Two teenagers were wounded Tuesday night in North Philadelphia in what may have been a drive-by shooting, police said.
The 18-year-old and 17-year-old, both male, were found on the 1800 block of North Woodstock Street about 10:30 p.m., when police responded to a report of a shooting in the area.
Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters one of the victims told officers he believed the incident was a drive-by shooting. Police recovered at least 17 spent shell casings.
The 18-year-old suffered a gunshot wound to the right side of his abdomen, and the 17-year-old was grazed above his right hip. Both were transported by police to Temple University Hospital and were placed in stable condition.
Police said they did not have a motive for the shootingor a description of any suspects, and detectives are requesting anyone with information to call the department’s anonymous tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).
An Upper Bucks man who shot at a DoorDash driver last year, irate that his cheesesteaks were late, was sentenced to four to 10 years in state prison Tuesday.
Keilan McKeever, 33, pleaded guilty earlier this year to aggravated assault and related crimes, in exchange for prosecutors dropping an attempted murder charge for the 9mm bullet he fired at Khalik Lewis in March 2025.
The gunshot struck the back windshield of Lewis’ Honda Civic, shattering it. Later, the then-19-year-old found the bullet stuck in the hood of his sweatshirt.
Judge Steven Corr, in handing down the sentence, said he had been prepared to send McKeever, of Richlandtown, to prison for even longer, citing the “disgusting” nature of the case.
But McKeever’s statement of contrition in court, including his detailed efforts to better himself while behind bars, moved Corr to exercise some leniency.
Still, Corr was adamant that McKeever’s actions were unreasonable. It was only pure luck, he said, that Lewis was not killed, and that no one else was injured as McKeever opened fire on a residential street.
“We have a young man out trying to make money, providing a service to you,” Corr said. “The way you treated him, I don’t know what causes someone to fire a shot at someone like that.”
Video of the incident recorded from a neighbor’s security camera, played in court, showed Lewis pulling up to McKeever’s home on Cherry Street. Almost immediately, McKeever begins shouting and threatening Lewis.
At one point, McKeever is heard saying “I’ll shoot you right now” and “see this” before a gunshot rings out.
Pennsylvania State Police troopers who investigated the case wrote in court filings that McKeever initially lied to them, denying he shot anyone and saying, instead, that the noise heard by his neighbors was a car backfiring.
Lewis, in an interview after Tuesday’s hearing, said McKeever came out of his house holding a loaded handgun. He was combative, Lewis said, and would not listen to him explain that his order was not late, as McKeever believed it was.
McKeever followed Lewis as he walked back to his car, and stood behind him as he attempted to pull away. When Lewis did finally pull out of the driveway, he heard a bang and saw his windshield shatter.
Lewis said he had no idea a bullet caused the damage.
“Literally, my life was just inches away from ending,” Lewis said. “I still suffer from it: Loud noises trigger me, it’s hard to sleep at night.”
He gave up driving for DoorDash, a side gig he had hoped would help pay for college and car repairs, right after the shooting.
And Tuesday’s sentence did little to calm his fears.
“I feel it could have been a much heavier sentence,” he said. “I feel like the judge could have seen it a little more from my point of view, instead of seeing the work he’s doing in jail. Everyone does that.”
McKeever’s attorney, Riley Downs, told Corr during the proceeding that his client struggles with mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, that are debilitating when left untreated. At the time of the shooting, McKeever had not been taking his prescribed medication, Downs said, having lost his health insurance after being fired from his last job months earlier.
His treatment, however, resumed after his arrest, along with therapy that McKeever said has helped him see what he did was wrong.
“I know I have a lot of issues. I know I have some things I want to work,” McKeever said. “It’s just hard on the outside to find help.”
McKeever apologized to Lewis and his family, saying he never intended to hurt him, only to scare him.
“I failed myself and everyone else,” he said. “I hope you can forgive me for your sake, so you can forget and move on with your life.”
Twelve people have been charged in connection with an alleged multimillion-dollar operation to sell high-potency marijuana products in stores across Pennsylvania “under the guise that they were legal” using large distribution warehouses, including one in Bucks County, state Attorney General Dave Sunday said Monday.
Marijuana products are being sold at vape shops, convenience stores, and gas stations because of what has been described as a loophole in federal law. This is separate from the laws passed by states, such as New Jersey, approving the sale of recreational marijuana with strict regulations.
In the Pennsylvania case, investigators traced about $18.7 million to the alleged illegal proceeds, Sunday said.
“We have closed this operation by raiding the main source warehouse locations, three of them, and by removing products from those warehouses and many convenience stores or smoke shops across Pennsylvania,” Sunday said at a news conference in Westmoreland County.
“The defendants in many cases went from being renters of homes and apartments to owners of giant warehouses and lavish residential properties,” Sunday said.
The investigation got its first “big break” in January 2025, when authorities conducted a vehicle stop in Chester County and discovered the driver was “hauling loads of THC products to these stores, illegal products, all being paid for with cash, and that was a tipping point,” Sunday said.
Three warehouses were raided as part of the statewide investigation into “legal weed” sold at gas stations and vape stores, state Attorney General Dave Sunday said.Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office
“So our investigation showed that this criminal organization began as a small-town, small-time operation that grew into something massive,” Sunday said.
A few months later in Westmoreland County, a related investigation was launched after authorities found that “kids at school” were consuming marijuana products sold from these stores, Sunday said.
“We know that these products can end up in the hands of children, but also adults who consume them, sometimes without knowing what they contained. The charged traffickers, however, knew what they were selling and they knew that the products were illegal,” Sunday said.
Investigators then allegedly connected the statewide operation to three main warehouses, and search warrants were executed last September in Bensalem, Pittston in Luzerne County, and Plum Borough in Allegheny County.
“These warehouses were hubs for distribution to storefronts where the products were sold, and those transactions led to consumption by kids and adults alike. From those warehouses, we seized more than 40 pallets full of illegal products,” Sunday said.
Hundreds of types of products were sold, including pre-rolled joints and candy-like edibles, and investigators seized nearly 150,000 total items, Sunday said. Some were also legal products, such as snacks and sodas.
Sunday said some of the defendants owned stores where the products were sold.
“The storefronts were also scattered all throughout the commonwealth, but the pieces and the players were all working together,” Sunday said.
Search warrants also were executed at some of the stores.
The 12 individuals charged are Albina Kumar, Duttkumar Patel, Dharmeshkumar Patel, Madhav Patel, Nirav Patel, Palak Patel, Divyesh Patel, Ketankumar Patel, Niravkumar Vora, Roshniben Patel, Ankitkumar Patel, and Mitul Patel.
“Many of them are also charged with felony drug trafficking charges as well, because that is precisely what this was — a high-level drug trafficking empire disguised as legitimate businesses,” Sunday said.
Agencies that assisted the attorney general’s office in the case include the district attorney’s offices in Bucks, Chester, and Montgomery Counties. Also assisting were the police departments in Bensalem Township, Bristol Township, Lower Moreland Township, and other municipalities.
In the meantime, Pennsylvania lawmakers are still struggling with how to close the so-called loophole.
Under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp became legal if it contained less than 0.3% Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) after harvest. The legislation was meant to help a struggling agricultural sector.
However, entrepreneurs began extracting trace amounts of intoxicating THC variants from those legally grown hemp flowers and turning them into powerful, alternative cannabis products.
The Philadelphia police officer who left a 48-year-old man lying on the ground in an Olney bike lane, leaving him to be killed in a hit-and-run minutes later, has been suspended and is slated to be fired.
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel made the announcement Monday, noting he felt “disgusted” over how the officer responded to the man, identified as Eugene Beauford.
“We don’t know what Mr. Beauford was suffering from,” Bethel said. “He could have had a medical condition that we just were not aware of. He could have had a mental condition that we were not aware.”
Bethel said the officer had a duty to determine what issues Beauford was dealing with and render aid, which he did not do. Police have not publicly identified the officer, who was assigned to the 35th District and has two years on the force, as separate investigations into his response and the hit-and-run continue.
Beauford was seen walking down the 5500 block of Rising Sun Avenue with an “unsteady gait” at around 1:40 a.m. on Aug. 27, according to police. Video shows the officer pulling his patrol car next to Beauford and engaging with him. It’s during this time that Beauford fell, lying across the bike lane and traffic lane. The officer got out of his vehicle to talk to Beauford some more, but then left him on the road.
Minutes later, police say, a car stopped right before reaching Beauford, but another car tried to circumvent the vehicle by going into the bike lane and ended up hitting Beauford, who would die later that morning.
Police said they were able to identify the person who hit Beauford but no charges have been filed as the investigation continues. Once the investigation is complete, it will be up to the District Attorney’s Office to levy charges.
The incident drew condemnation from the department’s top brass. The officer who left Beauford on the road was the first from the department back on the scene after the hit-and-run was reported. He did not file the proper paperwork and did not render aid, according to police.
Bethel would not speak as to whether the department thinks the officer attempted to “cover up” his actions, but he did say the officer violated a number of policies, including how police classify such an incident.
The officer did speak to investigators about the case, though Bethel declined to expand on what was said.
“What I could tell you is that what he did share did not move the needle in my decision,” he said.
Richard Nelson DeShield should be starting his senior year at Penn Wood High School, suiting up for football practice, and looking forward to life after graduation, his family said Monday.
But all of that was taken from him by a gunman who shot and killed him on Sept. 8, five days after his 18th birthday, officials said.
A Lansdowne police officer patrolling the area near North Wycombe and Blackburn Avenues saw two teens standing next to DeShield’s car as he sat inside it about 10:30 p.m., authorities said, when shots rang out.
Struck multiple times, DeShield sped forward and crashed the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The teens fled into a nearby apartment building, police said. Officers detained two people last week for questioning, but Lansdowne Police Chief Ken Rutherford said Monday that no charges have been filed, and the case remains under investigation.
“This is a terrible tragedy,” Rutherford said. “There is no taking back the loss of a young life, and our department will work diligently to determine what happened and hold those responsible accountable.”
DeShield was one of four children and the only son, said his older sister Christine.
He was an avid football player throughout his preteen and teenage years, and was preparing to suit up in number 85 for his senior year as a linebacker for Penn Wood High.
His loved ones held a vigil Sunday evening at their home in Lansdowne, releasing balloons with his football jersey number in his memory.
“He was a good friend, good student, good son,” Christine Browne said, adding that she was helping him prepare his application to join the Army after graduation.
DeShield’s mother, Wanita Browne, said she was too heartbroken to comment on her son’s slaying. But in a GoFundMe she started to help cover funeral costs, she described him as “a down-to-earth, friendly person who cared deeply for his friends and family.”
The online fundraiser drew support from former coaches, teammates, and friends who expressed shock and outrage at the crime that took DeShield’s life.
Lansdowne police ask that anyone with information about the shooting to call them at 610-623-0700.
As a young cop patrolling the streets of South Philadelphia, Shawn Hagan kept the Internal Affairs Division busy.
Between 2008 and 2010, Hagan, then in his late 20s, racked up a half dozen citizen complaints with allegations of physical abuse, harassment, and making racial slurs.
The city’s Law Department handled the fallout, as Hagan was named as a defendant in six excessive-force and civil-rights lawsuits between 2009 and 2015 that would later cost taxpayers more than $400,000 in settlements.
In 2024, records show, Hagan retired from the police force and decided to try his hand as a home-improvement contractor.
Now, complaints and lawsuits are rolling in again — this time accompanied by criminal charges involving the former officer’s company, Hagan Home Concepts.
Hagan, 46, is at the center of a sprawling, multijurisdictional fraud investigation that started in Bucks County and quickly spread to Delaware and Montgomery Counties.
Police in Bensalem, Upper Moreland, and Aston Townships have accused him over the last month of defrauding at least five families out of a combined $255,291 for doing a fraction of the work he had promised.
In some cases, according to court filings, he allegedly failed to use money given to him to pay for inspections, permits, and building materials.
Hagan, who lives in Northeast Philadelphia, is facing felony counts of theft, deceptive business practices, receiving stolen property, and related offenses in those cases. Police believe there may be more victims who have not yet been identified.
Neither Hagan nor his criminal defense attorney, Jeremy-Evan Alva, responded to requests for comment last week.
In January, Christopher Bilbao, who hired Hagan last year, moved out of the Levittown home he shares with his wife and three children as Hagan allegedly botched a major renovation for which they’d paid him $107,566.
Rainwater began pouring into the house. The electrical system was destroyed. Floor joists were left unsupported. The framing didn’t follow the architect’s specs. A township inspector found that Hagan used incorrect materials, didn’t follow measurements in the plans, and left the home uninhabitable.
“We’re still renting an apartment,” Bilbao said last week. “The whole house has been gutted. The way he left it, there was no roof on half the house. We’re hoping to get back home by Thanksgiving.”
Separate from the criminal cases, a Port Richmond man is suing Hagan in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to recover $94,800 he said he’d paid him for a home renovation and addition that was never completed.
A similar pattern is alleged in the lawsuit: rotting wood studs, crooked foundation, tilted third floor.
Nadia Silk, the lawyer for that homeowner, said Hagan had initially told her client he’d refund his money.
“Then he just went radio silent,” Silk said. “He’s getting all this money, then not doing the work. Where’s it going?”
Silk said Hagan did not respond to the lawsuit.
Trail of destruction
The criminal investigation into Hagan Home Concepts began in May, when the Bilbaos reported to police that Hagan had essentially abandoned their project, which was estimated to cost $172,700 when completed.
Bensalem police began investigating a similar complaint, in which Hagan allegedly received $46,725 from a family for an addition to their house. He poured the foundation and never returned to complete more work, according to a police report.
In an interview with a Bensalem detective in May, Hagan said “he got in over his head and never intended to defraud” that family, the criminal complaint states.
A few days later, Hagan told an Upper Moreland Township detective nearly the same thing, according to the police report. The department was investigating a complaint from Kevin and Angela Duffy, who said he had abandoned a project at their home.
They had hired him in May 2025 to build an addition to their first floor and renovate their second floor and basement, according to the affidavit for his arrest. In five and half weeks of work, police say, Hagan and his employees were at the Duffys’ home only 29 hours, and concrete footers they had installed for the addition failed inspection.
Hagan told police he tried to return the $55,200 he collected from the family, but that it had been “absorbed into the business,” according to the affidavit.
The Duffys declined to comment for this article. They are trying to recoup their losses, plus damages, through a default judgment awarded to them in May by a Montgomery County judge.
A person familiar with the case said Hagan had been hired to build wheelchair-accessible bedrooms for the Duffys’ two children, who have an inherited neurodegenerative disorder. The family had to hire another contractor to complete the project.
Hagan was also charged with fraud last month in Delaware County. An Aston Police detective wrote in the criminal complaint that Hagan accepted $21,800 from Kate Mckenna-Delagol’sfamily “while knowing his business was failing.” Hagan was also aware that a criminal investigation was underway because he had been interviewed by detectives in Bucks County, according to Aston Police.
“He tells everybody he’s a Philly cop. That’s how he earns your trust,” Mckenna-Delagol said on Friday.She’d hired Hagan to build a deck, but “he never did anything.”
Hagan filed for bankruptcy in federal court in June, identifying three of the victims mentioned in the criminal filings as creditors, including the Duffy and Bilbao families.
All told, Hagan wrote that he owes $865,059, and that Hagan Home Concepts is no longer operating. His bankruptcy attorney, Michael Cibik, did not return a request for comment.
The Bilbaos’ Levittown home was left uninhabitable after they hired Hagan Home Concepts for a major renovation. They’ve been renting an apartment since January 2026.Christopher Bilbao
Bilbao said he had hired Hagan to work on his Levittown home after another family in the neighborhood was satisfied with a recent addition he’d built for their house.
But even that job, Bilbao said, was later determined to be faulty.
“Since then, the people that recommended him realized he did all this work incorrectly,” he said. “They’re having to redo it.”
History of police complaints
Sgt. Eric Gripp, a Philadelphia police spokesman, declined to provide details about Hagan’s disciplinary history as an officer, other than to say he was hired in November 2003 and retired in February 2024.
Citizen complaints show that Hagan was repeatedly accused of assaulting and harassing people while on patrol in South Philadelphia’s 17th District.
In an April 2008 incident, for example, a man said Hagan grabbed him by the throat and dragged him to his police cruiser. Two months later, another man said Hagan used racial slurs while stopping him.
In January 2009, a complaint was filed against Hagan and his then-partner Kevin Corcoran for harassment and verbal abuse, then another that October for physical abuse. In 2010, a complainant said Hagan allegedly pushed him to the ground and called him a racial slur.
Hagan and Corcoran “received training and counseling” from two police captains in February 2009 “regarding their Internal Affairs record and professional responsibilities,” according to a note on one complaint.
Nonetheless, Internal Affairs investigators said the allegations in those cases were unfounded or not sustained, or they exonerated the officers altogether.
(Corcoran was fired in 2014 after he detained an Iraq War veteran, drove him to a dark side street near North Broad Street, then brought him back to Center City and released him. Corcoran was later acquitted of false imprisonment and official oppression, but convicted of a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice).
Between 2010 and 2015, Hagan was named as a defendant in three lawsuits filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court and three filed in federal court, including for using excessive force that caused serious injuries, illegal searches, and false imprisonment.
In one case, Raheem Holman alleged that Hagan repeatedly punched him in the face during an unlawful stop and frisk in March 2010 before Capt. Anthony Washington beat him with an expandable baton. Holman, who was later found not guilty of disarming a police officer, resisting arrest and all other related charges, required 11 staples at Methodist Hospital to close a head wound.
The city settled Holman’s case for $95,000 and the five other cases in which Hagan was a defendant for a combined $335,000.
Inquirer staff writers Ellie Rushing and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
Police are investigating after a man and a woman were shot and killed in North Philadelphia early Saturday evening, police said.
Police said they are investigating the incident as a “domestic-related murder-suicide.”
The shooting happened on the 2300 block of North 18th Street around 5:31 p.m. Saturday, according to police.
Officer Tanya Little, a spokesperson for the police department, said police took the man and woman to Temple University Hospital, where they were pronounced dead at 5:54 p.m.
A firearm was recovered at the scene, Little said. No further details were available, and the investigation is ongoing.
Davina Neuson has been haunted for years by questions about the killing of her son Armand Hayes, who was fatally shot outside a West Philadelphia bar in 2022.
She never understood how the fight that ended her 30-year-old son’s life escalated into murder.
Now, finally, she may get an answer.
Lawrence Cary, 44, was arrested in late August and charged with murder and related crimes in connection with Hayes’ killing after the men got into a bar fight the evening of Aug. 15, 2022, according to court documents. He is set to appear Monday before Judge Gregory O. Yorgey-Girdy for a preliminary hearing.
“I don’t know how to put it into words,” Neuson said. “I’ve waited four years for this moment.”
Hayes, known by many as “Ace,” was a father of two daughters and beloved by his family, Neuson said.
He attended Strayer University and Philadelphia Community College and had been working as a compressor operator for Philadelphia Gas Works when he was killed.
“Ace was a genuinely good person, he had a personality that could light up a room,” Neuson said. “A smile of his was unforgettable.”
Neuson said she never has been able to stop wondering about his last moments.
Police investigators said Cary and Hayes got into a physical altercation around 11:45 p.m. in the Asmara Lounge on Haverford Avenue, not far from where Hayes was found laying in the street with multiple gunshot wounds through his body.
He was taken to nearby Lankenau Hospital and pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.
A photo of Armand Hayes.Davina Neuson
Surveillance footage showed Cary leaving the bar after the altercation and driving in the area of 64th and Vine streets, near where Hayes was found wounded, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
Investigators later learned that Cary, seated in the driver’s seat of his Chevrolet Trailblazer, fired multiple shots from a handgun out his passenger window when he encountered Hayes, the document says.
Earlier in the evening, Hayes had told a bartender that Cary had bitten him during the scuffle, according to the document.
Investigators soon identified Cary using eyewitnesses, surveillance footage, and receipts from the bar marked with his name.
And in 2023, they learned that a week after the killing, Cary’s Trailblazer had been given a new title and gifted to another man who registered the vehicle in the name of a Bryn Mawr woman. The man asked the woman to do that for insurance purposes, according to the affidavit.
Neuson, Hayes’ mother, said she did not believe that Cary and her son knew each other before the incident.
She still cannot comprehend why her son’s life was taken.
“What hurts the most is knowing his life was taken so suddenly,” she said. “He had so much more life to live, so many more memories to make, so many people who loved him.”
Many of those people will be present in court as Cary’s case works through the system, Neuson added.
Cary is being held at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility and was denied bail.
A 25-year-old man was fatally shot early Friday evening in the parking lot of a shopping center in the Nicetown section of Philadelphia, police said.
Around 5:20 p.m., police were called to the shopping center on the 2800 block of Fox Street and transported the victim to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:48 p.m., police said.
A Pennsylvania state constable who was working at the shopping center as a security guard told police he saw an altercation at a parked SUV and went to investigate, said Philadelphia Police Inspector D.F. Pace.
The state constable found the man shot inside the SUV and attempted to provide aid before police arrived, Pace said.
A new motion filed Friday in the controversial case that has roiled Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office argued that a federal judge should not overturn a man’s murder conviction.
The filing from the District Attorney’s Office — which would have to be accepted by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond — was the latest development in a legal fight that has focused primarily on the conduct of lawyers in the case.
Jean Peters-Baker and Thomas Gaeta wrote in their motion that Dennis Johnson, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in 2009 and sentenced to life in prison without parole, should not be provided relief on his multiple appellate claims. The prosecutors also argued that Johnson had not yet exhausted his remedies in state court.
Peters-Baker, a longtime prosecutor from Missouri who previously led the prosecutor’s office in the county that includes Kansas City, was hired by Krasner’s office to handle the case as an outside attorney. Gaeta is Krasner’s civil litigation supervisor.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said in court documents that Krasner should be barred from continuing to oversee the post-conviction case in federal court — and that his office should be kicked off the case as well.
Prosecutors for Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday argued that drama about the Johnson case has consumed the District Attorney’s Office, and that Krasner has “placed his personal interest in protecting the office above the Commonwealth’s interest.”
Krasner’s office said that the DA had acted in legally appropriate ways, and that his office should be allowed to continue overseeing the case.
Krasner’s own staffers have accused him of questionable conduct in the case, including by saying he told them to “protect the office” and that they could face “consequences” if they didn’t.
In a Tuesday filing, Gaeta wrote that Krasner had taken pains to ensure the case was handled “with competence and integrity.”
Diamond has sought to learn more about how various attorneys connected to the case have behaved while the matter has moved through federal court.
The case began as a routine appeal, but in recent months has led to a series of explosive accusations about the inner workings of the District Attorney’s Office.
Several prosecutors said they advised Krasner to refer the case to the Attorney General’s Office, and Krasner allegedly responded angrily or suggested tactics they thought were legally inappropriate.
The tactics allegedly included keeping the case in-house, potentially seeking to assign blame to a line prosecutor while protecting her supervisor, and taking steps to “protect the office” in court.
At one point, Diamond suggested he viewed the allegations as potentially criminal, saying if they were true, they could amount to perjury, conspiracy, or obstruction of justice.
The judge did not specify who he believed might be at fault.
