Local category, Page 318

At least six people were left homeless Thursday evening after a fire ripped through an apartment building in Verona. Multiple fire departments responded to the call for a fire with entrapment shortly before 5 p.m. in the 400 block of Center Avenue. Bystanders and borough police were kicking in doors...

Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County officials said they suspect just 3% of its water system contains lead service lines and have started to notify impacted home and business owners of its findings. An inventory of the system’s more than 123,000 customers revealed more than 4,000 properties could be serviced by...

Leechburg Area student Katie Monroe has been in seven shows with the Leechburg Drama Club. She remembers the first year the club began hosting a student-run production that serves as a fundraiser for the club’s spring musical. Three years later, she’s one of the student officers helping to direct and...

A Mt. Lebanon man will spend three years in federal prison stemming from fraud allegations related to a South Side property he owned that burned down. Prasad Margabandhu, 48, pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud and mail fraud in September before U.S. District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand. On Thursday, she ordered...

Westmoreland County’s former deputy director of purchasing told a judge her boss said he and his five department employees were authorized for additional pay in August 2023. Kristen Coyne claimed she didn’t learn those pay hikes had actually been rejected by county officials until both she and her boss were...

United Steelworkers President David McCall was mentioned only once by name Thursday afternoon at a rally supporting the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel, but his intransigence over the $15 billion acquisition looms much larger with a decision on the deal likely imminent. “I want to know: Who’s...

A Greensburg man wanted on aggravated assault and other charges forced a SWAT team to enter a Perry Avenue residence to arrest him Thursday. Tyler Schultheis, 34, was wanted on a warrant issued Wednesday listing charges of aggravated assault, strangulation, terroristic threats and unlawful restraint, according to court records. A...

Police have sacked a Pittsburgh man they say netted more than $1,000 Sunday by getting Pittsburgh Steelers fans to pay to park at a North Side lot he doesn’t own. Alphonso Rattliff, 30, on Sunday charged 23 drivers headed to see the Steelers play at Acrisure Stadium $50 apiece to...

A New Kensington man convicted of kidnapping a woman he met online in 2022 was sentenced to serve five to 10 years in prison for what a Westmoreland County prosecutor called a chilling crime. “This defendant is more dangerous than anyone else I could imagine. The facts of this case,...

Two separate power outages affected schools and residents in Plum on Thursday morning. A “wind-related” outage caused equipment issues that impacted Plum Middle and Holiday Park Intermediate schools, Duquesne Light spokesperson Alyssa Battaglia said. The schools share a campus off Presque Isle Drive in the borough’s Holiday Park neighborhood. The...

Isabella Pivirotto is a busy young woman. The 17-year-old has never shied away from a full schedule and didn’t hesitate to add resurrecting the club culture in Penn Hills High School to her to-do list. “My freshman year was kind of that weird year where people were coming back to...

Logan Schutzman loves Dr. Seuss books. When he was younger, he was glued to the stories with whimsical rhymes and silly animations. So it made sense for the 11-year-old at Acmetonia Elementary School to spread that joy through a school project that donates blankets and book recordings to the Lower...

An icy wind whipped across an empty, snow-dusted field off Route 981 in South Huntingdon on Thursday afternoon as flames punched through the roof of a barn at Critter Country Animal Farm. At least a dozen fire trucks and ambulances lined Route 981, blockading the roadway for about an hour...

Eat’n Park isn’t smiling over a St. Louis bakery producing a similarly named cookie. McArthur’s Bakery and The Pioneer Cafe in St. Louis, which employs adults with disabilities, has received a cease and desist letter from Pittsburgh-­based restaurant chain Eat’n Park alleging trademark infringement over its popular Smiley Cookies. McArthur’s...

Mt. Pleasant Borough police are investigating a Thursday morning shooting downtown that caused Ramsey Elementary School to be locked down. A man entered the Sunoco convenience store on West Main Street around 11 a.m. and told employees that someone had shot at him as they were in the area of...

Allegheny County Police on Thursday removed all passengers from a Spirit jetliner at Pittsburgh International Airport after one traveler “misinterpreted” another’s text message as being about “a possible bomb threat,” the Transportation Security Administration told TribLive. There was no bomb threat, according to TSA and county police. TSA officials and...

Jordan Brown set out to prove he should never have been arrested for the 2009 shooting death of his father’s pregnant fiancee. He failed. A federal jury Thursday said the four state troopers who led the investigation and accused then-11-year-old Brown of killing Kenzie Houk had probable cause to charge...

Fresh air and fitness are two primary perks for members of a growing club at Fox Chapel Area High School. The Hiking Club formed in 2021 when Fox Chapel Area High School alumnus Matthew Fiedler completed a 130-mile hike over a 10-day span in Albuquerque, N.M. Fiedler, now 19 and...

Turner Dairy Farms in Penn Hills, long known for its milk and iced tea, isn’t satisfied with just sticking to tradition. Take its limited-run chocolate marshmallow milk, for instance, or hard iced tea collaboration with Pittsburgh Brewing Co. This evolution is part of why Turner’s recently was named the Business...

Local Red Kettle donations to benefit The Salvation Army are halfway to the goal. But there’s still time to volunteer and donate. “The Pittsburgh North Boroughs location alone has a local fundraising goal of $115,000 and they are close to 50% of reaching that goal, which is positive to see,”...

Some may recall the old McDonald’s jingle, “You deserve a break today …” Longtime owner and operator Priscilla Foster of the fast-food chain’s Wexford restaurant is finally heeding that call. Foster has fond memories of her employees and customers during more than three decades of owning the McDonald’s on Perry...

The slopes at Boyce Park will open Friday for the 2024-25 season, Allegheny County announced Thursday. The slopes, a 20-minute drive from Downtown Pittsburgh, will be open for skiing and snowboarding. The opening of the snow tubing area has been delayed. The lodge is located at 901 Centerview Drive in...

Email news briefs and event listings to pvarine@triblive.com. Christmas Bird Count in Westmoreland County Local residents are encouraged to volunteer for the annual Christmas Bird Count, a worldwide effort to document local bird populations. The survey is the largest citizen science effort held for one day, between Dec. 14 and...

More than 120 Fox Chapel Area High School alumni took a trip down memory lane Nov. 30 to celebrate the Class of 2004’s 20th reunion. The celebration, co-organzied by Todd Feiler and Darla Shay Whitlock, was held at Lawrence Hall in Lawrenceville. Both deemed the event a great success, with...

The Buffalo Township supervisors rejected a zoning change Wednesday that would have paved the way for yet another housing subdivision near the Route 356 corridor. Hawthorne Residential LLC asked the board to rezone a section of land off Riemer Road from agricultural to residential with the goal of building an...