A Fountain Hill woman is behind bars after allegedly hitting a police officer with her car mirror. Jennifer Sabater was arrested Monday after allegedly striking an officer with part of her vehicle and nearly hitting a firefighter following an unrelated incident. The officer was investigating a car crash on January 13th when he parked his patrol car with emergency lights activated. As he stepped out of the vehicle, Sabater allegedly hit him with her passenger side mirror and almost hit a uniformed firefighter, who jumped onto a fire truck to avoid being hit. She has a preliminary hearing scheduled for January 29th on numerous charges.
Three people are displaced following a fire Monday at an Allentown apartment building. Fire officials say they responded to a call about the flames about noon in the 600 block of Front Street. All the residents were able to evacuate safely and there were no reported injuries. Firefighters say the blaze began in the kitchen area of the second-floor apartment but have not released the official cause yet.
The South Whitehall Township Police Department is heading for a new temporary home. The department will be moving to the Roma Corporate Building at 1605 North Cedar Crest Boulevard for the next ten months. The temporary closure of the current headquarters is due to renovations being made in the building. The department will also be temporarily stopping some services during the remodeling, including fingerprinting for background and employment checks.
Stationary retailer Papyrus is shutting all of its stores. More than 260 Papyrus stores will be closing their doors for good, including the one at the Lehigh Valley Mall. The company's website states that the closures are due to the "current challenges of the retail industry."
State lawmakers are planning to take up a number of bills that focus on human trafficking this week. Among the proposals is a bill that would aim to protect victims from having their past used against them in court. Other bills would require incarcerated sex offenders to attend counseling and therapy, as well as increase penalties for trafficking. January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month.
Organizers say a gun buyback Monday in Pittsburgh was so successful, they ran out of money in less than an hour. The Rev. Torrey Johnson says the program at Holy Cross Episcopal Church is part of their initiative to clean up the violent city streets. "It's non-violence or non-existence. Either we go up together or we go down together and part of what we're doing here is trying to make this community safer," Johnson says. The program held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day offered $100 per gun turned in, no questions asked. Church officials say 40 minutes later, they had paid out more than $5000. They'll hold another event soon to buy back even more guns.
New Phillies manager Joe Girardi has offered his take on MLB's sign stealing scandal. "Sign stealing and all of this has been going on for years and it's our responsibility to protect them," Girardi says. Girardi's New York Yankees loss to the Houston Astros in the 2017 ALCS and he was fired after that defeat. The Astros have fired their general manager and manager for the team's elaborate and forbidden sign stealing methods. Girardi says he doesn't look back however.