompted leads from eight students, who all said the wire inserts were not nooses.
University administrators, who released a statement online, plan to do outreach to the campus community Wednesday.
A man suffered a broken arm and several other injuries after he was clipped by a train in Northeast Philadelphia early Wednesday morning.
The incident happened about 3 a.m. near Keystone and Benner Streets in the city’s Tacony section.
According to investigators, a man in his 40s was walking along the elevated tracks when he was clipped by a northbound Amtrak train.
The man suffered a broken arm and several other injuries. He was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in critical condition.
It was not immediately known why the man was on the tracks.
The incident remains under investigation.
Philly may have Francis fever (or fatigue depending on who you ask), but another town is really intent on following the pope's historic trip to the United States: Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
More people Googled Pope Francis in the small town on the city's western edge in the past 24 hours than any other city in the United States, Google said Wednesday.
The search giant's trends arm tracks common searches based on a number of demographics including location. The rest of the top five cities all fell in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Bala Cynwyd, which is part of Lower Merion Township, has a population of around 9,500, according to the latest census data. That's a lot of searching.
To be fair, if telecommunications companies have servers located in Bala Cynwyd or mobile phones are connected to towers in the town, a Philadelphian searching about Pope Francis could be classified as doing so from Bala. (NBC10 is located in Bala Cynwyd, but our website traffic is not routed locally.)
And St. Joseph's University, the popular Catholic university on City Avenue, is just a stone's throw away.
Regardless, there's obviously a lot of interest about Pope Francis around here.
The World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia this week culminating with Pope Francis' visit this weekend has drawn the faithful from all over the world.
At the Reading Terminal Market on Wednesday afternoon -- across the street from the Convention Center, where World Meeting events are being held -- meeting attendees, many on their first trip to Philadelphia, stopped for lunch.
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At Nanee's Kitchen at the market, Sister Patricia and Sister Angela waited to buy rice, fish and vegetables. The sisters were both born in Nigeria but belong to the Sisters of Our Lady Immaculate in Ontario, Canada. For both, the World Meeting of Families is their first visit to Philadelphia.
"We're loving every bit of it," Sister Patricia said, smiling. She and Sister Angela said they both came on a bus to Philadelphia Tuesday with families from their diocese. The bus ride from Ontario took 11 hours.
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Elsewhere in the market, Tom Speaker, of West Lafayette, Ind., finished up an oyster plate at Pearl's Oysters. His travel agency, Speaker's Travel, organized for a group of about 40 people from Wisconsin and a group of about 30 from Miami to attend the World Meeting. The groups are a part of a Catholic movement founded in Germany called Schoenstatt -- "beautiful place" -- Speaker said.
"It's been a hassle because I've been trying to get accommodations all together," Speaker said.
He said for some in the Schoenstatt movement, this World Meeting won't be their first time seeing Pope Francis.
"Last year, we took them to Germany and Rome and had a private audience with the Pope," Speaker said.
He said because of security restrictions, his groups need to be bussed to AT&T Station in South Philadelphia before the papal events this weekend. From there, the group of more than 70 will pick up the Broad Street Line subway back to Center City.
Speaker pulled a stack of special SEPTA Papal passes tied with a rubber band out of his pocket.
"It's gonna be real interesting," he said.
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In the northern courtyard of Philadelphia's Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, thousands of prayers jotted in black ink on white strips of paper blow in the breeze.
The Knotted Grotto, as the public art installation is called, is a place anyone can go, write their intentions down, and tie them onto one side of the courtyard fence to be "undone" by another person. People leaving intentions tie their own and then untie someone else's to move it to the other side in homage to Pope Francis' favorite image of the Blessed Mother as Mary Undoer of Knots.
The symbolism, a volunteer at the Grotto explained to people who streamed in to write intentions on Wednesday, is that at times, "you can't undo your own knots" and need support from others. Pope Francis is expected to bless the thousands of intentions written in different languages and tied at the grotto during his visit this weekend.
Kristin Henkel, 25, of Philadelphia, brought her 9-year-old nephew Ryan to add an intention to the grotto.
Theirs was for troops coming home and still overseas to have peace, and the one they untied, from an anonymous Philadelphian who left only initials, was for a family blessing.
"We obviously have so much to pray for," Henkel, who has military members in her family and used to work for the VA, said. "This is just something I find important."
A gunman in a wheelchair was shot to death by police after threatening to take his own life, neighbors told The News Journal.
The shooting happened Wednesday around 3 p.m. in the 1800 block of Tulip Street in Wilmington, Delaware.
A woman who identified herself as the gunman's cousin told the newspaper he was shot by police when he refused to put down his gun.
Police say they were called out to the neighborhood after a call from someone who said a man had shot himself.
Wilmington police released a statement late in the day saying "a departmental shooting ensued" after officers arrived on the scene to find a man with a gun.
Pumpkins, squash and hundreds of pounds of cocaine.
It's not your average fall cornucopia, but that's what federal authorities say they found in a crop shipment delivered to the Port of Philadelphia last week.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents discovered 363 lbs. of the illicit drug -- $6 million worth — last Thursday uniquely hidden at the bottom of boxes holding the vegetables. The drugs were put into pouches that were laminated and laid flat with the hopes they wouldn't be noticed.
“Approximately two-thirds of the shipment contained the cocaine, in essences it required you to go through all the boxes to verify whether it contained narcotics or not,” Special Agent John Kellegan told NBC10 Wednesday.
Kellegan said the drugs were shipped from Costa Rica. Officials called the seizure one of the largest in the field office's recent history.
“Our last seizure of this magnitude was in 2012 that was approximately 386 lbs. that came through Puerto Rico” said Assistant Port Director Paul Nardella.
No one has been arrested for the illegal shipment and Kellegan made a point to say there's no reason to believe the drugs are connected to Pope Francis' upcoming visit to Philadelphia this weekend.
The investigation is ongoing.