Brian C. Rittmeyer stories, Page 3

Nearly two dozen people are out of their homes after a fire Saturday morning in Pittsburgh’s Banksville neighborhood, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety. Firefighters responded around 10:50 a.m. to the fire in the 400 block of Mapleview Drive. The fire, believed to have started in an apartment bedroom, produced heavy...

A homemade slingshot and 200 pounds of potatoes made for a good time for young and old alike at Leechburg’s Fall Festival on Saturday. “Amazing. Loved it,” said Gretchen Bailey, of Parks Township, after she fired some spuds into the Kiski River. “I never launched potatoes into a river.” This...

A hunter died after falling from a tree stand Friday in Washington Township, authorities said. Kent David Horrell, 64, died early Friday afternoon, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said Saturday. Horrell was a resident of Washington Township. He died at AHN Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, according to his obituary...

A Pittsburgh police officer suffered head injuries Saturday after being hit by a car that had been reported stolen, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety. According to police, reports of the stolen vehicle were received around 10 a.m. A license plate reader detected it entering the department’s Zone 1, which covers...

A gnat infestation was among high-risk violations that prompted the Allegheny County Health Department to issue a consumer alert for a Richland restaurantthis week. During an inspection Monday, Oct. 6, at Scoreboard Lounge on William Flinn Highway, the health department said it found a dozen food safety violations, four considered...

A Pittsburgh-area World War II serviceman whose remains were unidentified for 80 years will be laid to rest back home on Sunday, Oct. 12. Paul F. Eshleman Jr., 21, was a technical sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He was a radio operator on a B-24 Liberator that was...

While Pine-Richland School District administrators are saying a mix of a spending cuts and a property tax increase will be needed to close a $4.9 million deficit, more cuts are not expected to be possible in special education, where the district is serving more students with fewer staff. In fact,...

Alle-Kiski Valley churches were among those celebrating the Feast of St. Francis this weekend with pet blessings. St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Brackenridge held its blessing service Saturday, while Christ Our Hope Anglican Church in Harrison offered blessings for pets Sunday. The ceremony is held annually, often Oct. 4, the...

A fire caused heavy damage to the concession stand at East Allegheny’s Churchman Stadium in North Versailles Sunday, said the North Versailles fire department. The fire happened prior to a youth football game, the East Allegheny School District said in a statement. Images of the fire showed flames inside the...

A man was in critical condition after being shot in a parking lot at The Waterworks shopping center near Aspinwall late Saturday night, according to police. According to authorities, the victim walked into the emergency room at UPMC St. Margaret Hospital, which is adjacent to the Waterworks, around 11:30 p.m....

A takeout box of chicken wings helped state police identify a man who fled from a traffic stop in Beaver County earlier this year. State police on Thursday filed nearly two dozen charges against Michael Richard Doran, 43, of Beaver Falls. According to state police, a trooper tried to stop...

A woman who was shot by Pittsburgh police at the end of a car chase more than a dozen years ago died this week, and her death has been ruled a homicide. Lena Davenport, 61, was taken to the emergency room at UPMC Mercy hospital after being found unresponsive at...

A woman’s body was recovered Saturday from the Monongahela River in West Homestead, according to the Allegheny County Police. The sighting was reported to Allegheny County 911 shortly after noon, police said. First responders found the body and recovered it. There were no obvious signs of trauma to the woman,...

A man accused of fleeing after hitting a vehicle in Hampton on Friday was arrested after crashing behind a business in Shaler and submerging himself in a creek, police said in court paperwork. Police said James Whorley, 46, of Ohio hit two other vehicles as he tried to elude officers....

A Baldwin woman charged in a fatal shooting at a barber shop Saturday in Pittsburgh’s South Side turned herself in, and later told police she didn’t need to shoot the woman she had been in a two-year dispute with, according to court records. Myairah Carter, 25, was being held in...

Teddy bears well-loved by a woman’s grandfather, a hand-painted plate found at a thrift store and a typewriter with a Ukrainian keyboard were among the treasures people brought to the Allegheny-Kiski Valley Heritage Museum in Tarentum on Saturday in hopes of discovering their worth. In some cases, sentimental value outweighed...

A golf simulation business and a stand-up comedy club are opening this Friday in Ross. At The Block Northway, 9 Yards Golf will have a soft opening Friday morning for its new location on the upper level of the south corridor. At Remo’s Event Center on Babcock Boulevard, The Comedy...

Within hours of a shootout late Tuesday night at Ross Park Mall, an ATM was firebombed along McKnight Road, according to township police. A nearby witness reported the firebombing shortly after midnight, Ross Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhelpp said. The drive-thru ATM is located under a canopy in the parking lot...

People were shopping, eating and walking at Ross Park Mall on Wednesday, a sunny morning after a shootout Tuesday night in the mall’s parking lot left at least one person hurt. Gene Pancheri and his wife, Antoinette, of Pittsburgh were among the mall walkers getting in their steps, as they...

A state study recommends that Etna and Reserve form a regional police department, while also finding that doing so will cost each municipality more for police services. The Governor’s Center for Local Government Services at the state Department of Community and Economic Development prepared the report at the request of...

Route 28 coming out of Pittsburgh is jammed because of a crash. The crash happened around 4 p.m., closing the northbound lanes between the Millvale and Etna interchanges, a PennDOT spokesman said. The crash was cleared and the road began reopening around 4:40 p.m., but traffic remained congested from the...

A proposed reconfiguration of the Shaler Area School District built around closing its elementary school has been met with a mixture of public support and opposition, along with questions and concerns. Superintendent Bryan O’Black took questions and comments from residents Monday at Shaler Area High School after giving a presentation...

Police were looking for a person who fled after crashing a stolen vehicle Tuesday morning in Shaler. According to Ross police, its officers followed a stolen vehicle out of Ross into Shaler and tried to stop it on Mt. Royal Boulevard near the Shaler North Hills Library. Shaler police deployed...

For nearly 30 years, Bob Breen helped hire law enforcement officers as part of his work with the Pennsylvania Civil Service Commission. That included state police troopers, parole and probation officers, and Game Commission officers, he said. Now that Breen’s retired, the Ross resident is getting a glimpse inside the...

An effort to find abandoned and orphaned gas wells in parts of Southwestern Pennsylvania took to the sky Sept. 21 over Ross Park Mall. The flights, conducted before the mall opened, marked the start of field work to survey parts of Ross and Shaler along with areas of North Fayette...