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.
Federal prosecutors have charged a Montgomery County rail parts supplier and its owner with participating for eight years in a bid-rigging conspiracy involving SEPTA contracts.
Hatfield-based Qual-Tran Products Co. LLCand owner Cathleen Shive colluded with competitors and others, including a former SEPTA employee, to manipulate the transit agency’s competitive bidding process, according to a charging document filed July 23 in theU.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania.
Invoices show SEPTA did $20.3 million worth of business with Qual-Tran from 2007 to 2025, authority spokesperson Andrew Busch said. The transit agency says it bought a variety of train and railway parts from the company, many of them for Regional Rail.
A person answering the phone at Qual-Tran’s listed telephone number declined to comment. Lawyer Fortunato Perri is representing the company according to court records and declined to comment Friday.
“SEPTA’s Office of Inspector General has been working closely with the Department of Justice on this matter and will continue to do so as the investigation moves forward,” Busch said.
Qual-Tran distributes after-market parts to transit systems and freight railroads across the country.
The company specializes in overhead catenary wires, which transfer power to passenger trains, as well as other equipment such as current sensors and third-rail contacts, according to its website and coverage in trade publications.
SEPTA won’t have a complete picture of how much money was involved in the alleged scheme until the government reveals more details as the case progresses, Busch said.
Qual-Tran was able to reverse-engineer replacement parts no longer made for older rail cars in SEPTA fleets, he said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Pennsylvania declined to comment on the case beyond court records.
Qual-Tran and Shive,prosecutors allege,conspired with five people and two corporations, noneidentified by name in court records. They created the appearance of competition for SEPTA work while deciding among them which company would win some contracts, the charging document says.
The alleged scheme ran from 2016 to 2024, according to the charges. Shive, the documents say, joined Qual-Tran in 2011 and became the president and owner of the company in 2024.
They face antitrust charges of unlawful restraint of trade in interstate commerce.
Prosecutors described five transactions.
In one September 2023 instance, the government said, Shive asked a senior resource controller with SEPTA to arrange for a second corporation to deliberately submit a higher bid of $3,310 each for “30 manhole frames and lids.” Qual-Tran won the contract by quoting a lower price.
SEPTA confirmed that the senior resource controller mentioned in the charging documents is no longer employed by the agency.
An Atlantic City lifeguard has been charged with attempting to pay for sex with who he believed to be an underage girl but who turned out to be an undercover detective, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said Thursday.
Stephen M. Pagnoni, of Egg Harbor Township, was arrested this week and was being held at the Camden County Correctional Facility pending a detention hearing, Camden County Prosecutor Grace C. MacAulay said.
Pagnoni, who has worked for the Atlantic City Beach Patrol for around 20 years, was suspended from his position, MacAulay said.
On Tuesday, Pagnoni allegedly began communicating online with a person he believed was a 15-year-old girl, but who was in fact a detective with the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office High Tech Crimes Unit, MacAulay said.
During the conversation, Pagnoni allegedly arranged to meet the supposed teen girl at a park in Cherry Hill for sex in exchange for money, MacAulay said.
After he arrived at the location, MacAulay said, Pagnoni was taken into custody by Cherry Hill police and members of the prosecutor’s office.
Pagnoni was charged with first-degree attempted manufacturing of child sexual abuse material, second-degree attempting to lure a child, second-degree attempted sexual assault of a minor, second-degree attempted prostitution with a minor, and related offenses.
In an emailed statement, the Atlantic City Department of Public Safety said it was aware of the criminal charges against Pagnoni.
“Based upon those charges, the lifeguard has been suspended from duty pending the outcome of the criminal investigation. The department will continue to monitor the investigation and will take any additional administrative action that may be appropriate as the matter proceeds,” the agency said.
Anyone with information that could be helpful to the investigation can contact Sgt. John Cochran of the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office High Tech Crimes Unit at 856-225-8826. Tips may also be sent to CAMDEN.TIPS.
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.
Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty will remain in prison after a federal judge again denied Dougherty’s request to be released on house arrest to provide care for his gravely ill wife.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl wrote in a memorandum filed Thursday that Dougherty and his lawyers had failed to demonstrate that he was the only person who could provide adequate care for his wife, Cecelia, who for years has suffered from a debilitating brain injury.
In addition, Schmehl wrote, Dougherty did not sufficiently specify when a trust fund established to support his wife’s care would run out of money. Those factors, coupled with the “minimal amount of time” Dougherty has served in his six-year sentence, Schmehl wrote, “do not weigh sufficiently in favor of relief.”
The decision was a blow to Dougherty, 66, who for months has been contending in court documents and in testimony before Schmehl that his wife’s condition has significantly worsened while he has been imprisoned, and that if he is not released to care for her, she will likely die.
Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, said in an interview Thursday that he was “deeply, gravely disappointed” by the ruling, and that he disagreed they had not shown the acute nature of the emergency that should qualify Dougherty for release.
“I thought the evidentiary hearing we had in front of Judge Schmehl was extraordinary, and it left no doubt in anybody’s mind” about the merits of Dougherty’s petition, Bochetto said.
The ruling followed another rejection in Dougherty’s ongoing bid for freedom. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump denied Dougherty’s request for a commutation, a legal avenue that could have cut Dougherty’s prison term short.
Schmehl, in his memorandum, did say that Dougherty could file a renewed motion in the future, “should the facts materially change.”
Bochetto said he would not wait that long. He was already working on his notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he said, and he intended to ask the court to consider the case on an emergency basis.
“This is why God invented appellate courts,” Bochetto said.
Dougherty was sentenced in 2024 to six years in prison after being convicted in separate bribery and embezzlement trials that centered on actions he took while serving as the head of his politically powerful union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
But last year, Dougherty — known colloquially as Johnny Doc — filed emergency motions asking Schmehl to allow him to serve the remainder of his prison term on house arrest so he could be his wife’s primary caregiver.
In his first request, filed in the summer, Dougherty said that the trust fund established to pay for her care was about to run out of money, and that his daughters and other relatives were unable to provide the kind of around-the-clock assistance she needed.
Then, in December, he filed another motion, saying the situation had become more dire after the death of his father-in-law, who had been serving as the primary caregiver in his absence.
Prosecutors opposed Dougherty’s requests, saying that although they were sympathetic to his wife’s plight, they did not believe he had served enough of his sentence to merit release.
And in January, Schmehl denied Dougherty’s request, writing that he, too, recognized the significant health challenges, but that they did “not outweigh, at this point in time, the need for punishment that has been adjudged.”
Bochetto appealed that ruling. And in May, Schmehl held an evidentiary hearing to learn more.
At the hearing, Dougherty took the stand for more than an hour, and occasionally choked back tears as he described his wife’s myriad complications and detailed the efforts he had made in prison to help her, including by sending her dozens of letters and using all of his allotted monthly phone minutes to call her.
But prosecutors argued that Dougherty and his relatives had not sufficiently looked into alternative care arrangements that might be covered by Medicaid or other insurance. And they said that while many families across the country could benefit from having an incarcerated defendant released to help care for their relatives, Dougherty had not shown that he was the only person who could do so for his wife.
Schmehl, in his order, said that Dougherty’s wife is being cared for by private nurses and her two daughters, and that “neither party suggests that her current care is inadequate.” Beyond that, the judge said, Dougherty did not sufficiently specify when her trust fund would run out of money and did not adequately explain what would happen once it did.
The ruling will leave Dougherty, for now, to serve out the remainder of his term, which he is serving at a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. His projected release date is in June 2029, according to the Bureau of Prisons website.
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.”
A nonfunctioning grenade was thrown into a Feltonville home early Thursday morning, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. The home was evacuated and no one was injured.
Police responded to the 400 block of West Courtland Street at 1:59 a.m. for reports that a grenade had been thrown into a residence. The home was cleared, and the Philadelphia Police Bomb Disposal Unit arrived at the scene around 3:35 a.m. to safely secure the device.
Following an examination, bomb squad officers determined the device to be nonexplosive, or inert, and posed no danger to the public.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Philadelphia Police Department’s tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).
Four Cheltenham High School football coaches and six players have been charged in connection with two assaults in the school’s locker room that injured a 15-year-old player and led to the cancellation of two football seasons, Montgomery County prosecutors said Wednesday.
In two violent assaults, District Attorney Kevin Steele said, multiple football players attacked a sophomore on the team, stomped on his chest and groin while wearing cleats, and used a broomstick to poke at his buttocks.
“The assaults on this victim were not typical goofing around by teammates, or horseplay, as some of the coaches in this case called it,” Steele said at a news conference Wednesday. “They were crimes.”
After the attacks, which took place last August and September, Steele said, coaches tried to cover them up.
Head coach Terence Tolbert, 55; associate head coach Darian McFadden, 42; assistant coach Benjamin Johnson III, 45; and volunteer coach Ralph Burnley, 60, have been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and conspiracy. The coaches are no longer with the district.
Two football players, Isaiah Simpson, and Josiah Peeler, both 18, have been charged as adults — Simpson with conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and related crimes for his role in the September assault, and Peeler with false swearing for being untruthful to police. The two were 18, Steele said, when the crimes they are charged with took place.
The four other players have been charged as juveniles, and were not identified by prosecutors or named in court records. Two of them face charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and related crimes, because authorities say they took part in the attacks. The other two players are charged with false swearing.
Tolbert, McFadden, Johnson, and Peeler were released on $5,000 unsecured bail. The two other adults had not been arraigned as of Wednesday afternoon. Only two of the defendants, Johnson and Peeler, had attorneys listed in court records.
Johnson’s attorney, Richard J. Fuschino, said his client “has been humiliated by what occurred and absolutely had nothing to do with it.”
“I do believe there is a cover-up, and I absolutely do not believe Benjamin Johnson had anything to do with it,” he said. “In fact, quite the opposite: He went out of the way to cooperate with every investigator.”
Peeler’s attorney, Jessica Mann, did not respond to a request for comment. Attempts to reach the other defendants were not successful Wednesday.
Cheltenham Superintendent Brian Scriven said Wednesday that the district appreciated prosecutors’ work on the case and the filing of criminal charges. “While no legal outcome can erase the harm that was experienced,” he said, “we appreciate that after nearly a year, charges have been announced and those responsible are being held accountable through the criminal justice system.”
Prosecutors say coaches wanted incident ‘kept quiet’
Steele said the charges followed a grand jury investigation in which witnesses described two violent assaults.
The coaches are criminally liable for the assaults, Steele said, because, while they were not present, they learned of the September incident and encouraged the victim not to tell his parents.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele at a press conference Wednesday.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Privately, the coaches sent incriminating text messages to one another, Steele said, expressing concern that the incident “has to be handled and kept quiet.”
McFadden, the former assistant coach, wrote “if this gets out we are [expletive]. They will cancel the whole season,” according to the grand jury presentment.
The assaults occurred Aug. 15, after a preseason practice, and Sept. 3, Steele said. He said video footage of the August incident showed several students restraining the victim, while another student poked at his legs and buttocks with a broomstick.
Players are laughing and yelling in the video, and “at least one player is chanting, ‘broomstick him,’” Steele said.
A football player who witnessed the assault, but is not charged in the case, told the grand jury that the use of a broomstick was an apparent reference to a TikTok video featuring a Meek Mill song with the lyrics “broomstick all in his butt, tell him take that,” according to the grand jury presentment.
Steele said there was no evidence that it constituted sexual assault.
Players didn’t take the incidents seriously
Several football players who testified before the grand jury characterized the behavior as “horseplay” and said they did not take it that seriously. Others said the victim had a difficult relationship with his teammates and was viewed by them as “someone who did not follow the rules during practices.”
The Sept. 3 assault, witnesses said, happened after the teen took a pair of shoulder pads from another player’s locker after misplacing his own, an infraction for which the entire team had to do extra conditioning as punishment.
Steele said that investigators did not have a video of the Sept. 3 assault but that multiple players, including Simpson and two of the juvenile defendants, kicked and stomped the victim.
The teen reported told investigators that his teammates were “trying to poke him in the butt with the broomstick,” and that they made contact with his buttocks, Steele said. He said the assault broke up when school buses arrived, and teammates left to board them.
Burnley, one of the coaches, drove the victim home after the attack, and the teen broke down in tears, telling the assistant coach he had been jumped by teammates, the district attorney said.
Burnley then texted coaches in a group chat and called Tolbert, Steele said. McFadden and Tolbert called the teen and “told him not to tell his mother about the incident because they would handle it,” Steele said.
He said the coaches were deliberate and calculating in their decision not to report the assault.
‘Serious concerns about the response’
The incident came to light four days later, when the teen’s mother said he told her he had been jumped by teammates and had pain in his genitals. She said she took her son to an urgent care center and texted the high school’s assistant principal, who called her later that day.
A front view of Cheltenham High School in Wyncote.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The teen did not tell his mom that his teammates used a broomstick in the attack. He was embarrassed and reluctant to share that detail, the mother said in an interview with The Inquirer in which she spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of her son.
She said her son told her that his teammates had tried “to mess with his manhood.”
She learned about the broomstick later in September, when Cheltenham Township police called to tell her that someone had called Pennsylvania’s Safe2Say hotline to anonymously report that students had used a broomstick during the attack, according to the teen’s lawyers, Alan Yatvin and Gabrielle Turley.
Sometime in October, the district obtained a video that had been circulating in the community and depicted an assault of the student with a broomstick, the lawyers said.
Investigators initially believed that footage was from the Sept. 3 assault. It was discovered during grand jury testimony in January that the assault was from August, prosecutors said. The teen, who said he was not shown the video until this spring, also identified it as being from August, revealing for the first time that he had been assaulted more than once, according to the lawyers.
“Our client and his family are grateful to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, law enforcement investigators, and the grand jury for their careful and thorough work in bringing these deeply troubling events to light and pursuing charges,” Yatvin said in a statement Wednesday. He added that the grand jury investigation “also raises serious concerns about the response by some within the Cheltenham High School community.”
The district faulted inadequate supervision in the locker room, “a failure to prioritize student safety” by coaches and volunteers, and “a toxic and negative culture” within the football program.
District officials have said a Title IX investigation, required by law when sexual assault or harassment is alleged, is ongoing.
Scriven, the superintendent, said in a statement Wednesday that “every report brought to the district’s attention was addressed based on the information available at the time.” He noted that law enforcement and the grand jury had the power to issue search warrants and compel testimony, which “brought information to light.”
In April, the district approved separation agreements with Tolbert and McFadden. Officials say none of the coaches from last season is still affiliated with the district.
The victim, who switched to virtual school after being harassed by peers after the attacks, has continued to struggle, according to his mother. She said he avoids going outside because he fears being taunted about what happened.
During Wednesday’s news conference, Steele criticized the school district and said it had failed the victim.
In its report, the grand jurors noted that they — not the school district’s Title IX investigator — discovered that two separate assaults had taken place.
“I believe the Cheltenham School District has taken the position that they don’t want police in their schools or school resource officers, and so it’s on them to address these issues,” Steele said. “So the grand jury took care of what the school did not.”
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele arrives at a press conference Wednesday to announce multiple charges in connection with two assaults in a Cheltenham High School locker room.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
In addition to recommending criminal charges against the players and coaches involved in the case, the grand jury filed a separate report calling for a change in state law that would require teachers and coaches to report incidents of hazing as a form of child abuse.
“While the school district claims to ‘protect and prioritize safety and well being,’ their actions in this case say otherwise,” the grand jury report said. “The administration carried out three school-led investigations that were so flawed they failed to even identify that two separate instances of hazing occurred in the locker room.”
News researcher Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
A 36-year-old Camden man was charged with soliciting sexually explicit photos from a 7-year-old girl after a specially trained K-9 dog found the phone the man allegedly used to message the victim, Camden County Prosecutor Grace C. MacAulay said Wednesday.
Elmer Lao was arrested on July 22 after a search was conducted at his residence and the phone was discovered in his bedroom by a K-9 dog named Rookie, who is trained to detect electronic devices, MacAulay said.
Lao was charged with second-degree attempted manufacturing of child sexual abuse material and third-degree endangering the welfare of a child. He was being held at the Camden County Correctional Facility pending a detention hearing, MacAulay said.
On July 20, the special victims and high-tech crimes units of the prosecutor’s office began the investigation after the 7-year-old girl disclosed that a man had begun sending her messages on TikTok and by text message, MacAulay said.
Investigators determined that Lao allegedly engaged in messaging conversations with the girl, whom he knew to be 7 years old, MacAulay said.
Lao allegedly sent nude videos of himself to the girl and requested that the girl send nude photos of herself in return, MacAulay said.
“Predators often use social media and messaging apps to target children, making parental involvement more important than ever,” MacAulay said in a statement.
“I urge every parent to regularly monitor their child’s messages on TikTok and other social media platforms and to have ongoing conversations about online safety and the risks of communicating with strangers,” MacAulay said.
Anyone with information that could be helpful to the investigation can contact Detective Jessica Minniti of the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit at 856-225-8537. Tips may also be sent to CAMDEN.TIPS.
Police recovered a vehicle on Tuesday believed to have been used in a fatal hit-and-run earlier this week.
Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said Wednesday that investigators found a black Dodge Charger Hellcat, a high-performance version of the standard Charger, in Upper Darby on Tuesday. Investigators also learned the vehicle had been stolen around an hour before its driver fatally struck Talyia Bernice Nesmith, 29, on Monday morning.
On Monday, just after 3 a.m., Nesmith exited a rideshare vehicle on the 7200 block of Elmwood Avenue in the Eastwick section of Southwest Philadelphia. As she attempted to cross the street, someone driving a black Dodge Charger Hellcat struck her at a high rate of speed, police said.
Nesmith was struck with so much force that she was thrown into the rear of a nearby unoccupied parked car. After striking Nesmith, police said, the driver of the Dodge continued east, striking another parked car before fleeing.
Police responded to the scene at 3:30 a.m. for reports of a multi-vehicle crash involving a pedestrian. Philadelphia Fire Department medics took Nesmith to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead at 4:05 a.m.
In the hours following the crash, investigators in Northwest Philadelphia found a report of a stolen 2019 black Dodge Charger Hellcat, a similar model to the one involved in the hit-and-run, Vanore said. Officers began tracking where the vehicle traveled after the theft and were able to identify the car in the area of the fatal hit-and-run.
Following that lead, investigators were able to further track the Hellcat into Delaware County. Vanore said that officers notified Delaware County law enforcement agencies of the vehicle they were looking for Tuesday, and that by 5 p.m., officers had recovered a 2019 black Dodge Charger Hellcat in a residential area of Upper Darby at Broadway and Oak Avenues. The vehicle will be processed for forensic evidence.
Police did not identify a suspect in the stolen vehicle or the hit-and-run, and no one is in custody. Investigators are combing through video evidence of the car theft and recovery and the fatal hit-and-run to identify a suspect, but are continuing to ask the public for any information.
“We still ask that anybody from the public who may know anything about this theft, who may know who was operating that Dodge Hellcat, we’re urging them to call us at our tip line or in our crash investigation division,” Vanore said.
Anyone with information can submit an anonymous tip by calling the police department’s tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477). Tips can also be submitted electronically at phillypolice.com/tips.
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The number of hit-and-run crashes, like the one that killed Nesmith, has fallen in Eastwick in recent years, according to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation data. There were nine hit-and-runs in 2025, down from 15 in 2023. But since 2019, nearly 100 hit-and-run crashes occurred in the neighborhood, resulting in 84 people injured and four deaths.
