WEATHER FORECAST FOR TUESDAY, AUGUST 21ST, 2018

TODAY – THUNDERSTORMS LIKELY. A FEW STORMS MAY BE
SEVERE. HIGH – 77.

TONIGHT – VARIABLE CLOUDS WITH SHOWERS AND
SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS. STORMS
BECOMING MORE NUMEROUS AS THE EVENING
GOES ON. LOW – 64.

WEDNESDAY – CLOUDY WITH OCCASIONAL RAIN SHOWERS.
HIGH – 72.

A pizza delivery driver who shot and killed a man who stabbed him during an attempted robbery in Beaver Falls has been fired from his job. The incident happened along Second Avenue on Aug. 10. According to management at the Rochester Domino’s, the driver was terminated. Management would not release an official statement but did say their drivers are not allowed to carry weapons. The Rochester location is owned by an independent franchisee and, per a corporate spokesperson, “The franchise owner is responsible for all decisions relating to his employees.” In a statement released last Tuesday morning, Beaver Falls Police Chief John DeLuca said 29-year-old Ryan Leonard tried to rob the driver. He also stabbed and assaulted him before the driver shot and killed Leonard. DeLuca said the driver was in lawful possession of the gun, had a valid permit to carry the weapon and used deadly force in response to deadly force being used against him. The police chief said they will be consulting with Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier but do not anticipate filing criminal charges.

THE U-S HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY VISITED BEAVER COUNTY YESTERDAY. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO WAS THERE. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…

A Beaver Falls man was charged with robbing The Huntington Bank in New Brighton last  Friday August the 17, 2018.

New Brighton Area police called to the Huntington Bank on 3rd Ave.  at about 1:20 p.m. for a report of a robbery in progress. A man gave a note to the teller demanding money, authorities said.

With the help of the FBI, the man was identified as 50-year-old Ernest DeWayne Taylor, he was arrested in Beaver Falls just after midnight Saturday by New Brighton police with the help of Beaver Falls and state police. Taylor who is currently in the Beaver County Jail after he failed to post $100,00.00 Bond is charged with robbery, terroristic threats, theft, receiving stolen property and false identification.

Catholics consider withholding donations amid scandals
By IVAN MORENO and JEFF KAROUB, Associated Press
For decades, Michael Drweiga has opened his wallet whenever the donation basket comes around at church, but the latest revelations of priests sexually abusing children brought him to the conclusion that he can no longer justify giving.
Brice Sokolowski helps small Catholic nonprofits and churches raise money, but he too supports the recent calls to withhold donations.
And Georgene Sorensen has felt enough anger and “just total sadness” over the past few weeks that she’s reconsidering her weekly offering at her parish.
Across the U.S., Catholics once faithful with their financial support to their churches are searching for ways to respond to the constant sex-abuse scandals that have tarnished the institution in which they believe, with back-to-back scandals in the past two months.
The most recent came Tuesday when a grand jury report revealed that hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania molested more than 1,000 children in six dioceses since the 1940s — crimes that church leaders are accused of covering up. The report came two months after Pope Francis ordered disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick removed from public ministry amid allegations the 88-year-old retired archbishop sexually abused a teenage altar boy and engaged in sexual misconduct with adult seminarians decades ago. Last month, Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal and ordered him to a “life of prayer and penance.”
The most recent “whopper of a report” from Pennsylvania, Drweiga said, was enough to make him wonder where his money was going and whether it was being used to cover up abuses.
“In an organization that spans the whole world like the Catholic Church, you don’t know where your money is going. And when you read about these priest-abuse scandals it just raises that question to the highest power. What is this money going for?” said Drweiga, 63, who lives in Wilmette, Illinois.
Sokolowski, an Austin, Texas, resident who founded Catholicfundraiser.net to provide advice to Catholic nonprofits and churches, said he’s heard from many who are “really sick and tired” of hearing about priests abusing children.
“So the big thing that people are saying is, ‘We just need to stop funding their crap,'” said Sokolowski, 36. He said he encourages people to stop giving money to their diocese, which oversees the network of churches in an area, but to keep supporting their local parish and tell their priest and bishop what they’re doing.
Calls to financially boycott the Catholic Church are not new. Five years ago, after sex-abuse scandals rocked the archdiocese in St. Paul, Minnesota, parishioners talked about withholding their donations in protest.
But Catholics face a delicate balance because some of the money dioceses raise are shared with parishes, cautioned Dr. Edward Peters, the Edmund Cardinal Szoka Chair at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
“I’m just saying, be careful about punishing the Spouse of Christ and her dependent children because some priests and even bishops, men presumably wedded to her as Jesus was wedded to her, abandoned her so shamelessly,” Peters wrote in a blog post Thursday, referring to the Catholic Church.
Sorensen, who lives near Tucson, Arizona, said after the McCarrick story broke, her prayer group sent a letter to her bishop voicing their concerns.
“Then came the Pennsylvania scandal and we thought, ‘Oh my God, this isn’t over. We thought it was over,'” the 72-yearold Sorensen said. “We thought we were building the new church again.”
Sorensen said she doesn’t plan to withhold money that she has pledged, including her diocese’s Annual Catholic Appeal, but she has spoken with others about the possibility of not giving a regular weekly contribution or only offering money to specific projects.
As for future major giving, she said, “we are definitely waiting to see where all the chips are going to fall.”
“It comes down to one thing: It’s the message, not the messenger,” she said. “I’m a faithful Catholic. … I will never leave the church. I will fight to save it.”
For Eddie Shih, however, the scandal has shaken his faith — one to which he converted about a decade ago and has intensely studied through three years of night school to earn a master’s degree in theology.
“I am struggling with it — it’s not easy for me,” said Shih, a Taiwanese immigrant who lives in New York City and attends several Catholic churches. “I don’t think I’ll leave the church but I can imagine a lot of people … will just drop out of the church.”
Tim Lennon, the president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said his organization has fielded calls from Catholics who have pledged to stop giving to their church.
“It’s an action as opposed to just sitting here doing nothing,” he said, but added that it’s a symbolic gesture.
“That in itself will not protect children. That in itself will not support survivors. That in itself will not compel … an attorney general to take action,” he said. “It’s just a message to the church that it’s not just survivors knocking at their door as we have been for the last 30 years.”
Ilene Kennedy, a San Antonio resident who attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on Sunday, said she doesn’t know “what the fix would be” aside from “holding the higher-ups accountable.” Still, she doesn’t think withholding her money from the collection basket is the answer.
“I don’t think that we should punish all churches just for that,” she said. “I don’t think that’s right.”
___
Associated Press video producer Robert Bumsted in New York contributed to this report.

Trump honors federal immigration officials at White House
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump planned to use a White House event Monday to pay tribute to federal immigration officials, returning to the fight over the U.S. southern border.
The president was honoring employees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection. The federal agencies have been thrust into the debate over the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their parents after they illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump has assailed some Democratic lawmakers for seeking to abolish ICE ahead of the November midterm elections. In a letter to state and local leaders, Trump wrote that ICE workers had been subjected to a “nationwide campaign of smears, insults and attacks” by politicians “catering to the extreme elements in our society.”
Trump has made border security a key part of his message as he tries to maintain Republican control of Congress in the November elections.
Before the president arrived, the White House held a panel discussion on immigration with several state and local officials, who pointed to the role that a secure border plays in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking and questioned calls to abolish ICE.
Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, who has worked closely with the administration on immigration legislation, said he struggled to see the point of eliminating the federal agency, likening it to someone saying, “I want to get rid of the Marines.”
“I just think it’s unconscionable, and frankly, I think it’s downright unpatriotic and treasonous,” Perdue said.

Latest: Official: Man held in US wanted for murder in Mexico
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Latest on the arrest by immigration agents of a man as he drove his wife to the hospital so she could give birth (all times local):
11:20 a.m.
An official of the Mexican state of Guanajuato confirms that a man detained by immigration agents in California is wanted on an arrest warrant for homicide in Mexico.
The official spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to be quoted by name and could not say when the crime occurred, but said it was an intentional homicide case akin to a U.S. murder charge.
The official says that Mexican prosecutors had asked the U.S. government to help find and detain Joel Arrona Lara.
Arrona Lara’s wife had to drive herself to the hospital and give birth without her husband after he was detained by immigration agents Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.
The couple came to the U.S. 12 years ago from the city of Leon, Guanajuato, without legal authorization to live in the U.S.
— By Mark Stevenson in Mexico City.
___
10:15 a.m.
The lawyer for a Mexican migrant detained by immigration agents in California while driving his wife to a hospital to give birth says the man may have been mistaken by agents for his brother.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say Joel Arrona Lara was wanted on a warrant in a homicide case in Mexico.
He was detained last week while stopping for gas.
His wife, Maria del Carmen Venegas, had to drive herself to a scheduled C-section.
Arrona attorney Emilio Amaya Garcia told KCBS-TV on Sunday he is unaware of any warrant and has been unable to confirm it with the Mexican consulate.
Garcia says authorities might have mistaken Arrona for his brother, who has done jail time in Mexico.
A telephone message to the consulate was not returned.

Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official says he hopes the state’s Roman Catholic leaders will “cease their denials and deflections” about a grand jury report into sexual abuse of children by priests following a letter to the faithful from Pope Francis condemning the attacks and efforts to hide them. Attorney General Josh Shapiro says the letter the pope sent Monday “acknowledges the painful truth.” The pope’s letter said church officials “showed no care for the little ones.”

PennDOT District 11 is announcing inspection activities are underway on the Rochester-Beaver Bridge (Route 51) ramp to southbound Route 18 in Rochester Borough. Lane restrictions and traffic shifts will occur in each direction of Route 65 under the ramp to allow crews from the Larson Design Group to conduct inspection activities.  Restrictions will occur from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday, August 20-23. The ramp will remain open during the inspection work.

THE ALIQUIPPA POLICE DEPARTMENT IS SEEKING FUNDS FOR A SECOND K-9 AND VEHICLE. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO NEWS CORRESPONDENT SANDY GIORDANO HAS MORE. Click on ‘play’ to hear Sandy’s report…