Court overturns then-11-year-old boy’s conviction in slaying
By MARC LEVY, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of a then-11-year-old boy in the 2009 shotgun slaying of his father’s pregnant fiancée, saying prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to support it.
The state Supreme Court’s 5-0 ruling clears Jordan Brown of wrongdoing, his lawyers say, in the slaying of 26-year-old Kenzie Houk, who was eight months pregnant when she was found dead in the family’s rural western Pennsylvania farmhouse.
It reversed a finding by a juvenile court judge in Lawrence County, upheld by a state appellate court, that Brown was guilty of first-degree murder and homicide of an unborn child.
Justices attacked the evidence as insufficient, saying among other things that trial testimony pointing to a shotgun in Brown’s bedroom as the murder weapon “supported an equally reasonable conclusion” that it wasn’t the murder weapon.
Houk was found lying in bed in a pool of blood with a shotgun blast to the back of her head, according to court papers. Brown, now 20, was tried as a juvenile after his lawyers fought a judge’s original decision to try him as an adult.
A lawyer for Brown, Kate Burdick, said Brown — referred to in court papers as J.B. — has maintained his innocence since the murder and has now received “long overdue justice.”
“While we can’t give J.B. his childhood back, we are glad the Supreme Court has cleared his name so that he can move forward with a productive life,” Burdick said.
The state attorney general’s office, which was handling the appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Burdick would not discuss Brown’s whereabouts, only saying that he was not in custody and that he had met all his treatment goals. In 2016, a judge put Brown on probation and in the custody of an uncle, who lives in Ohio.
Burdick said charging Brown again for the same crime would violate the “double jeopardy” clause of the U.S. Constitution that prohibits trying someone twice for the same crime.
Brown’s lawyers have battled the case to the Supreme Court before, in 2014 winning an order granting them a new chance to argue there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
Houk’s daughters — ages 4 and 7 at the time — went to live with their grandparents, and it was youngest who found her mom’s dead body, telling a member of a tree service crew that had arrived at the property to finish collecting firewood they had cut the previous day from a wooded area in front of the house.
On the day of the murder, Chris Brown, Jordan’s father, had already gone to work, leaving Houk with Jordan and the two girls before Jordan Brown and the older daughter went to catch the school bus.

Parking meters out. Two hour limit in.  Beaver County Radio News Correspondent, Sandy Giordano , has more:

Yesterday Beaver County Radio news intern Malik Garrett reported on 2 Beaver County Emergency Services calls for the Hazmat team. We have since learned that a Brush Creek Park employee called the police around 3:15 pm when he noticed a man who appeared to be unconscious inside the car. It turns out it was an apparent suicide. North Sewickley Township Police Chief Jeff Becze said that the responding officers noticed two tanks in the passenger seat so they called the Hazmat team. It turns out they were helium tanks. Becze said “Everyone followed protocol.” The incident is under investigation.

The former Pittsburgh Penguins all-star Kevin Stevens who was part of the Penguins Stanley Cup championship teams in the 1990s, is still having an impact on the people of Western Pennsylvania, but in a different way.

He was one of the best players in the NHL back then, but he says one split second decision changed everything. Stevens started with cocaine, but it led to painkillers and an opioid addiction following a knee injury playing for the Pens in 1993.

Steven’s said “So I was 28-years-old, I never did anything, & I activated this thing with the cocaine, and I didn’t do it all the time, but the change, the chemistry, the way I thought and the way I perceived things changed. Once I left Pittsburgh, I got in trouble. I was in total denial because I didn’t want to believe that this was happening” .

Stevens was in denial for 23 years, and then he hit rock bottom when he spent 6 days in jail….which might have saved his life.
For the last two and a half years Stevens has been clean.

Now Stevens is helping other addicts and families through his “Power Forward Foundation” which is working to combat the opioid crisis and addiction across the area.

DOUBLE SHOOTING IN ALIQUIPPA

The coroner was called at about 1:15 a.m. to the scene of a double shooting in Aliquippa on Wednesday morning.

An official said “It is believed it was an attempted home invasion. Both of the suspects had D.E.A. (Drug Enforcement Agency) shirts on.” It was stressed that the suspects were not actual law enforcement officers.

It was the homeowner who shot and killed one of the suspects and may have hit the other one who got away. Pennsylvania State Police say they are looking for 36-year-old Dana Penny, who is considered armed and dangerous.

The homeowner was also shot during the exchange and was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Pittsburgh where he was treated for non life-threatening injuries.

The shooting happened along the 100 block of Third Avenue. State police, Aliquippa police and Hopewell Township police were all on the scene.

IMPERIAL, Pa. —
A petition on the website MoveOn.org seeks to end the summer reading and math program in the West Allegheny School District.

The petition which has almost 1,000 signatures asks that summer reading and math requirements be removed from the district with an organizer writing “What happened to kids being kids in the summer?”

The organizer did not offer any details about what the particular reading and math requirements are.

The petition was be delivered to Dr. Jerri Lippert, the superintendent of the school district, and will be presented at a school board meeting Wednesday.

State troopers say they received numerous tips to the state’s ChildLine late last year about the behavior of a former Kiski Area School District employee.

Ryan O’Toole, 27, of Verona, faces one count of intercourse/sexual contact with a student, three counts of corruption of minors and a count of harassment.

District officials told investigators they’d questioned O’Toole about those reports and subsequently fired him.

When troopers interviewed him at his home, he allegedly confessed to engaging in inappropriate behavior and conduct with current and former students at the high school before and during his time working there.