LEVITTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man accused of beheading his father in suburban Philadelphia and posting a gruesome video on social media that shows him holding up the severed head has been charged with first-degree murder and abusing a corpse, authorities said Wednesday.

Justin Mohn was armed and had jumped a fence at a National Guard facility about 100 miles (161 kilometers) away when he was arrested late Tuesday, hours after the killing, a Guard spokeswoman said.

The father, identified as Michael Mohn, was found beheaded in the bathroom of his home in Levittown, where court records said his 32-year-old son also lived. Police said Justin Mohn was taken into custody at Fort Indiantown Gap.

Police said Michael Mohn’s wife, Denice Mohn, arrived home and found the body about 7 p.m. Tuesday. Officers found Mohn’s body and bloody rubber gloves, according to a police affidavit. Denice Mohn told police her husband’s white Toyota Corolla and her son were missing.

Police said the YouTube video, which was more than 14 minutes long, showed Justin Mohn picking up his father’s decapitated head and identifying him by name. Police said it appeared Mohn was reading from a script as he railed about the government.

In a statement, YouTube said the video, which was uploaded and not livestreamed, was removed for violating its graphic violence policy and that Mohn’s channel was shut down.

Mohn embraced violent anti-government rhetoric in writings he published online going back several years. In August 2020, Mohn published an online “pamphlet” in which he tried to make the case that people born in or after 1991 — his birth year — should carry out what he termed a “bloody revolution.” He also complained at length about a wrongful termination lawsuit that he lost, and encouraged assassinations of family members and public officials.

In the video posted after the killing, he described his father as a 20-year federal employee and called him a traitor to his country. He also espoused a variety of conspiracy theories and rants about the Biden administration, immigration and the border, fiscal policy, urban crime and the war in Ukraine.

Mohn had driven his father’s car to Fort Indiantown Gap, where he was taken into custody, Capt. Pete Feeney of the Middletown Township Police Department said.

Officials at Fort Indiantown Gap were told late Tuesday that Mohn’s cellphone had pinged nearby, according to Angela Watson, communications director for the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Investigators caught up with Mohn inside the National Guard base, where he was walking after having apparently jumped the fence. He had a gun when he was caught, Watson said. She said he has never been a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard.

The house where the body was found is in a suburban development of single-family homes. No one answered the door there early Wednesday.

Neighbors out walking dogs Wednesday morning described Justin Mohn as a regular walker in the development, someone they recognized and described as weird.

Bart DeHaven said he called police a handful of times since the summer after Justin Mohn sat on a raised manhole cover in a park directly across the street from his home and stared at his house.

“It’s just sad,” DeHaven said. “He should have got some kind of help.”

Carrie McCarthy said she saw him walking frequently and sitting in the wooded area in the neighborhood. She said someone sent her the YouTube video, which left her stunned.

“I screamed. I totally screamed,” she said. “I opened the video and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s they guy I see every day, and I knew something was unhinged.’”

Mohn, who also was arrested on a weapons possession charge, was arraigned early Wednesday and held without bail. He is scheduled for a hearing on Feb. 8. A spokesperson for the Bucks County district attorney’s office said they did not expect to comment publicly about the case Wednesday.

An attorney for Mohn wasn’t listed in court records Wednesday morning and a message seeking comment on his behalf was left at a phone listing for him. The court clerk’s office said it had no record of a lawyer representing him.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

Nearly one million dollars has been awarded to the city of Pittsburgh to completely replace a pair of traffic signals in the downtown area, as announced by Democratic Senate leader Jay Costa on Tuesday.

The funding for the traffic upgrades come from the Automated Red Light Enforcement program run by PennDOT. The two intersections that will be receiving complete replacement will be the intersection of Brownsville Road and Becks Run Road/Biscayne Drive, and the intersection of Ward Street and the Boulevard of the Allies.

Additionally, nearly $300,000 was awarded to the borough of Edgewood for improvements to the Braddock Avenue corridor.

No date for the beginning of the renovations was announced.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

Improvement work along McKnight Road in Pittsburgh will be beginning on Monday February 5, weather permitting.

PennDOT District 11 made the announcement Tuesday afternoon, stating that crews will begin pipe and drainage cleaning between Venture Street and Perrymont Road. Motorists can expect around-the-clock single-lane restrictions throughout the project in the areas on McKnight Road which have three lanes of traffic.

Work on the $25.5 million McKnight Road renovations will conclude in the spring of 2025.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Steelers are hoping Arthur Smith can turn around one of the NFL’s most underachieving offenses.

The Steelers are nearing an agreement to make Smith their new offensive coordinator, multiple sources told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The sources spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal was not official.

Smith would come to Pittsburgh just weeks after the Atlanta Falcons fired him as head coach following three straight 7-10 seasons. The magic Smith was able to produce while serving as the offensive coordinator in Tennessee in 2019 and 2020 — when the Titans finished 12th and then second in total offense — never materialized in Atlanta, which finished in the bottom half of the league in yards and points during Smith’s tenure.

He could get a fresh start with the Steelers, who managed a 10-7 record and a playoff berth despite an offense that ranked 25th in yards and 28th in points and didn’t show any real signs of life until the final three weeks when third-string quarterback Mason Rudolph spurred a late winning streak that helped Pittsburgh sneak into the postseason.

Steelers president Art Rooney II said Monday that while the team still believes in starting quarterback Kenny Pickett — who endured a bumpy first full season as a starter before sustaining an ankle injury in early December that forced him to watch from the sideline — it’s also time for Pittsburgh to get “quality play out of the quarterback position going forward.”

Rooney also indicated he’d be interested in bringing back the free-agent-to-be Rudolph to compete with Pickett during training camp, praising Rudolph for his play down the stretch.

Smith’s charge with whoever is behind center will be to come up with an approach that puts more points on the board to take some of the pressure off Pittsburgh’s star-laden defense. The Steelers have finished 21st or worse in scoring in four of the past five seasons, one of the reasons the team took the unusual step of firing offensive coordinator Matt Canada just before Thanksgiving, the club’s first in-season dismissal of a coordinator or head coach since World War II.

There are players to build around. Pittsburgh has one of the best running back tandems in the league in Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren. Wide receiver George Pickens has shown flashes of brilliance, though those flashes have been tempered with bouts of petulance. Wide receiver Diontae Johnson is one of the league’s better route-runners and tight end Pat Freiermuth is a quality playmaker when healthy.

Rooney said on Monday the team was close to making a hire. Less than 24 hours later, the team was closing in on its man.

“We’re looking forward to have someone come in and take a fresh approach who can help our young players grow and perform and have the offense perform at a consistently high level,” Rooney said.

Something that hasn’t happened since the height of the “Killer B” era in the mid-2010s when Ben Roethlisberger was throwing passes to Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell was one of the most productive all-around backs in the league.

The Steelers have somehow stayed competitive almost in spite of the offense, but they’ve also been exposed in the postseason. Pittsburgh has dropped five straight playoff games, four of them by double digits.

Smith would seem to be a good stylistic fit with the Steelers. Pittsburgh general manager Omar Khan and assistant general manager Andy Weidl are trying to build a physical team that likes to lean on the run. Smith was able to install a system that exploited the talents of Titans star running back Derrick Henry as Tennessee reached the postseason in each of Smith’s two years calling the plays.

(Photo/BCR Archives)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will visit the eastern Ohio community that was devastated by a fiery train derailment in February 2023 that displaced thousands of residents and left many fearing potential health effects from the toxic chemicals that spilled when a Norfolk Southern train went off the tracks.

A White House official said Wednesday that Biden will visit East Palestine in February, a year after the derailment. A date for the Democratic president’s trip was not given. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because Biden’s plans had yet to be formally announced.

The Feb. 3, 2023, derailment forced thousands of people from their homes near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Area residents still have lingering fears about potential health effects from the toxic chemicals that spilled and from the vinyl chloride that was released a few days after the crash to keep five tank cars from exploding.

The absence of a visit by Biden had become a subject of persistent questioning at the White House, as well as among residents in East Palestine. Some residents have said they felt forgotten as time marched on without a presidential visit and as they watched Biden fly to the scenes of other disasters, such as the wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui and hurricanes in Florida.

The Biden administration defended its response right after the toxic freight train derailment, even as local leaders and members of Congress demanded that more be done. The White House said then that it had “mobilized a robust, multi-agency effort to support the people of East Palestine, Ohio,” and it noted that officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies were at the rural site within hours even though Biden didn’t immediately visit.

Asked last week about a potential Biden visit to Ohio, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she had nothing to announce.

“When it is, when it is appropriate or helps … the community for him to be there, obviously, he will be there. He’s done that,” she said at her press briefing last Friday.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s in a rural area, urban area, suburban area, red state, blue state, the president has always been there to … assist and be there for the community,” Jean-Pierre added. “So, when it is helpful, he certainly will do that.”

She again defended the administration’s response, repeating that federal employees were on the ground providing assistance within hours of the derailment.

Biden ordered federal agencies to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the derailment and appointed an official from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to oversee East Palestine’s recovery.

Norfolk Southern has estimated that it will cost the company at least $803 million to remove all the hazardous chemicals, help the community and deal with lawsuits and related penalties.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency will assign artists to treasured bodies of water in the United States under a new program announced Tuesday at a White House-sponsored conference on exploring ways to use the arts and humanities as another instrument for problem-solving.

Leaders from government, the arts, academia and philanthropy gathered in Washington for “Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities.” Panel discussions focused on turning to the arts and humanities to solve challenges, from improving health to bridging divides.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the White House Domestic Policy Council hosted the daylong conference, which was the product of a September 2022 executive order from President Joe Biden.

Neera Tanden, who advises the Democratic president on domestic policy issues, said in an interview with The Associated Press before the summit that the arts help “people to see each other and understand how we’re connected,” which can help “mend the social fabric of the country.”

Maria Rosario Jackson, the NEA chair, in a separate interview said the conference is an “unprecedented opportunity for people from different sectors to come together and lift up and explore some of the things that are possible when one thinks of the arts as not being confined to a narrow sector, but woven and integrated into other things we care about.”

Discussions focused on using the arts and humanities to improve health and infrastructure and promote a healthy democracy. Participants included soprano Renee Fleming and actor Anna Deavere Smith. Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, was also scheduled to participate.

Radhika Fox, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water, announced the first-ever artist-in-residence program “to unleash the power of arts and culture to support water restoration and climate resilient efforts around the country.”

To start, artists will be embedded in national estuaries and urban waters federal partnerships in six regions of the country: Seattle, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, greater Philadelphia, Boston and the New York-New Jersey area. Each watershed will receive $200,00 to support the artist.

Jackson and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will co-chair a new government-wide working group on the arts, health and civic infrastructure, working with federal agencies to find ways to include the arts and humanities in these areas. HHS and the NEA have a long history of working together to improve health using the arts, including through music, Becerra said.

NEA is also committing $5 million for an initiative to support the work of artists and arts organizations that contribute to the health and well-being of individuals and communities.

Separately, the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities are collaborating on United We Stand: Connecting through Culture, an initiative that leverages the arts and humanities to combat hate-fueled violence. The program was launched in 2023, a year after Biden convened a similarly named summit at the White House focused on countering violence motivated by hate.

NEH committed $3 million to the program in 2023, and NEA is offering an additional $2 million.

Shelly Lowe, chair of the NEH, said art has an important role to play in the humanities.

“Art gives you a good sense of people’s cultures. That’s through painting, that’s through food, that’s through performances and music,” Lowe said in an interview before the summit. “They’re so tied together it’s hard to separate the two.”

Biden’s executive order said the arts, humanities and museum and library services are essential to the well-being, health, vitality and democracy of the nation.

“They are the soul of America,” Biden wrote in the order, adding that, under his leadership, they “will be integrated into strategies, policies and programs that advance the economic development, well-being and resilience of all communities, especially those that have historically been underserved.”