Amity Cop Charged With Stealing From Supermarket

Location of West Pottsgrove Township in Montgomery County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note:  I hope this isn’t what it appears to be 😦

AMITY TOWNSHIP, PA — A township police officer has been suspended without pay after he was charged with retail theft for allegedly stealing more than $300 worth of food and merchandise from a Giant food store on two separate occasions.

Glenn Oesterling, 35, a veteran corporal with the Amity Police Department, reportedly walked out of the Upland Square Giant on both June 12 and June 18 without paying for the merchandise he allegedly put into blue reusable shopping bags in the shopping cart he was pushing.

According to a criminal complaint filed by West Pottsgrove Police, a loss prevention officer with Giant observed a man leave the store on June 12 without paying for six items worth $38.04 in the reusable bags.

The loss prevention officer used store surveillance footage to confirm what the items were and that the man “bypass(ed) all points of sale,” the complaint states.

Read more:  http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20130708/NEWS01/130709443/amity-cop-charged-with-stealing-from-supermarket#full_story

San Francisco Plane Crash: Crew Tried To Abort Landing

The doomed Asiana Airlines jetliner had its throttles set to idle and was moving so slowly that it nearly stalled before it smashed into a seawall bordering a San Francisco International Airport runway, federal investigators said Sunday.

The crew tried to abort the landing and avert the disaster, which killed two teenage passengers and injured dozens of others, but it was too late, according to a preliminary review of flight data and cockpit communications by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The crew sought to accelerate 7 1/2 seconds before impact, investigators said.  Three seconds later, a vibrating “shaker stick” in the cockpit signaled an impending stall – a condition in which the wings lose lift and a plane can’t be controlled.

And with 1 1/2 seconds left, someone on board alerted an air traffic controller that the Boeing 777 jetliner would try to pull up and circle around.  It could not, and at 11:27 a.m. Saturday it bounced and skidded across the ground, losing its tail before it came to rest on the side of Runway 28L.

Read more:  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-plane-crash-Crew-tried-to-abort-landing-4650990.php

Pittsburgh-Area Hotels Find Niche In Oil, Gas Workers

Locator map of the Greater Pittsburgh metro area in the western part of the of . Red denotes the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, and yellow denotes the New Castle Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Pittsburgh-New Castle CSA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To endear a hotel to the oil and gas crowd, give them a place to eat and sleep at all hours of the day, a place to wash their boots, a warm place to smoke in the winter and a cold beer once in a while.

So goes the formula developed by Tejas Gosai, president of the Washington, Pa.-based business Shale Hotel Inc.  The company is managing two hotels geared toward oil and gas workers, building two others and preparing to turn the Monroeville Holiday Inn into an industry destination for workers summoned here by the Marcellus Shale, the natural gas deposit underlying much of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Gosai represents a group of four doctors, among them his father, who bought the 187-room Monroeville hotel in June.  His goal is to replicate there what he has helped to do in Bentleyville — attract at least half of the guests from oil and gas fields.

The Gosais have been in the hotel business for a dozen years.  Kam Gosai, a practicing physician in Washington County, co-owns the Holiday Inn Express and the Best Western Garden Inn in Bentleyville.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/pittsburgh-area-hotels-find-niche-in-oil-gas-workers-694646/#ixzz2YT5pEbAE

Firefighters investigating Back-To-Back Fires In Harrisburg As Possibly Related Arsons

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Dauphin County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Harrisburg resident Michael Bordner had just put his eldest daughter to bed in his home at 2042 Susquehanna Street when, just after midnight Monday morning, chaos erupted.

“I laid down at about midnight and then, at about 12:15, I heard all the alarms going off in my home,” he said.  “At the same time I heard my stepfather saying ‘Get [your daughter] grab the dog; we have to get out, there’s a fire!'”

Bordner’s stepfather, Tim Bucher, who was visiting the house Sunday night, had woken up only moments before when he noted a strange smell and bright light emanating from the row house next door at 2044 Susquehanna Street.

“I peeked out the third floor window because something didn’t smell right,” Bucher recalled, almost from a daze Monday morning as firefighters stomped up the ruined stairs to Bordner’s home.  “It didn’t smell like a fire, but when I looked out the window and looked down I saw flames coming up from the floor below.”

Read more:  http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/07/firefighters_investigating_bac.html#incart_m-rpt-2

Man Killed In Wilkes-Barre Shooting

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Luzerne County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A party at 174 S. Grant St. in Wilkes-Barre came to an abrupt halt around 1:20 a.m. Sunday when shooting resulted in the death of a 24-year-old in the backyard.

Police were called to the house on a report of a “large fight with shots fired” and found Vaughn Kemp lying motionless in the backyard.

Kemp, a black man who lived a few blocks away on Park Avenue, was transported to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center in Plains Township, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy concluded Kemp died from multiple gunshot wounds, said Luzerne County Deputy Coroner Dan Hughes.

Read more:  http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news/658426/Man-killed-in-W-B-shooting

VIDEO: Cook Exposes Golden Corral’s Alleged “All-You-Can-Eat Ribs… By The Dumpster” Policy

Golden Corral (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Golden Corral—the chain of buffet restaurants most-frequented by people who didn’t want to drive the extra 10 minutes to get to Old Country Buffet—is dealing with a PR nightmare after a video of one of their employees started making the rounds on the Internet this week.

Brandon Huber is a cook at the Golden Corral restaurant in Port Orange, Florida. He recently filmed a video from his place of employ, claiming that the restaurant’s management had wheeled loads of unprepared food out to the dumpster area during a health inspection.

The video—shot vertically, in true selfie style—shows Huber walking out to the restaurant’s dumpster area and pointing out that a bunch of uncooked meat and pans filled with food are resting inches from the dumpster.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/trending/VIDEO-True-American-hero-exposes-Golden-Corrals-All-You-Can-Eat-Ribs-By-the-Dumpster-policy.html#kwOgc27ADyyiHQO2.99

Montgomery County Budget Cuts Take A Toll On Community Organizations

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Montgomery County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NORRISTOWN — It’s halfway into the year, and some local organizations that received county funds in the past are beginning to feel the effects of the 2013 budget cuts.

County budget cuts are robbing the Montgomery County African American Coalition of its “meat and potatoes” programs, according to charter member Bob Wright.

Three weeks ago, the group met at the First Baptist Church in Cheltenham, where a consortium of representatives from different minority organizations throughout the county, including the local chapter of the NAACP, discussed the budget and how it affects the low- and moderate-income county population.

Among them, Legal Aid, which received $281,7000 from the county general fund in 2012, was initially zeroed out of the budget for fiscal year 2013.

Read more:  http://www.timesherald.com/article/20130707/NEWS01/130709776/montgomery-county-budget-cuts-take-a-toll-on-community-organizations#full_story

Birdsboro Water Authority Loses Rate Case Brought By Frank McLaughlin

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BIRDSBORO — Convicted water thief Frank McLaughlin won a victory in court last week when a judge agreed with his claim that the water bills he was paying to the Birdsboro Water Authority for two apartment buildings he owns could not be justified.

On July 1, District Judge David E. Glass ruled in favor of McLaughlin in two claims he filed in March, writing in both decisions that “it appears that the authority has arbitrarily assigned rates to apartment complexes that are neither reasonable nor fair.”

Noting that he never received a report explaining how the authority calculates those rates, he wrote “trying to understand the published Birdsboro Water and Sewer Authority rate structure is like trying to find a snapper turtle in a muddy pond.”

Glass further noted in his decision that “the water and sewer authority’s appeal process is flawed” advising both McLaughlin and the authority that “it would serve both sides across the aisle to remember more is accomplished with honey than vinegar.”

Read more:  http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20130707/NEWS01/130709519/birdsboro-water-authority-loses-rate-case-brought-by-water-thief#full_story

Shooting Witness Catches Suspect In Reading Homicide

A 1947 topographic map of the Reading, Pennsylvania area. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A man was shot and killed and his son wounded early Sunday in the 800 block of Elm Street, Reading police said.

When police arrived they learned an acquaintance of the victims was holding the man suspected to be the gunman nearby.

The acquaintance, 28, had witnessed the shooting and chased the suspect, yelling for him to stop, police said.

Police were first dispatched about 2:20 a.m. to Elm Street, where they found the 49-year-old victim dead on the sidewalk.  They also found that his 29-year-old son had been shot in the upper torso and driven to a local hospital in a private vehicle.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=491404