Police identify woman they say has stolen hundreds of packages across metro
Brookhaven police believe they know who has been stealing packages from the community, and they say the suspect has been committing this crime for years.
Police say they have a warrant out for the arrest of Amanda Noble, who is accused of targeting apartment mailrooms on Aug. 5 and Aug. 23, stealing packages during both incidents. In the Aug. 23 burglary alone, nearly 100 packages intended for residents were taken.
Capt. Abrem Ayana with the Brookhaven Police Department said this isn’t Noble’s first run-in with the law.
“We arrested Ms. Noble previously in Brookhaven back in 2023. We investigated a similar case here in Brookhaven, where she was accused of stealing packages at a separate apartment complex. All appearances are that this is what she does,” Ayana said.
Police said the suspect was last seen leaving the scene in a white Ford transit-style van, possibly a 2017 model.
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They believe she might be connected to other crimes in the surrounding area.
Grant Park homeowner Christopher Doherty believes the person seen in the recently released surveillance video could be the same person captured on camera targeting his community.
“She has a unique look with that pink hair and that pink braid,” Doherty said, describing the woman caught on Ring video during a May burglary at the Swift Townhome community.
Doherty said his community has been targeted multiple times this year, and he and others in the neighborhood are frustrated.
“Stealing packages from someone who works hard for the things that they buy, it’s just kind of crazy that someone would swoop in and steal these things,” Doherty said.
While Brookhaven police work to track down their porch pirate, they’re shipping out some advice to help homeowners protect their packages.
“We would encourage our residents, even if you have a secure mailroom or package room — in many cases, they can still gain access — so if you’re able to do a will call, we always recommend you do a will call,” Ayana said.
Police said they are also looking for a second suspect believed to be the woman’s co-conspirator.
Anyone with information about Noble’s whereabouts or about a second suspect is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 404-577- 8477. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward.,
$500M revitalization to bring 630 housing units, shops, and civic space
Plan backed by community at Brookhaven Town Hall hearing
Projected $5.7M in annual property tax revenue after completion
Redevelopment to create over 900 jobs during ongoing operations
Some 250 people packed Brookhaven Town Hall Thursday evening where a public hearing for an ambitious plan to redevelop about 40 acres in Mastic Beach drew mostly support.
The $500 million Neighborhood Road Revitalization project is helmed by Jericho-based Beechwood Organization, which was designated as master developer for the plan by the Town of Brookhaven in Oct. 2021. The proposed redevelopment, which covers most of Neighborhood Road and Commack Road between Maywood Road and Doris Drive, would create a mixed-use downtown area with up to 630 housing units, 133,600 square feet of commercial space, and 34,000 square feet of community/civic space, in which the existing library and ambulance company would remain.
Questions and comments from speakers at the hearing focused on traffic concerns and help for existing businesses.
“This is exactly the kind of dialogue we need,” Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico said in a town statement. “Hearing directly from residents helps us build a plan that reflects the real needs of the neighborhood.”
Courtesy of Town of Brookhaven
The town conducted a blight study of 140 parcels along Neighborhood Road and surrounding streets in 2019, which confirmed that the area had enough blight, code violations and obstacles that have deterred meaningful private investment in the area. In Nov. 2022, the town unveiled a proposed master plan that aimed to transform the area into a walkable and vibrant downtown, with new housing, retail shops, restaurants, services and public gathering spaces.
Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, which has worked on two previous plans for the Mastic Beach area, said he is happy to see this project move forward.
“Great to see robust turnout for the Mastic Beach revitalization plan. Community and business leaders have been working for decades to see the type of public and private investment the redevelopment will bring,” Alexander told LIBN. “The development team and town officials spent time through this process answering questions and adapting the plan to meet local needs. This community has been waiting a long time for this type of investment, and they are very deserving.”
According to the project’s draft environmental impact statement, the plan creates six subdistricts, including a Neighborhood Subdistrict that would allow townhomes; a Main Street Subdistrict for mixed-use buildings with ground-floor commercial/retail space and second-floor residential and/or commercial space; a Gateway Mixed-Use Subdistrict for mixed-use and multifamily buildings up to 35 feet high; a Downtown Mixed-Use Subdistrict that would allow multifamily residential buildings up to 50 feet high with commercial uses on the ground floor; a Civic Subdistrict for cultural uses, community spaces, educational facilities, and emergency service facilities; and a Parks Subdistrict for open, outdoor, active and passive public space.
The plan projects a significant increase in property tax revenue, rising from the current tax revenue of just over $800,000 per year to more than $5.7 million annually, of which more than $3.4 million would go to the William Floyd School District, according to the DGEIS.
Following construction, the redevelopment is expected to create 680 jobs in the redevelopment area, with an indirect and induced impact of nearly 250 jobs, bringing the total employment impact to 928 total jobs during annual operations.
Beechwood will need some time to assemble the 143 parcels in the redevelopment area, so construction on the project isn’t expected to begin 2027. The total redevelopment is projected to take four years to complete.
Public comments on the project are still being accepted by the town until Sept. 29.
Four ShopRite stores in the Philadelphia area will be the first in Pennsylvania where customers can use high-tech shopping carts that keep running totals of their groceries and unlock rewards.
The New Jersey-based supermarket chain said Thursday it will introduce the carts at the following stores:
• ShopRite of Morrell Plaza – 9910 Frankford Ave., Northeast Philly • ShopRite of Brookhaven – 5075 Edgemont Ave., Brookhaven, Delaware County • ShopRite of Bridge & Harbison – 5597 Tulip St., Northeast Philly • ShopRite of Drexeline – 5000 State Road, Drexel Hill, Delaware County
The new Caper Carts, made by grocery delivery company Instacart, were introduced at a ShopRite in Hoboken, New Jersey, in May and have since been added to 11 stores in the retailer’s footprint in the Northeast.
Each smart cart has a screen where shoppers scan their items as they shop, displaying how much they’re spending and which coupons are available. For those with a ShopRite Price Plus membership, the screen also shows customers how much they need to spend to get rewards. There’s also a built-in scale that weighs and determines the price of produce, and when items are removed from a cart, sensors know to deduct the cost from the customer’s total.
When shoppers are ready to pay, they take their carts to the self-checkout area and scan the bar code on their cart to check out.
The carts also offer first-time users a tutorial mode that explains how to use them. At the end of the shopping trip, the smart carts can be returned to the same area where regular carts are kept.
The technology has more features than the “Just Walk Out” shopping carts that Amazon Fresh introduced when the tech giant opened its first grocery stores in 2020. Earlier this year, Amazon Fresh opted to get rid of those carts because they had received feedback from customers who wanted to be able to see a running total of their shopping lists while going through the store.
Amazon Fresh has just over 40 stores and has struggled to gain traction, resulting in some closures and a pause on store openings. The company now plans to replace its older carts with new Dash Carts that have similar features to the ones entering ShopRite stores.
Instacart is rolling out its Caper Carts at a growing number of U.S. grocers as part of a wider effort to make the technology available to more shoppers.
ShopRite is a retailer-owned cooperative with more than 300 locations operated by 50 members. The brand’s presence in Philadelphia has grown to 13 stores, including nine operated by Brown’s Super Food Stores, Inc. — the company led by businessman and former mayoral candidate Jeff Brown. The four that initially will have the new carts are not among Brown’s stores.
A FedEx delivery driver who said two White men shot at and chased him in Mississippi in 2022 has now been fired from his job, he and his attorney said Monday.
“I honestly feel disrespected,” the former driver, D’Monterrio Gibson, 25, told The Associated Press shortly after he received an email from FedEx about his termination.
Meredith Miller, manager of global network communications for FedEx, confirmed Monday that “Mr. Gibson is no longer employed at FedEx,” but did not respond to other questions from AP.
A Mississippi judge on August 17 cited police errors in declaring a mistrial for the father and son charged in the attack. A detective testified about failing to give prosecutors and defense attorneys a copy of a videotaped police interview with Gibson.
“I honestly feel disrespected,” the former driver, D’Monterrio Gibson, 25, told The Associated Press shortly after he received an email from FedEx about his termination.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Carlos Moore, an attorney who has represented Gibson in a civil lawsuit, provided AP with a copy of an email Gibson received from FedEx on Monday. It said Gibson’s employment was terminated July 26, and the company attempted to deliver a letter and documents to him about the termination July 31.
FedEx fired Gibson because he did not accept a part-time, non-courier job that the company offered in mid-July, Moore said, adding that he did not know whether the company gave Gibson a deadline to accept.
“They can’t tell me when I should be ready to come back,” Gibson said.
Worker’s comp, therapy, trouble sleeping
Gibson said he has been on worker’s compensation leave, at about one-third of his pay, since shortly after he reported the attack to police in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on the night it allegedly happened, Jan. 24, 2022.
Gibson was not injured in the shooting or chase, but said Monday that he has been in therapy to deal with anxiety because of it. He said he still has trouble sleeping.
Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, are charged with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into the vehicle driven by Gibson. Prosecutors said they intend to schedule a new trial for the two men, who remain out on bond. A court official said the judge’s docket is full through December.
Moore said Gibson had done nothing wrong before two White men tried to stop him, with one of the men holding a gun.
“He was simply Black while working,” Moore said during a news conference in 2022. Gibson had said he was told by his superiors to run the same route the day after the chase, CBS affiliate WJTV reported.
“The following day, we had to go file a police report, and as soon as I was done filing a police report, they put me back on the same route. I did that for like a day or two until I started having real bad anxiety attacks, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I asked them for some time off, which I do have, but it’s unpaid,” said Gibson at the time.
In a statement earlier this year, FedEx said: “FedEx takes situations of this nature very seriously, and we are shocked by this criminal act against our team member. … The safety of our team members is our top priority, and we remain focused on his wellbeing. We will continue to support Mr. Gibson as we cooperate with investigating authorities.”
Although nobody was injured, the alleged incident has sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, about 55 miles south of the state capital, Jackson.
Brandon Case (right) and his father, Gregory Case (center), are charged with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into the vehicle driven by Gibson.
Hunter Cloud/ The Daily Leader via AP
Gibson reported that the encounter happened as he was making FedEx deliveries in a van with the Hertz logo on three sides. After he dropped off a package at a home on a dead-end public road, Gregory Case, then 58, used a pickup truck to try to block the van from leaving, and his son Brandon Case, 35 at the time, came outside with a gun, District Attorney Dee Bates told jurors last week.
As Gibson drove the van around the pickup truck, shots were fired, with three rounds hitting the delivery van and some of the packages inside, Bates said.
Gregory Case saw a rental van with a Florida license plate outside his mother-in-law’s unoccupied home after dark, defense attorney Terrell Stubbs told jurors. The elder Case was just going to ask the van driver what was going on, but the driver did not stop, Stubbs said.
Grand Jury: Brookhaven Police “complacent”
On August 10, a federal judge dismissed Gibson’s federal lawsuit seeking $5 million from FedEx, writing that the lawsuit failed to prove the company discriminated against him because of his race. That litigation also named the city of Brookhaven, the police chief and the Cases. Moore said he plans to file a new civil suit in state court, seeking $10 million.
A grand jury issued a report last month saying that Brookhaven Police Department officers “poorly investigate their cases.” The grand jury, made up of local residents, considered more than 60 criminal cases, and wrote that the department is “complacent,” “does not complete investigations in a timely manner,” shows a “lack of professionalism” and “has a habit of witness blaming.”
BROOKHAVEN, Miss. — A father and son have been indicted by a grand jury after allegedly chasing and shooting at a FedEx driver in January after he dropped off a package in a Mississippi city.
Brandon and Gregory Case, who are both white, were re-arrested Friday and indicted for attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into the vehicle of D’Monterrio Gibson, who is Black. The charges were upgraded from conspiracy and aggravated assault.
Gibson, 24, was not injured. But the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of the state capital, Jackson.
Gibson and his attorney, Carlos Moore, said they pushed prosecutors to secure an indictment for nearly 10 months.
“It was an extremely long process to get this far into the case,” Gibson told WLBT-TV. “I feel like most of the time, I was treated like a suspect rather than a victim.”
Moore compared the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun.
Moore has called for a federal hate crime probe into the case. A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press in February that the department received a request to look into the case and was reviewing the request to determine any next steps. The department did not provide an update Tuesday.
Gibson said he was wearing a FedEx uniform and was driving an unmarked van that FedEx had rented when he dropped off a package at a house in Brookhaven on Jan. 24. As he was leaving, he said he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.
The pickup driver then tried to cut him off as he pulled out of the driveway, he said. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man who had a gun pointed at the van and was motioning for him to stop. Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the pursuit.
Attorneys for Brandon and Gregory Case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Cases were initially arrested in February and released after paying bonds on lesser charges. Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said bond was set at $500,000 for the upgraded charges, according to the Brookhaven Daily Leader.
Moore doesn’t expect the case to go to trial until May of 2023 at the earliest.
