Bristol Borough police and Bucks County detectives are investigating a homicide that took place early Thursday.
Officers were called to a residence on Wood Street around 6:30 a.m. for what law enforcement sources described as a domestic incident.
A woman inside was reported dead at the scene, and one person was in custody, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Police said there was no danger to the public.
When Michael Nixon pulled the trigger on the handgun he was carrying last May, he robbed Khalief Webster Jr. of his future, Webster’s family of a loving son, and the community of any semblance of safety, Webster’s mother said Tuesday in a crowded Delaware County courtroom.
“Khalief was not just the headlines, not just the crime scene tape that haunts me through the night, not just a victim,” Talaya Shaw said of her 17-year-old son. “Khalief was a young boy growing into a young man with a heart bigger than this world could handle.”
And Nixon, she told Judge Deborah Krull, “had no God-given right to decide when and how he left this world.”
For killing Webster, Nixon, 18, of Upper Darby, was sentenced to 18 to 36 years in state prison. Nixon pleaded guilty to third-degree murder earlier this year for the fatal shooting, which unfolded in May 2025 as the two teens, classmates at Upper Darby High School, crossed paths on Long Lane near Pine Street.
Emotions and tempers flared during Nixon’s hours-long sentencing, which the judge had to pause multiple times to rein in outbursts from those who filled the standing-room-only courtroom. Webster’s friends and relatives screamed to be heard, calling Nixon a coward, among other insults, and demanding justice.
Sheriff’s deputies barred more people from entering the hearing, and had to respond to a scuffle that erupted outside the courthouse after Nixon’s sentence was handed down.
On the day of the shooting, Webster was riding a miniature dirt bike when he encountered Nixon, who had walked 25 minutes from his own neighborhood to the area, according to investigators.
What happened next was the subject of debate during Tuesday’s hearing.
Nixon’s attorney, Pete Manaras, said Webster asked his client if he was the “young boul” he had seen “the other day,” and got off the bike to confront him.
The two teens, he said, knew each other and had gotten into disputes before. Nixon, fearing for his safety, shot Webster in the abdomen, Manaras said.
But Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Phillips, who prosecuted the case, said Nixon was the aggressor. He was out looking for Webster, Phillips said, armed and lying in wait in an area where he knew he would encounter the other teen.
“The public needs to be protected from people that would do such a thing on a sunny afternoon, on a beautiful May day, to a young man who didn’t see it coming,” Phillips said.
After the shooting, Nixon fled and was recorded on a surveillance camera telling someone on a phone call that he had shot somebody in the chest, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Nixon’s mother then picked him up and drove him away.
Nixon addressed Webster’s family Tuesday to apologize, saying he wished he could take back what had occurred.
“I didn’t want to kill him. I never wanted to hurt him,” Nixon said. “I was just scared and my body reacted before my mind.”
Nixon said he encountered Webster by chance. He was carrying the gun because of previous run-ins with him, he said, and needed it for protection as he walked to a friend’s house.
Webster grabbed at his waistband as he confronted him, Nixon said. He believed Webster was reaching for a gun and reacted.
Nixon said he had grown up in an abusive household and that made him “perceive everything as a threat” and grow anxious when people get too close to him.
“I’m not saying this as an excuse for my actions, because I know I deserve to be locked up for what I did,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to turn my life around, because I do.”
Webster’s relatives, including his grandmother, Charlotte Webster, said that while they have not yet forgiven Nixon, they know that will come in time through their faith.
Still, she said, the pain Nixon caused their family was devastating.
“I believe this was a deliberate, heinous crime he committed,” she said. “He didn’t care about anything or anyone.”
A Bucks County woman who presided over squalid conditions on a Wrightstown farm and mistreated more than 100 animals in one of the worst neglect cases in county history has pleaded guilty.
Abigail Tuttle O’Keeffe, 55, the former owner of Narrow Way Farm, entered guilty pleas to aggravated cruelty to animals, neglect of animals, and related crimes late last month. She was spared from prison by entering a diversionary program, prosecutors said Monday. O’Keeffe must attend substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, and is barred from owning animals.
Her attorney, Josh Buchanan, declined to comment Monday.
In August 2024, the Bucks County SPCA served a search warrant on O’Keeffe’s property after a farm manager notified the agency that a sheep had been found dead, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest.
Officers rescued more than 100 pigs, goats, and sheep, many suffering from infections, parasites, and other chronic medical conditions. One severely emaciated goat died while investigators were searching the property. Another one was so malnourished and riddled with parasites that it had to be euthanized after weeks of intensive care, the affidavit said.
Volunteers at Narrow Way who spoke with The Inquirer in 2024 said O’Keeffe, who holds a doctorate in developmental psychology, did not have the skills to match her ambitions of running a working farm.
Most of O’Keeffe’s workforce also had little to no farm experience, and the 36-acre property was in disarray, to the detriment of the livestock she kept there, according to some of those volunteers.
In one incident, workers botched the dehorning of a calf, leaving the animal with permanent nerve damage.
Word of the conditions at Narrow Way spread quickly: The owner of a nearby farm said O’Keeffe was not “a real, active farmer,” shied away from the work that required of her, and ran the operation like a cult, comparing her farmhands to “disciples.”
But when local investigators came to the farm, O’Keeffe was thousands of miles away. Prosecutors said she moved to Belize, where she was arrested in April 2025 on gun charges.
U.S. Marshals extradited her to Bucks County months later.
Staff Writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.
A woman was killed and 9-year-old girl was wounded in a shooting at a home in East Goshen Friday morning, according to Chester County investigators.
Officers from the Westtown-East Goshen Police Department were dispatched just before 11 a.m. to a unit at the Summit House condominium complex on West Chester Pike for reports of a shooting, Chief David Leahy said.
Inside the unit, the officers found a woman in her 40s dead from a single gunshot wound, he said. Authorities did not release the woman’s identity. The girl, who was also shot, was treated at the scene by paramedics, and was alert, conscious and able to speak with investigators, he said.
Investigators found a gun not far from the woman’s body that they believe was used in the shooting.
There was no information available on a motive or a potential suspect in the case.
District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe said there is no threat to the public, and declined to comment further, citing the active investigation.
“We have just as many questions as you do, and we don’t want to put out any incorrect information,” de Barrena-Sarobe said.
He said his heart goes out to the family of the victims.
Collingdale’s police chief had her duties of office stripped away by officials in the Delaware County borough in what her lawyer described in a federal civil rights lawsuit as a racist, sexist plot to force her out of her position.
Shanee Mitchell, 44, has been on administrative leave since January, according to the lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court. Officially, Mitchell has been placed on leave because of borough officials’ concerns over her not showing up for her scheduled 8 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shifts.
But her attorney, Mark Schwartz, said the reasoning for her leave is bogus: He contends his client, a Black woman, is being discriminated against because of her race and gender, sidelined by Collingdale’s borough council and mayor until her contract ends in September.
“Borough Council, the Mayor, and senior borough officials were aware of [Mitchell’s] complaints,” Schwartz wrote in the filing. “Rather than stop the interference or protect her from retaliation, borough officials, including but not limited to those named, permitted the hostile course of conduct to continue.”
In his filing, Schwartz said that Mitchell’s contract allowed her to set flexible hours, given the expectation that, as chief, she would be attending meetings and other events outside of normal business hours.
Mitchell’s lawsuit names Collingdale Mayor Donna Matteo-Spadea, as well as borough council president Felecia Coffee, borough council members Stephen Zane and Shannon Murphy, and borough manager Joseph G. Papaleo.
Collingdale solicitor Deanna Williams declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Mitchell’s leave was extended in April after borough officials told her she was the subject of a criminal investigation, but she said she was never interviewed by police and received no further details. Borough officials declined to comment on the alleged investigation for this article, and Mitchell has not been charged with any crimes.
Mitchell filed complaints about the discrimination she allegedly experienced with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission in November 2024, early in her tenure. Those reports went unanswered, Schwartz said, and Mitchell believes she was placed on leave in retaliation for them.
Schwartz said Mitchell “inherited a police department in crisis,” modernized its technology, and improved community relations in the borough of 9,000 people that has struggled with officer shortages. In 2024, shortly before Mitchell took over, Pennsylvania State Police troopers were called in to help bolster overnight patrols.
However, some local law enforcement officials have been critical of Mitchell’s tenure, particularly a public controversy that erupted over a part-time officer she chose to hire as he was being investigated for a violent road-rage incident.
Mitchell was placed on administrative leave Jan. 6, the day after the defendants named in the lawsuit took control of borough council, replacing the council members who had voted to hire her.
But the lawsuit asserts Matteo-Spadea had long wanted to terminate Mitchell, and had made offhand comments for months about how she “can’t wait until January.”
Matteo-Spadea did not return a request for comment about the allegations in the filing.
Matteo-Spadea, the lawsuit said, tried to suspend Mitchell on her first day for violating departmental policy. Among those violations was Mitchell’s refusal to wear a reflective vest and act as a crossing guard, something she felt was not her responsibility and was a deliberate attempt to demean her.
In correspondence with Mitchell, obtained by The Inquirer, Matteo-Spadea defended the crossing-guard duty, saying she had Mitchell’s predecessor, Patrick Kilroy, fill in during the officer shortage. Matteo-Spadea, in issuing Mitchell a formal reprimand for having another officer serve as crossing guard instead, said that, as mayor, she has “full charge and control of the chief and the police department.”
Matteo-Spadea also directed white, male officers not to listen to Mitchell’s orders and stymied her attempts to fill vacancies in the department’s ranks, the lawsuit said. Two officers Mitchell hired, who are Black, were fired in June during their probationary period with the department.
The officers, Jerry Christian and Terrell Howard, both wrote in complaints to the EEOC that they believed they were being retaliated against for associating with Mitchell.
But as Mitchell feuded with the mayor behind closed doors, she faced public scrutiny over one of the officers she hired. In January 2025, Kevon Darden, a part-time officer, was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police just days after joining the department for his alleged role in a road-rage incident.
Darden, 30, was charged with terroristic threats, simple assault, and related crimes for pointing a gun at a dump truck driver on April 5, 2023, while driving on the Blue Route in Ridley Township, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. His case is pending in county court.
Mitchell defended Darden’s hiring in a statement to The Inquirer. But, privately, a top law enforcement official in the county chastised her in an email, accusing her of ignoring warnings not to hire Darden because of the pending criminal charges, according to a copy of that email obtained by The Inquirer.
Law enforcement sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said the controversy over Darden only deepened concerns about Mitchell’s hiring, given the manner in which she had left her previous job.
Before being hired by Collingdale, Mitchell served as the police chief in Selinsgrove, a central Pennsylvania borough about an hour north of Harrisburg. She resigned there after two years, amid what the Daily Item, a local newspaper, reported as concerns over her living situation: At the time, Mitchell lived in Pottstown, more than 100 miles away, and reported for her shifts only “sporadically,” according to the newspaper.
Schwartz, Mitchell’s attorney, called those concerns in Selinsgrove overblown, unlike the treatment he said she has received in Delaware County.
A Clifton Heights man who fired a gun three times in a crowded Walmart, injuring a bystander, has been charged with attempted murder, Delaware County prosecutors said Monday.
Armani Waite, 21, surrendered to police Monday afternoon, but District Attorney Tanner Rouse said investigators had identified him almost immediately after the Friday night shooting and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Waite remained in custody Monday, in lieu of $1 million bail. His attorney, Arik Benari, did not immediately return a request for comment.
“It is a remarkable act of violence, and it is really extraordinary that more people were not hurt by this,” Rouse said, noting that more than 30 people were standing in the store’s self-checkout area when Waite drew his gun.
“This could have been an absolute calamity, and the truth of the matter is it’s his own ineptitude that kept this from being a whole lot worse.”
Rouse said the shooting took place after a “relatively innocuous, relatively short” verbal dispute between Armani and another customer in the store, located on MacDade Boulevard in Glenolden.
During the dispute, the other man lifted his shirt to show Waite he had a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Waite’s arrest. When the other man turned around to leave, Waite drew his own gun and began firing, Rouse said.
One of the bullets flew through a glass door and struck a female employee as she was standing outside the store, he said. She was treated for her injuries and is in stable condition, according to the prosecutor.
Waite does not have a license to carry a concealed weapon, according to investigators. The man he targeted does have a concealed-carry permit, authorities said, and does not face criminal charges.
Rouse said it was unclear what the two men were arguing about, but stressed that Waite was solely responsible for the shooting.
“There is no basis for him to say ‘I was in fear for my life,’” Rouse said. “He was the aggressor here, plain and simple.”
Waite dropped the gun as he fled the store, and it was later recovered by investigators. He also dropped the keys to his car, which investigators used to identify Waite and track him down, according to Rouse.
He is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 11.
A school bus aide for the Bensalem Township School District groped a special-needs student and filmed the assault with his cell phone, police said Monday.
Ali Khan, 62, was charged late last week with corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault, and related crimes after the 14-year-old girl’s parents contacted police.
In a statement, interim Bensalem Township Superintendent Victoria Velazquez said Khan was removed from duty after the district was notified of the police investigation.
The district is cooperating with police and has initiated an internal investigation, she said.
Khan remained in custody, in lieu of 10% of $500,000 bail, court records show. There was no indication he had hired an attorney.
The girl told police that Khan on Thursday touched her inner thigh while she was sitting next to him on a bus heading to Bensalem Township High school, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
Before the assault, she said, Khan blocked her path and forced her to take a seat on the bus next to him. He fastened her seat belt for her, the affidavit said, and while doing so put his face close enough to hers “to kiss her.”
During the ride to her home, Khan intentionally dropped a pen and, while bending down to retrieve it, pointed his cell phone’s camera between her legs, the affidavit said.
Surveillance footage from the bus showed that the girl closed her legs to prevent Khan from touching her, but that he pulled her legs apart to continue touching her. At one point during the assault, police said, Khan put his hands in his pants and appeared to touch himself.
The fate of an assistant Delaware County fire chief accused of hurling racist threats at a woman during a tense confrontation in 2024 is now in the hands of a judge.
John Romano, 48, was charged with ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats, and related crimes after a woman, who is Black, told police he called her the N-word, along with another racial epithet, while she was stopped in traffic because Romano’s forklift was blocking traffic on Hook Road in Darby Township in November 2024.
Romano, of Secane, served as the assistant fire chief at the Sharon Hill Fire Company, an all-volunteer station, but was suspended by borough officials after his arrest, pending the outcome of his trial.
During Romano’s one-day bench trial Wednesday before Judge Margaret J. Amoroso, the woman testified that a line of cars, whose drivers started honking out of frustration, had lined up behind hers. The road was blocked, she said, because Romano was using the forklift to load Christmas trees at J&P Fencing, a business he co-founded.
After the car in front of hers squeezed through a small gap near the forklift, the woman said, Romano got out of the forklift, “rushed” to the passenger-side window of her car and demanded to know why she was honking at him.
From the outset, she said, Romano was “on full-blast rage.”
He called her the N-word, as well as another slur, she said, and took a picture of her license plate, telling her he would “take care” of her at her home. When she said she was calling the police, Romano told her to do so, saying he knew the county sheriff.
“I really couldn’t believe this was happening in the year that we were in,” she said.
Body-camera footage played in court showed Romano initially admitted to the responding Darby Township officers that he called the woman the N-word, but, minutes later, walked back the statement.
He also told the officers that the woman is “a wild animal, and I’m tired of dealing with them,” the footage showed.
That comment, said Assistant District Attorney Shuaiyb Newton, demonstrated Romano’s mindset and proved his guilt.
“It’s clear beyond all doubt that a threat was made from a man to a woman that he would find her and take care of her, a man who was upset, a man who was screaming, and a man who hates her,” Newton said. “And it’s clear the hatred he had for this stranger was based on nothing more than what she looked like.”
Romano’s attorney, Chris Boggs, disputed that. He said the confrontation was “more akin to a road-rage incident,” and was not a case of ethnic intimidation.
Romano, upset at the car horns honking, would have said “awful things to anyone in that circumstance,” he said. Because the driver was Black, Boggs said, he used the racial epithet.
But Boggs said Romano did not threaten violence.
“If this was something more than transitionary anger, something that happens in the moment … he’s going to be using specific threats of violence,” the lawyer said.
Amoroso is expected to deliver her verdict in the case on Aug. 31.
A former Sharon Hill Police officer was sentenced to nine-to-20 years in state prison after admitting he raped and sexually assaulted three children, one as young as 9.
Tyler Humphreys, 24, pleaded guilty in March to rape, corruption of minors, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, and related crimes in connection with the assaults, which took place between 2014 and 2022.
The sentence was handed down by Chester County Court Judge Annalisa Sondergaard during a lengthy hearing Wednesday evening. As a condition of his sentence, Humphreys, of Malvern, is barred from contacting any of the victims or their families.
His attorney, Elliot Marc Cohen, did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
During the hearing, the mother of one of the victims described how Humphreys betrayed the trust afforded him as a public servant and had torn their family apart.
Humphreys was hired as a Sharon Hill police officer in September 2023, three months before he was arrested.
The borough fired Humphreys shortly after the charges were filed by prosecutors in Chester County. During his brief stint with the department, Humphreys worked as a school resource officer, but Sharon Hill officials have said there were no allegations that he had committed any crimes during his tenure with the department.
Investigators said they received a report in November 2023 about the rape, which occurred the previous December at a home in Charlestown Township, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Humphreys’ arrest.
The victim, then 15, told police Humphreys served her alcohol until she was drunk, then carried her to a bedroom and raped her as she was “in and out of consciousness, the affidavit said. Humphreys was 20 at the time.
Another victim later told police about a second incident that also occurred in December 2022.
The woman, then 19, told police she woke up next to Humphreys in bed, and felt sharp pain in her genitals, according to the affidavit. Earlier, she said, Humphreys had urged her to take over-the-counter medication in a dosage that far exceeded what was recommended. When she confronted him about the pain she felt, he denied any wrongdoing, the affidavit said.
She also told investigators that Humphreys sexually assaulted her, groped her and exposed himself a number of times between 2014 and 2018, starting when she was 11 and he was 12, according to the affidavit.
Humphreys was also charged with — and admitted to — the sexual assault of a 9-year-old boy that took place when Humphreys was 12.
A Havertown man was charged Tuesday with terroristic threats, ethnic intimidation, and related crimes after prosecutors said he left racist, threatening voicemails for the Delaware County sheriff.
Sean Keenan, 40, made 15 calls earlier this month to the sheriff’s office in a 24-hour period, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Keenan left two voicemails, during which he used a racial slur to refer to Sheriff Siddiq Kamara, who is Black, threatened to hunt him down, and called for “death to Islam.” Kamara is a Muslim whose family came to Delaware County from their native Liberia.
Keenan was released on $100,000 unsecured bond. There was no indication he had hired an attorney. Keenan did not return a request for comment.
In announcing the charges, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Keenan’s words were “vile, disgusting, and completely unacceptable.”
“There is a time when language crosses the line into criminal behavior, and that is exactly what we have here,” Rouse said. “Threats of violence, most especially racially motivated violence, have no place in Delaware County, regardless of who the intended victim may be.”
Kamara, in a statement last week, said that he welcomes criticism as a public official, but that threats of violence cross the line.
Investigators said they used phone records to trace the numbers that made the call to two phones registered to Keenan, according to the affidavit. One of those numbers called 911 in February to report a car crash, and a recording of the caller’s voice matched Keenan’s.
After serving a search warrant on Keenan’s personal and work-issued cell phones, detectives found evidence that he had left the voicemails on July 18 and July 19, the affidavit said. In an interview with police, Keenan admitted to leaving the voicemails, the document said.
He is scheduled to appear before a district judge for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 7.