A 70-year-old man was shot and killed in East Germantown on Friday morning, authorities said.
The shooting took place around 8:30 a.m. on the 5900 block of Ogontz Avenue, according to police.
Responding officers took the victim ― whom police did not identify ― to Jefferson Einstein Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
A man is in custody and is being questioned by investigators with the homicide unit, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Philadelphia police tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).
The father of a Philadelphia man who was killed in an ATV crash this spring said police officers pursued his son moments before he drove the wrong way down a one-way street, ran a red light, and collided with a sedan.
Sterling Jones, 22, was killed on May 9 after the crash in North Philadelphia, according to police.
Lawyers for Jones’ father, Sterling Lamont Jones Sr., said his son and a group of friends had been riding off-road vehicles near Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue when officers from the police ATV and dirt bike detail spotted the young men popping wheelies and began a pursuit.
They followed Jones up Broad Street to West Thompson Street, the attorneys said. There he briefly sped in the wrong direction down the one-way street and ran a red light before striking an Uber driver’s Toyota sedan at the intersection as it turned onto 15th Street.
He was taken to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.
Sterling Jones Sr., 57, has since hired a team of attorneys to investigate the incident. Late last month, they filed a notice of intent to sue the city, alleging that the officers and the department violated Jones’ constitutional rights when they chased him and caused his fatal injuries.
Sterling Jones, a 22-year-old who lawyers say was killed in an ATV crash after being chased by police officers.Courtesy of Sterling Lamont Jones Sr.
Riding ATVs and dirt bikes on public streets in Philadelphia is against the law, and police have increased efforts to crack down on that behavior in recent years.
But the incident raises questions about whether the officers followed a department directive barring vehicular pursuits for all but the most serious offenses — a policy enacted because of the public safety risks posed by such chases, particularly in densely populated areas.
The initial police account of the incident did not mention that officers had been pursuing Jones before the crash. It could not be learned whether the department had since concluded that officers were engaged in a pursuit and whether it was conducted a high rate of speed, as the lawyers contend.
Sgt. Eric Gripp, a police spokesperson, said the incident is under investigation by the department’s internal affairs bureau. He declined to comment further, referring questions to the city’s law department.
A spokesperson for the law department said the city does not comment on pending litigation.
Surveillance footage gathered by lawyers for Jones’ father and viewed by The Inquirer showed at least eight police officers on dirt bikes, a squad car, and a tow vehicle tailing Jones that evening.
Around 9:23 p.m., Jones was seen cutting through a Sunoco gas station and speeding down West Thompson Street with dirt bike officers close behind. Within seconds, his ATV careened into the driver’s side of the sedan.
Under police department policy, vehicular chases are allowed only in situations in which officers believe they can prevent imminent danger to others, or if a suspect is either fleeing after committing a violent felony or in possession of a deadly weapon used in a crime.
And while riding off-road vehicles violates city code, attorneys for Sterling Jones Sr. say that type of infraction still should not trigger a police chase.
“The police department’s policy is, in our view, clearly violated,” said Thomas Kline of Kline & Specter, which is handling the case alongside the firm Hill & Associates.
A 2025 Inquirer investigation found police in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania were conducting hazardous and unnecessary chases, disproportionately endangering young people. Roughly half of all reported pursuits conducted by city police were not justified under department policy, the investigation found.
A police department spokesperson attributed the increase in chases to the COVID-era surge in violent crime, and said the department investigates every crash for policy violations.
Between 2020 and last year, records show, the city had paid out $20 million in crash- or chase-related settlements as a result of such chases.
In 2017, a 6-year-old girl and her great-aunt were seriously injured when they were struck by a dirt bike rider who was being chased by Philadelphia police into Upper Darby Township. The city settled a lawsuit with their attorneys for nearly $3 million last year.
Sterling Jones Sr. said that while he was planning to sue, no amount of money could make up for the loss of his son.
The young man was a graduate of Hunting Park Christian Academy and had been working for two years as a delivery driver for the U.S. Postal Service before his death. He had bought the ATV with money from that job, his father said.
“He wasn’t a criminal. He had a license,” he said.
Jones Sr. learned of the crash in the early morning of Mother’s Day, when his son’s mother came to his house to tell him Jones was dead.
He said he hired lawyers with the aim of ensuring that the officers who pursued his son would be reprimanded and removed from the beat.
“They killed my only son,” he said. “I just want justice.”
The Pennsylvania Superior Court has reinstated the murder convictions of three men who were granted new trials after being imprisoned for nearly 25 years for a crime they say they did not commit.
The men, known as the “Chester Trio,” were convicted in separate trials in the 1997 beating death of 70-year-old Henrietta Nickens in her Delaware County home and are serving life in prison.
Derrick Chappell, 44, Morton Johnson, 46, and Samuel Grasty, 49, have insisted for decades that they were not responsible for the death of Nickens, whose battered body was found face down in the bedroom of her Chester home, her bed and walls stained with blood.
In 2024, a Delaware County Court judge vacated the three men’s convictions, saying newly tested DNA from the crime scene cast doubt on their culpability and might have persuaded jurors to reach a different conclusion had they been presented with that evidence at trial.
But late last month, a panel of Superior Court judges disagreed and reversed that outcome.
In a 2-1 decision, the judges said that they did not consider the evidence presented by defense lawyers to be new, and that it therefore would not have changed jurors’ minds.
Judges Maria McLaughlin and Megan Sullivan said in a 41-page opinion that the newly tested DNA — recovered from Nickens’ dress and bedsheet, a green jacket found at the scene, and items in the jacket’s pockets — did not offer any revelations because it matched an unknown DNA profile that had been presented to the jurors who decided the trio’s fate.
“This same information was previously considered by all three separate fact-finders and rejected,” the judges said of the verdicts in three trials.
During the trials, they said, jurors were told that the DNA found at the scene was not a match for any of the defendants.
And they said the newly tested DNA did not alter the argument defense lawyers made at the earlier trials that someone other than the three men had broken into Nickens’ home, raped her, and beaten her to death.
Prosecutors relied on witnesses who testified that they had overheard the men discussing their involvement with the crime.
Their star witness, 15-year-old Richard McElwee, testified that he had acted as a lookout while the men robbed Nickens of $30. He pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in exchange for his testimony and was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison.
The men’s lawyers have long contended that the prosecution’s witnesses were unreliable and that the investigation was flawed. And they emphasized the lack of a DNA match for the men.
Paul Casteleiro, legal director of the nonprofit law center Centurion Ministries and Grasty’s attorney, said he was dismayed by the court’s decision and, along with attorneys for Chappell, has filed an appeal.
“We’re going to fight this every way possible,” he said.
A spokesperson for Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said the office appreciated the Superior Court’s affirmation of the jury verdicts.
As the men continued to assert their innocence, the possibility that Nickens was raped and beaten by a single assailant was central to defense arguments during 2023 hearings in which they sought to overturn their convictions.
In presentations before Delaware County Court Judge Mary Alice Brennan, the attorneys called on forensic experts who testified that the new tests showed a sample of Nickens’ blood and semen from the unknown assailant were deposited on her bedsheet at the same time, lending credence to their theory that she had been raped and beaten by the same person.
Prosecutors rejected the contention that Nickens had been sexually assaulted, and suggested the semen found on the sheet and in her body was from an earlier consensual encounter.
Jack Stollsteimer, then the Delaware County district attorney, swiftly appealed that decision, leading to the Superior Court decision reinstating the convictions.
Defense lawyers, in turn, have appealed that decision, saying the Superior Court panel had erred. Their arguments mirrored a strongly worded dissent by Superior Court President Judge Anne Lazarus, who said she believed that the recent DNA testing constituted a new finding — and that it was exculpatory.
The evidence, she wrote, “does significantly more by excluding the petitioners from being present at all in Nickens’ home.”
But her colleagues rejected that view in the majority opinion, which was sharply critical of the lower court’s decision to overturn the men’s convictions.
That decision, they said, was based on “erroneous conclusions.”
A Northwest Philadelphia woman who fatally shot her estranged husband and staged his death as a suicide pleaded guilty Wednesday to murder and related crimes.
Investigators said Baxter shot and killed her husband, a longtime SEPTA employee, in the bedroom of her home before dragging his body down the stairs and staging his body between two cars in a nearby driveway.
Police found Jordan Baxter there around 7 a.m., covered in blood. He had been shot through the back of the head, they said.
While investigators initially believed Baxter’s death was a suicide because he was found with a 9mm pistol in his hand, they soon questioned the nature of the crime after finding irregularities in statements made by Danielle Baxter.
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski of the homicide unit outlined those details during Baxter’s plea hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge J. Scott O’Keefe.
It was Danielle Baxter who called police to report her husband’s death, Toczylowski said. She told investigators she came across her husband’s body while she was taking out the trash that morning at her West Bells Mill Road home.
But investigators noted that Baxter was breathing heavily on the call and was unable to answer basic questions about her husband’s condition, she said.
Inside the home, police found blood pooling on Baxter’s bed where a pillow would be. Baxter, Toczylowski said, lied when she told police the blood was there because she had recently had her period.
Investigators later downloaded data from Baxter’s Apple Watch and learned she had recorded a “very steep level of activity” between 1 and 4 a.m. the morning Jordan Baxter was killed, activity they attributed to climbing multiple flights of stairs.
And investigators eventually determined that the bullet that killed Jordan Baxter was not of the same caliber as the weapon found on his body.
Rather, the bullet matched a gun that investigators recovered from Danielle Baxter’s closet, Toczylowski said.
Taken together, those factors led investigators to believe the killing “was not a suicide, but rather a staged homicide,” she said.
Baxter said little in O’Keefe’s courtroom beyond acknowledging that she was pleading guilty to third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of a crime.
She is expected to be sentenced Nov. 18.
Jonathan Strange, Baxter’s attorney with the Defender Association of Philadelphia, declined to comment.
District Attorney Larry Krasner on Tuesday said he strongly disagreed witha judge’s decision to overturn the murder conviction of a man who killed Philadelphia Police Officer Moses Walker Jr. in 2012 and vowed to appeal.
Krasner said Common Pleas Court Judge Jennifer Schultz, who handed down the ruling Monday, was “legally incorrect” in vacating the conviction of Rafael Jones, who is serving life in prison for killing the officer during a street robbery at the end of his shift.
But Krasner, speaking at a news conference alongside Walker’s mother and Roosevelt Poplar, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, said Jones’ conviction was different from others involving Nordo that have since been reevaluated.
“We believe now that Rafael Jones is guilty — that he murdered Moses Walker Jr.,” Krasner said.
If the appellate court denies the district attorney’s appeal, he added, “we will be retrying this case. We have a lot of evidence to do so. And we will be retrying it vigorously.”
Jones’ attorney, Jason Edward Parris, said Tuesday afternoon that the vacated conviction represented justice.
If jurors heard Jones’ case today, Parris said, they would have information about Nordo’s sex abuse crimes involving informants in homicide investigations that was not available at the time of Jones’ trial.
“I don’t think anybody should be comfortable with someone serving life in prison based in part on an investigation done by an officer who is now doing 49 years [in prison] for crimes committed during the investigation of this case,” Parris said.
Walker, 40, was shot and killed shortly before dawn on Aug. 18, 2012.
The officer had just left the 22nd District station in North Philadelphia dressed in civilian clothes when Jones and another man, Chancier McFarland, targeted him in a robbery, prosecutors said.
Jones fired at Walker after the officer reached for his gun, according to prosecutors. Both men were arrested, and McFarland pleaded guilty and testified against Jones as part of a deal to avoid life in prison.
Years later, during Nordo’s sexual abuse trial in 2022, one of his accusers testified that the detective had steered him toward a $20,000 reward and later raped him.
Though Krasner acknowledged the “messy history” that came with Nordo’s involvement in Jones’ case, he said the district attorney’s office was confident in the conviction.
There were multiple pieces of evidence that pointed to Jones’ guilt, he said, including a murder confession that was not introduced at trial because Jones did not testify, and McFarlane’s eyewitness account of the crime.
“We concluded years ago that this conviction was in the category that should not be disturbed,” Krasner said.
The district attorney’s office will appeal Schultz’s ruling to Superior Court, a process Krasner said could take up to two years.
Poplar, the FOP president, said he had faith that Krasner’s office would prevail.
“Yesterday was a tough day,” he said, echoing comments made by Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who said he was disappointed by the ruling.
Walker’s mother, Wayniya, said she and her family “would not allow these latest developments to weaken us.”
“We remain confident justice will prevail,” she said, adding that she hoped that the death of her son, not the vacated conviction of his killer, would “remain at the center of this case.”
“No decision rendered can alter what happened on Aug. 18, 2012,” she said.
It will soon be closing time for New Barber’s Hall, an iconic Black cultural space that has brought jazz, revelry, and community to North Philadelphia for nearly 50 years.
On Saturday, the combination music venue, restaurant, and ballroom on the 1400 block of West Oxford Street celebrated what will be one of its last hurrahs — the longtime owner, Jake Adams, has sold the building.
Adams and his wife, Sarah, said they plan to keep the joint open for as long as they see fit, though at some point the buyer — neighboring Temple University — will take over the property to enact plans not yet revealed.
Before curtains are called, local leaders and hundreds of loyal patrons gathered to celebrate decades of good times and cultural milestones that took place at New Barber’s Hall, a three-story brick building that dates to the 1800s and was once a social hub for the city’s Black barbers.
While there was plenty of talk about icons who had once played gigs or simply passed through — from Miles Davis and John Coltrane to Patti LaBelle and Boyz II Men — the afternoon’s focus was largely on Adams, who has diligently played host since purchasing the building in the late 1970s.
New Barber’s Hall owners Jake and Sarah Adams hold a street sign in their honor during a Barber’s Hall community legacy celebration, a daylong celebration of music, history, and community in North Philadelphia on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
To honor the duo, the celebration included the unveiling of Philadelphia’s newest street sign, designating that portion of West Oxford Street as “Jake and Sarah Adams Way.”
“For almost 50 years being a business leader here in the city, Jake has given back numerous times,” said City Councilmember Jeffery Young, whose district covers much of North Philadelphia, as he announced the new placard.
“When we announced we were doing this, people said, ‘Oh, my God, I had my baby shower there, my wedding reception there, I met my spouse there.’” Young said. “That’s what this place is.”
Adams, who in addition to owning New Barber’s Hall was a Democratic leader of the city’s 14th Ward, gave bittersweet remarks as he thanked the crowd for years of support.
“I tried to fix the building. I tried to make sure that everybody had a great time,” he said.
New Barber’s Hall owners Jake (second right) and Sarah Adams receive a street sign in their honor presented by 5th District Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., (left) during a Barber’s Hall community legacy celebration, a daylong celebration of music, history, and community in North Philadelphia on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
The sale is the latest development in the building’s lengthy history.
Constructed in the 1860s, it evolved over the decades to house various civic and fraternal organizations such as the National Council for Jewish Women and the Quaker City Wheelmen, and in the early 20th century it spent time as a bicycle factory.
The Barber’s Hall name came about when Black barbers pooled their money to purchase the building in 1949. It soon became a hub for the city’s growing Black community, and musicians staying at the nearby Chesterfield Hotel — listed in the Jim Crow-era “Green Book” — often stopped by to play.
Adams and his older brother purchased the building in 1978, running it as a jazz venue and soul food restaurant.
In addition to LaBelle, greats like Isaac Hayes, Grover Washington Jr., and Robert “Bootsie” Barnes graced the room (in an oft-repeated tale, a teenage Jill Scott was turned away because she was underage).
Guests attend the New Barber’s Hall community legacy celebration, a daylong celebration of music, history, and community in North Philadelphia on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
The building was set to receive a historic designation from the Philadelphia Historical Commission in 2024 that would have safeguarded it from demolition. But at the last minute, Adams had a change of heart about the nomination, saying he did not want his children to inherit a building with strict restrictions for potential buyers.
Temple, seeking to expand its footprint under president John Fry, quietly snatched up the building earlier this year for $2.3 million. The school will “explore further uses for the property, specifically related to how it might support the soon-to-be-completed campus development plan,” Temple said in a statement, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.
In the meantime, Adams told revelers Saturday that the true coda for New Barber’s Hall won’t come until he says so, adding that Temple had agreed to the arrangement.
For those like Lisa Sanders, who grew up around the corner from the venue, that day will mark the end of an era.
“It’s been a part of our family history,” said Sanders, 58, recounting countless birthday parties and platters of shrimp and chicken at the hall.
“It’s definitely been a pleasure, and [Jake and Sarah] deserve it,” she said. “I’ll really miss Barber’s Hall — but as long as I can still go, I’ll be happy about that.”
For Minara Rahman and her husband, a move to Philadelphia was supposed to be a fresh start.
She and Md Mahfuzul Haque met while attending medical school in their native Bangladesh in 2000, married soon after, and remained nearly inseparable for 21 years,most of them spent in Canada.
Their love story came to a tragic conclusion early this month when Haque, a 43-year-old doctor who was driving for DoorDash to support Rahman’s optometry career, was shot and killed during a robbery outside a Southwest Philadelphia home.
It was one of at least three shootings involving delivery drivers in the city this summer.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Rahman, 43. “I’m crying, I’m mourning, I’m in grief, but I’m still not believing he’s not with me.”
Philadelphia had only recently become home for Rahman, Haque, and their 14-year-old son.
In 2023, the family moved from Vancouver, where much of Haque’s extended family lives, as Rahman began her studies at Drexel University’s optometry school, she said.
She and Haque had both been practicing physicians in Bangladesh and worked in the healthcare industry in Canada, where they moved in 2011 after receiving skilled immigration visas.
In Philadelphia, Rahman saw the opportunity to get an American medical license and earn enough to support her family.
Haque, she said, sacrificed his own professional ambitions to support that move, doing odd jobs and driving for DoorDash to earn money while she completed school.
Rahman graduated from Drexel last year and began practical training while the family worked to extend their U.S. visas. Part of her work involved conducting eye exams forpolice and security guards, she said.
“It was me who wanted to do something more, and he always supported me,” Rahman said of her husband. “Without him, it would have been impossible.”
A photo of Md Mahfuzul Haque.Minara Rahman
Though Rahman worried that Philadelphia could be dangerous, she said, she and Haque believed that life in the United States would offer their family safety and security.
She no longer thinks so.
Just days after Haque’s killing, police made an arrest in a separate homicide case involving a food delivery driver. They accused a 14-year-old Queen Village teen of luring the man, Anshul Kuncha, to an abandoned North Philadelphia rowhouse, where he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head.
And on Tuesday, police said, a 31-year-old delivery driver was shot in the hand after getting into an argument with two women in Northern Liberties. He was placed in stable condition at a nearby hospital.
Since the July 7 shooting of Haque, Rahman has been in touch with police seeking to gather more information about her husband’s killing.
Officers responded to the 1000 block of South Ithan Street in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood around 9:30 that evening to find Haque on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head.
His car was still running, investigators said, and a bag of delivery food was found nearby. They soon identified three suspects, masked men wearing dark clothing.
Johnson, of East Mount Airy, was charged with murder in Haque’s killing last Friday while he was in custody in connection with an unrelated crime. He is being held in prison without bail.
The teen is expected to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 10.
Rahman said she was struck by the fact that the gunman who police say took her husband’s life is so young — just a year older than her own son.
“I can’t imagine any boy like my son’s age treating anybody else like that,” she said. “I have no idea what they were thinking — what was their motive, and how did they get that firearm that easily?”
Haque was buried in Vancouver, where Rahman and her son moved to be near his extended family, and she has abandoned her pursuit of a medical career in the United States.
In an interview, she spoke sorrowfully of plans abandoned: a family trip to Florida, an Atlantic City wedding anniversary celebration set for the last week of July.
And each day, Rahman said, she struggles with nagging worry that by moving her family to Philadelphia for her career, she was somehow responsible for her husband’s death.
The only thing she wants now is justice.
“We both did counseling for tons of patients,” Rahman said, recalling the years of challenging medical work caring for people at their worst moments.
“Now I’m in that situation,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore, and I need help.”
An off-duty Philadelphia police officer who authorities say shot and killed his uncle in Northampton County during the weekend contended he did so in self-defense, according to court documents.
Cummings told troopers he had fired at Moncrieffe because he feared the man was reaching for his concealed firearm during a domestic confrontation, according to an affidavit of probable cause in his arrest.
Investigators say Cummings shot Moncrieffe six times in the head with a 9mm handgun during the confrontation at a residence on Old Gate Road.
Cummings is a two-year veteran of the force. He has an entry-level rank and serves on the Kensington detail, where he is paid a salary of $79,259, public records show.
Cpl. Jasmine Reilly, a police spokesperson, said Monday that the department’s internal affairs bureau has opened an inquiry into Cummings. She referred further questions to state police, who are overseeing the criminal investigation.
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Bethlehem did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The conflict began Friday around 1:30 p.m., when Cummings confronted his uncle at the home after a young family member told the off-duty officer that Moncrieffe had verbally threatened him, according to court documents.
After Cummings entered the residence, other family members saw the two men begin to struggle, with Moncrieffe shoving Cummings as he tried to stand up, the documents said.
The young family member — a juvenile whom police did not identify — then approached Moncrieffe and punched him multiple times in the face, the documents said. He later told investigators that the escalation led Moncrieffe to “square up with him.”
That’s when Cummings drew his weapon and fired at Moncrieffe, striking him in the head, the documents said. Moncrieffe slumped to the floor, and Cummings shot him again in the head before fleeing the property.
Cummings was arrested that afternoon after leading troopers on a chase through the Lehigh Valley community, at points traveling more than 100 mph through residential areas as he evaded law enforcement in an orange 2023 Kia Forte, according to the documents.
The pursuit ended back at Moncrieffe’s home, where Cummings surrendered his firearm and was taken into custody without further resistance, authorities said.
He is being held in the Northampton County jail without bail and is set to appear before District Judge Jordan A. Knisley on Aug. 8.
Staff writer Ryan Briggs contributed to this article.
A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder and related crimes for fatally shooting a 43-year-old man in Southwest Philadelphia earlier this month, authorities said.
Zakah Johnson, of East Mount Airy, was already in custody for an unrelated crime when police accused him Friday of killing MD Mahfuzul Haque, who investigators said was shot dead on July 7 in the city’s Kingsessing section.
Police responded to a residence on the 100 block of South Ithan Street that evening to find Haque with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
He was pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center around 9:30 p.m.
On Thursday, police took Johnson into custody for an unrelated investigation. Before he was set to be released, authorities kept him in custody and charged him for Haque’s killing.
Johnson will be tried as an adult, police said. In addition to murder, he was charged with robbery, conspiracy, and a handful of firearms crimes.
He is being held in the Philadelphia Juvenile Detention Center and was denied bail.
Haque, a native of Bangladesh, had been delivering food for DoorDash at the time of the shooting, investigators said.
A well-known activist and founder of a Kensington anti-violence nonprofit was charged with aggravated assault and related crimes for attacking a woman with a box cutter during an argument on a SEPTA train last week, authorities said Thursday.
Rosalind “Roz” Pichardo, 48, was taken into custody days after the July 17 assault, which left the victim in critical condition with deep lacerations to her face and chestthat required more than 70 stitches to close, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case.
Pichardo is the founder of Operation Save Our City, a nonprofit that offers social services to people who have experienced grief, addiction, or trauma from exposure to violence, according to the group’s website. She also runs “Sunshine House,” a storefront on Kensington Avenue where people in addiction can drop in for meals, clothes, and other forms of support.
She has been involved with other anti-violence and victim services organizations throughout the city and has received at least two city grants for her work.
Last week, one day before the assault, Pichardo touted a $20,000 grant that Operation Save Our City received from the Philadelphia Office of Public Safety.
And in 2024 and this year, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office awarded Pichardo’s organization $25,000 and $10,000, respectively, through its violence prevention microgrant program.
Pichardo declined to comment Thursday. No attorney for her was listed in court documents.
Around 9 p.m. Friday on an eastbound SEPTA train near Eighth and Market Streets, prosecutors say, Pichardo assaulted a woman with a box cutter. They said the conflict began when the two women argued on a platform at the transit agency’s 15th Street Station.
The victim told investigators Pichardo “got smart with her” after she asked a man who was blocking a platform bench to move so she could sit down, according to an affidavit of probable cause for Pichardo’s arrest. She said she, in turn, “got smart” with Pichardo.
During the spat, the victim said, Pichardo complained about “how rude young people are” and called her entitled for asking the man to move.
The women then boarded the train, where the argument continued, and they “both got in each other’s face and started fighting each other,” the woman told investigators, according to the affidavit.
At some point during the scuffle, the woman said, Pichardo pulled out a box cutter and assaulted her. She told investigators she felt warmness on her face and felt “a lot of blood.”
The attack left the woman with severe lacerations on her cheeks and her chest that,in addition to needing stitches, required surgery to help her regain muscle movement, the documents said.
Pichardo was taken into custody by SEPTA transit police but released the same evening.
Investigators said technical issues initially prevented them from viewing surveillance footage captured within the train car, but they later recovered footage from an adjoining car that showed portions of the incident.
On Wednesday, Pichardo was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, possessing an instrument of a crime, reckless endangerment, harassment, and disorderly conduct.
She was released from custody after posting 10% of $25,000 bail, court records show.
The case will be handled by the attorney general’s special prosecutor for mass transit, a position created by the state legislature to address what Republican lawmakers said was the failure of District Attorney Larry Krasner to prosecute violent crimes on or near SEPTA properties.
A spokesperson for Krasner’s office declined to commenton the case and referred questions to the attorney general.
Pichardo appeared to address the matter in cryptic posts on Facebook, where she frequently promotes her activist work to her 23,000 followers.
On July 18, one day after the assault, she posted a photo of a SEPTA train car with the caption: “Lord please give me strength to get through this pain.”
And on Wednesday evening around 9 p.m., she updated followers: “I’m Good .. I’m Home and trusting the process . My head is up..”
In addition to founding Operation Save Our City in 2012 and later Sunshine House, Pichardo has worked as a lead educator with the harm reduction nonprofit Prevention Point and as a trauma victims advocate in Temple University Hospital’s emergency department.
Staff writers Ellie Rushing, Aubrey Whelan, and Jillian Kramer contributed to this article.
