Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published January 4, 2025 3:06 P.M.

(Brighton Township, Pa) Brighton Rehab & Wellness Center is now under new ownership.

The facility, located off of Dutch Ridge Road, was sold to New York based Blue Sky Basin for approximately 30 million dollars in late December, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times.

The site was previously under the ownership of Comprehensive Health Care.

Beaver County Radio spoke with County Commissioner Jack Manning who confirmed that the property and assets were sold.

Manning said he had not recieved any confirmation that the new owners have been permitted by the state to operate the facility. The company will need to aquire the proper licensing to do so.

Brighton Rehab previously caught the public eye due to a large covid outbreak in 2020. The facility was also called out last year for having a large buildup of garbage both inside and outside the building.

More recently, a federal jury ordered previous owner Comprehesive Health Care to pay back millions of dollars in May 2025 due to falsifying information to the Department of Health and other agencies.

(File Photo)

Story by Beaver County Radio Staff
01/04/25, 8:39 AM

(Aliquippa, Pa.)  Pennsylvania State Police are reporting that they were requested to assume the lead investigative role for an aggravated assault that occurred around 9:30 PM Saturday evening in Building “A” at the Valley Terrace Apartments in Aliquippa.
Troopers said via release that 21-year old Jadaya Wynkoop and 24-year old Tyler Lethridge were engaged in an ongoing domestic dispute when Lethridge was stabbed in the abdomen by Wynkoop.  Lethridge left the scene after he was stabbed and Aliquippa Police officers located him nearby, He was transported to UPMC Presbyterian and is expected to recover from his injuries.
Wynkoop was arrested at the scene and is accused of the stabbing. She is currently being housed in the Beaver County Jail.
State Police released no other information as the Investigation is on-going.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: A hearse drives past as police officers inspect the area where a fire broke out at the Le Constellation bar and lounge during New Year’s celebration, in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited a fatal fire at a Swiss ski resort when they came too close to the ceiling of a bar crowded with New Year’s Eve revelers.

Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were permitted for use in the bar.

Forty people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze early Thursday as it ripped through the busy Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest tragedies in Switzerland’s history.

Officials said they would also look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes. The attorney general for the Valais region warned of possible prosecutions if any criminal liability is found.

Arthur Brodard, 16, from the Swiss city of Lausanne, was among the missing. His mother, Laetitia, was in Crans-Montana on Friday and frantic to find him. She held out “a glimmer of hope” that he might be one of the six injured people who had yet to be identified.

“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” she told reporters. “I want to know, where is my child, and be by his side, wherever that may be — be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”

The injured included 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, according to Frédéric Gisler, police commander of the Valais region. The nationalities of 14 people were unclear.

An evening of celebration turns tragic

Among the crowd was Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, who said he felt as if he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he had been ringing in the new year.

The teenager escaped the inferno by forcing a window open with a table. The dead included one of Clavier’s friends, and he told The Associated Press that two or three other friends were still missing hours after the disaster.

An impromptu memorial took shape near the bar, where mourners left candles and flowers. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.

A French teenager on Friday brought a bouquet of tulips to the regional hospital in Sion for her best friend, a fellow 17-year-old girl who was badly burned and in intensive care. The two attend school together in Lausanne, said the girl, who was in distress and did not give her full name to the AP.

But when she arrived at the hospital, her friend had been heavily sedated for a dressing change and could not see visitors. It was the latest in hours of heartbreak for the teen, who had intended to join a dozen schoolmates at the bar but ultimately decided against it.

She said she has since learned that two of the 12 are in a Zurich hospital. She did not know if the others survived.

On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who were unaccounted for, and friends and relatives begged for tips about their whereabouts.

Valais regional government head Mathias Reynard told RTS radio Friday that officials have “numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say, of very strong solidarity in the moment.”

He lauded the work of emergency officials on the day after the fire but added “in the first minutes it was citizens — and in large part young people — who saved lives with their courage.”

Servers arrived with burning sparklers

Clavier, the Parisian teenager, said he did not see the fire start, but saw servers arrive with Champagne bottles topped with the burning sparklers.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a flight of stairs and through a narrow door.

Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside.

Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, raced to the bar to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the inferno. He described people on the ground suffering from terrible burns.

“I have seen horror, and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Campolo told French television network TF1.

The severity of the burns made it difficult to identify bodies, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside turned to ash in the flames.

Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old Italian golfer who competed internationally, was officially listed as missing. His uncle Sebastiano Galeppini told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation on its website announced that he had died.

With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is a major destination for international alpine skiing competitions. It’s also home to the European Masters each August.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the field office in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The FBI said Friday it had disrupted a plot to attack a North Carolina grocery store and fast-food restaurant on New Year’s Eve, arresting a man who officials said was inspired by the Islamic State group and had pledged loyalty to the extremist militants.

Christian Sturdivant, 18, was charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terror organization after officials say he communicated his attack plans to an undercover FBI employee who was posing as an encouraging confidant.

He was arrested by federal agents on Wednesday. He remained held following a Friday morning court appearance. Another hearing is set for Jan. 7. The lawyer representing Sturdivant in federal court on Friday didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

An FBI affidavit filed in the case said Sturdivant came under investigation last month following information that a social media account, which officials connected to Sturdivant, had made posts supportive of IS. Those included posts that depicted a ballistic vest and appeared to promote violence, the affidavit said, and the display name for the account referenced the name of the late IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Sturdivant began communicating on social media with someone who he thought was supportive of his plans but who was actually an undercover FBI employee, the affidavit said.

Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for western North Carolina, declined to name the grocery store and fast-food restaurant that were allegedly targeted, citing the ongoing investigation. But he said both were in Mint Hill, a small bedroom community of Charlotte.

The affidavit says Sturdivant had been on the FBI’s radar in January 2022, when he was a minor, after officials learned that he had been in contact with an IS member in Europe and had received instructions to dress in all black, knock on people’s doors and commit attacks with a hammer.

Sturdivant did actually set out for a neighbor’s house armed with a hammer and a knife but was restrained by his grandfather, the affidavit says.

The North Carolina attack would’ve come a year after 14 people were killed in New Orleans by a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had proclaimed his support for IS on social media.

Other IS-inspired attacks over the past decade include a 2015 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people.

The FBI has foiled several alleged attacks through sting operations in which agents posed as terror supporters, supplying advice and equipment. Critics say the strategy can amount to entrapment of mentally vulnerable people who wouldn’t have the wherewithal to act alone.

(Photo Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Lottery)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(New Castle, PA) A winning ticket was recently sold in New Castle as one of two winning tickets from this week’s New Year’s Millionaire Raffle weekly drawing. A $50,000 ticket with a number of 00488501 was sold between December 23rd and 29th, 2025 at Tic Toc Food Mart, located at 1001 Mount Jackson Road. The other winning ticket was sold in Mifflin County at the Save N’ Fill (Sunoco) at 20 South Kishacoquillas Street and it has the number of 00412130. These tickets were randomly drawn from over 97,000 tickets that were sold. The New Year’s Millionaire Raffle will have its final drawing tomorrow. You can check if your ticket was a winner by either using the ticket checker found on the Pennsylvania Lottery app or by taking a visit to a lottery retailer. Any winners can claim their prize in person and to do so, they should visit a Pennsylvania Lottery office, and their locations can be found online by clicking here.

(Photo Provided with Release Courtesy of AAA East Central)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) According to a release in Pittsburgh from AAA East Central, the 9th annual Pittsburgh Travel Showcase™ returns to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center from January 23rd through the 24th, 2026 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on January 25th, 2026 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This one-of-a-kind event that is presented by AAA Travel brings travel service representatives from various regional, national, and international exhibitors under one roof to help attendees by providing them one-stop vacation opportunities from all seven continents as well as insight and shopping at those destinations. It also includes over 100,000 square feet of displays, seminars for vacation planning and AAA Travel Advisors to book the trip of your dreams on-site. The invitation for this event goes out to everyone, either AAA members or not. Tickets are worth $10 and can either be purchased online at www.PittsburghTravelShowcase.com, which you can visit for more information, or at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Box Office during the Showcase of the event. AAA Branches are where you can get Discount Admission coupons that are available for the 9th annual Pittsburgh Travel Showcase™.

(Photo Courtesy of Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, (PennDOT), Posted on Facebook on December 30th, 2025)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Harrisburg, PA) As part of the Green Light-Go Program, a nearly $30 million investment will now go to communities all across Pennsylvania. According to PennDOT, the Green-Light Go Program is a reimbursement grant program that will see municipalities get the money back for projects that improve the efficiency and operation of existing traffic signals. Allegheny County has the most funding of these grants because they are receiving about $4.7 million, and over $1 million of that money is from the City of Pittsburgh. Beaver County received just over $132,000, $295,000 will go to Butler County, Fayette County will secure nearly $500,000, and Washington County will obtain nearly $900,000. These grants will help municipalities to improve their congestion and traffic flow by upgrading to technology that is newer, which will enhance the detection of traffic, allowing signals to better respond to traffic demands in real-time.

(File Photo of a Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Car)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Allegheny County, PA) Police are renewing a call for information to help them solve a deadly shooting that occurred in Swissvale on December 14th, 2024. The Allegheny County Police Department shared a post on Facebook yesterday saying that they are continuing to investigate the death of forty-two-year-old Matthew Bernard as officers were called to an apartment on the 7530 block of Dickson Street in Swissvale at 10:10 p.m. on December 14th, 2024. Bernard was found and he was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds before he died at the scene. Police confirmed that detectives have learned that the person who was living in the apartment was contacted about a potential home invasion. That person then asked a family member to check inside the apartment, and reportedly, that family member found Bernard dead. Another detail in the investigation since learned by detectives is that Bernard was known to visit the apartment. Officers are asking anyone with information that could help them identify the person who is responsible to call 1-833-ALL-TIPS, which is the Allegheny County Police Tip Line, and tips can also be left as anonymous.

(File Photo of a Fire)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Allegheny County, PA) A fire damaged apartments that were located near an event venue in Allegheny County yesterday morning. According to Allegheny County 911 dispatchers, emergency crews were called to the 200 block of Union Avenue in South Fayette Township around 6:30 a.m. Fire officials on scene told WPXI that a number of dogs were killed in the fire, but all people were able to get out safely. The cause of the fire is unknown, but it began on the second floor and severely damaged two units, with the unit below sustaining water damage.